He was taken back to the anteroom, and left alone again. The daylight was ebbing. A small lamp had been lit in his absence. Master Imus waited for twenty minutes, and then the officer arrived.

‘Johan Imus?’ the officer asked as he entered the room, reading from a data-slate.

Master Imus stood up.

‘That’s me, sir,’ he said.

The officer was a tall, well-made man with dark hair. He was dressed, and this came as no surprise to Johan Imus, in black clothes and a black leather coat. The officer looked Master Imus up and down with unforthcoming eyes, and announced his credentials with a cursory wave of his rosette.

‘You have been received for inspection. Follow me, please,’ he said.

Master Imus followed him obediently. He followed him across the twilit yard, in through an archway, and up an endless flight of varnished stairs. The officer opened a door, and ushered Master Imus into a small room. The room had a large, ornamental fireplace that looked as if it had not seen a fire in centuries. A gilt clock ticked on the mantle. There was a rug on the wooden floor, and two plain chairs on either side of a desk. An armchair stood in one corner, a comfortable and friendly item of furniture that Master Imus never got to sit in.

They took their seats on either side of the desk.

‘What is the nature of the crime you are confessing?’ the officer asked, after studying the data-slate for a few minutes.

‘Not a crime, as such,’ Master Imus replied hastily.

‘No?’

‘A transgression. Yes, transgression, that is a better word altogether.’

‘The nature of the transgression, then?’

‘I have already explained this,’ Master Imus offered, ‘to the clerk.’

The officer scrolled back through the slate’s files. ‘Have you born false witness to this statement as I read it?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Were you coerced, invited or urged to make this report?’

‘No, sir,’ Master Imus said. ‘I have come here of my own volition. I... I said as much.’

‘That is noted here, strenuously. You made that point several times during the preliminary examinations.’

‘I simply wanted it to be clear,’ said Master Imus. ‘I was persuaded to come here by my own conscience, nothing else.’

The officer was silent for a moment. ‘You say you have been suborned by the Ruinous Powers, drawn into their evil, and set upon an unholy task?’

Master Imus nodded.

‘I suppose,’ he sniffed, ‘you get a lot of cases like mine.’