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each person they passed, as though he suspected them of something.
    “Captain Michael Bates is thought to be deeply involved,” Hal said at last. “The general told me of the matter after you and Wainwright had left yesterday; Bates’s father is General Ezekial Bates—long retired, but an intimate of General Stanley’s.”
    “Ah,” Grey said. “I see.” He felt unsettled still, vaguely alarmed, pointlessly angry—but this intelligence relieved his mind a little. At least now he knew why the matter had come to Hal’s attention. “And the other men you mentioned—Otway and Ffoulkes?”
    “Otway is a private soldier in the Eleventh Infantry, a nobody. Ffoulkes is a reasonably well-known solicitor in Lincoln’s Inn.”
    “How are these men connected?”
    “Through Bates.”
    Captain Bates and Ffoulkes had met, according to General Stanley, when Ffoulkes had handled a minor matter of business for the captain’s family. Otway had evidently met Bates in a tavern near Temple Stairs, formed an unwholesome connexion with him, and then later been introduced to Ffoulkes, though the general did not know the circumstances.
    “Indeed,” said Grey, thinking of the bog-houses near Lincoln’s Inn, a spot much patronized by both lawyers and mollies. “This…association is what they refer to as a ‘company of sodomites’? It seems lacking in both membership and organizing principles, I think.”
    Hal snorted a little; his breath purled white in the winter air.
    “Oh, there’s more. Our friend Ffoulkes, it seems, has a French wife. Who in turn has two brothers. One of these brothers is a notorious pederast—notorious even by French standards—while the other is a colonel in the French army.”
    Grey grunted in surprise.
    “And is there any evidence of—I suppose it must be treason?”
    “It is. And there is. The War Office got wind of something, and has been quietly pursuing the matter for some months. Bates—he was General Stanley’s chief aide-de-camp for some time before joining the Horse Guards, by the way—”
    “Christ.”
    “Precisely. He apparently had been passing secret materials to Otway, who in turn delivered these to Ffoulkes in the course of their assignations. And from there, of course…”
    Grey drew the evening air deep into his lungs. The last of his defensive anger chilled, leaving him cold. It
was
a personal matter—but not directly personal. Hal’s concern was for the general, of course—and for their family, lest the old rumors be resurrected in light of fresh scandal, stimulated by their mother’s new marriage.
    “What has been done?” he asked. “I have heard nothing of it in the streets, read nothing in the periodicals.”
    Hal’s shoulders hunched a little; they were passing a gate where torches burned, and Grey saw his brother’s shadow, foreshortened and shrunk, the image of an old man.
    “It has been kept as quiet as possible. Bates and Otway were both arrested yesterday, though.”
    “And Ffoulkes?”
    Hal’s head lifted, and he blew out a long white breath.
    “Ffoulkes shot himself this morning.”
    Grey walked on, mechanically, no longer feeling chill or cobble.
    “May God have mercy on his soul,” he said at last.
    “And ours,” Hal said, without humor.

    H al could not or would not say more, and they walked the rest of the way in silence. Disturbed in mind though he was, Grey was jerked out of his thoughts as they turned into St. James Street.
    Candlelight streamed welcomingly through the windows of White’s, illuminating what appeared to be the body of a man lying on the pavement by the door. As they approached the building, Grey saw a head pop out of the club’s open door, survey the body, then pop back in, only to be succeeded by a different head, which repeated this procedure.
    “Do you know him?” Grey asked his brother, as they came up to the body. “Is he a member?” Grey was of course a member of White’s, as well, but seldom patronized the