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interest to a broad spectrum of the public. And similarly broad is their spectrum of influence: Members of the Hurleigh clan determine policy in everything from a lady’s choice of frock to a government’s choice of ambassador.”
    “Okay. What about them?”
    “Captain Bunsen may be having an affair with the eldest child, Laura.”
    “Jesus.” Stuyvesant’s eyes absently tracked two girls in drab winter coats topped by bright spring cloche hats, whose progress was being thwarted by the turmoil on the corner, but behind his eyes, his mind was in nearly as much turmoil as the crowd. Could his “demmed, elusive Pimpernel” be literally hand in hand with the bluest blood in the realm?
    But yes, that’s what the name Hurleigh had stirred up in his mind: a Lady Laura Hurleigh on the passenger manifest of two of the ships Bunsen had traveled on. Stuyvesant would have to retrieve his full folder of case notes from the bank to be sure, but he thought it was the July and January crossings. And if he remembered correctly, both times her cabin had been just down the corridor from his.
    Well, well: Richard Bunsen, lover to a Hurleigh. Could The Bastard have used such a woman to camouflage his ties to American radicals?
    Or could it be that Stuyvesant was wrong about the man?
    He shook himself mentally: Of course he could be wrong about Bunsen, for Christ sake—he wasn’t so utterly fixed on the man’s guilt that he walked around with his eyes shut. But his bones had brought him here, and after spending a week’s spare hours in reading rooms, hunting down the man’s speeches and articles in back issues of the newspapers, he still didn’t think his bones were wrong.
    However, this information changed things, no doubt about that. If nothing else, it raised the question of how in hell he was supposed to infiltrate a circle as heady as that one. Quite a different matter from his usual working-men-and-students set.
    “You’re pretty sure?”
    “It is common knowledge among a certain coterie of, so to speak, political bohemians.”
    “Artistic types,” Stuyvesant said. He’d met girls like Laura Hurleigh—Lady Laura, he supposed: rich, spoiled, eager to grab any fruit that society said was forbidden. Girls who played at politics, with no particular conviction except that if their elders disapproved, it must be worthy. Tiresome girls.
    “Quite.”
    Well, he thought, staring at the two young women without seeing either of them, I suppose I could try that approach. He couldn’t very well clothe himself in the personality of a member of the leisured classes—he was ten years too old, twenty pounds of muscle too heavy, and a whole lot of dollars short of what it called for—but if he didn’t find a way in through Bunsen’s Union connections, he’d try being a starving artist. A Modernistic sculptor, maybe, since he had the build for a man who spent his life bashing stone.
    “You need an ‘in,’” Carstairs noted; he might have been reading Stuyvesant’s thoughts.
    “You got one?” Stuyvesant asked, not expecting much.
    “I may.”
    That caught Stuyvesant’s attention.
    “I need to come at this obliquely,” Carstairs began. When Stuyvesant nodded his understanding, the man sat back and took out his cigar case. The girls came along the path, and one of them caught Stuyvesant’s eye. Another day, he’d have risen to the occasion; this time he merely gave a polite touch to the brim of his hat. Disappointed, they went on; when Carstairs had his cigarillo alight, he continued.
    “During the War,” the Englishman said, “I was with Intelligence. I spent time in a number of different divisions, but I ended up in the, hmm, research wing. Things cooled off considerably, of course, when the War ended, but there were certain programs that maintained their funding, and mine was one of those.
    “I cannot go into any detail, you’ll understand, but I will tell you that from time to time we investigated reports of