The Devil's Company

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

WOULD HAVE SPENT ANOTHER RESTLESS NIGHT, BUT FOR THE exhaustion that so encumbered me it felt near a palpable burden. Somehow, as the day progressed, I had moved beyond grief and sadness and anger into a numb dispassion. I would wake up on the morrow, and my life must continue, much as it had been before. I would have to return to Craven House, I would have to speak with Cobb, and I would have to continue to do his bidding and to work against him.

And so, the next morning, I prepared myself to do all of these. Sleep had returned some blood to my sadness, but I thought too of my aunt, of her strength and iron determination to come out from my uncle’s shadow. She would manage the business, she said, and she appeared as willing to manage me and offer me direction as my uncle Miguel had. I could not but honor that fortitude and attempt to emulate it.

I therefore cleaned myself at my washbasin, dressed, and took myself to Cobb’s house, arriving there shortly after the clock had struck seven. I did not know if I should find him awake or not, but I would find his bedroom and wake him myself if necessary. Edgar answered the door, now deferential and distant. He would not meet my eye, and I believe he understood that on this day, on this occasion, he must offer me no resistance.

“Mr. Cobb has anticipated your visit. He is in the parlor.”

So I found him. He rose when I entered and took my hand as though we were old friends. Indeed, from the look upon his face a stranger would think that it had been his family to suffer a loss and I merely paying a consolation visit.

“Mr. Weaver,” he began, in a tremulous voice, “allow me to say how very sorry I am to hear of your uncle’s death. It is a tragic thing, though of course pleurisy is a terrible business, and a physician can do so little.”

He made a few more noises, inchoate words, but ultimately he said no more. I believe I understood his struggle. He wished to articulate the idea that my uncle had died of his illness, rather than from any distress caused by his debts. However, he must know the act of making this observation would almost certainly anger me, and he could not bring himself to speak further.

“You wish to avoid all responsibility,” I said.

“I only mean to say that no one thing …” He stopped there, not knowing how to proceed.

“I shall tell you what I have considered, Mr. Cobb. I’ve considered telling you to go to the devil and allowing the consequences to fall as they might. I have considered killing you, sir, which I believe would release me of any further obligation to you.”

“I have taken measures, you must know, that should anything befall me—”

I held up a silencing hand. “I have not chosen that option. I shall only tell you to release my aunt from the burdens under which my uncle suffered. If you cancel those debts, return to her the goods withheld from my uncle, and do not force that lady, in her grief, to meet the demands of rapacious creditors, we can continue as before.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then, at last, he nodded. “I cannot do what you ask,” he said, “but I can stay hands, sir. I can hold back the tide of collection and make certain the creditors do not trouble her until, let us say, after the meeting of the Court of Proprietors. If we are satisfied with your work to that point, we shall release the lady, and only the lady, from those confines. If not, there can be no call for lenience.”

In truth, it was a better arrangement than I anticipated, so I nodded my assent.

“While you are here,” Cobb said, “have you any news to report? Any progress?”

“Do not tempt me, sir,” I said, taking my leave at once.

AT CRAVEN HOUSE, the men with whom I worked, including Mr. Ellershaw, were polite and deferential upon first seeing me, but, as is the way with such places, they soon forgot my grief, and matters had returned much to their usual courses by the end of the day. I had occasion to pass Aadil several times, and he grunted his usual sullen comments at me, and I responded much as I always did. He had cause to believe I did not suspect him in the theft of my notes, and I saw no need to yield the one advantage I might have over him. Indeed, before long, I found myself settling into my usual suspicion of him, thinking of him not too differently than I did before the phaeton race.

Yet there was a difference, for he remained for me a constant reminder of the many difficulties I faced and the burdens under which I labored, and this spurred me from my malaise and toward action. I might lament my uncle’s passing in private moments, but I had much work to do in the service of the living, and the recollection of my aunt’s fortitude and determination drove me onward.

Toward the end of the day, I contrived an excuse to pay a visit to Mr. Blackburn’s office. I was curious as to what, if anything, he would recall of the intelligence he had given me, and if he believed he had cause to resent my usage. To my great surprise, I found him not at work but rather collecting his private effects and ordering his space.

“Mr. Blackburn,” I said, getting his attention, “what happens here?”

“What happens,” he said, in an uneven voice, “is that I have been dismissed. After my many years of faithful service, they have chosen to send me on my way.”

“But whatever for?”

“They claim, sir, that my services are not equal to the payment I have been used to receiving. That I must leave, for they would not have a man who believes himself worth more than he is earning, nor should they pay him more than he is worth. And with that, I am gone by day’s end.”

“I am full of regret for you,” I said. “I know how much you value your place.”

He approached now, keeping his eyes and his voice low. “You have not said anything of our conversation? You told no one we spoke?”

“I have not. I would not betray you in that way.”

“It is no matter. I believe we were watched. I believe they saw us together at the tavern, so I am to be set upon my way.”

“I am very sorry.”

“I am sorry for it too. I ought not to have been seen with you,” he said, though utterly without resentment. He did not seem to blame me but rather to regard the mistake as his own, as though he had taken a foolish jump upon a horse and hurt himself accordingly.

“I regret being the cause of mischief for you,” I said. It was true enough, though I refrained to add that he ought to count himself lucky that he was only deprived of his place and not his life, like the other unfortunates who had come to harm through my efforts to learn from them.

He shook his head. “Yes, I regret it. I regret that the Company shall come to ruin without me. Where, sir, shall they find a man of my talents? Where?”

I had no answer, and neither did Mr. Blackburn, who had begun to shed tears of grief.

“If there is anything I can do to aid you, sir,” I said, “do not hesitate to call upon me.”

“No one can aid me now,” he lamented. “I am a clerk without a position. I am like a ghost, sir. A living ghost, left to wander the earth without purpose or pleasure.”

I had no response to this so I left him, struggling to replace my feelings of guilt with feelings of rage. I will not blame myself, I vowed, but Cobb. Cobb will answer.

AT MY HOME THAT NIGHT I found that Devout Hale had returned my messages, and I could think of no better way to occupy my time in the service of making Cobb answer than to pay Hale a visit. He had informed me I might find him that very night at one of the Spitalfields coffeehouses, and so, after a brief visit to my aunt, I took myself thither. I arrived on time, and Hale put his arm around me and took me to a secluded spot. “So, what is so urgent, then?” he asked. He looked more wretched than the last time I saw him, as though his scrofula had progressed with my own troubles at Craven House. He folded his reddened hands one on the other and stared at me with veined and deep-set eyes. “You left messages everywhere, and you have the appearance of alarm upon you. Have you some news about the king?”

“I have been unable to make progress on that score,” I said. “I am sorry, Devout, but I told you I am not so well affixed as you think and I have been consumed with my East India troubles.”

“As have we all. Well, for the moment I will only ask you to keep your promise in your mind. Now, tell me what you need of me.”

“I must ask you about someone. Have you ever heard the name Absalom Pepper?”

“Course I have.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, and an alarming cluster of it came out on his fingers. “He was one of my men. He worked the loom.”

I paused to consider this confirmation. “Did he have, to the best of your recollection, any dealings with the East India Company?”

“Him? Hardly. He wasn’t built for it, you know. He was a slight fellow, small and pale, more of a girl than a man to my mind. Pretty as a girl, too. Now, women of a certain type like a man with feminine beauty, but I’m always a bit suspicious of the type, if you take my meaning. As to your question, he wasn’t one for Craven House dealings. The rest of us would go to tear up the evil place, and he’d send us his good wishes but no more than that. Still, he was quick with the loom, that one, and very clever. The most clever of us all, I thought, though you’d hardly know. He kept his own council, and in his free time he’d always be writing this or that in his little book. Most of the boys here, you know, can’t read or write, so they just looked at him like he was the very devil himself, and he would sniff right back at them with the devil’s own contempt.”

“What was he writing in this book of his?” I asked.

Hale shook his head. “He never told me and I never cared enough to ask, to tell you the truth of it. He wasn’t my friend, and I wasn’t his. Not enemies, mind you, but not friends either. He did his work and was more than worth the space he took, but I didn’t much care for the airs he put on. That’s fine for a worker, but it don’t answer in a friend.”

“And when he died, did you offer any compensation to his widow?”

“Compensation? Ha! That’s a mighty good one. Sometimes when a fellow dies, there will be a contribution of some sort, but that’s usually when a fellow perishes in some accident related to the work. Or, at the very least, when it’s a fellow the boys like. But Pepper—I heard he got drunk and drowned in the river one night. Just as like made to fall, I would think, with his lordly disposition and all. He might have pushed some rough too hard, and—well, that rough pushed back, so to speak.”

“So, there is no way that you and your combination pay an annuity to his widow?”

“An annuity? That’s a right fine joke. You know full well we can barely pay the baker. An annuity indeed. Like I said, we take care of our own. Last year, when Jeremiah Carter died of the rot after an accident that took his fingers, we collected more than two pounds for his widow, but Jeremiah was always very popular, and his wife was left with three little ones.”

I made no comment on that sum and the small fortune provided by the Company for Pepper’s childless widow.

“So, I’ve been forthcoming, and I reckon it’s your turn, Weaver. What’s this about?”

The truth was, I did not know. “It is too soon to say.” I formed my words slowly, still attempting to decide how much information I could safely pass along. The great danger that loomed above me and my friends made me reluctant to speak at all, but I also knew that Hale had been kind to me and trustworthy—and, perhaps more important, there might be more information unearthed by informing him of what little I knew. I therefore swore him to secrecy and proceeded to tell him what I thought safe.

“What it’s about I don’t know,” I said. “I do know that the East India Company has contrived to pay his widow an annuity of a considerable sum and then credit some sort of fictional silk weavers’ guild with the generosity.”

“A considerable sum, my arse!” Hale cried. “Why, the poor girl is living in squalor.”

“I think you must be misinformed. I have been to Twickenham and saw the lady lives remarkable well for a silk worker’s widow—or anyone’s widow, for that matter.”

“Weaver, I should never have taken you for so great a dunce. His widow don’t live in Twickenham. She’ll never dream of living in Twickenham. She’s in a run-down old house off Little Tower Hill, and I can promise you she ain’t got no annuity of any sort. What she’s got is gin, and counts herself lucky when she’s got a great quantity of it.”

There was some more back and forth of this sort, but once we established the credentials of both ladies, it became increasingly clear to me that Mr. Absalom Pepper may well have been guilty of that crime, too common among the lower order of men, of being married to two women at the same time. For that reason, and many more, he was beginning to strike me as a very interesting personage indeed.

IN THE HACKNEY on the way to the second Widow Pepper’s house, Hale mused incessantly. “There’s something amiss here,” he said, with a low growl. He sounded like a dog perceiving footsteps on the outer boundary of its hearing. “There’s never been a more heartless or penny-pinching bunch of thieves in all the world than the East India Company. They are for nothing but their own profit, and if they are paying this alleged Pepper widow money, it is to buy her silence. They have done something despicable. Indeed, they have taken his life, you may depend upon it. How much do they pay her?”

Against my better judgment, I informed him of the sum.

“By Christ,” he swore, “that’s blood money if I ever heard of it. It’s absurd that they should pay so much, and its absurd that she should believe the money comes from us. It makes no sense, Weaver.”

He was right, of course. Elias and I had already arrived at the same conclusion. The sum drew attention to itself, and it was no sound part of an effort to conceal a crime.

“The lady I spoke to told us that Pepper was always taking notes upon things. Did he leave any of his writings about with you?”

“I have other things to concern me than idle scribblings.”

“Did you ever chance to observe what he wrote?”

“As a matter of fact, I did, but it didn’t much answer, as I never learned my letters.” Seeing my eyes widen and then a crestfallen expression overtake me, Hale hurried to add a further detail. “I can’t read, it’s true, but I know what letters look like, at least, and Pepper’s writings were not made of them entire.”

“Not made of letters?”

“Well, there were some, but there were drawings too. Pictures of things.”

“What sort of things?”

“It was hard to say, given that I only caught a glimpse. When Pepper saw me gazing at his papers, he snatched them away and glared at me something fierce. I tried to laugh it off, pointing out I could no more read what he’d written than the newspaper, but his mood didn’t lighten none. Said I was trying to steal from him. I told him I had no interest in stealing his papers and no notion of who should want them.”

“But what did the drawings contain?” I asked again.

“From the quick look he afforded me,” Hale said, “it looked like he was drawing pictures of us.”

“The silk weavers?”

“Not the men themselves, but the room and the equipment, the looms. Like I told you, it was only a quick glance, but that was the impression I got. Though I couldn’t guess why someone should care to steal a picture of a bunch of silk workers and their things. Who could care to look at something of so little import?”

The only answer that came to my mind was an organization that had been harmed by the will of the silk weavers: the East India Company.

Hale told the hackney man where to stop. I jumped out and offered my ill friend a hand, but he shook his head. “I took you here, Weaver, but that’s as far as I go. I knew poor Jane Pepper when she was a girl, and I’ve no heart to see her as she is now. Her father, rest his soul, was a friend of mine, and it burns me up to think he saved his whole life to put together twenty pounds dowry on his little girl. At the time I thought he was throwing away the money, letting her marry Pepper, and now I know it.” He shook his head again. “There’s some things I cannot choose to see.”

I understood this reluctance only too well. I never wanted to be in St. Giles after dark, and after Hale’s ominous warning I wanted it even less. Nevertheless, I followed his directions and soon found the house to which he had directed me. My knock was answered by a very old woman wearing a dress in a very poor state of repair. When I told her I wished to speak with Mrs. Jane Pepper, she let out a sigh of exasperation, or perhaps sadness, and directed me up the stairs.

Mrs. Pepper met me at the door in such a state of undress that it was no longer possible to pretend I did not suspect that her place in the world had fallen considerably since her husband’s death. She wore her hair and her gown loose, with the better part of her ample bosoms exposed. And she smelled of gin. Indeed, I could see, in the hard lines around her eyes and the way in which her cheekbones jutted out against the tight skin of her face, that in defiance of natural order it was the drink that owned the drinker. And yet, under the hard crust of misery and desperation, I could see the remnants of a lovely creature. There could be no doubt that Absalom Pepper had an eye for beauty.

“Hello, my dear,” she said to me. “Please come in.”

I accepted her invitation and took a seat, without waiting to be asked, in the room’s only chair. She sat across from me on her bed. “What’s it to be tonight, then, dearie?”

I reached into my purse and retrieved a shilling, which I handed her. “Some questions, only. That’s for your time.”

She snatched up the coin the way I’ve seen monkeys snatch at sugar plums meted out by their masters. “My time,” she told me in a steady voice, “is worth three shillings.”

I could little credit that she had ever been paid so well for any favor, let alone one as gentle as that I sought, but I hadn’t the spirit to argue with the poor creature, and I provided the coin she required.

“I wish to ask you of your late husband.”

“Oh, my Absalom,” she said. Her eyes became moist, and some of her icy hardness appeared to melt. “Was there ever a dearer man?”

I was struck at once by such similarity of devotion in the two Mrs. Peppers. I knew not how the late Mr. Pepper had so charmed the ladies, but I could only wish I knew a small fraction of his secrets.

“He was a good husband, then?”

“He was a good man, sir. The best of men. And it is often true that a good man does not always have the leisure to be a good husband.”

Particularly if he is busy being someone else’s good husband, I thought, though I would not dream of giving voice to such a comment. “What can you tell me of him?”

“Oh, he was good to me, sir, very good to me. When he was with me, I should have never suspected there were even other women in the world, for he only thought of me, only saw me when we walked down the street together. We could be in St. James’s with the fanciest folk in the metropolis, and he would not notice a one of them. And he would—” She stopped herself now and gave me a critical glance. “Why is it you wish to know? Who are you?”

“I do beg your pardon, madam. My name is Benjamin Weaver, and I have been charged to inquire into the affairs of your husband in order to determine if he may have been owed some money prior to his death.”

It was a cruel trick and I knew it, but there was little I could do to aid this Mrs. Pepper, and much I would have to do to aid those who depended upon my labors. Besides, a little hope might, in her case, be more of a kindness than a cruelty.

“Money? Who from? How much?”

I held up my hands, as if to say, How can such powerless people as ourselves fathom the ways of the great? “Indeed, I cannot say how much, nor exactly who from. I have been hired by a group of men inclined to invest in projects, and they have asked me to inquire into Mr. Pepper’s affairs. I know nothing beyond that.”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “he had more going on than silk weaving, I can tell you that. He always had money in his pocket, which none of the other silk weavers did. And I wasn’t to say anything to Hale and the others about it neither, because they wasn’t to know about it. On account they would be jealous of Absalom, what with his being so very clever and handsome.”

“And what did he have going on, other than silk work?”

She shook her head. “He would never tell me. Said I shouldn’t concern myself with such dry matters as that. But he swore we would be rich one day soon. And then he died, all tragic like, falling into the river. It was a cruel thing for fate to leave me so, alone and penniless.”

She leaned forward in her distress, and this gesture further exposed the barely hidden swell of her breast. I could not fail to understand her meaning, though I was determined to pretend to misunderstand it just the same. She was a beautiful woman, but a hardened one, a destroyed one, and I could not so debase myself by taking advantage of her misery. I might be tempted, but I would not do it.

“It is very important,” I said. “Did Mr. Pepper ever tell you anything of his aspirations? Did he mention names, places, anything of that sort, which could help me to figure out what it was he worked upon?”

“No, he never did.” She stopped still for a moment and then looked hard upon me. “Do you mean to steal his ideas, the things he wrote down in books?”

I smiled at her question, as though it were the silliest thing in the world. “I have no interest in stealing anything, madam. And I promise you, upon my honor, if I discover that your husband stumbled upon something of note, I will make certain you receive what is yours. It is not my task to take anything from you, only to learn and, if possible, restore to your family something that may have been lost.”

My words so succeeded in assuaging her concerns that she rose and rested a hand upon my shoulder with a gentleness I would not have expected from a woman to which the world had not been gentle at all. She looked at me in such a way that let me know in no uncertain terms she wished for me to kiss her. I confess I was flattered, and it is a testament to her charms that I was, for why, my perceptive reader will wonder, should I be flattered by the willingness of a whore to whom I had already given money and made a vague promise of future wealth? Nevertheless, I felt my previous resolve begin to dissipate. I cannot say with any certainty what would have transpired had not something most unexpected happened.

The Widow Pepper began to move her fingers to my face, but I held up a hand in a halting gesture and raised a finger to my lips to signal silence. As quietly as I could manage, I moved over to the door of her chamber. Alas, ever mindful of her safety, Mrs. Pepper had locked it, which would detract precious seconds from the advantage of surprise, but it was what I had been given, so, quickly as I could, I turned the key in the lock and flung the door open.

As I had feared, whoever had been lurking outside had determined my movements sooner than I would have liked, but I caught the glimpse of a man running, nearly falling, down the stairs, and at once I charged after him. I lacked my quarry’s grace, I suppose, because the stairs took me more time than they did him, and by the time I reached the ground floor, he had already flung wide the front door and was out upon the street.

I followed hard behind him, and when I came out of Mrs. Pepper’s house, I saw the figure heading down the Tower Hill Pass toward East Smithfield. He moved swiftly, but without the disadvantage of stairs I could hope at least to match his pace, and I had a great deal of faith in my endurance. One thing a man who has fought in the ring must know is how to continue to exert himself even when his stores of energy feel depleted. Even if I could not overtake him at first, I reasoned, if I could but keep pace, I should catch him in the end.

As it happened, the grace he had shown upon the stairs did not manifest itself in the dark of the streets. He stumbled in a slick pool of dark filth and went sprawling forward. But as quickly as he went down, he was up again, springing to his feet with the alacrity of an Italian acrobat. He then made a quick turn down one of the dark alleys for which St. Giles is duly notorious. These streets are winding labyrinths without lights, and unless one knows his way, he may well depend on losing it. I, however, did not even have that opportunity, for I lost my man first. Once I rounded the first corner, I was met only with the distant patting of footsteps, but from which direction and to what direction I could not say.

I had no choice but to abandon pursuit. And though I regarded this decision with the melancholy that comes with failure, I attempted to comfort myself by saying that I could have done little had I actually captured him. Besides possessing an unexpected quickness, the man was larger and almost certainly stronger than myself. Overtaking him might have been more dangerous than informative. Besides, in the moment he stumbled, I was able to observe his form with a flash of clarity. I could not be entirely certain, and I would have been hesitant to swear in court to his identity. Nevertheless, I was near certain.

The man who had been outside Mrs. Pepper’s door, spying on me, or perhaps her, had been, I was almost certain, none other than the East Indian, Aadil. He continued to dog my steps and to keep an eye upon me, and I knew not how long I could pretend not to know it.

GIVEN EDGAR’S WARNING, I was in no way eager to take another day away from Craven House, but I believed myself close to an answer and wished to push forward. The next morning I therefore sent another note to Mr. Ellershaw, informing him that my aunt required some service of me and I would be late in arriving to work.

I advised him that if he had further questions, he might communicate directly with my surgeon, and then I wrote Elias informing him of the lies I had told and leaving him to clean up the mess. That concluded, I took the coach out to Twickenham, once more to visit with Mr. Pepper’s widow. She received me again, but this time less civilly than before. Perhaps she had now begun to fear for the future of her annuity.

“Again, madam, I have no wish to cause you disease, but there are some questions. The gentlemen of the Seahawk Insurance Office wish to assure you that your annuity is very likely in no danger whatsoever. We cannot oblige you to answer our questions, but I believe your funds will be far better secured if you choose to be of help.”

These words appeared to promote precisely the alarm I wished, and she told me she would help as best she can.

“You are too kind. Now, you must understand, as we discussed yesterday, that one hundred and twenty pounds per annum is an unusual amount for a man of your late husband’s income. Have you any idea why you should have been designated for such generosity by the guild?”

“Surely you have already asked these questions. I do not love your taking liberties with Mr. Pepper’s memory in this way.”

“I have indeed already asked these questions,” I admitted, “but having not yet received sufficient answers, I find I must ask again. As for the matter of Mr. Pepper’s memory, I hope you will allow me to point out that in these inquiries we have a much greater opportunity to honor his memory by discovering the lost instances of his cleverness.”

It was my own cleverness I now celebrated, because I saw my words had the desired effect upon the affectionate widow. She appeared no less skeptical, but I observed that she could not allow any opportunity to celebrate the saintly Mr. Pepper to pass.

“I don’t know much about it, except that he was always at his books, reading and making notations of one sort or another and making his drawings.”

I thought it highly unusual that a silk weaver would have books, let alone many books, in his possession. Books cost a great deal of money, and a silk weaver has little enough of that, though I had learned enough of Mr. Pepper to see that he was an exception to virtually all rules. Whatever his interest, it must have been more than an idle curiosity. It must have been something he believed would return the investment of time and money. “How did he afford the books?” I asked.

“We never suffered for them, I assure you. Important though his learning may have been to him, he would not have been able to endure it if it had resulted in my doing without what I needed or desired.”

“And his drawings: Did you know their nature?” I pressed on.

“He didn’t share that with me. He said it wouldn’t answer to trouble a woman with what he had in mind.”

“So your husband never spoke to you of his intentions?”

She shook her head.

“You mentioned he kept books. May I see them?”

She shook her head once more. “When the man from the silk weavers’ guild came, he said those books and papers and such would be of the greatest good to the guild and offered to buy the lot of them for another ten pounds. They weren’t of any use to me, and I would have sold them anyway. I don’t know if ten pounds was a good price, but I reckoned that even if it weren’t they had been so good to me it might be uncivil to resent them over such a thing.”

“They took everything, then.”

“I said they did,” she answered, irritation peaking through her voice.

Now I understood why it was that this particular Widow Pepper should be the one to receive compensation. The Company had paid her for Pepper’s books and papers. “Tell me, Mrs. Pepper. I understand that your husband never discussed his researches with you directly, and such arrangements are certainly common among husband and wife, but it is an unusual household in which information does not seep through the cracks, the way the smell of a soup wafts from the kitchen to the adjoining rooms.”

She nodded, and I waited, but she did not follow my lead any more than to comment that she did not like for the smells of her kitchen to infect the rest of the house.

“Is it not possible,” I continued, “that you overheard Mr. Pepper speak of his business to friends and associates? I cannot emphasize how important it is that we learn of his work. It may be the very thing,” I added with a deliberate twinkle in my eye, “to lay to rest any questions regarding this annuity.”

“Why must there be questions?” Her voice was now several pitches higher than its usual.

“Indeed, my most earnest desire is to lay such questions to rest and to leave your arrangement unperturbed. You will help me to do so, will you not?”

It was abundantly clear that she would. “He never much talked about his researches, as he styled them, with me, but he did have one particular friend with whom he did discuss such things. I never met this gentleman, for he was never invited to our home, but Mr. Pepper used to mention him in the loftiest terms as a fellow who could appreciate and encourage and aid his researches. He would go off to spend great amounts of time with him and their books, learning whatever it was they wished to learn.”

“Did you learn this gentleman’s name?”

“Aye, but not the name entire. Mr. Pepper only referred to him as Mr. Teaser.”

It took a great deal of will to stifle a grim smile. Mr. Teaser sounded like nothing so much as a character from a stage comedy. I began to suspect that he might not have been so much a he as a she, and that when Pepper met this particular friend, little in the way of research was conducted. Nevertheless, I had no choice but to inquire fully into the matter.

“What can you tell me of this Mr. Teaser?”

“Very little, I’m afraid. He spoke of him infrequently, and when he did so it was with a strange mixture of satisfaction and something like contempt. He would praise Mr. Teaser’s perspicacity but at the same time laugh at him, saying he was as simple as a child, and that he—my husband, the late Mr. Pepper—might lead that poor man where he wished.”

“Is there any hope,” I inquired, “that you chanced to overhear the location of these meetings?”

“In that I may assist you. On one occasion, I did chance to overhear Mr. Pepper speaking to a friend of his, describing a forthcoming meeting, and he identified the location as a house on Field Lane, bordering a tavern called the Bunch of Grapes, if I recall. I cannot say if this is a public house or a private one, but I do recall hearing him give that direction.”

“Did you ever follow that direction yourself?”

“No, why should I?”

Because you were curious, I thought. Because you would never have recalled the location if it had been of no consequence to you. Nevertheless, I held my tongue, for I had nothing to gain by exposing that I knew more of her heart than she wished to allow, and it would little serve my ends to demonstrate that I saw she was, in a very strange way, jealous of this Teaser.

Further inquiry revealed that Mrs. Pepper had nothing more to tell me, so I thanked her for her time.

“And what of my annuity?” she asked me. “Is it safe?”

Having no desire to eliminate what I believed might still be a useful fount of knowledge, I chose to remain vague. “I shall do all I can to serve you,” I said, with a bow.

She bit her lip in clear distress. “If I show you something,” she said, “if I let you look at it, you must accept that I do it in the spirit of co operation and you will do what you can to help me.”

“Of course,” I promised, making all possible efforts to banish from my mind the hypocrisy of words. I could not say to what ends the East India Company paid this lady an annuity, but should I expose their secrets, in all likelihood the money would run dry. In short, I made every effort to convince this woman to aid in her own ruin.

She bade me wait and then disappeared for a moment, returning with a thin calfskin-bound quarto in her hands. She clutched it to her bosom so that I could observe a large discolored streak along the front of the book.

“It was always a peculiarity with my husband, the late Mr. Pepper, that his books were his memory—or so he told me several times. He had to write down his ideas, nearly at the moment he had them, lest they be gone in an instant, never to be recovered. Indeed, he believed he had forgotten more fine notions than a whole army of men will enjoy in their lives. So it was that he kept books about him at all times and took notes incessantly. Many of these books, he believed, had fine ideas, many others, nothing of note. When the men of the guild came for his books, they said they wanted everything. And yet I held something back. Just this one volume, and only because he told me it was a book of false starts, terrible ideas. It was a book he once told me he would never care if he lost. I recollected this volume, for it had the imperfection in the calfskin that looks almost like a letter P—for Pepper, you know. In any event, I dared to keep it for myself.”

I held out my hand. Reluctantly, she delivered the goods. Page after page was full of cramped, slanted writing, so small I could hardly read it. The letters ran together, and my head began to ache from the effort to decipher. In addition to these passages were, as Hale had told me, drawings—drawings of what looked like the equipment and materials for silk weaving.

Mr. Pepper believed the book to be of no value, but I could not be so certain. “May I take this with me? I promise to return it to you.”

It pained her, but she granted me a reluctant nod.

Now confident that my efforts could hope for no further reward, I bade her farewell, once more promised to diligently pursue her case, and went to find the return coach. Alas, it was a longer wait than I should have liked, and I did not return to the metropolis until nearly dark. Then, once upon my familiar streets, I had to make my way home, so a dark gloom cast itself over Duke’s Place as I approached my home.

I had grown very hungry during my travels and considered stopping to eat before retiring, but there is nothing like travel to make one wish for rest, and even if my landlady should not have a light supper at the ready for me, I preferred a meal of bread and cheese in my room to one of cold meats and peas in an eating house.

But as I approached my house I felt a rough hand land upon my shoulder. When I turned, I could not say I was entirely surprised to find the very faithful Edgar at the ready to deliver a sneer.

“You been smoked, Weaver,” he said, pressing his lips together in his duckish way. “You thought to hide like a coward under cover of your uncle’s death, but we are not so foolish as you think. Did you believe Mr. Cobb would not discover your double-dealing?”

“What double-dealing is that, you rascal?” I managed. I tried to sound indignant, but in truth I wondered which particular bit of deception had been uncovered.

He barked out a laugh, for clearly what he felt was satisfaction and not mirth. “It is one thing to believe you might play us for fools. It is quite another to feign ignorance once you’ve been caught. There is nothing in it for you, so you may as well accept that you’ve been discovered, and you had better be more forthcoming lest you do more damage to your friends.”

“More damage? What is it you mean?”

“What I mean is that Mr. Cobb has been generous with you, far too generous in my opinion, but your foolishness has now caught up with you. You were told that, should you defy us, should you refuse to deal with us like a gentleman, then your friends would suffer. It became clear, all too clear, that you would not believe us unless you were shown a measure of our determination, so Mr. Cobb has decided it is time to show you he means what he says.”

I lashed out without giving the matter a moment’s thought. I grabbed the unctuous fellow by his cravat and twisted that instrument, turning his face, almost immediate, a dark color, the precise shade of which was impossible to determine in the darkness. “What have you done?” I demanded, though it quickly became clear that he would not answer so long as I strangled him. Reluctantly I let go and allowed the wretch to fall to the ground.

“What have you done?” I asked again, delivering a kick that he might understand the earnestness of my question.

“It’s your friend Franco,” he told me, after a series of histrionic flailing gestures. “Franco has been taken away. And if you don’t begin to follow orders, he will be but the first.”