by Parry, Owen
He shook his head. “Lord John had already seen to all that. Earl Russell has a certain fondness for Mr. Adams, you know. He does what he can for him. Lord John made it clear that he didn’t want anyone to breathe a word outside the Foreign Office.”
This was all awry. “But you,” I said, “on Friday, in the morgue. You were positively insolent toward Mr. Adams.”
He looked down like a child whose devices have failed. “I was afraid to go back to the office without an explanation of some kind. I didn’t want to look a fool, you know. I suppose I was impertinent. But I didn’t want to go back empty-handed and listen to them all saying, ‘Old Pomeroy never gets it quite right, does he?’ I thought there might be something I could learn, if I pushed a bit. Something that would show them all I could master a situation.”
Abruptly, he leaned forward. “Don’t you see? If I can’t even keep my position at the Foreign Office, what will I do? If my father should disinherit me? I have no prospects. I’m in debt. Badly in debt. My wife’s ill. I daren’t lose my position.”
I sighed. Perhaps he thought it was a sign of sympathy. If so, I did not correct him. Although the truth was that I just felt weary. And sick of more deceptions than I could count. Was anyone in England to be trusted?
Finally, though, the puppet-masters had made a miscalculation. Young Pomeroy had been lured to the penny gaff so I would see him and draw a false conclusion. Likely, that boy’s hacked carcass had been deposited in the park nearby to add to my suspicions. I was to go on suspecting Pomeroy, see, conjuring a devil from a dupe. And he had not been expected to do the one thing of which an Englishman had begun to seem incapable: Telling the truth. I had simply had a stroke of good fortune, at young Pomeroy’s expense. Even if I was God’s own fool. I had caught the lad in a moment of weakness and given him the extra dose of terror that it took to break him down. And he had blabbered.
So the dark men pulling the strings had erred at last.
Or had they?
And was the Earl of Thretford behind the murders? I knew him for a man willing to shed blood. The blood of others, shed by other hands.
And he would have had some knowledge of me, imparted by Professor Kildare, the mesmerist behind the plot back in New York. That would explain some of my enemy’s knowledge of me.
But what on earth could be the tie to India? To Thuggee cords and severed hands in boxes?
Young Pomeroy sat there, smaller than a grown man should have been. And I do not speak of physiognomy.
“Look you,” I said. “What is this business I hear of your fondness for the Confederates and Richmond?”
He could not rise above his blighted slump, for he had been hit hard. By himself, above all. But he said, “It’s just the fashion. None of the fellows I know thinks much of the American Union. Or of that Lincoln of yours. He’s said to be little more than an ape.”
I could have struck him. For well I knew the insults the whole world had ready for Mr. Lincoln. I would have liked to give them all a hammering. For if Mr. Lincoln was not high-born or polished after their society fashion, he was true and stalwart and good.
I mastered myself.
“So . . . you support the Rebels and slavers because it is the fashion?”
“I don’t support them. Not really. The truth is I don’t give a fig about your war.”
“But you pass on information. Do you not?”
“To blackmailers,” he said ruefully. “Not that they get anything from me they couldn’t have free for the asking from anyone in the Foreign Office. Except Lord John. He keeps himself above things.” The boy gave a one-note laugh. “He hardly knows the half of what goes on.”
A weak reed he was, if ever one had sprouted. But young Pomeroy did not seem truly a wicked sort to me. Despite his many follies. For he loved his wife, who was ill, and he stood by her in his weakling’s manner. That must have cost him all his reserves of courage. And more.
Twas nearly time for me to leave, for the evening was advancing. And now I had another call to pay. But I needed to clear up a final matter.
“The letters. Which you were to fetch from Miss Perkins, the singer. The letters to your wife. I take it the Earl of Thretford has them in his possession? Or is it Mr. Disraeli, do you think?”
He looked dull and drained. “I don’t know. I only wish I did. Then I’d know where to start. But I doubt it’s Disraeli. The letters went missing months ago. And I only heard from him Friday.”
“Then the Earl must have them.”
But he was not convinced of that, either. “He may have them. I can’t say with any certainty. I only know they were stolen. And that I was told that little slut from Eastcheap Street was going to return them.”
“Then these love-letters have not been used to blackmail you? At least, not yet? Not by the Earl of Thretford?”
“He may be holding them. As a sort of bank reserve. But he doesn’t really need them, you see.”
“Then what, in God’s name, is he holding over your head, man?”
“He knows,” young Pomeroy said, in the placid voice of a man worn-out completely, “that my wife’s a Jewess.”
EIGHT
I TOOK ME OFF TO MR. DISRAELI’S HOUSE, FOR I AM rash when angered. Wet air darkened the alleys and twilight brooded above the chimney pots. Sounds carried. In a lesser street, I heard the play of children I could not see from the hack. To the clop of hooves and the creak of axles, their small, thin voices sang:
First comes the packman,
Next comes the tallyman,
Last comes the bailiff,
One, two, three!
Then we left the lanes of care and passed before fine mansions once again. Mr. Disraeli lived in a proper house, on a proper street, but I was unsure he was a proper man.
His windows were lit to a gaiety, giving the building’s facade a luminous tone that suggested all was well and good within. I saw no forms from the pavement and realized we had reached the dinner hour. The Disraelis and their guests would be at table.
At least they appeared to be at home. Mr. Adams had mentioned to me that Mr. Disraeli missed no opportunity to play the country gentleman at a manor house provided by his backers. But Parliament was keeping the members in town with its plodding, which seemed to be my good fortune.
I should have waited, I suppose, for no man likes to have his meal disrupted. But I was hot, for I had been deceived, as had Mr. Adams. And the misery of young Pomeroy affected me, although by rights I owed him nothing at all.
I pulled the bell. And gave the door a whack with my cane for good measure.
Instead of a sniffing porter, a serving girl answered my knock. Her hair was out of her cap and the lass perspired. After hardly a glance at me, she said, in a voice too loud, “Have you brung the oysters, then? For we’re all at sixes and sevens. Though you’d ought to go round to the back where we take in the trade.”
“Begging your pardon, miss. I am not in trade.”
She gave me the up and down. “Collecting, then, are you? Well, you’ll have to get in line.”
“I have come to see Mr. Disraeli. My name is Jones and I am an American officer. The matter has a certain urgency. Might you ask the hall-porter to inform him?”
“You’ll find no porter here, sir, for Sam’s gone off in complaint of unpaid wages. Oh, ain’t the four walls in commotion? For the guests are come, and the food’s but arf-fixed, and nobody’s brung the oysters. What shouldn’t be et in the month of June, but no matter. For the master likes his rarities, he does.”
I began to suspect that the course of Mr. Disraeli’s household did not run smooth.
“Thought he’d be up the country, we did, so cook went off to Finchley with Mr. Grimes. Oh, we’re all in a terrible uproar, sir, and I wish you had brung us the oysters, but the master carries it off with savwar fairy.”
“Do you think,” I tried, “that you could inform Mr. Disraeli of my coming?”
She looked at me again, as if she had to
remind herself of my existence. “Oh, I can, sir, and I will, sir. It’s only that I been sent to look out for the oysters. What’s like to poison us all, since the summer’s upon us.” She offered me a confidence. “You know, sir, that the month of June don’t have no r in it. I’m worried the master will eat ’em and keel over dead. And me owed wages these three months and beyond!”
“Please, miss. Will you tell your master that Major Jones has come to see him? Upon a pressing matter?”
“Oh, I’m already gone to do that,” she assured me. “I’m halfway down the hall. But would you be a right gent and look out for the oysters?”
I told her that I would. And she went at last.
In a brace of minutes, the lass come back, with a worried look on her face. I assured her that the oysters had not slipped past me.
“Oh, now I’m to show you in,” she said, “but I ain’t sure you should go. For when I said you was come, the master smiled. And he’s always unhappy when he puts on a smile like that. He don’t like seeing bill collectors on Sundays, sir. Not that he likes them any other day. But Sundays always set him off most awful. Would you happen to know, sir, of any decent households as wants a parlor maid? Although I’m not above a share in the kitchen.”
I professed my good will toward her and, since the oysters still had not arrived, she cast her attention up the street, then down it to make certain, and hastened me into the study where I had enjoyed my first interview with Mr. Disraeli. He sat in the self-same chair, with the same little smile above his goaty beard, and his eyes were as dark and as deep in his flesh as ever.
He did not rise to greet me.
“How delightful!” he said. “And utterly unexpected! Won’t you sit down, Major Jones?”
I took a chair, but found I could not look at him. For I was afraid I might not control my speech. Instead, I trailed my eyes over his books, whose gilded spines shone vivid in the gaslight. The room smelled of tobacco and pomade.
Dinner guests or no, Mr. Disraeli waited calmly for me to begin. With his head weaving back and forth, ever so slightly, above the points of his collar.
“Sir,” I began at last, “you have been dishonest.”
“Oh, dear!”
“You deceived Mr. Adams. And myself.”
His face came forward, ever so slightly, as if he could strike out any time he wanted. But he only maintained that imperturbable smile. It did not alter even as he spoke. As though the man were speaking behind a mask.
“You have me at a disadvantage, Major Jones. I haven’t the least idea what you mean.”
“You gave Mr. Adams assurances.”
His expression shifted at last. To a look that wished to appear amiable. “Ah, yes! I did, indeed. And in good faith.” His face came forward another inch. “If I may ask—which of those assurances did I neglect, sir? The indelicate matter of your parson has been suppressed. Fleet Street has behaved admirably. I haven’t seen a word in the press. Her Majesty’s Government appears unconcerned. In what have I disappointed?”
“You implied that you would be the one who—”
“Ah,” he raised his head higher, “there we have a fascinating word! ‘Implied.’ Perhaps you were about to say that I ‘implied’ I would effect certain results that Earl Russell saw fit to attain without my assistance? But why should I have duplicated his effort? As long as my assurances to your minister were fulfilled?” For an instant, his smile seemed almost genuine. “As to anything that may have been ‘implied,’ I believe that ears are in the habit of hearing what they wish, rather than what has been spoken for their benefit. I cannot interfere with human nature.”
“You bullied that boy. Young Pomeroy. To find out all you could about the legation’s involvement with the Reverend Mr. Campbell?”
“Is there an ‘involvement,’ Major Jones?”
“Your curiosity seems to—”
“Ah! ‘Curiosity!’ Another word that never fails to interest me. Curiosity, Major Jones, is a quality I find admirable under almost every circumstance. Curiosity leads us onward to knowledge. And knowledge . . . knowledge is the engine of progress, whether in the realms of industry, in the far fields of science, or in politics. Why, I believe a man in my position would fail in his duty, were he to decline the least chance to learn something new. Something,” he said, with that masking smile upon him again, “that might prove unexpectedly advantageous.”
“You preyed upon the boy’s weakness!”
His smile was like the light on a field of bracken, when the weather is changeable and the clouds run. The moment I thought him in shadow, sunlight returned. But one thing was markedly different from our first encounter. He did not twitter. Not once. It made me think that matters had grown serious.
“Upon his weakness? My dear Major Jones! Weakness may be an explanation, but it is never an excuse. Weak men should not seek position, if they cannot withstand the strong. I think that is an accepted argument of our times.” He stirred in his chair. “But I’ve been unspeakably neglectful. May I offer you a glass of sherry?”
Then he paused. For a sliver of a second after he had finished speaking, his mouth hung open. He looked just to the side of me and said, “But I forget myself. You abstain.”
Twas clear that his slight forgetfulness annoyed him. And stranger still I found it that a man who had dinner and guests waiting would help himself to a sherry, as Mr. Disraeli did before my eyes. I do not think it is “done,” as such folk say.
“I want the letters,” I told him.
Before he turned to face me again, he said, “I find myself at a disadvantage yet again. What letters, Major Jones?”
I knew it in my bones, see. Pomeroy might funk a conclusion staring him in the face, but I would not. Disraeli had the letters the failed young man had written to his wife. That is how he knew enough to break him.
“Mr. Reginald Pomeroy’s letters. To his wife.”
He lowered his glass of sherry and constructed an amazed face.
“You must explain.”
But I was learning his tricks of language, see.
“The letters from which you learned enough to make him sick with fear. Enough to make him dance and jump for you like a dog. The letters—”
“But my dear Major Jones . . . even if a gentleman came into the possession of such letters, which seems unlikely, he could hardly fail to—”
“Mr. Disraeli, I am not afraid to call things as they are. You have blackmailed that boy.”
He sat down again, and neatly placed his sherry glass on a table topped with marble. “Is that what you Americans call it? When a fellow seeks to assist a young man who has strayed? When a gentleman . . . attempts to spare a threatened youth the gravest embarrassment? When a man of position tries, selflessly, to improve the performance in office of one of Her Majesty’s officials? Is that called ‘blackmail’ in the United States, sir?”
“I will have the letters,” I told him, “before I go.”
He shook his head. Delicately, as a fine, high gentleman will. “Let us explore the dimensions of theoretical possibility, Major Jones. I will play Faraday and put a supposition to you. Now, if the first party possessed such letters, and party the second desired to come into their possession—perhaps for dubious reasons of their own, although that does not figure in our supposition—what might the second party offer party the first in exchange?” His smiled catted higher. “In what I believe the Yankee terms a ‘swap’?”
I do not like games. Not games of cards, nor games with words. And I am not skilled in such matters.
Twas then I blundered.
“It seems to me,” I said, “that the first fellow would be lucky not to be known publicly as a thief. Who stole a lady’s letters while she was lying ill, and who used them against the loving husband who had written them to her. Such a fellow should be glad to save his reputation.”
Mr. Disraeli made a steeple of his fingertips, feigning deep thought. Then he said, “But, Major Jones, I fail to re
call any mention of thievery in our proposition. It was my unspoken assumption that the first party, far from annoying a lady and her property, had come by the letters in question in his customary role as a good angel. Rescuing them from less scrupulous hands, and keeping them safe and intact. But now we have begun to speak of motives, which are never as clear as they seem.” He took a decidedly slow sip of sherry. “As for your suggested reward, the preservation of party the first’s good reputation, I should rather expect that reputation to be enhanced, should the affair come to light. When it emerged that he had attempted, at some risk, to effect the best of deeds and preserve a lady’s honor. Or, at least, the illusion thereof.”
Now, I was in a muddle. I do not like to talk around things, or over and under them, but to say plainly what must be said.
“What are you suggesting, sir?” I asked, in a voice too near demanding for good manners. I have little polish, see, and Christian honesty will not do in society.
He rose, slowly, like a cobra from its basket. “Why, I don’t believe I’ve ‘suggested’ a single thing. We have been speaking theoretically, nothing more. Even idly, one might say.” He glided behind a desk and opened one of its drawers. “Yet . . . it happens, Major Jones,” he said, bringing out a stack of letters tied up with a blue ribbon, “that there is a measure of reality to my proposition. I found myself enabled to defend the Pomeroy boy’s interests and—at no small cost—I did what a gentleman ought.”
He held the stack of letters out toward me.
I took them. And, sick with the vanity of my imagined cleverness, I pretended to count the stack I had been given. Though it was a fib of sorts, for I was merely guessing, I said, “The rest of them, too, sir. This is not all of them.”
It seemed to me that such a one as Mr. Disraeli would not give all at once, at the first asking.
Obediently, he made a show of rooting through the drawer. And he produced another, smaller collection, bound up in a red ribbon.
“How good of you to remind me,” he said.
I got myself up to my feet. “Thank you, sir. You have done the right thing, see.”