A short walk through the city’s night enshrouded streets brought us to our objective, West’s apartment building. As befitted the home of a well – paid government scientist the security was formidable – indeed Fox had a great deal of trouble with the sophisticated door locks. Fortunately I’ve been called on to defeat such things in the past and our combined efforts gained access to the building.

Luck remained with us, for we didn’t encounter any of the building’s other residents as we quickly made our way to his first floor flat. The security on the flat wasn’t as formidable as that at the building entrance and was easily bypassed. The three of us entered the flat and began a quick but thorough search. Agent Fox quickly discovered a collection of badly damaged papers in the top of West’s waste paper bin. They appeared to be the text of a play, “The King in Yellow”, and were covered with scrawled notes, equations and diagrams. We were in two minds whether we should take the notes, if we did then West would certainly know someone had been in his flat but ultimately we had no choice – there was simply to much information to assimilate quickly. I did consider taking photos of them but there would be no time to develop the pictures and so dismissed that plan. A further search revealed a hastily scribbled message on a pad by the phone which indicated that Lux and West were due to meet up at Taylors at eight that evening. Although no further immediately relevant information was found we did discover further notes referring to Bonisagus, Tremere, Tytalus etc – apparently the names of medieval hermetic orders. West’s bookcase was also stocked with tomes on the Undead and other tomes which indicated an interest in the occult unusual for a physicist with his apparently high reputation. I paused briefly to place a bug under West’s sofa and we then departed.

Fox passed the information about the meeting at Taylors to Jones and the others and we returned to the car to see what we could make of the tattered notes that had been discovered. In the limited time we had available we could make out little concerning the play itself but the scribbled sidenotes proved a revelation. Many of them were complex mathematical equations whose meaning proved impossible to fathom but others referred to a ‘summoning’ and seemed to indicate that it would occur sometime between eleven and midnight. A chill ran down my spine, for I could not help remembering the terrible rituals used by the witchdoctors of Borneo to summon their dark gods. Much of what appeared on the tattered pages before me reminded me of those madmen and the bloody horrors they practised. References to Schr?dinger’s Cat indicated that West’s field of work involved exploration of the Quantum universe. This presented the terrible possibility that a brilliant scientist whose field of work was multi– dimensional physics might be devoting his twisted intellect to breaching the barriers between our world and more alien realms.

A number of diagrams were also present, they meant little to me but Fox divined some occult significance in them. Patrick would later identify them as a representation of the Cabalistic Tree of Life and then that same pattern reversed. Other marginalia contained astronomical references and the phrase “Goodbye Norma Jean” appeared more than once. It took me some time to realise that this may be a veiled reference to psychic phenomena … Goodbye Norma Jean … Candle in the Wind … Project Candlelight – a tenuous connection but not too far fetched given the muddy waters which we were now navigating.

There was more to be discovered but Agent Scott pointed out that time was marching on and West would soon be leaving work and we’d have to hurry to be in place to follow him.

The three of us abandoned the car once again and made our way out onto the darkened streets of Cheltenham, rapidly making our way to the Gilman Foundation. Scott felt that the research centre might have valuable secrets to reveal and suggested we try to gain entrance. I was dubious, it was only a little before seven and West would be emerging shortly – there didn’t seem to be the time to learn anything before our target appeared. Not daunted by these difficulties Karl Fox strode boldly up to the Foundation’s entrance and tried to bluff his way past the two security guards who barred his way. He tried to persuade them that he was making an important delivery but the lack of any appropriate paperwork, not to say any form of package, made this story a good deal less credible. He rejoined me having failed to gain entrance.

We were continuing our watch on the building when we saw a beautiful young woman leave. She approached us as we loitered by a strategically placed phone box, ostensibly looking for a light for her cigarette. Both Fox and I realised that this was an ideal opportunity to find out more about the work carried out at the Foundation – therefore Karl rushed over the road to buy her a box of matches while I made small talk. It was at this point that West emerged from work and managed to evade our eagle – eyed surveillance. His ability to slip by us so easily proved that he was a master of disguise, a veritable man of a thousand faces, clearly possessing a formidable range of counter- espionage skills.

Although our target had eluded us initially I regret to say that we allowed ourselves to become side-tracked by the female stranger from the Foundation. In a distinctive American accent we were informed that her name was Alice and she was one of Alec West’s co-workers. Posing as old college friends of West’s from Cambridge we attempted to discover what she knew.

Karl used his suave charms to try and pry information out of the young American but every question was parried with a cunning counter-thrust. I must say that I had no greater luck with my queries, although Alice did hint that she might see West later. While we questioned her, trying to discover what she knew about Alec West and his work, we were led away from the man we were actually supposed to be following. The dark–haired American asked if we would like to go for a drink and Karl, motivated only by a desire to further our investigation I’m sure, accepted on our behalf. We were on our way to a nearby pub when Agent Fox received a desperate message from Billy, warning us that we were in terrible danger from whoever we were with and imploring us to get away from whoever it was immediately. Given the direction the investigation had taken we were in no mood to question Billy’s mysterious hunches so we made our apologies to a slightly puzzled Alice and departed.

It later occurred to me that we had been the victims of a cunning piece of misdirection, a classic honey-trap with the alluring Alice tasked with drawing us away to discover what we knew while West made his escape. I also realised that I’d missed an opportunity to gain more information by bugging the matchbox, which Fox could then have given to the young woman.

We decided to meet up with the other team back at the safehouse in order to compare notes and make further plans.