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On Holmes's command we moved back into the hall. As we rounded the bannister Holmes reached out and opened the door slightly, then slammed it shut.

'With luck they'll think our courage deserted us,' he said grimly. 'That harpy could tell from your face that you were discomfited.'

'Discomfited!' I hissed. 'Holmes, do you have any idea . . .?'

'More than you, old friend,' he said as we reached the first landing. 'The underside of London is my natural habitat. I have been able to keep most of it from you. I'm only sorry you had to be here now.'

'But Holmes, they were children!'

He scanned the carpet and sniffed the air like an experienced hunter in search of big game, then started up the next flight of stairs.

'The other side of the coin to our experiences in Holborn,' he whispered.

'The overcrowding in the slums and rookeries is so intense, the poverty so appalling, that many families feel they have no option but to sell their children into what may seem to them to be better circumstances.'

'And there are men willing to . . . to pay money for . . . And with boys as well . . .!'

I could not continue. Holmes glanced over at me, his eyes shadowed.

'I have never been one to censure what two consenting adults wish to do in private, Watson, the provisions of Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill notwithstanding. But to involve children is the lowest form of moral perversion imaginable.'

We had reached the second landing by now. The dubious trappings of respectability had faded: the walls were distempered rather than papered, the floor uncarpeted. Holmes repeated his shikari act, then led the way to a closed door which he opened a crack. Behind it a smaller staircase led further upward. From upstairs I thought I could hear chanting: voices raised in a deep, slow song whose words appeared to be in some foreign language. Closing the door again, Holmes whispered, 'I can hear Maupertuis at the top of the stairs. He appears to be standing guard over a room, inside which I presume is his hooded companion. We must determine what he is doing in there.'

'But Holmes, surely it's obvious.'

He gazed at me pityingly.

'This address was familiar to me not because I am an expert in brothels but because Madame Sosostris, the infamous clairvoyant, holds her devilish seances here.'

'Wasn't she mixed up in black mass ceremonies a few years back? I remember reading it in the newspapers. Shocking.'

'Indeed, and this is where she ended up, attempting to contact the other side by using devils and demons, rather than the Red Indian spirit guides so beloved of other clairvoyants. I would give a great deal to know what this hooded man wants with her.' A thought struck him. 'Perhaps we can gain access from this floor.'

Holmes and I checked the nearest door. Hearing nothing, I cautiously turned the handle and opened the door a crack. The room was dark. I pushed the door a few more inches and poked my head cautiously around the edge. Apart from a stained and rumpled bed and a small plaster crucifix on the wall above it, there was nothing. The curtains had been drawn, and the room was in twilight.

Holmes went straight to the window and drew back the curtains. Beyond the fly-specked glass I could see a patch of overgrown garden bordered by chest-high walls. As I retrieved my stethoscope from my hat, Holmes threw up the window, secure in the knowledge that he could not be observed, and began to climb out onto the ledge.

'Be careful!' I mouthed. He nodded, and swung himself sideways, feeling with his fingers and toes for the gaps between the bricks.

I was just about to turn back to the room when something-familiar caught my eye in the garden, half hidden by the shadow cast by one of the walls. It was a pile of tall, thin twigs with a leather pouch, like a half-deflated football, balanced on top. I tried to remember where I had seen something similar, but my mind would not cooperate.

'Watson,' Holmes hissed from his position above