"Your terms?" Stevenson was weary—though he hoped it didn't show. "I'm not saying you're wrong. But what terms?"
Again, Prendergast looked pained and innocent. The effect would have been comical had the situation itself been otherwise. "Terms! Terms! Oh, this is so heavy. Not terms, dear fellow. A humble proposition. A partnership. A"—he smiled to prepare for the word—"a silent partnership." He alone laughed. "I think I shall earn fully a third of your profit on Summit Tunnel." He laid no stress on the fraction; yet for Stevenson it was the only word that rang on into the ensuing silence. Then Prendergast said something that took Stevenson completely off guard: "And if I put two and a half thousand behind you, I dare say that would not be too far from a third of your actual capital? Eh? You see how determined I am to be fair to you?"
Stevenson's first thought was that Prendergast must know, or at least surmise, that there would never be any call on this offer. But did he? Prendergast, for all his railroad knowledge, had not sat through those long calculations last night; he could not know the coming finances of the contract in such detail as he pretended. Perhaps he believed Stevenson really did need the extra moneys now offered. Intuitively, unable to say why, he knew he had to preserve that illusion—if it was there to preserve. "Damn you!" he laughed ruefully. "I've met my match all right! You sincerely mean it?" Everything about him hinted that the offer of extra finance had turned the scale.
Prendergast for once seemed sincere. "I've waited years to meet such a man as you. You're in the ascendant, Mr. Stevenson. You'll steam ahead now and there's no power in the land can pull you off the rails—save your own folly. Dammit man—ye need me! So let's have no more talk of blackmail or bloodsucking. What if my share is a third, ye'll always get twice that. Here's my hand on it."
"And mine!" They shook warmly; Stevenson had no way of telling if the other were as insincere as he. "May I have back my little joke—my letter from the Duke?"
Prendergast's smile was refusal enough. "Now that is a problem. D'ye see— there can be no written or formal agreement between us. And it will, by the by, be an aunt of mine who ostensibly lends you the money. So—until our partnership is working and thriving—I feel quite sure you'd not want to be associated with anyone who was so imprudent as to return such a document carte blanche. And while we're talking of it, ye'd better do another bank forgery signed only by Chambers. I'll find the opportunity to substitute it."
"And keep the original!" Stevenson outwardly conceded total defeat. "I've known many rogues in my time, Doctor, but…"
"Oh, small fry, believe me!" Prendergast was delighted to accept his surrender. "Small fry beside the giants you're about to join. Good heavens, fellow, d'you think what you have done is in any way extraordinary? Somewhat blatant, perhaps. But yours…uh, ours…is no case yet for finesse. There's no fortune to be made without chicanery, and all the world knows it."
He leaned back, puffed thick clouds from his cigar, and waxed expansive. "How easy matters would be if virtue were more than its own reward! After all, if mankind had never broken the rules we would all be living still in naked savagery—not to say democracy—in the Garden of Eden. No merchants' club there! No crusted port there!" He reached for the decanter and poured another liberal glass. "No fine cigars there! So—your health! Long may you thrive…and me with you!"
Chapter 9
Stevenson's first act upon returning to his palace was to burn all the purloined crested papers in his possession save two from the bankers, Bolitho and Chambers. He was furious with himself for having fallen so totally into Prendergast's grip. It was no comfort to reflect that there had been no other choice. As soon as Thornton had told him that the Board, not the now-discredited Skelm, would reassign the contract, he had had to forge some evidence of credit. True, the letter of patronage had not been strictly necessary. That, in retrospect, had been a blunder. But the really damaging piece had been the letter on Bolitho and Chambers notepaper. If he could somehow—Lord alone knew how, but somehow—nullify that, the Duke-of-Somerset nonsense would immediately be less damaging. For one thing, no one had seen him hand it over. There was only Prendergast's word for it.
What was the flaw in that man? Arrogance? Vanity. Yes—vanity and overconfidence. But he was sham, too. Never underestimate him. He was quite capable of working out that the "Duke's" letter was too thin to be of any real service on its own—especially without witnesses.
The girl, Nora, was a witness, of course.
But apart from that, it left the banker's letter and its replacement as the aceand-all of trumps. If there was only some way to get the bank to own both of them as genuine…no, Prendergast would get there before him and prevent it.
Unless…unless he could play on the priest's vanity and feed his already fattened self-confidence. If he could get the man to believe that the firm of Stevenson was permanently stretched for money—until, say, Christmas—and if he could skim off all the profit before it went anywhere near a Manchester bank, and send it all up to Bolitho and Chambers…
Was that dangerous?
Yes, it was. Prendergast seemed to know a lot about that particular bank; he might have some way of getting the information out. Damnation! Of all the banks to have chosen!
Never mind. Risky or not, he had to do it. Chambers had to see fat and regular profits every month from now until as late next year as he could spin Prendergast's tolerance to accept. If he could tickle the banker's greed, he might get the forgery owned.
He closed his mind to all estimates of how slim his chances were. Instead, he basked in the thought of taking the good news to Prendergast. Would he storm and curse? Would he take it on the chin? What would Prendergast do?
He might even make himself useful—as useful as he had promised to be. For there was no doubt that, if you took away the threat of blackmail, the cleric's suggestions and his offers of help had all been most sensible. Not thirty-three per cent sensible; that was sheer greed. But…say, five per cent? And five per cent of Summit's expected profits was going to be something a great deal more than a sneeze.
He stood, suddenly erect above the dying fire, and breathed with deep contentment. That was his way forward—keep Prendergast feeling like cock-o-thedunghill for the moment, then add enough to settle his greed, and finally break the good news to him in such a way that he'd want to make himself useful. No stick. Carrots all the way.
It sounded right. In fact, the best thing about it was that it didn't in any way cut across his main effort, which was to start organizing the working at Summit so as to yield the £25,000 to £30,000 profit he knew to be buried in there somewhere. He was really going to need that girl Nora now; what a find she had been!
The thought filled his day with a warmth and a radiance that made Prendergast and his blackmail suddenly remote and trivial.
Meg, the old crone who looked after the shanty and served him his food, came out and watched until he stamped the sherds to ashes.
"Why?" she asked. "What's burnin' it fer?"
"For? 'Fore it hangs me," he said.
"'Tis pretty."
"Go pack me things, Meg. I'm leavin' this neet."
"Leavin'! Art in trouble?" She was alarmed.
"Trouble!" He laughed. "Nay! Tha'llt never guess. Tha'rt looking at main contractor for Summit Tunnel. Name o' John Stevenson!"
"Eee! Main contractor? Tha never are!"
Her delight brought back certain unconscious tricks her body had practised in her youth—a certain cocquetry. He saw that she must once have been more than attractive; and he regretted, now that he was leaving, never having got to know her better.
"Tha'd laugh," he told her, grasping her waist and doing a courtly little dance above the ashes. "This very day."
She grew younger still in delight as she danced with him. "Skelm's bankrupt and they put us in. I s'll stop at The Royal Oak in Littleborough—if they're still takin' railroad folk."
"An th' wench? Nora?"
"'Appen," he said. "If s
he wants. Where is she?"
"Killin' rabbits," Meg said. And then she reacted to the news all over again. "Eeee! Ye'd 'ardly give it credit! Lord John't main contractor! Eay!"
He stopped dancing and, his arm still encircling her waist, walked her back to the shanty. "Things'll change now, Meg. They'll get better. Tha'llt see. Ye'll all see."
"They said as th'explosion'd finish Skelm."
"'E 'ad but a narrow grasp on this contract from't start."
He felt her stiffen. "It were just by chance they give it thee, then? T'contract? An' thou were on't shift as made th'explosion?"
"Speak out, Meg. Never fear to speak tha mind wi' me."
"There's many'll say so."
"Many? When I stood there, too? Closest to't gunpowder for nigh on twenty minutes? Many?"
"Some, anygate."
He stopped short of the doorway and turned her to face him.
Then he took her head between his hands, almost a lover's gesture, so that she blushed beneath the grime on her face. He spoke earnestly and low. "God save them if word of it comes to me! I'd take a terrible vengeance—and I'd not mind that widely known."
She grew uncomfortable at last. "What'll tha do wi' this palace?' she asked.
"I'm givin' it to thee, Meg." He relinquished his hold.
"Me!" Now her delight was pure avarice, without a hint of the youth he had glimpsed earlier. "Nay! Me? Eay but…"
"On condition," he added.
She was wary at once. "Oh ah?"
"Aye. What wi' livin' out an' that I'll not get to 'ear ow't lads is talkin'. Not as I would if I was still 'ere. I need ears, Meg. Eyes an ears."
There came a groan from inside the hut. Pengilly! Of course. He had forgotten.
"'Ow is a?"
Meg shook her head dourly. "Bad today. Shiverin', see tha. 'Is brow's all degged with sweatin'. I covered 'im well."
Stevenson went indoors and crossed the room to kneel beside the injured man.
"Well, Pengilly?" he asked.
The eyes, screwed up in pain, shivered open. "Boy," Pengilly said in a voice little more than a rasp.
"How is it?"
"'Urtin' some."
"Let's 'ave a spy."
He threw off the blankets, which were alive with bugs. "Lay them out in't sun," he told Meg. Then he turned to undo the bandages he had put on the previous day. The cauterised stump had wept but there was no fresh bleeding.
"Cut to fletters dam'ee," Pengilly said. "Some ole mess! Some sore, too!" He winced at the pain. Then, in a more philosophic tone, he added: "What'm I goin do now then, boy?"
A thought struck Stevenson. The steam engine! The one he had hired from the Board in that morning's negotiations. "Pengilly," he said. "I s'll just lift that…" he tugged gently at the cloth, stuck in the hardened rime on the stump. All the skin of the thigh moved with it. Pengilly bit hard and dug nails in palms to avoid crying out. "Good. Sorry 'bout that. But tha'llt 'eal well there. That dressin's as tight'n dry's a bloody cheesecloth."
He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed the sweat from the man's brow. "Did tha ever man a steam engine down in Cornwall?"
"'Es. When I were a boy. Tended…" he dissolved in pain. "My dear soul!"
"Easy now! Easy! Meg!" he shouted to the crone outside. "Some gin!"
But Pengilly's hand on his arm stopped him. "Nooo. Nooo. I'd sooner the pain!"
"Go on then. Steam engine."
"'Es. I tended th' engineer over to Carleen District, Wheal Vor."
"Big one?"
"Middlin'. Middlin'. Fifty-four inch, six-ten stroke. Workin' single."
Meg came over with a broken china cup near filled with gin.
"Whim or pump?"
Pain again racked Pengilly, making a reply impossible. Stevenson held the cup to his lips. "Come on," he said. "It'll dill't pain." This time there was no protest.
"What for do 'ee ask?" he said when he had drained the cup and breathed out the fire.
"Whim or pump?" Stevenson insisted.
"Pump."
"Leave'm be Lord John," Meg said.
But Stevenson persisted. "Coulds't man a whim engine?"
Pengilly pondered. "'Es. 'E in't no different, really. Whim or pump."
"I mean, wi' thy leg gone?"
"Why, calculate I could." He even managed a chuckle. "Don't need a foot for'n damee. T'int like a 'orse!"
"They'll be putting one more steam whim up on't tops. On't first shaft— number two, seein' as number one'll now be blind. Coulds't tend'n? If tha'd a boy to 'elp thee wi't furnace?"
"'Es," Pengilly was confident. "Course, they won't pay s'much. Not wi' this yer 'ole leg gone."
Stevenson smiled. "Me, Pengilly. Not they. I'm paymaster now, see tha. I'll pay thee what't job's worth. An' thall't get what bonus is goin. An' I'll damn that man 'oo says I built on others' mis'aps."
"Why, thankee boy, thankee." His eyes sparkled again. "I'll do'n for'ee. By god I'll do'n!"
"There." Stevenson's relief was almost as great as the Cornishman's. "Rest easy now. Easy. Job's waitin' on thee. We s'll manage wi' 'orses while tha leg mends."
He stood and smiled at the man. The gin was working. The wrinkled eyes fell shut. "Thankee. You're some proper boy, you are. Proper ansom boy."
He and Meg tiptoed away as the man fell back into his stupor.
"Th'art a good man, Lord John," she said.
Stevenson shook his head. "Pengilly, too. 'E's too good a man to put on't parish. See tha, 'e can ave my bed while 'e's mended; then it's thine, along o't rest."
They had reached the door and went outside again. "Now. T'bargain twixt thee an me. Strucken?"
"Tha'llt give us this palace if I…"
"Hold thy tongue an' stake't door." Stevenson was cautious of what Pengilly, drunk or no, might overhear. "Tha knows't rest. Tha knows what's what. Is't strucken?"
For an answer she bared her toothless gums at him, spat drily at the palm of her hand, and held it forth to shake his.
"Strucken," she said.
Chapter 10
Nora was well spattered with blood and fur by the end of the day. As soon as she had heard of the breaking up of the rabbit warren she had run, still barefoot, across the fields to where the ploughmen, labourers, ferrets, and dogs were already beginning their work.
The warren was of some great age. At its heart was a mound enclosed by a once-stout stone wall in which there had been trapdoors for the warrender to let his conies in and out. But that had been in medieval days. Careful regulation of that sort had long since relapsed into chaos. The wall, now breached in dozens of places, had disgorged hundreds of rabbits into the country around, turning it into one vast unregulated warren—a plague of rabbits, intolerable to farmer and gamekeeper alike. Now every hole in that maze was to be dug out and obliterated. The rabbits were to be killed to the last, least one that could be caught. The mere thought of it set Nora's pulse racing.
For hunting was in her blood. Her grandfather had let their farm at Normanton go to ruin while he hunted and shot and fished anything smaller than himself that had fur, feather, or scales. Her father, too, would always leave his loom when the hunt was near enough to reach and follow on foot. Often he took Nora with him. She never forgot the day she had seen a fox cornered and torn apart. The look in its eyes as it faced the certainty of death had held her spellbound for weeks.
And now, as she pounded over the burrows, even before she saw the first rabbit of the day, she sensed the terror that thumped beneath her feet, through those hundred upon hundred little hearts, and the shivering, furry bodies, waiting in bewilderment and panic as their world fell about them.
By sheer good fortune, it was she who killed the first rabbit of the day. She stood with a stone poised over a hole that was being routed by a ferret. A young buck came out, too fearful of what was behind to be cautious of what lay ahead. Quicker than thought, Nora brought the stone down; and her shriek of joy as the rabbit froze and was obliterated spread among the
company like an infection.
By midmorning the rabbits were coming from earth as fast as men, women, youngsters, and dogs could kill them—faster at times, for several dozen escaped into the fields around. But hundreds more were caught and finished off.
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