Sebastian looked down his nose at Harold in silence. Finally he grinned devilishly, his cheeks turning apple red.

“Really, Harold? Is that it? Is that the best you’ve got?”

Sarah looked back and forth between the two men. She seemed unsure of her position.

“We found the message you left on Cale’s machine,” said Harold. “You sounded pretty angry.”

“Yes, yes, yes, and then after Cale died, I offered to help you two silly twats find the killer. And I told you all about my fight with Cale. I never made a secret of it.”

“Who’s following us?” blurted Sarah suddenly.

Now Sebastian appeared confused. “I’m sorry, someone is following you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Someone with a gun,” added Harold. “A very large gun. And whoever it is ransacked Cale’s office as well.”

Harold studied Sebastian’s expression as best he could. Sebastian gave every indication of processing this information for the very first time.

“Then don’t you think,” Sebastian said, “that it’s likely that whoever this armed pursuer is, he might be, oh, let’s just suppose, Cale’s bloody killer?”

“Maybe,” said Harold. “Except I don’t think that guy has the diary. I think you do.”

A long moment of silence followed.

“Perhaps, Mr. White, you’ve exhausted your usefulness,” said Sebastian icily.

Harold braced himself. Would Sebastian lunge at him? Did he have a weapon? Harold stepped back, trying to prepare himself for anything.

“I suggest you leave,” continued Sebastian. His voice was firm yet calm. He seemed to be a man easily driven to annoyance, but not to anger.

“I’ll be in touch,” said Harold as he made his way toward the door. He felt he’d handled that quite well.

“So where’d you get those balls from?” asked Sarah after she and Harold had made it onto the street below. They walked along Abbotsbury, under the older Oriental planes that grew closer to the park. They hadn’t discussed where to go, but that didn’t stop them from walking. Harold was deep in thought, processing the new information. He felt as if he were at the edge of something, just at the precipice between not-knowing and knowing. He was so irritatingly close to figuring it all out, and yet, damn it, he didn’t quite have it.

“Sorry?” said Harold, awakening from his thoughts.

“Balls. All of a sudden. Up there.” She gestured behind them toward Sebastian’s building. “Do you really think he killed Cale?”

“No,” said Harold after a sizable pause. “I don’t. I suppose there’s a lot of evidence that points to him. Motive, means. And the guy creeps me out, I’ll be honest. But I don’t think he killed Cale.”

“Great way to show it.”

“I don’t think he did, but I could be wrong. And I wanted to see how he’d react. Maybe he’d break down and confess the whole thing. Murderers do that in the Holmes stories all the time, once they’ve been confronted. Even if there isn’t any real evidence against them.”

For a few minutes, they walked in silent lockstep. Holland Park turned into Notting Hill and then Bayswater. The buildings grew a few stories taller, and the street noise a few decibels louder.

“So,déjà vu, we’re being followed,” said Sarah suddenly.

“What?” Harold was incredulous.

“Older man. Mud-brown suit. Glasses. Wing tips so loud I can hear them from here.”

“Christ,” said Harold. “How did they find us? And how are you so good at telling when someone is watching you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they had a man on Sebastian’s flat, figuring that ten to one we’d show up there eventually? And you try being a woman walking down a busy street sometime. You become acutely aware of each set of eyes that’re on you. It’s better training than the CIA.”

Having no experience being stared at himself, Harold felt obligated to accept her reasoning. “You said he’s older?” he asked as they continued walking, faster now.

“Yes,” she replied. “Seventies, maybe.”

“Seventies? You don’t see a lot of goons in their seventies. Unless… Unless he’s the boss of the operation! He hired them to follow us, they screwed it up, and now he’s doing the trailing himself.”

“Shit,” said Sarah, suddenly more nervous. “You see the alley up ahead on the left? Ten paces? Eight?”

“Yeah.”

“Turn into it with me. Right… now.”

Sarah slid suddenly to her left, and Harold followed into the alley. In an instant she had thrown out her arm, pressing him up against the wall. The bricks felt hard and cold against his back. Her arm felt hard and warm against his chest.

“Don’t move,” she said.

She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her retractable knife. She flipped out the blade. It was dark in the alley, even for a foggy midday, as the tall buildings on either side blocked out the sun. The steel blade appeared a murky blue in the dim light.

Sarah flattened her own back against the wall, next to Harold but closer to the alley’s entrance. Harold saw her breath in the cold air, even and measured. He realized then that he’d been holding his breath. He was too scared to exhale. He heard loud footsteps approaching the alley. The man’s wing tips sounded like hooves on the pavement. Harold let out a tiny wisp of air.

There was an instantaneous flash of violence. The old man turned into the alley, and Sarah leaped at him. Her movements seemed half professional and half bestial. Before Harold’s single puff of hot breath disappeared into the cold alley, Sarah had the old man on the ground. Her knife was pressed into his neck.

The old man clutched at his knee. Sarah must have kicked it.

“Ahhhh!” he yelped.

Harold’s eyes settled on the man’s face. His big glasses. His patchy gray skin. His thick, dark eyebrows. His nose, seemingly too large for his face, looked soft and mushy. As if it were a costume nose, knocked halfway off in the man’s fall…Oh, Jesus.

“Don’t! Ah! It’s me!” yelped the old man again.

“Let him up,” said Harold.

Sarah didn’t budge, keeping her eyes firmly on the old man and her knife scraping against his neck.

“Harold, please, owww, don’t let her kill me!”

“Sarah,” said Harold after a deep gulp of oxygen. “It’s okay. Let him up.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. For the first time, she took her eyes off the old man and looked up at Harold.

“It’s okay,” said Harold. “It’s Ron.” His face grew flush with embarrassment. “From the Irregulars. It’s Ron Rosenberg.”

CHAPTER 25 Surveillance

November 12, 19oo

Arthur inhaled a deep lungful of Morris tobacco, then coughed it up, sputtering as a mist of gray smoke floated up into the gaslight above him. He leaned against the streetlamp and inhaled again on his cigarette. Arthur was not a regular cigarette smoker, and yet he felt that while one was engaged in the work of surveillance, smoking seemed the only practicable method for passing the time. He glanced across the street, into the third-floor window of a moderate four-story. The lights were on inside, and they shone clear out into the night. He saw a figure move in front of the window, framed in the light like an actor in a Chinese shadow play. Arthur instantly stepped backward, out of the narrow beam of the streetlight above him, and dipped his head. The figure in the window was Emily, the petite suffragist from the night before, and it was of the utmost importance that she not discover Arthur spying on her. She passed out of the window’s frame, deeper into her flat and out of Arthur’s vision. He took another puff of his Morris, this one a bit less full. Goodness, was not surveillance the most infernally tedious activity to which he’d ever submitted himself?