A Good Man

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  McCorkle shrugged. “If you’re so damned skittish – do as you like.”

  “I like best what’s in my interest. And I ain’t said I’m about to do it neither.” Dunne paused. “I’m just saying how’s the right way to do it if a fellow was to do it. The way I’m thinking now is that a damn sovereign ain’t worth losing gainful employment for.”

  McCorkle jabbed the dust of the lane with the toe of his boot. “If we had a permanent arrangement, more sovereigns would follow in due course. Seeing how well-placed you are, that could be advantageous to both of us.”

  “I think you better explain how that arrangement would work.”

  “I take it you post the family letters?” asked McCorkle. Dunne nodded. “Then it shouldn’t be difficult for you to drop me a note when you learn Mr. Hind is receiving guests. Send it to Dan McCorkle, care of the Brandywine Tavern, Front Street. Once I am alerted, we’ll proceed just as we have discussed today. I, or someone else, will check the carriage house wall until we receive news about when Mr. Hind’s guests are leaving” – he flashed a smile – “on business.”

  “And how do I get paid?” said Dunne. “You didn’t happen to mention that.”

  “If you have a bank account it could be deposited there.”

  “I don’t trust banks. I want cash laid in my palm,” said Dunne.

  Irritation showed on McCorkle’s face. “The other servants may begin to speculate if we’re seen too much in one another’s company – as you have already proved, the help knows more than one would expect.”

  “Whenever I tip you about visitors, the next Thursday afternoon I’ll come to the Brandywine. That’s my half-day off. You can give me my money then.”

  “I have my duties. I can’t be dancing attendance on you. My time is valuable.”

  “I’ll be saving you time aplenty. There’ll be no need to keep men hanging around watching the house like you do now. You got a departure time, all you have to do is be at the station, board the same train, and follow them. As far as your precious time goes, you got a bargain.”

  McCorkle sucked his cheeks. “All right,” he said at last. Then he added, “You’re a dark horse, Dunne.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Dunne. “And nobody rides me for nothing. Remember that.”

  Dunne finds it sweet to recall how good it had been to strike Hind in his soft spot, hit him in the breadbasket of his nigger love. Sweeter still to know that he had no inkling his plans were being confounded. There’s the difference between a man such as Michael Dunne and those cocks of the walk that have to crow and flap their wings, let everyone know they’ve had a triumph. Knowing he’s won is satisfaction enough for him. After all, secrets are power. Let them loose in the world and the power escapes with them.

  Just as the newspapers had helped him to deduce the reason for his employer’s gloom that past summer, now they helped him deduce who the whiskey-drinking Yankees were. He put two and two together and decided the old man was aiding and abetting crimpers and substitute brokers. As people said, the conflict raging to the south was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. The wealthy had a way to escape the draft that had sent poverty-stricken New Yorkers on a wrecking spree. For three hundred dollars, an exemption from conscription could be purchased from the government. Men of lesser means, for whom raising such a sum was a stretch, could buy themselves a substitute, negotiate a cheaper price with some hungry wretch.

  But the article writers pointed out that the flesh dealers couldn’t get enough recruits in the United States to supply the demand. The crimpers had now come to Canada and were tricking gullible farm boys into selling themselves into military servitude for a few Yankee dollars. Worse still, there were claims that young men were being shanghaied, filled with beer and strong cider, then spirited across the border in the dead of night, or simply tapped on the head with a cosh, aded into a wagon, and bundled off against their will. Editorials demanded that an end be brought to the chicanery and kidnapping, reminded the government that the recruitment of British subjects by a foreign power was a crime, and that it was their duty to protect honest citizens from these thugs. But from everything Dunne read, the trade in cannon fodder seemed impossible to suppress. If a broker was promised two hundred and fifty dollars from some boy’s family to find a replacement for him, and the broker could nab a Canadian hayseed for fifty, it made perfect sense to Michael Dunne why men would run the risk of arrest and continue in such a profitable business.

  Not that Dunne thought Hind was helping crimpers and substitute brokers for hard cash; he was sure his employer believed he was furthering God’s holy work by assisting the Union to harvest soldiers for its army. But as far as Dunne was concerned, Hind had as good as opened his house to slavers. If trading in black flesh was an offence in the sight of God, wasn’t it a hundred times worse, a thousand times worse, to buy and sell a white man? Hind would sooner wash the feet of a darky with his tears than give a man who had been his slave for two years, who had practically got down on his knees and begged for a chance to better himself, the slightest consideration. The old hypocrite had put his thumb to Michael Dunne’s head and pushed him down just as his own father had. People who did that paid a price. Hind’s would be to pay wages to a man working against him. It delighted Dunne to serve two masters, Hind and McCorkle, betray the first in the interests of the other, and pocket the money of both.

  And so it went on for months, chalk marks rewarded with sovereigns, although as far as Dunne could see without much effect on the tide of brokers and crimpers. They still continued to arrive from the States. When he questioned McCorkle about what results were being obtained, all that McCorkle could do was make lame excuses. He said that the crimpers were slippery fellows and careful not to incriminate themselves. They needed to be caught red-handed to provide the evidence a court required to convict them, and that was a difficult thing to do. But, McCorkle added smugly, the mere fact that they knew they were being watched was making them so cautious that their catch was growing ever smaller and smaller. That was almost as useful a result as putting them behind bars. Dunne knew what to think of that explanation. McCorkle was a bungler and so were the people who worked with him.

  Then something occurred that changed Dunne’s comfortable situation. He found it necessary to report some bad news to McCorkle. Several articles of Mrs. Hind’s jewellery had gone missing, and everything pointed to the substitute brokers having stolen it. Mr. Hind felt this as a crushing blow, twice over. The men he was aiding had abused his hospitality, and reporting the theft was out of the question. The police would oblige him to answer questions about the people he had entertained and that meant compromising himself. So when Mrs. Hind unleashed her ire on him for the loss of her geegaws, her husband contritely offered a solemn pledge never to entertain people of that sort again.

  Never would Dunne have believed that Hind would so easily draw back the hand he had extended to pull the Negro out of the mire. The goose that laid the golden eggs had been well and truly cooked. The crimpers and substitute brokers would never again darken his master’s doorway. It was all over.

  But two days later Dunne received a message from McCorkle asking him to drop by the Brandywineavern at three o’clock on his next half-day off. Something needed to be discussed. When Dunne presented himself McCorkle was not alone. Sitting beside him was a tiny man with a shovel-shaped beard, deep-set eyes, and an aggressively crooked nose whom McCorkle introduced as Stipendiary Magistrate Gilbert McMicken. The title signified nothing to Dunne, but the moment McMicken opened his mouth he knew this little bantam ruled the roost. Turning to McCorkle, he said in a harsh, scraping voice, “Off with you.”

  Surprise glimmered on McCorkle’s face, surprise quickly succeeded by disappointment. “Shall I wait outside or –”

  “No reason to wait. I don’t know how long this will take.”

  When McCorkle had left, the magistrate said matter-of-factly to Dunne, “I’m a frank man. McCorkle urged me not to meet wi
th you. He thinks you may have lost your nerve and tattled to Hind. He sees no other explanation for his sudden break with the crimpers.”

  “Here’s the explanation,” said Dunne. “They lifted his wife’s jewellery. She laid down the law to him. Said she wouldn’t have them in her house again. I told McCorkle all about it.”

  “Indeed you did, indeed you did,” said McMicken. “Yet how very strange those substitute brokers should put their cozy, safe nest in jeopardy.”

  “Well, they’re a tribe of money-hungry rascals. Maybe the itch in their fingers overruled their good sense. The arrangement I had with McCorkle – I was doing all right by it. Why would I wreck it? And if I’d gone squealing to Hind about McCorkle like some fat hog stuck under a gate, would I still be in Hind’s employ?”

  McMicken eased back in his chair, stroked the tabletop with his fingertips. “McCorkle says you’re an extremely cautious, an extremely wary man. He reads that as timidity, a lack of fortitude. I thought it might point to something else. A quality I’m looking for.” He smiled grimly. “I’ve come to see. Put a few questions to you.”

  “What questions?”

  “Have you formed an opinion about who McCorkle is? Who he represents?”

  “I took him for a peeler. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have got mixed up with him.”

  “Yes,” said McMicken, “I’m sure an upstanding citizen such as yourself would wish to render every assistance to the police. But I ask myself if you ever wondered why the police were willing to pay so exorbitantly for your civic-mindedness?”

  “No.”

  “I think you did, Mr. Dunne. I think you concluded you were not dealing with ordinary, run-of-the-mill peelers.”

  “Well, maybe not ordinary peelers,” said Dunne guardedly. “Detectives. I figured McCorkle for a detective.”

  “Yes, a detective. Of a kind,” McMicken Mc. He stared hard at Dunne for a moment. “Have you liked your work? Did it suit you?”

  “Good enough.”

  “The thing is,” said McMicken, “at present I have a pressing need for men. You may be the kind of man I require, or you may not. I would need to examine you on your suitability. But there is no point in beginning that examination until I know whether or not you are interested in being employed as a detective.”

  “Same sort of wages – I’m interested,” said Dunne.

  McMicken gave him a wintry smile. “There is another thing you must be aware of before we proceed. What we are going to speak of is confidential. If I were to hear that you blabbed about anything I have to say I would be obliged to do you a great deal of damage. Let me assure you that I have that power, and I would not scruple to use it.” He paused. “So what do you say? Are you ready to continue?”

  McMicken reminded Dunne of nails, hard and sharp. He sensed the little bugger would not hesitate to do him harm. “I don’t blab,” he replied. “Ask McCorkle.”

  “I assure you I did ask McCorkle. You would not be here if he did not testify to your discretion.” Dunne saw he was growing impatient. “But I want to hear from your own lips that if you decide you wish to hear me out, you will keep your mouth shut about any matter I touch upon.”

  “I will,” said Dunne. “Go on.”

  McMicken resumed talking in his frosty, level way. “Some months ago I was put in charge of the Western Frontier Constabulary created by Attorney General John A. Macdonald. We are a force of detectives who do not concern ourselves with ordinary villains, burglars, robbers, pickpockets – common criminal riffraff. We have one task and one task only – minimizing awkward, unpleasant situations that arise in our midst from the conflict going on to the south of us. One might say our work is political. Do you understand the implications of that?”

  “No.”

  “What I mean is that it is political in the sense that the constabulary is more closely monitored and directed by the government than is customary. Attorney General Macdonald has a hand in the day-to-day running of our affairs. He and I have had a long personal relationship. I have done him many favours in the past and he has returned them,” McMicken said significantly. “He has my sworn loyalty. The efficient working of the Frontier Constabulary depends on loyalty, loyalty that binds the highest link in the chain of command to the lowest. Which is to say I look after my people. I take care of them.” He paused. “We have made a beginning in our work, but I am discovering that not everyone we have employed has the proper outlook. We need men who don’t let their private opinions interfere with their work. Could you be such a man?”

  “I don’t have no private opinions,” said Dunne.

  “Everyone,” said McMicken emphatically, “has private opinions. The question is, can a man shelve themas required? At the behest of his superior?”

  Dunne looked at him blankly.

  “Very well,” said McMicken, “let me illustrate from my own experience. A short time ago, I obtained a commission from President Davis’s government to assist Confederate escapees from Union camps to make their way back to the South. There was no pecuniary award attached to this work. I accepted it because I sympathize with the Confederacy’s struggle against the tyranny of the North. It was also my firm belief that an independent South would be in the interests of British North America because it would diminish the power of the United States on this continent. If they were weakened we could breathe easier.” McMicken pondered for a moment. “Nevertheless, I resigned this appointment. Do you know why?”

  “No,” said Dunne. “I ain’t got no idea.”

  “Because Attorney General Macdonald requested me to. It is his view that it is now clear that the South has no chance of winning this war. The writing is on the wall. And in the light of the script he reads there, we must modify ourselves to a new reality. This means placating the North. Whatever feelings of distaste this causes me, I have set them aside. Whatever wind Attorney General Macdonald fills my sails with is the wind I steer by. This is the sort of loyalty I speak of.”

  “Which means you ain’t interested in arresting crimpers any longer. Because the winds has changed.”

  “In a nutshell.” McMicken made a wry face, as if his own observation had injected a bitter taste in his mouth. “President Lincoln’s government has made a vigorous demand that we take action against Confederate conspirators resident here. In Mr. Macdonald’s opinion, it is only wise that we give full attention to this request. At present, we have a Southern plotter in our custody, a man called Bennett Burley, implicated in the Confederates’ attempt to launch an attack on Detroit from our soil. Unfortunately, we were not successful in capturing the ringleader, John Beall. President Lincoln’s administration is not happy Beall avoided our nets. It is necessary they be mollified.”

  “And how you going to do that?”

  “In the past, our courts have frequently proven unwilling to extradite Southerners to face justice in a Northern court. Mr. Burley’s extradition hearing is pending. There is no doubt that in this instance he will be given over for trial in the North. That is already decided. However, the secessionist men here in Toronto will do everything they can to prevent him being surrendered to their enemies. They may attempt to spring him from the Toronto jail, or, more likely, try to free him when he is escorted to the border.” McMicken tapped the table with his index finger, a soft insistent noise. “It is my responsibility to see the Southerners do not succeed. If Burley makes an escape, the Lincoln administration will accuse us of colluding in it. That would be most unfortunate.” McMicken’s eyes suddenly seemed to be regarding some far distant place. “But as you can imagine, this reversal of policy in regard to the North has produced difficulties. Men have had to be shifted to new purposes. Chop and change produces gaps. They need to be filled. At present I am short a pair of eyes and ears.”

  “Meaning you want to buy mine.”

  McMicken laid his hands one beside the other on the table and studied his nails. Dunne understood that this was a calculated effect, the depiction of a thoughtful man easin
g into an important decision. “That remains to be seen. Ordinarily I would wish you had a little more seasoning, but we are stretched very thin. The best of my people are taken up with the riskiest work. The role I am considering you for is not dangerous – it simply requires that you observe the comings and goings of certain individuals.”

  “And what is the wages for that? Watching comings and goings.”

  “In the past you have received a sovereign for each piece of information divulged – that is the piecework rate. Now you would go on the regular payroll. It would certainly be considerably more than you earn from Mr. Hind. And if you did stellar work, there would be bonuses.”

  “All right,” said Dunne, “I’ll take it.”

  “You have misunderstood,” said McMicken. “I need to satisfy myself that you are right for the job. McCorkle disparaged what he called your ‘morbid suspicions,’ said you were ‘dull as ditchwater.’ But ditchwater has its uses. It’s very difficult to see to the bottom of ditchwater, isn’t it, Mr. Dunne? It’s difficult to ascertain what lies beneath it. On the other hand, sometimes murk is simply murk. Nothing but stupidity. I need to know which it is with you.”

  “I ain’t stupid,” said Dunne. “I’m a damn sight smarter than McCorkle.”

  McMicken ignored that. “I am looking for a man with a grasp of detail, a mind for particulars, a sticky memory, powers of concentration and focus. I have found this a useful tool for testing those qualities in my men.” McMicken reached inside his jacket and removed a sheet of paper, which he slid across the table to Dunne. “Have a look at that,” he said.