Glitch with Matt de Cesare: no assassin shows up

[cjdevito]

It's been years since the last time I played arcanum and I decided to fire it up for another play through. Unfortunately, I've run into a bug I remember encountering in previous play throughs but it's been so long I can't remember how I got around it back then.

In Tarant Thom Grak asks you to give a message to Matt de Cesare in the Wellington Club; it's the start of the half-ogre island quest chain. Unfortunately, when I give the message to de Cesare and the dialogue ends he shouts 'Look out!' but no assassin shows up. The quest doesn't advance until the assassin is killed (no further dialogue with de Cesare is possible), so this bug essentially breaks the quest chain.

Anyone else ever run into this and remember the work-around?

I'm running the official patch (1.074 if memory serves) and the bug seems to be affecting every character -except- the first character who did the quest.