An Enigma Wrapped in Packaging Tape

The mystery of the Enigma continues.

After disappearing from a museum on April Fools’ Day, a World War II-era encryption machine turned up Tuesday--in the mail room of the British Broadcasting Corp.

The German Enigma machine was in a package addressed to Jeremy Paxman, who anchors the nightly “Newsnight” program, the BBC said.

Paxman said the parcel, sent from the central English city of Birmingham, apparently had been in the “Newsnight” office for several days.

“As soon as I opened it, I realized what it was. I haven’t a clue why they sent it to me,” Paxman said.

An Enigma machine, the device the Nazis used to encrypt top-secret messages during World War II, was stolen from the Bletchley Park Museum, about 40 miles northwest of London, on April 1.

The museum is in the building occupied by a top-secret wartime team of code-breakers who cracked the Enigma cipher.

Last month, the museum received a letter demanding $36,000 by Oct. 6 for the safe return of the machine. The writer, who threatened to destroy the WWII relic otherwise, claimed to be acting for a third party who bought the Enigma unwittingly.

There was no immediate word whether the museum had paid the ransom.

More than 70 Enigma machines are known to exist, according to a list compiled by data-security researcher David Hamer. Bletchley Park’s Enigma was a rare and especially complex model used by German military intelligence.