Gloom and Jake arrived back at the museum just before midday. They found Alfred, Jake's father and Gloom's housekeeper, helping the charcoalman unload three new bags of charcoal into the alcove behind the steam wheelchair's storage bay, under the watchful gaze of Daisy Turner, the charcoalman's daughter. “Hi, Daisy!” said Jake happily. “How you doing?”

     “Great, Jake!” replied the girl. “Hello, Mister Gloom.”

     “Hello, Daisy,” replied Gloom, grateful to Jake for providing her name. “Glad to meet you.” He'd never met the girl before. He’d always been either in the building or out and about town during deliveries.

     “Are you still coming with me to Davey's tomorrow?” asked Jake.

     “Of course. Looking forward to it.” The girl skipped forward and put her arms around Jake's neck. “Maybe we can slip away from the others for a little while. Just you and me...”

     Jake blushed in a way that Gloom found quite charming and he smiled to himself as the girl kissed the boy on the cheek. She was even sootier than Jake and left black smudges on the sides of his face. He put his arms around her waist and pulled her close, but the girl's father barked at him and he let her go hurriedly. “Get on the cart!” He ordered his daughter.

     Daisy waved goodbye to Jake as she climbed aboard, and then the charcoalman climbed into the driver's seat and picked up the reins. He gave them a flick and the horses pulled the wagon out into the street and off to their next customer.

     “Davey's dad is a sailor,” Jake explained as they parked the steam wheelchair in its alcove and the boy helped Gloom into his indoor wheelchair. “He just got back from the south seas and he always brings stuff back with him. Everyone goes there to see what he's got. The last time he had a collection of shrunken heads from Borneo and a voodoo priest's mask. He let me try it on.”

     “Educational and entertaining,” said Gloom approvingly. “I wouldn't mind seeing his collection myself.”

     “Maybe you can come too. I'm sure he’d like to meet you.”

     “Some other time, maybe. I wouldn’t want to come between you and Daisy.” Jake grinned again and pushed the wheelchair into the building.

     They found Benson to be still asleep, so they went to the bathrooms to get cleaned up and changed. Charcoal burns very cleanly, producing very little smoke, but they both still had soot on their skin and clothes and Jake's hands were black from handling the charcoal. While Doreen, Jake's mother and the museum's cook, filled two bathtubs with hot water, therefore, Jake helped Gloom get undressed and then took off his own clothes. His scrawny body was white, in stark contrast with his sooty face and arms.

     The boy helped Gloom into his bathtub, but he washed his hands in a washbasin before getting into his own bath, so that the soot wouldn’t leave his body dirtier than it been before. Gloom looked down at his withered legs and the limp, useless tube of his penis, then looked at Jake. His legs were toned and muscular, and his penis was twitching with the beginnings of an erection. He was evidently still thinking of Daisy. It occurred to Gloom that, even though the boy was only fourteen, he might already have lain with a girl, something that Gloom had never done, nor could ever do.

     The old, familiar rage began to rise within him again. The unfairness that he couldn’t enjoy the pleasures that other men took for granted. Was it the malice of God that polio had struck him down at such a young age, or was it nothing more than dumb luck? Which would be worse? And his legs! He could go nowhere without his wheelchair, like an infant in his pram. It was humiliating and degrading. He hated the wheelchair, even his splendid steam wheelchair. It attracted admiring stares wherever he went, but they had no idea what it was like to be confined to it, to be so helpless and dependent. The rage grew and grew inside him and he allowed it to grow, having long since learned the trick of dealing with it. He made himself get angry, imagined himself taking terrible vengeance on the whole world, and suddenly the rage burst like a soap bubble, leaving him feeling empty and a little foolish.

     I'm not so helpless, he told himself. I broke into Father Anthony's office with no help from anyone, and I've put dozens of crooks in prison. I'm not helpless. I'm a predator, and I prey on the very worst of humanity. The thought made him feel better, and he got to the task of washing himself.

     Half an hour later Jake helped him out of the bath, helped him dry and dress himself, and then got dressed himself. Then, clean and wearing clean clothes, they were once again ready to face the world. “I won't be needing you again today, Jake,” Gloom told the boy. “You can go back to school. Tell me, how are you getting on there?”

     “Great,” replied the boy. “Mister Summers says I'm one of his best pupils. He doesn't even mind all the classes I miss, because of all the things you teach me. He says looking after you is better for me than homework.”

     “That's good,” said Gloom. ‘Your education is important, and I don't want to hurt it. Off you go then.” The boy nodded and hurried off along the corridor.

     Benson was still asleep, so Gloom went to his office to research another of his cases, one on which he’d been working for more than a year. He’d hit a dead end while investigating the disappearance of Hilda Robinson, the wife of Captain Robinson of the Devonshire Regiment, an event that the Captain thought might be the result of a family curse. Gloom had had some experience with curses, but he was sceptical that this case had any kind of occult explanation. He had taken the case nonetheless, but with a total lack of success. His one remaining hope was that her personal diaries might hold a clue, and so he had sent a letter asking the Captain to send them to him.

     The husband had hesitated for a long time before complying. He had read them himself and had assured Gloom that they held nothing that shed light on the case. Respect for her privacy made him extremely reluctant to allow them to be read by a stranger, but his last remaining hope was that the investigator would spot something that he had missed. A package containing the diaries had therefore arrived a few days ago and Gloom opened it to find a dozen small books filled with neat handwriting. He opened the first diary, the one containing the most recent entries, and began to read.

     He quickly became engrossed with the trivia of Mrs Robinsons life to such an extent that he was unaware of Benson's entry into the room, and the manservant had to clear his throat several times before Gloom was aware of him. “Ah, you're up.” He laid the diary aside with some regret and turned his mind back to their current case. “Are you ready for another foray against the forces of darkness?”

     “Just lead the way,” the manservant replied with a smile.

     “I'm afraid I'm going to have to send you alone again. I have some familiarity with the Cheetham Hill area and it's not an area that I can enter without attracting attention. Do you think you’re up to a little housebreaking on your own?”

     “I'm pretty sure I can handle it. Just give me the man's address.”

     Gloom did so. “It’s an apartment block, in the middle of the top floor. Each floor has ten apartments, so anyone who sees you will probably think you live in one of the other apartments. If he's an honest man, with nothing to do with our investigation, then he'll almost certainly be out. Either working or down the pub. The mother will probably have a job too, unless she has small children.”

     Benson nodded. “I come from that kind of life, if you remember.”

     Gloom smiled apologetically. “Yes, of course. If it is him, and if the police picked up his two partners, then he'll be alone, but if he knows they've been picked up he'll probably have run. Our only hope then will be that he left some kind of clue behind. Something we can use to keep following his trail. I suppose the police did pick them up?”

     “I left an anonymous tip off that there were crooks there. No way of knowing whether they followed up on it. If they didn't there might be three of them there waiting for me.”

     “Maybe you should take your friend MacNally with you.”

     “He has a job, working security for the Burlington Trading Company. He can't afford to lose it, he has a wife and children to support. I'll be okay. I’ll observe from a distance. I won't go anywhere near the place until I know how many people are in there.”

     “Just be careful. These are dangerous people.”

     “I'm dangerous as well.”

     Gloom nodded. He’d seen how true that was many times over the years. He bade him farewell, therefore, and Benson went off to get ready.