A Conspiracy of Paper

FOURTEEN

I FOUND ELIAS’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.

“Can you think of anything to suggest that Mr. Balfour’s death was not what it appears?”

“Nothing,” d’Arblay replied adamantly.

“And for whom do you work now, Mr. d’Arblay?”

“I have offered my services in putting Mrs. Balfour’s affairs in order. She is a foolish woman who has long held her money in gold plate and precious jewels. I have convinced her that the funds shall serve her more justly.”

“And can you tell me what Mrs. Balfour stood to inherit from her husband—assuming he died solvent, that is?”

D’Arblay screwed his face into a skeletal attitude of disgust. “Not a thing,” he said. “Mrs. Balfour had a separate settlement upon her. She would have inherited nothing. Balfour’s mismanagement was an embarrassment to her, but nothing more.”

That was precisely what Balfour had told me, but as their stories had several discrepancies, I wanted to see how d’Arblay characterized the financial arrangement between the spouses. “I see. Where might I reach you if I have any more questions regarding this matter?”

“Allow me to be blunt with you, sir. I have no desire to have you ever visit me in my places of business or residence. I have endured this conversation only out of courtesy to the late Mr. Balfour, who was a kind gentleman, if a foolish one. I can offer you no further information, so there is little reason for you to seek me out.”

“I shall then thank you for your help.” I rose and bowed at him before heading farther into the thick confusion of Jonathan’s. As I wandered, pushing my way through the crowds, I attempted to understand the conversation. If old Balfour’s estate had been robbed, then there could have been no one in a better position to perpetrate the robbery than d’Arblay. Elias’s suspicions of plot and scheme might go no further than this one clerk, who, for all I knew, might have had the power to rob his employer freely. On the other hand, I had only young Balfour’s belief that the estate had been robbed. Surely one of them lied, but if d’Arblay was the liar, he might still not be the thief. Such a man could obscure a crime that he might protect his own reputation.

I would not understand this crime, or this purported crime, unless I better understood the Alley itself. So I thought it a fine idea to take advantage of the library available in the coffeehouse, and made my way over to the shelves, where I began to search through the mountains of material, organized in no way I could discern. The proprietors showed little worry about insulting their patrons, for many of the pamphlets decried stock-jobbers as villainous Jews and foreigners who made Englishmen effeminate with their financial legerdemains. I dismissed titles that I thought too narrow in their focus, such as A Delineation of the Complaints of the New East India Company Lodged Against the Old. I similarly rejected the works too complex in their intent, like A Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to a Friend in the City on the Recent Legislation—I can remember no more of that title, for the very word legislation makes my brain feel as though it is covered with grease.

Even as a boy I had been shockingly inept at matters of hard books. My teachers had refused to understand why I could not master what came far more easily to other boys. More often than not, words would simply blur upon the page as I looked at them, and I found myself thinking of engaging in anything other than my studies. It was not as though I took no pleasure from reading, for I often enjoyed the illicit pleasures of romances or adventure stories—I merely wished never to read what others wished to make me learn.

Perhaps that was why I now finally settled on a slim volume of some thirty or so pages that I believed to be as approachable as it was inflammatory: ’Change Alley Laid Open; Or, the Crimes of that Sinister Race of Beings, Called Stock-Jobbers, and the Truth of Their Villainous Operations. It had been put out but recently by a publisher called Nahum Bryce, whose name I knew from some novels and romances in which I have indulged. Here, I thought, was precisely what I wished for: a history of the ’Change written as an adventure.

Clutching the little booklet, I slid myself into a chair at an open table and began to make my way through. I was disappointed to discover that the book was more full of invective than information—or adventure for that matter; it railed against the mortgaging of the future with the national debt, the corruption of the Parliament through bribes, and the unmanning of the nation from the mania of stock-jobbing. I found it shocking to discover a fleeting reference to my own father in these pages, hidden with the pretense of disguise as “S——l L——n——o, that notorious jobber of the Hebrew race, who can be seen everyday upon the ’Change, draining the purses of honest Englishmen with his promises of untold wealth.”

To discover one’s own father maligned is no easy thing. I had seen my own name in print before—many times, in fact, and there has always been something disorienting to be sure, for a man’s business is a private thing, and print is a very public affair. But here these names were not printed in transient and ultimately insignificant newspapers. This was a pamphlet, a permanent thing that a man might keep in his library. These accusations the pamphleteer made—I understood they were mere hyperbole, the rhetoric of the anti-jobbers, but the fact that my father should be so important a figure in their thinking took me by surprise. I could not say that I recognized no other names, for here were references to the schemes of N——n A——l——n, who could only be Nathan Adelman; and the pamphlet had much to say on the villainy of P——l B——th——t, whom I could not but conclude to be my father’s old enemy, Perceval Bloathwait. This scoundrel, according to the pamphlet, delighted in trickery, manipulating the markets to his own profit, caring not what ruin he brought upon others and the nation. It was odd to me that men who lived far from the metropolis, men who knew ’Change Alley only from such pamphlets as these, would think of men such as my father and Adelman and Bloathwait much as they would of fictional characters in a novel or romance.

My musings on this subject were shattered when I noticed the short, round form of Nathan Adelman standing near me with a kind of wry smile. “Have you come to follow in your father’s footsteps?” he asked me, hovering over my table. He struck me as entirely different from the person he had been at my uncle’s or in his coach. Here he was in his element, and he fairly drew strength from the chaos around us. Despite his obvious smallness, Adelman appeared to me grander, more powerful, more confident; and why should he not have appeared so when all those around him behaved as though he was a monarch in his own little kingdom? Perhaps ten feet behind him, a crowd of jobbers had gathered. All desired a few minutes of his attention, and I must say I enjoyed being important enough to divert the great financier from his pressing concerns. I took no personal pride, mind you, but Adelman’s interest in me only confirmed that I was not wasting my time or chasing shadows.

I greeted him, and he casually asked me with what pamphlet I passed the time. “Ah,” he said, looking it over. “I fear the author thought little of me. Or of your father, for that matter.”

“And do you believe what the author writes? Do you believe in the corrupting power of greedy jobbers?”

“I believe the issue here is not the greed of jobbers but the greed of the booksellers,” Adelman said. He casually placed his hands behind his back and balanced on the balls of his feet.

“These are lies you say that the author has written of you and my father. What do you know of Perceval Bloathwait?”

“Bloathwait.” Adelman’s good cheer dripped away like the fat from a roasting hare. “Yes, he rather deserves the abuse he receives. He’s a tricky rascal, and he gives the rest of us a bad name.”

“I do not suppose you say that because he is a member of the Court of Directors of the Bank of England, and thus the enemy of your South Sea Company.”

“The Company is hardly mine, but I do, as you say, take an interest in it. I look to the Company because its practices are laudable; I do not defend the practices because of my association.”

“Your loyalty is commendable, but I wonder how far it extends. This pamphlet I’ve been reading makes some convincing points. I do not believe its assertion that jobbery is itself evil, but I cannot but be swayed by the argument that greed—in any form, I suppose, but in this case stock-jobbing—can shift villainy from one venue to another. It is, perhaps, only a short step from trickery in what one buys or sells to, perhaps, murder.”

Adelman stiffened considerably. “I see you have not taken my advice to heart, Mr. Weaver. Do you have any idea how much one Jew crying murder will injure us all?”

Our conversation was then interrupted by a ruddy-faced gentleman who looked to be about five-and-twenty, who rushed into the center of the coffeehouse. His wig was askew, and his chest heaved as he struggled for air. Yet he managed a deafening bellow. “I have just come from the Guildhall,” he cried to all who would listen. “No one does business within the lottery ticket office. The drawing is grossly undersubscribed. It shall all be a disaster!”

A swarm of men jumped from their seats and all shouted at once. Yet I could hear one name repeated again and again. D’Arblay.

I looked over to where he sat and observed that his table was now surrounded by a host of men who would sell their holdings: “Do you still wish to buy tickets, sir? Take these. I shall give you a very fair rate.” D’Arblay dealt with each man calmly, looking at what he had to sell and negotiating a price.

Adelman laughed softly. “I cannot believe that ruse still works. Note that the men buying from Mr. d’Arblay are all younger. They have not been long upon the ’Change.”

“Do you mean to say that the man who made the announcement is in league with d’Arblay?”

Adelman nodded. “Of course. He creates a panic, makes the gullible believe the lottery is undersubscribed. These men sell at a loss, and d’Arblay makes a handsome profit. It is but a primitive stock-jobber’s trick, yet it clearly continues to earn a profit for those who dare to do the unthinkably silly.”

I looked at the frantic scene with a kind of distant amusement.

“Are you prepared to involve yourself in such matters?” Adelman asked, distracting me from the mayhem of frantic selling. “All this stock-jobbing that you see—you do not understand it, and there is no reason you should trouble yourself with it. Why not think on my offer to do business with gentlemen I know?”

“I am thinking about it, Mr. Adelman, and I appreciate your attention, please make no mistake. In the meantime, I think you will understand that I am interested to uncover the truth about what happened to my father. Could a son do less? Especially,” I added by way of cutting off any stinging retorts, “a son who has much to make up for. And now that we have sorted out why we do the things we do, can you tell me, sir, what you know of a man called Martin Rochester?” I could not think why I asked if he knew the man who had taken into employ my father’s killer, but the idea to do so entered my head and found expression in my mouth before I had time to consider of it.

I should like to say the expression of Adelman’s face betrayed something, but it did not change at all. So frozen was his face in the blank amusement of our conversation, so much did he not twitch or narrow his eyes, that I could not but suspect that this lack of movement was a practiced impenetrability. Adelman made every effort to hide what he was thinking.

“I’ve never heard the name,” he said. “Who is he, and what is it to me?”

“You’ve never heard the name?” I asked incredulously. I had considered what Elias had explained of probability, and it occurred to me that if I was to believe that my father had been murdered, then I must act as though the events surrounding his murder were connected. Rochester had hired away the man who had run my father down, and here was Adelman, who wished me to discontinue my inquiry of that event. Was it not probable, I wondered, that Adelman should at least know of Rochester? “You, sir, perhaps the best-known and best-informed man upon the Exchange,” I pressed on, “can it be that you have never heard of him?”

“Well, I have heard of him,” Adelman said, a slight smile upon his lips. “I simply meant that he was not worth hearing of,” he continued. “My use of Court language has confused you—I quite apologize. I should have realized you are not used to this bombastic method of talking. But as for this Rochester, one hears so little of small men that the names are not long retained in one’s mind.”

“And what little have you heard of him? Who is he?”

He shrugged. “A small man upon the Exchange. No more. A jobber.”

A jobber. This Martin Rochester was a jobber, and the man who killed my father was in his employ. The man at the Anchor Brewery had likened Rochester to Jonathan Wild—not a jobber, but a master thief. Perhaps Elias was right about the corruption of ’Change Alley, for now it seemed that in the person of Martin Rochester, finance and theft found a single voice.

“I have heard,” I said, pushing as far as I might, “that he is a great man.”

“From whom have you heard this arrant nonsense?”

I spoke without pause. “From the man who killed my father.”

Adelman pursed his lips into an ugly and twisted shape. I could only presume he wished to display this disgust, for he was quite clearly a man who knew how to disguise his feelings. “I shall not linger long,” he said, “for if you keep the company of such men, I do not wish to be numbered among them. Let me only say this, Mr. Weaver: you sail your ship upon treacherous waters.”

“Perhaps I require insurance.” I grinned at him.

Adelman responded to my gibe with characteristic seriousness. “No company will insure you. You are in danger of foundering.”

I thought to make another quip, but changed my mind and considered his words. The man I spoke to was no street filth whose threats could be laughed off. He was one of the wealthiest men in the Kingdom and one of the most powerful, too. Yet he took the time to speak with me, to attempt to frighten me off my course. I could not take this matter lightly, nor could I dismiss it with clever phrases. I had not the slightest idea of what Adelman’s interest was in my inquiry nor what his involvement might be in the deaths of my father and Balfour, but I could not ignore the fact that a man of his position hovered above me in a public place, speaking of my doom.

I stood up very slowly, until I dwarfed him at my full height. We stared at one another, each like a fighter sizing up his opponent in the ring. “Do you threaten me, sir?” I asked after a moment.

He impressed me greatly, for he showed no sign of intimidation. He did not merely pretend to disregard my greater size and the anger upon my face. He truly cared nothing for it. “Mr. Weaver, the difference between us in family, fortune, and education is so great that your question, asked in so bellicose a manner, truly does you little credit. You must recognize that I condescend to speak to you as an equal, and you have now taken advantage of my generosity. No, I do not threaten you. I merely wish to advise you, for you neither see nor care to see the path upon which you embark. Exchange Alley, sir, is no game of fists within a ring, in which might prevails. It is not even a chess game, in which all pieces are laid upon the board and each player sees all and the most accomplished man sees best. It is a labyrinth, sir, in which you will see only a few feet before you; you can never know what it is that lies ahead, and you can never be sure from which direction you came. There are men who stand above the labyrinth, and while you try to learn what is beyond the next turn, there are those who see you and the path you seek with perfect clarity, and it is but a small thing to block you. Please make no more of what I say. I do not suggest that your life or your safety are in danger. Nothing so dramatic. But to learn the things you wish to know—even if none of your suspicions are true—you may have to cross men who share no direct guilt in your father’s death, yet believe that your inquiries will expose them in ways they have no wish to be exposed. These men can and will block your passage. You will never see their hands or suspect how they move the pieces. You cannot succeed.”

I did not lower my gaze. “Are you one of these men?”

“Should I tell you if I were?” He smiled. “Perhaps so. I would have nothing to lose.”

“Such men,” I said, my quiet voice hardly audible above the din of the room, “attempted my life two nights ago. If you know who they are, inform them that I shall not be deterred.”

“I know not men who would execute so foul a plot,” he said hastily. “And I am sorry to hear of the attempt. I can promise you that no man of business engages in such tricks. You must have been the victim of an enemy from one of your other ventures.”

I said nothing at this speculation that was, after all, not improbable.

Adelman now attempted to soften slightly. “I do admire you, sir; I have not lied about that. Despite your enthusiastic rudeness, I wish you well. You show the world that not all Jews are loathsome beggars or dangerous schemers. I believe that your father would want you to use your talents to enrich yourself and to strengthen your family, not to waste your time upon a fool’s errand that will make you enemies you will never know and harm you in ways you will never see.”

I bitterly thanked Mr. Adelman for his good wishes and watched him effortlessly insinuate himself into the conversation of a group of grim-looking gentlemen. I sat staring blankly for some time, thinking on what Adelman had said, and then returned to the pamphlet, though my concentration was now shattered. So I thought on the things I had now learned.

My mind wandered fitfully, and I took to scanning the room, wondering who among these men knew who I was and what I was after. Who among them could perhaps easily tell me something of use, but would not do so because a fund might fall by ten points should the truth out? What would my father have done? I wondered. Would he have spoken the truth, uncovered a terrible crime, if it had meant losing a great deal of money? What about my uncle? Indeed, what about me?

I had nothing to gain from remaining at Jonathan’s, though I thought it might be worth my while to make an appearance with some regularity until I resolved the current inquiry. Tired and somewhat frustrated, I made my way home, where I hoped to take some sleep.

When I walked through the door, however, I was astonished to hear what I took to be my uncle’s voice coming from the parlor. I approached slowly, unsure what to make of his presence in my home, but the tone of his voice was light, even cheerful. And I thought I even heard Mrs. Garrison laugh.

“I do not believe now is the time to look to East India funds,” my uncle was saying as I entered the room. My landlady and my uncle, playing cards clutched in their hands, were seated at the small table, whose velvet top was strewn with piles of small coins. “And I cannot support the South Sea Company. Government issues, madam, funded by the Bank of England, are your wisest investment.” He sipped at a dish of chocolate that had been laid out for him.

“Oh, Mr. Lienzo, you are so very learned in these matters,” she said with a puerile titter, the likes of which I had never heard burst from her mouth, “but I fear that right now you have rather lost your investment.” She set her cards upon the table. “You owe me four pence, sir,” she announced, in a tone that made it clear that her designs on my uncle were of the amorous variety.

My senses had been too heavily assaulted in the past few days, and I could in no way consider allowing this silliness to continue. “Uncle,” I announced as I walked into the room, “I am astonished to see you here.”

“Mr. Weaver, sir,” Mrs. Garrison cooed, “you never told me you had such a charming uncle.”

“That is because I knew you would attempt to beat him at cards. Now the secret is out.”

My uncle cleared his throat and stood up. He stroked his beard as he ran through a gamut of facial expressions, searching, perhaps, for the one that best fit the moment. “Benjamin, we must speak at once.” He bowed to Mrs. Garrison. “I thank you for your entertainment, madam. You have been most kind. And if you wish to look into the funds, please let me know, and I shall find an honest man who shall meet your needs admirably.”

Mrs. Garrison curtsied. “You are too kind, sir.”

“Shall we talk in my rooms, Uncle?” I suggested.

“By all means.” He collected a bundle of papers pressed into a sheepskin folder and then followed me up Mrs. Garrison’s narrow and steep stairway. When we reached the top, I saw my uncle was agitated and breathing hard. I opened the door, invited him to sit, and opened a bottle of claret that I hoped he would find refreshing.

He clutched his wine in both hands and stared straight ahead, his eyes suddenly having lost their focus. “I am no longer a young man to muster this kind of energy. But still I am clever enough to impress myself,” he said with a smile. He studied the look upon my face and saw that I did not smile in return. “You have no curiosity about what I have to tell you?”

“I am curious at any business that leads you to turn my landlady into a coquette, Uncle.”

He smiled. “She is a bit of a talker, is she not? But there is no harm in kindness to the ladies, I believe. It is what I always told Aaron, and I hope it is a lesson you may learn as well. But I have come to talk rather about the matter of Samuel’s death and to review our progress.”

“There has been little progress, I’m afraid. I grow discouraged,” I said as I took a seat across from him. “I have learned many things, developed many suspicions, but I cannot know if they have anything to do with the matter at hand, and I’m not sure I shall ever know. I wonder if this inquiry will yield anything at all.”

“You discourage too easily,” he said. “And while you get discouraged, I make progress. Benjamin,” he said, tapping the bundle of papers on the table beside him. “I now know why your father was killed.”