Finessing the King
It was a wet Wednesday in the offices of the International Detective Agency. Tuppence let the Daily Leader fall idly from her hand.
“Do you know what I’ve been thinking, Tommy?”
“It’s impossible to say,” replied her husband. “You think of so many things, and you think of them all at once.”
“I think it’s time we went dancing again.”
Tommy picked up the Daily Leader hastily.
“Our advertisement looks well,” he remarked, his head on one side. “Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives. Do you realise, Tuppence, that you and you alone are Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives? There’s glory for you, as Humpty Dumpty would say.”
“I was talking about dancing.”
“There’s a curious point that I have observed about newspapers. I wonder if you have ever noticed it. Take these three copies of the Daily Leader . Can you tell me how they differ one from the other?”
Tuppence took them with some curiosity.
“It seems fairly easy,” she remarked witheringly. “One is today’s, one is yesterday’s, and one is the day before’s.”
“Positively scintillating, my dear Watson. But that was not my meaning. Observe the headline, ‘The Daily Leader .’ Compare the three—do you see any difference between them?”