“Hazards: drunks, muggers, constables. There may be some overlap. Avoid shooting if possible, it only attracts trouble. What we want—” She glanced both ways—“is a cab! Hail it quick!”
The hansom was already occupied and as it passed them she heard a titter of laughter from the passengers crammed on the bench seat, but now the Gammon knew what to look for. “It’s tiny,” he observed, sounding surprised. “More like a rickshaw than a taxi.”
Eve felt a momentary flash of irritation, but let it go. She needed him around for now, and his culture shock was only to be expected. “Horses aren’t magic carpets,” she pointed out. “It’s easier than walking.”
“Yes—” He stuck his arm out for another cab, and this time the driver reined in his horse and touched his brim. His face was sallow and lined and the horse was alarmingly bony, but his hansom appeared to be in reasonable condition.
“Where to?”
“Leman Street,” Eve announced, and recoiled at the very old-fashioned look the cabbie sent her.
“Oh aye?” He thought for a moment: “That’ll be six shillings up front, right enough. And I’m not stoppin’ fer anything.”
“Six—” Eve suppressed the impulse to sneer at the man. “Very well. Help me up, Peter?”
The Gammon handed her up, then climbed in behind her while she counted out the coins. “Here,” she said tartly.
“Let’s just see…” The driver squinted at his palm. The coins passed muster, for they disappeared immediately. He cracked his whip past the nag’s shoulder. “Trot on!”
The hansom rattled through the streets of poshville—gated Mayfair, tidy Marylebone—before moving into the crowded theaterland between the British Museum and Covent Garden. The streets were busier here, and they got stuck a couple of times between logjams of cabs and throngs of tipsy revellers spilling into the streets. They continued east, the streets gradually becoming cramped and the buildings drabber (aside from a memorable stretch of ostentatious medievalism around St. Paul’s Cathedral). They proceeded down Cheapside. The pavements were still crowded but the menfolk were increasingly ragged, and the few loitering women who were visible showed a considerable amount of skin. The still-noisome stench of the Thames merged with the miasma drifting from Spitalfields Market to the north. And now they were clopping and jingling through unlit streets where the foot traffic was fast and furtive, the drunk and homeless lay in the gutter, and occasional wails of pain or pleasure split the thickening fog.
“I’ll take ye this far and no further,” the cabbie told them, reining in his horse. “Just keep goin’ another hundred yards or so, and may God have mercy on your soul,” he added pointedly to the Gammon, who he evidently held to be a blameless victim of Eve’s sinful scheming.
“Thank you very much,” the Gammon told him, very formal and sincere. He scanned the street, then stepped down and offered Eve his hand. “If you’d care to come with me, my dear…”
Eve waited for the hansom to rattle away then took his arm. With her free hand she reached into her pocket for a bunch of glass marbles. She held them loosely in her cupped palm, but grasped them tightly with her mind’s fist. “Next right,” she said quietly. “We’re entering bandit country. Look sharp.”
An eerie howl split the night: perhaps a dog’s dying agony or a woman in childbirth. Or maybe it was one of the johns who visited this part of town to slake his carnal appetites, appetites unacceptable in polite society but tolerated in the lawless warrens of London’s underbelly.
They passed a pub. The door was crudely hammered together, lacking window panes. It hung ajar and as they passed Eve saw an interior scene lit by flickering candlelight that would have given Hieronymus Bosch nightmares. Bodies with legs outstretched on the bare floor, their backs propped up against the wall as they suckled on bottles of gin. The bar was a couple of planks propped atop damaged beer casks, the proprietor a brawny thug pouring pints into battered tin cups. In the refuse-littered alleyway outside a woman hitched her skirts up beneath a drunk, while an infant crawled in the slops by their ankles.
The Gammon’s head was swiveling in all directions. “What are you thinking?” Eve demanded.
“I’m thinking I haven’t seen anything this lively since that one time I was on close protection duty and my principal’s girlfriend insisted on going clubbing in Pattaya right after the USS Nimitz came into port.” He moved his right hand closer to his machine pistol. “It took four of us to get her to safety, and the master chief needed rabies shots.” His shoulders tensed as footsteps approached. “Let me handle this, ma’am.”
A shadowy figure emerged from the mist. “’Ello there,” he said, touching a fine-gloved finger to his hat. “What ’ave we here?” The accent was fake (he dropped his h’s inconsistently), his boots were finely polished, and his coat unpatched. “That’s a fine bit of totty you’ve got there, sir! ’Ow much do you want for ’er?”
Eve froze her face to hold back her killing smile. The marbles in her left hand vibrated, growing warm with anticipation. But curiosity stilled her lethal impulse: How would her escort handle things?
“She’s not for sale,” the Gammon said tersely.
“Aw, say it’s not so? I’ve got half a guinea to change your mind! You could go ’ome and enjoy yourself an’ leave the business end to me.”
Half a guinea? That’s far too much. Eve twitched. Her marbles grew almost too hot to hold.
“No.” The Gammon’s head turned almost imperceptibly, checking to confirm that the importunate pimp wasn’t the distraction in an ambush. “Go away.”
“Nah, I don’t fink that’s gonna happen—”
He was wrong. Things happened extremely fast:
Eve’s would-be purchaser brought his left hand out from behind his back and stabbed at the Gammon. He was holding a folding Parisian Apache gun—one-third revolver and one-third stiletto, with a knuckle-duster for a
