Syme and Gregory meet in Saffron Park and debate whether true poetry belongs to order or to chaos.

Gregory leads Syme into a hidden underground chamber with walls lined with bombs beneath a run-down London bar.

Syme reveals to Gregory that he is a Scotland Yard detective, and each man swears to keep the other's secret.

Syme delivers a passionate anti-anarchist speech at the council election and is voted in as the new Thursday.

A hidden police chief recruits Syme in a pitch-dark room and hands him a blue card marked 'The Last Crusade.'

Syme sees Sunday's face on the hotel balcony for the first time and is overwhelmed with inexplicable dread.

The anarchist council votes to send the Marquis to Paris to assassinate both the Czar and the French President.

Sunday forces Gogol to place his blue undercover card on the table and releases him under threat of death if he talks.

Professor de Worms reveals to Syme in a dockside pub that he is an undercover detective named Wilks.

Dr. Bull removes his dark spectacles and throws his blue card on the table, confirming he is also a detective.

The Marquis tears off his disguise after the duel and identifies himself as Inspector Ratcliffe of Scotland Yard.

The Secretary removes his mask at the jetty and announces he is arresting the group in the name of the law.

Sunday leaps over the restaurant balcony after declaring he is the man from the dark room who made them all detectives.

Sunday escapes the pursuing detectives by boarding a fire truck, then riding an elephant, then ascending in a hot air balloon.

Sunday declares he is the Sabbath and the peace of God, and Gregory appears dressed in black as the true anarchist.

Gabriel Syme, a poet and philosopher, meets self-proclaimed anarchist Lucian Gregory in Saffron Park and is drawn into the world of a secret Central Anarchist Council. After infiltrating the council and being elected as its newest member, Thursday, Syme discovers that nearly every other member is also an undercover Scotland Yard detective. The detectives pursue the council's assassination plot across London and Calais, unmasking one another along the way in a chain of astonishing revelations. When the last council member is exposed at a dramatic standoff on a French jetty, all six detectives unite to confront their mysterious leader, Sunday. Sunday reveals himself as the very man who recruited them all before leading them on a wild chase through London and eventually to a surreal garden estate. There, Sunday identifies himself as the Sabbath and the peace of God, and Lucian Gregory appears as the embodiment of true anarchy, bringing the metaphysical journey to its startling conclusion.

The headline events of Syme's undercover mission against the anarchist council.

Rosamond asks Syme if he genuinely believes her brother would use bombs to harm people.

Gregory explains that anarchists avoid suspicion by openly presenting themselves as anarchists, hiding in plain sight.

Gregory gives a deliberately vague nomination speech for Thursday that fails to impress the anarchist council.

A policeman on the Thames Embankment tells Syme about a secret police corps that recruits philosopher-detectives.

Syme meets the scarred, crookedly smiling Secretary at the embankment steps and is immediately unsettled by him.

Walking through Leicester Square with the Secretary, Syme feels as though he has entered a strange foreign world.

Sunday leads the council into a private room and strikes the table, declaring there is a spy among them.

Syme sinks into his chair with relief when Sunday names Gogol rather than Syme as the spy in the council.

De Worms boards the same moving bus as Syme, leaving Syme incredulous that he cannot shake the pursuit.

De Worms explains he impersonated the real Professor de Worms so convincingly that the actual professor was ejected from his own party.

Syme, de Worms, and Dr. Bull cross from Dover to Calais by boat to intercept the Marquis before he reaches Paris.

Ducroix is revealed as a traitor conspiring with the Secretary, and Syme charges at him with a broken sword.

Dr. Bull spots Gogol waiting alone outside the hotel near Leicester Square and brings him in to rejoin the group.

Sunday throws papers with random words and nonsensical messages from his carriage to taunt the pursuing detectives.

A perfectly dressed valet meets the six exhausted men in a field and announces carriages are waiting to bring them to his master.

Before the main action begins, Rosamond Gregory expresses quiet concern about her brother, and Gregory demonstrates anarchist philosophy to Syme through dinner in a disguised bar. At the council election, Gregory undermines his own candidacy through a cautious speech, allowing Syme to seize the Thursday seat. As Syme navigates his double life, key secondary moments reveal the texture of his dangerous situation: his unsettling first impression of the Secretary, his relief when Gogol is named the spy instead of him, and the exhausting chase through London when de Worms refuses to stop following him. The mission escalates as the three detectives travel to Calais by boat, and the jetty standoff ends in a shocking betrayal by Ducroix before the Secretary's true identity is revealed. After the confrontation with Sunday, the pursuit through London adds wild color to the chase, and the story winds down as a valet in a field invites the six weary men to their mysterious host's estate.

The supporting scenes and secondary moments that fill out Syme's journey.

Gregory demands Syme swear an oath of secrecy before leading him to the anarchist underground meeting place.

A young Syme is caught in an anarchist dynamite blast, crystallizing his lifelong determination to fight against anarchists.

Syme stuns the council by nominating himself as Thursday, knowing Gregory cannot expose him without breaking his oath.

Syme arrives at the dark Thames embankment steps at night feeling as though he is mounting them to attack heathen kings.

Syme sees Sunday's enormous back from across the hotel balcony and feels a wave of inexplicable, childlike terror.

Sunday suddenly strikes the council table and announces that a spy is hiding among the members, triggering a scuffle.

Syme shouts 'Catch me if you can' at de Worms near St. Paul's Cathedral and sprints toward the London docks.

Syme asks Dr. Bull to remove his spectacles on instinct, trusting his intuition that the quiet doctor is a fellow policeman.

Syme provokes the Marquis into agreeing to a duel by pretending the Marquis has insulted a member of his family.

Dr. Bull uses field glasses to reveal that the ordinary-looking train passengers are wearing black masks across their faces.

Ratcliffe argues that the true anarchist threat comes not from the poor but from the wealthy aristocratic classes.

The gendarmes who arrive at the jetty line up alongside the mob instead of coming to the detectives' aid.

Each detective shares a completely different personal impression of Sunday as the group follows the balloon on foot.

The valet gives Syme a Bible opened to Genesis and explains that each man's costume represents a day of Creation.

Syme asks Sunday if he has ever suffered, Sunday expands to fill the sky, and Syme wakes to find Rosamond cutting lilacs.

The story turns on a series of oaths, intuitions, and unmasking moments that constantly shift what Syme believes to be true. Gregory's demand for an oath of secrecy at the outset creates the central irony of the novel, binding Syme and Gregory in mutual silence and allowing Syme's bold self-nomination to succeed. A pivotal childhood trauma rooted in an anarchist bomb blast drives Syme toward his mission, while each new revelation — de Worms's true identity as a young actor, Dr. Bull's hidden good humor, the Marquis's field-glasses revelation of the masked tourists — strips away another layer of deception. The turning points accelerate in France as Ratcliffe reframes the entire social threat of anarchy as a disease of the wealthy, not the poor, and former allies turn against the detectives before the Secretary's stunning reveal resolves the French standoff. In the final movement, the costumes at Sunday's estate paradoxically reveal rather than conceal the men's true identities, and Syme's direct question to Sunday about suffering collapses into a divine vision, after which he wakes to see Rosamond cutting lilacs — a peaceful image that implies an impossible, transcendent good news.

The key decisions, discoveries, and revelations that turn the course of the story.