“I should not expect any less of you, Weaver. You’ve always had a good eye in your own way.” He handed me a piece of paper on which there were notes about some loan venture of the Bank, but I could not see how it might be of value.
“Are you thinking matrimony?” he asked impishly, moving to a stack of papers bound together with a thick string. He carefully worked out the knot and began to glance at the pages. “Have you begun to consider starting a home, circumcising some young ones?”
“I know not why my fondness for this woman so amuses you,” I said churlishly. “You fall in love three times a fortnight.”
“Which makes me immune to mockery, then, does it not? Everyone expects me to fall in love. But you, the stony, stout, fighting Israelite—that’s another matter.”
I held up my hand. I heard creaking from somewhere—like footsteps. We both remained motionless in the flickering candlelight for some minutes, listening only to the sound of our own breathing and the ticking of Bloathwait’s great clock. What should we do if Bloathwait were to stroll in, candle in one hand, dressing gown wrapped about his enormous form? He might laugh, send us away, mock us—or he might commit us to the magistrate and use his mighty influence to see us hang for housebreaking. Possibility after possibility ran though my mind, scorn and haughtiness and sinister laughter, or prison and suffering and the scaffold. I fingered the handle of my hangar, and then my pistol. Elias watched me do so; he knew what I was about. I would kill Bloathwait, I would go upon the road, leave London and never return. I would not face trial for this adventure of mine, nor could I think of permitting Elias to know the horrors of prison. I resolved myself to do what I believed necessary.
The noise did not come again, and after a few moments in which I could not quite believe my own conviction that the danger had passed, I signaled that we should resume.
“I wonder about you,” Elias said, trying once more to lighten my mood—and his own. “All this spending time among your coreligionists. Are you thinking of returning to the fold? Moving to Dukes Place and becoming an elder at the synagogue? Growing a beard and such?”
“And what if I should?” The idea of returning to Dukes Place had crossed my mind, not as a resolution, but as a question—what should it be like to live there, to be one Jew among many rather than to be the one Jew that my acquaintances knew?
“I can only hope that when you find the path of abstemious devotion, you do not entirely forget the friends of your debauched youth.”
“You might consider converting to our faith,” I said. “I suppose the operation may prove painful—but I have no specific memory of being uncomfortable.”
“Look at this.” He waved a piece of paper before me. “It’s Henry Upshaw. He owes me ten shillings, and he’s dealing with Bloathwait for two hundred pounds.”
“Stop looking for gossip,” I told him. “We mustn’t stay here longer than we need to.”
We had been there perhaps two hours, and we were both growing anxious, wondering how foolish an idea this had been, when a piece of paper caught my eye—not because of anything written upon it, but because it looked familiar. It had the same kind of torn corner that I had seen on the document Bloathwait had attempted to hide from me.
Picking it up carefully, I saw written at the top “S. S. Co.?” My heart rate quickened. Underneath he had written “forge?” and under that “warning Lienzo.” Did he mean that he had received a warning from my father, that he had given a warning to my father, or even that he took my father’s death as a warning?
A little farther down the page he had written “Rochester,” and then, under that, “S. S. Co. Contact—Virgil Cowper.”
I called Elias over and showed it to him.
“Could these be notes that he took after your meeting?” he asked.
“I never mentioned Rochester to him,” I said. “And I have no idea who Virgil Cowper is, so even if these are notes he took later, it shows that he knows something he’s not telling me.”
“But these could just be his speculations. They don’t prove anything.”
“True enough, but at least we have a name we didn’t have before. Virgil Cowper. I suspect he’s someone at the South Sea Company, and he may be able to tell us something.”
I took out a piece of paper and wrote down the name, and then continued looking through the piles. Elias by now had grown bored, and began looking through Bloathwait’s bound notes upon the bookshelves, but all he found there were incomprehensible pages of names and numbers and dates.
We worked together in silence once more, both of us exhilarated by the find. We were not wasting our time. I do not believe, however, that Elias was capable of periods of prolonged silence.
“You never answered my question,” he said at last. “Would you marry this widow if she would have you?”
Although Elias sought mostly to rail at me, there was something else in his voice—a kind of sadness, and a kind of excitement, too, as though he were on the brink of something wonderful and altering.
“She would never have me,” I said at last. “So there is no answering the question.”
“I think you have answered it,” he said gently.
I escaped further probing by discovering a draft of a letter, made out to a name I could not decipher. I should have overlooked it completely, but a name in the middle of the page caught my eye. “Sarmento proves himself to be an idiot, but more on that later.” It was the only mention of my uncle’s man that I could find. The reference made me smile, and for some reason it gave me a curious pleasure to know that he and I agreed on Sarmento’s character.
My reflection was halted by the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. We both quickly rushed to replace all the papers and blow out candles. But our frenzy halted when we saw Bessie come dashing through the door, her skirt lifted to aid her running.
“Mr. Bloathwait’s awake,” she breathed. “His gout roused him. I’m to be fixing him a dish of chocolate, and then he aims to come down. So give me my half crown, and then off with you.”
I slipped her the coin as Elias finished dousing the lights. I could only hope that enough time elapsed before Bloathwait made his way in here that whoever lit them again would not notice the wax to be soft and warm.
Bessie quietly led us through the maze of hallways to the servants’ entrance. “Don’t be coming back here,” she said to me, “unless you have something else on your mind. I’ve no time for the intrigues of you men of business. I don’t much care for such things.”
She curtsied and closed the door, and Elias and I scrambled into the street. It was late, and I took out my pistol so that anyone passing by would think twice before setting upon us.
“Was it a successful venture?” Elias asked.
“I think so,” I said. “We know that Bloathwait has some knowledge of the South Sea forgeries, and that he had some kind of idea about my father in relation to it. And we have this name, this Virgil Cowper. I tell you, Elias, I have a good feeling about tonight. I think the information we’ve taken of Bloathwait will prove most useful to us.”
I could not tell if Elias disagreed or merely wished to return to his room and sleep.
NINETEEN
I AIMED TO MAKE my way to South Sea House the next afternoon, but I first wished to visit my uncle and report to him of my adventures with Bloathwait. I was not yet certain that I wanted to tell him what I had seen of Sarmento, but I grew tired of playing these cat-and-mouse games. For the nonce I would inform him that the Bank of England director had made it clear that he had some interest in the inquiry.
I confess that my desire to meet with my uncle was in some way augmented by a desire to see Miriam once again. I wondered how the matter of the twenty-five pounds she borrowed of me would sit between us. A loan of necessity such as this could produce a discomfort, and I was determined to do all in power to keep such a thing from happening.
The irony of my interest in Miriam amused me; had I known more of Aaron’s pretty widow, perhaps I would have contemplated a reconciliation long before. And yet, even as I sang a little drinking ditty to myself as I walked, I wondered about my intentions. Despite the world’s opinion of widows, I could not think myself such a cad as to attempt to encroach upon the virtue of a woman who was very nearly a relation, and living under the protection of
