by John Drake
Slym chose a bland, open question. One that he hoped would not be seen as a threat to anybody.
“How long did you know Mr Fletcher?”
“Why do you want to know?” said she.
“Because powerful interests are involved.”
“Whose?”
“Many people’s.”
“Whose specifically?”
“Yours, perhaps.”
“why?”
“Because I could offer you a lot of money.”
“Why?”
Slym paused again. Miss Booth was not what she looked. She was sharper and cleverer. She was fully alert, staring him straight back in the eye, and not giving an inch. Slym’s every instinct told him that he’d found a gold-mine of information on Jacob Fletcher. But first he had to find out how things stood between her and Mr Fletcher.
“Because, my dear,” he said, “things are very awkward where Mr Fletcher is concerned. He has friends and he has enemies, and it’s hard to know which is which.”
“And which are you, sir?” she said, giving nothing away. Slym settled down for a long and difficult contest. But he had all night, if necessary; he’d paid for it.
“Mr Fletcher stands to inherit a great fortune,” he said, “and I act for the lawyers who seek to bring him to his inheritance.”
“Oh,” said she, “you mean the Coignwood money?” she shook her head. “He doesn’t want it.”
“What?” said Slym, not sure that he’d heard aright.
“He doesn’t want it,” she repeated. “He only wanted to make his own fortune his own way.”
“But it’s hundreds of thousands ...” said Slym, in disbelief.
“Whoever holds the Coignwood money is one of the greatest in the land.”
“He knows that,” she said, firmly. “And he still doesn’t want it. But why should this concern you? For whom are you acting?”
Slym was thrown over by this unbelievable piece of information, but he did his best.
“For Nock and Manton,” said he, giving the first two names that came into his head. Nock and Manton were London gun-makers, but Kate Booth accepted this clumsy effort without comment.
“In what capacity do you act?” she said, glancing at the heavy fists and the fierce, glowering face. “You will not tell me that you are a clerk out of an office!”
“I pursue my employers’ investigations,” said he, carefully.
Kate sneered. “You look like a catchpole,” she said. “Are you an officer of police?” Slym laughed a rare laugh. It was like an animal’s bark.
“No, ma’am,” said he, “I’m no Bow Street man. I act in a private capacity.” But he saw that she’d spotted him, more or less, for what he was, and his professional vanity was aroused. He squared his shoulders and added, with no little pride, “I am Samuel Slym of Aldgate! Perhaps you know the name?”
“Slym?” said she and smiled slightly. “No.”
“Oh,” said he, and shook his head. This was no time to allow himself to become irritated. He leaned closer to the girl and composed his face as best he could. His intention was to be reassuring and he placed one broad, knuckly hand on her slim white fingers. But she glanced once at the hand and then stared coldly back at him. She managed the remarkable feat of making Slym feel impertinent. He took his hand away and leaned back. “Careful!” he thought. “Careful!”
“Ma’am,” said he, “I’ve no graces for the ladies, and my face would frighten the devil, but I must ask you to trust me.” He thought she relaxed a little and so he spun her his tale. “The truth is, ma’am, that it makes no difference to my employers whether Mr Fletcher wants the Coignwood guineas or no.” He paused to check an important matter. “What do you know of the law of legacies, ma’am?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“I see,” said Slym, serious as a judge. “Then I must make a brief explanation. The case is, that under the Integument of Legacy Bill of 1751, without Mr Fletcher either takes his rights under the extant Will, or assigns them away by Deed of Draft, then the whole vast fortune of riches is bound frozen!” He studied her face to see how she was accepting this nonsense. “Do you see, ma’am? They cannot move without the legal heir, and meanwhile great matters of estate and money are bearing down upon them.”
“I see,” she said, and to his intense satisfaction, Slym saw the great brown eyes fixed in attention upon him. For all her sharpness, she was so lovely with her white gown and little heart-shaped face that any normal man would have been touched to the core. And even Slym was smitten with a quick pang of guilt for the nasty trick he was about to play on her. But he crushed this sentiment with practised ease.
“Now, ma’am,” said he, “may I ask you an important question?”
“Yes,” she said.
“‘Tis about Mr Jacob Fletcher.”
“Yes?” she said, and her hands fidgeted in her lap. She blinked several times.
“Ah-ha!” thought Slym to himself. “That’s the way the wind blows is it?”
“Ma’am,” he continued, “I take a risk in asking this, but I must know how you stand. Can I take it that you are a friend of Mr Fletcher, that you are on his side, so to speak … like myself?” For once Slym’s stony seriousness fitted the part. Added to his unblinking stare, it gave a passing good imitation of earnestness and integrity. In any case, good, bad or indifferent, it challenged Kate Booth to make up her own mind on Mr Fletcher and on the wisdom of spurning the advances of wealthy gentlemen.
“Yes,” she said, “I’d count him a friend.”
“I knew it!” he said, as if surprised. “And so, ma’am, I can declare to you the full truth of my commission. That is, to find Mr Fletcher and somehow obtain his co-operation to make all right with my principals!” She was hanging on his words, openmouthed now. “So, ma’am, will you help me find him?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’ll help you. What have I to lose?”
“Then you must tell me everything you know of him, sparing nothing. In my business the smallest detail can be of pivotal importance …”
And so Kate Booth told Sam Slym all about Jacob Fletcher. Despite her instinctive caution with a man like Slym, she found she was more willing than she’d thought to talk upon this particular subject. She was careful, of course, and held back certain matters. She tried to, at least.
They talked for hours. Slym took out a pencil and a notebook and made notes in his neat shorthand. He asked a number of questions. He made more notes.
When Slym finally folded his memorandum book and put it away, he did so with a great delight. He was delighted not for what Kate Booth had told him but for what she had not told him. As regards Mr Jacob Fletcher he’d learned much that was useful — such as the fact that if ever Mr Fletcher were to be taken, then it would be a job for six men at least. He’d also learned that the girl didn’t know where Fletcher was. All she knew was that he’d said he was going to London to make his fortune. All well and good. London was Slym’s home ground.
But none of these things had swelled Slym’s bosom with delight. What had done that was something hidden behind the girl’s words. There was something she’d kept back. He’d nearly trapped her into spilling it once or twice, but she’d shied away. It was something Fletcher had done, and that she wouldn’t reveal. In that case, thought Slym, whatever it was, it was no small thing. Slym would have wagered his reputation that there was a hanging in it for Fletcher somewhere.
In fact, fitting that together with what he’d beaten out of Salisbury, Slym wondered whether the formidable Mr F. might not have had something to do with the disappearance of Bosun Dixon of H.M. Press tender Bullfrog? Perhaps he’d thrown the bugger over the side? An interesting idea which Slym would pursue. But the immediate problem was to get Miss Booth out of Mrs Simpson’s and safe back to London where she could be questioned properly.
“Ma’am,” said Slym, “you have become a material asset in my investigation and if we are to find Mr Fletcher I shall need your
active assistance. Can I therefore ask you to accompany me back to London? My principals, Nock and Manton, will cover all expenses, and there will doubtless be a substantial reward.” He paused and chose his next words with very great care. “You’d be well provided for, believe me. You’d be your own, free, independent woman.”
Slym was an artful man. He’d hit the mark precisely. Kate was still suspicious of him and still unsure of her feelings for Jacob Fletcher, while here at Mrs Simpson’s she was well paid, well fed and protected. But she knew how short would be her future in this house, with its high standards, and she feared the inexorable decay from gilded courtesan to ragged streetwalker, and a nasty death in the gutter from some loathsome disease.
The risk in going with Slym was considerable. But it offered hope, which her present life did not. Even so, many girls would have clung to the temporary security of Mrs Simpson’s house. But Kate was a far tougher creature than her fairy looks would ever have led a man to believe.
20
“Phiandra!” I yelled. “Phiandra ahoy!” I took the risk of standing in the boat and waving an oar over my head. It was a vast and empty ocean. Declaration was long gone, and I’d been suddenly smitten with the fear that Phiandra might pass me by. If she did, it would be a miserable death from thirst for me and my semi-conscious companion.
But I needn’t have worried. Phiandra altered course towards me and wallowed along under her tattered sails, with spars wobbling like an old man’s loose teeth and the water gushing from her scuppers where the pumps were throwing it, as she tried to keep afloat. She looked more like a shipwreck than a man-o’-war and the closer she came, the more obvious it was that she’d been badly smashed by Declaration’s gunners.
I looked her over and shook my head in amazement. It was hard to believe that Phiandra was still seeking battle while Declaration was running for home. Soon I could hear the hack and clatter of the carpenter’s crew busy at work on battle-damage and even the groans of the wounded. I searched her rail for a familiar face …
“Mr Seymour!” says I, with a great shout. “It’s Fletcher! Jacob Fletcher! Permission to come aboard, sir?”
Seymour had been First Lieutenant under Captain Bollington, but I knew from the Gazette that Bollington had been given another ship after his great victory at Passage d’Aron. So I guessed that Seymour might now be Captain. I was right too and I saw him throw back his head and bellow at his men. He waved at me, too, which I took to be a good sign.
Soon Phiandra’s bulk hung over me and she lay to under backed main topsail to let me come under her lee. They dropped a rope and I went up the side as best I could, by the mizzen chains. Somebody dropped into the boat to help Brown, ‘cos he wasn’t up to climbing on his own. (That’d teach the lubber to point knives at me!)
As soon as I came over the rail on to the quarterdeck I was horrified at the damage Phiandra had suffered. She was floating on courage alone, if you ask me. The clank of the pumps echoed from end to end of her, her bulkwarks were beaten flat all down the side that had faced the enemy, guns were thrown over like toys, the mainmast was sprung and secured by a massive serving with heavy cable, and looked ready to go over the side at the first blow of wind, and her decks looked like a farmer’s field after the plough. Not a man aboard was idle and furious activity was under way to make right and mend.
“Fletcher?” said Captain Seymour. “Fletcher the Coignwood heir? What the hell are you doing here?”
He was wild-eyed and exhausted. He was an active, busy little man and even at his best he’d looked odd with his scruffy ways and big head on a short-limbed body. But now he looked like a troll from a smoke-filled cavern. His uniform was in rags, he’d lost his hat and one sleeve hung empty from the shoulder where the stitches had parted that normally kept it folded away. He’d left an arm at Passage d’Aron and now he had to cut his food left-handed, like Nelson.
“Sir!” cries a voice, and a Lieutenant was tugging at Sey-mour’s one arm. A new Lieutenant. New to me, that is, and appointed since I left the ship last July. “More men for the pumps, sir!” says this fellow, saluting. “Water’s gaining, sir. Breast deep in the hold. Can you spare me another ten men?”
“No!” says Seymour. “We shall lose both masts presently if I take a man from the work of securing them. Do what you can.”
The Lieutenant opened his mouth, shut it again, looked helplessly at me, as if for support, saluted and darted away back to his pump crew.
“Fletcher!” says Seymour again, peering at me closely. “What in God’s name are you doing here? I thought you’d gone to make your fortune in London?” Then his eyes narrowed nastily, as he noted my Yankee coat with its shiny buttons. “Have you taken service with the enemy?” says he.
This was a most undesirable turn of conversation, and one I hadn’t expected. But I was saved for the moment by a rush of men going past at the double, hauling on a line. Seymour and I had to leap out of their way.
One of the men hauling on that line was Sammy Bone, my old messmate and probably the best friend I had in all the world. He stared at me in amazement as he went past and then he was gone. That’s how desperate it was aboard Phiandra at that moment. As they rushed past with the Bosun screaming at them, Seymour stumbled and what with his tiredness and his one arm, he’d have gone over, but I grabbed him and set him on his feet, swinging him easily over the stump of spar that had tripped him. He was a quick-thinking man and instantly put his conclusions to the ship’s advantage.
“Hmm!” says he thoughtfully. “You have grown big, Mr Fletcher!”
“Aye-aye, sir!” says I, and he glanced again at my blue coat.
“And you look to be a Sea Service Officer of some kind, so you’ll recognise the difficulties that face me, and I’ll ask you to get below and help with the pumps. At the double now!”
“Aye-aye, sir!” says I. The cheek of it! Ordering me about like a common hand before the mast. But what could I do? Phiandra was going down under our feet, anybody could see that. This was not at all what I’d expected when I left Declaration, but it was no time for standing on my dignity. There was nothing for it but to take my place at the pumps.
Pumping is the worst job in a ship. It’s the worst because it’s unremitting and miserable, and because when you really have to go at it, you do so because the alternative is drowning. The main work fell to Phiandra’s chain pump, the most powerful in the ship. It could accommodate up to thirty men at the cranking handles, to drive a big sprocket-wheel set in a cistern mounted on the gun-deck. The sprocket-wheel drove a continuous chain down to the well, far below, which collected the bilge water. The chain drew water up from the well through a water-tight casing, by means of leather “saucers” fixed at intervals to the chain, and which tightly fitted inside the casing.
If the men didn’t tire, and the chain didn’t break (as sometimes it did) then the chain pump would raise two tons of water per minute — not bad going before the days of steam. But I hated the work. Unfortunately pumping is one of the many things about seafaring that everybody thinks the Good Lord made me specifically to do.
So I made the best of it. I shoved three or four ghastly-tired, half-dead matelots aside, rolled up my sleeves and took their place. Some of them would have dropped and slept where they lay, but the Bosun’s mates came round and helped them to other duties with the toes of their boots, while I turned the handles with the rest, and sent the water foaming out of the pump dale.
And that was my return to my “home”. I’d have been better off in Declaration with Cooper and his long horse-face and his wicked liberties with the truth. Phiandra was like an ant-hill that’d been turned with a spade. Poor mad creatures were charging in all directions trying to offset disaster and hauling gear in all directions. Everyone was shouting and nobody had time to talk. Another of my old messmates, Norris Polperro, was one of the pumping team. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, but he was too far gone in exhaustion even to notice me.
I don’
t know how long I laboured at the pumps, except that it was long enough to dry my clothes after my swimming, but eventually, the two frigates that had been topsails on the horizon, Endemnon and Fydor, were alongside and sending their boats manned to give assistance.
That brought a respite as hundreds of fresh men poured into the ship. They swarmed everywhere with the energetic initiative of British seamen and every man seemed to do two jobs at once without ever getting in any other man’s way.
And as for me, I got sent for and got my chance to talk. Norris Polperro gaped at me as a little middy bustled me away, and I never even had the time to say hello. I was wanted up on the quarterdeck where Captain Seymour was in conference with Mr Barrow, Fydor’s First Lieutenant and another lieutenant from Endemnon whose name I never learned. The three of them gave me some odd looks, ‘cos they didn’t know what to make of me. In early ‘94 I was a celebrity. All the newspapers of England had told the tale of Jacob Fletcher and the Coignwood inheritance, and how I’d walked away from it. But on the other hand, there I was dressed in a Yankee uniform coat, fresh from the bosom of the enemy. So what they were thinking was … was I an officer, a gentleman and a millionaire, or was I a common turncoat without a penny to his name?
So there on the heaving Atlantic, with Phiandra rolling like a hog, and hundreds of seamen going hammer and tongs all around us, at the work of keeping her afloat, I got one of the most serious interrogations of my life.
“Fletcher,” says Seymour, “you held a good character in this ship when you served aboard her, so I’ll give you the chance to explain yourself, and how you came to be aboard an American — and wearing that coat!”
Damn that bloody Yankee coat! A few yards of blue woollen superfine and some buttons with insignia upon them. That’s all it was, but if I wasn’t careful it would drag me down as sure as if the entire House of Lords had caught me piddling in the King’s claret. Already Seymour and his Lieutenants were scowling and beginning to work themselves up into outrage. If I didn’t say something damned convincing, then I was sunk. What was at stake was either to be received by my own people as one of them and so go home to England, fame and wealth, or to be dragged back in chains -as that most despised form of human life, a traitor.