Chevie swabbed Riley’s face as best she could with a damp cloth from the sink, then she helped the boy stagger to the kitchen door, which led conveniently to the back of the house.

We gotta get out of here, thought Chevie again, grabbing an overcoat from a hook by the door. But I wish I could stay long enough to see the look on Charismo’s face. I bet the spirits didn’t warn him about this.

The look on Charismo’s face was a blend of disbelief and petulant terror, an unusual cocktail of emotions for a set of features to display. The result was that Tibor appeared to be sucking on an invisible bottle when Colonel Jeffers of the Knightsbridge Barracks strode into his office, flanked by two privates and a doctor.

Once they were certain that Charismo was unarmed and alone, the soldiers relaxed a fraction, though the barrels of the privates’ Lee-Enfield repeater rifles were rock steady and aimed squarely at Charismo’s torso.

Charismo fluttered his kerchief, as though that could deflect bullets from their course.

“Am I in danger, Captain?” he enquired querulously. “Has the duke sent you to protect me? Is there a credible threat?”

“There is a threat, sir,” replied Jeffers. “Indeed there is, and I have the misfortune to be staring directly at it.”

Charismo’s hanky fluttered like a hummingbird’s wing. “Right at it? I am the threat? Tibor Charismo threatens? And whom does he threaten, Captain? Answer me that.”

Jeffers did not answer, but he followed a cable on the floor until his eyes lighted on the Farspeak, which lay where Riley had tipped it.

“Somebody wishes to speak to you, sir,” he said, picking up the device and holding it out to Charismo.

Charismo understood then, and his curled mustache quivered. “I do not wish to converse at present,” he said, almost childishly.

“I advise you to take it,” said Jeffers firmly, and Charismo correctly inferred that to refuse again would have dire consequences. He accepted the Farspeak with trembling hands and pressed the transmitter close to his mouth.

“Hello? Your Grace?”

On the other end was the rattling breathing of a pipe smoker, then: “I am dreadfully disappointed, Tibor. Dreadfully.”

Charismo tried to talk his way out of it. “Your Grace, I can only imagine what you must have thought. Sometimes when I am in the grip of the spirits, my words are not as I would choose.”

“Silence!” thundered the Duke of Westminster. “I am to die! The queen is to die. The rheumatic queen, for whom you do not care a fig! The end of the house of Hanover.”

“Perhaps I overstepped the mark,” admitted Charismo.

“Overstepped the mark? You plan to aid the Germans in a war against Britannia! Germany is our friend. This is high treason, nothing less.”

“It was idle chatter. A passing notion.”