by David Liss
I HAD NO DIFFICULTY breaking into the house—I’d pillaged so many houses in my past that to do so now, on the side of justice rather than theft, gave me nothing but delight. This house was something larger than any I’d forced my way into before; there were four floors, and many rooms that my quarry might sleep in, so I had to maneuver my way about, avoiding servants who moved through the halls like shadowy figures, brandishing candles that seemed designed to hunt me out.
The first bedroom I slipped into was clearly not his. It was already occupied, and when I saw the silhouette of the old woman in the dark, heard her muttering in her sleep, I made my way out and tried another. I looked in four more rooms before I found another sleeping closet, this one empty, but I recognized a coat hung on a hook by the door. I sat down to wait, hoping that he was not out carousing all night, that he had not decided to travel from London. I was ready, and the sooner he returned, the sooner I would feel some measure of justice.
I had in my pocket the half-minute hourglass that the Tudesco beggar had given me. It had occurred to me to take it along just before I had departed my uncle’s house. I liked the idea that the Tudesco’s gift might serve me in some way, and I supposed if I ever saw him again, and could tell him how I had put his hourglass to use, he should be most pleased.
I turned it over time and again as I waited in the dark in his room. The chair I sat in was shockingly hard and uncomfortable, and my leg and hip ached prodigiously, but I suffered it all, for I knew that now I was close to understanding everything. After Fat Billy had spoken of the stolen stocks and told me who removed them of old Balfour’s property, I had felt only the joy of success. It took some time for the real import of this information to occur to me. Before I had known for certain that there were counterfeit stocks; now I knew for certain that old Balfour had been killed for them. I may not have understood the motives of all the players in my drama, but I was not sure I any longer needed to. Balfour and my father had been killed because they wished to tell the world of the false stocks. All I required now was the true name of Rochester.
Each minute in the blackness of his closet dragged on interminably, but the confidence that I knew what I was doing, that I no longer wandered aimlessly, gave me a resilient kind of patience. I turned over my hourglass. I watched the sands trickle out and I turned it again.
It was not too late, almost eleven, before he came in. I heard the creaking of the stairs and hissing of his feet as he lazily dragged them upward. There were a few words muttered I know not whether to a servant or himself and then the slow, clumsy turning of the doorknob. He held out a candle in one hand and lit a lamp that rested on a table by the door. Now a soft, orange glow filled the room, and when he turned around, Balfour saw me in his chair, pistol pointed directly at him.
“Lock the door and step forward,” I said calmly.
He opened his mouth to speak, to express some outrage or another, but in the dim light of his candle he saw at once that he dare not. I had a practiced expression for him—cold, hard, merciless. He locked the door and turned to me.
“I have wondered sometimes, Balfour, that if a man were a blockhead, let us say the greatest blockhead who ever lived, would he know of his own idiocy, or would he be too much a fool even to sense that he was deficient? I believe you can answer that question for me.”
A pistol raised upon him and a murderous look in my eye had silenced him, but he could not bear my insult. “Weaver, I cannot claim to guess what you think you are doing, but I suggest you take these outrages no further.”
The hourglass sat on a table by my chair. Not taking my eyes off Balfour, I turned it over with my left hand. “You have half a minute,” I said coolly, “to give me the true name of Martin Rochester, or I shall shoot you. You know me too well, I think, to wonder even for an instant if I mean what I say.”
I had anticipated he would not be a strong man, but I had not expected that his weakness would prove so very complete. He collapsed to his knees as though his feet and shins had simply disappeared. He opened his mouth to beg for mercy, but said nothing.
I would show him no mercy. He would receive no sign from me that his panic would grant him any leniency. The hourglass ran down. I pulled back the hammer on my pistol and prepared my eyes for the powder’s burst into flame.
He gagged, trying to speak through his terror. I suppose that somewhere, on some level I ignored, I sympathized with him. I think we all have had dreams in which something terrible has happened and we try to scream, but we can produce no sound. Balfour acted out this terror. He heaved, like a man attempting to expel a piece of bone from his throat, and at last he opened his mouth wide and released a mighty bellow with all the force of his lungs. “I don’t know!”
His cry seemed to harness all of the power of his previous attempts to speak. We both sat in silence for some time, shocked at the force of his scream and with the silence that followed. Perhaps it was because he had gotten these first words out, and perhaps it was because his thirty seconds had expired and he was not dead yet. I could hardly even guess why, but his tongue at last loosened. “I don’t know who he is,” he said in a quiet voice. “I swear it. No one does.”
“But you stole your father’s South Sea issues for him.” It was not a question.
His head hung loose, like the limp skull of a skeleton I had seen once at Bartholomew Fair. “How did you know?” he asked quietly.
“Who else could have?” I preferred to make him believe that I had reasoned it out rather than explain that I had beaten the information out of a young weakling. “If they were missing from the estate, someone had to have taken them. Who was in a better position than you? After all, unless the issues were transferred to another owner, they were of no value, and they couldn’t be transferred, could they? They were counterfeit, so no one would want them other than those who would wish to destroy them—that is, Rochester or the South Sea Company. I simply presumed that it was Rochester’s hand behind their theft. He then used his man inside the Company to alter the records so as to make it appear that your father had sold his holdings long before his death.”
Balfour anticipated my question. “He sent me a banknote by messenger: one hundred pounds if I would agree to do it. Another three hundred when he received the issues. My father was already dead, and I had no idea they had been planning on killing him before it happened. After they’d killed him, there was nothing to be done. I never stood the chance of seeing a penny from him otherwise, so why should I not have taken advantage of this opportunity?” As he spoke, I believe that Balfour began to convince himself with his own excuses. I could see his face begin to change from the hollow countenance of shame to the hopeful expression of a man who believes he is on the verge of absolution.
“When you consider the matter, I did nothing wrong.”
“Nothing but aid the men who killed your father,” I said. “But I wish to return to the matter of your idiocy for a moment. You see, Balfour, I have no trouble believing that you had no actual hand in your father’s death, for I believe you too much of a coward for such a thing.”
I cannot say how much I enjoyed this insult. He bristled at this accusation of cowardice, but he could hardly argue that indeed he was a stout enough man to commit patricide.
“I believe you knave enough to profit from your father’s death and to aid his murderer,” I continued. “What I do not understand is why you should ask me to find the man who killed your father. You asked me in particular to look into his missing issues. Unless I am mistaken, you hired me to expose you. Why should you do such a thing?”
“Because,” he spat, angered at my effrontery, “I never believed you could learn as much as you did. I thought myself safe.”
“That doesn’t explain why, Balfour. Why?”
“Damn you, Weaver, for a filthy Jew. I won’t answer your questions. I merely have to call out for my servants to open this door and drag you before the magistrate.”
“You’ve already called out
and your servants did not hear you. These handsome town houses are so finely built, you know—all thick stone walls and heavy doors.”
“Then I shall wait you out. I do not believe you will shoot me. I shall remain here for as long as you, and I dare say, your arm will grow tired before I grow weary of sitting.”
I smiled and dropped my pistol into my pocket. “You are quite right, sir. I shall not shoot you. The pistol merely makes a dramatic point. I shall tell you what I am willing to do, however. I am willing to break each of your fingers, sir—to ask you the same question each time I break a finger. You will have ten chances before I finish with your hands. I shan’t mess with the toes—the pain is too slight—but there are numerous objects in this room with sufficient strength to smash a foot. A knee too, I suppose. And let us suppose I break all I can think of to break and you still do not tell me what I wish to know, there remains only your skull. You will be found, as limp as a rag doll, and no one will know what happened to you.”
Balfour attempted to keep his eyes open.
“But,” I added brightly, “I really do not believe such a thing would ever be necessary. Do you know what I believe? That the most you would be able to stand would be one broken finger. Shall we put this theory of mine to the test, or will you tell me what I wish to know?”
Balfour remained silent for what seemed an interminable period. I understood what went on in his head. He searched for a way, some other way, than his giving me information, that he might avoid any repercussions from the man he would have to betray. I suppose he mulled it over from every angle, but in the end he could only think of how to avoid a torment now—the torment to come would be dealt with later.
“I was paid to engage your services,” he said at last, “by a man who could not have known that I had sent my father’s stocks to Rochester. He hired me because it would seem very plausible that I should have an interest in the inquiry. And it was he, not I, who wished to put you upon this course. I merely stood to profit from it. I again thought that if I could make some small money from my father in his death, why should I refuse? I never believed you should learn of my involvement.”
“Who is this man that hired you?” I asked.
I know not what name he might have given that would have surprised me. Had he said the King of Prussia, the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Nabob of Bengal I would have thought these as likely villains as anyone else. But the name he gave me was perhaps less surprising.
Jonathan Wild had paid Balfour to set me upon my inquiry.
I stood up, and looked down at Balfour, who could not decide if he should attempt supplication or righteous indignation. “Did Rochester give you the remainder of what he promised?”
Balfour shook his head. “He never did send it.”
“Good.” I hit him hard in the face. I wanted that he should bear a mark of our encounter, for every time he was asked of its origins, his lie would remind him of his villainy and his cowardice.
THIRTY-TWO
THE NEXT TWO DAYS were very grim ones for me. I had learned so much—I had unearthed the great conspiracy that Elias had predicted, and I had done so largely with the aid of philosophy, something I would never have believed. I knew who had killed my father, why he had done so, and how he had done so. But Rochester had hidden himself too well. He had known from the outset that to cross the South Sea Company was a dangerous business, and he had taken care that an enemy should never find him out.
I had exhausted every possibility, but I could not crack the edifice that Martin Rochester had erected to protect himself. I thought of pursuing his three henchmen once again, but I could not convince myself that it would be worth my while. Rochester had gone to such great lengths to conceal himself that he would hardly divulge his true name to a group of murderers-for-hire who might sell it at the first opportunity. In addition, Rochester’s villains were aware that I knew who they were, and it struck me as probable that they would make themselves hard to find, at least for a few weeks.
I wished heartily to talk to Elias, but he could spare me little time as he made the final preparations for his play. There was a great deal of rewriting to be done, but he assured me that Rochester was going nowhere. Once the play was successfully launched I could count on him for assistance.
With little else to occupy my time, I spent my days in Jonathan’s, drinking far too much coffee and hoping to overhear conversations of note. I saw no more of Mr. Sarmento, and my uncle mentioned in passing that he was most concerned that the clerk had not been to the warehouse for two days. I did not think it my place to tell him of what I knew.
Miriam and I had been almost entirely estranged since our brief kiss, and her efforts to mend our breach, as she had done in the hall, had been courageous, but no single gesture of goodwill—no matter how daring—could hope to set aside so monstrous a discomfort as that which now lay between us.
The afternoon before the premiere of Elias’s play she and I sat in my uncle’s drawing room. It was the first time we had spent together since we shared that particular intimacy in the inn, and I found I could tolerate her presence only by attempting to put that incident out of my mind. She, on the other hand, sat as though entirely comfortable as she devoured a romance entitled Love in Excess. When not casting secret glances upon her, I pored over pamphlets on the Bank and the companies and anything else I could find. I understood almost none of what I read, and I suppose the effort was fruitless. I wished to find some reference to Rochester, but I knew there could be none.
I watched Miriam read, studying her look of enjoyment as her eyes passed over this foolishness. “Miriam,” I said after some time, “is it truly your intention not to marry me?”
She looked up at me, her face taut with horror, I suppose, but there must have been something upon my face—something impish rather than desperate—that made her burst out laughing. Not laughing in a mocking way, you understand, but laughing at the absurdity of all that had passed between the two of us. It was most infectious, and I too fell to laughing. And so we remained, laughing together, each encouraging the other, until both of our stomachs ached.
“You are ridiculously direct,” she said at last, through gasps of air.
“I suppose I am,” I agreed, as the last of the laughter departed. “And so I shall be direct with you,” I said formally. “What are your plans now? What will you do with your money?”
She blushed a little, as though talking about money embarrassed her. Perhaps it was only this money. “I shall need to find someone to help me—someone I can trust. But I shall then invest it, I suppose. If I do so carefully, I may yield 5 percent on it, and with that money, along with my jointure, I should be able to afford a place that I find satisfactory.”
I felt myself awash with disappointment and shame. I was disappointed that Miriam would now move out, establish her own household, and become independent. While she had been subject to my uncle, she had seemed somehow more accessible; now she would be truly beyond me and my selfishness in this matter left me ashamed.
I opened my mouth to begin a speech that I know not how I might have composed, and I still know not, for fate intervened. I heard the door open, and Isaac entered the room with a card resting upon a silver tray.
“For you, Mr. Weaver,” Isaac said. “A lady.”
I examined the card, on which the name Sarah Decker was printed in a handsome type.
“Did she state anything of her business?”
“I believe she’s looking to employ your services,” Isaac answered.
I was in no mood to take on new charges, but my inquiries had cost me a great deal of money, and I could see the value in giving myself some new task or other. Besides, the name Sarah Decker sounded familiar to me. I could not quite place it, but I knew that I had heard of it sometime in recent weeks.
Miriam excused herself, and Isaac sent in the lady. I immediately felt gratified that I had not sent her away, for she was an astonishingly beautiful woman of shining yellow h
air, ample eyebrows, and a round, delicate face. She wore a dress of ivory with a blue petticoat and a matching bonnet. Her demeanor was genteel, but I could see she was ill at ease, calling upon a man such as myself in a neighborhood such as Dukes Place. I bade her sit and asked if I could offer her a refreshment, but she would have none.
“I come upon a difficult matter,” she said. “I have long thought that there was nothing I could do to better my state, but it has grown worse, and when your name was mentioned to me, Mr. Weaver, I thought of you as my last hope.”
I bowed. “If I may be of any assistance, it shall be my honor to serve you.”
She smiled at me, and for such a smile, I believed, I would serve her in any way I could. “It is awkward to discuss, sir. I hope you will not grow impatient with me.”
I would soon need to leave for the theater, but I nevertheless assured her she might take as long as she required.
“It is about Sir Owen Nettleton. I believe you know him.”
I nodded. “Yes, I expect to see him at the theatre this very night.”
“Do you believe him to be a man of honor?”
It was a delicate question, and one that I had to answer cautiously. “I believe Sir Owen to be a gentleman,” I said.
“You performed a service for him, did you not? Did he mention my name to you?”
I now knew how I recalled her name, for Sir Owen had told me of his plans to marry Sarah Decker.
“Sir Owen mentioned you in only the most laudatory terms,” I said. “May I ask why you inquire?”
She shook her head. “I hardly know how I can explain it,” she said. “It is my hope that you might be able to speak with him, to make him see reason. I know not what else to do. I have discussed the matter with a man of law, but there is no crime he has committed. My brother has told me he will duel, but I know Sir Owen to be my brother’s superior with the sword, and I could not stand that something should happen to him on my account.”
