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thing as a pair of lurkers watching. He had returned to London two weeks previously after an absence of several years to discover what he had long suspected:that his family of villains could no longer be completely trusted, just as he could not depend entirely on the close members of his so-called Praetorian Guard, and could depend only partly on his former mistress, Sal Hodges, mother of his son, Arthur James Moriarty. *
    Terremant went downstairs to the little cubbyhole that he had set up as living quarters among what probably had once been the senior servants’ quarters near the spacious kitchens: sitting rooms for the cook or butler, he presumed, for the house had obviously been built for a significant family.
    He had made the room as cozy as possible, with a comfortable bed, a small chest of drawers, a table, and an easy chair that the previous occupants had left behind. Once inside the room he closed and locked the door, for he had no wish for Moriarty to come in unexpectedly.
    He took out the Professor’s letter and dropped it on the table, then lit a small candle and warmed the thin blade of a pocketknife he had bought when in Switzerland with the Professor. Once the blade was warm he wiped off any stains or soot and slid it into the envelope flap, directly below where Moriarty had sealed the packet with wax. His experienced fingers moved the blade along the flap, under the wax, then up to the top of the envelope.
    Terremant was an expert at opening the coverings to letters, envelopes, and more exotic foldings. He had started his working life as a footman to a large family here in London. There were several young people, both boys and girls, in the family and he soon discovered that the master—a highly placed man in the Foreign Service—insisted that his butler spy on his sons and daughters. In turn, thebutler instructed the footmen in the opening of notes and billets-doux from would-be lovers, which they did the year round for a small percentage of what the butler was given by either the master or, as often occurred, the young ladies and gentlemen who paid so that the servants would look the other way.
    Sitting at the table, Terremant smoothed out the letter and, with his finger travelling from word to word and line to line and his lips moving as he slowly read what Moriarty had written, the big man digested the entire message that he was to take to Albert Spear. The job took several minutes, for Terremant was not the fastest reader in England, having learned to read and write at a comparatively late age under the tutelage of Albert Spear himself. But the deception was finally done, and when he had finished and tucked the letter back into its envelope Terremant nodded to himself, as though the whole thing made perfect sense to him, as indeed it did.
    He put on his greatcoat—the dark one with the caped shoulders and the long skirts—and took from his pocket the Smith & Wesson revolver that the Professor had given him when they were in America, checking that it was loaded, cocked, and with the safety catch on, then returned it to his pocket. Then, putting on his somewhat battered hat, and picking up the thick, heavy stick with a knobbed head that he liked to carry when going abroad, James Thomas Terremant let himself out the door at the foot of the area steps that he climbed to the pavement and set out on foot, in the growing darkness, to start his lengthy journey to meet his three colleagues in Poplar.
    He had almost disappeared into the murk of night as another dark shape detached itself from the blackness across the road and moved after Terremant with a sense of purpose and a silence borne of much practice and thick rubber soles on well-made boots.

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Questions and Conversations
    LONDON: JANUARY 15–16, 1900
    T HERE WERE NO two ways about it: Daniel Carbonardo was terrified, thought he was
in extremis
, thought he was going to die, and wanted a priest because if he died without benefit