I uncrumpled it while I waited for them to scramble the eggs and fry the potatoes. It was a Juicy Fruit gum wrapper (the same one? a different one? who knows? who cares?). This time I turned it over and found that someone had written something on the back.

Like this:

T:

Sp r-ints.

Soonest.

The scrambled eggs and fried potatoes came. I ate them. I drank several cups of coffee. I read the message over and over again. I would have to destroy it, I decided. It wouldn’t do to leave it lying about where anyone could find it. Someone might glean information from it. Just because I couldn’t get anything out of it didn’t mean that some keen-eyed, quick-brained lad couldn’t get a kernel of meaning out of it.

Sprints. No, correct that: SP r-ints.

Uh-huh.

The T seemed likely to mean Tanner. The soonest probably meant that I was supposed to do something right away. And the fundamental insanity of this particular method of delivering a message suggested the message’s source. Only the undercover agencies of the United States Government operate habitually in this fashion.

Which meant that this gum wrapper was a message from the Chief. A certain amount of his cuteness is dictated by circumstances. Since I’m a subversive a couple thousand times over, my privacy is limited in certain ways. The FBI taps my phone and reads my mail before I do, and the CIA has bugged my apartment. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. I’m not entirely sure which is which and I don’t entirely care.

SP r-ints?

I tucked the gum wrapper into my shirt pocket and took it back to my apartment. I puzzled over it for a while, then hauled over the telephone and looked at the dial. Then I got it. SP r-ints was a telephone number. Just substitute the appropriate numbers for the last five letters and one came up with SPring 7-4687.