A window appeared in the middle of Shelton’s main screen, assuring them that it was WORKING ON IT. They waited while the machine zipped at light-speed through the near-infinite number of possible password combinations. Wolf perched on a nearby desk. Ben lit a Gauloise. Shelton pawed the air and said, ‘Really? Must you?’

‘Just improving the smell in here,’ Ben said.

In their military careers he and Wolf had both spent hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hours sitting around on standby waiting for things to happen. But at this moment six or seven minutes seemed like an eternity. At last, right on cue, Shelton’s computer finished its work and spat out the decrypted code with a triumphant ping.

‘There you have it,’ Shelton announced. ‘The magic password is F-U-C-K-T-H-E-M-A-L-L-6-6-6. That’s original.’

‘Sounds like a man highly motivated in his work,’ Ben said. He watched as Shelton returned to the laptop screen, brought up the prompt box for the entry code and tapped it in.

‘Easy when you know how,’ Shelton chuckled. The prompt box vanished. The book manuscript file flashed up onscreen, opening at the last page its author had been working on before being forever interrupted by the advent of his hired assassin.

There it was. The Pandemonium Club, by Thomas Revere, aka Anthony Abbott.

Ben flicked away the stub of his Gauloise and approached the desk. Wolf jumped down from his perch and came over to join him. Clearly, the manuscript had come on in leaps and bounds since Abbott had submitted his sample to Seaward & Laverack. The word counter at the bottom left of the laptop screen showed a reading of 116,573 words.

‘Who’d been a busy little bastard, then?’ Wolf commented with a smile.

‘Getting to be quite a magnum opus,’ Shelton said. ‘Well over four hundred pages’ worth. It’ll take a while to read it all from the beginning.’

‘Later,’ Ben told him. ‘Let’s keep this focused for now. Is there a way to search the whole document for a specific key phrase?’

Shelton gave him a look. ‘Wow. I can tell I’m in the company of a fellow computer nerd here. Uh, yeah, I think we’re able to do that.’ He shot his cursor down to hit Select Browse, then clicked a little binocular icon, and another little box opened up that said ‘Find What?’ Shelton paused expectantly with his fingers poised on the keys. ‘On your command, boss.’

‘Search for “Tristan Dudley”,’ Ben said.

Shelton’s agile fingertips rapped out the thirteen letters faster than a machine gun and he entered the search phrase with a flourish.

The computer didn’t need long to think about it. In a heartbeat it had scoured all 116,573 words and come back with its findings.

‘Well, well, well,’ Wolf said.

The search result showed that the name Tristan Dudley was mentioned forty-seven times in the manuscript.