The Dollar Prince's Wife (8 page)

Violet was not sure that she believed him. She watched him go with a frown on her lovely face. He had been as harsh with Dinah as she had hoped that he might be, but she did not feel quite so pleased with him—or with herself—as she had expected.

She walked thoughtfully to her own rooms, unaware that, for once, Cobie had not been lying to her. He had received a large number of letters which he needed to deal with quickly, and on his way upstairs he knocked at the door of the room which his temporary secretary, Rogers, had been given and told him to report to his suite at once.

He was reading a letter when Rogers entered. It was from Ebenezer Bristow, addressed to Mr John Dilley, care of the shabby office in the City which he had hired in that name together with a clerk to run it for him. The letter told him that a suitable house—the one next door to 21 Sea Coal Street—had been bought, and was being furnished and staffed, ready for more abandoned and homeless children.

He also added that Miss Lizzie Steele appeared to be happy in her new home. Her stepfather had not tried to trace her and make trouble, and was probably lying low, fearful of the law.

‘Take some dictation, Rogers, if you would,' he said abruptly, and rapidly answered Bristow's letter, before picking up another, and saying, ‘I fear that our time here is up. I have a mining expert from the States waiting to see me in London, and news in from Paris which may necessitate me travelling there. Notify my valet that we shall be leaving tomorrow, and make all the travel arrangements necessary for the three of us.'

Rogers raised inward brows. He could have sworn that Apollo, for he was aware of Cobie's nickname, was nicely settled in at Moorings until the Season began, what with Lady K. being so available, and Lord K. apparently a congenial and obliging host ready to turn a blind eye on Lady K.'s interest in the handsome American.

He wondered what had happened to change his new employer's mind.

 

So did Hendrick Van Deusen, to say nothing of Violet, when Cobie told her his news.

‘Oh, really, is this necessary?'

‘My dear Violet, wild horses would not drag me away if there were any means by which I could stay. But, alas, I am needed elsewhere. I did not inherit wealth, Violet, I make my own, and dare not neglect my interests lest I end up a poor man unable to visit Moorings. I shall be back in town for the beginning of the Season, you know. I don't intend to abandon you.'

No, it's only poor Dinah I'm abandoning. But God help
you
if I discover that you have persecuted her further because of my rapid departure, but God help
me
, I cannot endure to stay here longer and see a helpless child suffer because I was foolish enough to try to lighten her life a little.

Violet said nothing more, merely pouted. Mr Van Deusen by contrast, was blunt.

‘Had enough of Lady K., have you?'

‘Now, what on earth should make you think that?'

‘Oh, I know you, Jumpin' Jake. Nothing you ever do is unconsidered. Jealous of the kid sister, is she?'

Mr Van Deusen had seen far too much. He wondered if others had. Mr Van Deusen now did a bit of mind-reading of his own.

‘No, my friend, I don't think anyone else has noticed. They don't know you well enough. Reminds you of Belita, does she?'

The face Cobie offered him after he had said that was one which the Professor had not seen since his days as a desperado in Arizona Territory. They were alone: Cobie took him by the lapels of his expensive and beautiful coat
and put his savage face into his friend's, his teeth and his temper showing, the rage almost on him.

‘By God, Professor, don't take advantage of our friendship by reminding me of Belita. I can only live in peace when I forget what I unwittingly did to her. To satisfy you I'll say this: that, yes, the situation has its similarities, but speak of Belita or Dinah Freville to me again, and I won't answer for the consequences.'

Mr Van Deusen freed himself, and murmured wryly, ‘Oh, you've not changed—except to become even less civilised. I'll give you a piece of advice, because I think that you may be about to try to set the world to rights in your own inimitable fashion. Don't fly too near the sun. You've cut a swathe in the States and here which many men might envy, but the over-reacher always goes too far. You fly high, but the higher you go, the greater the fall.'

It was the second warning! The Salvation Army Captain had given him the first. He remembered what Lewis Carroll had said in his riddling rhyme
The Hunting of the Snark
: ‘What I tell you three times is true!'

Well, no one was more aware than Jacobus Grant of the dangers of hubris: that in every venture he had ever undertaken he had always followed a narrow path between triumphant success and dismal failure. He would not have it otherwise.

‘Don't croak at me, Van Deusen,' he said dismissively. ‘Your own life is hardly fit to be a sermon on the charms of cautious rectitude!'

‘True, but I don't care for people, and for all your claims to be hard-hearted, Jake, you do. And that makes you vulnerable. Mind your back, is the best advice I can give you. And don't hesitate to call in the debt I owe you, that's all.'

Cobie knew that he had had no right to speak to Van
Deusen as he had done. He owed him too much. Whatever his old friend said, the debt was his, Cobie's, rather than the other way round.

‘You minded my back more than once,' he told Van Deusen, ‘and for that, I shouldn't have reproached you as I just did.'

He said nothing more. Mr Van Deusen shrugged at the apology.

 

The person Cobie really wanted to apologise to was Dinah, and he thought so even more that evening, at dinner, when he saw her wan face and Violet's satisfied one.

Dinah had heard that he was leaving, and she thought that she was pleased, which was a lie, she acknowledged while she made herself ready for bed. She had thought that all her feelings for him had died, which was also untrue. She hated him now, and wanted him to be there, to be hated.

Only, that night, she had a dream, a strange one. She was wandering in the dark, alone and frightened. A moment earlier she had been a child again in the gardens at Borough Hall, holding Violet's hand, but the hand had been snatched away, and night had fallen.

Terror struck, hard. She was lost and knew no way back to safety. She began to run, calling out Violet's name, and only succeeded in ending up in a place which was so black that darkness itself became something palpable, a garment which she was wearing.

Just as everything seemed lost, someone said her name, and took her hand in his. She knew that it was a man's hand, it was so large and strong. It was warm, like the voice which said, ‘Don't be afraid, Dinah, I'm with you.'

The darkness cleared for a moment, and it was Mr
Grant—she wouldn't call him Cobie—holding her hand. She could hardly recognise him, he looked so strange and feral. He wore a beard, his hair was long and greasy, tied back from his face, and his clothes were dirty, and odd. Perhaps the oddest thing of all was his hairy filth, he being a man whom she had never seen as other than goldenly clean-shaven and spotless.

Wordless, she looked up into his wild face, asking him a question with her eyes. He nodded, said once again, ‘Don't be afraid,' and then, ‘Remember this, Dinah…appearances often deceive.'

She tried to snatch her hand out of his, but she couldn't, he held it so strongly, pulling her towards him with his right hand, repeating, ‘Remember this, Dinah…appearances often deceive.' Immediately before both he and the dream disappeared she saw that he was holding a revolver in his left hand…

And then she was sitting up in her bed, crying out his name. She lay back against the pillows. The night was not very warm, but she was running in sweat. Her nightgown was drenched, and her hair was wet. She had been crying in her dream before he had appeared to take her hand and offer her comfort, and the tears were wet on her cheeks.

How shameful to dream of him! To wake up, calling his name when he had treated her so dreadfully. Pearson, now her maid, always said that dreams had meanings and were trying to tell you something, usually about the future. She had told Dinah that her aunt was a wise woman, and if she gave you a small pouch filled with herbs and put it under your pillow you would dream of your future husband, see his face.

Well, Dinah, hadn't put anything under her pillow, and she didn't want to dream of Mr Grant, but he had walked
into her dream to repeat twice more what he had said to her the other day. Why was he dressed so oddly, nothing at all like the dandy he usually was: the dandy he had been on that dreadful morning, who always put her own drab outfit to shame?

Was the dream trying to tell her something? If you took what he said at face value he was simply saying that she had been mistaken in him, and his meaningless kindness. What else could he possibly mean?

The puzzle was too much for her. She lay down and tried to sleep, and then she sat up again, her heart thumping. Suppose she dreamed of him again?

The thought didn't prevent her from sleeping. When she did her dreams, if she had any, faded with the morning, as so many dreams do, except for the one which she had had of him offering her help and comfort.

It remained as clear and bright as though she had walked out of Moorings and turned a corner to find him there, a smile on his face, waiting for her.

I
f Dinah Freville haunted Cobie, then the child he had rescued from Madame Louise's haunted him, too. That, and the decision he had made at Moorings before he had left. Those who used Madame Louise's deserved to be punished as well. Only then could he decide what to do about Dinah.

He decided to visit Lizzie Steele at her new home, claiming to be a relative of hers. He arrived in the late evening, wearing an ill-cut suit, a cloth cap, and heavy laced-up boots. Mrs Hedges, Lizzie's guardian, the wife of the Superintendent Bristow had appointed to run the refuge Cobie had paid for, stared at him when he told her that he was Uncle Jack, Lizzie's mother's brother. She said doubtfully, ‘She's never spoken of you.'

‘She wouldn't, I'm the black sheep, ain't I.' He was so busy imitating Lizzie's own broad cockney that he missed her appearing suddenly at the bottom of the stairs. She was spotlessly clean. Her dark hair was screwed back from her face, and she looked quite unlike the waif he had rescued.

‘Here's your Uncle Jack come to see you.'

‘Uncle Jack?' Lizzie was doubtful, until she saw him. Her face suddenly broke into a broad grin. Before she could
begin to speak and perhaps give him away, he said rapidly, ‘Come on, our Lizzie. Remember old Jack, don't you?'

Lizzie was no fool. Life had taught her to dissemble. If well-spoken, flash Mr Dilley chose to look and speak like any masher who walked London's East End, that was his business. He had done Lizzie a good turn, and she wasn't going to let him down.

‘Thought as how I'd come and see how you was doin'. Happy, are you?'

‘Very happy,' she told him. ‘Ain't you goin' to come in? Mrs Hedges'd give you some tea, I'm sure.'

‘Haven't time,' he told her. ‘Jus' came to see that you were happy and well. That stepdad not bothering you?'

Lizzie shook her head and put out a hand to touch his timidly. ‘You'll come and see me again, I hope.'

‘When I can,' he said. ‘I've been away.'

He carried the memory of her face away with him. Also with him was her likeness to Dinah in the early days of their friendship when her face had lit up every time she saw him. He wondered where she was, and what that bitch, her sister Violet, was doing to her now. He had no real hope that she would stop persecuting Dinah once he was not there to see that she kept her worthless word.

He swore to himself, and carried on walking to his next rendezvous, which was with a possibly corrupt copper from Scotland Yard whom an enquiry agent had found for him. He had asked that a meeting be arranged, and the agent had set one up at a pub called the Jolly Watermen, which stood, not surprisingly, near to the Thames.

It was small, dark and full. His man was waiting for him in a corner seat, a glass of whisky before him. He was wearing a brown Derby hat and a crimson tie; a copy of the
Morning Post
lay on the table beside the whiskey—all
there to identify him to Cobie. Cobie was now wearing a tartan muffler. He had rubbed ashes from a fire grate into his hair, and on to his hands and face. His dirty appearance was unremarkable and unremarked.

He sat down next to the copper, said, cheerfully, ‘I'm Mr Horne, James Salmon's pal. You're…?'

‘No one whose name you need know,' said the copper. He was a plain-clothes man, and his face, too, was unremarkable. He was as hard and dour as everyone else in the snug. ‘What'll you have?'

‘Same as you,' Cobie told him, and waited while it was fetched. He had dropped his cockney voice and spoke an undistinguished English.

The whisky arrived; he drank some of it. The copper, who still hadn't offered his name, watched him with a marked lack of interest. He said after Cobie had put his glass down, ‘What is it you want, chum?'

‘Information.' Cobie was in his brief business mode. ‘And help.'

‘I don't know whether I can offer you either.'

‘If the cash was right…' Cobie let his discreet murmur die away.

‘Depends.'

‘We're talking in hundreds, perhaps thousands—all the way up to the top.'

‘Pennies or pounds?'

Cobie gave a snort of laughter. ‘Pounds, of course. The more information you give me, the more you do as I wish, the more you'll get. Mark me, though, tricked I won't be.'

‘Wouldn't dream of it. So…?'

‘Children—and the traffic in them. Specifically at Madame Louise's off the Haymarket. Who's behind it, and
who is paying for protection. If they're paying you, I'll match their offer—then raise it.'

If the man before him was surprised, he wasn't showing it. ‘So, you want to muscle in on the game?'

‘Oh, no,' and Cobie's voice was suddenly sweet, more like the one which society knew. ‘No, I want to break it, put those who run it where they belong—in a cell.'

He had surprised the copper now, who said, ‘Listen to me, I don't—and won't—take their dirty money to help them run a dirty business, but I know those who do. Among them are powerful people—both those who offer and those who take. Who the devil are you to challenge them?'

‘The devil,' Cobie said. ‘I can't pursue every foul swine who organises this trade, every house where it happens, but I want to break this one—spectacularly. To do so, I need your help. I don't much care whether you have been on the take. Your guilt or innocence leaves me cold.'

‘Then why worry? About the children, I mean.'

‘Why should I tell you?'

He saw the other man shrug, and said, ‘Right, I ran across them at their filthy game. I saved a ten-year-old girl from being violated by a man who in his public life has power, position—and respect. If I can close this one house, then I shall have done something, however small, to redress the balance a little in favour of the unfortunate, the illegitimate and the exploited. Satisfied?'

‘Yes, Mr Horne. Which is, of course, not your name. What do you propose that we do?'

‘I want you to tell me exactly how much money it would cost me to pay to have the house raided by the police whilst the filthy business is going on in the attics, so that the perpetrators of it are caught red-handed. In other words, I am prepared to pay as much as it takes. Afterwards, your
people can tell those whom they are selling down the river that the scandal had grown too great to be endured, and that an example had to be made. Above all, I want no one warned beforehand. You understand me.'

‘You have no idea how much this would cost.'

‘Oh, spare me. I have said that I will pay what it takes. Tell me what it might cost me, and then we'll talk about whether I can, or can't, afford it.'

The copper looked hard at the shabby character sitting opposite to him who talked so carelessly of tons of money. He named a price, a high one, and watched his man carefully.

Cobie nodded. ‘I'll double it,' he said coolly, ‘and half of it will be paid in golden sovereigns before the raid, and half in a bank draft drawn on the account of Mr Horne after it.'

‘Oh, come,' said the other man with a smile. ‘Why should I believe you?'

Cobie put his left hand in his pocket, and withdrew from it a heavy purse, ‘There's a hundred golden sovs for you personally as a sweetener. You may also contact Coutts Bank and ask what lies in the account of Mr John Horne. I'll give you a piece of paper authorising you to do so.

‘Coutts will pay out the sovereigns at my order to your messenger after I receive your answer, here, tomorrow night. I shall require you to give me details of the day and the time of the raid. Only then will I hand the first payment over. After that you'll not see me again. Don't be more of a fool than you need be and have me followed. I promise you I'll dispose of anyone who tries to track me down.'

The copper whistled. ‘What about your agent? Suppose we put the frighteners on him?'

‘He only knows me as Mr Horne, of an address which I
have now vacated. Don't waste your time on him. He's a go-between—like you.'

‘Suppose we take your money and run?'

‘Then pray, Mr Policeman, pray. For I know you, and you don't know me, and my revenge will be swift and sure—and not only on you. Do we have a deal?'

‘I think so. Be here at the same time tomorrow.'

‘And no double-cross?'

‘No, you offer too much for that.'

 

So, the deed was done. He had little doubt that he had offered a sum so large that those in the police force who had been protecting Madame Louise would snap his hand off to get at the fortune he was offering. Ever since he had rescued Lizzie and told Ebenezer Bristow that those who had thrown her in Sir Ratcliffe's way would pay—and then Sir Ratcliffe himself—he had been planning to make them do exactly that.

He thought of the network of bolt-holes he had set up round London to cover his tracks, and all the way to the nearest of them where he had a change of clothes waiting, he was on the
qui vive
for the man whom he was sure would be following him. He finally made certain of him on Waterloo Bridge and walked off it for about a hundred yards to wait for his quarry in an alley. The hunted had become the hunter.

He heard footsteps coming along, the steps which had followed him from the Jolly Watermen. He laughed to himself, and when the man passed the end of the alley, he caught him from behind with his tartan muffler in a garrotter's grip. It took him only a moment to drag him against the nearest wall.

He held his victim tightly to him, slipped a razor-sharp
knife from his pocket to hold it with his left hand under his jaw, whispering, ‘I told your superior not to have me followed. I could cut your throat, but I prefer to have you go back to tell him how I keep my word. Nod, if you can hear what I am saying.'

The gasping man nodded frantically.

‘Good. Tell him I shall kill the next man he sends to follow me, and as an earnest of what I say, you may show him this.'

With one swift motion he cut off half of the man's mustachios, before releasing him, coughing and spluttering, black in the face and clutching his throat. Once he had straightened up, Cobie kicked his feet from under him, and then rolled him, semi-conscious, into the gutter, before running silently and swiftly away in the opposite direction from the one he had previously taken.

He had not the slightest intention of killing anyone—particularly a policeman—but it would not hurt to impress upon those with whom he was dealing that to cheat him might be dangerous.

 

Later, at the Jolly Watermen, Inspector Will Walker glared at his sergeant who stood before him, hangdog, his hand over his face.

‘What happened?' he said at last.

‘Somehow, he found out that I was following him, sir.'

Walker's glare grew nastier. It took in his sergeant's bruised face and neck, and the damage done to the mustachios of which Bates was so proud. Sour amusement grew inside him and found an outlet.

‘I know that, Bates, you excuse for a man, you incompetent half-wit. Tell me what happened.'

Bates swallowed. ‘He was waiting in an alley, just across
Waterloo Bridge. He garrotted me—with his scarf, I think—and shoved me against the wall. I thought that my last moment had come.'

Walker remembered Mr Horne's unseasonable tartan muffler and his internal grin grew nastier.

‘And?' he prompted. ‘Spew it all out, Bates, or I'll finish Mr Horne's work for him. I'm sure there was more to it than that.'

‘He put a knife to my throat and said he would have cut it, but that he wanted you to know he's a man of his word…'

‘Many words,' cut in Walker wearily, ‘and all of them nasty. Go on.'

‘He said he'd kill the next man you sent after him, and then…'

‘He cut your throat for you, you fat fool.'

‘What!'

Bates put his hand to his bruised throat, and discovered the thin, shallow cut which Cobie had made, and which was dribbling a little blood.

‘I need a doctor!' he moaned.

‘You'd need a grave digger if I had my way. What else?'

Bates moaned silently to himself. He might have known that the swine in front of him would drag every last detail of his humiliation into the open. ‘And then he tripped me, and kicked me into the gutter. I caught my head.'

He fingered the lump there gingerly. ‘I think that I was out for a few moments, and when I recovered…'

‘Don't tell me. He'd gone. Why am I surrounded by fools and ponces, Bates? Tell me that. Would you say that he was a gentleman?'

‘A what? A gentleman!' Bates stared at Walker. Had
frustration made him mad? ‘He didn't sound or behave like one, sir.'

‘That wasn't what I asked you, Bates. I asked you whether he was a gentleman because although he was dirty, wore filthy clothes, and his hands were particularly grimy, there was one thing he couldn't disguise. His nails. Beneath the dirt his hands and fingernails were in perfect condition. He either never does manual work—or hasn't done it for years. Does that tell you anything, Bates? Of course it doesn't. Oh, never mind. Do you think that he would kill, or was he just talking?'

Bates said, after thinking hard. ‘Yes, I think that he could kill. There was something about him… On the other hand, he might just have been trying to frighten us—he could have finished me off then and there if he'd been so minded. There's another thing, sir. How did he know that I was following him?'

‘Mmm.' Walker contemplated Bates's ruined face and neck. ‘I think so, too—both as to killing, and to frightening. As to knowing that you were following him, you were probably as noisy as a herd of elephants on the loose!

‘What I do know is that I want him found. I'm sure that Coutts won't tell us anything—other than that there is a Mr Horne, with money in his account—a lot of money.