“Elton?” He sat up straighter and looked genuinely struck. For a moment. Then the smirk reappeared, and he swept his eyes down the length of her. “Are you his sister? Dora, isn’t it?”

Men could be such imbeciles. “No. And no.” She picked up the tube she’d brought with her, opened it, and pulled out the intercepted telegrams within. “Are you ready to get to work, or do you need a few more minutes to prove yourself a reprobate?”

He waved a hand. “By all means, darling. Teach me something.”

He was about to learn how not darling she was. “That top sheet there has today’s code on it. Since you’re obviously so much smarter than a mere woman could possibly be, why don’t you just go right ahead and decode those telegrams?”

He sent her an arched look but picked up the day’s code and one of the slips of paper from the tube. “Might take some time, but infinitely doable.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Then you’ll be ready for your first night shift in a few days and will be able to do it in reverse—break the code with nothing to go on but the telegram written in it.” She pushed off the desk and gave him an empty smile. “Have at it, then. Cheerio.”

She pivoted to the door, fully intending to leave him to his own devices for an hour or two and see what came of it.

But the doorway was blocked by Dilly Knox, who stepped inside with raised brows. “Is DID angry with you, De Wilde? To assign you to him?”

Margot grinned. “No. He just knows I’m not going to butt heads with him like a ram, as the rest of you do.”

“Mm.” Dilly glared at Camden for a moment and then held up a paper in his hands, his eyes softening back to normal when he looked again to her. “I could use your help, if you have a moment. This just came in. I haven’t compared it to all our codebooks yet, but it doesn’t look to me as though it’s in the usual ones, and I was afraid it would be another of those that seem to be in that new code. You hold the lot of them in your head better than I do, so I thought perhaps you could . . . ?”

“Ah, fun.” It was something like holding up a random piece and trying to determine which of five puzzles it belonged to. One had to look past the portion of image that was so incomplete, the colors that could belong in any of the blank spots, and instead look at the shape of the thing.

Behind her, the chair scraped. “Wait just a blighted moment. Do you mean to tell me—”