She spun the dial through its paces and the safe swung silently open to reveal a velvet box containing Grandmama’s medals, her mother’s diamond collar, and her parents’ wedding rings. If the previous occupants had found this safe, she imagined it all would have vanished along with the paintings and the furniture. She might have to sell the jewels herself, if fortune didn’t fill the family’s sails and soon.

Under the baubles was a small pile of papers. Her wedding contract, Stephen’s birth certificate, the deeds to Damesfort and to Coral Street. Beneath it all, in a plain brown envelope: a passport for Ambrose van Weill.

She slipped this free and locked the safe again, then climbed down and gave the little booklet to Daoud. He flipped the passport open to Cyril’s photograph: half starved and all wrung out.

“I know you don’t want to speak to Aristide again,” she said, “but since you said you’ll be going back to Sykes House … I don’t know if it will do him any good, with the fraud charges and all, but I thought it was better he had it. In case it can be of some use.”

Daoud put the passport into the pocket of his greatcoat. “I will give it to him.”

«Thank you,» she said, and meant it. Then, «You might take a roundabout route, getting back. Just to throw them off the trail.»

«Who’s sniffing?» he asked.

«That pack of vultures out front,» she said. «And heaven’s eyes see whatever else.»

«I’ll swap cabs,» he said. «Maybe stop for a drink somewhere. So hopefully, we won’t find out.»

Cyril was resting his eyes, half wishing for a newspaper and knowing he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on any printed page, when he heard the clang of a steel door and, beneath its echoes, a tense, whispered conversation in the corridor perpendicular to his cell. Markert, and some other guard. It had the rhythm of street market haggling, by which Cyril surmised it might be a discussion of bribery.

The whole thing ended in under thirty seconds, with Markert’s declaration—so loud Cyril heard it clearly—that this had better not happen again. It struck a false note. He must have come out wealthier in the deal.

A freckled, brawny guard—Pryzbieza, fond of Cyril because he could pronounce the surname none of her colleagues could—came to unlock his cell.

“Visitor,” she said. “Your sister. Markert didn’t want to let her in after hours, but…”

“I hope you kept a little for yourself.”

“Enough to drink on, after work. Come on, let’s go.”

He let her handcuff him and went meekly down the corridor, wondering what Lillian wanted.

Her face gave him no clues. When he sat, she produced a single cigarette from her coat pocket, which he took gratefully.

“How’s it turning?” he asked, around the straight.