some way to put them to use. Until I could do so, however, I thought it time I applied some of the more basic powers upon which I had long depended.
I knew that Herbert Fenn, the scoundrel who had run down my father—and who, in my mind, had attempted to run me down as well—drove a cart for the Anchor Brewery, so it was to the brewery I went in search of this villain. As the hackney coach approached, I felt that I passed not only through neighborhoods, but through the dozens of different worlds that combined to make the great metropolis: the worlds of the rich and the privileged and the poor and the criminal, artisan and beggar, beau and belle, foreigner and Briton, and, oh yes, the world of the speculator, too.
I had, for the past two days, inhabited the world of speculation—I had tried to imagine who had killed my father and old Balfour, and I had tried to imagine what the motivation for these murders might be. According to Elias, it was conspiracy and plot and intrigue. His ideas were fantastical to me, and yet now I was on my way to confront the man who had trampled my father in the street. I cannot say that I looked forward to this confrontation, and my experience at Jonathan’s made me feel twitchy and violent, as though I could not depend upon myself to keep a mastery of my passions.
I cannot quite say what I felt when the foreman in charge of the delivery wagons assured me that Berty Fenn had not worked at their brewery for many weeks. “ ’E run over an old Jew,” the foreman said. “Not on purpose, ’e told me, and no reason to think otherwise, but you can’t keep a man around who’d run over folks, accident or no. Jew or no,” he added as an afterthought. “Trampling folks to death is no good, and I send such men away, I do, without the by-your-leave they might think themselves entitled to.”
“Do you know where Fenn went?”
He shook his head. “Couldn’t say. Someplace where running over old Jews isn’t so frowned upon, I reckon. You a bailiff? I don’t think so—you don’t smell bad enough. Besides, no one would let ’im get so far into debt as to need a bailiff to find ’im out. What’s Fenn to you, anyhow?”
“The old Jew he ran over was my father.”
“That would make you—”
“A young Jew, yes. At least a younger one.” I handed him my card. “Should you hear of his whereabouts, please let me know. I assure you I shall pay fairly for any information.”
I started to turn away when the foreman called after me. “Wait a moment, Sir ’Ebrew. You didn’t say nothin’ before about payin’. You understand that we have to look after our own, but if you’ve some silver upon you, I might be persuaded to look after meself.”
I handed him a sixpence. “That’s to loosen you up. Tell me something useful and I’ll make it worth your while.”
“A sixpence? You’re as tight-fisted as they say. I reckon I should be more civil, eh, Sir ’Ebrew. Otherwise you might put the knife to me an’ circ’cize a beggar.”
“Might you please simply tell me what you know?”
“Right. Well, Fenn, ’e didn’t take so kindly to being given the boot, and ’e bragged on ’ow it didn’t matter to ’im none, now as ’e got ’imself a position, ’e did. With a Mr. Martin Rochester, ’e said. ‘I’ll do a turn with Mr. Martin Rochester,’ ’e said. ‘Mr. Martin Rochester don’t treat a man so,’ ’e said. Like Mr. Martin Rochester was first arse- wiper to ’is ’Anoverian Majesty ’imself.”
“Who is Martin Rochester?” I asked.
“That’s the point, don’cha see? No one ever ’eard of the bugger, but Fenn thinks ’e’s the Second Coming.” He flashed me a grin. “Or the First, depending upon your perspective, I reckon.”
“Did he say anything else? Give you any other information about this Rochester?”
“Aye, ’e said ’e was a bigger cove than Jonathan Wild. This buck no one’s ever ’eard of a bigger man than the big prig-nabber ’imself. Course, I figured ’e was talkin’ to ’ear ’imself since I’d givin ’im the shove and all. But I reckon this Rochester spark is some new man or t’other who took Fenn in for a driver or some such.”
“How long after the accident did all this happen?”
“A few days. Soon as the matter cleared the magistrate, I sent him on ’is way, I did.”
“So it seems reasonable to suppose that Fenn knew this Rochester prior to the accident.”
“I suppose it does, not that I ever gave it much thought.”
“Did Fenn have any family, friends, anyone who might know where to find him?”
He shrugged. “I just worked ’im, I didn’t like ’im. Can’t say none of us much did, and I can’t say as I felt too bad ’bout ’aving a reason to send ’im on his way. ’E was foul-tempered, ’e was. Didn’t take to followin’ orders much, had a pair o’ gums on ’im that ’e’d flap at you for no cause but the pleasure of flappin’. None of the boys ’ere took their pints with ’im. When ’e was done with what ’e ’ad to do, ’e made ’is way to wherever it was ’e went to.”
I gave the man a half crown with a reminder to contact me if he had any more information. Based on the look upon his face, he had now changed his mind somewhat about the generosity of the Hebrew.
I stopped into a public house and called for a lunch of cold meat and ale—a meal that was interrupted when an urgent-looking fellow rushed in demanding to know if there were a man inside called Arnold Jayens. He further announced that he had been sent because Jayens’s boy had been injured at his school, that he had broken his arm and that the surgeon feared for his life. A man in the back jumped up and ran for the door most furiously, but before he had even taken a second step outside, two bailiffs grabbed him and explained that they were sorry for the deceit, but that his son was well, and they merely wished to escort Mr. Jayens to debtor’s prison. It was a sad trick—one I had used myself in the past, though always with great regret. As I looked through the window and saw this unfortunate taken away, I could not but think of the money Miriam had borrowed of me, and I fairly puffed myself up with pride to think I had saved her from such a fate.
I shook myself from thoughts of my cousin-in-law in order to reflect upon the information I had acquired. Fenn had moved rapidly from his employment at the brewery to work for the great Martin Rochester, a bigger man than Jonathan Wild. I could only hope it was all a lie, for I needed no more great enemies.
I SPENT MUCH OF the rest of the day and night pondering my next move, and the following morning I determined to seek out old Balfour’s clerk, this d’Arblay of whom Balfour had spoken. I recalled that Balfour had told me that d’Arblay made his home at Jonathan’s, so learning from my experiences the previous day, I sent Mrs. Garrison’s boy to the coffeehouse with a note addressed to d’Arblay, identifying myself only as a man who wished to see him upon business. The boy returned within an hour with a message from d’Arblay, indicating that I should find him at Jonathan’s until late this afternoon and that he awaited my commands.
I therefore procured a hackney and once again made my way toward ’Change Alley and the buzzing hive of Jonathan’s. Such places generate their own pleasures, I think, for the moment I stepped through the door, and took in the sounds and sights and pungent smells of that house of commerce, I wanted nothing so much as to drink a strong dish of coffee and to feel the taut excitement of doing business with a hundred men who have all taken too much of the same drink.
I asked a boy to point out to me Mr. d’Arblay, and he gestured toward a table at which two men sat, hunched over a single document. “He’s the bullish one,” the boy mumbled, using the language of the Exchange. Bullishness signified that a man had an interest in selling, while bearishness meant that he pursued buying. And looking at these men, it was not difficult to determine which animal was which. With back angled toward me, but such that I could see half of his face, sat a man who had lived perhaps fifty years, each of which had left its mark upon a gaunt visage tightly wrapped with blotchy pale skin. A bit of snuff was encrusted about a nose that had been well eaten by the ravages of the French pox. His attire, fashionable in its cut, informed me of a desire to appear the gentleman, but the flimsy fabric of his red-and-black suit of clothes, also sprinkled liberally with snuff, and even the weave of his wig, were of poor quality.
The bear he spoke to was perhaps twenty years his junior. He possessed one of those wide-open, happy faces, and hung upon each of d’Arblay’s words with the intense, almost drooling attention of a man born to idiocy.
I moved in as closely as I might and attempted to make myself discreet as I listened to the conversation.
“I think you will agree,” d’Arblay was saying in a voice I found unusually high and shrill for a fully grown man, “that this is the soundest method of protecting your investment.”
“But I do not see that the investment needs protecting,” his interlocutor responded, sounding more confused than resistant. “Is not chance the very purpose of the lottery? I must risk losing if I am to have a chance of winning.”
