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in answer to Box’s questions, there came a stirring in the narrow, tunnel-like passage joining the office to what Mr Mackharness called the ‘drill hall’, a long, whitewashed room at the rear of the building. Presently a burly, uniformed police constable, an impressive figure with a flowing spade beard, emerged into the office. He was carrying a tin tray, on which reposed two mugs of steaming tea, and a saucer of broken biscuits.
    â€˜Ah! Sergeant Kenwright! As always, you’re just in the nick of time. Sit down there, will you, while I tell you what happened to Sergeant Knollys and me this morning.’
    As Box sipped his tea, he told the sergeant all about the summons to the Mithraeum, and what he and Knollys had found there.
    â€˜I want you to go out to Clerkenwell, Sergeant Kenwright,’ said Box, ‘and take that art box of yours with you. You can take a cab if you like, or go on the omnibus. I want you to do some measurements in that crypt – its dimensions, and the dimensions of the big reredos I told you about. But more than that, I want you to make careful drawings of those pagan figures, and of anything else that you think is important. I want to know as much as I can about that Mithraeum, Sergeant, and we can start by having your collection of plans and drawings pinned up on boards in the drill hall for our contemplation. Go out there tomorrow morning.’
    â€˜Very good, sir,’ said Kenwright, rising from the table. ‘I’ll put some things together straight away.’
    He saluted Box, and moved away down the tunnel. How lucky he was to have landed up there, at the Rents! Two years ago, as a beat constable, he had contracted rheumatic fever and had nearly died. When he was still convalescent, his divisional superintendent had arranged for him to be transferred to King James’s Rents, for the performance of light duties.
    There, he had discovered new talents, which had been put to such good use in the dramatic cases of Sir William Porteous, and the sinister business of the Hansa Protocol, that he had been promoted to sergeant. He hoped devoutly that he would not be returned at some time to the divisions. It was lovely at the Rents.
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    In the dim, panelled smoking-room of the Scottish Lyceum Club, where he was staying, Professor Roderick Ainsworth, LLD, MA, blew out the match with which he had lit his cigar, dropped it into the ashtray, and leaned back in his deep leather armchair. It was good to be in Edinburgh again, with the prospect of a capacity audience for his forthcoming lecture at the Royal Caledonian Institution. ‘Mithras in the Shadow of St Paul’s: How London’s ancient Temple of Mithras was discovered’. He’d give the same lecture again, suitably retitled, at the Exeter Hall in London on the twentieth.
    His friend David Mackay was holding forth on one of his deliberately mischievous hobby-horses. The others sitting round the table regarded him with amused resignation. David was getting fat. He didn’t exercise enough, and he ate too much. They had all enjoyed a rather late luncheon, but David Mackay had turned his enjoyment into something approaching devotion!
    â€˜So you still maintain, Ainsworth,’ he was saying, ‘that the Romans never penetrated to any great effect into Scotland? Or, rather, what we now call Scotland? Surely old Wayneflete maintained that they’d established a fortress of sorts near Newbie Mains, on the Solway Firth, just south of Annan? He wrote a paper about it, some years ago, in which he showed engravings of some fragments of tile—’
    â€˜Wayneflete’s a charlatan! I know that you’re just teasing me, Mackay, but it’s true. And it’s no good waving that confounded pamphlet of his at me: I told you that I’ve come up to Scotland without my reading glasses. I don’t know where they are. Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes.’
    Ainsworth put his cigar