The Blind Beak

by Ernest Dudley

  Of a sudden Nick saw pushing their way towards him the tall, handsome figure of Casanova and his companion. At once he edged his way in their direction, until he stood boldly before them and held one of Dr. Zodiac’s packets invitingly towards the girl.

  ‘To be sure, one so handsome and genteel as Signor Casanova or so beautiful and charming as you, madame, will have no use for its contents, yet I would be honoured were you to accept it, without payment.’

  Casanova’s dark eyes glittered with amusement. ‘I had no notion my fame had reached so far as Batholomew Fair.’ His voice, soft and musical, was marked by a Venetian accent. ‘We are overwhelmed by such frank generosity, especially as you will be sixpence the loser’ — glancing round him — ‘and with so many eager to buy this miraculous cure-all.’

  ‘Do you not worry overmuch about that. I fancy these oafs are so anxious to obtain it they will easily pay twice over.’ Nick turned to the girl, still keeping his voice low, ‘You may find these pills useful as polish for your shoe-leather. They are made of best wax and water.’

  He could hear Dr. Zodiac’s peroration reaching its climax and he would have to make ready to admit the mob into the booth. So pressing the package into her hand with a wink at the Venetian, he moved off, reimbursing himself with the extra sixpence as he had reassured Casanova he would do, by neatly charging a fat merchant twice over, his basket fast emptied. He went into the booth where he was pounced upon by Mab.

  ‘Why must you spend so long with that strumpet?’ she demanded, her pretty little face twisted up at him.

  ‘It was not she who interested me, but Casanova — he whom I pointed out to you earlier.’

  ‘I saw the way you could not take your eyes off her before,’ she snapped, ‘and now you had to fondle her hand under pretext of giving her a pill-package.’

  Nick gave a shrug and sighed inwardly, mopping his face, moist with perspiration, with his sleeve. Mab’s possessive rages were becoming increasingly intolerable. Intrigued as he had been by the ardour of her passion for him and touched by its fundamental pathos, he had come to feel, light and fragile as she was physically, the weight of her vain and overbearing ego bearing him down so that he soon must break away. Involuntarily his thoughts flew enviously to that dark, handsome figure outside and he knew the hour was speedily approaching when he must free himself from this environment of cheap chicanery, spread his wings to reach upwards, emulating an adventurer on the grand scale such as Casanova.

  ‘Do you not stand day-dreaming of her now?’ Mab’s childishly petulant voice brought him out of his reverie. ‘The pack of fools will be crowding in.’

  Nick moved rapidly about the booth, lighting the lanterns and thick tallow candles to illuminate to their best advantage the effigies before the onlookers gawking at them. He was at great pains to sprinkle a powerful citronella perfume over Pharaoh’s Daughter, the corpse exuding an unpleasant odour; then as Dr. Zodiac appeared, jostled by his eager audience, he vanished beyond the curtains of the stage at the other end of the booth.

  Presently, when all interest in the wax-works and Pharaoh’s Daughter was exhausted, would follow the laughing monster’s fireeating and flame-swallowing exhibition assisted by the dog-faced boy, who would first whimper as if with fear at the fearsome fire, then lead the applause by barking. Nick would meanwhile be making certain Queen Mab’s tight-rope, which was some eight feet high from the stage, was held secure at either end and that the tiny, gaily coloured parasol and skipping-rope with its prettily jingling bells on the handles were ready.

  While in front of the drop-curtain Dr. Zodiac discoursed glibly upon the fabulous characteristics of his two monstrous proteges, Nick was testing the tight-rope at one side of the stage, in readiness for when Mab would arrive, painted and powdered, her hair shimmering in gold-dust and her slim, tiny figure revealingly attired in spangled tights and low-bodiced costume, when through a crack in the curtain he observed Casanova and the girl faintly amused by the spectacle. At the same moment he perceived a young woman, whose trade he instantly recognized, stumble, as if jostled by those around her, against Casanova who gallantly gave her his hand to restore her balance. She smiled her thanks and moved away. With a glance to see Mab was not spying on him, Nick was through a gap in the canvas proscenium and into the audience. Edging his way speedily round the side of the booth, he was just in time to sight the girl disappearing outside. He went after her.

  By now the August sky had darkened, and hissing flares, lanterns and spattering tallow candles threw their unsteadily dancing light over the boisterous scene. He caught up with her as his quarry made to turn the corner of the booth and vanish into the darkness beyond. His hand closed over her wrist and she gasped and turned to face him.

  ‘I will thank you for that handkerchief,’ he said.

  Her eyes darted from side to side before they returned to meet his in a bold stare. ‘I know not of what you speak,’ she tried to brazen it out.

  For answer Nick jerked her towards him and tore open her bodice, whipping the handkerchief from her, she spitting at him with the fury of a cornered cat, her free hand clawing at his face so he had to draw back. She yelped with pain as he spun her round, throwing her violently to the ground.

  A few moments later he was in the booth searching among the audience for Casanova and the girl. He was discomfited to find them gone, and after making certain they had slipped out during his brief absence he decided to attempt to catch up with them. Sighting the Venetian’s tall figure and the top of the other’s fashionably feathered hat some thirty yards ahead, he sped after them, the handkerchief thrust deep into his pocket.

  His progress was impeded by the roistering mob and he would lose track of his quarry in the dark patches round the booths where the strident lights failed to reach. When next he saw them he involuntarily quickened his pace. Casanova and the girl were unsuspectingly being hedged in by a gang of unprepossessing-looking individuals whom Nick instantly recognized as footpads marking down their victim.

  Nick saw Casanova glance sharply about him to realize he and his companion were quickly being surrounded and pushed out towards a dark backwater between a big confectioner’s stall and a theatrical booth. Nick saw the impossibility of reaching the rogue’s prospective prey in time by staying in the flow of the crowd. Turning aside he sped behind the stalls and barrows to the booth ahead whose position he had marked.

  As he hurried unimpeded through the shadows, he stumbled over a young gallant lying in a drunken stupor. Picking himself up without apologies his hand encountered the hilt of the other’s sword. Grateful for this usefully opportune reinforcement he withdrew the sword from its sheath and hurried onwards.

  6.

  He came up between the stall and the booth just as the ring of desperadoes were about to close round Casanova and the girl. His sword already drawn and with one arm protectively about the latter, whitefaced with terror, Casanova had backed towards the wooden side of the big confectionery stand as some protection against attack from behind. Uttering a bloodcurdling yell Nick plunged between two of the bullies to the other side of the girl and jabbed his sword at the nearest thieving cove.

  ‘Do you stay tight between us,’ he shouted to the girl, who had turned to him in bewilderment, followed by a grateful gasp, while Casanova, his eyes gleaming, threw him a word of thanks. ‘Merci, mon brave.’

  ‘Have no fear,’ Nick answered with jaunty encouragement and the air of an expert fencer, though he had never held a sword in anger in his life before, and proceeded to cut and thrust with the wildest enthusiasm. The gang of cut-purses had drawn back momentarily in face of this unexpected show of resistance. But Nick caught the glint of a dagger and waving his sword windmill fashion, was about to leap forward to dispose of this threat.

  ‘Non, non. Ne l’ondoyer pas. Lounge — lounge,’ Casanova, translating for Nick’s benefit: ‘Do you not wave your sword. Thrust — thrust.’ Illustrating the action, Casanova lunged to
the attack, his skilful blade spitting forth like a snake’s tongue. There were yelps of pain, and, Nick, following his mentor’s instructions, the ruffians were now bunched together to be forced across into a crude canvas shelter over the entrance to the stage at the back of the booth.

  ‘Sacré Nom,’ exclaimed Casanova, as Nick’s sword neatly transfixed one rascal in the fleshy part of his shoulder, bringing forth an agonized yell and a spurt of blood, ‘he has a flair for the game.’

  With a devilish grin on his face Nick leapt forward. ‘Do you watch this swordplay, Signor Casanova,’ he yelled. He slashed at the ropes holding up the canvas structure which, with cracks and tearing sounds, suddenly collapsed. There were muffled shouts and curses as the trapped bullies fought each other to extricate themselves from the canvas, then more up-roar and curses from within the booth itself as the actors and some of the audience rounded upon the interrupters of the play.

  A little while later Nick had guided Casanova and the girl, both recognizing him from Dr. Zodiac’s booth and deeply grateful for his brave intervention, to a nearby tavern against St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Sitting at the windows of the first-floor room, crowded and the air thick from many tobacco-pipes, fumes of beer and wines, they overlooked the fair. Returning the stolen handkerchief, Nick explained how it had sent him after them. Casanova had presented his alluring pink and white, blue-eyed companion as Marianne Charpillon. They drank their small beer spiced with bitter cucumber, and Casanova’s attention was diverted by a trio of young men seated nearby, ridiculously attired in absurdly small cocked hats, large pigtails and very tight-fitting clothes of striped colours, each carrying tall walking-sticks ornamented with tassels. ‘Why, they are wearing two watches from their fobs. How can they indulge in that absurdity?’

  ‘They are dubbed macaronis,’ Nick explained. ‘And they wear two watches to show what o’clock it is and what o’clock it is not.’

  Then a fellow with a great scar across his forehead picked out a pair of pocket-pistols and laid them beside him on the table. ‘And who would he be?’ Casanova asked Nick in a low voice.

  ‘Do you hear the waiter call him ‘Captain’? He is a man of considerable reputation amongst birds of the same feather and resolute as any who cocked a pistol upon the road. He fears no man in the world but the hangman and dreads no death but choking.’ Nick’s gaze shifted to another customer before whom was a glass of champagne and a platter of oysters. ‘That man,’ he said, ‘handles false dice and cards with much dexterity and will drain the pockets of a large company in but a few minutes. You see him wearing his country cloth coat, all over dust, as if he had come a fifty-mile journey, though he has only travelled from St. Giles’s. Being a rare talker he could outflatter a poet, outhuff a bully, outwrangle a lawyer and out-face truth.’

  Nick took a drink of his beer and Casanova placed a hand upon his sleeve. ‘What has been your employment in the world that you are so well acquainted with its scandalous society?’ The question was casual enough, but Nick intercepted a look between Casanova and the girl which, though it occasioned little surprise, set his wits more atingle.

  ‘Let us say,’ he answered easily, ‘there is no sharper nor cut-throat but I am wary of him. For that matter,’ after an imperceptible pause, ‘no Bow Street Runner’s disguise could fox me, nor any police informant either.’ He broke off with an indrawn hissing breath and Casanova saw in the crowd immediately below them who it was had attracted his attention. The huge towering figure with the black bandage beneath the shadow of his three-cornered hat. Accompanied by a short, lean man close beside him he moved slowly, before his dominating approach the milling throng falling back. ‘Speak of the devil,’ Nick muttered.

  ‘Who is it?’ The strange, enormous creature and his companion, whose spectacles glinted in the flaring lights, becoming lost to view, Casanova turned to Nick.

  ‘Mr. Fielding, the Bow Street magistrate,’ Nick grated. ‘The Blind Beak himself.’

  ‘He is blind? And yet he is a magistrate?’

  At the other’s puzzled expression the girl vouchsafed an answer. ‘He is well known in London, people crowd his police court; they say that, stone-blind though he is, when a crime is committed he will visit the scene himself to question those concerned at first-hand.’

  As if she felt Nick’s gaze upon her she fell silent abruptly, while Casanova’s eyes over the rim of his glass studied Nick with an odd intensity. He might be any age twixt twenty and thirty, the Venetian conjectured, idly speculating upon what vicissitudes and quirks of destiny had contributed to the sardonic humour of his look. He glanced at Marianne Charpillon, but her face was turned away, idly bent apparently upon the crowd.

  It was with an elaborately casual air that Casanova took three playing cards from his pocket, placing them face downwards on the table. Nick’s gaze flicked to the cards and back to Casanova, who leaned forward murmuring quietly: ‘Your hands, however much you have used them, you have taken pains to keep well cared for. It is said a card-sharp may make his fingers more delicate by treating them with chemicals, but that seems a dubious practice. A Venetian sharper will rub his finger-tips with ointment or creams to add to their sensitivity.’

  Now Nick glanced at his hands and then grinned frankly, picked up the cards from the table, looked at them and threw them down so they fell face upwards; queen of diamonds, ace of hearts, ten of clubs. Casanova turned to the girl, who eyed the cards disinterestedly. ‘Cherchez la femme,’ he urged.

  Nick took up the three cards with his left hand, holding them so their faces were hidden. He transferred a card to the right hand, leaving the other two where they were, a finger separating them. He showed Marianne Charpillon the bottom card, the queen. ‘Remember well where it is.’ He turned the cards again, passed the right hand holding the card to the left, which he placed on the table, passed the left hand to the right where apparently he placed the bottom card, then returning to the left appeared to put the top card down beside that on the table. The girl found herself fascinated by the dexterity with which Nick handled the cards. She fixed her eyes upon the first one he had put down while he slowly shifted all three cards round. ‘Find the lady.’ Unhesitatingly she pointed to the card she had kept under the unwavering gaze. Nick turned the card up and she gave a cry of surprised dismay. It was not the queen of diamonds.

  ‘Fortunate you had not wagered on it,’ Casanova commented. ‘Very neatly done,’ he complimented Nick at whom the girl was staring. Casanova then took the cards, his hands flashing with magnificent rings, and went through the same manoeuvres Nick had performed. ‘Mark well where she is,’ showing the girl the queen of diamonds as Nick had done. Again she concentrated her attention upon the cards, and closely as Nick watched did not perceive the exact split second when Casanova placed the top, not the lower card, the queen on the table. ‘Cherchez la femme,’ and Marianne Charpillon picked up the card, looked at it and threw it down in disgust. ‘Foolish and simple game,’ Casanova laughed, ‘but thousands of dupes lose money by it and will ever continue so to do, so long as these exist.’

  He slipped the cards back into his pocket, considered his highly polished nails for a moment, turned to the girl, whose attention appeared again abstractedly bent upon the crowd, and leaned forward to Nick. ‘By a curious coincidence, it so happens I am in need of someone in my service such as yourself.’ Nick remained silent, but behind his half-veiled gaze his brain seethed at the prospect of this sudden opportunity of gratifying his hopes but a little while since as far off realization as a distant star, together with a shrewd speculation touching what lay behind this implied invitation. He waited for the other to put his offer into words. ‘And you care to attend my house in Spring Gardens, Pall Mall, later this evening you may secure a change from your present employment. Come at nine o’clock.’

  With a nod to him, Casanova, together with the girl, who gave Nick a faint smile, rose. Nick watched them make their way out of the room. From the window he sa
w them mingle with the crowd so swiftly, never glancing back either of them, they became lost to his sight.

  7.

  The house in Spring Gardens which Casanova had rented for his stay in London comprised a ground floor and three upper storeys. It was well furnished, everything was scrupulously clean, the linen and carpets, the silver and china of best quality. The housekeeper, an old crone named Mrs. Rancour, kept her kitchen with its rows of shining pots and pans in first-rate order. Marianne Charp-illon occupied the entire floor of the second storey, though she often came down to join Casanova and Nick at meal-times. Without acquainting Dr. Zodiac or Mab of the sudden change in his fortune, Nick had quietly taken his departure and removed himself from Batholomew Fair, returning to the booth merely to doff his motley for his ordinary clothes and then steal away. It was not Dr. Zodiac so much as Mab he had shrunk from bidding adieu. Anticipating only too vividly the jealously passionate storm into which she would fly on learning he was leaving her, he had hardened his heart, dispensing with any fond farewells, but disappearing there and then while the going was good. Thuswise had he drawn the curtain on this stage in his story.