Den of Thieves (10 page)

Mr Tweadle frowned and put down his glass. ‘No, I'm afraid you can't go wandering.'

‘I promise to go there and come straight back. I won't talk to anyone.'

‘I said no, Cathy. My word is final.'

I'd had enough of being his slave. I took off my cap and began to untie my apron.

‘What are you doing?' he asked sharply, all pretence at being friendly abandoned.

‘I'm sorry, sir. I can't continue like this. I'll go mad if I can't get out and about.'

‘You hear that?' he appealed to Nokes. ‘The ungrateful girl frets over her freedom to roam the streets like some common hussy. You see how right I was to insist she stayed inside?'

‘Very wise, sir,' Nokes intoned. ‘She's got to be kept close, this one, or your name will be mud.'

‘I don't think a walk to a butcher's shop would place Mr Tweadle's name in peril, but as you both do, I had better take my leave. If I could have my manuscripts back, please?' I held out my hand.

My employer and Nokes exchanged looks.

‘What manuscripts?' asked Mr Tweadle coldly.

‘My manuscripts – the ones I showed you last week!' I felt a rising sense of panic. I had to get them back – I had to!

‘There were no manuscripts.'

‘There were! In a canvas bag. You looked at them in the shop.'

‘Oh, those bits of old paper. I think I put them down somewhere – can't for the life of me remember what I did with them.'

‘Kindling for the fire, sir?' suggested Nokes with a malevolent grin at me.

‘Very possibly. If you're so worried about it, you'd better write some more, girl. I'll give you pen and paper so you can keep up your little hobby. I like to encourage innocent pursuits. If you're good, I might be able to remember what I did with them in a few days.'

‘A few days!' I exclaimed. The slimy cheat was holding my manuscripts hostage to keep a cheap maid about the place.

Mr Tweadle got up. ‘I'll send Nokes back with the paper for you. I do so want you to be happy while you are staying here, Cathy. You'll feel so much better if you let your mind rather than your person wander and write a few more stories to pass the time. You won't mind if I lock you in now, will you? You have to understand it's for your own good.'

Of course I minded, but they were gone and the bolt clunked into place.

That night, I considered my options. Mr Tweadle couldn't keep an eye on me forever – I had no fears about that locked door. If the worst came to the worst, I'd simply climb over the back wall and make my escape that way. But he needed no real shackles – my manuscripts were like a ball and chain keeping me here. They were irreplaceable. No one else might have any use for them, but they were everything to me. I'd have to find them, then flee – that was all there was to it.

To lull Mr Tweadle into a false sense of security, I scribbled down a little story that night – something about star-crossed lovers and dutiful daughters. It was poor stuff – but better than many a tale that made it into print. I left it on the table so that Mr Tweadle would see it when he came down for breakfast.

‘Ah, I see you've passed your time profitably, Cathy,' he said, stirring his porridge and smiling at
me as if for all the world our quarrel of yestereve had not happened.

‘Yes, sir.'

I went out the back to escape his presence. I wasn't sure how long I could keep up the pretence of obedience when I hated every wispy hair on his head. I'd only swept the yard twice over when he came to the door holding my new story.

‘What's all this?' he asked me. ‘Where are the boxers and the villains? The musicians and actors?'

So he had read my stuff then.

‘I wrote what I thought you, standing
in loco parentis
, would approve of, sir,' I said with a passable imitation of meekness.

‘Well, no, no, I do not approve, Cathy. I want the other kind of story from you – something with guts and excitement, not this curds-and-whey stuff.'

‘Why? I thought I was supposed to be just amusing myself – a hobby you called it.' A suspicion was forming in my mind that perhaps after all his delays he might, just might, be considering putting out a collection of my work. This might all be a test to see if I really was the author.

‘Hmm.' He looked up at the sky and then down at me. ‘If you are ever going to make it into print, Cathy, you have to be true to yourself. This . . . this is cheap imitation. I want the genuine article.'

I nodded. ‘I understand. I'll write something for you – to show you I can do it.'

‘That's it. You do that. Take the morning to see what you can knock out for me.'

Heartened by this exchange, even partially reconciled to my position in the household if I was allowed time to write, I cleared the kitchen table and set down to work. I was soon lost in an account of a visit to a crime lord's flashy household and forgot the time. I was amused to find that even Billy made good copy when turned into a story – the repellent reality becoming quite amusing when looked at from a distance.

I was so pleased by the end product that I was determined to take it to Mr Tweadle directly. I tried the kitchen door: it wasn't locked this morning. Running along the corridor, I paused outside the shop entrance, wondering if it was safe to knock. Mr Tweadle would not want me to
interrupt him with a customer. I could hear voices. I put my head close to the door to listen.

‘I asked you, sir, if you knew where I could find Catherine Royal.' It was Mr Sheridan. Thank goodness I hadn't burst in dressed in my dirty scullery maid's apron – I would have died of embarrassment.

‘As I told you, I have no idea where the young person can be found,' Mr Tweadle said airily.

‘He's lying, he must be.' Frank! What was he doing here? ‘It's her stuff, I know it is.'

Mr Sheridan spoke again. ‘Look, Mr . . . er . . . Mr Tweadle, the young lady has disappeared and her friends are most anxious to locate her. I'm not asking you to betray any confidences – we're not fortune hunters trying to muscle in on her success or anything of that kind – but we know that you must be in contact with her or you wouldn't have all this.'

All what? What were they talking about?

‘I repeat, sir, I have no knowledge of the lady. You are mistaken if you think this belongs to anyone but my talented young assistant, George Nokes. He's a prodigy.'

‘He's a fraud and a thief!' interrupted Frank, outraged. ‘If he's told you those stories are his then he's lying through his teeth.'

‘Am not!' protested Nokes. ‘I've sweated over those, I 'ave. I'd swear it in court, I would. No girl could write that stuff.'

I went cold and leant against the door.

‘Well, you are wrong,' countered Mr Sheridan. ‘I know the only girl in London who could write “that stuff ” as you call it and I'm prepared to say so in court. Produce her or I'll fetch the constable.'

‘There's no young lady on the premises. There's just me, Nokes and the maid, as I am more than happy to prove to anyone who comes with a warrant.'

The dirty double-crossing liar! Roused by my fury, I pushed the door open, pulling the cap from my head as I entered the shop.

‘I suppose it's not exactly a lie, is it, Mr Tweadle?' I said flatly. ‘That's all there is – but you've a maid no longer. I resign.'

‘Cat!' Frank vaulted the counter and gave me a
hug. He then held me out at arm's length. ‘You look terrible.'

‘Thanks.'

Despite having demanded that I be produced, Mr Sheridan was shocked to see me. I suppose I did not cut a very good figure in my shoddy clothes and I'd been living off scraps, thanks to the large appetites of my employers.

‘Cat, you're not staying another moment under this man's roof. I've a carriage outside,' Mr Sheridan said. ‘Come along.'

‘Not without my manuscripts.'

‘I think you'll find he no longer has them,' he said, casting a disgusted look at Mr Tweadle. ‘They'll be locked in the printer's safe. That is now a matter for my lawyer. I'll be instructing him immediately to take action on your behalf.'

He put a small magazine in my hand, the kind you can buy unbound on any street corner at a penny a time.
London Life – Tales of Cat of Drury Lane, the mischievous orphan girl.

‘I'm afraid he's made you quite sensational, Cat. I was surprised that you'd allowed it when I
first heard of the success of the series – but now I see you had no say in the matter.'

So Mr Tweadle had not only stolen my stories – but my character too! The magazine trembled in my fist. This wasn't at all how I had imagined my print debut: a cheap pamphlet with crude woodcuts. How I wished I was a big man like Syd and could punch his nasty face. But I wasn't – I was a stupid fool of a girl who had fallen for so simple a trick. I'd even cooked the meals that my own work had bought him – he and Nokes must have been laughing themselves silly over me. I should have taken a leaf out of the last maid's book and tried poisoning them.

‘I don't know what to say,' I said faintly.

‘Let's get you out of here, Cat. We'll leave this to Mr Sheridan's lawyers,' said Frank, steering me gently towards the door.

And shaking the dust of that foul place off my feet, I let myself be led out of Mr Tweadle's shop.

You may guess my feelings, Reader, as I sat in a corner of Mr Sheridan's carriage watching St Paul's Cathedral disappear behind me. I was heartily ashamed of myself. I had taken pride in being wise to the ways of the street but, once truly thrown on my own resources, I had fallen at the first hurdle. How could I have let a lowlife like Mr Tweadle get the better of me? He must have thought I was quite the Christmas goose, turning up on his doorstep and offering to pluck, stuff and cook myself for his dinner.

‘The first thing we need to do is get a square meal inside you, Cat,' said Mr Sheridan in a fatherly tone. ‘There never was much of you but you seem to have diminished dangerously over the past few weeks.'

‘And a change of clothes wouldn't go amiss,' added Frank, smiling at me from the seat opposite.

I looked out of the window as we rattled down Fleet Street, gazing at the piles of books displayed on the booksellers' stalls – stacks of respectable volumes bound in leather, produced by highly-regarded authors.

Mr Sheridan gave an awkward cough, finding my silence difficult after years of me speaking out of place. ‘Cheer up, Cat, it's over now.'

But it wasn't over for me – not till I had my manuscripts back. I felt like I'd left a part of me behind.

‘It was good luck that Lord Francis turned up this morning demanding to know where you were. I had thought of finding you myself as I wanted to ask you a favour, but I assumed that you would be too busy to see me in the bloom of your success.'

‘What success?' I asked in a dull tone of voice.

‘The stories, of course. That man may have changed a few things here and there, but they were essentially yours. The public love them. I've heard of nothing else all week – you are quite the fashion. The Prince of Wales told me his favourite was the incident where you rampaged through Brook's;
mine was the boxing match, as I've always had a soft spot for the Fancy.'

I felt a glimmer of pride that my tales had made it into the hands of the most illustrious personages in the land. ‘How did Tweadle change them?' I asked, feeling a flicker of curiosity. ‘You said he had made them sensational.'

Frank suddenly became very interested in his nails. Mr Sheridan avoided my eye and looked out the window.

‘Aside from massacring the language with a hurried print job, he . . . er . . . made you out to be rather less respectable than you are.'

‘What did he say about me?' If my reputation was in tatters, I wanted to know the worst.

‘Well, the language was rather stiff for one – and you appear to spend your time in the company of some rather bad characters, criminals and the like.'

Perhaps Mr Tweadle hadn't had time to change very much then, I thought sourly.

‘But it is not so much what was in the stories as the way he presented them.' Mr Sheridan placed
on my knee the pamphlet he had briefly shown me in the shop. I turned to the smaller print. ‘
Read the next episode from the pen of this real-life moll, Queen of the London Underworld
.'

‘I'm nobody's moll!' I said indignantly. ‘I'm not a thief, neither do I live among them!'

‘We know you're not, Cat,' interjected Frank, ‘but I'm afraid the damage is done.'

Mr Sheridan looked out of the window – we were approaching his house. You could always tell which one it was because it had a perpetual queue of creditors waiting outside in the hope of catching a few moments of the great man's time.