Waldo translated his irritation into a quickstep, so Chevie and Riley had to hustle to keep on his tail. He led them around the front desk and into a small steel elevator, which he summoned with a remote control fob on his waistcoat.

Riley tried to appear blasé. “It’s an ascending room, no great shakes. I saw ’em at the Savoy years ago when Garrick sent me to suss out some swell’s gaff.”

Waldo raised an eyebrow at Chevie, who knew exactly what the unasked question was. “Yes, he talks like that all the time. It’s all Strike me blind or Cor, luv a duck with this little gent.”

Waldo took a smartphone from his pocket and typed a note. Chevie would be willing to bet that the word delusional was in the note somewhere.

They took the elevator to the fourth floor, with Riley holding grimly onto the rail.

“You can’t be overcautious,” he told Chevie. “I heard about one of these things snapping its cable in New York City. It dropped quicker than a shirkster at closing time. Made jam of the passengers.”

“I’m getting a headache listening to this cockney speak,” said Waldo. “Please God there won’t be any rhyming slang.”

Riley literally jumped from the elevator when the door opened, then they pushed through a fire door and climbed some back stairs up two more flights.

“Here we are,” said Waldo, indicating a nondescript gray door with the sweep of his arm, as though it was the gateway to a palace of wonder. “Room seventeen seventy-six.”

He pressed another button on his remote and the door swung smoothly open.

“In you go, Agent. You can hole up here until a field team arrives. It shouldn’t be too long, though head office tells me that our team has already been deployed to deal with a suspected terrorist hive, in Devon, of all places. False alarm, as it turned out. So I’m guessing it’ll take an hour for them to make it back here. Plenty of time for you to get some clothes on, and for the Artful Dodger to take a bath.”

“Cheers, guv’nor, you is a proper swell,” said Riley innocently, and Chevie guessed that he knew exactly who the Artful Dodger was.