"This," Mr Ambrose said, gazing coldly at the two doors, "is inconvenient."

Karim swore violently.

"What is this?" I demanded, pointing to the bifurcation. "I thought you said there is only one corridor, and it leads straight on."

"I also mentioned that the plans were not up-to-date, if you remember, Mr Linton."

"Spiffing! Absolutely top-hole!" Angrily, I gave the wall a kick. Naturally, it kicked back as hard as walls usually do. "So we're just going to pack our bags and go home?"

"Certainly not," said Mr Ambrose, who looked as if the whole thing was nothing more than an intellectual problem to be discussed over tea and biscuits. "There are two corridors. We are three people. Simple Arithmetic tells us the solution. We will divide our forces, and whoever discovers Dalgliesh's office or his personal safe will have to acquire the file and make it out of here."

Karim, who had just been about to follow my example and kick the wall with all his force, stopped. I was rather glad. He might have brought down the house on top of us.

"Of course!" He exclaimed. "I'm at your service, Sahib. Where shall we go? Where shall we send..." His eyes rested for a moment on me, while he searched for the proper pronoun. "...this individual?" he concluded.

I opened my mouth to give him a piece of my mind, but Mr Ambrose was quicker.

"No, Karim. We will not go together. You will go one way. I and Mr Linton shall explore the other corridor."

Something like hurt showed under the black curls of Karim's beard. I might have been sorry for him if I hadn't been so busy suppressing a gigantic grin.

"You'd rather be accompanied by this creature than by me, Sahib?" the Mohammedan demanded.

Mr Ambrose made a terse movement with the head towards the second corridor. "I'd rather send somebody I can rely on where I cannot go myself, Karim."

Nice. The grin stopped trying to force its way onto my face. So he couldn't rely on me, could he?

Mollified by Mr Ambrose words, and probably also by the sour look on my face, Karim bowed.

"I shall do as you command, Sahib."

"If you find the file, leave. If you find nothing, leave. Don't wait for us. We will meet back at Empire House."

Karim didn't look too happy about that order. But he bowed again.

"As you wish, Sahib."

Without another word, he turned and disappeared down the corridor to the left.

"Come on." Mr Ambrose motioned down the other corridor and started forwards. "We have wasted enough time."

I almost ran after him. Not that I would ever have admitted, but leaving Karim behind sent a tingle of fear up my spine. No matter how many soldiers Lord Dalgliesh had at his command, I couldn't see any of them getting past the huge Mohammedan. Now that he was gone, all Mr Ambrose had for protection was his cane, which just now didn't seem as impressive to me as on the first occasion he had drawn its hidden blade.

Suddenly, Mr Ambrose stopped and held up his hand. That was a sign which even I, with my very limited experience in burglary, had no problems understanding. I halted, and waited with baited breath.

When, after a few moments, nothing had happened, I whispered: "What is it?"

"Voices," he said, in a low, but otherwise normal tone of voice. "Be quiet. And if you have to speak, don't whisper. We are soldiers, remember? We are supposed to be here, and if we whisper, it will sound suspicious."

That actually made sense. "Yes, Sir."

"And don't call me 'Sir'," he added, still peering down the corridor, his back to me. "If somebody catches you doing it, we will be under immediate suspicion. We wear uniforms of the same rank."

A grin spread across my face. "Do we, now?"

"Mr Linton?"

"Yes, Si- um, I mean, yes, mate?"

"I can feel your smile. Dispose of it immediately."

"Yes, mate!"

"And don't call me mate. Only drunken sailors do that."

"Yes, Si- ma- um... thingy."

"Mr Linton?"

"Yes?"

"Be silent! I am trying to listen."

I decided against giving an answer. I had run out of ways of address in any case, and I was just as interested as he to hear what was going on up ahead. Straining my ears, I tried to catch the voices he had mentioned. There was something... Not voices, only indistinct noises. A clang of metal here, a dull thump there, that was it.

Then it came: a low shout, just before the next thump. Again, a shout, a bit like a command, but not really, and then another thump.

"What do you suppose it means?" I whispered

His hand jerked up.

Blast! I had forgotten: no whispering. Quickly, I continued in a more normal tone of voice: "That doesn't sound like an office, does it?"

He shook his head.

"Well? What is it?"

"I am reluctant to venture a guess with only audible data at my disposal, Mr Linton. But it sounds very much like a dock. Like a ship being loaded."

"But... we're still a long way away from the docks, aren't we?"

"Yes."

Without any further explanation, he started forward again.

Yes? That's all you're going to say?

Cursing inwardly, I hurried after him. He still marched along the corridor as if the whole place belonged to him, as if he had a right to be here that nobody could dispute. I did my best to imitate him, but probably didn't quite succeed. Slowly, the noises up ahead grew louder, the voices clearer. It was clear now that things were being loaded. I could hear the recurring thumps of the load as it was let down from high above, and the squeak of what I supposed were pulleys and cranes.

The shouted commands made it certain:

"Two yards to the left!"

"Down! Now!"

"A bit to the right!"

"You've got it! Gently, now, gently. This stuff is valuable!"

I could see light up ahead. Suddenly, the corridor opened in front of us into a wide hall. I wanted to duck back, but Mr Ambrose hissed at me out of the corner of his mouth: "Don't you dare! They have already seen us!"

And he was right. The eyes of several soldiers who were standing on a gallery that lead all around the room were on us. They were out of hearing range, but they could see our every move.

"Oh my God!" I breathed. "What now?"

"Do as I do," he hissed. "Exactly as I do, on the other side. Now!"

And he took a few steps to the right, until he stood at the left end of the corridor, and assumed an erect position, his arms clasped behind his back, his legs clamped together. Having no idea why, I did the same, and felt pretty silly about it.

After a few moments, the soldiers on the gallery seemed to lose interest in us. Their eyes wandered on to more important things, like the crates full of dried cod that were piled on top of one another in a corner of the hall.

I stared at them, fixedly, waiting for the "Seize them!" or "Shoot!" But no such command came.

"What is the matter?" I asked out of the corner of my mouth. "Why aren't they suspicious? Why aren't they even looking at us anymore?"

"Because we are acting as soldiers are supposed to act," Mr Ambrose replied. I had no idea how, but he managed to speak without actually moving his lips. "We are standing guard."

"Standing guard? Over what?"

"The entrance to this corridor, of course."

"What would anyone want to guard it for? It's just a corridor!"

"Soldiers aren't trained to think about why they do things, Mr Linton. If they were, nobody would ever get an army together. Now be silent!"

Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced at his face. It was as cool and still as a block of ice. How could he do it? Inside me, fear, excitement and stress were writhing like a wounded snake. He didn't show the least emotion. But then, he never did.

Oh, yes, he sometimes does—In your imagination he does a lot of things...

Behind my back, I clenched my hands together. No! I couldn't follow that train of thought, not now, now here of all places. Quickly, I let my eye wander through the hall to find something to distract me.

There was certainly enough to see.

At first, the red coats of the soldiers, flaring up like signs of danger, had distracted me from the rest. But now that they seemed to have lost interest in us entirely, I took in the rest of the giant room.

"Room" probably was not big enough a word. It was a cavern, a man-made cavern, almost as big as the entrance hall of Empire House. I could see that Mr Ambrose and his nemesis had the same penchant for giant proportions. Yet where in Mr Ambrose's hall there had been a monument of cold barrenness, although it was the entrance to his headquarters, this hall in a simple East End outpost of the East India Company was flaming with sumptuous colour.

The walls were dark, red brick, interspersed with wooden beams painted and white red. Up above, the beams arched to support a flat ceiling. Torches hung from the wooden supports, plunging the whole scene into a sinister shades of dark gold and orange. In the flickering the torchlight, the glinting barrels of the soldiers' guns looked like the torture instruments of Satan's disciples in Hell.

Shadows flickered over the ceiling and the gallery that surrounded the room. Shadows also moved with the soldiers that were marching along the gallery, watching the scene below. And shadows were thrown by the gigantic contraptions which filled the centre of the hall.

I hadn't been wrong. There were pulleys, cranes, ropes and even lorries in abundance. They formed a labyrinth through which hundreds of workers scuttled like ants over an anthill, carrying, fetching, shouting. If all things around them left bizarre shadow-paintings on the wall in the flickering torchlight, they themselves painted entire ghastly frescos in black and dark orange. The cranes were the arms of giant black octopi, and the ropes on the pulleys were snakes, waiting to strike and bite.

Under the ghastly play of shadows, on each of the four walls of the hall, hung a gigantic tapestry, displaying a coat of arms: two roaring lions on either side of a shield showing a red cross on white ground. Although I had never seen this particular crest before, and the shadowy monsters on the wall made it hard to see, I had no trouble guessing what it was:

We were in Lord Dalgliesh's lair. There was only one thing it could be: the official coat of arms of the Honourable East India Company.

Under the farthest of the tapestries, the one directly opposite me, the entrance to a tunnel gaped lake an open maul. Tracks ran down into the tunnel, disappearing out of sight, to God only knew where.

One thing was for sure. This was no mere warehouse or office building

Slowly, I raised my eyes again to the towering golden Lions above the entrance to the tunnel. Come on, they seemed to say. Dare approach. Dare enter into our forbidden realm. We will tear you to shreds before you've taken one step.

Nonsense! Taking a deep breath, I straightened and tried to look unconcerned.

Get a grip, Lilly! Those lions are just pieces of printed cloth. Do you want Mr Ambrose to think you're scared of giant coloured bedsheets on a wall?

No. I did not want that. Particularly after the incident with the wooden dragon.

I glared at the lions, meeting their bold, glittering gaze head-on. My eyes fell on a blue band that wound like a snake under the lions' paws. There were letters on it. Yet even though they were printed in bright gold, in the semi-darkness of the hall, they were nearly impossible to make out. Was this English? No, it looked more like a foreign language...

Auspicio... Regis... Et Senatus... Angliae...

What did that mean?

"By the authority of the King and Parliament of England."

Startled, my eyes flicked to where Mr Ambrose was standing, the perfect model of the British-Indian soldier.

"That's what it means," he said, again managing to speak in his cool, calm voice without his mouth even twitching. "The motto under the coat of arms of the East India Company that you were staring at. By the authority of the King and Parliament of England."

"How did you know that was what I was looking at?" I hissed.

"Your lips were moving, forming the Latin words. When I say 'be silent', Mr Linton, that also means don't move your lips."

Too preoccupied to argue, I gave a tiny nod, and swallowed. My eyes once more took in the soldiers on the gallery, then returned to the roaring lions on the giant tapestries, and to the words they shouted at the world. Auspicio Regis Et Senatus Angliae...

No wonder Lord Dalgliesh felt justified in doing whatever he wanted. He had the Queen's Official Seal of Approval.

Beside me, Mr Ambrose tensed. Tensed more than he was already tensed, I mean – which, considering his normal stance, was an impressive feat.

"Out of the way! Quickly!" With those words hissed into my ear, he sprang away and pulled me after him in a decidedly unsoldierly manner. We were behind a heap of crates before I could utter a word of protest. And then I heard his voice, and the protest died in my throat.

"...have everything loaded onto the Perses immediately, please, Captain. I shall await a full report in half an hour."

Ice flooded my heart, and I stumbled after Mr Ambrose, not uttering a single word. Just before he pulled me out of sight, and we disappeared behind the heap of wooden crates, I saw it, out of the corner of my eye. I saw the golden mane and hawk's beak. I saw the steely glint of piercing blue eyes.

Lord Dalgliesh was here.

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My dear Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,

What do you think of Lord Dalgliesh's London lair? Is it worthy of a villain such as him? And will there be a big showdown between him and Mr Ambrose?

I await your thoughts, eagerly! :)

Yours Truly

Sir Rob

P.S.: Beware of the Lion(s)! I've included a picture of the East India Company coat of arms for you to practice your heraldic skills on ;-)