A Conspiracy of Paper (46 page)

“Are you certain that is the only reason you were at the Haymarket that night?”

“Of course I am certain. Don’t be irritating.”

“Your presence there had nothing to do with my inquiry?”

“Damn your inquiry, Weaver. I care not whether it is your inquiry into the South Sea or into Miriam’s money. Why can you not mind your own affairs?”

I then understood his agitation. “Miriam told you that she believed me to be inquiring into her finances.”

“Quite so,” he said proudly, as though he did not understand the words, “it was I who told her that your business with your uncle was to discover what had happened to her money.”

“Why did you tell her that?”

“Because I believed it to be true. The stories about you and the South Sea Company and such had not yet begun to circulate about the ’Change. I could imagine no other reason for your uncle to welcome you back.”

“Why do you follow Miriam, Sarmento? Is it not clear that she cares nothing for you? Do you really believe that you can win her?”

“It is none of your concern, I promise you, for she will never consent to a marriage with a ruffian like you. And to win her, I only need her to give me one more chance.”

“One more chance at what?”

Sarmento opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself. A heavy blush began to spread across his face like a ruddy shadow.

“One more chance at what?” I repeated.

“To get her money back.” He nearly shouted. “She’d been asking me to manage her investments, and I did well at first. But I made some foolish moves.”

“How much did you lose?”

He shook his head. “More than a hundred pounds.” He let out a long, almost comic sigh. “After that she had me relinquish all control over her funds. One foolish move, one stupid mistake, and ’Change Alley unmanned me in a single day. She entrusted her money to Deloney. I tried to warn her that he was a profligate rogue, but she would not listen.”

“She listened to me,” I told him. “I’ve exposed Deloney.”

Sarmento gasped. “Then where is her money now? Perhaps I can reclaim it.”

“Her money isn’t the same thing as her heart. You seem to forget that.”

Sarmento laughed. “You may believe what you wish.”

I waved my hand in dismissal. I had not come here to learn of Sarmento’s feelings for Miriam. “I have more important business with you—and that is your connection to Martin Rochester.”

“Rochester?” he asked. “What have I to do with him?”

“What do you know of him?” I demanded, raising my voice and taking a step forward.

Sarmento was clearly shaken. “I know nothing of him, Weaver. He’s a jobber. I’ve heard his name, and that is all. He and I have had no dealings.”

I did not misbelieve him. Sarmento was an unpleasant man, but he was a transparent one. I did not believe he could lie to me on this matter and convince me. I took a few steps back to indicate that I would not harm him.

“I came here because a man I know told me he had overheard you speaking of me in connection with Rochester,” I told him.

A strange look of pleasure spread upon Sarmento’s face, as though he had been waiting all along to tell me what he now had to say. “I believe I might have mentioned your name. There was some betting to be done—whether you would survive your inquiry. A gentleman offered to bet that you would be dead before the end of December. I put down fifty pounds that you would yet live.”

This news truly astonished me. “I am gratified by your confidence,” I told him blankly.

“Don’t be. I was merely handling the odds as I have been taught to in ’Change Alley. You see, it is a perfect bet, Weaver. Either way, I win something.”

“Tell me,” I said as I opened his door, “for I really wish to understand. I have lived among the Christians for ten years now, but I have never felt compelled to become one of them. What is it that has driven you to do so?”

“You have lived among them,” he said as he turned to leave the drawing room. “I should like to do the same.”

THIRTY-ONE

I
SPENT THE REST
of the day and most of the next attempting to determine my next move. I found that I could theorize no more. Thus, on Monday night, I changed into some worn and tattered clothes, for I had no wish that evening to look the gentleman. I had the misfortune to pass my aunt as I left the house, and she looked at me so disparagingly that I could only smile and tell her I would explain later. My destination was the Laughing Negro in Wapping, where I had not set foot since retrieving Sir Owen’s letters from Quilt Arnold.

After Adelman had attempted to convince me that I had been deceived about the South Sea Company, I felt that I could no longer know anything for certain, and I began to worry that I had been relying too much on my own abilities to make sense of information of which no sense could be made. I therefore took a detour on my way to pay a visit to Elias on the chance that he might be at home. Though it was early, especially for a man of Elias’s tastes, he was not only in, but undressed and ready for bed. The rigors of preparing his play for the stage had nearly exhausted him, but he assured me he was eager to learn more about my progress. In his nightdress and cap, he invited me into his rooms, where we shared a bottle of claret.

“I have read your comedy,” I told him, “and found it utterly delightful.”

His face fairly glowed with pride. “Thank you, Weaver. I trust your opinion considerably.”

“I have no doubt that it shall be a success,” I said.

He smiled with pleasure, refilled my glass, and asked which parts I liked in particular. We spent some time discussing
The Unsuspecting Lover
, and then Elias asked me again of my inquiry. I explained to him all that had happened of late, including my business with Miriam, the encounter at South Sea House, the death of Kate Cole, and even my confrontation with Sarmento.

Elias listened closely to each detail. “I am astonished,” he said, once I had finished my narrative. “This story exposes the deceptive villainy of the new finance. Each step you take makes you disbelieve that you had ever taken the previous one.”

“There are very few things I know for certain now. The South Sea Company may indeed be my enemy, or Bloathwait may have been manipulating me all along. Wild may be planning to murder me, or he may simply be looking to profit from my inquiry. Rochester may be his partner or his enemy. And with Kate dead, I can think of no sure way to get closer to Rochester.”

“And what do you do now?” Elias studied my face with a particular attention. From the way he stared I thought he wished to gauge something medical about me.

“I shall return to the Laughing Negro,” I said. “I shall seek out Wild’s man to see what I may learn of him.”

“Why do you seek out Wild’s man? Are we not convinced that Rochester is our villain?”

“I do not believe that Wild is a prime mover in this villainy, but he has shown more than a common interest in my business, and I should be astonished if he does not withhold from me some useful information—not because he is involved with these murders, but because it is some advantage to him that I should continue my inquiry.”

Elias rubbed his nose quizzically. “How can you be certain that Wild has had no share in the murders? Indeed, since we know his name to be a false one, must we not consider that Rochester might
be
Wild? After all, who would be better equipped to engage in so dangerous an affair as the purveyance of false South Sea stock?”

I nodded. “I had thought on that, certainly, but I do not believe what you suggest is at all probable. Wild encouraged my inquiry. He set me upon the South Sea Company. Even if we assume that he gave me erroneous or incomplete information, we cannot dismiss the simple fact that he did not try to stop me. We speak of Jonathan Wild, do not forget. It would have been no difficult thing for him to have me arrested, or even killed.”

“No,” Elias observed, “he merely had you beaten upon the street.”

Elias’s observation was one to which I had given a great deal of thought. “Why would Wild have me beaten in public and then try to charm me in private?” I asked, half to myself, half to my friend. “He told me that his men defied his orders, but his men know full well the consequence of disobliging their master.”

“I understand you,” Elias muttered. “He wished for the world to see his men assault you.”

“I think so,” I agreed. “And why? Perhaps because he fears Rochester. He wishes to keep me upon my course, but he wishes for the world to believe that he and I are at odds.”

“If he fears telling you what he knows—if your possession of that knowledge would make it clear to Rochester that you had obtained it of Wild—we must assume that Wild knows things that no one else knows.”

“And that,” I announced, “is why I seek out Wild’s man, Quilt Arnold—the man who spied upon me at Kent’s Coffeehouse when I awaited a response to our advertisement. If I can learn why Wild sent Arnold there, I may be closer to learning more of Wild’s involvement, and that may take me closer to Rochester.”

Elias smiled. “You have truly learned to think like a philosopher.”

I swirled my wine about in my cup. “Perhaps. I promise you I shall not forget to think like a pugilist when I find Arnold. I grow tired of this matter, Elias. I must resolve it soon.”

“I heartily endorse your sentiments,” he told me, rubbing his injured knee.

“I only hope I
can
resolve it. Your philosophy has allowed me to come this far, but I cannot see how it can take me farther. Perhaps if I were more of a philosopher I would have concluded this unpleasantness long ago.”

Elias looked down for a moment. He appeared to me to be nervous, agitated. “Weaver, our friendship frequently involves a great deal of raillery—too much, I think. When you fought in the ring, you were the best fighter this island had ever seen. I must have had the sixth sense of a Highland seer to have bet against you that day, for only a fool would have done so. As a pugilist, you turned a sport that was the province of mindless animals into an art. And when you set your mind to thief-taking, you turned something that had been the province of criminals and petty minds into an art as well. If philosophy no longer yields results, perhaps it is not because you have reached your limit to understanding philosophy. I think it far more probable that philosophy has done what philosophy can do, and you would be wise to trust your instincts as a fighter and a thief-taker.”

My face burned with pleasure as I listened to Elias’s sentiments. He did not often speak thus, and his doing so made me determined. “My instincts tell me to find anyone whom I believe to have information and beat that information from him.”

Elias smiled. “Trust your instincts.”

B
UOYED BY HIS COMMENTS
, I left my friend’s lodgings and traveled to the Laughing Negro. I sat at a table in the back that gave me a good view of the door, and I snuffed the candles around me to obscure my face should Arnold look in my direction before I should look in his. There was, however, no sign of him; I had to fend off the advances of several whores and gamblers, and soon I heard whispers about the foul sod who sat in the corner, not drinking enough to satisfy the barkeeper.

By eleven o’clock it was clear to me that Arnold was not to come in, so I paid my reckoning and stepped outside. I was not ten feet away from the door before I saw a shadow rushing from the darkness toward me. Perhaps I was too eager for violence, for I drew my hangar and ran it through someone’s shoulder before I realized that my assailants were but a few boys out to knock me down for my money. They had no connection with murders or Wild or the South Sea Company. This was no conspiracy, just London after nightfall. I wiped my sword blade as I laughed upon my own panic, and I somehow managed to make my way from that place without further incident.

I
N THE DAYTIME
Bawdy Moll’s is but a dank place of sleepy drunks and whispering prigs, but at night it becomes something else entirely. It was so full of sweaty and sickly bodies that I could barely press my way inside, and the air was thick with the stink of vomit and urine and tobacco. I could not call Moll’s crowd merrymakers, for no one came to a gin house to make merry; they came to forget and to recast misery into senselessness. They pretended they took some pleasure in it, however, and I could hear a hundred conversations, the shrill and nervous laughter of women, the breaking of glass, and somewhere in the back a player scraped a bow across an untuned fiddle.

I pushed through the crowd, as my boots sloshed in things I did not care to think of, and I felt countless fingers of undetectable origin explore my body, but I held secure my sword, my pistol, and my purse, and I made it to the bar without any serious damage. There I found Bawdy Moll cheerfully dispensing gin by the pint and collecting her pennies with equal delight.

“Ben,” she shouted as she saw me. “I ’ardly expected to see ye ’ere at a time like this. ’Avin’ a bad time are ye? Well, I’ve the cure for it, and it comes a penny a pint.”

I was in no mood for Moll’s banter. I was in a foul temper, and the stench of sewage from the Fleet Ditch was particularly rancid that night. “What,” I said as quietly as I could, “know you of a man called Quilt Arnold?”

Moll screwed up her face in displeasure; I watched her face paint crack like the earth in the summer sun. “Ye know better than to come ’ere on a busy night and ask me suchlike questions. I can’t have me customers thinkin’ they’ll be ’peached in me place.”

I slipped Moll a guinea. I had not the time to equivocate with smaller coins. “It is a matter of the utmost importance, Moll, or I should not bother you.”

She held the coin in her hand, feeling the weight of the gold. It had a power no paper or banknote could ever match. Her objection vanished.

“Quilt’s a no-good blackguard, but he ain’t the murderin’ type what I can tell. Stands close to Wild, ’e does, and does the great man’s bidding. Least ’e used to. ’E also run with that whore ye asked me for last week: Kate Cole, what ’ung ’erself in Newgate.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

She did. At least she knew of a few likely places, not one near the other, unfortunately. I surreptitiously slid her another guinea; I had violated the trust we had by making my inquiries before a crowd, and I was more than willing to pay the price to keep Moll happy.

I inspected two more places that night, but I caught no sign of Arnold, and growing tired and despondent I returned home to sleep. I began the search anew the next day, and was fortunate enough to catch him around noon, eating his dinner in a tavern Moll had told me to be a favorite daytime haunt of his. He sat at a table, shoving spoonfuls of watery gruel into his face, caring little of his bad aim or the effects it had upon his attire. Across from him sat a sickly whore, hideously in need of nourishment, who was so thin I feared she might expire as I looked on. She stared at Arnold’s food, but he shared none of it with her.

I carefully kept myself from Arnold’s sight as I hired a private room on the first floor. The tapman blankly accepted an extra shilling in exchange for paying no mind to what happened next. I approached Arnold from behind and kicked out his chair from under him. He fell hard, and much of his meal followed him. His companion cried out while I compounded Arnold’s surprise by stomping hard on his left hand, which was sloppily wrapped with a filthy bandage. He let out a howl—shrill and desperate. His whore clapped a hand over her mouth and stifled her own scream. I grabbed the stunned Arnold under his armpits and dragged him down the hall and threw him into the room I had hired. I closed the door and locked it, placing the key in my coat. The room was perfect: dark, small, and poorly lit through a window too small to admit thieves, and thus too small to allow Arnold’s escape.

His one good eye bugged in terror, but he said nothing. I had seen once before that he was not at heart the ruffian he pretended to be, and I knew his kind too well not to know how to get him feeling talkative. For good measure, and because I felt little other than anger, I picked him up and threw him hard against the wall. Too hard, I fear, for his head hit the brick, and his good eye rolled back into his skull as he collapsed upon the floor.

I returned to the bar, locking the door behind me, and bought two pints of small beer. The whore, I noticed, was now at another man’s table, and she paid me no attention. The barkeeper showed me nothing but terse indifference—something just shy of politeness. I made a note to myself to return to this place, for I liked its way of conducting business.

I reentered the room and threw one of the pints of beer into Arnold’s face. He stirred like a man awakened from a pleasing slumber. “Oh, Christ.” He used his hand to wipe the ale from his eye.

“I hope I shall not have to kill you,” I said. “I even hope I might avoid inflicting much more pain upon you, but you had better be very cooperative if we are to realize these hopes.”

He rubbed at his good eye until I began to fear he should pluck it out. “I knew you was trouble,” he mumbled.

“You are a keen observer,” I said. “Let’s start with a simple question. Why were you at Kent’s Coffeehouse when I came in response to my advertisement?”

“I was just having a dish o’ coffee,” he said meekly.

I would have to be creative if he did not become more forthcoming, but for the time being, a good stomp upon his injured hand proved the fastest way of assuring him I would have no nonsense. The bandage was now covered with fresh blood and a kind of brownish liquid I did not care to consider at length. “You will lose that hand I think,” I said, “and perhaps your life if you don’t have that looked at. But you may not live long enough for the rot to advance. So perhaps you will tell me what it was you were doing at Kent’s?”

“Let me go,” he said with a whimper. “This is me last chance. Wild, ’e used to trust me. Now ’e’s got that Jew Mendes doing me work. I need to make things right.” His face turned a sickly shade, and I feared he would lose consciousness.

“What were you doing there?” I repeated.