Someone knocked.

“Damn!” Walden said quietly.

Lydia turned her face away from the door and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

Pritchard came in. “Excuse me, my lord. An urgent telephone communication from Mr. Basil Thomson. They have tracked the man Feliks to his lodging. If you want to be in at the kill, Mr. Thomson will pick you up here in three minutes.”

“Get my hat and coat,” Walden told him.

When Feliks went out to get the morning paper he seemed to see children every way he turned. In the courtyard a group of girls played a game involving dancing and chanting. The boys were playing cricket with a wicket chalked on the wall and a piece of rotten planking for a bat. In the street, older boys were pushing handcarts. He bought his newspaper from an adolescent girl. As he went back to his room, his way was blocked by a naked baby crawling up the stairs. As he looked at the child-it was a girl-she stood up unsteadily and slowly toppled backward. Feliks caught her and put her down on the landing. Her mother came out of an open door. She was a pale young woman with greasy hair, already very pregnant with another child. She scooped the baby girl up off the floor and disappeared back into her room with a suspicious look at Feliks.

Every time he considered exactly how he would bamboozle Charlotte into telling him the whereabouts of Orlov, he seemed to run up against a brick wall in his mind. He visualized getting the information out of her sneakily, without her knowing she was telling him; or by giving her a cock-and-bull story like the one he had given Lydia; or by telling her straight out that he wanted to kill Orlov; and his imagination recoiled at each scene.

When he thought about what was at stake he found his feelings ridiculous. He had a chance to save millions of lives and possibly spark the Russian Revolution-and he was worried about lying to an upper-class girl! It was not as if he intended to do her any harm-just use her, deceive her and betray her trust, his own daughter, whom he had only just met…

To occupy his hands he began to fashion the homemade dynamite into a primitive bomb. He packed the nitroglycerine-soaked cotton waste into a cracked china vase. He considered the problem of detonation. Burning paper alone might not be sufficient. He stuffed half a dozen matches into the cotton so that only their bright red heads showed. It was difficult to get the matches to stand upright because his hands were unsteady.

My hands never shake.

What is happening to me?

He twisted a piece of newspaper into a taper and stuck one end into the middle of the match heads, then tied the heads together with a length of cotton. He found it very difficult to tie the knot.

He read all the international news in The Times, plowing doggedly through the turgid English sentences. He was more or less sure that there would be a war, but more or less sure no longer seemed enough. He would have been happy to kill a useless idler like Orlov, then find out that it had been to no purpose. But to destroy his relationship with Charlotte to no purpose…

Relationship? What relationship?

You know what relationship.

Reading The Times made his head ache. The print was too small and his room was dark. It was a wretchedly conservative newspaper. It ought to be blown up.

He longed to see Charlotte again.

He heard shuffling footsteps on the landing outside; then there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” he called carelessly.

The caretaker came in, coughing. “Morning.”

“Good morning, Mr. Price.” What did the old fool want now?

“What’s that?” said Price, nodding to the bomb on the table.

“Homemade candle,” Feliks said. “Lasts months. What do you want?”

“I wondered if you needed a spare pair of sheets. I can get them at a very low price-”

“No, thank you,” Feliks said. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, then.” Price went out.

I should have hidden that bomb, Feliks thought.

What is happening to me?

“Yes, he’s in there,” Price said to Basil Thomson.

Tension knotted in Walden’s stomach.

They sat in the back of a police car parked around the corner from Canada Buildings, where Feliks was. With them was an inspector from the Special Branch and a uniformed superintendent from Southwark police station.

If they could catch Feliks now, then Aleks would be safe: what a relief that will be, Walden thought.

Thomson said: “Mr. Price went to the police station to report that he had rented a room to a suspicious character with a foreign accent who had very little money and was growing a beard as if to change his appearance. He identified Feliks from our artist’s drawing. Well done, Price.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The uniformed superintendent unfolded a large-scale map. He was maddeningly slow and deliberate. “Canada Buildings consists of three five-story tenements around a courtyard. Each building has three stairwells. As you stand at the entrance to the courtyard, Toronto House is on your right. Feliks is on the middle staircase and the top floor. Behind Toronto House is the yard of a builder’s merchant.”

Walden contained his impatience.

“On your left is Vancouver House, and behind Vancouver House is another street. The third building, straight ahead of you as you stand at the courtyard entrance, is Montreal House, which backs on to the railway line.”

Thomson pointed to the map. “What’s that, in the middle of the courtyard?”

“The privy,” replied the superintendent. “And a real stinker, too, with all those people using it.”

Walden thought: Get on with it!

Thomson said: “It seems to me that Feliks has three ways out of the courtyard. First, the entrance: obviously we’ll block that. Second, at the opposite end of the courtyard on the left, the alley between Vancouver House and Montreal House. It leads to the next street. Put three men in the alley, superintendent.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Third, the alley between Montreal House and Toronto House. This alley leads to the builder’s yard. Another three men in there.”

The superintendent nodded.

“Now, do these tenements have back windows?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So Feliks has a fourth escape route from Toronto House: out of the back window and across the builder’s yard. Better put six men in the builder’s yard. Finally, let’s have a nice show of strength right here in the middle of the courtyard, to encourage him to come along quietly. Does all that meet with your approval, Superintendent?”

“More than adequate, I’d say, sir.”

He doesn’t know what kind of man we’re dealing with, Walden thought.

Thomson said: “You and Inspector Sutton here can make the arrest. Got your gun, Sutton?”

Sutton pulled aside his coat to show a small revolver strapped under his arm. Walden was surprised: He had thought that no British policeman ever carried a firearm. Obviously the Special Branch was different. He was glad.

Thomson said to Sutton: “Take my advice-have it in your hand when you knock on his door.” He turned to the uniformed superintendent. “You’d better take my gun.”

The superintendent was mildly offended. “I’ve been twenty-five years in the force and never felt the lack of a firearm, sir, so if it’s all the same to you I shan’t begin now.”

“Policemen have died trying to arrest this man.”

“I’m afraid I’ve never been taught to shoot, sir.”

Good God, Walden thought despairingly, how can people like us deal with people like Feliks?

Thomson said: “Lord Walden and I will be at the courtyard entrance.”

“You’ll stay in the car, sir?”

“We’ll stay in the car.”

Let’s go, thought Walden.

“Let’s go,” said Thomson.