The Blind Beak

by Ernest Dudley

  ‘And you elaborate upon what chanced last night,’ he said, ‘that concerned either you or I. My mind is a trifle hazy.’

  ‘Doubtless you are suffering from the effects of the drenching you received, together with your disappointment at the absence from the coach of the Paris jeweller.’

  He met her mocking smile with the realization she was no longer the young girl beside whom he had sat in such enchantment five years before. He found himself wondering what had accounted for this strengthening of her personality. ‘I compliment you,’ he said softly, ‘on having pierced my disguise.’ Her look took in that sardonic lift at the corners of his dark jutting brows, the glint in his long black eyes, now veiled by sleepily drooping lids. ‘I set one of my cronies at once to discover where you were residing,’ he explained to her.

  ‘I would have known your hands anywhere,’ glancing down at the strong, broad palm with the tapering fingers. She did not add how, discovering it was none other than he, had filled her with tumultuous excitement, mingled with dismay at finding him pursuing still his criminal career. Since that night five years ago when, as she had ever since reproached herself, she had failed to help him in his hour of need, she had striven vainly to banish him from her faintest remembrance. The memory of him had returned to her again and again. ‘That you knew me,’ she said to him, ‘your expression made plain.’

  ‘At what hour did he call at Beaumont’s — the fellow who brought you my message?’

  ‘Ten o’clock this morning, or thereabouts.’

  Ted Shadow had been emphatic no one else but Lord Tregarth had asked for her at the hotel. When it came to keeping watch upon the unsuspecting object of his attention his lynx-like eye could not be questioned, and his having no reason to be other than honest in his report, Nick knew Chagrin was lying.

  ‘What did he look like? A desperate-seeming rogue stumping upon a wooden leg?’ His casual tone gave her no indication of the trap he was baiting for her. It was obvious she was seizing upon her recognition of him last night to explain away her visit to Morande. Did not this anxiety to forearm herself against any doubt he might hold regarding her rendezvous at Half Moon Alley imply her sense of guilt? None the less, she was too shrewd to be caught by his question.

  ‘Just an ordinary man,’ she answered, adding she had been so puzzled at the time to receive the message she could not remember rightly how he looked.

  Nick must be careful not to let her suspect he was aware she was lying. ‘All this is most interesting,’ he said, ‘since I sent you no message.’

  She looked at him in excellently simulated surprise. ‘Then who did? Who else could have known you and I were already acquainted?’

  ‘The messenger omitted to mention my name,’ he reminded her. ‘You merely assumed he came from me.’

  She gave him a perplexed frown. ‘But no one except my friends knew I was in London.’

  ‘One person there is who does not occur to you,’ he answered, experiencing a curious sensation as if he were a cat playing with a mouse. Her look was innocently blank. ‘Morande, receiving intelligence from France of your journey, planned to entangle you in some nefarious scheme he had in mind. He would have his own means of learning where you were to be found in London.’ ‘And I believing it was you had sent me the message,’ she said, as if in acceptance of his theory. His hopes gave a sudden leap at the slender chance that what he had been saying for her benefit might, in fact, have a basis of truth. He tried to pretend Ted Shadow had either by some mischance failed to discover there had been another caller for her that morning at Beaumont’s, or had forgotten to mention it to him. She shuddered. ‘Thank le bon Dieu you arrived when you did.’ Then she queried: ‘How did you know I should be there?’

  ‘My livelihood depends no less upon my obtaining information regarding persons in whom I am interested,’ he replied glibly.

  Appearing satisfied with his explanation, she said lightly: ‘I had no notion my visit would be the object of so much concern. Since you know so much about me, it seems superfluous I should have to confess my motive for journeying to London.’ At the pressure of her fingers in his, the hard lines of his face softened, a tenderness flickered at the corners of his mouth. Was he about to come by so easily the truth behind her meeting with Morande? ‘You do not appear over-curious.’

  ‘You mistake me,’ he replied. ‘I am speechless with curiosity.’

  ‘Though I have tried not to admit it to myself,’ she began slowly, as if uncertain how he would take what she had to say, ‘I would not come to London again for fear of meeting someone whom these past five years I sought to banish from my heart.’ He was remembering her as he saw her when he had stood accused beside Casanova. As if reading his thoughts, she said: ‘Forgive me for that night, when I might have shown my faith in you.’

  She was buoying him up with the promise of the fulfilment of his innermost longing, the realization of a dream he scarcely dared to dream. And yet, with her so near to him, with the allure of her voice in his ears and the haunting fragrance of her intoxicating his senses, he wanted only to believe every syllable she was uttering. The hackney was slowing down, for they were approaching Beaumont’s and he felt a sinking of the heart.

  ‘May I hope,’ she was pleading softly, ‘for your continued interest in me during the remainder of my visit?’

  ‘You do forget,’ he smiled at her thinly, ‘the nature of my profession. It may be you will see me again at Bow Street. Or’ — nonchalantly flicking a speck of dust from an immaculate knee of his black velvet breeches — ‘perchance you may witness me perform my little jig at Tyburn.’ Her face paled and her finger-tips dug into his hand. ‘At least let me thank you for saving me from that dreadful creature.’ She passed a hand across her face in the manner of one collecting her thoughts. ‘I shall be at the Pantheon tonight.’

  ‘I had a mind to attend there myself,’ he interrupted her. She hesitated and he continued reassuringly. ‘Do you not concern yourself Lord Tregarth will recognize me as Captain Lash.’

  The carriage-door was opened. ‘Tonight then,’ she nodded, and crossed to the hotel entrance, there to glance over her shoulder at him, glimpsing the white streak in his hair as he raised his hat.

  Presently he stood again outside the house in Half Moon Alley. The curtains across the window at which he had seen the woman and the monkey were still closed, no sign of anyone watching. No sound as he made his way along the gloomy passage to the room. The door was open as he had left it, hurrying Chagrin away; the draught through the smashed window bellied one tattered curtain into the room — the other had been dragged down with Morande. He took a cursory look through the window, saw the inert form still lying, the head twisted. Satisfied no one was approaching, he crossed to the fire and kicked an ember into a flickering flame. From it he lit a taper and found the candle which had been precipitated to the floor. By its light he searched among the scattered books and papers on the floor.

  He found what he was looking for in a pocket of Morande’s discarded dressing-gown, a folded piece of paper, which, as he held it up to the light, exuded that faint elusive perfume he had come to know so well. Written in French, it bore no address, only the embossed myrtle and roses and dated four days before. The few sentences were addressed to Monsieur Morande and appeared, so far as he could decipher them, to introduce the Comtesse Chagrin de l’Isle. No signature, just a seal inscribed ‘D.B.’

  He caught the faint but distinct echo of footsteps in the alley. Returning the paper to the dressing-gown pocket, he snuffed the candle, and slipped like a shadow out of the room. Making out a short flight of stairs ahead of him, he ascended them as the front door opened. He waited there in the darkness, glimpsed a glow of candle-flame, then sounds of someone moving round the room he had just left as if searching. There was a sudden silence. The candle went out, footsteps receded slightly along the passage, the front door opened and closed once more.

  The echo of the foo
tsteps in the alley died away and he returned to the room where that intriguing perfume lingered and looked for the folded paper in the dressing-gown pocket. It was no longer there.

  15.

  As the Somershams’ carriage drove off from Drury Lane she leaned back in the corner exchanging conversation with Sir Guy and his pretty young wife, and all the time the image of that tall, rakish form in black engrossed her mind to the exclusion of aught else. She had sat in the box at the theatre apparently intent upon David Garrick storming his way through Richard II, never hearing a word of the play nor seeing the actors in their splendid costumes, her ears and eyes filled only with that other voice, that other figure. Just as when before the performance she had accompanied the Somershams into the green room to gossip with friends and acquaintances, she had been keyed up in the hope that across the chattering throngs of elegant beaux and women of fashion Nick Rathburn’s dark, sardonic gaze would suddenly meet hers.

  ‘Do you not concern yourself Lord Tregarth will recognize me as Captain Lash,’ he had reassured her, but she could not help feeling fearful for his safety, which conflicted with her longing to see him again. Since he had left her at Beaumont’s she had been the victim of a turmoil of emotions at war with one another. Her heart raced with excitement at the memory of Nick bursting in to save her. The sense of elation with which his presence had uplifted her then mounted in intensity as the hour approached for her visit to the Pantheon. Dawdling luxuriously in her bath, fragrant with perfume, the serving-maid had several times been obliged to disturb her from her reverie, and never could she remember having taken so long before her mirror, over the elaborate mode in which she arranged her hair and her apparel. Sir Guy and his wife and others at the theatre had remarked upon her loveliness and the heightened brilliance in her eyes.

  ‘La, Chagrin darling,’ Lady Somer-sham was remarking now as she leant across to her, ‘and I did not know your heart were made of ice, I could believe you to be at last in love.’

  She gave a little start and then smiled enigmatically. ‘It is the excitement of seeing you both,’ she explained, ‘and London again.’

  The glare of light from a street-booth they were passing as they drove into Oxford Street illuminated the interior of the carriage, their gleaming jewellery and magnificent apparel only half cloaked by the dominoes they wore, and she perceived a look pass between the Somershams. ‘Fine cooked eels for sale,’ the booth proprietor was shouting, ‘fine cooked eels, all piping hot.’ Suddenly a louder commotion arose from the crowd pressing round the booth and another cry was taken up by a score of voices: ‘The Bow Street Runners... A thief has been taken.’ With dread clutching at her heart, Chagrin glimpsed a bedraggled wretch struggling in the grip of two burly men, whose red waistcoats showed distinctly in the harsh light of the flares.

  ‘Some rogue taken by the Blind Beak’s men,’ Somersham said, and Chagrin caught a glint in his eye. ‘Soon every footpad and rascal will be cleared from the roads.’

  ‘Did the sight upset you?’ Lady Somersham asked her, and she forced herself to give a casual shake of her head. She must learn to mask her thoughts. She reassured herself that, even if she cried out the truth behind her presence in London, the Somershams would merely conclude she was joking or had taken leave of her senses. How would they comprehend the complex pattern of motives which had impelled her to play her sinister role? Fruitless to explain to them how her father, faithfully serving his beloved Louis, le Bien-Aime, had, upon France’s defeat by the English twelve years before, suffered unendurably. On his death-bed he had wrung from his young daughter the vow she would help restore France’s glory and pride. The new king with his Austrian queen sought friendship with Britain in an effort to forget past bitterness. The De l’Isles, remaining implacably opposed to such a policy, had banded themselves with others in France, equally devoted to the dead Louis XV’s memory. This faction, advocating war with Britain, were to find their leaders in Brissac and the Du Barry.

  Tutored and encouraged by the rest of the De l’Isles she had bent her mind and energy to one end. Such, for instance, was her inner motive for engaging herself in friendship with the Somershams. Concealing her true feelings was something she came to regard as a stratagem which, her mentors argued, the English themselves never shrank from adopting. She would hear Sir Guy boast how, an officer on Wolfe’s staff during the last war, he had deliberately used his wife’s acquaintanceship with certain people in France who had links with French-Canadians in order to obtain items of information required. ‘All is fair in love and war,’ he had laughed complacently. ‘If we have to fight the French again I would do the same.’ The English capacity good-humouredly to fraternize with a defeated enemy encouraged Chagrin to imagine spying against them was a game, a kind of charade with nothing sinister about it, only a hint of danger that made it exciting. Her encounter with Morande had for the first time forced upon her the realization she had set her feet along a darker path.

  Was it because, she wondered now, she herself pursued this subtle way of duplicity that Nick Rathburn had aroused in her an overpowering attraction? Had she found in him, professional criminal treading a tight-rope of danger, one slip from which would precipitate him to ignominious destruction, her affinity?

  ‘We are here!’ Somersham exclaimed as the carriage came to a halt. Sir Guy escorted his wife and Chagrin towards the entrance of the Pantheon, the ugly exterior only partly revealed in the torch-light and lantern glow.

  ‘La, but we must mask ourselves,’ Lady Somersham cried, and Chagrin and her husband followed her example, producing their black masks. A dense crowd, laughing and chattering, joking and ogling, milled about them in the entrance vestibule, everyone’s elegant attire hidden by dominoes of all colours and every face masked. Chagrin and the Somershams drifted with the stream of revellers into the large ballroom which was embellished with every luxury. Overhead, suspended from the beautiful stuccoed ceiling, represented as the heavens filled with gods and goddesses, hung a magnificent chandelier of enormous dimensions throwing its light upon the galleries supported by gilded pillars and the surrounding walls panelled to represent Raphael’s loggia in the Vatican, while the friezes and niches were edged with alternate lamps of green and purple glass.

  Already the floor was overflowing with dancers. Somersham had just sighted the loggia occupied by Lord Tregarth and his party when a sudden stentorian voice caused Chagrin to turn round.

  ‘Watch your pockets. This is Townsend, the Bow Street Runner, warning you all. Watch your pockets, I say.’ Regally making his way through the crowd, Chagrin saw a tub-like figure masked and wearing a domino which fell away to reveal the robin-red waistcoat indicating his profession.

  ‘It is the famous Mr. Townsend,’ Lady Somersham exclaimed, and again Chagrin experienced that feeling of dread, though quickly forcing herself to show a smile of interest.

  ‘One of Mr. Fielding’s crack thief-takers,’ Somersham put in. ‘Always to be seen at these sort of assemblies and a great favourite with the sprigs of fashion.’ By now the police officer was becoming obscured from view as, followed by admirers, he continued on his way round the ballroom uttering his familiar cry: ‘Watch your pockets. It is Townsend warning you all. Watch your pockets, I tell you.’

  The panic fluttering Chagrin’s heart subsided, and so as not to arouse the others’ notice she would cast a glance about her hopefully for a sight of that tall, dark form. Lord Tregarth’s loggia was decorated with little coloured lanterns and she and the Somershams edged their way through those crowded round Lord Tregarth, making himself heard above the music and chatter extolling Jem Morgan’s prowess in the prize-ring.

  Those who were not interested in prize-fighting were giving their attention to the huge platters of oysters and bottles of champagne. Pausing in his account of how his stalwart protege had finally overcome his opponent, the Orleans Butcher, Lord Tregarth greeted Chagrin effusively. She was at once the object of admiring glances from th
e men and envious looks from their fair companions. Chagrin sipped absently at her champagne and pretended to evince interest as for the benefit of his listeners her host launched himself into a graphic account of how the Flying Hope had been waylaid on Blackheath. He had toasted Chagrin in praise of her intrepid demeanour in the face of danger, when there was a sudden disturbance outside the loggia, the raucous voice of a broadsheet-seller was heard above the laughing chatter and lively music. ‘Captain Lash, the highwayman, taken. Read the story of his life and wicked crimes.’ The stem of Chagrin’s glass snapped in her fingers, and at her evident distress several glanced at her so that she was thankful for her mask which partly concealed her terror-stricken expression. ‘What is it, darling?’ Lady Somersham wanted to know as Lord Tregarth gallantly applied his fine lace handkerchief to the champagne which had splashed her domino.

  ‘Ce n’est rien,’ she gasped. ‘Ce n’est rien. I felt a little faint,’ and she murmured apologetically to Lord Tregarth, who called for another glass of champagne. The broadsheet-seller had gathered a morbidly curious throng about him as he repeated his cry, and she could see him waving the broad-sheets he was offering for sale. Lord Tregarth turned to her triumphantly. ‘Do you hear the news, Mademoiselle la Comtesse? They have nabbed the scoundrel who waylaid us last night. I told him I would see him jig at Tyburn, and by God I will.’ Someone passed a broadsheet to him and Chagrin saw the crude black lettering blazoning forth the notorious highwayman’s arrest. Lord Tregarth handed her the broadsheet to read. ‘You have not been to Tyburn, Mademoiselle la Comtesse? This is a unique opportunity to spend an amusing hour. We will make a party.’ His enthusiastic smile included the Somer-shams and others around him. ‘It will be a memory of London to take back to Paris with which you may regale your friends.’ And then cutting the hubbub of music which mocked her and the babble spinning about her came a voice smooth as silk in her ear.