Moriarty

3 The Midnight Watch

Athelney Jones had taken a room at the Englischer Hof and suggested that I do the same. We headed there together after we had parted company with the Swiss policemen, walking through the village with the sun brilliant in a cloudless sky and everything silent apart from our own footsteps and the occasional jangle of a bell coming from the sheep or goats that were grazing in the nearby hills. Jones was deep in thought, reflecting on the document we had discovered in the dead man’s pocket. What on earth was Moriarty doing with an extract from a Sherlock Holmes story hidden about him as he travelled to Switzerland? Had he perhaps been seeking some insight into his adversary’s mind before the two of them met at the Reichenbach Falls? Or was it actually the communication I had described, the reason for my long journey to Switzerland? Could it have some secret meaning unknown to both of us? Jones did not address these questions to me but I could see that they were plainly on his mind.

The hotel was small and charming with shapes cut into the wood and flowers hanging around the windows; the very image of a Swiss chalet that every English traveller might dream of finding. Fortunately, there was room for me, and a boy was dispatched to the police station to collect my luggage. Jones and I parted company at the stairs. He had the page in his hand.

‘I would like, with your permission, to hold onto it a while longer,’ he said.

‘You think you can make some sense of it?’

‘I can at least give it my full attention and… who knows?’ He was tired. The walk from the police station had not been a long one but, combined with the high altitude, it had almost drained him.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Will we meet again this evening?’

‘We can dine together. Shall we say eight o’clock?’

‘That will suit me very well, Inspector Jones. Apart from anything else, it will give me time to walk to the famous Reichenbach Falls. I never thought I’d find myself in Switzerland of all places, and this village—it’s quite delightful, like something out of a fairy story.’

‘You might perhaps ask about Moriarty. If he didn’t stay in a hotel or a guest house, he might have taken a room in a private home. And someone may have seen him before he met up with Holmes.’

‘I thought the Swiss police had already made these enquiries.’

‘Wachtmeister Gessner? An admirable man doing the best that he can. But it won’t hurt to ask again.’

‘Very well. I’ll see what I can do.’

I did as I was asked and strolled through the village, talking to those inhabitants who spoke my language, not that there were many of them. There were two words though that they all understood: Sherlock Holmes. At the mention of his name, they became serious and animated. That such a man had visited Meiringen was extraordinary; that he had died here beyond belief. They wanted to help. Sadly, though, none of them had seen Moriarty. No stranger had taken a room in their midst. They had nothing to offer me but broken English and sympathy. Eventually, I returned to my own room. On second thoughts, I had no desire to walk to the falls, which were at least two hours away. The truth was that I could not even think of them without shuddering and visiting them would have told me nothing I did not already know.

Athelney Jones and I dined late that night and I was glad to see that he had recovered his strength. We sat together in the snug hotel restaurant with the tables packed closely together, animal heads on the wall, and a roaring fire quite out of proportion to the size of the room. It was needed though, for with the darkness a torrent of cold air had come twisting through the mountain passes and settled on the village. This was, after all, only May, and we were at an elevation of almost two thousand feet. There were only a few other diners around us and we had chosen a table close to the inglenook so that we could talk together undisturbed.

We were welcomed by a small, round-shouldered woman wearing an apron dress with puffed-out sleeves and a shawl. She brought us a basket of bread and a pint of red wine served in a pitcher and, setting them down, introduced herself as Greta Steiler, the Swiss wife of our English host. ‘We have only soup and roast meat tonight,’ she explained. Her English was excellent and I hoped the cooking would be the same. ‘My husband is alone in the kitchen today and you are lucky we are only half full. If we had any more guests, I do not know how we would manage.’

‘What has happened to your cook?’ Jones asked.

‘He went to visit his mother in Rosenlaui because she hasn’t been well. He was due back almost a week ago but we haven’t heard from him—and this after he has been with us five years! And then we have this business with the falls and with all the police and the detectives asking us their questions. I wait for Meiringen to be back as it was. We do not ask for all this excitement.’

She bustled off and I poured myself some wine but Jones refused, helping himself instead to water. ‘The document…’ I began. From the moment we had sat down, I had wanted to ask what he had made of it.

‘I may be able to shed a certain light on the matter,’ Jones replied. ‘To begin with, it is very likely that it is the communication of which you spoke. It certainly seems to have been written by an American.’

‘How can you possibly know?’

‘I have examined the paper closely and found it to be clay-coated groundwood and therefore very probably American in origin.’

‘And the content?’

‘We will come to that shortly. But first, I think, we should reach an agreement.’ Jones lifted his glass. He swirled it round and I saw the firelight reflecting in the liquid. ‘I am here as a representative of the British police. As soon as we heard that Sherlock Holmes was dead, it was felt that one of us should attend upon the scene, if only as a matter of courtesy. He had, as I am sure you are aware, been helpful to us on a number of occasions. And anything relating to the activities of Professor James Moriarty was naturally of interest to us. What happened at the Reichenbach Falls seems straightforward enough but even so there is clearly something afoot, as Mr Holmes was wont to say. Your presence here and your suggestion that Moriarty was in contact with a member of the American underworld—’

‘Not just a member, sir. The master.’

‘It may well be that we have mutual interests and should work side by side although I must warn you that, generally speaking, Scotland Yard has a certain reticence about dealing with foreign detective agencies, particularly private ones. It may not be helpful, but that’s how it is. It follows that, if I am to make the case to my superiors, I need to know more. In short, you must tell me everything about yourself and the events that have brought you here. You can do so in confidence. But it is only on the strength of what you tell me that I can decide what course of action I should take.’

‘I will willingly tell you everything, Inspector Jones,’ I said. ‘And I’ll make no secret of the fact that I am greatly in need of any help you and the British police can provide.’ I broke off as Frau Steiler returned to the table with two bowls of steaming soup and Spätzle—which was the word she used to describe the little dumplings floating in a murky brown liquid. It smelled better than it looked and, with the scent of boiled chicken and herbs rising in my nostrils, I began my narrative.

‘I was, as I have already told you, born in Boston, where my father was the owner of a very highly regarded law practice with offices in Court Square. My childhood memories are of a family that was correct in every detail, with several servants and a black nanny—Tilly—who was very dear to me.’

‘You were an only child?’

‘No, sir, I was the second of two boys. My brother, Arthur, was quite a few years older than me and we were never close. My father was a member of Boston’s Republican Party and spent much of his time surrounded by like-minded gentlemen who prided themselves on the values which they had brought with them from England and which they felt set them apart as a sort of elite. They were members of the Somerset Club and the Myopia Club and many others. My mother, I’m afraid, was fragile in her health and spent much of the time in bed. The result was that I saw very little of either of my parents and that might explain why, in my teens, I became quite rebellious in nature and finally left home in circumstances which I still regret.

‘My brother had already joined the family firm and it was expected that I would do the same. However, I had no aptitude for the law. I found the textbooks dry and almost indecipherable. Besides, I had other ambitions. I cannot quite say what it was that first interested me in the criminal world… it may have been stories that I found in Merry’s Museum. This was a magazine read by every child in the neighbourhood. But there was also an incident I remember very clearly. We were members of the congregation at the Warren Avenue Baptist Church. We never missed a service and it was the one place we were together as a family. Well, when I was about twenty, it was discovered that the sexton, one Thomas Piper, had committed a series of quite gruesome murders—’

‘Piper?’ Jones’s eyes narrowed. ‘I recall the name. His first victim was a young girl…’

‘That’s correct. The story was widely reported outside America. As for me, although my entire community felt nothing but outrage, I must confess that I was thrilled that such a man could have concealed himself in our midst. I had seen him often in his long black cape, always smiling and beneficent. If he could be guilty of such crimes, was there anyone in our community who could genuinely claim to be above suspicion?

‘It was at this moment that I found my vocation in life. The dry world of the lawyer was not for me. I wanted to be a detective. I had heard of the Pinkertons. They were already legendary throughout America. Just a few days after the scandal came to light, I told my father that I wanted to travel to New York to join them.’

I fell silent. Jones was watching me with an intensity that I would come to know well and I knew that he was weighing my every word. There was a part of me that did not wish to open myself up to him in this way but at the same time I knew that he would demand nothing less.

‘My father was a quiet man and a very cultivated one,’ I continued. ‘He had never raised his voice to me, not in my entire life, but he did so on that day. To him, with all his sensibilities, the work of the policeman and the detective (for he saw no difference between the two) was lowly, disgusting. He begged me to change my mind. I refused. We quarrelled, and in the end I left with hardly more than a few dollars in my pocket and the growing fear that, as my home slipped away behind me, I was making a terrible mistake.

‘I took the train to New York and it is hard to convey to you my first impressions as I left Grand Central Depot. I found myself in a city of extraordinary opulence and abject poverty, of astonishing elegance and extreme depravity, the two living so close by that I only had to turn my head to pass from one to the other. Somehow I made my way to the Lower East Side, a part of the city that put me in mind of the tower of Babel, for here there were Poles, Italians, Jews, Bohemians, all of them speaking their own languages and observing their own customs. Even the smells in the streets were new to me. After my long, protected childhood, it was as if I were seeing the world for the first time.

‘It was easy enough to find a room in a tenement; every door carried an advertisement. I spent that first night in a dark, airless place with no furniture, a tiny stove and a kerosene lamp and I will admit that I was very glad to open my eyes and see the first light of dawn.

‘I had considered applying to the police force in New York, thinking that I would need some experience as a guardian of the law before I could apply to the Pinkertons, but I soon discovered that such a course of action would be practically impossible. I had brought with me no letters of recommendation; I had no connections, and without preferment of one sort or another, it would be hard even to get a foot through the door. The police were poorly resourced and corruption was rife. Would the famous detective agency, “The Eye that Never Sleeps”, even consider a rash and inexperienced youth? There was only one way to find out. I went straight to their office and applied.

‘I was fortunate. Allan Pinkerton, the most famous detective in America and the founder of the company, and his sons, Robert and William, were actively seeking recruits. It may surprise you to learn that police experience was not a requirement. In fact, it was the other way round. Many senior police officers in America first learned their trade with Pinkerton’s. Honesty, integrity, reliability… these were the qualities that counted and I found myself being interviewed along with former bootmakers, teachers and wine merchants, all hoping to better themselves in the company. Nor did my youth count against me: I was well presented and I had a good knowledge of the law. By the end of the day I had been recruited as a special operative, working on a temporary basis for $2.50 a day plus bed and board. The hours were long and it was made clear to me that my employment could be terminated at any time if I was found wanting. I was determined that it should not be.’

Briefly, I stirred my soup with my spoon. A man at a table on the far side of the room suddenly broke into loud laughter, I think at his own joke. It struck me that he laughed in a way that was peculiarly Germanic, although perhaps it was an unworthy thought.

I began again. ‘I am moving quickly forward, Mr Jones, because my own life story will be of little interest to you.’

‘On the contrary, I am immersed.’

‘Well, let me just say that my work was found to be more than satisfactory and that, over the years, I rose up within the ranks. I will mention that I returned to Boston and that I was reunited with my father, although he never completely forgave me. He died a few years ago, leaving his practice to my brother and a small sum to me. It has proved useful for, although I am not complaining, I have never been highly paid.’

‘The enforcement of the law has never been particularly well remunerated in any country, to my knowledge,’ Jones returned. ‘I might add that criminality pays more. However, you must forgive me. I interrupt.’

‘I have investigated fraud, murder, counterfeiting, bank robberies and missing persons—all of which are prevalent in New York. I cannot say that I have used the same methods, the same extraordinary intelligence that you demonstrated to me this morning. I am dogged in my approach. I am fastidious. I may read a hundred witness statements before I find the two conflicting remarks that will lead me to the truth. And it is this, more than anything, which has led me frequently to success and brought me to the attention of my superiors. Let me tell you, however, of one investigation that was entrusted to me in the spring of 1889. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was this more than anything that was eventually to bring me here.

‘We had a client, a man called William Orton, the president of Western Union. He had come to us because his company’s lines had been intercepted and a series of completely false and damaging messages were being sent to the New York stock market with devastating results. Several large companies had been brought to the very edge of bankruptcy, and investors found themselves with losses stretching into the millions. The chairman of a mining company in Colorado, receiving one of these wires, went up to his bedroom and shot himself. Orton thought it must be the work of an extremely malevolent and cold-hearted practical joker. It took me three months and an endless series of interviews to discover the truth. It was, in fact, a remarkable and completely original form of embezzlement. A consortium of brokers, working out of Wall Street, were buying up the stocks of the companies that had been affected—acquiring them, of course, at rock-bottom prices. In this way, they were making a fortune. The operation required nerve, imagination, cunning and the bringing together of a great many criminal talents. At Pinkerton’s, we knew at once that we had never encountered anything quite like it. Eventually, we arrested the gang—but the leader, the man who had initiated the whole enterprise, slipped through our fingers. His name was Clarence Devereux.

‘You have to understand that America is a young country and as such it is still, in many respects, uncivilised. I was actually shocked by the lawlessness that I found all around me when I first arrived in New York, although I suppose I might have expected it. How else could a company like the Pinkerton Detective Agency have become so successful if it wasn’t needed? The tenement where I lived was surrounded by brothels, gaming places and saloons where the criminal classes congregated and boasted quite openly about their exploits. I’ve already mentioned forgers, counterfeiters and bank robbers. To those I might have added the countless footpads who made it dangerous to venture out at night and the pickpockets who committed their crimes quite brazenly in the day.

‘There were criminals everywhere. A thousand thieves; two thousand prostitutes. But—and this, you might say, was the saving grace—they were disparate and disorganised, nearly always acting alone. Of course, there were exceptions. Jim Dunlap and Bob Scott headed an organisation that became known as The Ring and which stole three million dollars, an amazing sum, from banks across the country. Other gangs—the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys—came and went. There were the Plug Uglies over in Baltimore. I read all the files. But Clarence Devereux was the first man to see the advantages of a comprehensive criminal network with its own code of practice and a fully worked-out chain of command. We first heard of him at the time of the Western Union business, but by then he had already established himself as the most brilliant and most successful criminal of his generation.’

‘And this man is the reason you are here?’ Jones enquired. ‘He is the author of the letter sent to the late Professor Moriarty?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘Please, continue.’

I had not even tasted the soup in front of me. Jones was still watching me intently. It was a strange meal, two foreigners in a Swiss restaurant, neither of them eating a thing. I wondered how much time had passed since I had begun my tale. Outside, the night seemed darker than ever and the flames were crackling, leaping at the chimney.

‘By now I had been promoted to the role of General Operative,’ I continued, ‘and Robert Pinkerton made me personally responsible for Devereux’s arrest. I was given a special team—three investigators, a cashier, a secretary, two stenographers and an office boy—and together we became known as the Midnight Watch, a reference to the long hours we kept. Our office, tucked away in the basement, was jammed with correspondence and not an inch of our four walls was visible beneath the veritable rogues’ gallery that we had pinned into place. Reports from Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia were sent to us and slowly, methodically, we worked our way through hundreds of pages. It was an exhausting business but by the beginning of this year, a face had begun to take shape… well, not so much a face, a presence.’

‘Clarence Devereux.’

‘I cannot even be certain that that is his real name. He has never been seen. No illustration or photograph of him exists. It is said that he is about forty years of age; that he came to America from Europe, from a well-to-do family; that he is charming, highly cultivated and philanthropic. Yes, I see you start. But I know for a fact that he has given substantial sums of money to the New York Foundling Hospital and to the Home for the Friendless. He has endowed a scholarship at Harvard University and he was one of the founding subscribers of the Metropolitan Opera.

‘And yet at the same time, I tell you, there is no more evil influence in the whole of America. Clarence Devereux is a criminal like no other, utterly ruthless, as much feared by the villains who work for him as by the victims whose lives he has ruined. There is no form of depravity, no vice that is below him. Indeed, he takes such pleasure in the organisation and execution of his various schemes that we have been led to believe that he commits his crimes as much to amuse himself as to benefit from any profits they might bring. After all, he has already made his fortune. He is a showman, a ringmaster who brings misery to everyone he touches, leaving his bloody fingerprints everywhere he goes.

‘I have studied him. I have pursued him. He represents everything that I loathe and find most vile and to bring an end to his activities would be the crowning moment of my career. And yet he remains out of my reach. Sometimes I feel that he knows my every move; that he is toying with me. Clarence Devereux is very careful about the way he operates, hiding behind his false identity. Never once will he expose himself or put himself in any danger. He will plan a crime—a bank robbery, a burglary, a murder; work out the details, recruit the gang, take the spoils—but he himself will not come close. He remains invisible. He has, however, one trait that may one day help me identify him. It is said that he has a strange psychological condition called agoraphobia—which is to say, a morbid fear of open spaces. He remains indoors and travels only in a covered carriage.

‘There is something else. As we continued our work, we were able to track down three men who knew his true identity and who almost certainly worked for him: his closest lieutenants and bodyguards. They formed a satellite around him, all three of them vicious criminals in their own right. Two of them are brothers—Edgar and Leland Mortlake. The third started life as a smatter-hauler, which is what we call a handkerchief thief, but soon graduated to safe-cracking and grand larceny. His name is Scotchy Lavelle.’

‘Can you not arrest them?’

‘We have arrested them—many times. They are all three of them graduates of Sing Sing and the Tombs but in recent years they have been careful to keep their hands clean. They pretend to be respectable businessmen now and there is no evidence to prove otherwise. Arresting them again would do no good. The police have questioned them repeatedly but there is nothing in this world that would make them talk. They represent the new breed of gangster, the one that we at Pinkerton’s most fear. They are no longer afraid of the law. They think themselves above it.’

‘Have you met them?’

‘I have observed all three of them from a distance and from behind a wire mesh. I always thought it best that we should remain unacquainted. If Devereux can keep his face a secret from me, it seems only fair to repay the compliment.’ Mrs Steiler walked past and placed another log on the fire although her restaurant was already sweltering. I waited until she had left us and then finished my account. ‘For two years we investigated Clarence Devereux with little success, but then, just a few months ago, we had a breakthrough. One of my investigators was a young man called Jonathan Pilgrim.’

‘I know that name too,’ Jones muttered.

‘He was only in his twenties when I first met him and in his enthusiasm and basic decency he reminded me of myself at his age. He was a remarkable fellow who’d come to us from the west. A fine cello player and a baseball player too. I once saw him pitch at Bloomingdale Park. When he was nineteen, he trailed a horse herd a thousand miles across the Texas plains and he’d had experience of ranches, mines—he’d even spent time working the riverboats. He joined the team in New York and, working on his own, managed to get close to Leland Mortlake. Let’s just say that the older of the two brothers had always enjoyed the company of a handsome boy and with his straw-coloured hair and bright blue eyes, JP was very handsome indeed. He became Mortlake’s secretary and travelling companion. The two of them dined together. They visited the theatre and the opera and hung out at the saloons. Well, in January, Mortlake announced that he was moving to London and he invited JP to go with him.

‘It was a brilliant opportunity. We had an agent right inside the gang and although Jonathan never came face to face with Devereux—how much easier it would have made our task if he had!—he did have access to much of Mortlake’s correspondence. Although it placed him in the greatest personal danger, he eavesdropped on conversations, kept an eye on everyone who came and went and made extensive notes on the workings of the gang. I used to meet with him secretly on the third Sunday of every month at the Haymarket, a dance hall on Thirtieth Street. He would report everything that he had learned to me.

‘From him, I gathered that although Clarence Devereux exerted almost total control over the American underworld, it still was not enough. He was turning his attention to England. He had been in communication with a certain Professor James Moriarty, exploring the possibility of what might be termed a transatlantic alliance. Can you imagine it, Inspector Jones? A criminal fraternity whose tentacles would extend all the way from the west coast of California to the heart of Europe! A worldwide confederation. The coming together of two evil geniuses.’

‘You knew of Moriarty?’

‘By name and by reputation, most certainly. Although it is unfortunately true that Scotland Yard is not always co-operative in its dealings with Pinkerton’s, we still have our contacts within the New York police—and for that matter with the Rijkswacht and the Sûreté. We had always been afraid that one day Moriarty might head west but it now appeared that the exact opposite had occurred.

‘Scotchy Lavelle, Leland Mortlake and Edgar Mortlake had all set themselves up in London by the start of the New Year. Jonathan had gone with them and, a few weeks later, he sent us a telegraph to the effect that Clarence Devereux had also joined them. It was exactly what we had been waiting for. There are not so many forty-year-old wealthy Americans in London. His psychological condition, if true, could also help to identify him. At once, the Midnight Watch drew together the passenger lists of every steamship that had made the crossing from America to England in the past month and although it was a huge task—there were hundreds of names—we still thought it possible to narrow them down. Unless Clarence Devereux had somehow found a way to fly, he must be among them and to find him we worked night and day.

‘While this was continuing, we received a second telegraph from Jonathan Pilgrim informing us that he had personally delivered a letter to Moriarty, arranging a meeting between him and Devereux. Yes! Our agent had actually met Moriarty. The two of them talked. But the very next day, before he could tell us exactly what had taken place, tragedy struck: Jonathan must have been discovered by the gang. Perhaps that last telegraph was the undoing of him. At any event, he was brutally killed.’

‘He was tied up and shot. I remember the report.’

‘Yes, Inspector—this was not so much a murder as an execution. It is how New York gangs frequently deal with informers.’

‘Even so, you followed him across the Atlantic.’

‘I still believed it would be easier to find Devereux in London than it was in New York and it also occurred to me that if I could pinpoint this meeting between Devereux and Moriarty, why, it would be two birds with one stone: the arrest of the two greatest criminals on the planet at one fell swoop.

‘So you can imagine my dismay when I disembarked from my vessel, stepping on English soil for the first time, only to see the newspaper headlines… Moriarty believed dead. That was May seventh. My immediate thought was to come here to Meiringen, a village I had never heard of in a country I had never visited. Why? Because of the letter; if Moriarty still had it with him, it might lead me to Devereux. It even occurred to me that Devereux might be here and that his presence might be connected in some way to what had occurred at the Reichenbach Falls. At any event, there was nothing to be gained by kicking my heels in Southampton. I took the first train to Paris and then down to Switzerland and I was attempting to prise some sort of co-operation from the Swiss police—without much success—this morning when you and I met.’

I fell silent. It was too late now to attack my soup, which had cooled in the long telling of my tale. I took instead a sip of wine, which tasted sweet and heavy on my lips. Inspector Jones had listened to my long discourse as if the two of us had been alone in the room. I knew that he had absorbed every detail, that he had missed nothing and would—if called upon—be able to set down almost everything I had said. And yet it was not without effort. I had already marked him as the sort of man who sets the very highest standards for himself but who achieves them only through perseverance and fortitude. It was as if he were at war with himself.

‘Your informant, Jonathan Pilgrim; do you know where he was staying?’

‘He had rooms at a club—the Bostonian. I believe it is in a part of London called Mayfair. If he had one weakness as an agent, it is that he was independently minded. He told us very little and will, I am sure, have left nothing behind.’

‘What of the others? The Mortlake brothers and Lavelle?’

‘As far as I know, they are still in London.’

‘You know them. You know what they look like. Can you not use them to reach Devereux?’

‘They are too careful. If they ever meet, it is in secret and behind locked doors. They communicate only through telegrams and secret codes.’

Jones considered what I had told him. I watched the flames devouring the logs in the fireplace and waited for him to speak. ‘Your story is of the greatest interest,’ he said at length. ‘And I would see no reason not to offer you my assistance. However, it may already be too late.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Now that Moriarty is dead, why should this man, Clarence Devereux, wish to remain in London?’

‘Because it may be an opportunity for him; Devereux was suggesting some sort of partnership. With Moriarty gone, everything can be his alone. He can inherit Moriarty’s entire organisation.’

Jones sniffed at that. ‘We had arrested pretty much the entire gang before Professor Moriarty reached Meiringen,’ he remarked. ‘And Sherlock Holmes himself had left an envelope containing the identities and the addresses of many of his associates. Clarence Devereux may have come to England in search of a business partner but he will have already discovered that his journey was in vain. The same, I fear, may be true for you.’

‘The note that we found in Moriarty’s pocket—you said it would shed some light on the affair.’

‘And so it does.’

‘You have solved it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then tell me, for Heaven’s sake! Moriarty may be finished but Clarence Devereux most certainly is not and if there is anything you or I can do to rid the world of this evil creature, we must not hesitate.’

Jones had finished his soup. He moved his plate aside, clearing a space, then took out the sheet of paper, unfolded it and laid it in front of me. It seemed to me that the restaurant had suddenly become quieter. The candles were throwing dark, nimble shadows across the tables. The animal heads craned towards us as if trying to listen in.

Once again I read the extract with its jumble of capital and small letters.

‘It makes no sense to you?’ Jones enquired.

‘None at all.’

‘Then let me explain.’