‘How did he get in?’ demanded one clerk in alarm. ‘Harper set guards on all the doors.’
‘For God’s sake, do not let him escape.’ It was Morland, his thin face pale. ‘Clarendon was oddly unfriendly when we met at White Hall not long ago, and I have a bad feeling that Chaloner has managed to regain his favour. He cannot be allowed to reveal what he knows.’
Chaloner’s blood ran cold. If the Earl was wandering around White Hall, did it mean he had been unable to raise the promised troops, and nothing stood in the way of whatever plot was unfolding? Desperation drove him, and he managed to knock Lamb to his knees before racing towards the door, scattering the officials who blocked his way. He had almost reached it when Harper appeared.
Face lit with a savage grin, Harper launched himself at the spy with a ferocity that was unnatural. Chaloner held his own, but then Lamb recovered and joined in, leaving Chaloner with a choice of being bludgeoned from his left or stabbed from his right. He blocked one blow with his arm, and scored a cut on Harper’s neck before retreating behind a table.
‘I was right last week,’ Harper whispered, dabbing at the blood with his sleeve. Lamb waited for him to finish, so they could attack together. ‘There is a secret tunnel into this building.’
‘Morland could have told you that,’ said Chaloner, aiming to cause trouble. ‘He has known about it since the Commonwealth, and has been using it to spy on you, learning your business so he will be better able to inveigle a place in your—’
‘Lies!’ shouted Morland. ‘He is inventing stories, so we will argue, giving him a chance to escape. I know his sly tricks. Now disarm him quickly, before he wastes any more of our time.’
Chaloner had struggled to fight Lamb and Harper at the same time, so when three more clerks joined in, it was not long before he was pinned against the wall, Harper’s sword at his throat. He was quickly disarmed, after which Lamb immobilised him with a painful choke-hold.
‘Thank God,’ said Morland in relief. ‘He would have taken over from Gery if you had let him escape, and then he would have had all your secrets.’
‘You mean our secrets,’ said Harper, his eyes cold and hard.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Morland hastily. ‘Our secrets.’
‘Kill him,’ ordered Harper, and Lamb’s arm immediately tightened around Chaloner’s throat. Chaloner struggled, but Lamb was a powerful man, and Chaloner felt himself begin to black out.
‘Wait,’ ordered Morland. ‘We should consult your director before dispatching anyone.’
‘You only suggest it because you want to know his identity,’ said Harper accusingly.
Morland raised his hands. ‘He may have questions to ask of the man who has been spying on his operation. But if you think he will not mind being deprived of that option, then carry on. However, do not say I did not warn you.’
Harper considered briefly, then gestured to Lamb, and the fierce pressure around Chaloner’s neck eased. Another nod sent one of the clerks scurrying away. As he struggled to draw air into his protesting lungs, Chaloner tried to read Morland’s face. What game was the secretary playing now?
Suddenly, there was a loud voice in the hall, and every clerk in the room turned in surprise. Murmurs of ‘the director’ rippled through their ranks.
‘Henry!’ exclaimed Harper in astonishment, as the newcomer entered. ‘I did not expect you in person.’
‘I met him in the Letter Hall,’ explained the clerk who had been sent to find out what was to be done with Chaloner. ‘He says it is safe for him to visit today, because the Post Office is closed.’
The director was Bishop.
Chapter 13
Smelly lapdog under his arm, Bishop listened carefully while Harper gave an account of all that had happened, including Morland’s triumph with the letter-opening machine. Morland’s eyes were agleam, although whether because he now knew the director’s identity, or because Bishop was obviously impressed by the invention was impossible to say.
‘Why did no one tell me about this secret tunnel when I was Postmaster?’ demanded Bishop, after Harper had explained how he thought Chaloner had broken in.
‘Perhaps everyone assumed you knew,’ said Morland, when accusing eyes turned on him. He smiled ingratiatingly. ‘I certainly did – a man of your knowledge and expertise.’
Bishop regarded him with icy disdain, and Chaloner saw there was more to the ex-Postmaster than an embittered buffoon with a ridiculous pet. The corrupt officials had run a tightly efficient operation under his direction, and any number of people had said that the Post Office had functioned more smoothly with him in charge. Chaloner should not have underestimated him.
‘Is O’Neill aware of this device?’ Bishop demanded, abruptly turning his attention back to Morland’s machine.
‘No,’ replied Harper. ‘He never visits this part of the building. However, Chaloner’s presence here suggests our secret is no longer safe. If he knew to break in, so might others.’
Lamb issued a low growl, and Chaloner’s air was cut off a second time.
Bishop swung around to look at them. ‘I hate to deprive the world of a decent violist, Chaloner, so you will live if you answer me truthfully. Loosen your hold, Lamb. He cannot speak if he is being throttled.’ The pressure eased fractionally. ‘Who else knows about our business?’
‘It is common knowledge.’ Chaloner could manage no more than a croak, and Bishop was obliged to lean towards him to hear. ‘Your feud with O’Neill is the talk of the city, and everyone knows that you have coerced half his clerks into cheating the Post Office.’
The last part was a lie, because Chaloner was astounded that so many of O’Neill’s officials had elected to betray him, and he suspected that most Londoners would not believe it had been possible.
‘Coercion was unnecessary,’ said Bishop coldly. ‘They volunteered. None like working for an incompetent rogue who does not pay them what they are worth. Tom Harper had very little persuading to do.’
‘Harper,’ rasped Chaloner, noting the easy familiarity between the two men. ‘He is the key to the whole operation – those not seduced by promises of wealth could be intimidated into looking the other way. How did you convince O’Neill to hire him?’
‘Easily,’ replied Bishop, unable to resist a gloat. ‘By letting his conceited wife think it was her idea. But I am the one asking questions, not you. What else do you know?’
‘Gery did not find the papers that Ibson stole – the ones revealing the extent of the corruption here,’ Chaloner went on, desperately trying to think of a way to use Bishop’s willingness to listen before Lamb choked off his life. ‘I did. They are in White Hall, and will be made public tomorrow. Unless I am there to stop it.’
‘Good,’ said Bishop fiercely. ‘I want them published. I know for a fact that one proves dangerous intelligence was passed to the Dutch in a letter. That alone will finish O’Neill, because it is his responsibility to prevent that kind of thing.’
‘Several more are copies of accounts that show the extent of your dishonest dealings,’ Chaloner managed to gasp. Lamb’s grip had constricted again and he was growing light-headed.
‘My dishonest dealings?’ Bishop put his hand to his chest in mock astonishment. ‘But O’Neill is Postmaster now, so any hint of thievery is his to bear.’
‘You are right,’ said Chaloner, struggling to speak loudly enough to be heard by all the clerks. ‘Your status probably will allow you to escape prosecution. But your helpmeets will hang.’
‘Do not listen to him,’ ordered Bishop with haughty authority, cutting across the immediate murmur of consternation. ‘None of this can be laid at our door. O’Neill will be blamed, which has been my intention from the start. He conspired to see me ousted, so I vowed to make him pay. Any leaked documents will prove his guilt. Not mine and not yours.’
‘But you have committed murder,’ Chaloner tried again. ‘A more serious—’
‘We have killed no one,’ said Bishop firml
y. ‘The explosion was not our doing – we lost the Alibond brothers, two of our most dedicated helpers. Smartfoot and Copping were ours, too, but they were involved in other dark business, so their deaths were not our fault either.’
‘Wait!’ gasped Chaloner, as Bishop, evidently deciding the discussion was over, began to turn away. ‘You are in danger. Something deadly will happen here soon, and—’
‘That is true, actually,’ interrupted Lamb. ‘I overheard Rea muttering about it last night. It will be today, and he believes it will shake the entire country to its foundations.’
‘Not our concern.’ Bishop nodded to Lamb. ‘Kill Chaloner and hide his body in O’Neill’s garden. Let us see the bastard worm his way out of that when I report it to Clarendon.’
‘O’Neill is behind the Devill’s—’ Chaloner managed to gasp before his air was cut off, a desperate plan forming in his mind.
Bishop swung around abruptly. ‘What? What did you say?’
With an irritable sigh, Lamb loosened his hold again. Chaloner spoke in a whisper, obliging Bishop to lean towards him as he strained to hear. He could smell the lapdog; it was wearing a diamond-studded collar. He let his voice drop lower still, forcing Bishop to put his head even closer as he tried to catch what was being said.
Morland’s eyes widened when he saw what Chaloner intended to do, and he opened his mouth to yell, but Chaloner was already on the move. With all the strength he could muster, the spy butted Bishop hard in the face, moving sharply and violently enough to pull Lamb off balance as he did so. He and Lamb fell to the floor, Bishop staggered backwards and the dog leapt free.
Pandemonium erupted. Bishop bellowed his pain and fury, blood splattering from his shattered nose, while the dog raced yapping through the clerks, creating panic as it nipped at unprotected ankles. Harper stabbed wildly at Chaloner with his sword, oblivious to or uncaring of the fact that he was just as likely to injure Lamb. Screaming for him to stop, Lamb jerked and twisted to avoid the lethal assault, while Chaloner fought just as hard to use him as a shield.
‘Stop!’
Assuming the command came from Bishop, Chaloner fought on, grabbing Lamb’s hair and thrusting him into the path of one particularly lethal swipe. Lamb shrieked as the blade cut into his shoulder, and Chaloner could see the black rage in Harper’s eyes as the sword flashed upwards to try again. The killing blow never came, but Chaloner was too intent on keeping hold of Lamb to consider why. Lamb was struggling violently now, and Chaloner was obliged to use every low tactic he knew to hang on to him.
‘Chaloner, please!’ came an indignant voice after two bites and a knee to the groin. ‘This is the Post Office, not a Fleet Street tavern. Desist immediately!’
With a massive show of strength, Lamb flung Chaloner away from him, but Harper did not strike. Chaloner struggled to his knees, fists at the ready, to see the speaker was Clarendon, resplendent in the robes that marked him as Lord Chancellor. The chamber was full of soldiers led by Gery, and the corrupt officials were lined up against a wall, sullen and frightened. Bishop was among them, a handkerchief pressed to his bloody nose, while O’Neill watched from the doorway.
A hand came to help Chaloner to his feet, but he pushed it away when he saw it was Morland’s. The secretary’s other hand held a dagger that dripped red.
‘I stabbed him just as he was on the verge of dispatching you,’ explained Morland. He nodded to where Harper lay dead from a wound in his back. ‘Which was extremely noble of me after you broke my nose, so be sure to express your thanks in an appropriate manner.’
Chaloner stared at him, itching to grab the weapon and plunge it into his treacherous heart.
It did not take Gery long to organise his men, ready to march Bishop and his accomplices to gaol. O’Neill smirked gloatingly at his old enemy’s stunned dismay, while Morland whispered feverishly in the Earl’s ear. Chaloner could not hear what was being said, because Bishop’s pooch was loose again, barking in its high-pitched, staccato yip.
‘Our raid was a success,’ declared the Earl, extricating himself from Morland and waddling to stand with Chaloner and O’Neill. ‘Newgate will be twenty villains the richer today, and we have exposed the greatest conspiracy the Post Office has ever known.’
‘These men know nothing about the Devill’s Worke, sir,’ said Chaloner. His throat hurt from being half-strangled, and it was not easy to make himself heard over the dog. ‘John Fry is—’
‘You cannot arrest us, My Lord,’ shouted Bishop, snapping out of the shock that had rendered him mute when the Earl and his troops had stormed in. ‘All we have done is gather here to pray. Then your spy arrived and began to—’
‘To pray,’ repeated the Earl flatly, wincing as the yaps reached a new level of shrillness.
‘For the snow to abate,’ elaborated Bishop. ‘So the mail can resume. We would not want the Post Office to lose money because of inclement weather.’
‘Do not lie,’ said the Earl coldly. ‘We know what you have been doing. We overheard some of what was said, and we can guess the rest. You will not succeed in discrediting O’Neill.’
‘No,’ agreed O’Neill smugly. ‘You will not.’
Chaloner regarded the Controller sharply. Was it just pleasure at seeing an old adversary defeated that gave him his mien of haughty triumph? Or was it delight because Bishop was continuing to provide the perfect foil for the Devill’s Worke?
‘Discredit O’Neill?’ echoed Bishop in mock surprise. ‘I assure you, he is quite capable of doing that for himself – with his natural ineptitude.’
Chaloner turned back to the Earl. ‘We need to learn what Fry and Oxenbridge are—’
‘You arrogant bastard!’ spat O’Neill, taking several steps towards Bishop. ‘How dare you accuse me of ineptitude when you were dismissed because you were corrupt and indolent? At least everyone knows that I am honest.’
‘Are you?’ Bishop smiled lazily as he addressed Clarendon. ‘Check the Post Office accounts, My Lord. You will find wild discrepancies between what is produced in the official record and what is really in the coffers – and between what O’Neill says he earns and what he actually takes home. It was a dreadful mistake to appoint him and—’
‘Your hatred has blinded you to reason, Bishop,’ interrupted the Earl. ‘Has it not occurred to you that your accomplices will tell the truth once they know the alternative is the gibbet?’
‘They will,’ gushed Morland, sidling up to him. ‘And I can remember most of the figures on that vital document they burned a short while ago. I shall write them down for you.’
‘There is no need.’ Chaloner pulled the page from his pocket. Morland shot him a venomous glare, and there were groans from the clerks. ‘But this is not important now, sir. We must—’
The Earl snatched it from him, scanning it with the eye of a man who was used to heady figures. Meanwhile, Bishop’s dog had decided that Gery was a worthy target for its fangs, and was busying itself around the marshal’s legs, barking all the while. The Earl raised a hand to his head.
‘Can no one silence that damned beast? I cannot think while it is carrying on.’
‘She is not a “damned beast”,’ objected Bishop, brushing a soldier aside contemptuously as he went to retrieve his pet. ‘She is just appalled at the wickedness perpetrated here by O’Neill.’
O’Neill replied in kind and then a spat was under way, raised voices driving the dog into an even greater paroxysm of snaps and yips. Chaloner tried again to reason with the Earl, but could not make himself heard over the hubbub. Then Morland pulled him to one side, an expression on his face that Chaloner did not like at all.
‘We both emerged unscathed,’ the secretary said silkily. ‘Well, you sound like a rusty saw, but that will pass in a day or two. We should thank God for such a successful outcome.’
‘You were part of their plot, Morland. Not even your sly tongue will see you slither out of this, because I shall stand witness against you.’
‘I wa
s working undercover,’ objected Morland indignantly. ‘Pretending to be part of Bishop’s scheme in order to catch him. You must have done similar things during your life of espionage.’
‘Not nearly so convincingly.’
Morland bowed. ‘I shall take that as a compliment. But you know I am telling the truth, because not once did I urge anyone to kill you – which I would have done, had I really been one of them. I told them to take you prisoner, at which point I would have helped you escape.’
‘As you helped me escape from White Hall last night?’
‘You survived, did you not? And I have tried constantly to keep you out of danger. How many times did you hear me urge Gery to arrest you? That was to keep you safely locked away.’
‘Knight was not very safe when he was locked away.’
‘No,’ acknowledged Morland. ‘And that is a pity. But never mind him. How could you imagine that I would defraud the Post Office? What do you think I am?’
Chaloner would have told him, but the Earl approached at that point and he disliked bad language. ‘You accepted bribes,’ he said instead.
‘Prove it,’ challenged Morland.
Chaloner grabbed his coat and shook it, so that the coins jangled in his pocket. Rage flashed briefly across Morland’s face, but it was so quickly suppressed that Chaloner wondered if he had imagined it. With cool aplomb, Morland presented the purse to the Earl.
‘I almost forgot,’ he said with a serene smile. ‘Take it, My Lord. It is yours.’
The Earl’s eyes gleamed. He liked money and was always claiming that he did not have enough of it. Chaloner’s heart sank, suspecting the gesture was enough to ‘prove’ Morland’s loyalty, and might even serve to protect him from awkward questions.
Death in St James's Park: 8 (Exploits of Thomas Chaloner) Page 34
