Montague nodded. “Rest assured I’ll give these matters my fullest attention.”

His enthusiastic tone made Christian smile; as he stood, he remarked, “You seem to enjoy these forays into investigation.”

“Oh, I do.” Montague pushed back his chair and rose. “Indeed, I will admit I live for the unusual queries you and some of my other clients bring me from time to time. They lend spice to the mundane accounting and investing that otherwise is my bread and butter. While sustaining, bread and butter and nothing else can be rather dull.” Smiling, Montague accompanied Christian to the door. “Sadly, good money management often is deathly dull, so I feel rather blessed when you or one of the others looks in.”

Christian grinned; he saluted as he went through the door. “Glad to be of service.” Walking through the outer office, he headed back to Mayfair.

At midday they all assembled in Randall’s study-Letitia, Christian, and Dalziel, with Hermione as lookout. They shut Mellon out and locked the study door, much to his consternation.

Also to Barton’s; the runner was still keeping watch from the street. Lounging against the area railings of the house opposite, he’d noted Christian’s and Dalziel’s arrivals with mounting curiosity. When Letitia drew the study curtains firmly across the windows, then peeked through a tiny gap, she saw Barton frowning. He started across the street; she tugged the curtains closed.

Turning, she glanced at the study door. “Did you leave the key in the lock?”

“Of course,” Dalziel replied.

“Good!” She ignored the arrogant look he sent her. “So even if he weasels his way into the house, that pest Barton won’t be able to see in.”

A heavy knock fell on the front door. Letitia waved dismissively. “Don’t bother-it’ll only be him.” She headed for the window and the catch for the secret door.

“I don’t think so.” Christian sent her a warning look.

She slowed, halted-and heard deep voices in the front hall.

Christian exchanged a glance with Dalziel. “It sounds like Trentham has brought reinforcements.”

Returning to the study door, Christian unlocked and opened it-to admit three gentlemen. Tristan and two other large gentleman Letitia hadn’t previously met.

Christian and Dalziel knew them; they exchanged handshakes and greetings, then Tristan brought the newcomers to Letitia and Hermione, who had sidled up to stand beside her. Tristan shook both their hands, then waved to the gentlemen alongside him. “Lady Letitia Randall, Lady Hermione Vaux-Anthony Blake, Viscount Torrington-for his sins, another member of our club-and Jonathon, Lord Hendon, who escaped by being in a slightly different wing of the services.”

Anthony Blake grinned and elegantly bowed over Letitia’s hand, then Hermione’s. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, ladies.” The dancing light in his dark eyes suggested it truly was. “Please call me Tony.”

Lord Hendon smiled and shook first Hermione’s hand, making her blush furiously, and then Letitia’s. “A pleasure, ma’am. And please call me Jack-everyone does. I understand you’ve inherited a share of a trading company.”

“Apparently. Unfortunately we’ve yet to determine just what the company trades in.”

Tony glanced around. “Tristan said you had books…?”

Letitia looked across and confirmed that Christian had shut and relocked the study door. “Indeed.” Turning to the window frame, she depressed the catch for the secret door. “Come”-turning back to Tony and Jack, she waved beyond them to where Christian was swinging the secret door wide-“and we’ll show you.”

Jack and Tony were as amazed by the secret room as they’d all been, but they quickly got down to business when Christian showed them one of the ledgers.

“Just from this, it seems certain the Orient Trading Company, whoever they are, are a going concern-a business selling…what, we don’t yet know.” Jack looked up from the ledger. His gaze scanned the rows of packed shelves, taking in the enormity of the task they faced, then, jaw firming, he nodded. “We’ll need to get everything down-every box, every file, every ledger. We need to look for the account ledgers-money in, and money out. They could be in separate ledgers-from this one it looks like they will be-and there could well be more than one set of books, too.”

Tony nodded, surveying the shelves. “We also need to look for inventory files, documents listing goods, invoices, and any shipping documentation.” He exchanged a look with Jack. “If we can get the information on those two areas collected, we’ll have somewhere to start.”

There were seven of them all told. They buckled down to the task with grim determination. They quickly established a rhythm-Christian, Dalziel, and Tristan reaching and lifting the files and books down from the shelves, then handing them to Letitia or Hermione to ferry to one or other of the two main piles. Tony watched over the pile for inventory and all things to do with goods, while Jack stacked and organized the account ledgers.

Within half an hour they realized they had a problem, but forged on until every box, file, and paper had been considered, and either assigned to a pile or set aside as not immediately relevant.

Surrounded by now empty shelves, they slumped into the chairs or propped against the desk or shelves and took stock. Two hours had passed. From the chair behind the desk, presumably the one in which Randall used to sit, Letitia surveyed what they’d discovered about her late husband’s enterprise, glancing from the neatly stacked ledgers, over fifty of them, all fat and plump, surrounding Jack Hendon on one side of the room, to the fourteen thin ledgers by Tony Blake’s feet.

Tony looked down at them and shook his head. “Frankly, this is bizarre. These aren’t inventory.” He picked up one ledger and flicked through it. “It’s coded like everything else, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a property ledger.” He stopped flicking pages to scan one leaf. “There’s furniture, and furnishings.” He turned a few pages. “And what looks like staff rolls and payments, although they don’t seem to go on for very long-several months, but not more than a year.” He flicked through to the end of the book, closed it, and looked down at the pile, then at the other files and papers they’d set aside. “There’s nothing here-no trace at all, either incoming or outgoing, of tradable stock.”

“Conversely,” Jack Hendon said, an account ledger open in his hands, “we have extremely, even obsessively, detailed accounts going back”-he glanced down at the pile-“for twelve years.”

“That’s how long the Orient Trading Company has been in existence,” Christian supplied. “According to Montague, it first appeared twelve years ago, at much the same time as Randall moved to London.”

Tristan pricked up his ears. “Any word on where he came by his money?”

Christian shook his head. “It’s Montague’s considered opinion that Randall opened his London bank accounts with cold, hard cash.”

Eyebrows were raised.

Christian had already reported Montague’s findings to Letitia; she was busy thinking of other things.

“Could he have been renting properties?” She looked around, her gaze coming to rest on Jack Hendon.

He pulled a “could be, might be” face, and stood to start resorting the account ledgers. “Let’s take a look at the last year’s incomings. That might give us a clue.”

Tony forsook his disappointing pile and went to help. Tristan and Christian gravitated in the same direction. Dalziel remained slumped on a straight-backed chair, his hands sunk in his pockets, his long legs stretched before him, his face a mask denoting that he was thinking. Furiously, on many different tracks at once.

They left him to it, crowding around Jack to read over his shoulder as with an “Ah-ha!” he stood, a blue account ledger in his hands, and opened it.

From the chair behind the desk, Letitia, with Hermione perched on the desk beside her, watched.

The four of them scanned the incomings, Jack running his large finger down the relevant column.

“He wasn’t renting properties,” Christian concluded. “These incoming amounts are simply too large, even if he owned half of Mayfair.”

“Not only that,” Tony said, pointing to the dates column of the ledger. “These payments are too frequent, especially given their amount, to be rent.” He shook his head. “This looks like what you’d expect it to be-the lodgings of business takings, the sort any shop or store that sells things would make.”

Dalziel rose and joined the group; picking up another of the account ledgers, he opened it and scanned. “Could it be that the Orient Trading Company has a number of different shops?” He glanced across the room at Tony’s deserted pile. “Fourteen, perhaps? Might that explain the high amounts?”

“Fourteen excellent shops, if that’s the case…” Reading over Jack’s shoulder, Tristan frowned. “But it might be so.” He, too, reached for an account ledger. “If there are only fourteen initials, signifying fourteen different payers into the accounts…perhaps the Orient Trading Company does have fourteen shops.”

“Perhaps,” Tony replied. “But if so, what the devil are they selling?”

“Bizarre is indeed the word for it,” Dalziel murmured, his attention on the ledger he held. “It’s almost as if they’re selling something that’s not real…”

Slowly he lifted his gaze and met Christian’s eyes.

For a moment no one spoke.

Letitia knew what they were thinking, but none of them would say the words “prostitution” or “brothel” in front of her, and even less in front of Hermione, although neither of them would swoon.

Regardless, she felt very real relief when Jack Hendon shook his head. “I don’t think it can be that either. Just look at this amount.” He pointed to a figure, waited while the others looked, then flicked the page. “And then here again, a week later. Establishments of that sort simply cannot clear those sort of sums in that time. It’s simply not physically possible.”