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"I certainly will. I'll work tomorrow night, and then I'll come down and see her—I must do that. I don't care how far apart we were, a sister's a sister, for all that."

She took the card and tucked it into her bag.

"By the way," he said, "d'you know a chap called Al-istair Mackinnon?"

Her reaction was immediate.

"Him!" she said with icy derision. "That little crawling wood louse. Know him? I should say so. And if he was here now, I'd knock his block off. Mackinnon? Macslimey, if you ask me. Ugh! Is he mixed up in this as well?"

"Yes . . . but I dont know how. He seems to arouse strong reactions, anyway. I've lost track of him. He ought to know about his mother."

"His mother?"

"Your sister. Mrs. Budd."

"Whatr

She stood up suddenly and faced him, her plump frame quivering with anger and astonishment.

"His mother, did you say? You better explain yourself, my lad. You don't go saying things like that to me without a good explanation."

Frederick was as taken aback as she was. He ran his fingers through his hair before he found anything to say.

"I'm extremely sorry," he said. "I was under the impression that he was your sister's son. He said so himself"

"He said that? The little demon. Where is he now? My God, I've a mind to go and tear him limb from limb. How dare he! How dare he!"

She sat down again, pale and trembling with anger. Frederick poured her some champagne.

"Here," he said. "Drink this before the bubbles disappear. What is the connection between your sister and Mackinnon?"

"Can't you tell?" she said bitterly.

He shook his head.

"Just like a man. They were lovers, of course. Lovers! And I—" She collapsed suddenly into tears. "And I was in love with him too. Like a fool."

Frederick sat, amazed. Jessie Saxon blew her nose, dabbed her eyes, sipped angrily at the champagne, coughed, choked, and wailed aloud. Frederick put his arms around her; it seemed the only sensible thing to do. She leaned against him and sobbed while he stroked her hair and gazed around the shabby, narrow little dressing room, with its cracked mirror and faded curtains, with the case of makeup on the dressing table and the oil lamp flaring smokily beside it. . . . It might be a cozy place if you had someone to share it with; or an exciting place if you were starting on the stage. But it must be a terribly lonely place if you were Jessie Saxon. He held her close and kissed her gently on the forehead.

When she recovered, she pushed him away softly and dabbed at her eyes again with little angry movements, before laughing a short rueflil laugh.

"Forty-four years old, and sobbing like a girl. . . . And we quarreled over him. Can you imagine it? Oh,

it's so humiliating now. Well, were all fools when it comes to love. Wouldn't be human otherwise—^we'd be machines, or horses, or something. I don't know. What were you asking, love?"

"About Mackinnon in general. He's ... a client of mine." He sat up; they were side by side on a hard litde sofa. He leaned across to pour her some more champagne. "He also claimed that Lord Wytham was his father. Is that a lie as well?"

"Old Johnny Wytham?" She laughed more genuinely. "He's got a bloody cheek. Mind you—that could be true. He . . . oh, dear, I can't think straight yet."

She looked at herself in the mirror, made a face, and patted her hair into shape. Frederick prompted her gently.

"Lord Wytham?" he said.

"Oh, yts. You must think me a fool, carrying on like this. . . . You really want to know about Alistair? Well, he lied to me often enough, but one thing he never altered: he was the illegitimate son of a lord. So it could be true, for what it's worth."

"And you knew Lord Wytham, did you?"

"Used to in the old days. He used to run around with Nellie, but I'm certain she never had a child. Damn it, I'd know, wouldn't I? We were that close. . .. He's a politician now, I'm told. Is he mixed up in this as well?"

"Yes, but I'm damned if I know how. Nor does your sister."

\

"I wouldnt bet on it," she said, and helped herself to \ another glass. '

"I beg your pardon?" \

"You'd probably find out if you went up and asked J around in Carlisle," she said. "That's where I last saw , her and where we quarreled. . . . Last year. Only last ] year. ?

"What was she doing there?" \

"Oh, this silly spiritualism lark. There was a circle, or i a league, of the idiots in Carlisle, you see, and she was 1 asked up there and I was playing nearby and that insect I Mackinnon was playing a little town near Dumfries—I \ found out that Nellie was keeping him. Can you imag- \ ine! He hadn't perfected his art—his arty he calls it— ^ and he kept breaking engagements. Well, theater ■ managers won't stand for that, and rightly. So he was on i his uppers, and Nellie stepped in and. . . That's it, \ really. A little place called Netherbrigg—just over the : border."

"Isn't that where Wytham's estate is?"

"Yes, it is. But I hadn't seen him for years, and nor had Nellie. He married, you see, and stopped gadding about the music halls. What was her name now?. . . Lady Louisa Something. . . Big landowners. Graphite mines."

"Graphite?" Frederick sat up.

"Something like that. What is graphite?"

"They make pencils with it. . . ." And Steam Guns, he thought, but he didn't mention that. Instead he let

her talk as she Hked: she was a garrulous soul, and was obviously glad of his company. He learned little more of interest to his inquiry. But about her own life she was eloquent: funny and vivid and scandalous, and when he'd finished laughing, he said, "Jessie, you ought to write your memoirs."

"There's a thought," she said. "But would they print em?

They agreed about the unlikelihood of that and parted fast friends. And before Frederick got into his cold bed at the Railway Hotel, he got out a map and looked for Dumfries and Carlisle and Thurlby, where the firing range was. Not far away, really. A mornings train ride, perhaps; and where was Wytham's estate? Not marked. Or was that it? And as for graphite . . . Lady Wytham's family. . . Bellmann . . . Poor old Nellie. Poor Jessie, too. Both in love with Mackinnon. What the devil had he got to make all these women starry-eyed? Extraordinary. Quite extraordinary. But Sally hadn't taken to him. Sensible girl. Thurlby ... go there in the morning.

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Sally spent the rest of Thursday in her office, ; dealing with business; and first thing on Friday morn- \ ing, she went to the patent Ubrary. ^

It was in the Great Seal Patent Office, just oflP | Chancery Lane: a large building like a museum, with a j high glass roof and cast-iron galleries all the way < around. Sally had been there before, in conneaion with a client who'd wanted to invest all his money in an in- i vention for making a new kind of sardine tin; she'd i been able to show him that it wasn't as new as he'd ^ thought, and persuaded him to buy government stocks instead.

She began her search by looking in the alphabetical index of patentees for anything under the name of Hopkinson. She started with the volume for 1870, feeling that there was unlikely to be anything relevant earlier. She found nothing there, but in the 1871 volume there was listed a patent for steam engines under the name J. Hopkinson.

Was that it, then? Surely she wouldn't find it as

quickly as that? After all, Hopkinson wasn't an uncommon name, and there were patents dealing with steam engines on every page of the index, as she saw from glancing through it.

She made a note and turned to the next volume. There was nothing in 1872, but in 1873 and 1874 J. or J. A. Hopkinson had registered two more patents for steam boilers. There was nothing else up to the present. Out of interest she looked up Nordenfels but found nothing.

She went to the desk and filled out a slip requesting the Hopkinson specifications and, while she was waiting, looked up Garland in the alphabetical index for 1873. There he was: Garland, RDM, 1385, May 20, Photographic lens. She had made him patent it when she first began to look after the finances of the firm. It hadn't brought him in any money yet, but the patent would run for another nine years; there'd be time to get it into production, if she could find someone with an interest in manufacturing it. She found herself looking forward to it, to dealing with businessmen and managers and investors again. Something enterprising, something clean and open and honest after all this murk and cruelty! Fred could deal with the technical side that he was so good at, and she'd look after the finance, the planning, the marketing . . .

But he might not want to. Finish this case, and then well call it a go, he'd said. He meant their friendship as

well as anything deeper; his expression had told her that. Would he feel like taking up a new kind of partnership? She doubted it somehow.

She looked around at the men—lawyers' clerks most of them, she guessed, and one or two private inventors—busily leafing through bound volumes or scratching away with steel pens at the rows of library desks. She was the only woman in the building, and that had brought her some curious looks, but she was used to that. They were carefiil men, competent and steady and reliable, and she had no doubt of their ability and their usefulness—but Frederick outshone them like the sun. There was no comparison, any more than there was with that flimsy wraith Mackinnon. Fred was incomparable. She had no doubt now about how she felt: she loved him. She always would.

And he'd said she was unlikable . . .

"Miss Lockhart?" It was the man from the desk. "The specifications you requested are ready, miss."

She took the blue booklets and sat at a desk to read them. Each contained a set of folded drawings and a description of the invention. The first was headed:

LETTERS PATENT to John Addy Hopkinson of Huddersfield, in the County of York, Engineer, for the Invention of "IMPROVEMENTS IN STEAM BOILERS AND IN APPARATUS TO BE USED THEREWITH," sealed 5 June 1874, and dated 24 December 1873.

She began to read, but it was soon clear that this wasn't the machine Bellmann was making in the North Star works. Nor were the others: a new kind of moving grate for conveying fiiel to the firebox of a steam engine, a new design of boiler. . . Innocuous. This was the wrong Hopkinson.

She took the booklets back to the desk and asked, "Is there an index classified by subject? Suppose I wanted to look up all the patents concerned with firearms manufacture, for instance—how would I do that?"

"There is a subject index, yes, miss. But the printed index for those years is away at the binders. If you wanted to look something up you'd have to search through the written slips. Was there something in particular you were looking for?"

"Yes, there was, but..." Another thought occurred to her. "You keep foreign patents here, don't you?"

"Yes, indeed, miss."

"Russian ones?"

"Certainly. In the section over there, under the gallery."

"Is there a translation service, by any chance?"

"I'll see if Mr. Tolhausen is free. Could you wait a moment?"

He went into the office behind, and she thought through what she wanted to find out. If Nordenfels had patented an invention in Russia, there'd be a record of it here. But there was nothing to prevent anyone exploiting a foreign invention in Britain if there wasn't a

British patent for it; so even if Bellmann were doing that, he'd be breaking no law. On the other hand, if she could prove that Bellmann had stolen the idea ... \

"Mr. Tolhausen, Miss Lockhart."

The translator was a dignified gendeman in his forties who betrayed not the slightest surprise at finding a young woman making technical inquiries. She warmed to him at once and explained her quest. He listened courteously.

"We shall start with the alphabetical index," he said^ "Nordenfels . . . Arne Nordenfels. Here is a patent, dated 1872, for a safety valve for steam boilers. Another here in the same year for improvements in circulating high-pressure steam. In 1873 we have . . ."

He stopped. He was turning the page back and forth, firowning.

"There is a page missing," he said. "Look. It has been carefully cut out."

Sally felt her heart beating fast. "It's the page with

Nordenfels on it?"

I

Her eyes could make nothing of the unfamiliar script, but she could see the neatly trimmed edge where the leaf had been cut.

"Could you look in the following year?" she said. j He did so. Again there was a page missing at the place where Nordenfels would have appeared. Mr. Tolhausen came as close as his dignity would allow him to being outraged. ]

"I shall report this at once. I have never known such breach of regulations. It is most distressing."

"Before you do, could you check the next couple of jrears for me? And the subject index?"

He checked the subject index for each year under 50th steam engines and armaments, which took some ime, since both subjects had long entries. Altogether they found seven patents for steam engines in the name of Nordenfels, but in the armaments section for 1872 and 1873 Mr. Tolhausen found more pages missing.

"Yes, they are the pages for Nordenfels," he said. But the index is cross-referenced. One moment..."

He turned back to the steam engines section and nodded. "Aha," he said. "Here is a patent for the application of steam power to machine guns. And here is one for a steam-powered gun to be mounted on a railway carriage. But the number of the patent is on the armaments page, which is missing. This is outrageous. I must apologize to you. Miss Lockhart, for the failure of upervision—clearly someone has managed to cut these 5ages out without being noticed. It is extremely annoying. I must thank you for bringing the matter to my attention."

Sally thanked him for his help, noted the dates md numbers of those patents there was a record of, and turned to go. Before she left a thought struck her, and she took out the alphabetical index of British patents digain. If Bellmann were going to make any money from