The Baltic Gambit

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Then on, my wrath, on, and crush this plotter of big things; close with him, thyself rend him in pieces with thine own hands.

– LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA,

HERCULES FURENS, 75-76

A bloody awful day for 't," Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby commented as the hired coach-and-four clattered and swayed to a stop on the cobblestones before the steps leading up to the Old Bailey. With a wince and a sniff, he sampled the weather, sticking his head out of the right-hand side door window into the cold.

"Arr," his son, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, idly replied. Lewrie, it must here be pointed out, was a tad hung over, after a sleepless night in his rooms at the Madeira Club, a sedate lodging for gentlemen not too far away from the Old Bailey, at the corner of Duke Street and Wigmore Street. His father, the old reprobate, leaned back to gather his walking stick and cloak, allowing Lewrie a view of the building. "Oh, Lord," Lewrie whispered.

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