Her mouth was a thin line, lips tight. “Enough to tempt men to great crime,” she said hoarsely. “For people to believe the worst of anyone . . . quite easily. Mr. Monk, this answer is not sufficient.” She looked down, away from his eyes and what they might read in hers. When she spoke again her voice was little more than a whisper. “I am so afraid for Michael I hardly know how to keep my head at all. Because I am afraid, I have taken risks I would never take in other circumstances. I have listened at doors, I have overheard conversations, I have even read papers on other people’s desks. I am ashamed to confess it.” She looked up suddenly. “But I am seeking with all my strength to prevent disaster to those I love, and to ordinary innocent men and women who only wish to travel from one town to another and who trust the railway to carry them safely.”

“What is it that you have not told me?” he demanded, now a little roughly.

Again passersby were staring at them, perhaps because they were standing rather than walking, more likely because they saw the passion and the urgency in Katrina’s face, and that she was still gripping Monk’s arm.

“I know that Jarvis Baltimore is planning to spend over two thousand pounds on an estate for himself,” she said breathlessly. “I saw the plans of it. He spoke of having the money in almost two months’ time, from the profits they expect out of the scheme he and Michael spoke of.” She was watching him intently, struggling to guess his judgment. “But both he and Michael have said it must be kept a most deadly secret or it will ruin them instead.”

“Are you quite certain you have not misunderstood?” he questioned. “Was this since Nolan Baltimore’s death?”

“No . . .” The word was hardly more than a breathing out.

So it was not an inheritance.

“The sale of railway stock to foreign railway companies?”

“Why should that be secret?” she asked. “Would someone not speak of it quite openly? Do not companies do it all the time?”

“Yes.” He said that with certainty.

“There is some secret you have not yet discovered, Mr. Monk,” she said huskily. “Something which is terrible and dangerous, and will drag Michael down to prison, if not death, if we do not find it before it is too late!”

Fear ran through him like a burning wave, but it was nameless and without sense. He reached for the only thing he knew which matched the violence and the enormity of what she was suggesting.

“Miss Harcus! Nolan Baltimore was murdered a short while ago. Most people assumed it was because he was frequenting a brothel in Leather Lane. But perhaps that is what they were intended to think.”