These days, the Palais Royal was the very heart of French dissipation, with every manner of vice available to the hopeful bucks who swarmed there. Externally it was the only really well-lit place in Paris, and idlers of every nation could be seen drifting under the arcades and clustering by the columns.

The only females visible were of the more public sort, and one of those approached Rafe as he alighted from his carriage. He wondered with some interest what kept her low-cut gown from falling off. A fortunate thing that the evening was mild, or she would be courting pneumonia.

She had plied her trade long enough to size up a man's nationality and wealth quickly. "Is the English milord here for pleasure?" she asked in a husky voice with a provincial accent. Her heavy mask of makeup couldn't conceal the lines in her face.

None of Rafe's distaste showed in his face. She was a coarse, unattractive creature and any man sampling her charms risked the pox, but she was no better or worse than half a hundred other women wandering the arcades and gardens. For that matter, she was little different from many of the great ladies of society except for her price, which was lower and more honest. Courteously he said, "I feel in luck this evening. I understand the gaming is good at the Cafe Mazarin."

"The cafe is that way." Tossing her head coquettishly, the prostitute added, "Perhaps later you will wish a companion to celebrate or commiserate with?"

"Perhaps." Making his way through a crowd of Allied officers, Rafe soon found a sign for the Cafe Mazarin. On the ground floor was a jeweler's shop, still open at this late hour in the hope that a lucky gambler might wish to buy some bauble to bestow upon his lady.

Beside the shop a dim staircase led up to the cafe. A flamboyantly dressed woman presided over the counter, her dark eyes shrewdly assessing new customers. Liking what she saw of Rafe, she came around her counter to greet him in person. "Good evening, milord. Are you here for dining or gaming, or perhaps to go upstairs?"

Upstairs would mean ladies of a higher grade than the streetwalkers outside. With luck, they would be pox-free and not steal the customers' wallets. "I've been told that the play is good here, madame. Perhaps later I will dine as well."

The woman nodded and led him through the dining room to the gambling salon. It looked like any number of other gambling hells Rafe had been in. In one corner was a rouge-et-noir table, in another a roulette wheel. A scattering of tables contained card games such as faro and whist.

The patrons ran the full range from innocent young pigeons to the Captain Sharps who preyed on them, and the smoky atmosphere was dense with the desperate excitement of serious gamesters. The low murmur of voices was punctuated by the rattle of dice at the hazard table and the soft slap of cards on green baize. All in all, a typical den of iniquity, and not the sort of place that Rafe had ever found attractive.

Still, he was here for information, not pleasure, so he spent the next two hours playing at different tables. Whist was the only game he would have enjoyed, because it was more a test of skill than chance, so he avoided the whist table lest it prove too absorbing. Over dice, cards, and wheel, he exchanged casual comments with other gamesters, listening more than he spoke.

Not surprisingly, much of the conversation was political. However, he heard only the talk that could be heard anywhere in Paris. This particular establishment was patronized by a mixture of Frenchmen and foreigners, but if any were extremists, they kept their mouths discreetly shut.

An hour past midnight Rafe was preparing to call it an evening and find some fresh air when his attention was drawn by a thin, dark-haired man at the rouge-et-noir table. The man had been winning earlier, but luck had turned against him and the bank had taken all his money. A wide scar across his cheek shone livid in the candlelight as he reached into an inside pocket to draw out his final stake. Defiantly he slapped a pile of notes on the red diamond.

In the hush that sometimes falls on a crowded room, it seemed that everyone was watching. Rafe was too far away to see the cards dealt, but when the scar-faced man whooped a moment later, it was obvious that he had won.

It would have meant nothing, except that the Frenchman next to Rafe said, "It looks like Lemercier is in the money again. The man has the devil's own luck."

The name was familiar, and after a moment Rafe remembered why. There was a Lemercier on the list of secondary suspects that Maggie had given him, a Bonapartist officer if he recalled correctly. Rafe studied the scar-faced man as he rose from the rouge-et-noir table. The fellow had a military bearing; now to see if he was Captain Henri Lemercier.

As the man crossed the room, Rafe casually intercepted him. "May I buy you a drink to celebrate your beating the bank?"

His quarry smiled jovially. "You may. Lost a few to the bank yourself, eh?"

The hostess set them up with a bottle of bad port in the cafe section of the establishment. Rafe discovered that the man was indeed Captain Henri Lemercier, and the port was obviously not his first drink of the evening.

As the level of the bottle dropped, Rafe learned that the captain despised all Germans, Russians, and Englishmen, present company excepted, and that he was a devil of a fellow. Soon he was boasting of the numerous times that his iron nerve had caused him to win when lesser men would have withdrawn from the game.

It was not an enlightening conversation, though Rafe was interested to learn that Lemercier was a regular patron of the Cafe" Mazarin. ("At least the tables are usually honest, my English friend.")

Lemercier had the nervous gestures and darting eyes of a ferret. Rafe guessed that he was an addicted gambler, the kind of man who would do anything for money. If the captain had political convictions, they would easily be subordinated to personal gain. There was an excellent chance that he was the Frenchman Maggie's contact had overheard here the night before. If so, who was the foreigner the captain had spoken with?

After half an hour of listening to the man's ramblings, Rafe decided that he was unlikely to learn anything more. He took his leave with mutual assurances of esteem and hopes of meeting at the Cafe Mazarin in the future. If he did seek Lemercier out again, Rafe made a note to do so earlier in the evening, when the man was more likely to be sober. He was not an interesting drunk.

Rafe paid the bejeweled woman behind the counter for the port. Before going downstairs, he cast one last glance across the room. His eyes narrowed when he saw a blond man taking the empty chair opposite Lemercier. In spite of the dark smokiness of the room and the man's distinctly French way of dressing, Rafe had no trouble identifying the newcomer who was talking so earnestly to Lemercier.

It was Robert Anderson, the ubiquitous underling from the British delegation. Maggie's lover.

The Englishman was tense even though he had made this blindfolded journey once before. The summons from Le Serpent had been curt, with no explanation of why his presence was needed. Once again a hackney circled through Paris and the silent escort refused all conversational overtures. However, this time when he was brought into Le Serpent's presence, the sibilant voice instructed him to remove his blindfold.

The Englishman felt a stab of fear that the order meant he would not be leaving, but a hoarse chuckle allayed that. "Don't worry, mon Anglais, you will not recognize me. You will need your eyes for what you must tell me tonight."

Pulling off the blindfold, he found himself in a dark room lit by the feeble glow of a single candle and furnished only with a desk and two chairs. Le Serpent sat behind the desk, his face masked and a black cloak disguising his body so thoroughly that it was impossible to tell if he was tall or short, fat or thin.

Disdaining preliminaries, the dark figure said, "Draw me a detailed sketch of the British embassy stables. There have been changes since the Princess Borghese sold it to Wellington, and I need to know about them. I am particularly interested in where Castlereagh's horses are kept. I want you to describe his beasts exactly, in both looks and temper."

The Englishman's eyes widened. "You're plotting against Castlereagh? If anything happens to him, there will be hell to pay. Wellington is his best friend, and he would set the whole British Army to searching for assassins if necessary."

And a diligent investigation might uncover matters to the Englishman's detriment. Only a complete lack of suspicion had made it possible for him to pass so much information.

Reading his mind again, Le Serpent smiled nastily. "You needn't fear for your worthless neck. Whatever happens to Castlereagh will seem like an accident. Soon the illustrious duke himself will be in no position to investigate anything."

As the Englishman started sketching floorplans of the stable and its yard, his mind was racing. It sounded like his repellent host wished to eliminate both of the top British officials, a fact that had interesting ramifications. Clumsy attempts had been made on Wellington's life before, but there would be nothing clumsy about an attempt by Le Serpent. The question was, how could this information be turned to account?

Le Serpent asked a number of questions about the routine of the stables and the grooms, curtly demanding that his visitor find the answers to anything he couldn't answer immediately. After discussing the stables, he made exhaustive queries about the daily routines and habits of Castlereagh and Wellington.