Woolvey appeared slightly more sober, or perhaps it was belligerence, and he seconded this demand, but with suspicion added, ‘And I tell you, Laurence, I expect some better answers. No, you shan't go, unless you do want me to set up a shout. You cannot accost a man in the street during times like these and then claim it is all about secret missions and go bounding away, with this Chinaman in tow.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Tharkay said, in his most frigidly aristocratic accent, and drew their stares. ‘I do not believe we have been introduced, gentlemen.’

‘What the devil are you doing made up like a Chinaman, then?’ Sutton-Leeds said, peering at Tharkay's face, as if he expected to find some artifice responsible for his features.

Given this brief distraction, Laurence caught Woolvey's arm and said low and sharply, ‘Do not be a damned fool. If they take us in your house, they will take you for a spy, do you understand, and if they care to be thorough your wife also. Forget we were ever here and pay your servants to do the same: every moment we stay here, we put you all in danger, to no purpose.’

Woolvey wrenched himself free and returned, as coldly, ‘That you take me for a fool, I very well know, but I am not so simple as to take the word of a convicted traitor— Yes, I have heard—And one skulking loose in the streets, the day after Bonaparte marches in.’

‘Then I am lying and a turncoat for the French,’ Laurence said impatiently, ‘and if you interfere with me I might have you all arrested: either way you had better let me go.’

‘I am no coward, sir,’ Woolvey said. ‘If you are on some black business for that Corsican, I will stop you even if I have to blow a hole through you to do it, yes, and go to prison for it too, damn you.’

‘Gentlemen,’ Edith said, breaking the charged atmosphere, ‘I beg you all go into the sitting room before you wake the entire house,’ and there was nothing to be done for it.

Sutton-Leeds was disposed of by means of a substantial glass of brandy, which left him snoring in an armchair. The credit was Edith's: they had scarcely entered the room before she had come down again, hastily dressed, and taken the decanter around at once. But though Woolvey accepted a glass, he simply looked at it, set it down, and said, ‘I will have coffee, my dear, if you please,’ with determined mien, and waited with his arms folded across his chest.

Laurence looked at the clock: it was nearly eleven. Bonaparte's engagement at the party, with so many of his entourage surely gave them their best chance of success, and every minute was now doubly precious.