In any case, I picked it up and was about to put it in my pocket when I realized why Ellen had saved it—and why Bill Yorke had tossed it away.

It was covered with blocks and blocks of letters, beginning with two meaningless groups of three letters apiece and the rest in rows of five, lines of nonsense marching down the thin sheet. I couldn’t read it. I mean, I could read the letters; they were neat block capitals, evenly printed. But they didn’t say anything—they didn’t make words that meant anything.

Whatever it said, it was in code.

Back upstairs in Room Five, Jane lay on the bed and rested her eyes.

I sat down and opened a book. But I kept thinking about the cigarette paper with the rows of meaningless letters. I felt like it was burning an imaginary hole in my skirt pocket. Was it important? No, it couldn’t be, or Bill Yorke wouldn’t have tossed it in the ashtray. But what if he’d done that because he wanted to get rid of it? Had Ellen noticed the writing—did she wonder what it meant?

I pulled the paper out of my pocket and spread it flat on my open book, like a bookmark. The sheet was covered back and front with the rows of printed letters. Bill Yorke was the wireless operator for his flight crew as well as their gunner—he must have taken this down in the air not long ago. Maybe only last night.

Then I had a wild thought.

I had a coding machine and I had a coded message. Perhaps I could put the two together.

By now, Jane was snoring gently as she rested her eyes. I shut my book on the cigarette paper and went to the wardrobe. When I opened it and dug out the coding machine and the box of extra rotors, Jane didn’t stir. So I picked everything up, and my book and a pencil too, and let myself out of the room.

I listened for anyone in the passage. But Phyllis had gone with Ellen to deliver the 648 Squadron airmen to their barracks, and Mrs. Campbell was downstairs washing up. I made my way quietly down the passage and into the loo—the toilet was separate from the bathroom, right next to it in a little closet with a door and an arrow-slit window of its own.

I locked the door and sat down on the loo with the book on my knees and the coding machine at my feet. I felt like Pandora as I opened the beautiful wooden box.