Caroline wanted to ask Why are you telling me this but she dared not speak aloud, for she sensed a pedestrian close by on her left hand. Then she was distracted by some commotion off to the right, not in Drury Lane but back in what she assumed to be a maze of alleys behind. Shod hooves were sparking on pavement back there, and a voice commanding, "Make way, damn you!" She knew enough English by now to know that this was the voice of someone well-bred, someone with the right to bear arms. She looked behind again to see that the two men following had made up half the distance separating them; then, turning back to give this news to Johann, she observed that he was gone, with no good-bye other than a tattoo of hoofbeats down an alley, and murmur of prostitutes in his wake.