strangers.
He said good-night briefly and watched Evan hesitate, then reply in his quiet voice and turn away in the darkness, an elegant figure, oddly young in the gaslight.
Back at Mrs. Worley's, he ate a hot meal, grateful for it, at once savoring each mouthful and hating it because he could not dismiss from his mind all those who would count it victory merely to have survived the day and eaten enough to sustain life.
None of it was strange to him, as it obviously had been to Evan. He must have been to such places many times before. He had behaved instinctively, altering his stance, knowing how to melt into the background, not to look like a stranger, least of all a figure of authority. The beggars, the sick, the hopeless moved him to excruciating pity, and a deep, abiding anger-but no surprise.
And his mercilessness with the screever had come without calculation, his natural reaction. He knew the rookeries and their denizens. He might even have survived in them himself.
Only afterwards, when the plate was empty, did he lean back in the chair and think of the case.
A moneylender made sense. Joscelin Grey might well have borrowed money when he lost his small possessions in the affair with Latterly, and his family would not help. Had the moneylender meant to injure him a little, to frighten repayment from him, and warn other tardy borrowers, and when Grey had fought back it had gone too far? It was possible. And Yeats's visitor had been a moneylender's ruffian. Yeats and Grimwade had both said he was a big man, lean and strong, as far as they could tell under his clothes.
What a baptism for Evan. He had said nothing about it afterwards. He had not even asked if Monk would really have arrested people he knew to be innocent and then spread the word the screever had betrayed them.
Monk flinched as he remembered what he had said; but it had simply been what instinct directed. It was a streak of ruthlessness in himself he had been unaware of; and it would have shocked him in anyone else. Was that really what he was like? Surely it was only a threat, and he would never have carried it out? Or would he? He remembered the anger that had welled up inside him at the mention of moneylenders, parasites of the desperate poor who clung to respectability, to a few precious standards. Sometimes a man's honesty was his only real possession, his only source of pride and identity in the anonymous, wretched, teeming multitude.
What had Evan thought of him? He cared; it was a miserable thought that Evan would be disillusioned, finding his methods as ugly as the crime he fought, not understanding he was using words, only words.
Or did Evan know him better than he knew himself? Evan would know his past. Perhaps in the past the words had been a warning, and reality had followed.
And what would Imogen Latterly have felt? It was a preposterous dream. The rookeries were as foreign to her as the planets in the sky. She would be sick, disgusted even to see them, let alone to have passed through them and dealt with their occupants. If she had seen him threaten the screever, standing in the filthy room, she would not permit him to enter her house again.
He sat staring up at the ceiling, full of anger and pain. It was cold comfort to him that tomorrow he would find the usurer who might have killed Joscelin Grey. He hated the world he had to deal with; he wanted to belong to the clean, gracious world where he could speak as an equal with people like the Latterlys; Charles would not patronize him, he could converse with Imogen Latterly as a friend, and quarrel with Hester without the hindrance of social inferiority. That would be a delicate pleasure. He would dearly like to put that opinionated young woman in her place.
But purely because he hated the rookeries so fiercely, he could not ignore them. He had seen them, known their squalor and their desperation, and they would not go away.
Well at least he could turn his anger to some purpose; he would find the violent, greedy man who had paid to have Joscelin Grey beaten to death. Then he could face Grey in peace in his imagination-and Runcorn would be defeated.
10
Monk sent Evan to try pawnshops for the pink jade, and then himself went to look for Josiah Wigtight. He had no trouble finding the address. It was half a mile east of Whitechapel off the Mile End Road. The building was narrow and almost lost between a seedy lawyer's office and a sweatshop where in dim light and heavy, breathless air women worked eighteen hours a day sewing shirts for a handful of pence. Some felt driven to walk the street at night also, for the extra dreadfully and easily earned silver coins that meant food and rent. A few were wives or daughters of the poor, the drunken or the inadequate; many were women who had in the past been in domestic service, and had lost their 'character' one way or another-for impertinence, dishonesty, loose morals, or because a mistress found them 'uppity,' or a master had taken advantage of them and been discovered, and in a number of cases they had become with child, and thus not only unemployable but a disgrace and an affront.
Inside, the office was dim behind drawn blinds and smelled of polish, dust and ancient leather. A black-dressed clerk sat at a high stool in the first room. He looked up as Monk came in.
'Good morning, sir; may we be of assistance to you?'
His voice was soft, like mud. 'Perhaps you have a little problem?' He rubbed his hands together as though the cold bothered him, although it was summer. 'A temporary problem, of course?' He smiled at his own hypocrisy.
'I hope so.' Monk smiled back.
The man was skilled at his job. He regarded Monk with caution. His expression had not the nervousness he was accustomed to; if anything it was a little wolfish. Monk realized he had been clumsy. Surely in the past he must have been more skilled, more attuned to the nuances of judgment?
'That rather depends on you,' he added to encourage the man, and allay any suspicion he might unwittingly have aroused.
'Indeed,' the clerk agreed. 'That's what we're in business for: to help gentlemen with a temporary embarrassment of funds. Of course there are conditions, you understand?' He fished out a clean sheet of paper and held his pen ready. 'If I could just have the details, sir?'
'My problem is not a shortage of funds,' Monk replied with the faintest smile. He hated moneylenders; he hated the relish with which they plied their revolting trade. 'At least not pressing enough to come to you. I have a matter of business to discuss with Mr. Wigtight.'
'Quite.' The man nodded with a smirk of understanding. 'Quite so. All matters of business are referred to Mr. Wigtight, ultimately, Mr.-er?' He raised his eyebrows.
“I do not want to borrow any money,'' Monk said rather more tartly. 'Tell Mr. Wigtight it is about something he has mislaid, and very badly wishes to have returned to him.'
'Mislaid?' The man screwed up his pallid face. 'Mislaid? What are you talking about, sir? Mr. Wigtight does not mislay things.' He snifled in offended disapproval.
Monk leaned forward and put both hands on the counter, and the man was obliged to face him.
'Are you going to show me to Mr. Wigtight?' Monk said very clearly. 'Or do I take my information elsewhere?' He did not want to tell the man who he was, or Wigtight would be forewarned, and he needed the slight advantage of surprise.
'Ah-' The man made up his mind rapidly. 'Ah- yes; yes sir. I'll take you to Mr. Wigtight, sir. If you'll come this way.' He closed his ledger with a snap and slid it into a drawer. With one eye still on Monk he took a key from his waistcoat pocket and locked the drawer, then straightened up. 'Yes sir, this way.'
The inner office of Josiah Wigtight was quite a different affair from the drab attempt at anonymous respectability of the entrance. It was frankly lush, everything chosen for comfort, almost hedonism. The big armchairs were covered in velvet and the cushions were deep in both color and texture; the carpet muffled sound and the gas lamps hissing softly on the walls were mantled in rose-colored glass which shed a glow over the room, obscuring outlines and dulling glare. The curtains were heavy and drawn in folds to keep out the intrusion and the reality of daylight. It was not a matter of taste, not even of vulgarity, but purely the uses of pleasure. After a moment or two the effect was curiously soporific. Immediately Monk's respect for Wigtight rose. It was clever.
'Ah.' Wigtight breathed out deeply. He was a portly man, swelling out like a giant toad behind his desk, wide mouth split into a smile that died long before it reached his bulbous eyes. 'Ah,' he repeated. 'A matter of business
