Lest they consider bringing the gold to the police, he warned her that if they decided to turn in the gold taken from the train, without Edward to vouch for their good intentions in engineering the daring heists, he reminded her sternly that it would be difficult to prove their innocence. And knowing how the judicial system felt about these types of spectacular crimes, they would likely be hanged.

On the other hand, he warned her that it was likely that Mr Pimms would eventually tell people about his gold cache, assuming that Scotland Yard would be successful in catching him, before he was hanged for his crimes, without fully explaining how he had built up this gold cache. Given his knowledge of how criminals thought, Edward surmised the criminals who would come to know of the gold cache would likely keep hunting for the gold, and may eventually get to John and his group.

So Edward advised her that she and John should make arrangements to keep moving the gold, until they decided what to do.

Although he trusted that they would eventually do the right thing, he further advised that they split the responsibilities over moving the gold, to ensure neither would be tempted to take the gold for himself or herself.

He explained to her the system he and John agreed to use to communicate with each other about the gold, and implored her to keep safe the leather notebook that contained all the root names and words of the “codex” he and John had dreamed up during their university days, as well as the rules of how to use them, including the numbers and symbols that related to the names and words.

His last advice was to burn the letter. For her safety – even if, on the one hand, it was possible that, in some way, it could be used as proof of their good intentions regarding the gold. All in all, however, any document or trail that related to the gold needed to be “vanished,” because the criminals that could come looking for the gold would be “cruel beyond all imagination, my Lady.”

Lady Beatrice paused after she read the letter for the fifth time.

Edward had used calm, matter-of-fact language in the letter, and not melodramatic prose. He didn’t need to emphasize the dangers she and John faced: the manner with which he’d been executed, and which he may have anticipated, told her what she needed to know.  Oddly enough, his letter, and the calm, resolute march of words and letters that laid out his last thoughts on this most important matter, had a soothing effect on her.