“I’ll ask. Again, thank you.” Matthew left the kitchen with the book and the spectacles in hand. He walked past the room where Julian had been in bed for the two days since they’d arrived. He went into Firebaugh’s room. The doctor was sitting in a chair with his banyan robe on, his feet up on an ottoman and the red leatherbound book of potions in his lap. In case the innkeeper or his wife happened to look in—which they certainly were not going to—Firebaugh kept the ropes loosely about his wrists and the other end tied to the bedpost. Matthew closed the door behind him. “Four pair for you to try.”

“Ah.” The first pair brought a wince and a comment of, “This person was born of a bat.” The second: “Not too bad.” The third and fourth did not suit, so the second pair went on the doctor’s face and he opened the book of potions. Matthew put the book he’d selected as a decoy aside on a table.

“Quite a chemist, was this Jonathan Gentry,” said Firebaugh as he turned through the forty or so pages of the book. “Some of these are devilishly intricate. What became of him?”

Matthew had known this question was coming sooner or later. “He passed away. Thus his place was taken by a chemist named Gustav Ribbenhoff. He was unfortunately dispatched on orders from Cardinal Black.”

Firebaugh gazed at him over the rims of his spectacles. “I hope I don’t see a pattern developing. That of a short life for the professor’s chemists.”

Matthew offered a faint smile but could go no further in his assurances.

The first full day of their arrival all three of them had slept like the dead, Matthew keeping his vow to sleep on a pad at the foot of the murderer’s bed, and with Julian’s pistol at the ready to further comfort their hosts though the gun was not loaded. On the second day, yesterday, Firebaugh had told Matthew he wanted to start re-reading the book of potions so he might be as best informed as possible when they reached Fell’s village, but his mind was still somewhat fogged and it needed to wait for another day.

The reason they had not left the Flying Dragon was that on the previous morning Julian had begun throwing up blood. Varney had taken a horse to Whistler Green, the nearest village six miles to the west, and returned with a thin but wiry and white-bearded doctor named Adam Clark following him in a buggy. Clark had gone in to see Julian, with Matthew standing at the bedside, and at once the assembly—including Varney and his wife—could see that the pallid and sweating man in the bed was not only in extreme pain but had sustained life-threatening injuries.