"Yes, well, we all thought we heard a wretched shriek." Muttered Simon, glancing briefly at the woman who'd commented on this fact. He wasn't sure he was at all comfortable about the way this collective encounter was going. "I heard some kind of animal in the cellar, broke through one of the windows to get in." He added dispassionately, "I was curious."
This said, Simon clapped his hands together and forced a tight grin, "So, should I presume from our various exclamations of surprise and recognition, that in all of the city of London the collection of people who happen to have tempted here, are in some way tangentially familiar to one another?" He paused then, reconsidering his phrasing in relation to the collective intellect of the room, "I mean, everybody here knows someone else who's here?"