Page 91 of The Number of Love
She appeared at his side and drew in a sharp breath. “Telegrams.”
“Telegrams.” He opened to the first one, made note of the page number in case it mattered, and handed it to her after only a cursory glance. “In German.”
“In code.” She sank onto the edge of the little wooden chair by the bookshelf. “Blast.”
“What?”
“In the mystery code. I’m all but certain of it. The one we haven’t broken yet.”
He extracted the others too. “What about these?”
She took them, her eyes going over them not word by word but seeming to swallow them whole. Then she let her eyes slide shut, her lips move without sound. And she nodded. “All the same.”
Drake re-marked the pages in the book with pieces he tore off a blank page on the desk. “How long will it take you to break it?”
“Too long. Weeks. Months. We don’t have enough examples of it.”
“Not even when combined with what you have on file?”
“Thesearewhat we have on file. Some of them, anyway. The originals.” She stood again, her dark eyes troubled. “We need to get this all to the admiral. We can check the sources, see where they were sent from. That might give us a clue as to what code we’re looking for and where we can find a codebook.”
In this flat would be nice—but he had a feeling this bloke hadn’t left such a thing lying about. He nodded and looked around again. “Let me just make certain there’s nothing else of interest hiding here first.”
“All right. I’ll stare at these a bit longer. See if I have any epiphanies.”
He let a smile tease the edges of his mouth as he turned back to the bookshelf. If anyone could crack a code just by staring at it, it was surely Margot De Wilde.
He didn’t find anything else hidden in the tomes, nor in the cupboards in the kitchen, nor anywhere else he checked. After a thoroughsearch, he moved back to Margot’s side. “I suppose those are our only clues.”
She wasn’t staring at the telegrams any longer though. She was staring at a small notebook opened to a blank page.
“What is it?”
She picked it up, angled it toward the light. “I thought so.”
He bent down to match her view and could just barely make out indentations on the page. “What does it say? Something important?”
“It’s what he used to write the notes that he left with the—wait a minute.” Frowning, she stood and spun in a faster three-sixty. “Where’s the game board?”
Drake spun, too, even though he knew well it hadn’t been anywhere in here. “I don’t know. Could it be set up in the park?”
Her answer was simply to look at him for a second and then take off for the door. Drake followed in her wake, pulling the door closed behind him and nodding his thanks to the bobby stationed in the corridor.
Williams’s flat wasn’t far from the park. It only took them a few minutes to reach it and walk the familiar paths.
But the table was empty. No game. No notes. Certainly no Niall Walsh.
“He must have it with him.”
Drake shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “He didn’t grab his coat, but he grabbed the game?”
“Priorities, I suppose. Which tells us what?”
He grinned. “I’m rubbing off on you. That, mi alma, is the question. It tells us he’s going to use it again. To communicate with you.”
“Well then. It’s his play.” She tucked her hand into the crook of Drake’s arm—without prompting, without invitation—and tugged him along the path. “We need to get to Hall.”
They didn’t speak as they hurried along. He had to imagine that her mind was working through everything like a moving-picture reel. His certainly was. Drawing up all the details again, examining them, asking what each piece could mean, then flipping to the next.
