Max hurried along behind them, and looked at the building. It was a drab brown, like a moth between butterflies, and it had a silver plaque which read:

21 TÉLI ÚT

MAREK, MAREK ÉS RUSZY:

AUKCIÓSHÁZ

Then three more slim plaques, with a name each:

ISTVAN MAREK

DANIEL MAREK

HANNA RUSZY

Max didn’t think that Marek, Marek and Ruszy, whoever they were, would just let in any old eleven-year-old, so she was going to need to pretend something to get through that door. She was good at pretending. Her plaits were not available for tugging, so she pulled at the bobble on her hat instead, and thought.

Then she knelt down on the pavement and opened her case. She took out Great-Aunt Elodie’s parcel, which by now only contained the postcard and the letter (Max’s tickets were in a pouch round her neck for safekeeping). She tore a page out of her notebook, and found the superglue that she had picked up when Sister Marguerite left it behind. With that, she glued the parcel shut, glued the paper to the front to cover her address, and wrote on it: Istvan Marek, 21 Téli Út, Budapest.

She crossed her fingers, and rang the doorbell.

The door was opened by a small, neat man in a doorman’s uniform, who made a small, neat “O” of surprise with his mouth when he saw Max, and frowned a small, neat frown as she pushed past him into the hallway.

The room was wood-panelled and dark, and smelled of polish and wealth. Along one wall there were three doors, and from the furthest away, Max could hear the tumultuous rumbles of Ester Rosenkrantz. There was another door at the end of the hall, and against the other wall were two wooden chairs, squatting under an oil painting of some deflated spaniels, and a hatstand.

Max sat on one of the chairs as haughtily as she could, and tried to look as polished and important as the hallway. The bobble of her hat fell forward with an undignified flump as she sat. She wished she had thought to take it off.

The man said something in Hungarian that sounded small and neat and quite annoyed. Which was fair enough. Max held out the parcel, and said firmly, “Istvan Marek.”

The man reached out his hand to take it. Max couldn’t let him do that. It was her only reason for being there.

“I have to give it to him myself. Very secret,” she said, pressing a finger to her lips to make up for her meaningless French. She rubbed the tips of her fingers together, like a gangster talking about money. “Very valuable.”