A Conspiracy of Paper

was not as though I took no pleasure from reading, for I often enjoyed the illicit pleasures of romances or adventure stories—I merely wished never to read what others wished to make me learn.

Perhaps that was why I now finally settled on a slim volume of some thirty or so pages that I believed to be as approachable as it was inflammatory: ’Change Alley Laid Open; Or, the Crimes of that Sinister Race of Beings, Called Stock-Jobbers, and the Truth of Their Villainous Operations. It had been put out but recently by a publisher called Nahum Bryce, whose name I knew from some novels and romances in which I have indulged. Here, I thought, was precisely what I wished for: a history of the ’Change written as an adventure.

Clutching the little booklet, I slid myself into a chair at an open table and began to make my way through. I was disappointed to discover that the book was more full of invective than information—or adventure for that matter; it railed against the mortgaging of the future with the national debt, the corruption of the Parliament through bribes, and the unmanning of the nation from the mania of stock-jobbing. I found it shocking to discover a fleeting reference to my own father in these pages, hidden with the pretense of disguise as “S——l L——n——o, that notorious jobber of the Hebrew race, who can be seen everyday upon the ’Change, draining the purses of honest Englishmen with his promises of untold wealth.”

To discover one’s own father maligned is no easy thing. I had seen my own name in print before—many times, in fact, and there has always been something disorienting to be sure, for a man’s business is a private thing, and print is a very public affair. But here these names were not printed in transient and ultimately insignificant newspapers. This was a pamphlet, a permanent thing that a man might keep in his library. These accusations the pamphleteer made—I understood they were mere hyperbole, the rhetoric of the anti-jobbers, but the fact that my father should be so important a figure in their thinking took me by surprise. I could not say that I recognized no other names, for here were references to the schemes of N——n A——l——n, who could only be Nathan Adelman; and the pamphlet had much to say on the villainy of P——l B——th——t, whom I could not but conclude to be my father’s old enemy, Perceval Bloathwait. This scoundrel, according to the pamphlet, delighted in trickery, manipulating the markets to his own profit, caring not what ruin he brought upon others and the nation. It was odd to me that men who lived far from the metropolis, men who knew ’Change Alley only from such pamphlets as these, would think of men such as my father and Adelman and Bloathwait much as they would of fictional characters in a novel or romance.

My musings on this subject were shattered when I noticed the short, round form of Nathan Adelman standing near me with a kind of wry smile. “Have you come to follow in your father’s footsteps?” he asked me, hovering over my table. He struck me as entirely different from the person he had been at my uncle’s or in his coach. Here he was in his element, and he fairly drew strength from the chaos around us. Despite his obvious smallness, Adelman appeared to me grander, more powerful, more confident; and why should he not have appeared so when all those around him behaved as though he was a monarch in his own little kingdom? Perhaps ten feet behind him, a crowd of jobbers had gathered. All desired a few minutes of his attention, and I must say I enjoyed being important enough to divert the great financier from his pressing concerns. I took no personal pride, mind you, but Adelman’s interest in me only confirmed that I was not wasting my time or chasing shadows.

I greeted him, and he casually asked me with what pamphlet I passed the time. “Ah,” he said, looking it over. “I fear the author thought little of me. Or of your father, for that matter.”

“And do you believe what the author writes? Do you believe in the corrupting power of greedy jobbers?”

“I believe the issue here is not the greed of jobbers but the greed of the booksellers,” Adelman said. He casually placed his hands behind his back and balanced on the balls of his feet.

“These are lies you say that the author has written of you and my father. What do you know of Perceval Bloathwait?”

“Bloathwait.” Adelman’s good cheer dripped away like the fat from a roasting hare. “Yes, he rather deserves the abuse he receives. He’s a tricky rascal, and he gives the rest of us a bad name.”

“I do not suppose you say that because he is a member of the Court of Directors of the Bank of England, and thus the enemy of your South Sea Company.”

“The Company is hardly mine, but I do, as you say, take an interest in it. I look to the Company because its practices are laudable; I do not defend the practices because of my association.”

“Your loyalty is commendable, but I wonder how far it extends. This pamphlet I’ve been reading makes some convincing points. I do not believe its assertion that jobbery is itself evil, but I cannot but be swayed by the argument that greed—in any form, I suppose, but in this case stock-jobbing—can shift villainy from one venue to another. It is, perhaps, only a short step from trickery in what one buys or sells to, perhaps, murder.”

Adelman stiffened considerably. “I see you have not taken my advice to heart, Mr. Weaver. Do you have any idea how much one Jew crying murder will injure us all?”

Our conversation was then interrupted by a ruddy-faced gentleman who looked to be about five-and-twenty, who rushed into the center of the coffeehouse. His wig was askew, and his chest heaved as he struggled for air. Yet he managed a deafening bellow. “I have just come from the Guildhall,” he cried to all who would listen. “No one does business within the lottery ticket office. The drawing is grossly undersubscribed. It shall all be a disaster!”

A swarm of men jumped from their seats and all shouted at once. Yet I could hear one name repeated again and again. D’Arblay.

I looked over to where he sat and observed that his table was now surrounded by a host of men who would sell their holdings: “Do you still wish to buy tickets, sir? Take these. I shall give you a very fair rate.” D’Arblay dealt with each man calmly, looking at what he had to sell and negotiating a price.

Adelman laughed softly. “I cannot believe that ruse still works. Note that the men buying from Mr. d’Arblay are all younger. They have not been long upon the ’Change.”

“Do you mean to say that the man who made the announcement is in league with d’Arblay?”

Adelman nodded. “Of course. He creates a panic, makes the gullible believe the lottery is undersubscribed. These men sell at a loss, and d’Arblay makes a handsome profit. It is but a primitive stock-jobber’s trick, yet it clearly continues to earn a profit for those who dare to do the unthinkably silly.”

I looked at the frantic scene with a kind of distant amusement.

“Are you prepared to involve yourself in such matters?” Adelman asked, distracting me from the mayhem of frantic selling. “All this stock-jobbing that you see—you do not understand it, and there is no reason you should trouble yourself with it. Why not think on my offer to do business with gentlemen I know?”

“I am thinking about it, Mr. Adelman, and I appreciate your attention, please make no mistake. In the meantime, I think you will understand that I am interested to uncover the truth about what happened to my father. Could a son do less? Especially,” I added by way of cutting off any stinging retorts, “a son who has much to make up for. And now that we have sorted out why we do the things we do, can you tell me, sir, what you know of a man called Martin Rochester?” I could not think why I asked if he knew the man who had taken into employ my father’s killer, but the idea to do so entered my head and found expression in my mouth before I had time to consider of it.

I should like to say the expression of Adelman’s face betrayed something, but it did not change at all. So frozen was his face in the blank amusement of our conversation, so much did he not twitch or narrow his eyes, that I could not but suspect that this lack of movement was a practiced impenetrability. Adelman made every effort to hide what he was thinking.

“I’ve never heard the name,” he said. “Who is he, and what is it to me?”

“You’ve never heard the name?” I asked incredulously. I had considered what Elias had explained of probability, and it occurred to me that if I was to believe that my father had been murdered, then I must act as though the events surrounding his murder were connected. Rochester had hired away the man who had run my father down, and here was Adelman, who wished me to discontinue my inquiry of that event. Was it not probable, I wondered, that Adelman should at least know of Rochester? “You, sir, perhaps the best-known and best-informed man upon the Exchange,” I pressed on, “can it be that you have never heard of him?”

“Well, I have heard of him,” Adelman said, a slight smile upon his lips. “I simply meant that he was not worth hearing of,” he continued. “My use of Court language has confused you—I quite apologize. I should have realized you are not used to this bombastic method of talking. But as for this Rochester, one hears so little of small men that the names are not long retained in one’s mind.”

“And what little have you heard of him? Who is he?”