Ptolemy's Gate

glass. His face gleamed with perspiration, his eyes were never still. He mumbled rather than spoke. "I need more information."
    Jenkins laughed, adjusted his spectacles. "Relax, relax. I'm not going to bite you, Palmer. Information you'll get. But first we need proof of your good intentions."
    The other man made an odd champing motion with his lips and teeth. "When have I ever given you reason to doubt me?"
    "You haven't. But you haven't given us much reason to believe in you either. We need proof."
    "How? You mean a test?"
    "Of sorts. Mr. Hopkins needs to see your commitment for himself. You could be police for all we know. Working for Devereaux, or that bitch Farrar." He took another sip of beer. "Can't be too careful."

    Outside the orb, in another time and another place, John Mandrake looked up at Jane Farrar and raised an eyebrow. She smiled lazily, showing a pointed canine.
    "Hopkins . . ." he began. "You think that's the same one—"
    "The scholar who showed Duvall how to work the golems," Farrar said. "The missing link of the last conspiracy. Yes, I do. But listen."
    Mr. Palmer was in the middle of a red-faced expostulation, working himself up into an agony of wounded reproach. Clive Jenkins said nothing. Finally Palmer's tirade finished; he subsided like a limp balloon. "Well, what do you want me to do?" he said. "I'm warning you, Jenkins, you'd better not be setting me up—"
    He raised his glass to refresh himself. As he did so, Jenkins seemed to flinch; his patched elbow knocked the others arm. The pint glass jerked, beer dashed against the table. Palmer gave a little mew of anger. "You clumsy fool—"
    Jenkins offered no apology. "If you do what's required," he said, "you'll reap the rewards along with me and the rest. You're to meet him. . . here"
    "When?"
    "Then. That's all. I'm going now."
    Without another word, the slight, ginger-haired man slipped out from behind the trestle table and disappeared from view. For a few minutes Mr. Palmer remained sitting, his red face blank and desperate. Then he too departed.
    Ms. Farrar snapped her fingers. The image faded; far in the distance the face of shadows reluctantly returned. Farrar sat back in her chair. "Needless to say," she said, "Yole failed us. From his vantage point as a mouse he could not see the surface of the table. He did not think that Jenkins had spilled the beer on purpose, nor that he had written the hour and place of meeting in the liquid on the table. Well, Yole followed Palmer for the remainder of the day and saw nothing. That night he reported back to me. While he was so doing, Palmer left his flat and did not come back. Evidently he went to keep his appointment with the mysterious Hopkins."
    John Mandrake tapped his fingers together eagerly. "We shall have to interrogate Mr. Palmer when he returns."
    "Therein lies a problem. At dawn this morning engineers working at the Rotherhithe Sewage Works saw something lying on a midden. They thought at first it was a pile of rags."
    Mandrake hesitated. "Not. . ."
    "I fear so. It was the body of Mr. Palmer. He had been stabbed through the heart."
    "Oh," Mandrake said. "Ah. That's awkward."
    "It is indeed. But it is promising too." Jane Farrar passed a hand across the orb; it darkened, became a cold, dull blue. "It means that this Clive Jenkins of yours—and this Hopkins—are planning something big. Big enough to involve quite casual murder. And we're onto it." Her eyes gleamed with excitement. Her long black hair was a little disheveled; several wisps fell down across her brow. Her face was flushed, and she was breathing quickly.
    Mandrake adjusted his collar slightly. "Why are you telling me this now, outside Council?"
    "Because I trust you, John. And I don't trust any of the others." She pushed the wisps away from her eye. "Whitwell and Mortensen are both intriguing against us. You know that. We've no friends in Council, apart from the PM. If we can flush out these traitors ourselves, our position will be admirably strengthened."
    He nodded. "True. Well, it's clear what to do. Send a demon to tail Clive Jenkins and see if he can lead us to the truth."
    Ms. Farrar zipped the crystal orb into its bag and stood. "I'll leave that to you, if I may. Yole's hopeless and my others are all on assignment. It's observation only at this stage. You won't need anything powerful. Or are all your djinn tied up?"
    Mandrake looked toward the silent pentacles. "No, no," he said slowly, "I'm sure I'll be able to