A Matter of Magic (4 page)

Kim thought of the underhanded way the skinny toff had held back information to keep the price down. “No.”

“Yes, he certainly should,” Mairelon said, as though he hadn’t heard
Kim. “I think you should go back to that place you mentioned—what was the name again?”

“The Dog and Bull.”

“Of course. I think you should go back and collect your five pounds.” He paused and smiled at Kim. “What do you say?”

Kim darted across a street directly in front of a hackney, causing the horses to shy. The driver’s curses followed her as she slipped into the pedestrian traffic on the other side, but she paid no attention. She was late for her appointment, and she didn’t know how long the skinny toff would wait.

Not that she was particularly anxious to see him again, five pounds or not. She still wasn’t sure how she’d been talked into this. Maybe it was because Hunch had been so set against it; knowing how much he disliked the idea, she couldn’t resist going ahead with it. Or maybe it was Mairelon’s persuasiveness. The man made it all sound so
reasonable
, and he knew just how to appeal to Kim’s curiosity.

That, of course, was the root of the problem. Kim dodged a lamplighter, ducking under the end of his ladder. Someday she was going to get into real trouble if she didn’t stop poking her nose into things just to find out what they looked like.

Still castigating herself, Kim turned down the crooked lane that led to the Dog and Bull. Here the traffic was less, and she made better time. When she saw the cracked sign with its garish painting, she broke into a run, and a moment later she was inside. She stepped to one side of the door and paused, panting, to survey the room.

It was a moment before her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Though the single window was large, half or more of its panes had been broken and stuffed with paper, and those that remained were dark with dirt. What
light there was came from the fire in the huge, blackened hearth, and it did not penetrate far into the smoke and steam that filled the air.

Three long, bare tables occupied the center of the room. The backless benches on either side were half full of large men in well-worn clothes. Most were hunched over mugs of beer; some were eating with single-minded intensity from an assortment of battered bowls. There was no sign of the toff anywhere.

Kim frowned. Had she missed him, then? There was no way of telling. She decided to take the chance that he, too, was late, and made her way to one of the tables. She squeezed herself into a corner where she could watch the door, ordered a half-pint of ale, and settled in to wait.

The procession of customers entering the room was not exactly encouraging. Most were working-class men identifiable by their clothes—carters, bricklayers, a butcher, one or two costermongers, a swayer. A nondescript man in a shabby coat slouched in and crept to the far corner of the table as if he expected to be thrown out. Kim sipped at her ale, wondering unhappily whether she should risk attracting attention by asking questions.

The door opened again, and another collection of solid men in rough-spun wool and grimy linen entered. In their wake came a tall man made even taller by his top hat. He wore a voluminous cape that made it impossible to tell whether he was fat or slim, but the white-gloved hand pressing a handkerchief to his lips was impossible to mistake. Famble-cheats and a top hat, Kim thought disgustedly, in a place like this. He was the one she was waiting for, all right. She straightened, trying to look taller so that he would see her.

The toff surveyed the room disdainfully, then made his way among the tables and stopped beside Kim. “I trust your presence means you have succeeded, boy,” he said.

“I done what you asked,” Kim said.

“Good. I suggest we conduct the remainder of our business in one of the private rooms in back.”

“You want everyone here knowin’ you got business with me?” Kim asked without moving.

The toff’s face darkened in anger, but after a moment he shook his head. “No, I suppose not.”

“Then you’d better set down afore everyone here ends up lookin’ at you,” Kim advised.

The man’s lips pressed together, but he recognized the wisdom of Kim’s statement. He seated himself on the bench across from her, setting his hat carefully on the table. The publican, a fat man in a dirty apron, came over at once, and the toff accepted, with some reluctance, a mug of beer. As the publican left, the toff leaned forward. “You said you’d done as I asked. You found the bowl, then? You have a list of what is in Mairelon’s wagon?”

“What would the likes of me be doing makin’ lists?” Kim said sarcastically.

The man looked startled. “I had anticipated—”

“You wanted a list, you should of hired a schoolmaster,” Kim informed him. “I can tell you what I saw in that magic-cove’s wagon, but that’s all.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “In that case, perhaps five pounds is more than the information is worth to me.”

“In that case, you ain’t getting no information at all,” Kim said, mimicking his tone.

“Come, now, I think you are unreasonable. Shall we say, three pounds?”

Kim spat. “I done what you said, and you never said nothing about no list. Five pounds and that’s flat.”

“Oh, very well. Did you find the bowl?”

“I ain’t saying nothin’ until I get what you promised.”

The toff argued, but Kim remained firm. Eventually he agreed, and unwillingly counted out the five pounds in notes and coin. Kim made a show of re-counting it, her fingers lingering over each coin in spite of herself. She had never had so much money at once in all her life, and every silver shilling and half crown meant another day or week of food and possible safety. She stowed the money safely in the inner pockets of her jacket, feeling highly pleased with both herself and Mairelon. If it hadn’t been for the magician’s urging, she might have passed up an easy mark.

“Satisfied?” the man said angrily. “All right, then, tell me what you found.”

Kim smiled inwardly and launched into a detailed and exhaustive description of the interior of the magician’s wagon. She noticed the anticipation on her listener’s face when she talked of the pots and pans in Mairelon’s cupboard, and carefully saved the information that they were all made of iron for the end of the sentence. She got a perverse satisfaction out of seeing the flash of disappointment on the toff’s face.

The man got more and more impatient as she went along. Finally she mentioned the locked chest. The toff sat up. “Locked?”

“Yes.” Kim paused. “But I got in.”

The man leaned forward eagerly. “And?”

“It looked like that’s where the cove kept his magics. There were a whole bunch of little paper lanterns, and a couple of them little wooden boxes, and a stack of silk—”

“Yes, yes, boy, but the bowl!”

“Bowl?” Kim said, feigning innocence.

“The silver bowl I described to you! Did you find it?”

“I didn’t see nothin’ like that in Mairelon’s wagon,” Kim said with perfect truth.

“What!” The toff’s voice was loud enough to make heads turn all along the table. He controlled himself with effort, and when the other customers had turned away, he glared at Kim. “You said you’d do as I asked!”

“And so I have,” Kim retorted, unperturbed. “Ain’t nobody could of found somethin’ that ain’t never been there.”

“Not there?” The man sounded stupefied.

“Use your head, cully,” Kim advised. “If this Mairelon swell had something like that, I would of seen it, wouldn’t I? And I ain’t. So it ain’t there.”

“You’re certain?”

Kim nodded.

The toff glared as though it were her fault. “Not there,” he muttered. “All this time, wasted on the wrong man. Amelia will never let me hear the end of it. Merrill could be anywhere in England by now, anywhere!”

“That ain’t my lookout,” Kim pointed out. “You want to hear what else he had, or not?”

“And you,” the toff went on in a venomous whisper, “you knew. That’s why you made me give you your money in advance, isn’t it? You little cheat!”

On the last word, he lunged across the table. The sudden movement took Kim completely by surprise. He would have had his hands at her throat if a grimy, disreputable-looking man had not half lurched, half fallen against the toff’s back at that moment.

The unexpected shove knocked the toff heavily into the edge of the table; Kim heard his grunt of pain plainly. She stood and backed away a little, watching with interest. She recognized the grimy man now, he had come into the public house just before the toff’s arrival.

The grimy man was the first to recover. “Sh-shorry, very shorry,” he said. “The floor jusht, jusht shook me over, thash all.” He waved a hand to demonstrate, and lost his balance again.

“Get away from me, you idiot!” the toff snarled.

“Right. Very shorry.” The drunk made ineffectual apologetic motions in the toff’s direction. Since he was still draped halfway over the toff’s shoulder, this succeeded only in knocking over the almost untouched mug of beer in front of them. A wave of brown foam surged across the table, picking up dirt and grease as it went.

The toff made a valiant effort to spring back out of the way, but with the drunk still leaning helpfully across his shoulder, he didn’t have a chance. The pool of cool, dirty beer swished into his lap, thoroughly drenching his previously immaculate attire. The taproom exploded in laughter.

The drunk began a tearful apology, which was more a lament for the wasted beer than anything else. Cursing, the toff shoved him aside. He began wiping vainly at his clothes with a pocket handkerchief while the publican escorted the drunk firmly to the door. Kim judged it a good moment for her own departure and slipped quietly out in the drunk’s wake. Her last sight was of the toff, gingerly picking his dripping top hat out of the pool of beer.

Still chuckling, Kim paused in the lane outside. It was now fully dark,
and a yellow fog was rising. Not the best time for running about the London streets, even for as ragged a waif as Kim looked. Still, she hadn’t much choice. She swallowed hard, thinking of the coins in her pockets. If she lost them, she’d have nothing to fall back on if her arrangement with Mairelon fell apart. She started off, hugging the edge of the lane.

As she passed the corner of the Dog and Bull, a pair of dirty, beer-scented hands grabbed her. One clamped itself over her mouth, the other pinned her arms. Kim threw herself forward, but the man was too strong. She was dragged quickly and quietly into a filthy alley beside the public house.

She kicked backward, hard, and connected. The man made no sound, but his grip loosened, and Kim wrenched one arm free. She bit down on the hand covering her mouth and felt her captor jerk. Then she heard a whisper almost directly in her ear. “Kim! Stop it! It’s Mairelon.”

Without thinking, Kim struck at the voice with her free hand. Then the words penetrated, and she hesitated. She couldn’t imagine what Mairelon might be doing in this part of town, but magicians were a queer lot, and she’d already decided that Mairelon was one of the queerest of them all. And who else would expect that name to have any weight with her?

“It really is me, unlikely as it seems,” the whisper said. “If I let go, you won’t make a sound until you’re sure, will you? Nod if you agree.”

Kim nodded, and the hands released their hold. She turned and found herself confronting the drunk who had caused so much trouble a few minutes before. He no longer seemed drunk in the least, though he still looked and smelled thoroughly unpleasant.

Kim took a step backward. The man raised a warning hand and she stopped, peering at him. He was the right height for Mairelon, but he had no mustache and his face was half hidden by a layer of greasy dirt. Then he grinned, and Kim’s doubts vanished. Impossible as it seemed, this
was
Mairelon.

She smiled back and he doffed his grimy cap and bowed with a stage magician’s flourish. She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, and at once he held up a warning finger. She stepped closer, wondering even more what was behind his strange behavior.

The creak of the public house door swinging open filtered into the alley. Mairelon flattened himself into a niche along one wall and motioned to Kim to do the same. She complied, still puzzled. Then she heard the skinny toff’s unmistakable whine.

“—don’t expect such treatment! You haven’t heard the end of this!”

“Mebbe,” the gravelly voice of the publican said. “And mebbe not. Evenin’.”

Kim heard the door shut, then the toff muttering curses under his breath. A moment later came the incongruous sound of a small silver bell ringing.

A large shadow passed the mouth of the alley. “There you are, Stuggs!” the toff said pettishly. “Did you catch the boy?”

“I ain’t seen ’im,” said a deep, slow voice.

“Not seen him? But he left just a few minutes ago.”

“I ain’t seen ’im,” the second voice reiterated patiently.

“You fool! He must have gone the other way.”

“Couldn’t ’ave. Street’s blocked.”

“Then he slipped by you in the dark. Idiot! Nothing has gone right tonight, simply nothing! We’ve spent five days tracing the wrong man, my clothes are ruined, and on top of everything else you let the boy escape!”

“I never seen ’im. If I’d seen ’im, I’d a catched ’im.”

“Oh, well. Under the circumstances, it hardly matters. But if it
had
been Merrill’s wagon, we would have needed the boy. You’re lucky.”

Something in the man’s voice made Kim shrink back against the wall of the building, trying to become one with the bricks and half-timbering. Why were they so interested in her? Surely five pounds wasn’t worth such trouble to a swell!

“You want I should look for ’im?” Stuggs’s deep voice said and Kim held her breath.

“Weren’t you listening? There’s no need; he didn’t find anything. And I’m not going to stand here smelling like a brewery while you blunder about. Come on.”

Footsteps clicked against the cobblestones, passing the end of the alley. Gradually they died away, but Kim did not move until she heard the distant rattle of carriage wheels. Then she looked across at Mairelon.