by Mike Ashley
The same thought must instantly have occurred to Lord Wroth. With a weird, echoing howl he tore himself from my grasp and fled up the stairs.
XIII
It was time to pay a call upon the house in Newick Square, which I now knew belonged to Sir Harry Pelham.
I stood before the imposing door and pulled the bell-rope. A proud and saucy-looking footman opened it to me.
“Sir?” he asked insolently.
“I wish to see Sir Harry Pelham.”
“Many do, Sir,” he said squarely. “What name shall I give?”
“My name is Nash. Captain Nash.”
“And what business may I state, Captain?”
“My business.”
“Sir?” The impudent eyes rose superciliously. He sneered at me openly. He was a good man at a door. It began to close imperceptibly. I recognized that he had all the qualifications necessary for a footman. He had, no doubt, turned away twelve duns that morning. He knew his duty to his master – to lie for him, pimp for him, and allow nobody to cheat him but himself.
“Sir Harry is not receiving today,” he said, gazing unseeingly somewhere above my head.
Casually I scratched my nose with a small shiner. His eyes travelled slowly down my face. The movement of the door was halted fractionally.
“My master is not receiving today,” he repeated, his gaze fixed upon the coin.
“Will he be at home all day?” I asked.
“He’ll be walking out to his club within the hour,” he said. With a startling rapidity, the coin disappeared beneath the lace cuff of his sleeve and the door was shut firmly in my face.
I set myself to wait.
Surely enough, the door opened some forty minutes later and the tall, bull-headed figure of Sir Harry Pelham walked down the steps. He strode purposefully in the direction of St. James’ and I marched after him as resolutely.
Sir Harry Pelham was a most notorious rake with a scandalous past. He had always sported a reputation. As a student at Cambridge he had drunk the most beer, sworn the deepest oaths, sang the noisiest songs, and fought the most duels. He had honoured all his friends by the most liberal levies on their purses. After expulsion from his college he came to London, where he speedily got rid of the remnants of a small fortune. A sad scamp as a youth, he had grown into a full-blown rogue in manhood. In order to raise supplies, he had to betake himself to such resources as a nimble wit presented to a not over-scrupulous conscience. Detected in false play, kicked out of one gambling-hell after another, until finding them all too hot to hold him, he had taken to arranging card-parties which, despite (or because of) his extreme reputation, were doing very well. He was the perfect rake; he would die of fast women, slow horses, crooked cards and straight drink – but he would die in his own good time.
I caught up with him as he turned into Green Park.
“Sir Harry!”
He looked at me enquiringly. A man with a mortal aversion to bailiffs and constables, he regarded me for a moment as if I had crept from beneath a stone. Then realizing that I was not an agent of the law, the heavy brown eyes regarded me with a sort of dull impassivity. All the same, his hand tightened on his walking-stick, his “oaken towel”, his “knocking-down argument”, as he called it.
“Sir?”
I bowed.
“What is your business with me, Sir?”
“Murrell’s business,” I replied.
There was not a flicker of light in that turgid brown stare.
“Murrell?” he drawled. His voice had the easy, insolent quality that can make the most commonplace statement sound like an epigram and this was largely the basis for his reputation as a wit.
“‘Cunning’ Murrell,” I said. “Or Dr. Asclepius, if you prefer that name.”
“The ‘Paphlagonian’?” he asked lazily, a slight interest stirring in his eyes and his hand encircling his stick with a tighter grip. “What have I to do with his business?”
I smiled at him confidingly.
“You have his business stacked away in your cellars, Sir,” I said. “Unfortunately, as you must know by now, you lack the key to it. I have the code-book.”
A gleam like a small cinder began to glow in the treacly eyes. A slow and dangerous anger.
“Shall we take a turn about the park, Sir Harry?”
His mind was made up on the instant. Perhaps I was too great a challenge to his gambling instinct. With a slight ironic bow, he indicated a path leading towards a leafy arbour.
We paced together slowly down the path. Not a word was exchanged until we reached the comparative seclusion of the trees.
“Well, Sir?” he drawled.
I waited whilst a nursemaid and her charges passed beyond our hearing. He grew restive.
“Patience is not one of my virtues, Sir,” he said.
“Neither is caution, Sir,” I replied coolly.
His eyebrows rose.
“The little cavalcade that brought the goods to your back door, Sir Harry,” I explained reproachfully. “A veritable circus. I’m surprised that half the children in London weren’t on their backs.”
Sir Harry sighed dolefully.
“Time would not allow for a more finished performance,” he said heavily. “What do you want? You said that you possessed the code-book.”
“And you have the provisions,” I said. “The patents and the medicines.”
My ploy was to confuse him as to my motives. He would not, I felt, do business if he thought it honest.
“The patents! The medicines!” he snapped. “Quackery. Sugar and water! That is what I have invested in.”
“Is it all quite useless?” I asked.
The cinders in his eyes now glowed like coals.
“Water cannot be turned into wine, Sir, without a worker of miracles!” he said shortly.
“But there’s money to be made from his gulls – once you can read the code.”
A dull flush crept into his face.
“There are famous names in that book, Sir Harry,” I went on, gently insistent. “The whole world would be interested in the disclosure of their vices.”
The stick shook slightly in his hand.
“There is a treasure house between its covers,” I said.
A look of the purest anguish showed in his dark eyes.
“Of course,” I told him, almost affectionately, “such an enterprise would require a considerable power of organization behind it, if it is to run smoothly. It needs a man confident of his position in society to guide it properly. A man well-used to catering for the whims and fancies of the great and noble.”
“True,” he agreed, and spat contemptuously. “Murrell was an incompetent, a man without style.” His eyes ran over me like a horse-coper sizing up the season’s stock. “Do you fancy your chances in this line of work, Mr. er . . .?”
“Nash,” I said. “Captain Nash.”
“Well, Captain? Do you?”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “I could hardly do less justice to the trade than Murrell did,” I replied. “And I’d know where the danger lies.”
“The danger?”
“I’d know who my enemies were, Sir Harry.”
“And Murrell didn’t?”
“He was singularly careless. He should never have entrusted himself to a sedan chair so late at night and in such an area.”
Genuine surprise showed in Pelham’s eyes. For a brief moment I exacted a look of wary admiration from him.
“How did you know that?” he asked.
“I was there, Sir. I saw it all.”
He was puzzled by me. He mused silently for a moment, his large hand massaging the head of his broad-stick.
“He must have received an urgent summons to bring him into those streets at that hour,” I said suggestively.
A strange smile played about his lips, but it did not linger.
“Are you saying that I was responsible for his death, Sir?” he asked.
“I am saying that you could be m
ade to seem so.”
He raised the stick and struck the ground with a snapping blow.
“You take risks, Sir,” he said softly.
“I am merely saying that the charge could be laid at your door, Sir Harry. You would have a hard time proving that you aren’t connected with him.”
He shrugged wearily.
“Why should I want to rid myself of a partner in a lucrative venture?” he said.
“In order to make the venture more lucrative – for yourself, perhaps?” I suggested.
“Pah! As I said before, miracles need a miraculous hand. Murrell was the magician.”
“Murrell was a box of tricks, Sir Harry. No more than that. A sham is what Murrell was, Sir. Such tricks can be taught to any avid learner.”
He considered it.
“What do you want from me?” he asked at last.
“Little enough,” I said. “I want the Wroth papers.”
“The Wroth papers?”
“The receipts signed by Lord Wroth. In return for which you may have the code-book and my silence.”
He frowned. “And if I don’t have the papers?”
“I think you have them, Sir.”
He smiled wryly.
“And if I were to assure you, Sir, that I don’t?”
He laughed without amusement, then answered my unspoken question.
“The old rapscallion! I fear our magician may have had more partners than we bargained for.”
He laughed aloud – an alarming sound. If a tiger could laugh, he would make a sound like that.
We walked into a clearing and Pelham’s laughter turned to a choked gurgle. He fell heavily against a tree, his stout walking-stick breaking beneath him.
A knife had whistled through the green air, catching him in the shoulder a little below his neck.
XIV
He was not greatly injured, but he was bleeding profusely and swearing like a duchess in labour. The knife lay on the ground where he had flung it. He was trying to stem the flow of blood with a silk handkerchief. He looked up, his face working savagely.
“After him!” he spat. “I’m not dead – nor even dying. After him! Get after him, man!”
He spoke to me much as he would to a hound. I ran across the clearing without another thought, in full cry.
There was no sign of his assailant but a few broken twigs and some leaves swept aside by a cloak. And a small leather pouch. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, then pressed through the trees to where the park spread out in the afternoon sun.
It was a calm enough scene, a typical English park, with the greensward and the red deer grazing. Towards the lake a few people sauntered along the walks.
I skirted the clump of trees in which the would-be assassin had lurked. There was no sign of him. Nothing disturbed the utter stillness of the leafy thicket but the twittering of birds. I made my way cautiously back to Pelham.
He had struggled to his feet and was leaning languidly against the tree which had broken his fall. His hands clutching the material to his wound were soaked with blood.
I took off my neckcloth and attended to his wound as efficiently as I could. He looked at me, his eyes as dull as molasses.
“Did you see him?”
“Him?” I asked.
“Wroth.” he answered thickly.
“Wroth!”
His mouth twitched bitterly. “Did you not see him?”
I shook my head.
“Naturally not,” he said sarcastically. “You are their man.”
I looked at him closely.
“Did you see him, Sir Harry?” I asked. “. . . Truly.”
His eyes flickered sideways.
“I thought I did. It seemed like.”
“Did he wear a bandana?” I asked abruptly.
He looked up from examining the still welling blood, his eyes puzzled.
“A bandana?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean, man?”
“I found this in the wood opposite,” I said, and showed him the leather pouch.
“So?”
I turned it over. On the reverse side was an embossed design. A strange device, a barbaric device. I picked up the knife; emblazoned on the cheap gilt hilt was the same design.
His eyelids twitched nervously, for a moment the whites of his eyes gleamed fiercely then, once again, they dulled over. I knew that he had recognized the symbol, it had been prominently displayed in Murrell’s funeral chamber.
“So?” he asked again.
“You’ve never seen this device before?”
He shook his head slowly.
“And yet Murrell was your partner?”
“Is it his?”
“Did you never remark his cabbalistic designs?” I asked. “You must have seen it on the cloth that covered his corpse.”
This time I had struck home. The breath whistled out of his body.
“His corpse?”
“You saw it laid out in the Temple of Health.”
His eyes met my own. A look of superstitious awe passed over his face.
“Are you ubiquitous?” he asked, at length.
“I was there.”
He gestured towards the pouch.
“And this?”
“This held that knife.”
His lips twisted ferociously.
“Has Murrell returned from the dead then? To cut down a man who never harmed him?”
“Not Murrell, no. But his slave, possibly.”
“His slave?”
“Servant, then.”
“The black woman?”
“Yes.”
He looked incredulous.
“She thinks I killed her master?”
“It would seem so,” I said.
He staggered and shivered violently. I thought he was about to fall and reached out a hand to steady him.
“You’d better get me home,” he said.
The impudent footman let us into the house, his face an amusing mixture of concern at his master’s condition and surprise at seeing me in attendance. I sent out for a surgeon at once, and saw Pelham stripped and put to his bed. The wound was in his flesh only, but it could have been dangerous had it gone a bare half an inch deeper or higher.
Pelham lay on his crimson damask bed. So far not a murmur of complaint had passed his lips, though he swore roundly and often at the covey of servants who crowded in and out of the vast room. He had forbidden them to send for the Bow Street Men, insisting that it was no more than a common street brawl he had been involved in and not worth the inconvenience of calling in the Law. His servants, who knew their master, were willing enough to give way to him in this.
I stood by a classical fireplace in the elegant Adam room, musing deeply whilst all this activity surged around me. I was trying to create some pattern from the events that had occurred. But nothing emerged with any clarity.
I was mostly concerned with the most recent incident. Why did Pelham think he had seen Wroth in the clearing? Had he seen him truly? If so, why was Wroth there? Had he thrown the knife? The possibility had to be admitted. It was even possible that the knife was his, a gift from Murrell; it was the sort of toy that he’d appreciate. Perhaps Murrell had breathed some magic incantation over it, rendering it as accurate as Achilles’ immortal weapon? That was the sort of preposterous flummery to impress his lordship.
I looked at the knife, which lay upon a Pembroke table, its blade encrusted with dried blood. Yes, it was more than possible that Wroth had hurled it; remembering his murderous skill with the foils, this deadly toy seemed a likely weapon for him to use.
But then again, remembering his skill, it seemed more like that he would directly have challenged Pelham to a mad, fanatical duel if he had any quarrel with him. This method of despatch seemed altogether too sinister, too stealthy, for such an impetuous person.
An image of Lord Wroth as he had stood beside me in the Temple came into my mind. He had been curiously reluctant to ta
ke his sword from its scabbard, though it had been halfdragged from there. All the mad, murderous rage in him seemed to have died. Could it be that without d’Urfey to jack him up, he had no taste for the game? Lady Wroth had called d’Urfey a “led captain” – could it be that he had allowed young Wroth to seem a better man with a sword than he was in truth? It would have been in his favour to flatter his lordship. And Wroth was not perhaps too mad to realize that he was no match for a stronger man without his friend’s support. No match for a man of Pelham’s talents, anyway.
In which case, he might well resort to stealthier tricks. But his shot had gone wide of the mark and that fact bothered me if I had to consider him as a suspect. For Wroth had shown he had a good eye for a mark and this knife had been intended for Pelham’s exposed neck.
Pelham’s neck! The knife that had killed d’Urfey had protruded from the base of his neck, though he had been an unresisting victim when the blow was struck. Was it possible that whoever had killed d’Urfey had killed him in an identical way to Wroth’s plans for Pelham? Could it have been a purely fortuitous coincidence? But no, it seemed too close.
Pelham had been mistaken when he thought he saw young Wroth. Unless, of course, the boy believed Pelham responsible for d’Urfey’s death and had planned an identical end for the baronet? It had the right, gory, poetical touch to it.
But . . . I turned the pouch over in my hand. The device glittered in the sunlight . . . What of the Negress? This pouch seemed to link her with the crime more fittingly than Wroth. To kill a man by a knife thrown in stealth seemed a more primitive method of despatch than an Englishman would use in a London park. And the knife was obviously connected with Murrell. It had a barbaric feeling about it. It looked to be a ceremonial sort of knife. Such a killing, to a woman like that, would be more in the nature of a ceremony than a plain act of revenge.
But why should she seek to murder Pelham who was her master’s friend? And if she had dealt in this way with Pelham, then she must have dealt with d’Urfey in a like manner? Save that one had been unsuccessful, the two means of despatch were the same, and two unconnected murders in the same manner would be stretching coincidence beyond the bounds of probability.
But surely there could be no connection between the murdered youth and the luckily escaped Pelham?