Riley placed his cup on its saucer, tracing the pattern of dancing girls on the china with his index finger. “I can’t stay long, sir. You have been wonderful to grant us shelter, but Garrick will find me, and then you would be in danger. My conscience could not bear that responsibility.”

Charismo harrumphed. “With your leave, Riley, I shall worry about this Garrick individual.”

Riley’s scratched the scab on his shoulder, though the tattooist Farley had warned him against this. “Everyone says that, sir. Then Garrick kills them.”

“Shall we make a gentlemen’s agreement?” asked Charismo. “We will have our little talk and I shall take my silly notes, and then I will set all the resources at my disposal, which are considerable and include Otto Malarkey and his stooges, a-looking for your Garrick. How does that sound?”

Riley forced a smile.

“Capital,” he said, resolving that he and Chevie must be away before nightfall.

Chevie’s first thought upon emerging through the fireplace into the chamber directly above her bedroom was that perhaps she should not have worn a white shirt.

I am not having much luck with clothes these days, she thought, and then, These days? What does that even mean anymore?

The climb had been difficult, but far from impossible for someone whose first month in training had included a half-mile crawl along a disused latrine drain, with barbed wire overhead and a permanently disgruntled FBI instructor above the wire. Her only worry in the chimney had been that she would lose her purchase on the mortar between the bricks and slide down to the cellar.

Chevie climbed over the grate’s brass railing, then stood upright, grateful to have space on every side—she had been about two minutes away from developing claustrophobia.

She looked around. This room was three times the size of hers and infinitely more luxurious. The bed was the size of a trampoline and seemed to be built on a nautical theme, with posts designed to look like masts and drapes rigged like sails. Blue-and-white-striped cushions were heaped in a mountain in the center, and what looked like a veil was tied to a brass hook on the headboard. Chevie counted over a dozen gas jets on the walls, as well as four electric lamps. One of Charismo’s Farspeak devices stood on a marble-topped bedside table and another on the rolltop writing desk. Gold-framed pictures lined the walls, and all depicted Charismo. Some were seated portraits, but others documented his extraordinary career. Here he was onstage with Robert Louis Stevenson in Covent Garden, and there was Tibor presenting a leather-bound book to Queen Victoria herself. By the window was a framed cover of Harper’s Magazine, split by a Union Jack ribbon into two halves, the left depicting Charismo speaking into his Farspeak device, the right showing an amazed mother with her petticoated daughters listening raptly to the receiver.