A Spectacle Of Corruption

CHAPTER 11

I HAD FAILED to mention to Elias my plans for the following morning because I knew he would have told me I was taking too great a risk. Perhaps I did not want to argue with him, and perhaps I did not want to risk his argument’s prevailing over mine. I therefore went back to my rooms, studied the biography he had written for the persona of Matthew Evans, made some adjustments, and contemplated my strategy.

I arrived at Mr. Dogmill’s fine house at Cleveland Street just after ten in the morning. Though anxious in the extreme, I did my utmost to conceal my concern. I merely knocked upon the door and presented my card to his unusually tall manservant. The fellow held it in his gloved hands and studied it for a moment the way a pawnbroker gazes at a piece of jewelry offered for evaluation.

“I promise you, he will want to speak with me,” I said.

“Any man may make a promise,” he said. “Mr. Dogmill is very busy.”

“I am certain he has time to speak with a brother of the tobacco trade,” I proposed.

The mention of my fabulous business appeared to turn the tide. Donning the slouch of a man surrendering to the inevitable, the servant showed me to a pleasant little room where I was invited to sit in a high-backed soft chair, clearly of French construction. The fellow knew not how long Mr. Dogmill should be nor how much time he might be able to spare for me. I nodded and folded my hands agreeably and gazed down at the intricate Turkey rug on the floor to lose myself for a moment in the swirl of its blue and red patterns. Across from where I sat, over the marbled fireplace, I studied a picture of an aging plump man and his aging plump wife. Dogmill’s father, perhaps?

After more than half an hour, I rose from my chair and began to pace. I have never loved being made to cool my heels, as the saying goes, and I found the experience to be, if anything, far more trying when I was in disguise and visiting the very man I believed responsible for every difficulty I faced in the world. How could I know that Dogmill would not recognize me at once? I hardly thought it likely. He might well have orchestrated my ruin, but he and I were not acquainted. He could not know me so well as to spot me in this disguise- at least, so I told myself.

At last the door opened and pulled me from a reverie of exposure and ruin. I turned, perhaps too quickly, but instead of seeing the imperious servant come to lead me to his master, a pretty young lady faced me. She was unusually tall, nearly my height, but neither gangling nor overly plump, as tall women tend to be. Rather, she was most striking in appearance, with dark, almost wine-colored hair and very pale orange eyes. The features of her face were regular and finely formed, though her nose was strong- possessing a rugged beauty perhaps better suited for a man’s face than a woman’s. I found her appearance most charming, however, and I bowed to her at once. “Good morning, madam,” I said.

“George informs me that you have been in here for some time. I thought you might wish for something to make the wait pass more easily.” She reached out with a graceful arm and presented an octavo volume. A quick glance showed it to be the plays of William Congreve. How ought I to interpret her giving me a book of plays by so naughty an author? She might easily have offered me a volume of Otway.

“My name is Matthew Evans,” I told her, still feeling the tug of doubt at using this nom de guerre.

“I am pleased to meet you, sir. I am Grace Dogmill, Mr. Dogmill’s sister.”

“Please come sit with me and make my wait more pleasant. I very much like Mr. Congreve, but I think I might like talking with you more.”

I had meant to be forward, perhaps even a bit rude. I hardly expected her to comply, but she did just that. Like a proper lady, she left the door behind her open and came and took a chair across from me.

“Thank you for your company,” I said, now somewhat softened. My first impulse had been to make Dogmill dislike me by insulting his sister. I now had other ideas.

“I must confess, sir, to something of a wicked tendency to review my brother’s appointments when I can. He is cruelly inconsistent in speaking of his business to me- sometimes he will seek my advice earnestly, other times he will refuse to speak to me at all. In those times, I must discover his affairs as best I can on my own.”

“I see nothing wicked in your offering conversation to a man with no other diversion. Particularly when he is a man new to the city, and with very little acquaintance as yet.”

“Oh?” she said. Her lips curled into a delightful little smile. “Where do you come from, Mr. Evans?”

“I am just this month arrived from Jamaica,” I told her. “My father purchased a plantation on that island when I was but a boy, and now that it is grown to self-sufficient status, I have returned to this island from where I come, but of which I have so little memory.”

“I hope someone will show you all the interesting sights,” she said.

“I hope so too.”

“I am blessed with a large circle of acquaintance,” she said. “Perhaps we might impose upon you to join us for one excursion or another.”

“I should be delighted,” I told her. And I spoke the truth. Miss Dogmill was turning out to be a curious creature- strangely forward without seeming improper. I knew I would have to be careful lest I find myself liking her more than would be prudent.

“You are in the tobacco trade in Jamaica?” she asked me.

I raised my eyebrows. “How could you know that?”

She laughed. “You are newly arrived in London and know no one, but you call on my brother. It seemed to me a likely prospect.”

“And you are right, Miss Dogmill. I am in the tobacco trade. It is the principal crop of my plantation.”

She bit her lower lip. “Mr. Dogmill will be certain to inform you, and perhaps in none the politest way, that he believes Jamaica tobacco inferior to the Virginia that he principally imports.”

“Mayhap your brother’s opinion is sound, madam, but even the poor must have their tobacco, and they cannot always afford that of Virginia or Maryland.”

She laughed. “You are a philosopher, I see.”

“No, not a philosopher. Only a man who grew weary of the limitations of island life and sought the fine scenery of London.”

“And do you like what you see, Mr. Evans?”

I could not mistake her meaning, so I met her eyes. “Indeed, I do, Miss Dogmill.”

“I thank you for entertaining my visitor, Grace,” said a voice from behind me, “but you may now return to your affairs.”

It was Dogmill standing in the doorway, looking even more massive than he had when sitting in Mr. Moore’s coffeehouse. I had thought him huge then, but now I caught sight of his hands, which were so large as to be almost absurd. His neck was wider than my skull. I had spoken manfully with Elias about who would persevere in the ring, but I knew in an instant that I should never want to try my luck with this colossus.

Yet I took some delight in Dogmill’s blank and impatient gaze. The contempt he had shown me at the coffeehouse now worked in my favor, for it was clear he had no recollection of having seen me before. Nevertheless, the leg injury that ended my career as a pugilist now began to ache, as if to remind me that I was but a frail thing in comparison to this Hercules.

“I am Dennis Dogmill, sir,” he said to me. “You have some business that I presume does not include my sister.”

I rose to bow at Mr. Dogmill, all the while keeping my eyes upon his cold face. Here, I had good reason to believe, was the man responsible for every trouble I had in the world. Here was the man who had murdered Walter Yate and made certain the blame fell upon me. Here was the man who had convinced a judge to rule against me at my trial, that I might hang for what he had done himself. I suppose- despite his size and apparent strength- I ought to have wanted to strike him, to knock him from his feet and kick him senseless, but instead I felt a strangely cool dispassion, like a medical man studying some new disease for the first time.

“At this moment, sir, I regret to announce that I do have such business with you, but I can always remain optimistic that the future will hold some more inclusive affairs.”

He stared at me for a moment, as though he could not credit his ears. His face was wide and boyish, but for the heaviness and the darkness about the eyes. He possessed what would certainly be called a handsome appearance, but I would have guessed that women were not quick to give him second or third glances. There are some men, no matter how pleasing their countenance or shape, who announce their hardness and cruelty in inexplicable and silent ways. Dogmill was such a man, and I admit I felt a queasy urge to discontinue my plan.

“Follow me, if you please,” he said to me curtly.

I offered Miss Dogmill one more bow and smile and followed her brother into an adjoining room, where another gentleman sat reading through papers and drinking from a silver-stemmed goblet. Dogmill took a moment to study this man with disgust.

“I thought we had concluded our business,” Dogmill said.

The gentleman looked up. He was young, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with a slightly feminine appearance and an air of confusion I could not judge whether situational or permanent. He smiled broadly, but his eyes would not focus. “Oh, I was just looking through some things,” he said, clearly ill at ease. “I had not thought you would be back so soon.” The fellow now noticed me and rose to bow, as though he believed I might save him from some awkwardness. “Albert Hertcomb at your service.”

I knew from my readings in the political papers that Hertcomb was the incumbent in Westminster, a Whig who would face Melbury in his race for the seat. The Tories decried him for a simpleton, a mere puppet of Dogmill’s whims. There was nothing in his easy and open face to contradict those accusations.

I returned the bow. “Matthew Evans,” I said. “You are, I believe, running once more for the House under the Whig banner.”

He bowed again. “I am honored enough for that to be so,” he said. “I hope I may count on your vote, sir.”

“You may not count on anything from him,” Dogmill said. “He’s just returned from the West Indies and has no property here. He won’t have the franchise for this election.”

“Then perhaps the next election, seven years hence,” he said, and laughed as though at the greatest joke in the world.

“We shall see how we are all feeling then,” I said merrily.

“Very good, very good.”

“Perhaps, Mr. Hertcomb, you might leave me and Mr. Evans alone,” Dogmill suggested, not a little irritated.

“Oh, certainly, certainly,” he said, oblivious to Dogmill’s impatience. “I just wanted to talk a bit about this speech you’ve handed to me. It’s grand, you know. Quite the picture of grandness. Grandeur, I suppose, really. But there is a point or two about which I’m not quite clear, you know. And, well- faith!- it should be a devilish business if I am to give speeches the meaning of which is lost on me.”

Dogmill stared at Hertcomb as though he spoke some mysterious language of the American interior. “You are not to give that speech for nearly two weeks,” he said at last. “I think in that time you will puzzle out the meaning. If not, we may talk later. As we have been in the habit of speaking every day for the past month, it is a likely prospect that we shall do so again.”

Hertcomb laughed. “Oh, very likely, I should think. There’s no need to be so sour with a fellow, you know, Dogmill. I just wanted to ask you a question or two.”

“Then you may ask me tomorrow,” Dogmill said, now with a massive hand on Hertcomb’s shoulder. In movements forceful without exactly being rough, he began to shove the Parliamentarian out of the room, but then he stopped and pulled Hertcomb back. “One moment.” He let go and pointed a finger- long and thick and unnaturally flat, like a cricket bat- toward an empty decanter of wine. “Did you finish that?”

Hertcomb seemed like a child caught stealing pies. “No,” he said meekly.

“Damn you to the devil,” he swore, though not at Hertcomb- nor anyone I could see. He then rang a bell, and in almost an instant the same servant who had answered the door appeared.

“George, did I not tell you to fill that decanter?”

The servant nodded. “Yes, Mr. Dogmill. You did tell me so, but there was a bit of confusion in the kitchens with a collapsing rack of pots, and I thought to assist Miss Betty in collecting the mess, who had been slightly hurt, sir, when the pots came a-tumbling.”

“You may conspire to get under Betty’s skirts on your own time, not mine,” Dogmill said. “Get me what I ask for when I ask for it, or you’ll know my displeasure.” He then turned and, with the same ease that you and I might demonstrate in closing a door or lifting a volume from a desk, he kicked the poor servant in his arse.

I mean that quite literally. The thing of it is, we often talk of kicking this fellow or that in the arse, and it is but a figure of speech. No one ever does such a thing. I have even seen the operation performed in comical stage plays, and part of the humor is the very absurdity of the act. But let me assure my readers that there was nothing comic here. Dogmill kicked the man quite soundly, deploying his toe as a weapon, and the servant’s face collapsed into itself in pain. Perhaps because it is something we do not think of happening literally, there was a raw brutality about the act, a cruelty one associates with nasty little boys who torment cats and puppies.

The servant himself let out a cry and stumbled, but I knew that the pain must be more in his heart than his posterior. He had been utterly humiliated before stranger and familiar alike. Me, he might never see again; Hertcomb he must see every day. Every day he would face the Parliamentarian, whose gaze, no matter how kind or placid, would remind him of this utter degradation. I understood well that if he should live another forty years, he would always cringe to think of this moment.

I have seen men abuse their servants, treat them no better than animals, but there was a cruelty here that made me wish to strike back. What have I set in motion? I wondered, as I glanced over at Dogmill’s hard face. But I never once considered changing my plans. Dogmill, in all likelihood, had murdered Walter Yate and ordered matters so I would hang for his crime. He might kick every servant in the kingdom before I would run away from him.

“Well, then,” Hertcomb said, “I’ll be off, shall I?”

Dogmill waved a hand dismissively and shut the door behind him. He then gestured for me to sit with an impatient flick of the hand. “As to my sister,” he said, as though we had been before in the midst of a conversation, “do not think to take her prattlings as anything but silly nonsense got from reading too many romances. She speaks thus to everyone and creates all manner of mischief in doing so, but she is a good girl all the same. She is a very good girl, and a man ought never to be caught by me in a mistaken notion concerning her. If you think that because you’re a gentleman I’ll treat you better than my manservant, you shall be unpleasantly surprised. I spare nothing to propriety where the welfare of my sister is concerned.”

There was a tenderness in his voice I found surprising, and though I liked Miss Dogmill, I thought that her brother’s affection for her might be a means of exploitation. “I promise your foot shall have no need to seek my arse,” I said. “I found Miss Dogmill to be delightful company and nothing more.”

He smacked his lips together. “I never asked that you evaluate my sister’s company, and your opinion of it cannot be relevant to whatever business you bring here. Now, what is it I can help you with, Mr. Evans?”

I told him what I had told his sister- viz., that I was newly arrived and in the tobacco trade.

“Jamaica tobacco is not fit for a dog. And I have never heard your name before, even in the context of foul Jamaica weed. Who is your purchasing agent?”

“Mr. Archibald Laidlaw in Glasgow,” I told him promptly, making use of the name Elias had provided in the fictitious biography he had penned. I was grateful both that he had produced a document of such detail and that I had taken the trouble to read it carefully. I cannot say how I would have hummed and hawed otherwise. “I do not know if his reputation has extended so far south, but I am told he is of some importance in North Britain.”

Dogmill turned as red as a Norfolk apple. “Laidlaw!” he cried. “The man is nothing but a pirate. He sends his own cutters to meet his ships when they are still at sea and unloads them there- all to escape the Customs.”

Strong words, I thought, considering what Mendes had told me of Dogmill’s own practices. Yet I knew well that men can see the faults in others far more easily than they can in themselves.

“I have never met him and know nothing of his practices. I am merely used to selling him my goods.”

“You ought,” he said, “to sell your goods to a better man, and you ought to make a habit of learning the nature of the men with whom you trade.” Here was something else. Though I sat more than six feet away from him, I realized that I felt a sudden and unexpected flash of fear for my safety. I was not used to being afraid of other men, but there was something about the way he sat, his muscles gone taut, that made him seem like a barrel of gunpowder on the verge of ignition.

I should not get what I wanted from him if he sensed my anxiety, so I offered a warm smile, the smile of a merchant who cares only for his trade. “You are certainly right, sir. I have often found it hard to find a purchasing agent in London, where the docks are full of the tobaccos of Virginia and Maryland. It is for that reason, now I am arrived here, that I thought of setting myself upon such a trade. As you are well known as the most respected purchasing agent in the city for tobacco, I had hoped I might impose on you for some advice on navigating the waters of such a business.”

Dogmill had begun to redden again. “Mr. Evans, I cannot say how affairs are conducted in Jamaica or in any of His Majesty’s other primitive domains, but I can assure you that in London it is no common thing for a man to provide the secrets of his business to a competitor. Did you believe you would walk in here and I would instruct you on how to take money from my own pocket?”

“I had not thought of it in those terms,” I said. “I know you do not trade in Jamaica tobacco, so I did not consider myself a competitor.”

“I do not trade in Jamaica tobacco because it is ghastly, and I do my utmost to keep it from the ports of London because it is so devilish cheap. I am afraid you will get no help here.”

“If you will but give me a moment to explain myself further,” I began.

“I have given you too many minutes. Perhaps you are unaware of it, but in this country we have a regular institution known as Parliamentary elections, and as I am the election agent for Mr. Hertcomb, whom you have just met, my time is shorter than that to which even I am used. I must therefore bid you a good day.”

I rose and bowed very slightly. “I thank you for what time you have granted me,” I said.

“Yes, yes,” he answered, and turned to some pages on his desk.

“I should add, sir, that your words are not offered in the spirit of brotherhood. You say that you don’t know how we do business in Jamaica, so I will take one more instant of your time to inform you that in Jamaica men of a particular trade, even those whom we might regard as competitors, as you so style it, know the value of the trade itself over the interests of any one man in it.”

This was all rubbish, of course. I knew no more how men conducted business in Jamaica than how they conduct business in the most hidden depths of Abyssinia, but I found myself warming to my performance and was of no mind to do anything but indulge myself.

“We work together to strengthen the trade before we work apart to line our pockets,” I continued, “and this manner of doing business has served us very well.”

“Yes, yes,” he said once more. His pen scratched away at his paper.

“I have heard that your trade has dropped off somewhat since your father’s time, sir. I wonder if perhaps a more open disposition might not help you to restore your family to the pinnacle of its glory.”

Dogmill did not look up, but he ceased his writing. I could see that I had stuck him in his tenderest part, and I could hardly keep from smiling at the trueness of my aim. I might have left then, but I was not quite ready.

“Can it be that there is something else, Mr. Evans?” he asked.

“One more thing,” I admitted. “Would you have any objections to my calling upon your sister?”

He studied me for a moment. “Yes,” he said at last. “I would object most assuredly.”