“What was that, I wonder,” Adrian said.
“I don’t know. MacLeish came over and sent me back to my desk.” Buchanan brushed the sleeve of his coat. “But I do know Pitney got overruled. After a while he toddled off to open the safe, looking unhappy. It’s no work for a man, taking orders from a woman. I don’t know how Pitney and MacLeish stomach it.”
Sebastian put his watch away. Someday soon he’d find an hour to beat Buchanan to a pulp.
The clerk gave a wide-lipped smile. “Pitney came creeping back like a whipped dog. He brought her something—a little wrapped-up packet. Something from the safe.”
“What do you think Pitney brought her?” Adrian said amiably. “That little package. Did you see what it was?”
Doyle extracted an ivory toothpick from his pocket and began to pick his teeth.
“Something valuable.” Buchanan pinched the knit fabric of his pantaloons between thumb and forefinger and adjusted the fit over his knee. “That is, I didn’t actually see what he brought, but I watched Pitney come creeping by with it, clutching it to his bosom. He might as well have been wearing a sign, ‘I am carrying something immensely important.’ ”
“And then?” Adrian prompted.
“Well, she left, don’t you know? Just took her hat off the peg and left, right in the middle of the day, without a word to anyone. I . . . ah . . . took the opportunity to drop a few small matters on her desk. Receipts and so on. There was nothing on her blotter except for . . .” He swished the tail of his coat aside and drew a small letter from his pocket. “. . . this.”
Adrian held out his hand.
“It was what she was writing earlier, obviously. The letter she didn’t want me to see. You can see it’s addressed to her father. Normally, she’d hand letters over to the messenger boy.” Buchanan’s pale blue eyes slid from one man to another. “But she left it there on her desk. I thought that had to be suspicious. Since I was coming here anyway to drop off a few papers for Mr. Whitby, it was quite natural to pick this up and bring it along.”
Adrian kept his hand out. Buchanan held the letter tight, plucking at the corners.
“She meant for it to be delivered, and it had Whitby’s name on it. It could have been that she just forgot to give it to the messenger. She left in a hurry.” Jerkily, he laid it in Adrian’s hand and stood up. “I’ll just go ask Mr. Whitby if he has commissions for me. I’m not . . . Mr. MacLeish may ask me why I was out of the office.”
Adrian inspected the seal of the letter. “You opened it. That was not strictly necessary, Mr. Buchanan.”
“I thought it best. If it had been quite innocent, I wouldn’t have bothered you with it.” Buchanan wiped his fingertips against the cloth of his jacket. “It pretends to be a polite note saying she’ll be late, but the name she mentions is not one of our customers. I’ve never heard of him.”
“Thank you,” Adrian said. “We’ll study it carefully.”
Doyle laid a huge, friendly hand on Buchanan and pushed him toward the door. “We’ll take care of it.”
“If I could talk to Mr. Whitby—”
“Not now. They’ll be wanting you back at work, I expect.”
“I knew you’d want to see this at once. If there’s anything else you need from the files, I can—”
“We’ll let you know. You just keep an eye open.”
The door opened. Buchanan found himself speaking from the front porch. “It’s a French name. I find that significant. She receives letters from France. I’m sure of it.”
Doyle said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t right about that, Mr. Buchanan. Here now, watch yerself on the steps. They just been washed.” He closed the door.
Sebastian waited till Buchanan was down the steps and walking toward Booth Square. “Do you have to use that pig?”
“Men of sterling worth do not spy on their employers for pay. He sells Whitby commercial information to several interested parties.” Adrian frowned and turned the letter over. “I wish he’d stop opening mail.”
“I don’t like the idea of him close to Jess.”
“I doubt she notices his existence. If he ever annoys her, she’ll crush him like a bug. I wonder what devilment she’s up to now?”
“Something mad. She’s out there alone.” Doyle came back to sit heavily on the sofa, his big, solid frame taking up most of it. He looked worried. “I thought I had all the exits watched. I don’t like this.”
Sebastian didn’t like it himself. “She cleans her desk and leaves one letter behind, addressed to her father. She dodges your men and mine and disappears. Do you think she’s leaving England?”
“Wouldn’t that be nice? But I doubt it.” Adrian held the letter up to the sunlight and squinted at it, then unfolded the sheet across his lap. “Let us see what she has to say. ‘Cher Papa.’ That’s Jess being suspiciously French for my benefit. You do like to get in a sly dig every once in a while, don’t you, my girl?”
Probably the letter didn’t mean anything, but right now it was the only clue they had to where she’d gone. “Just read.”
“Her writing’s improved. One of the governesses must have finally accomplished that. When I was being their butler in Russia, she wrote chicken scratches in four languages. ‘Cher Papa. Just a note to let you know I may not be free to see you this afternoon. I go to visit our old friend to seek his advice and aid. He may urge me to stay, and you know how persuasive Monsieur L’Hommemort can be—’ ”
Adrian’s voice cut off, like a knife had slashed through the word.
“Monsieur L’Hommemort?” Sebastian took the letter. “Nobody’s named that. Let me see.”
Adrian whispered, “Oh, damn you, Jess. Why?”
"L’homme mort. The Dead Man.” Sebastian stood up to read the rest. " ’I will see you soon, one way or the other. Jess. P.S. Please do not be angry with Pitney.’ L’Homme mort. It can’t mean what I think it does.”
“It means exactly and precisely what you think it means. She’s already on her way. Damn the girl.”
“She’s going to Lazarus for help? She’s going to wind up held for ransom.” Jess might come from Whitechapel, but that didn’t mean she knew how to deal with a man like Lazarus.
“It’s worse than that. Sebastian, wait. She was Hand.”
“What?”
“She was Jess the Hand, with all that means.”
Pretty, elegant Jess working for Lazarus? The Hand was one of the inner circle of Lazarus’s gang. “It doesn’t make any sense. She would have been a child when she left London.”
“They are kids, generally. Lazarus picks the young ones. They can be trusted. She went to work for him when Josiah disappeared from England. Then Josiah showed up again, years after everybody thought he was dead. He took Jess back, away from Lazarus and out of the country.” Adrian stood up and pulled his coat off the back of the chair. “Lazarus takes money to leave her alone. But he never gave her up and never forgot. In his eyes, she’s a deserter.”
“And she’s walking right to him.”
“Right down his gullet.”
Doyle took his pistol out of his pocket to give it a check. Adrian was half into his coat.
“Not you,” Sebastian told them. “Just me.”
Doyle understood first. “Because you can get in alone.”
“We can’t fight Lazarus on his own ground. I have to talk her out of there.”
“He’s not going to just let her go.” Adrian picked up the note and began folding it and unfolding it, running his fingernails down the crease again and again. “You have to understand. You and the other captains pay the pence and Lazarus leaves your ships and men alone. It’s different with Jess. She took the shilling from him before she was nine.”
He felt his stomach harden to heavy, cold rock.
“He owns her, Sebastian, body and soul. Remember that when you go charging in there. He owns her.”
Twenty-two
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO GET TO LAZARUS.
Sebastian didn’t have time to waste, so he tracked down his shipping manager on the deck of the Scarlet Dancer and dragged him off to the tavern where Kennett Shipping paid its pence. The introduction was made. Sebastian held a brief colloquy with the lean, avaricious youth who sat in the back receiving payment and marking it off in a book. He described, exactly and pungently, what he intended to do to the boy’s anatomy if he wasn’t taken to Lazarus immediately.
He felt no surprise when a thin blade came from behind to rest against his throat. The avaricious youth had a friend. It was the etiquette of these encounters. He repeated his request, and the threat, this time tossing a roll of banknotes on the dirty table. A half-grown girl, filthy and cunning as a rat, was his guide through the maze of streets. Had Jess ever been as miserable and dirty as this child?
He followed her toward what was either the current lairing place of Lazarus, or else a convenient spot to kill someone and dispose of the body. Choose one.
That was how he came to Lazarus.
BEING scared turned her muscles to water, but she was kneeling, so her legs didn’t give out. She wasn’t going to think about men and women she’d seen, kneeling like this, petitioning Lazarus. She wasn’t going to think what had happened to some of them. They’d been scared, too.
Lazarus finished talking to one bloke and sent him off. He motioned another over, ignoring her. That was fine. Likely he was deciding what the hell to do with her, now he’d got her. She didn’t want to hurry him while he was thinking that over.
Time passed. Word had gone out. Men trickled in, in twos and threes, and sat on the benches or stood along the wall. She knew most of them from when she was a kid. Friends, she would have called them.
These were Lazarus’s thieves. Some of them were clever with their fingers or specialists in cracking houses. Some were evil brutes who beat men senseless in alleys. They wore rags, or cheap flashy jackets, or dressed respectable as Quakers. One or two wore the fine clothes of gentlemen and brocade waistcoats.
They were clearing the room for what was coming. They kicked the whores awake and hustled them out. The rabble of little kids and pickpockets and sneak thieves got cuffed out the door, too. It was quiet, except for a low, gritty whisper that rose and fell in the room, like dirty waves breaking on pebbles. It was men left now, men and a few hard-eyed women. This was the Brotherhood. They’d come to see what Lazarus would do to her.
Lazarus finished conducting business and exchanged a word with Black John. He motioned, and the pregnant girl brought him a string bag of walnuts and scuttled back to the sofa.
It looked like Lazarus had finished mulling things over. The whispers died away. The room filled up with expectant silence. She knelt where she was and waited. For a while, Lazarus cracked walnuts, one against the other in his hand, and picked out the meat, and dropped the shells on the floor.
He said softly, “Do you happen to remember the penalty for deserting the Brotherhood, Jess?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“What is it?”
“Death.”
Mutters ran through the men watching. Lazarus cracked another nut. He had very strong hands.
She knew Lazarus as well as anyone. Once, she’d obeyed his orders, the way all these men did. She would have died for him, if he’d asked it. Ten years ago Papa came back from France and took her away. She hadn’t seen Lazarus since.
“Did you get tired of breathing?”
“No, Sir.” Life seemed very sweet, just at this moment, on any terms whatsoever. She’d seen a man executed for deserting. The Brotherhood had done it with knives and it had taken all night.
“Then explain why you’re here.”
Once, she’d sat behind him, where that boy was, and watched Lazarus amuse himself like this, tormenting people, a good few of whom ended up dead. “You know why, Sir. If anybody in this town knows what happened to Papa, you do.”
“You think I give a rat’s fart what happens to Josiah Whitby?”
“No, Sir,” she said quickly.
Lazarus got up and walked toward her. She heard his boots, going past, circling her. She’d forgotten what it was like, being afraid of Lazarus. Been years since she was scared of him.
“You turned out pretty.” He was standing behind her, talking quiet. “I wouldn’t have expected it. You were ugly as a monkey last time I saw you.”
Nothing to say to that. She swallowed and didn’t move.
“It took you a long time to find your way back. I guess you were busy making money in all those foreign places.”
She felt his hand on the bare skin of her neck, and she froze. Ice speared inside her, everywhere. He killed men this way, with his bare hands, with a sharp twist to the neck. She’d seen him do it a few times when he was making an example of men who peached to the law or fools who tried to cheat him. She’d watched them dragged in, pleading and explaining.
He played with them before he killed them. He let them beg. For her, he’d do it quick. No warning. With her he’d be merciful. It was faster than hanging, he told her once.
“You’ve been back in London a time or two, haven’t you?” His fingers touched the side of her jaw. She flinched. Terror squirmed in her belly like long, cold snakes.
“I been ’ere from time to time,” she said. “Everybody knows that.”
He was just stroking back some hair that had fallen loose, tucking it behind her ear. His hand dropped away. “You’ve gone soft, Jess. Soft skin. Soft clothes. Soft inside, too, I think. I hate to see that happen to you. You weren’t soft ten years ago.”
“I’m here. That’s not soft.” She concentrated on breathing. If she didn’t keep her mind on it, she’d probably stop.
“No, Jess. That’s stupid. You weren’t stupid ten years ago, either.” He stood, looking down at her. “You’re a rich woman, I hear.”
That was bad. Lazarus loathed the gentry. The blonde girl against the wall there, the pregnant one, was one of his toys. He kidnapped girls from rich homes, kept them a few months, and sold them back to their families. Evening the scales, he called it. Generally they went home pregnant.
“Bloody rich,” she said. “Scares me sometimes.”
He walked around her and finished up in front. “I never had one of my own people turn on me. Not one of my special ones. Only you.”
“Yes.” Nothing she could say.
“You were one of my favorites. The best I ever had in some ways.”
No excuses to give. Nothing.
“Now you’ve come waltzing back. You always did take chances with yourself. Never could break you of it. You’ll get yerself killed that way, sooner or later.”
She risked glancing up. He used to smile when he said that to her. “I been lucky. So far.” She got it out past the pain in her throat. It was the old answer, from when she was the only one who dared to joke with him.
Something glinted behind the opaque eyes. “One way you haven’t changed. You still have more backbone than brains.” He nudged her knee with the toe of his boot. “Oh, for God’s sake, Jess, get up off the floor. If I wanted to break your neck, I’d have done it years ago.”
He turned his back on her and stomped over to his chair and sat down heavy. He sounded bloody exasperated, just like the old days, back when she was Hand. The tight coil in her stomach loosened a notch, hearing him sound so familiar. When she struggled to her feet she was clumsy with it, her muscles cramped up like she’d been sitting there a week.
“Tell me what’s happened to Josiah. Report to me,” he snapped.
Lazarus used to send her out to follow men he pointed to and listen to everything they said. Used to send her into shops and houses he was planning to rob, telling her to list up what was in them worth stealing. She’d reported back a thousand times, standing in front of him, setting words out neat and organized the way he taught her. Felt strange, doing it again.
She stepped up close and spilled it out, talking low so no one heard but Black John and the Hand. She tol
d him about Meeks Street. Cinq. The British Service. Reports from her agents. What she’d figured out so far. She knew what Lazarus would be interested in. She gave him facts. Speculation. Everything.
He always liked knowing more than anyone else. He collected secrets the way the other men collected silver and gold.
She talked till her voice hurt. Around her and behind her, the Brotherhood shuffled and spat and coughed. There was a clicking sound that might have been coins. The door opened and closed. A dozen gruff conversations filled the background. Nothing was going to happen till Lazarus finished talking to her.
Eventually he ran out of things to ask her and she ran out of things to say. She waited to see what he’d do to her. She kept her hands behind her back, grabbed into each other. Lazarus picked up a pair of walnuts in one hand and rolled them back and forth between his fingers, changing one over the other. “Why have you come to Lazarus, Jessamyn Whitby?”
That was the formal question. He asked it a dozen times a day. She could have been any petitioner. It was like she’d never been Hand. Like she’d never been anything at all. She’d counted too much on an old fondness. Looked like it’d been too many years since Lazarus had been fond of her.
So be it. She’d be a petitioner. She’d do whatever she had to. “I come ’ere . . .” Her voice shook.
“Yes?” Damn him for lazing back like none of this mattered.
“I come to buy a service, Lazarus. I need your records from the docks.” Lazarus collected his pence from the captains of every ship that put down anchor in the Pool of London. From every sailor who stepped ashore. And it was all writ down. “I brought payment.”
She dipped in her pocket and pulled out the bauble and tossed it to the Hand, sitting on the ground beside Lazarus. It was an unexpected throw, but the boy snagged it, sudden and swift. He was as good as she’d been, when she’d held that place. Soundless, he opened the pouch, checked what was inside, and passed it over to Lazarus.
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