There was a brougham, a closed carriage, waiting outside the house. At the reins was a man bundled up in heavy clothing and with his hat obscuring his face. Fairfax leapt into the carriage and there was a third man inside who helped him through the door. I caught only a brief glimpse of him before the driver whipped up the horse and they sped away, but I have a strange feeling that I’ve seen that third man before, a long time ago, but I can’t think where. He was small and, for a moment, he looked at me with notably glittering eyes. I had the impression that he was a hunchback.”
“So,” Dacers mused, “we have your big man with a blond moustache and a powder burn who takes a drink of whisky; one who might be a hunchback, and a driver who, like most coachman in these winter days, looks like nothing but a bundle of clothing. If I locate these fellows, what I can do? You do not want the police involved, but I have no powers of arrest. I certainly want to help you but, at best, I could only warn them off with the threat of police action; after all, this so-called Fairfax did commit trespass and demonstrated threatening behaviour. But a warning might not be enough. A fellow who makes free with a Derringer pistol sounds like a desperate customer, and he might prove tenacious and show up again. There are a few haunts in London where I might find a lead on this crew. I’ll do what I can.”
Roberta Van Trask gave him a hesitant smile. “If that is the best you can do, and it offers some hope of success, then please do it. I’ll be grateful for anything that might take this terrible burden off my father’s shoulders,” she said.
“Very well, Miss Van Trask. Tell me, you arrived here unescorted. How did you travel?”
“By cab. Normally, I would have my maid, Esther, accompany me, but I wanted to see you strictly in private. Although Esther is completely trustworthy, I did not want my father or anyone from the embassy to know I came to consult you.”
“Then let me escort you as far as the cab stand at the corner of the square, and see you safely on your way. Not that I think you are a young lady who is easily frightened, but our ugly friends could have been watching your home and might have followed you.”
The American girl squared her shoulders and set her jaw decisively. “I assure you I am not easily frightened,” she declared firmly. “I’ll stand my ground against any threat to my father, but I’m obliged to you for your courtesy.”
An admiring smile crossed Dacers’ usually grave face, and she noticed how boyish it suddenly made him appear.
It was now fully dark outside and, after he had seen her safely off in a cab, Dacers paced homeward through the evening gloom thinking of the narrative he had heard. There was something deep and potentially dangerous in the happenings at the home of the American diplomat, and, only for the fact that police involvement might spark off the public scandal Roberta Van Trask feared, he would have liked to acquaint Twells with the matter.
“It’s the sort of case old Amos would grab with both hands,” he muttered to himself. “I’m not at all sure where to begin or where it will take me, but a lady in distress must be helped, so some sort of start must be made.”
CHAPTER TWO
DARK PLACES, DARK DEEDS
Dacers walked out early the following morning, after a night in which confused scraps of dreams containing pictures of Roberta Van Trask, various threatening men, and scenes from the war in America chased themselves through his slumbers. He breakfasted, then decided on a stroll to clear his head and think about the matter the American girl had placed before him the evening before.
The fog had cleared and, as usual, the streets were alive early. Vehicles of all kinds, from brewery wagons to the light donkey carts of costermongers, and from rumbling, crowded omnibuses to more elegant carriages, crowded the roads. On the footways, throngs of clerks, charwomen, milliners, and brisk, impatient men of business, as usual, elbowed and shoved each other, hastening to get to work on time and showing the lack of neighbourly consideration, characteristic of London at rush hour. The sooty form of the sweep, trailed by the even sootier apparition of his boy, laden with brushes, moved among them; milkmen decanted the day’s supply of milk in the areas of Bloomsbury’s substantial houses, then bellowed the traditional: “Milk below!” for the benefit of the cook and kitchen maids. On a street corner, a policeman was trying to mediate between an irate pedestrian who claimed he had almost been run over and a carter who protested his innocence, with the shouts of all three mounting while a ragged old man, hoping to cadge a penny, wailed an almost unrecognisable hymn which set a stray dog howling in a similar morose tone.
As Dacers turned into Russell Square, which was no more tranquil than anywhere else at that hour, old Setty Wilkins came to mind. Enigmatic old Setty was often worth consulting. There was no telling what might emerge from the aged man’s brimming vault of London knowledge, so Dacers turned his footsteps towards the Seven Dials.
In that tangled and insalubrious region of London, he came to a short street hemmed in by rickety property, some of it half-timbered and dating from centuries before. Over the door of a tumbledown structure, a roughly lettered board announced: “Seth Wilkins, Practical Engraver.” Dacers approached the door over a surface of broken cobbles and stagnant puddles.
Inside his shadow haunted workshop, Setty Wilkins lifted a small copper plate from an acid bath with metal tongs, shook off surplus acid, then pushed the end of his nose close to the plate, screwed up his eyes, and inspected the etching he had just completed. Setty was well-trained in his trade: in lines bitten into the metal was the neat depiction of a woman suspended from the hangman’s gallows. The old man gave a grunt of satisfaction.
“That’ll be capital on a confession fakement come the next time some fair beauty dances the Paddington frisk on the gallows in front of Newgate,” he rumbled to himself. He meant the plate would produce an illustration for a totally spurious “last true confession” of the gallows’ victim, hawked through the bawling, brawling crowd that flocked to public hangings and made gala occasions of them. The “confession” would be what the criminal fraternity called a “fakement,” a piece of sheer fiction, produced for a pittance by some gin-ruined unfortunate employed by a printer of penny broadsheets.
Ancient Setty Wilkins turned his hand to many shifts to get his living. These days, he was a good deal more legitimate than in years gone by, but it was said that he once risked the Newgate gallows himself by forging banknotes.
The door of the workshop darkened, and Setty looked up to see the tall, lean form of Septimus Dacers entering.
“Vy, Mr. Dacers, as ever was!” he greeted heartily. “I ’eard Dandy Jem nearly croaked you with the blade of his snickersnee, an’ now they’re makin’ an Australian farmer of ’im. Not before time. I allus said he didn’t have brains enough to keep clear of either the hangman or Botany Bay for long.” Small, wizened, and gnome-like, Setty was of indeterminate age, and his jargon, tellingly, was largely the criminal “cant” of the previous reign of King William IV, which, around 1830, was replaced by a new underworld language to baffle the “New Police,” which had just created by Sir Robert Peel. He had the reversed v’s and w’s of previous generations of Cockneys.
The character of London was stamped all over him, and he possessed an almost uncanny knowledge of the city’s obscurest corners and of its myriad inhabitants. He cocked his head to one side and surveyed Dacers critically, then declared: “You ain’t lookin’ so bad arter a mill with Dandy Jem, an’ I ’opes you’re as good as I sees you.”
“I’m quite well, Setty, and improving every day, thank you,” said Dacers.
“Come, now, Mr. Dacers,” responded Setty with a change of tone, “you vants somethin’, othervise you vouldn’t be honourin’ me vith a wisit, vould you, old culley?”
“You’re shrewd as ever, Setty,” grinned Dacers. “I’m looking for a hint or two.”
“Not on behalf of the crushers, I ’opes,” said Setty, narrowing his eyes. Though he professed to be in a reformed condition, he still regarded the peelers as more a public menace than a benefit.
“No, you may be sure the police are