hooves if he’d not been paying attention, and he drew himself back up to the curb thankful for no broken bones. The grid meant long, flat, and unobstructed streets, and woe to pedestrians for Matthew noted that the drivers of some vehicles took advantage of that fact to let their horses run.
Having secured a room at Mrs. Fontaine’s, shaved, and then eaten a light breakfast, Matthew headed back at midmorning with his valise toward Market Street in search of Icabod Primm’s office. The sun was beginning to shine through the murk. Thanks to the help of a tailor on the corner of Market and Fourth, it was no difficult matter to find the building, which was just a block to the east and near the very beautiful and elm-shaded Christ Church.
I. Primm, Attorney-At-Law, read a brass plate on the front gate. Matthew ascended six stone steps to the slab of a door, opened it, and faced a young clerk at a reception desk. The place was as quiet and serious as a crypt, the walls the color of dark tea. The clerk waited until Matthew had closed the door behind him and approached the desk.
“May I help you, sir?”
“Yes. I’d like to see Mr. Primm, please.”
The young man’s eyes behind his spectacles were two bits of uncaring coal and were certainly not impressed by either Matthew’s suit or new hat. “And this is concerning…?”
“I just need to see him for a few minutes.”
“Well,” said the clerk, and folded his thin hands together. Matthew knew the signs when a person who had no power suddenly got a gift of it. “Mr. Primm has a very busy schedule, sir. In fact, he’s with a client now and I doubt he’ll be free within the hour. Let me see.” He opened a ledger book and made a show of tapping his finger down a list of appointments. “No, no…unfortunately, no. Mr. Primm will not have time to see any new clients today.” He looked up and gave a cheerless smile. “Might you come back tomorrow afternoon, say?”
“I’m afraid I’m taking the packet boat back to New York tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, New York, is it? I thought something about you seemed different.”
“Be that as it may,” Matthew said, keeping his voice pleasant, “I would appreciate five minutes with Mr. Primm. Today. Would that be impossible?”
“Yes sir, I’m afraid it is. Impossible.” The clerk picked up his quill and started to pretend to do whatever it was he’d been pretending to do when Matthew had opened the door.
Matthew had hoped it would not come to this, but here it was. And so quickly, too. He opened the valise, took out a rolled sheet of paper, and put it on the desk in front of the clerk’s face. “If you value your position,” he said calmly, “you’ll take that to Mr. Primm. I’ll wait.”
The young man unrolled the paper and looked at the drawing there. In an eyeblink Matthew knew the clerk had no inkling who the woman was. “This has some meaning, I assume?”
“You may. Assume,” Matthew answered, with a little more grit in his voice. He decided to approach this irritating roadblock as Hudson Greathouse might. “Now get your ‘assume’ up out of your chair and take that drawing to Mr. Primm. I don’t care who he’s with, and he won’t care either in about two minutes.” For effect, he produced his silver watch and snapped it open.
It was either the tone or the watch, for the clerk took Berry’s drawing and was off like a rabbit up a set of stairs behind him and to the left.
Matthew waited, and wound his watch while he was at it. One minute later, there came the sound of a door opening and closing and boots on the risers. A voice boomed along the stairway: “I should say I couldn’t sit there like a muffin and let that man strike me, could I? And right in broad daylight at my favorite tavern! I ought to challenge the old fart to a duel, is what I should do, and to blazes with the courts!”
“I’m sure that would not be the best course of action, Admiral,” came the clerk’s voice, now more nettled than powerful. He appeared guiding a man of about seventy wearing a huge cockaded bicorn and dressed in some kind of military uniform with a row of medals pinned to his chest. The old man’s right eye was blackened.
“Mr. Primm promised me an hour! Either I’m more senseless than I thought or my hour has shrunken into ten minutes!” the affronted admiral protested as he was escorted to the door.
“Yes sir. But I’m sure Mr. Primm has the situation under control and, besides, as Mr. Primm says, your time and money are best spent more wisely than sitting in his office talking about a minor scuffle.”
“A minor scuffle? That old seabeast strikes me, near blinds my eye, and it’s called a minor scuffle? See here, I have a reputation to uphold!”
“Of course, sir, and Mr. Primm has your reputation foremost in his mind.” The clerk opened the door for the crusty old man’s exit and said quickly and rather acidly to Matthew, “Go up.”
Matthew picked up his valise, climbed the stairs, and at the top faced another door. He started to knock but decided it was a waste of time. He was expected. He took a fast deep breath for courage, gripped the doorhandle, and turned it.
The man beyond the door, sitting at a central desk before a wide multi-paned window that overlooked the river, did not lift his head nor otherwise acknowledge the visitor. Before him, spread out on a dark green blotter, was the likeness of the Queen of Bedlam. The office was either a tribute to the triumph of order or, as Berry might have said, a monument to a tight-ass. In fact, two of those dreaded gray-fleshed portraits of constipated noble-men hung upon the walls. There were shelves of dozens of thick leatherbound books that looked as if they’d been recently waxed. Three granite busts of unknown but obviously revered gentlemen stood on pedestals along the right-hand wall, their faces turned toward the door as if measuring the value of whoever crossed that august threshold. On the floor was a dun-colored carpet and in the silvery light that spilled through the window not one mote of dust dared float. A spare and uncomfortable-looking chair had been positioned in front of the desk. Standing in the corner just behind Mr. Primm, and casting a shadow across his desk, was a granite life-sized statue of the blindfolded goddess Justitia, holding a sword in one hand and balancing scales in the other. It was fitting for this mausoleum, Matthew thought, for the man at the desk might also be mistaken for a statue.
Primm wore a black suit with thin gray pinstripes and a white shirt buttoned to the throat. A black ribbon-tie was wound around the collar and tied with a small ugly knot that looked like a strangler’s joy. Atop Primm’s high forehead sat a white wig of tight curls, which went very well with the white powder that adorned his gaunt and solemn face. Matthew thought Primm had the longest nose and smallest mouth of any man he’d ever seen; it was not so much a nose as a boulevard, and not so much a mouth as a trinket.
Therefore Matthew was not surprised when Primm spoke in a high-pitched, hushed voice that did not seem to require his mouth, for the tiny compressed lips barely moved.
“I will give you five minutes.”
“Thank you. I regret to have interrupted the admiral’s complaint.”
“An honorary title. We humor him.”
“Ah,” Matthew said, and waited for an invitation to sit that was clearly not going to be offered.
Still Primm had not lifted his gaze from the paper. Long thin fingers touched the surface, meandering over the charcoaled features.
“I’d like to know who she is,” Matthew said.
“And who are you?”
“My name is Matthew Corbett. I’ve come from New York.”
“In what capacity?”
“I’m an associate with the Herrald Agency.”
Primm’s fingers stopped moving. “Their nearest office is in London.”
“No sir, that’s incorrect. Our new office is Number Seven Stone Street, New York.”
“You have a card?”
Matthew felt a little twinge in the stomach. A card! Why hadn’t Mrs. Herrald given him an official card before she’d left? Maybe it was up to Greathouse to have them printed. “The cards have been delayed,” he countered.
Now Primm did tear his attention away from the portrait, and his pallid face with small marbles of piercing black deepset within it lifted to look at Matthew as one would consider the vilest dockside roach. “No card? Therefore no proof of identity?” He spoke that last word as if he were biting his teeth against a bone.
Getting me off-balance, Matthew thought. Attacking, when he should be defending. “No card,” Matthew answered flatly. “As far as identity, I’m sure the doctors Ramsendell and Hulzen might vouch for me.”
“They are not present.”
“Present or not, they’ve hired the agency-and me-to find out who their patient is. They believe they can help
