it likely his wits were disordered, sir. He had been drinking. I cannot say whether he intended to offer violence or whether his design was simply to attract the boys’ attention and demand money. Young Allan tried to drag Charles away.”
“A brave lad. The man was carrying a stick, I understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he offered you violence?”
“Yes, sir, but it didn’t signify – I had a stick myself and I fancy that even without it I would not have been in difficulties.”
“My son told his mama the man was somewhat larger than you.”
“True, sir, but on the other hand I am somewhat younger.”
Henry Frant turned aside to sharpen a pencil. “Would you indulge my curiosity a little further and describe him?”
“He was well above the middle height and had an ill-trimmed beard. He wore blue spectacles, and a blue coat with metal buttons and I think brown breeches. Oh, and a cocked hat and a wig.” I hesitated. “There’s one more thing, sir. I cannot be absolutely certain, but I believe I may have seen him before.”
“The devil you have. Where?”
“In Southampton-row. It was on the day I came to collect your son when he first went to school. I took Edgar Allan to his parents’ house on the way. The man was loitering, and asked me when I was leaving if that was Mr Allan’s, and then he hurried away.”
Frant tapped his teeth with the pencil. “If he were interested in Allan’s boy, then why should he attach himself to mine? It makes no sense.”
“No, sir. But the two boys are not unlike. And I noticed the man stooped to look at me.”
“So you formed the impression he might be short-sighted? Perhaps. I will be candid, Mr Shield. A man in my situation makes enemies. I am a banker, you understand, and bankers cannot please everybody all the time. There is also the point that a certain type of depraved mind might consider stealing the child of a wealthy man in order to extort money. This attack may be no more than a chance encounter, the casual work of a drunkard. Or it may be that the man was more interested in Mr Allan’s boy. But there remains the third possibility: that he nursed a design of some sort against my son, or even in the long run against myself.”
“To judge by what little I have seen of him, sir, I would doubt that he could put any design successfully into action, apart, perhaps, from that of raising a glass or a bottle up to his lips.”
Frant gave a bark of laughter. “I like a man who speaks plain, Mr Shield. May I ask you not to mention what we have discussed to my wife? Speculation of this nature must inevitably distress her.”
I bowed. “You may depend on me, sir.”
“I take this kindly, Mr Shield.” Frant glanced at the clock on the mantel-shelf. “One more thing, for my own private satisfaction I should like to meet this fellow and ask him a few questions. Should you come across him again, would you be good enough to let me know? Now, I must not keep you any longer from your half holiday.”
He shook hands cordially with me. A moment later I was walking down to Holborn. My mind was in a whirl. There is something intensely gratifying about being treated civilly by people of wealth and indeed fashion. I felt myself a fine fellow.
Perhaps, I thought as I strolled through the autumn sunshine, my luck was changing. With Mr and Mrs Frant as my patrons, where might I not end?
The afternoon unexpectedly changed its course as I was walking down Long Acre on my way to Gaunt-court and Mrs Jem’s six shillings, the balance of the price we had agreed for my aunt Reynolds’s possessions. I stopped to buy a buttonhole and, while the woman was fixing it to my lapel, I glanced over her shoulder along the way I had come. I saw some twenty-five yards away, quite distinctly, the man with the bird’s-nest beard.
As if aware I had recognised him, he ducked into the shadow of a shop doorway. I gave the girl a penny and hurried back along the street. He plunged out of the doorway and blundered into one of the side roads leading down to Covent Garden.
Without conscious thought, I set off in pursuit. I acted upon impulse – partly, no doubt, because Mr Frant wanted to know more about the man, and I welcomed an opportunity to oblige Mr Frant. But there was both more and less to it than that: I was like a cat chasing a rope’s end: I chased the man not because I wanted to catch him but because he moved.
The market was drawing to its close for the day. We pushed our way into a swirling sea of humanity and vegetables. There was a tremendous din – of iron-shod wheels and hooves on cobbles, of half a dozen barrel organs, each playing a different tune, of people swearing and shouting and crying their wares. Despite his age and weight and condition, my quarry was remarkably agile. We zigzagged through the market, where he tried to conceal himself behind a stall selling oranges. I found him out, but he saw me, and off he went again. He leapt like a hunter over a wheelbarrow full of cocoa nuts, veered past the church and swerved into the mouth of Henrietta-street.
It so happened that there was a pile of rotting cabbage leaves on the corner and this, quite literally, was his downfall. He slipped and went down. Though he tried at once to scramble up, his ankle gave way and he sank back, swearing. I seized him by the shoulder. He straightened his spectacles and looked up at me, his face red with exertion.
“I meant no harm, sir,” he panted in that absurdly deep voice. “As God is my witness, I meant no harm.”
“Then why did you run away?”
“I was afraid, sir. I thought you might set the constables on me.”
“Then why did you follow me in the first place?”
“Because –” He broke off. “It does not matter.” His voice took on a richer note and the words that followed fell into a rhythm, like words often repeated: “I give you my word, sir, as one gentleman to another, that I am as innocent as the day is long. It is true that I have fallen upon evil times but the fault has not been mine. I have been unlucky in the choice of my companions, perhaps, and cursed by a generous spirit, by a fatal tendency to trust my fellow men. Yet –”
“Enough, sir,” I interrupted. “Why have you been following me?”
“A father’s feelings,” he said, beating himself on the breast with both fists, “may not be denied. The heart which beats within this breast is that of a gentleman of an old and distinguished Irish family.”
By now he was kneeling in the gutter and a knot of spectators was gathering around us to enjoy the spectacle.
“Bloody clunch,” an urchin cried. “He’s dicked in the nob.”
“Which, you may ask, has been the worst of my many losses?” my companion continued. “Was it the loss of my patrimony? My enforced departure from my native heath? Was it the bitter knowledge that my reputation has been unjustly besmirched by men not fit to brush my coat? Was it disappointment in my profession and the loss, through the intemperate jealousy of others, of my hopes of regaining my fortune by my own exertions? Was it the death of the beloved wife of my bosom? No, sir, bad though all these things were, none of them was the worst blow to befall me.” He raised his face to the sky. “As heaven is my witness, no sorrow compares with the loss of my little cherubs, my beloved children. Two fine sons had I, and a daughter, destined to be the delights of my maturity and the supports of my old age. Alas, they have been snatched away from me.” He paused to wipe his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.
“If that was a play,” observed another of our audience, “I wouldn’t pay a penny to see it. I wouldn’t pay a bloody ha’penny. A bloody farthing.”
“You repugnant rapscallion!” the man roared, shaking his fist at the boy. Once more he lifted his face