The Reverse of the Medal (25 page)

'I dare say you have had a great deal of experience, Mr Pratt?'

'Well, yes, sir, I think I may say I have had as much or even more than most. I was born in Newgate, do you see, where my father was a turnkey, so I grew up among thieves. Thieves and their children were my companions and playmates and I came to know them very well. Some few were right bastards, particularly among the informers; hut not many. Then my father moved on to the Clink and after that the King's Bench, so I made a good many more friends among the thieves and such south of the river and the low attorneys and gaolers and constables and ward officers, and it all came in very useful after I set up on my own, after a spell with the Bow Street runners.'

'Aye,' said Stephen. 'I am sure it would.'

'Now, sir,' said Pratt, putting down his cup, 'perhaps I had better be getting back to Lyon's Inn. I must admit I thought I had run my man to earth, for although a great many people live there now, particularly in the back court, which is a regular warren, there could not be many that would match my description. He had to be about five foot seven, lean, bob-wig or his own hair powdered, fifty or thereabouts, a sharp of course.'

'What do you mean by a sharp?'

'I am sorry to talk low, sir: it is a cant word we use to mean a dishonest person. They reckon you are a flat if you don't snap up whatever offers: the world is divided into the sharps and the flats. Mr P was a sharp of course, because nobody but a sharp would have tried to conceal his tracks like that; and a genuine nob, or gentleman by birth. He could never have had dinner with Captain Aubrey and talked to him all night if he had only been one of the swell mob, dressed up for the part, or the Captain would have seen through him, simple though he - that is to say, the Captain would have seen through him for sure. So I thought I had my man: but I was wrong. He did not live there. He was either spoiling the scent again, which I doubt, or he had just called in to rest or leave a message. It was a cruel blow, but I am carrying on, talking to maid-servants and street boys and ticket-porters and scavengers and the like, as well as my other connections - I am carrying on at the inn, trying to find out who he called on and so work back to him. And I am looking elsewhere too, among the genuine nobs known to my friends who might be that way inclined. But, gentlemen,' said Pratt, looking from one to another, 'now that my first bit of luck turned out not to be so lucky after all - now that I did not manage to take it first bounce -I should not like to make any great promises. This here caper is not the low toby, nor the high toby, but the very tip-top or what you might call the celestial toby: these jobs - and I have seen a few insurance frauds and one rigging of the market on something like the same scale, prepared very careful and damn the expense - are always run by gentlemen who have just one confidential agent as you might call him that hires the underlings, always at two or three removes, and sees to all the details. Always at two or three removes: if I was to pick up the Quaker and the flash cove, who certainly belong to the race-course mob, they would be no use to us - they would have no idea of the men who were behind the dummy that recruited them. The confidential agent is the only one who can peach on his principals, and they take good care he does not do so by having a hanging felony to hold over his head: or by some surer way, if things begin to go a little wrong.' Stephen and Sir Joseph exchanged a covert glance; the practice was not unknown in intelligence. 'And this chap looks after himself in much the same fashion all the way down the line. I shall go on looking for Mr Palmer, of course, and I may find him; but even if I do, I doubt we shall learn anything about the men at the head of the affair.'

'From our point of view,' said Stephen, 'it is the finding of Palmer that is essential: and with the case coming on so soon, he must be found quickly. Listen, Mr Pratt, have you any reliable colleagues who could work with you, to save time? I will gladly pay them whatever fee you think right, and double yours, if we may have a word with Mr Palmer before the trial.'

'Why, sir, as to colleagues...' Pratt hesitated, rasping his bony jaw. 'Of course, it would save a mort of time, having Bill work south of the river,' he muttered, and aloud he said 'There is only Bill Hemmings and his brother I could work with really cordial. They were both at Bow Street with me. I will have a word with them and let you know.'

'Do that, if you please, Mr Pratt, and pray waste not a minute: there is not a moment to he lost. And remember, you may commit me to a handsome fee. Do not let a few score guineas stand in the way.'

'My dear Maturin,' said Blaine, when Pratt had kit them, 'allow me to observe that if you make bargains like that, you will never he a rich man. It is fairly begging Bill Hemmings to fleece you.'

'It was thoughtless, sure,' said Stephen: then, with a wan smile, 'But as for never being a rich man, why, my dear Blaine, I am one already. My godfather made me his heir, God rest his soul. I never knew there was so much money in the world, so much money, that is to say, in a private person's hands. But this is between ourselves, I would not have it generally known.'

'When you speak of your godfather, I presume you refer to Don Ram�

'Don Ram�himself, bless him,' said Stephen. 'You will not mention it, however.'

'Of course not. An appearance of decent mediocrity is better by far - infinitely wiser from every point of view. But in this strict privacy, let me give you joy of your fortune.' They shook hands, and Sir Joseph said, 'If I do not mistake, Don Ram�ust have been one of the richest men in Spain: perhaps you will endow a chair of comparative osteology.'

'I might too,' said Stephen. 'My thoughts have turned that way, when they have had time to turn at all.'

'Speaking of wealth,' said Sir Joseph, 'come into my study and see what Banks has sent me.' He led the way, opening the door with caution, for the entire room was crammed with case after case of botanical, entomological and mineral specimens, all balanced in tottering piles.

'God love us,' cried Stephen, seizing the dried skin of a Surinam toad, 'what splendour!'

'The beetles arc beyond anything,' said Sir Joseph. 'I spent such a happy morning with them.'

'Where did all these beautiful things come from?'

'They are the collections made for the Jardin des Plantes by a number of agents, and they had reached the Channel before Swiftsure snapped them up: Admiralty passed them on to the Royal Society, and Banks is sending them to Cuvier by the next cartel, as he always does in these cases. He has just let me have the sight of them before they are packed.'

'If the gentlemen would like to eat their dinner while it is hot,' said Sir Joseph's housekeeper in a carefully restrained voice, 'perhaps they will come now.'

'Heavens, Mrs Barlow,' said Sir Joseph, peering at the clock behind a heap of preserved serpents, 'I am afraid we are late.'

'Could we not eat it in our hand?' asked Stephen. 'Like a sandwich?'

'No, sir, you could not,' said Mrs Barlow 'A souffl�s not a sandwich. Though it may be very like a pancake if you do not come directly'.

People say unkind things about Lord Sandwich,' observed Stephen as they sat down, 'but I think mankind is very much in his debt for that genial invention and in any event he was an excellent good friend to Banks'.

People say unkind things about Banks, too. They say he is a tyrannical president of the Royal Society -that he does not esteem the mathematics as he should -everything for botany - would botanize on his mother s grave. Some of this is perhaps jealousy of his wealth, and certain it is that he can go off on expeditions that few other men could afford, employing capital artists to figure his discoveries and engraving them without regard for the expense.'

'Is he indeed very wealthy?'

'Oh dear me yes. When he inherited Revesby and the other estates, they brought in six thousand a year: wheat was just under a guinea a quarter in those days and now it is close on six pounds, so that even with income tax I dare say he was thirty thousand clear.'

'No more? Well, well. But I dare say a man can rub along on thirty thousand a year.'

'You may say what you like, Dr Croesus, but even this trifle gives him a weight and consequence that sonic people resent.' Sir Joseph refilled Stephen's glass, ate a large piece of pudding, and then, with a benevolent look, he said 'Tell me, Maturin, do you find wealth affect you?'

'When I remember it I do: and I find its effects almost entirely discreditable. I feel better than other men, superior to them, richer in every way - richer in wisdom, virtue, worth, knowledge, intelligence, understanding, common sense, in everything except perhaps beauty, God help us. In such a fit I might easily patronize Sir Joseph Banks: or Newton, if he happened to be at hand. But fortunately I do not often remember it, and when I do I rarely believe it entirely: penurious habits die hard, and I do not suppose I shall ever be such a heavy swell as those who were born to riches and who are wholly convinced both of their wealth and their merit.'

'Allow me to help you to a little more pudding.'

'With all my heart,' said Stephen, holding out his plate. 'How I wish Jack Aubrey were here: he takes a truly sinful pleasure in pudding, above all in this one. Would you think me very rude if I were to beg leave to carry mine into your study? I must be at the Marshalsea before six, and I should be very sorry not to see more of Cuvier's treasures before they are packed up. By the way, do you know where the Marshalsea is?'

'Oh yes. It is south of the river, on the Surrey side. The easiest way is to cross by London Bridge, carry on right down the Borough to Blackman Street, and then still on until you reach Dirty Lane, which is the fourth turning on your right hand. You cannot miss it.'

He repeated his direction and his remark at their parting; but he had mistaken his man. As Stephen had observed, penurious habits die hard, and instead of taking a chair or a coach he walked: when he arrived at the Surrey side he was unhappily inspired to ask the way to Dirty Lane rather than the perfectly obvious Marshal-sea. A kindly native told him, and even set him on his way, assuring him that he should reach Dirty Lane if he followed his nose for another two minutes, no more: two minutes by the clock. So he did, too; but it was the wrong Dirty Lane, there being at least two in Southwark, and from this point he hurried along empty streets inhabited by strangers, often looking at his watch and proceeding at a gasping half-trot until he came to Melancholy Walk, where another, even kindlier native, speaking a dialect of which Stephen could catch only one word in three, told him that he was going directly away from the Marshalsea, that if he carried on in that direction he would eventually reach Lambeth and then Americay, that he had no doubt been taking the air in the Liberties, which included these here St George's Fields - pointing to a stretch of scrofulous earth with sparse weeds standing in it here and there - and had grown confused in his intellects, that he certainly wanted to get back to his kip before lock-up, and he had best be led there the quickest way, rather than be left to wander in the dusk 'for there were a great many forking thieves about in those parts, and a single gent might never be seen again pork pies were assured of a ready sale in the Marshalsea and the King's Bench prison, no great way off, and the cost of the pastry was trifling, given the vicinity of the flour wharves down the way.'

In the event Stephen was only a few minutes late, and a number of small fees, amounting to no more than three times the coach-hire, brought him through the debtors' side to what might be considered the true heart of the prison, the building in which the sailors were confined: for the Marshalsea had always been the Navy's prison, and here those who escaped hanging for striking their superiors served their sentence, together with officers who had run their ship aground for want of attention, those whose accounts were hopelessly entangled and deficient, those who had been detected taking things from prizes before those prizes were legally condemned, those who had been fined for a number of offences and who could not pay, some who had run mad, and some who were guilty of contempt of any admiralty or vice-admiralty court, of the Lord Steward or of any such officers of the Board of Green Cloth as the Coroner of the Verge.

Captain Aubrey, therefore, though not perhaps in quite the company he would have chosen, was at least in nautical surroundings. Strong sea-going voices echoed from the narrow court below, where a party of officers were playing skittles, watched and encouraged by Killick from a little square window, only just large enough for his head, and Jack was obliged to call out quite loud to make himself heard. 'Killick, Killick, there. Bear a hand, bear a hand - there is someone at the door.' Captain Aubrey, being for the moment well supplied with money, had hired two rooms, and this being so, the turnkey knocked at the outer door, instead of walking straight in.

'Why, if it ain't the Doctor,' cried Killick, his face changing from the mean, pinched, suspicious expression it always wore when in contact with the law, to open pleasure. 'We have a surprise for you, sir.'

Mrs Aubrey was the surprise, and she ran out of the inner room dusting flour from her hands, wearing an apron, and looking more like a happy, rosy girl than was reasonable in a mother of three. She kissed him on both cheeks, stooping to do so, and with a particular look, a blush, and a squeeze of his hand conveyed to him that she was much ashamed of her recent weakness, that she should never behave so again, and that he was not to hold it against her.

'Come in, come in,' called Jack through the door.

'How glad I am to see you, Stephen; I was beginning to think you might be lost. Forgive me for not getting up: I dare not trust these to any hand but my own.' He was toasting sausages on a long fork made of twisted wire at a small, bright-glowing hearth. 'We shall he shipshape by Monday, I hope,' he went on, 'but at present we are a little on the primitive side'.

As far as Stephen could see they were tolerably shipshape already. The bare little rooms had been sanded and scrubbed; various neat lockers economized space; a complication of white cordage in the corner showed that a hanging chair, that most comfortable of seats, was being made; and hammocks lashed up with seven perfectly even turns and covered with a rug formed a not inelegant sofa. Jack Aubrey had spent most of his naval life in quarters very much more confined than this; he had also a good deal of experience of French and American prisons, to say nothing of English sponging houses, and it would have been a hard gaol indeed that found him at a loss. 'These are from a local man,' he said, turning the sausages on their fork, 'and they are famous. So are his pork pies: should you like a slice? It is already cut.'