As de Massloff had said, Dunbar's room was on the fourth floor —his precious fourth floor. Earlier Gray had worried that he might not be in, but now it seemed that he could even sense him from the stairwell: brooding by lamplight with a bottle of gin and one more Mata Hari photograph. "Charles is actually a wonderfully emotional and complex man," she had told him not long after they had met. How would she describe him now?

The last corridor was silent and empty. There were also no sounds from neighboring rooms, and not even the whine of elevators. As Gray approached the door he withdrew the revolver, removed his coat, and laid it beside him on the carpet. He had already decided that if Charles demanded to know who was knocking, he would answer in slurred French: télégramme—it seemed cruelly appropriate.

Dunbar responded to Gray's knock without speaking, drawing back the door like any gentleman with nothing to fear. Gray hit him twice as he lunged inside; first in the mouth with the muzzle of the revolver, then with a knee to the groin.

Dunbar stayed on the floor for several minutes. His hands were clamped to his testicles, and there was a fair amount of blood from his mouth. Gray had locked the door, drawn the shades, poured himself a glass of gin. The leg of a table had been shattered, and the carpet was littered with papers: letters on beige stationery with his majesty's crest, typewritten sheets of onionskin, handwritten notes on yellow foolscap, and a dozen photographs of Zelle.

The photographs were old, from her first tour abroad. Gray could see that Dunbar had scribbled something on the back of one but could not make it out.

"You never actually saw an early performance, did you?" Gray said.

Dunbar's eyes kept following him across the room. "I won't be able to protect you, Nicky, not after this."

"Personally I've always felt she was better in those days. Not as technically accomplished perhaps but wonderfully spontaneous."

"I'm warning you. There are going to be very serious repercussions—"

"You really should have seen her perform at the Olympia, Charles. Believe me, she danced spectacularly that evening."

"Look, Nicky, I don't want to see you hurt ..."

Gray crossed the room and swung the heel of his shoe into the base of Dunbar's spine. "I don't want to see you get hurt either, Charlie."

Dunbar's eyes remained open. Traces of vomit had mixed with the blood on the carpet.

"I don't know what you expected to gain from this but you can't possibly—"

"Oh shut up."

He poured a second glass of gin and placed it on the window ledge alongside Dunbar's head.

"Tell me about her, Charles. How's she holding up in there?"

"It isn't too late to stop this, Nicky. I can still look the other way."