The hotel Gesar had sent me to was a perfectly ordinary little London hotel, located in Bayswater—a district famous for hotels like that. Or perhaps it was the opposite—infamous for its abundance of cheap tourist accommodation. The hotel didn’t have any signs that were visible only in the Twilight, like the “yin-yang” symbol which traditionally means “Others welcome.” I was beginning to suspect that although Gesar had given me a business-class flight, he had economized on the accommodation.

Or was there actually some point in staying in the three-star Darling Hotel that occupied two houses in an old Victorian terrace (white walls, columns at the entrance, single-glazed windows with wooden frames)?

My room was typical for that kind of hotel—that is, small, with narrow doors, a low ceiling, and a tiny bathroom. But the bathroom fittings were new, in the European style, and there was a flat-screen TV with a hundred satellite channels, including a couple of Russian channels squeezed in between the Arab and Chinese ones, and a minibar, and an air conditioner. The bed was also surprisingly large and comfortable.

It would do. I hadn’t come here to loiter in my room.

Exactly what I did now was entirely up to me. I could take a stroll round the shops, buy souvenirs and sit over a pint of beer in a pub, putting business off until tomorrow. I could go to visit Erasmus—unceremoniously, without an invitation. I could ride or walk through Hyde Park to Belgravia, where the office of the London Night Watch was located, and ask for their cooperation.

Or I could just phone Erasmus.

I took out my phone. Disdaining all subtlety and cunning, Mr. Erasmus Darwin now styled himself in the French manner—as Monsieur Erasme de Arvin. And, when I heard his voice in the handset, I even realized why: he spoke with a slight accent, which any modern person would have identified as French.

In actual fact it was an echo of times gone by. An eighteenth-century accent.

The speech of old Others usually doesn’t differ much from modern speech. A language changes gradually, the new words enter the Others’ vocabulary, they pick up new intonations and only a few individual old-fashioned words or expressions are left. The more an Other associates with people, the more active he is in the Watch, the harder it is to tell his age by listening to him.

But if an Other has kept his association with his fellows and with humans to the minimum . . .

There was the accent. And the old-fashioned turns of phrase. And particular words . . . If I had studied English the way normal people do, and not absorbed it magically, I would hardly have understood a thing . . .

“Erasme on the line, I heed you.”

“This is Anton here. I’ve come from Moscow and I really need to see you, Mr. Darwin. I’d like to have a word with you . . . about tigers . . .”