Based on the 1946 Alfred Hitchcock film Notorious.

The house was small, a bungalow that had seen better days. The grass was overgrown and there were stains from broken eggs that hadn't been properly cleaned. The rent was months past due but the landlord hadn't taken any steps to evict the girl living inside. Maybe he felt sorry for her for the way that her life had been turned upside down by her father's conviction for treason. More likely she was paying him in something other than money.

She'd been a well known party girl even before the arrest. Belle French, nicknamed Lacey after her favorite type of clothing, had been linked to politicians and actors, to artists and rakes. But when her father was arrested for giving secrets to the Germans it catapulted her from famous to notorious. The media tried its damnedest to prove that he'd gotten his information from his daughter but she was clean. At least of that particular sin.

Gold limped to the door, his cane sinking into the untended ground. He didn't knock, not that anyone would have been able to hear him over the loud music coming from a record player in the corner and the men laughing in the back room. Gold took a second to try and determine how to shift off the racket and then just swung his cane to silence the machine.

"The fu-" the woman stumbled from the back of the home, a satin robe barely wrapped around her. "Oh, are you the man from the liquor store? Did you bring the ice?"

"I'm afraid not," Gold said, "I need to talk with you Miss French."

"So, talk." She pulled a cigarette from the robe and waited for him to light it. She didn't even attempt to hide her appraisal of him with red rimmed blue eyes.

"It's a private matter. Can you get rid of the company in the back?"

"They're invited. I think you're the one who should leave." Lacey poured herself a drink, a good amount of brandy in a highball tumbler.

"Well, I'm the one here from the government, so I think that I'll stay. At least if you want to try and help your father stay alive."

Lacey threw the glass against the ground. "My father? The man who has ruined my life? Why the hell should I care about him?"

"Maybe you shouldn't, but you do. You went to the trial every single day. You fainted when the verdict came in. Those aren't the actions of someone who doesn't care."

For a moment he thought she was going to slap him but instead she just crumpled to the ground. Glass cut her knees but she didn't seem to care or even notice. Gold was a small man but she was so slight that he could lift her easily. He couldn't get far with his bad leg, but he did get her to the couch. Gently he started to pull the glass from her knees, clucking his tongue.

"You're lucky that you don't need any stitches. As it is you'll probably end up with some scars."

"I already have them, now everyone will just be able to see them."

Gold chuckled. "That was surprisingly deep, Miss French. I'd read that you'd studied philosophy but I didn't realize that it stuck."

"You know so much about me, and I don't even know your name."

"Gold. Just call me Gold."

One of the guys out of the back stumbled out, looking for Lacey, but seeing her bloodied on the couch turned him pale. The destroyed record player and glass on the ground didn't help matters. He left, along with his friends, all without saying a word to the pair on the couch.

"What gentlemen," Gold snarled as he watched the boys leave.

"I don't really like gentlemen and they certainly don't like me." The girl was barely 25 but sounded as world weary as Gold did even though he had the Great War and decades of life on her. There was a momentary twinge of guilt for what he was about to do but only the moment. There were bigger things at play than Belle French.

"And Rum Sebastian, was he a gentleman?"

"Is that what this is about, my ex-fiance?"

"No, this is about a Nazi sympathizer and spy who is at the center of the creation of some new weapon. Just happens that same man is your fiance and still in love with you." He was also a dark figure, a dangerous man who was known in the espionage world as The Dark One, a wheeler dealer who always ended up on the best side of any interaction. None of the agents who they had tried to get to infiltrate his group had lived to bring back any information. But he had a soft spot for the broken girl in Gold's arms, and maybe that could be his weakness.