port. An’ ol’ Bert Culpepper’ll get it, sure as God made little fishes. An’ then where’ll Clem Louvain be, eh? I’ll tell yer, a week be’ind for the rest of ’is days. An’ you an’ I but know wot good a cargo is a week be’ind! So yer put yer money on Clem Louvain if yer want, but I’m keepin’ mine in me pocket till I sees which way the cat jumps.”
Monk smiled at her very slowly. “Then so will I,” he said softly. It was what he had wanted at last.
She was uncertain just how deep his agreement was. She wanted it all, but she knew she had to play it slowly. She had reeled in many fish in her day, and this was a tasty one.
Monk sat back again, still looking at her. “You said something about watches?”
She moved her fingers gently on the fabric of her embroidery. “Yer got watches?”
“Three . . . for now.”
She held out her hand.
He gave them to her, one at a time, hoping she would either give them back to him or pay him something like their worth. If not, the information she’d just revealed would have been bought at a price he could not afford.
It took him nearly an hour to haggle with her, and she relished every moment of it as if it were a kind of game between them. She sent for a bottle of gin, and it was brought by a thin man with muscles like cords in his neck, and a knife scar over the crown of his shaven head. He brought it with ill grace, and Lil barely looked at him. She was bored with him, her appetite was sharp for Monk.
They sat in front of the fire, sipping gin, arguing back and forth. She leaned forward so close to him he could smell the warmth and the staleness of her, but he dared not let her see that. He could feel the sweat trickling down his body and knew it was as much from revulsion as from the heat of the room. He had walked into this knowingly, using what he saw in her face, and now he did not know how to get out. He was tempted to settle for less than the watches were worth—anything to escape. But if he did that she would know why, and not only despise him for it but be insulted, which would be far more dangerous. Every instinct in him screamed that a woman rebuffed was an enemy no man could afford. Better a man robbed of his goods, or insulted in his honor, better almost anything rather than that.
The minutes ticked by. She sent for the man with the corded neck again to fetch more coal. Apparently his name was Ollie.
He brought it. She told him to stoke the fire. He did so. She dismissed him.
“Forty pound,” she said as Ollie closed the door behind him. “That’s me last offer.”
He pretended to weigh it very carefully. He had asked forty-five, three pounds more than the forty pounds Louvain had given him, expecting to have to come down. This would mean he lost two pounds, but he would not do better. “Well . . . I suppose there’s more to a price than money,” he said at last.
She nodded with satisfaction. “Gimme.”
He passed over the watches, and she stood up and went to a locked box in the far corner of the room. She opened it and brought back forty sovereigns, counting them out for him.
He took them and put them in his own inside pockets. He knew better than to leave instantly. It was another five minutes before he rose to his feet, thanked her for her hospitality, and said he would be back the next time he had business of a similar nature.
He walked briskly to Louvain’s office, tense all the way, thinking he heard footsteps behind him. He could not afford to lose the money. He went in with a sense of relief so overwhelming it was like exhaustion suddenly catching up with him. He asked to see Louvain immediately, and was shown in within ten minutes.
“Well?” Louvain demanded, his face dark with anger and impatience.
Monk realized how glad he was that he had something positive to report—and that the coins were in his pocket. He took them out and put them on the desk. “Forty pounds,” he said. “It bought me information that you should have told me in the first place.”
Louvain looked at the money for a moment, then picked it up, scraped his fingernail across one of the coins, and put them in his pocket. “What information is that?” he said quietly. There was a rough, dangerous edge to his voice, and his eyes were cold, but he did not ask for the other two pounds.
“That your warehouse is surety for a loan from Bert Culpepper, and if you don’t redeem it you can’t put it up for collateral to buy the clipper when it comes up for auction,” Monk told him.
Louvain let out his breath slowly, his jaw clenched so the muscle stood out. “Who told you that? And what you say had better be the truth.”
“An opulent receiver,” Monk replied. “If you want to know who else knows, I can’t tell you, I didn’t learn that.”
“So now they know you’re my man!”
“I’m not your man! And no, they don’t know.”
“You’re my man until I say you aren’t.” Louvain leaned forward over his desk, his hands, callused and scarred by ropes, spread wide on the polished wood. “How does knowing about Culpepper and the clipper get you any further? I told you I needed to deliver the ivory because it was due. I hadn’t time to tell you all my enemies along the river. I have crossed every man on it, one time or another. And they’ve crossed me. It’s not a trade for the squeamish.”
“Because if you’d told me about Culpepper I could have started to trace the ivory from the other end!” Monk answered back with equal bitterness. “Following the ivory from the ship I’m always at least two days behind.”
A dull flush spread up Louvain’s cheeks. “Well, go and get on with looking at Culpepper, but for the love of God, be careful! You’re no use to me at the bottom of the river with your throat cut.”
“Thank you,” Monk said sarcastically, then turned on his heel and went out. He felt safer now that he had only a little silver and copper change in his pocket, but he still kept to the middle of the road all the way back to the omnibus stop.
He was standing, waiting, hunched against the wind, when another man came up, presumably to wait also. Only when he stood beside him was Monk suddenly aware of a weight pressing into his side. He turned to complain,
