He had already touched the telephone receiver to unhook it. Miss
Erith looked at him appealingly; her eyes were very, very hazel.

"Couldn't we handle it?" she asked.

"WE?"

"You and I!"

"But that's not our affair, Miss Erith--"

"Make it so! Oh, please do. Won't you?"

Vaux's arm fell to the desk top. He sat thinking for a few minutes.
Then he picked up a pencil in an absent-minded manner and began to
trace little circles, squares, and crosses on his pad, stringing
them along line after line as though at hazard and apparently
thinking of anything except what he was doing.

The paper on which he seemed to be so idly employed lay on his desk
directly under Miss Erith's eyes; and after a while the girl began
to laugh softly to herself.

"Thank you, Mr. Vaux," she said. "This is the opportunity I have
longed for."

Vaux looked up at her as though he did not understand. But the girl
laid one finger on the lines of circles, squares, dashes and
crosses, and, still laughing, read them off, translating what he had
written: