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diminish when you hear why we've come, milady."
    She tilted her head and gave one of her saucy smiles. "Unless you've come with manacles and an order to haul me off to the Tower for beheading, I shan't complain, sir. But of course you've come to quiz me about the Bee."
    "I must compliment you on your frankness," said Prance, who was determined to compliment her on something and didn't feel he was on close enough terms yet to venture any praise of her person. Byron murmured his agreement.
    She batted the praise away. "You might as well tell the wind not to blow as to tell Adele to keep a secret. I felt, after I left her yesterday, that you might call."
    Apparently the coffee had already been brewed, for it appeared almost at once. She daintily poured and passed, took a sip, then set down her cup and said in a businesslike manner, "Now what is it you want to know, gentlemen?"
    "Anything you can tell us about the Bee," Byron said. "Start with what you saw when you made the payment. Lady Jergen was remarkably unobservant."
    She puckered her pretty forehead in concentration a moment to show them she was really trying, then said, "The hackney was a carriage that used to belong to Lord Horner. The coach drivers buy them when the noblemen are through with them. It had been painted black but I recognized it at once. I've been in it a dozen times when the Horners had it. It had the same fittings, the lights in front a little larger than most. I could even recognize the crest on the door under the fading paint."
    "That's wonderful!" Prance cried. "But did you keep your appointment by daylight?"
    "No, at midnight, at the corner of Portman and Oxford Streets. I took a lantern with me. The man in the carriage made me put it out as soon as he saw me. I jabbered like a frightened ninny until I got a good look at the rig. He was wearing a mask. Frightening," she said with a little shudder and a peep at Byron that gave Prance the notion she had rehearsed every word. "I couldn't see much of him, but I saw the lining of the carriage was blue velvet like Horner's. Oh and there was a little round hole on the seat, perhaps from a cheroot. Horner's had one in exactly the same place."
    "Could you tell us anything about the man?" Prance urged.
    "Very little, I'm afraid. Since he was seated, I don't know his height, but he had broad shoulders. He assumed a rough voice that I'm sure wasn't his usual voice."
    "He actually spoke, then," Prance said.
    "Only to order me to put out the lamp–twice. The second time he was getting nervous and used a different voice. Not rough like the first time. A gentleman's voice, I think. Brisk, you know, authoritative. He wore black leather gloves of the sort gentlemen wear. Oh and the kid slippers were definitely Hoby's work. Callwood has a pair exactly like them. Now that, to me, rules out servants. The slippers were like new, not castoffs."
    "How on earth did you see his slippers in a dark carriage?" Prance asked.
    "He stuck his foot out the door the second time he told me to put out my lantern. I was hoping he'd get out so I could see his size, but he didn't."
    "You're a marvel of observation!" Prance complimented.
    She smiled her pleasure. "I pay attention when someone robs me."
    Byron said, "I understand he asked you for three thousand."
    Her eyes narrowed in a knowing way. "Yes, that's interesting, n'est-ce pas? The exact sum I had of my own. It was left to me by an aunt of Callwood's last year. Of course my husband is rich, but a lady likes to have a little money she doesn't have to account for." She lifted her eyebrows and said with one of her wicked smiles, "Mad money. You know."
    On the evening Caroline Lamb first met Lord Byron, she had written in her diary, and later broadcast to the world, that he was "Mad, bad and dangerous to know." Prance intended to write the same words in his journal that night regarding Lady Callwood, and perhaps add "delightful."
    "Who would know about that sum?" Byron asked.
    "Not