I was dead sure it was old Baumberger at the other end, and I--well, I struck up a mild sort of flirtation with the operator at Shoshone." She smiled deprecatingly at Peaceful.
"I wanted to find out--and I did by writing a nice letter or two; we have to be pretty cute about what we send over the wires," she explained, "though we do talk back and forth quite a lot, too.

There was a news-agent and cigar man--you know that kind of joint, where they sell paper novels and magazines and tobacco and such--getting Saunders' messages.

Jim Wakely is his name.

He told the operator that he and Saunders were just practicing; they were going to be detectives, he said, and rigged up a cipher that they were learning together so they wouldn't need any codebook.

Pretty thin that--but you can't prove it wasn't the truth.