"Karolyi's only a means to an end," Asher said quietly. "He's the only way you can track Ernchester..."

"And don't keep calling him 'Ernchester.' " Streatham peevishly aligned the edge of a report with the edge of his desk and centered the ink stand above it. "The Earl of Ernchester happens to be a good friend of mine-the real Earl of Ernchester. Lucius Wanthope. We were up at the House together," he added smugly. By "the House" Asher knew he meant Christ Church College, Oxford, and wondered if that was the same Lucius Wanthope who'd been one of Lydia 's suitors, eight or nine years ago. Streatham pronounced it Wanthope, swallowing the middle of the word after the fashion of Oxford. "If this impostor is going about calling himself by that title, the least you can do is not subscribe to the hoax."

"It doesn't matter," Asher said tiredly, "if he's calling himself Albert of Saxe- Coburg-Gotha. And I know all about the reorganization and the budget. Have him followed. This was the address on his luggage. It's just a transit point, but your man can trace him through the local carting company. He'll be hauling a large trunk somewhere today, possibly to the Gare de l'Est to go on to Vienna, more probably to some house here in the city where they can set up operations. Find out who his connections are..."

"And what?" Streatham chuckled juicily. "Drive a stake through his heart?"

"If necessary."

Streatham's eyes-too close together in flaccid pouches the color of fish belly- narrowed again, studying him. Asher had washed and shaved in one of the public washrooms at the Gare du Nord after dispatching a telegram to Lydia, but he was well aware that at the moment he looked less like an Oxford don than he did some down-on-his-luck clerk at the end of the night on the tiles.