Enigma

the kippers that had been cooked in the same fat the previous Friday. The egg was pale yellow and tasted of stale biscuits. Yet such was his appetite after the excitements of the night that, despite his anxiety, he ate every scrap of it, washed it down with two cups of greyish tea, mopped up the last of the grease with a fragment of bread, and even, on his way out, complimented Mrs Armstrong on the quality of her cooking—an unprecedented gesture which caused her to poke her head around the kitchen door and search his features for a trace of irony. She found none. He also attempted a cheerful 'Good morning' to Mr Bonnyman, who was just groping his way down the banisters ('Feeling a bit rough, to be honest, old boy -something wrong with the beer in that place') and by seven forty-five he was back in his room.
    If Mrs Armstrong could have seen the changes he had wrought up there, she would have been astonished. Far from preparing to evacuate it after his first night, like so many of the bedroom's previous tenants, Jericho had unpacked. His suitcases were empty. His one good suit hung in the wardrobe. His books were lined along the mantelpiece. Balanced on the top of them was his print of King's College Chapel.
    He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the picture. It was not a skilful piece of work. In fact, it was rather ugly. The twin Gothic spires were hastily drawn, the sky was an improbable blue, the blob-like figures clustered around its base could have been the work of a child. But even bad art can sometimes have its uses. Behind its scratched glass, and behind the cheap Victorian mezzotint itself, laid flat and carefully secured, were the four undecrypted intercepts he had removed from Claire's bedroom.
    He should have returned them to the Park, of course. He should have cycled straight from the cottage to the huts, should have sought out Logie or some other figure of authority, and handed them in.
    Even now, he couldn't disentangle all his motives for not doing so, couldn't sort out the selfless (his wish to protect her) from the selfish (his desire to have her in his power, just once). He only knew he could not bring himself to betray her, and that he was able to rationalise this by telling himself that there was no harm in waiting till the morning, no harm in giving her a chance to explain.
    And so he had cycled on, past the main gate, had tiptoed up to his room and had hidden the cryptograms behind the print, increasingly aware that he had strayed across whatever border it is that separates folly from treason, and that with every passing hour it would be harder for him to find his way back.
    For the hundredth time, sitting on his bed, he ran though all the possibilities. That she was crazy. That she was being blackmailed. That her room was being used as a hiding place without her knowledge. That she was a spy.
    A spy? The notion seemed fantastic to him -melodramatic, bizarre, illogical For one thing, why would a spy with any sense steal cryptograms? A spy would be after decodes, surely: the answers not the riddles; the hard proof that Enigma was being broken? He checked the door, then gently took down the picture and dismantled the frame, working the thumbtacks loose with his fingers and lifting away the hardboard backing. Now he thought about it, there was something distinctly odd about these cryptograms, looking at them again he realised what it was. They should have had the thin paper strips of decode produced by the Type-X machines gummed to their backs. But not only were there no strips, there weren't even any marks to show where the strips had been torn off. So, by the look of them, these signals had never even been broken. Their secrets were intact. They were virgin, None of it made any sense.
    He stroked one of the signals between finger and thumb. The yellowish paper had a slight but perceptible odour. What was it? He held it close to his nose and inhaled. The scent of a library or an archive, perhaps? Quite a rich smell—warm, almost smoky—as evocative as perfume.
    He realised suddenly that despite his fear he was actually beginning to treasure the cryptograms, as another man might treasure a favourite snapshot of a girl. Only these were better than any photographs, weren't they, for photographs were merely likenesses, whereas these were clues to who she was, and therefore wasn't he, by possessing them, in a sense, possessing her...? He would give her just one chance. No more. He looked at