As I walked, I turned over in my mind what had passed in Brewer-street. My thoughts had the misleading limpidity that so often accompanies fatigue. Mr Noak had been remarkably frank, I believed: which might be due to the strength of his fanatical desire to avenge his son's death, to his despair of making progress, to old age and the consequent decay of his intellectual faculties, or to any combination of these. Alternatively, every word, every hypothesis, every apparent confidence, had been carefully planned for the purpose of achieving an unknown end.
This evening's events were only the latest in a long series. From start to finish in this sorry business, I had been led by the nose – by Henry Frant, Stephen Carswall and now Mr Noak; by Flora Carswall and even, perhaps, by Sophie – though my partiality for her struggled to persuade me that she had been as much a victim as myself. It was undeniable that I had come very close to falling in with Mr Noak's proposal since it appeared to accord so well with my own wishes. But among all the drawbacks to the plan was this: I could not rid myself of the knowledge that if anyone had a motive for murdering Mr Frant, it was Mr Noak himself.
I stopped to lean against a railing. In some part of my mind I became aware that a set of footsteps behind me had also stopped. A moment later I moved on, and so too did the footsteps. I repeated the experiment and obtained the same result. London is a busy city but at night it contains pockets of silence so profound that one may hear a pin drop on the pavement. The footsteps should have put me instantly on the alert. But my body was too weary, and my mind too full of other anxious thoughts, for the possible significance of the footsteps to register as a cause for alarm.
Mr Noak's grand scheme to confound his enemies had come to this: he wanted me to spy on Sophie, and through her on Mr Carswall. Mrs Kerridge, it had appeared, was happy to oblige Mr Harmwell with information upon occasion, and she had reported my meeting with her mistress at the burying ground that afternoon. Noak had also learned from her the real reason for my departure from Monkshill-park. From this, and from his own observations, he had inferred quite correctly that I had a tenderness for Sophie Frant. He had made a further deduction at an earlier stage of my acquaintance with Mr Carswall that I had been employed by him for confidential business. That was why he had set Harmwell to follow me on the occasion of my going to Queen-street that first time, in search of the man who was either David Poe or Henry Frant. It had been fortunate for me that he had done so – Mr Harmwell had been my rescuer when Iversen's hired bullies assaulted me, and now Noak wanted me to pay a price for it.
So tonight Noak had dangled the hope of reward in front of me: if I could turn Sophie into his spy, he had hinted, I might hope to win Sophie for myself. Were Carswall disgraced, she would have no one else to turn to. Noak promised me that, if all went well, he would put me in the way of earning a competence so that I might support her. But the promises were vague and I had no guarantee that he would fulfil them. I thought he would have promised me anything if I could have ensured the downfall of Stephen Carswall and discovered the identity of the man in Wellington-terrace. In the end, I did not trust the American, which was why I had not told him of the finger I had been encouraged to find at the tooth-puller's, or of today's discovery that the tooth-puller was among Mr Iversen's customers.
With immense effort of will, I abandoned the support of the railing and staggered down the Strand. Movement had become a form of torture. Worse than the woes of my body, however, was the despair that depressed my spirits. Noak's offer had given me the possibility of regaining Sophie. It had been as alluring a temptation as any I had ever faced. I might have justified succumbing to it, too, on the grounds that it might save Sophie from Mr Carswall, whom I knew to be the worst of men.
I heard the footsteps behind me, slow and dragging like an echo of my own. Nemesis pursued me and knew she need not hurry.
The stumbling block was this: in the past six or seven months, I had learnt too well the lesson of what it felt like to be manipulated by others, to have no more control over one's destiny than Mr Punch in his puppet show. Were I to accede to Mr Noak's proposal, I would seek to make Sophie my puppet. In agreeing to marry Mr Carswall, she had. made a perfectly rational choice. He was rich and she was poor. He was old and she was young, which at least had the advantage that the marriage was unlikely to be a long one. On her side it could not be a love match. On his, I doubted that the emotions that made him desire her had much to do with love as it is generally understood; for a desire to possess, to be a person's master, is not love. But each would gain by the arrangement. Marriages have been happy without love before now, but not without money. As Flora Carswall had pointed out, love in a cottage didn't pay the bills. You cannot eat and drink love; you cannot wear it, and it will not provide for your children.
I reached the entrance into Gaunt-court. There was no gas illumination here, of course, only the fitful glow of the oil lamp on the corner. Nothing had changed, I told myself, since Sophie had given me my
At the head of the steps up to the front door of number 3 I stopped and, supporting myself on the railing, turned to look back down the court. I heard in the distance a carriage passing along the Strand, the clop of hooves, the jingle of harness and the rattle of wheels on the roadway. I did not hear the sound of footsteps. At some point in the last few minutes, they had stopped. I told myself that London is a city full of dramas played out every night, and there was no reason in the world to believe that these footsteps had belonged to my little tragi-comedy. But now the footsteps had stopped I felt inexplicably uneasy.
76
The following morning I left the house in search of coffee. I was unwashed and unshaven. I had slept late and my mind was still fogged with sleep.
A small, closed carriage, painted black and rather the worse for wear, was standing at the corner by the lamp- stand. As I drew near, the door opened and a swarthy man dressed in shabby black clothes leaned out and asked me the quickest way to Covent Garden.
Simultaneously, a second man, also in black, came round the back of the carriage and seized my arm. The first man grabbed my lapels. Between them, they pulled and pushed me into the carriage. The second man followed me in, shutting the door behind him. The carriage moved off with a jerk.
With three of us inside, there was barely room to move, let alone to struggle. The blinds were down and there was scarcely any light. The first man had his arm round my neck, drawing my head back. I felt the prick of a knife at my throat.
'Stay still, cully,' he murmured. 'Stay still or we've got a nasty accident on our hands.'
As the carriage rattled and bumped through streets filled with the noise of a London morning, a ritual was acted out inside it. I use the word ritual with care. My captors knew so precisely what they were doing that there was a negligent, familiar ease about their movements. The second man tied my wrists in front of me, inserted a filthy rag in my mouth, and finally lashed my knees together.
By now I was huddled in the corner of the seat, still with the tip of a knife at my throat. Neither man spoke. The confined space was filled with the sound of our breathing and the smell of our bodies. I tried without success to bring my mind to grapple with my situation; but fear inhibits rational thought. Over and over again I cursed my own folly at remaining in the house at Gaunt-court, and not seeking refuge under another name and in another city. Once again, and in far more brutal circumstances than before, I had become a mere cypher in my own life.
We came to a halt again. I felt and heard our driver jumping down from the box, the sound of voices and of heavy gates being unbarred and drawn back. Then the horses began to move again. At that moment my head was roughly seized and a bandage placed over my eyes. The carriage door opened. A current of fresh air swept inside. One of my companions jumped down. Between them they dragged me out of the carriage. In a moment I found myself in the open air with a man on either side to hold my arms.
Owing to the bonds around my knees, I could not walk. Grunting and swearing, the men dragged me across cobbles, my boots bumping up and down, and pulled me into a place that smelled strongly of sawdust and varnish. It was at this point that my nightmare entered a still more terrible phase. Without warning my feet were lifted away from the ground and I felt myself hoisted aloft on strong arms, my body moving from the vertical to the horizontal. I was raised and then lowered. There was a glancing blow to the back of my head. It was followed by a laugh,
