This was the original: `Fir planks too narrow by half.' Sounds harmless enough, doesn't it ?" "Absolutely.

What's the hidden meaning ?" "There I am still at a loss," Julian confessed, "but treated with the cipher it comes out as `Thirty-eight steeple on barn.'" Furley stared for a moment, then he lit his pipe.
"Well, of the two," he declared, "I should prefer the first rendering for intelligibility." "So would most people," Julian assented, smiling, "yet I am sure there is something in it--some meaning, of course, that needs a context to grasp it." "Have you interviewed the firm of timber merchants ?" "Not personally.

That doesn't come into my department.

The name of the man who manages the London office, though, is Fenn--Nicholas Fenn." Furley withdrew the pipe from his mouth.

His eyebrows had come together in a slight frown.
"Nicholas Fenn, the Labour M.P. ?" "That's the fellow.