“You’d have to kill me,” said Waldo, completing the hackneyed phrase.

“And your family,” added Orange, straight-faced.

Waldo’s instinctive dislike of this Scot burned brighter. “There’s no call to be rude. We have a procedure in place here, and that’s the end of it. You may wait in the lounge if you wish, but there will be no contact with the suspects. After all, we only have your word for it that the detainees are guilty of anything.”

Orange’s smile never wavered. “That’s an excellent point. Unfortunately, I am not in a mood to be detained at the moment, and as you pointed out, you outrank me only inside the suite. And I am outside. So I shall partake of another excellent coffee from the establishment across the street and return later when the big-knob bluebottle has joined the party.” Orange stopped suddenly and his eyes brightened as though lit from within. “Can it be?” he cried, his accent suddenly less Scottish. “Why, I swear that it is.”

Waldo was reluctantly intrigued. “What is? It is what?”

Orange gazed past the suite’s custodian into the room itself. “Blow me if I haven’t been here before.”

“I think you’re mistaken,” said Waldo in the most patronizing tone he could muster. “I have a log of every single person who has set foot across this threshold in the past twenty years, and you are not on it.”

Orange was so delighted that he actually clapped his hands. “This was years ago, Waldo. Many years ago. If I remember it right, an exceedingly dodgy character answered the landlord’s rap in those days.”

“Fascinating story, really. But if you won’t come in, you must leave. Security and all that.”

Orange doffed his cap, revealing a head of hair that seemed gray or black depending on the incline of his head. “And all that, indeed, Waldo. A quick coffee bath for the ivories, and I shall return. Watch for me, won’t you?”

Neither man offered his hand upon parting, but Waldo Gunn flicked through different camera views on the security screen so that he could watch Orange all the way to Monmouth Street.

“I will watch for you, Agent Orange,” he said between his teeth. “You give your ivories their coffee bath, and I will watch for you like a hawk.”

Waldo placed a hand on his round stomach, the result of too many fried Cumberland sausages and late night hot chocolates with Chantilly swirls.

What is that feeling? he wondered, trying to match an emotion to the acid churning in his belly.

Waldo Gunn realized that, for the first time in twenty years, he did not feel safe in his own fortress.

Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. Orange is a disconcerting character, that is all. He’s not dangerous.

But Waldo Gunn’s subconscious was trying to tell him something, and the portly agent really should have listened.

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