A Conspiracy of Paper (20 page)

“Even if such a preposterous thing were to happen, what would be the harm? After all, silver only has value because everyone agrees it has value. It is not like food, which has a use unto itself. If we all agree that banknotes have value, how are they less valuable than silver?”

“But silver is silver. Coins are clipped because you can take your silver to Spain or India or China and exchange it for something that you desire. You cannot do that with a banknote, because there is nothing to support the promise outside of its point of origin. Don’t you see, Weaver, these financial institutions are committed to divesting our money of value and replacing it with promises of value. For when they control the promise of value, they control all wealth itself.”

“Is this the plot you are talking of? Do you mean to say that you believe that one of the companies is scheming to control all of the wealth in the Kingdom?”

Elias leaned forward. “Not one of the companies,” he said in a low voice. “All of them. Separately, together—it makes no difference. They have seen the power of paper, and they wish to exploit it.”

“And you believe that my father and old Balfour somehow thwarted such a scheme?”

“More likely some small part of a greater scheme. A system of credit is like a great spiderweb—you cannot see it until you are trapped within it, and you cannot see the spider until she dangles above you, poised to devour. I do not know who the spider is, Weaver. But I assure you, it is the spider that killed your father. It is money that killed your father. Money inspires action, and money creates power. Somewhere in this Kingdom are the men who create money, and they, for reasons we do not yet understand—perhaps even for reasons
they
do not understand—have killed your father.”

“I say, Elias, I cannot think why, if you view the funds as so very wicked to the core, you invest in them yourself.”

“That’s the very devil of it,” he breathed. “One
must
invest in the funds these days. Look about you in this coffeehouse. Do you think these men are here out of a love of stock-jobbery? There is no other thing to do with one’s money. Money breeds money, and we are all caught within the spiderweb, even those of us who see it for what it is. We cannot help it.”

“None of which tells us in what plot my father and old Balfour found themselves entangled.”

“We can’t weave facts out of the air, Weaver. I only wish you to see that these companies have much to gain, and they may have good reason to harm someone who stands in their way.”

“As you are so well versed in these matters,” I said, mustering the courage to bring up a topic I wished heartily to avoid, “can you perhaps tell me what you know of a gentleman called Perceval Bloathwait? He is a man deep within the funds, and therefore, no doubt, one of the nation’s great enemies.”

To my astonishment, Elias suddenly lit up. “Bloathwait, the Bank of England director? A devilish good man for one of your English Dissenters. Knows how to show his gratitude at any rate. I had the good fortune to be close at hand during a production of Addison’s
Cato
when Bloathwait was overcome with an attack of stomach gout. He nearly fell into the pit. Fortunately, I was there to bleed him on the spot—neatly turning a near-fatal accident into a lucky bit of business indeed. He rewarded me with no less than twenty guineas.”

“Your suspicions of moneyed men,” I observed, “are considerably tempered when they do you a good turn.”

“I should say so!” Elias responded with exuberance. “Many’s the man of greater birth who would think himself above paying the surgeon whom providence has placed in his way. Bloathwait is a good man, I say. If,” he added after a brief pause, “vested with too much power and probably corrupt and villainous.”

“It is clear that I shall have to pay a visit to this devilish good, corrupt, and villainous fainter,” I muttered, “for he has long been an enemy of my father.”

“You will forgive me if I don’t accompany you. I do not wish to have so powerful a man speak ill of me in the best circles.”

“I understand,” I said. “Perhaps you can use the time to polish
The Unsuspecting Lover
.”

“A splendid idea. Would you care to hear a few particularly effective scenes?”

I finished my coffee and rose. “I would like nothing better, but I must make this business my first priority.” I paid our reckoning, and left Elias at the table, scribbling busily upon his play.

FOURTEEN

I
FOUND
E
LIAS
’
S ARGUMENTS
based upon probability both fascinating and seductive, and I longed to find some way to put them to use. Until I could do so, however, I thought it time I applied some of the more basic powers upon which I had long depended.

I knew that Herbert Fenn, the scoundrel who had run down my father—and who, in my mind, had attempted to run me down as well—drove a cart for the Anchor Brewery, so it was to the brewery I went in search of this villain. As the hackney coach approached, I felt that I passed not only through neighborhoods, but through the dozens of different worlds that combined to make the great metropolis: the worlds of the rich and the privileged and the poor and the criminal, artisan and beggar, beau and belle, foreigner and Briton, and, oh yes, the world of the speculator, too.

I had, for the past two days, inhabited the world of speculation—I had tried to imagine who had killed my father and old Balfour, and I had tried to imagine what the motivation for these murders might be. According to Elias, it was conspiracy and plot and intrigue. His ideas were fantastical to me, and yet now I was on my way to confront the man who had trampled my father in the street. I cannot say that I looked forward to this confrontation, and my experience at Jonathan’s made me feel twitchy and violent, as though I could not depend upon myself to keep a mastery of my passions.

I cannot quite say what I felt when the foreman in charge of the delivery wagons assured me that Berty Fenn had not worked at their brewery for many weeks. “ ’E run over an old Jew,” the foreman said. “Not on purpose, ’e told me, and no reason to think otherwise, but you can’t keep a man around who’d run over folks, accident or no. Jew or no,” he added as an afterthought. “Trampling folks to death is no good, and I send such men away, I do, without the by-your-leave they might think themselves entitled to.”

“Do you know where Fenn went?”

He shook his head. “Couldn’t say. Someplace where running over old Jews isn’t so frowned upon, I reckon. You a bailiff? I don’t think so—you don’t smell bad enough. Besides, no one would let ’im get so far into debt as to need a bailiff to find ’im out. What’s Fenn to you, anyhow?”

“The old Jew he ran over was my father.”

“That would make you—”

“A young Jew, yes. At least a younger one.” I handed him my card. “Should you hear of his whereabouts, please let me know. I assure you I shall pay fairly for any information.”

I started to turn away when the foreman called after me. “Wait a moment, Sir ’Ebrew. You didn’t say nothin’ before about payin’. You understand that we have to look after our own, but if you’ve some silver upon you, I might be persuaded to look after meself.”

I handed him a sixpence. “That’s to loosen you up. Tell me something useful and I’ll make it worth your while.”

“A sixpence? You’re as tight-fisted as they say. I reckon I should be more civil, eh, Sir ’Ebrew. Otherwise you might put the knife to me an’ circ’cize a beggar.”

“Might you please simply tell me what you know?”

“Right. Well, Fenn, ’e didn’t take so kindly to being given the boot, and ’e bragged on ’ow it didn’t matter to ’im none, now as ’e got ’imself a position, ’e did. With a Mr. Martin Rochester, ’e said. ‘I’ll do a turn with Mr. Martin Rochester,’ ’e said. ‘Mr. Martin Rochester don’t treat a man so,’ ’e said. Like Mr. Martin Rochester was first arse-wiper to ’is ’Anoverian Majesty ’imself.”

“Who is Martin Rochester?” I asked.

“That’s the point, don’cha see? No one ever ’eard of the bugger, but Fenn thinks ’e’s the Second Coming.” He flashed me a grin. “Or the First, depending upon your perspective, I reckon.”

“Did he say anything else? Give you any other information about this Rochester?”

“Aye, ’e said ’e was a bigger cove than Jonathan Wild. This buck no one’s ever ’eard of a bigger man than the big prig-nabber ’imself. Course, I figured ’e was talkin’ to ’ear ’imself since I’d givin ’im the shove and all. But I reckon this Rochester spark is some new man or t’other who took Fenn in for a driver or some such.”

“How long after the accident did all this happen?”

“A few days. Soon as the matter cleared the magistrate, I sent him on ’is way, I did.”

“So it seems reasonable to suppose that Fenn knew this Rochester prior to the accident.”

“I suppose it does, not that I ever gave it much thought.”

“Did Fenn have any family, friends, anyone who might know where to find him?”

He shrugged. “I just worked ’im, I didn’t like ’im. Can’t say none of us much did, and I can’t say as I felt too bad ’bout ’aving a reason to send ’im on his way. ’E was foul-tempered, ’e was. Didn’t take to followin’ orders much, had a pair o’ gums on ’im that ’e’d flap at you for no cause but the pleasure of flappin’. None of the boys ’ere took their pints with ’im. When ’e was done with what ’e ’ad to do, ’e made ’is way to wherever it was ’e went to.”

I gave the man a half crown with a reminder to contact me if he had any more information. Based on the look upon his face, he had now changed his mind somewhat about the generosity of the Hebrew.

I stopped into a public house and called for a lunch of cold meat and ale—a meal that was interrupted when an urgent-looking fellow rushed in demanding to know if there were a man inside called Arnold Jayens. He further announced that he had been sent because Jayens’s boy had been injured at his school, that he had broken his arm and that the surgeon feared for his life. A man in the back jumped up and ran for the door most furiously, but before he had even taken a second step outside, two bailiffs grabbed him and explained that they were sorry for the deceit, but that his son was well, and they merely wished to escort Mr. Jayens to debtor’s prison. It was a sad trick—one I had used myself in the past, though always with great regret. As I looked through the window and saw this unfortunate taken away, I could not but think of the money Miriam had borrowed of me, and I fairly puffed myself up with pride to think I had saved her from such a fate.

I shook myself from thoughts of my cousin-in-law in order to reflect upon the information I had acquired. Fenn had moved rapidly from his employment at the brewery to work for the great Martin Rochester, a bigger man than Jonathan Wild. I could only hope it was all a lie, for I needed no more great enemies.

I
SPENT MUCH OF
the rest of the day and night pondering my next move, and the following morning I determined to seek out old Balfour’s clerk, this d’Arblay of whom Balfour had spoken. I recalled that Balfour had told me that d’Arblay made his home at Jonathan’s, so learning from my experiences the previous day, I sent Mrs. Garrison’s boy to the coffeehouse with a note addressed to d’Arblay, identifying myself only as a man who wished to see him upon business. The boy returned within an hour with a message from d’Arblay, indicating that I should find him at Jonathan’s until late this afternoon and that he awaited my commands.

I therefore procured a hackney and once again made my way toward ’Change Alley and the buzzing hive of Jonathan’s. Such places generate their own pleasures, I think, for the moment I stepped through the door, and took in the sounds and sights and pungent smells of that house of commerce, I wanted nothing so much as to drink a strong dish of coffee and to feel the taut excitement of doing business with a hundred men who have all taken too much of the same drink.

I asked a boy to point out to me Mr. d’Arblay, and he gestured toward a table at which two men sat, hunched over a single document. “He’s the bullish one,” the boy mumbled, using the language of the Exchange. Bullishness signified that a man had an interest in selling, while bearishness meant that he pursued buying. And looking at these men, it was not difficult to determine which animal was which. With back angled toward me, but such that I could see half of his face, sat a man who had lived perhaps fifty years, each of which had left its mark upon a gaunt visage tightly wrapped with blotchy pale skin. A bit of snuff was encrusted about a nose that had been well eaten by the ravages of the French pox. His attire, fashionable in its cut, informed me of a desire to appear the gentleman, but the flimsy fabric of his red-and-black suit of clothes, also sprinkled liberally with snuff, and even the weave of his wig, were of poor quality.

The bear he spoke to was perhaps twenty years his junior. He possessed one of those wide-open, happy faces, and hung upon each of d’Arblay’s words with the intense, almost drooling attention of a man born to idiocy.

I moved in as closely as I might and attempted to make myself discreet as I listened to the conversation.

“I think you will agree,” d’Arblay was saying in a voice I found unusually high and shrill for a fully grown man, “that this is the soundest method of protecting your investment.”

“But I do not see that the investment needs protecting,” his interlocutor responded, sounding more confused than resistant. “Is not chance the very purpose of the lottery? I must risk losing if I am to have a chance of winning.”

D’Arblay flattened out his lips into a condescending smile. “You are not tempting fate by protecting your investment. Your tickets cost you three pounds each, and if you draw blanks, the amount will be repaid over a period of thirty-two years. This is a very small investment indeed. I simply offer you the chance to insure your lottery tickets for an additional 2 percent for ten years.”

“But it is a chance?” the man inquired. “It is not guaranteed?”

D’arblay nodded. “Like you, we wish to keep intact the spirit of the lottery. You may insure your lottery tickets with a kind of lottery insurance—each losing ticket places you in the drawing for the additional revenue, and at only one shilling per ticket I think you will agree that it dramatically increases your chances of winning without to any great extent increasing your risk.”

His associate bobbed his head. “Well, you make a compelling case, sir, and I think of myself as a sporting man.” He slid some coins across the table. “I should like five tickets insured.”

The men made an appointment to meet again for the purpose of recording the ticket numbers, and, shaking d’Arblay’s hand, the other man made his way out of Jonathan’s.

I had, during this exchange, been standing behind d’Arblay, who now, alone at his table, looked straight ahead and said, “As you have been attending my conversation so nearly, may I presume that you have business of me?”

I stepped forward to where he could see me. “You may.” I gave him my name and reminded him that I had inquired of him earlier in the day.

D’Arblay rose just enough to offer me a bow. “In what capacity may I serve you, sir? Do you wish to buy or sell?”

“If I wished to buy,” I said slowly, wishing to know more of the man before I pressed him, “what would you have to offer me?” I sat at the table and faced him, attempting to imitate the ingenuous appearance of the man who had just left.

“Why, anything that one may sell, of course. Name what issue you seek, and I shall provide it for you within two days.”

“So you will sell me what you do not have?”

“Of course, Mr. Weaver. Have you never done business upon the ’Change? Why, you are very fortunate to have found me as you have, for I can promise you that not every man you come across will serve you as honestly as I. Nor can you easily expect to find a man as well situated as I. You need but name your interest, sir, and I can promise you that I shall procure it within an acceptable time, or I shall return your money with my good wishes. No man has yet had cause to call me a lame duck,” he boasted, using the language of the Exchange to signify a man who sold what he could not provide. “I think you will further find that, once we complete our business, my fees are competitive. May I ask how you learned my name?”

“I learned your name of William Balfour,” I explained, “and what I seek is information, not government issues.”

D’Arblay sucked upon his already hollow cheeks, took a bit of snuff, and folded his hands neatly upon the table. “I fear you must misunderstand me. I do not trade in information of any kind—there is so little to be gained and so much to be lost.”

“I seek only justice, Mr. d’Arblay, for your late employer. Young Mr. Balfour has come to me with the belief that his father’s death was not what it appears, and he suspects there may be some machinations in the Alley to explain the deceit.”

“I dismiss the very notion,” d’Arblay said. “Now, if you will excuse me, I believe I have business to attend to.”

He began to rise, but I stopped him with a single look. “I do not think you understand me, sir. Mr. Balfour has explained to me that his father’s estate was missing a prodigious quantity of money for which he cannot account. As the late Mr. Balfour’s clerk, you would have been the first man to notice such an absence. And yet, apparently, you did not. I wonder how you can account for that.”

“If you accuse, I would prefer you did so in plain language,” d’Arblay said haughtily. “I can assure you that I cannot account for missing money from Balfour’s estate—unless one accounts for gambling, excessive drinking, living beyond one’s means—and, I might add, three expensive mistresses, not one of them worth her upkeep, to my mind. I am surprised Mr. Balfour would send you upon so foolish a quest. He of all people despised his father for being a wastrel. Mr. Balfour—the elder, that is—was once industrious and successful, but as he grew older he felt that he had earned the right to waste all that he had accomplished, and as his son watched his estate disappear, he began to hate his father.”

I nodded, thinking about the discrepancy in Balfour’s version of the tale. “Yet you told young Mr. Balfour that you believed some issues to be missing from his father’s estate.”

“I did no such thing. Who told you this preposterous lie?” D’Arblay did not wait for me to answer. “Missing issues, indeed. My late employer was certainly capable of losing valuable pieces of paper, but fortunately I ordered those affairs, not he. It is only owing to my skills that I was able to keep his estate afloat as long as I did. In the end, however, he was quite ruined, and as you know he could not endure his shame. There really is very little to this history that should surprise you, although it is a cautionary tale from which many could learn.” D’Arblay folded his arms, pleased with the wisdom of this observation.