Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on September 18, 2002 at 16:37:40 from 194.112.53.104 user ACB.
His first telegram is the most famous telegram in literature.
But he is particularly prone to sending them. Amongst merchant ship Masters of the grander type (P&O, Blue Funnel, and so on) there was a tradition of cabling one's Agent as tersely as possible, often citing verses from the Bible or Shakespeare as shorthand, and just possibly the Navy, espescially on the China Station, where they mixed with merchantmen, had a similar custom.
His cable from Berlin is understandable; either Miss Powell has no telephone, or he does not know her number, or it is an Ungodly Hour, or the cost of an international call was excessive (most likely the last!) His two cables from Flushing are intended (in the nicest possible way) to decieve, in a way which could not have been done by telephone, and thereby to reassure his wife.
And it has just struck me that his flurry of cables to Beckfoot, sent whilst he was at work, no doubt dictated over the office telephone, which have long puzzled me, since Beckfoot has a telephone, are also calculated to deceive; he signs the first one in his wife's name.
The mask slips in later telegrams with the erroneous reference to "tents".
But it is a remarkably consistent plotting device. Nancy adopts it herself in PM, trying to fend off the GA.
Are there other plot construction devices which turn up in more than one book?