“No, I don’t,” said Tuppence, “and what’s more, I don’t believe there is any.”
Tommy sighed, and brought the tips of his fingers together in the most approved Sherlock Holmes fashion.
“Exactly. Yet you read the papers as much—in fact, more than I do. But I have observed and you have not. If you will look at today’s Daily Leader , you will see that in the middle of the downstroke of the D is a small white dot, and there is another in the L of the same word. But in yesterday’s paper the white dot is not in Daily at all. There are two white dots in the L of Leader . That of the day before again has two dots in the D of Daily . In fact, the dot, or dots, are in a different position every day.”
“Why?” asked Tuppence.
“That’s a journalistic secret.”
“Meaning you don’t know, and can’t guess.”
“I will merely say this—the practice is common to all newspapers.”
“Aren’t you clever?” said Tuppence. “Especially at drawing red herrings across the track. Let’s go back to what we were talking about before.”
“What were we talking about?”
“The Three Arts Ball.”
Tommy groaned.
“No, no, Tuppence. Not the Three Arts Ball. I’m not young enough. I assure you I’m not young enough.”
“When I was a nice young girl,” said Tuppence, “I was brought up to believe that men—especially husbands—were dissipated beings, fond of