Charles the footman said: “Imagine how I felt when I found the carriage gone! I said to myself, I’m sure it was left here. Oh, well, I thinks, William’s moved it. I run up and down The Mall; I look everywhere. In the end I go back to the palace. ‘Here’s trouble,’ I says to the doorman, ‘the Earl of Walden’s carriage has gone missing.’ He says to me: ‘Walden?’ he says-not very respectful-”

Mrs. Mitchell interrupted: “Palace servants, they think they’re better than the nobility-”

“He says to me: ‘Walden’s gone, mate.’ I thought, Gorblimey, I’m for it! I come running through the park, and halfway home I find the carriage, and my lady having hysterics, and my lord with blood on his sword!”

Mrs. Mitchell said: “And after all that, nothing stolen.”

“A lewnatic,” said Charles. “An ingenious lewnatic.”

There was general agreement.

The cook poured the tea and served Charlotte first. “How is my lady now?” she said.

“Oh, she’s all right,” Charlotte said. “She went to bed and took a dose of laudanum. She must be asleep by now.”

“And the gentlemen?”

“Papa and Prince Orlov are in the drawing room, having a brandy.”

The cook sighed heavily. “Robbers in the park and suffragettes at the court-I don’t know what we’re coming to.”

“There’ll be a socialist revolution,” said Charles. “You mark my words.”

“We’ll all be murdered in our beds,” the cook said lugubriously.

Charlotte said: “What did the suffragette mean about the King torturing women?” As she spoke she looked at Pritchard, who was sometimes willing to explain to her things she was not supposed to know about.

“She was talking about force-feeding,” Pritchard said. “Apparently it’s painful.”

“Force-feeding?”

“When they won’t eat, they’re fed by force.”

Charlotte was mystified. “How on earth is that done?”

“Several ways,” said Pritchard with a look that indicated he would not go into detail about all of them. “A tube through the nostrils is one.”

The under-house-parlormaid said: “I wonder what they feed them.”

Charles said: “Probably ’ot soup.”

“I can’t believe this,” Charlotte said. “Why should they refuse to eat?”

“It’s a protest,” said Pritchard. “Makes difficulties for the prison authorities.”

“Prison?” Charlotte was astonished. “Why are they in prison?”

“For breaking windows, making bombs, disturbing the peace…”

“But what do they want?”

There was a silence as the servants realized that Charlotte had no idea what a suffragette was.

Finally Pritchard said: “They want votes for women.”

“Oh.” Charlotte thought: Did I know that women couldn’t vote? She was not sure. She had never thought about that sort of thing.

“I think this discussion has gone quite far enough,” said Mrs. Mitchell firmly. “You’ll be in trouble, Mr. Pritchard, for putting wrong ideas into my lady’s head.”

Charlotte knew that Pritchard never got in trouble, because he was practically Papa’s friend. She said: “I wonder why they care so much about something like voting.”

There was a ring, and they all looked instinctively at the bell board.

“Front door!” said Pritchard. “At this time of night!” He went out, pulling on his coat.

Charlotte drank her tea. She felt tired. The suffragettes were puzzling and rather frightening, she decided; but all the same she wanted to know more.

Pritchard came back. “Plate of sandwiches, please, Cook,” he said. “Charles, take a fresh soda siphon to the drawing room.” He began to arrange plates and napkins on a tray.

“Well, come on,” Charlotte said. “Who is it?”

“A gentleman from Scotland Yard,” said Pritchard.

Basil Thomson was a bullet-headed man with light-colored receding hair, a heavy mustache and a penetrating gaze. Walden had heard of him. His father had been Archbishop of York. Thomson had been educated at Eton and Oxford and had done service in the Colonies as a Native Commissioner and as Prime Minister of Tonga. He had come home to qualify as a barrister and then had worked in the Prison Service, ending up as Governor of Dartmoor Prison with a reputation as a riot breaker. From prisons he had gravitated toward police work, and had become an expert on the mixed criminal-anarchist milieu of London’s East End. This expertise had got him the top job in the Special Branch, the political police force.

Walden sat him down and began to recount the evening’s events. As he spoke he kept an eye on Aleks. The boy was superficially calm, but his face was pale, he sipped steadily at a glass of brandy-and-soda and his left hand clutched rhythmically at the arm of his chair.

At one point Thomson interrupted Walden, saying: “Did you notice when the carriage picked you up that the footman was missing?”

“Yes, I did,” Walden said. “I asked the coachman where he was, but the coachman seemed not to hear. Then, because there was such a crush at the palace door, and my daughter was telling me to hurry up, I decided not to press the matter until we got home.”

“Our villain was relying on that, of course. He must have a cool nerve. Go on.”

“The carriage stopped suddenly in the park, and the door was thrown open by the man.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall. He had a scarf or something over his face. Dark hair. Staring eyes.”

“All criminals have staring eyes,” Thomson said. “Earlier on, had the coachman got a better look at him?”

“Not much. At that time the man wore a hat, and of course it was dark.”

“Hm. And then?”

Walden took a deep breath. At the time he had been not so much frightened as angry, but now, when he looked back on it, he was full of fear for what might have happened to Aleks, or Lydia, or Charlotte. He said: “Lady Walden screamed, and that seemed to disconcert the fellow. Perhaps he had not expected to find any women in the coach. Anyway, he hesitated.” And thank God he did, he thought. “I poked him with my sword, and he dropped the gun.”

“Did you do him much damage?”

“I doubt it. I couldn’t get a swing in that confined space, and of course the sword isn’t particularly sharp. I bloodied him, though. I wish I had chopped off his damned head.”

The butler came in, and conversation stopped. Walden realized he had been talking rather loudly. He tried to calm himself. Pritchard served sandwiches and brandy-and-soda to the three men. Walden said: “You’d better stay up, Pritchard, but you can send everyone else to bed.”

“Very good, my lord.”

When he had gone Walden said: “It is possible that this was just a robbery. I have let the servants think that, and Lady Walden and Charlotte, too. However, a robber would hardly have needed such an elaborate plan, to my mind. I am perfectly certain that it was an attempt on Aleks’s life.”

Thomson looked at Aleks. “I’m afraid I agree. Have you any idea how he knew where to find you?”

Aleks crossed his legs. “My movements haven’t been secret.”

“That must change. Tell me, sir, has your life ever been threatened?”

“I live with threats,” Aleks said tightly. “There has never been an attempt before.”

“Is there any reason why you in particular should be the target of Nihilists or revolutionists?”

“For them, it is enough that I am a p-prince.”

Walden realized that the problems of the English establishment, with suffragettes and Liberals and trade unions, were trivial by comparison with what the Russians had to cope with, and he felt a surge of sympathy for Aleks.

Aleks went on in a quiet, controlled voice. “However, I am known to be something of a reformer, by Russian standards. They could pick a more appropriate victim.”

“Even in London,” Thomson agreed. “There’s always a Russian aristocrat or two in London for the season.”

Walden said: “What are you getting at?”

Thomson said: “I’m wondering whether the villain knew what Prince Orlov is doing here, and whether his motive for tonight’s attack was to sabotage your talks.”