look for and the kind of place where I might find him -an educated chap - person, I mean - perhaps connected with the bar or even the Church, perhaps an unfrocked parson - likely to frequent the better gambling places -and I travelled back in a chaise with the same post-boy that had driven the Captain and Mr P, dropping the Captain at his club and Mr P in Butcher Row. That is just after Hollywell Street, sir, towards the City.' This aside was for Stephen, who reflected 'My clothes were made in London, my half-boots also; I have not uttered five words, and I am tolerably good at preserving an impassive countenance; yet this man has detected that I am not a native. Either I have been flattering myself these many years, or he is exceptionally acute.' 'And then, sir,' Pratt went on, now addressing himself more to Sir Joseph, 'the post-boy, having seen his fare walk off northwards up Bell Yard, wheeled his chaise down Temple Lane, called a street boy to water his horses in Fountain Court, and went back to the mutton-pie shop on the corner by Temple Bar, where the hackney-coaches stand: it is open all night. He was standing there with some of the drivers he knew, eating his second pie, when he saw Mr P on the other pavement, walking very tired with his little portmanteau and papercase. Mr P crossed Fleet Street, coming from north to south, you follow me, sir, and hailed the first coach. The post-boy did not hear where he went, but the next day I found the driver, who remembered having taken a gentleman from Temple Bar to Lyon's Inn very early in the morning. Lyon's Inn.' Pratt's eye rested on Stephen for a moment, but Stephen happened to know that obscure, out-of-the-way series of courtyards, once the haunt of Chancery lawyers, and he said 'I believe Mr Pratt began by observing that we have nothing yet in the way of legal proof - that we are not approaching a crisis, but rather reviewing the present position - so perhaps I will retire for a moment.' He smiled apologetically at Sir Joseph, adding 'I travelled all night.'
'Of course, of course,' cried Blaine. 'You know the way.' Stephen knew the way. He also knew that a lamp was kept perpetually burning in Sir Joseph's dim, book-lined privy: he took a cigar from his case, broke it in two, lit one half at the lamp (he was no hand with a tinder-box) and sat there drawing the smoke in deep. Somewhere far below him in the house he heard the grinding of a coffee-mill, no doubt fixed to the kitchen wall from the way the vibration travelled, and he smiled: the present tobacco and the prospective coffee soothed at least the very top of his mind, that part which had been so harassed by an exceptionally disagreeable night's journey in a lurching coach with drunken fellow-travellers. The rest of it could not so easily be relieved: he knew little of the English law, but he was almost certain that Jack Aubrey was undone; he was intensely anxious about his friend Martin, upon whom he had operated, perhaps too late, for a badly strangulated hernia and whom he had left comfortable but still in grave danger; and then he had had a particularly trying time with Sophie when he called in at Ashgrove Cottage. He was very deeply attached to her, and she to him; but in this instance her tears, her unconcealed distress and her need for support were something of a disappointment. Of course, exhaustion from her long journey and the sudden overthrow of her happiness accounted for a great deal, but it seemed to him that Diana, or at least his idealized Diana, would have shown more courage, more fortitude, more manliness. Diana might well have used foul language, but surely he would never have heard the faintest echo of Mrs Williams from her. And surely Diana, having failed to bribe or bamboozle those sent to arrest her husband, would have followed him with a change of stockings and a couple of clean shirts in spite of his direct command, instead of wringing her hands. For a while he twisted the knife in his wound, thinking of Diana as a tigress; then, after a final draught that made his head swim, he threw his hissing stump away and walked downstairs.
'Mr Pratt,' he said as they sat drinking their coffee, 'you began by saying that as soon as you saw Captain Aubrey you were convinced that all this was a put-up job. May I ask what led you to this conclusion? Did he produce irrefragable arguments that I am unacquainted with?'
'No, sir, it was not so much what he said as the way he said it. He was so amused at the idea anyone should think him capable of inventing such a rigmarole - he had never heard of a time-bargain or selling forward until Palmer explained - he was sure Palmer would turn up - such a good fellow, and an excellent judge of wine - they would have such a laugh when it was all over. In my calling, sir, I have heard a good many denials and explanations, but never one like that. It would get him nowhere with a jury at the end of a long trial, with him bewildered in a court-room and badgered by the prosecution and maybe the judge - certainly the judge in this case - but man to man in that two-pair front at the Marshalsea - why, as the Romans say, you would give him the blessed sacrament without confession. In my line you get a nose for these things, and I had not listened to him five minutes, no nor two, before I knew he was as innocent as a babe unborn. But dear me, gentlemen, lambs to the slaughter ain't in it: I have rarely seen the like.'
'I dare say you have had a great deal of experience, Mr Pratt?'
'Well, yes, sir, I think I may say I have had as much or even more than most. I was born in Newgate, do you see, where my father was a turnkey, so I grew up among thieves. Thieves and their children were my companions and playmates and I came to know them very well. Some few were right bastards, particularly among the informers; hut not many. Then my father moved on to the Clink and after that the King's Bench, so I made a good many more friends among the thieves and such south of the river and the low attorneys and gaolers and constables and ward officers, and it all came in very useful after I set up on my own, after a spell with the Bow Street runners.'
'Aye,' said Stephen. 'I am sure it would.'
'Now, sir,' said Pratt, putting down his cup, 'perhaps I had better be getting back to Lyon's Inn. I must admit I thought I had run my man to earth, for although a great many people live there now, particularly in the back court, which is a regular warren, there could not be many that would match my description. He had to be about five foot seven, lean, bob-wig or his own hair powdered, fifty or thereabouts, a sharp of course.'
'What do you mean by a sharp?'
'I am sorry to talk low, sir: it is a cant word we use to mean a dishonest person. They reckon you are a flat if you don't snap up whatever offers: the world is divided into the sharps and the flats. Mr P was a sharp of course, because nobody but a sharp would have tried to conceal his tracks like that; and a genuine nob, or gentleman by birth. He could never have had dinner with Captain Aubrey and talked to him all night if he had only been one of the swell mob, dressed up for the part, or the Captain would have seen through him, simple though he - that is to say, the Captain would have seen through him for sure. So I thought I had my man: but I was wrong. He did not live there. He was either spoiling the scent again, which I doubt, or he had just called in to rest or leave a message. It was a cruel blow, but I am carrying on, talking to maid-servants and street boys and ticket-porters and scavengers and the like, as well as my other connections - I am carrying on at the inn, trying to find out who he called on and so work back to him. And I am looking elsewhere too, among the genuine nobs known to my friends who might be that way inclined. But, gentlemen,' said Pratt, looking from one to another, 'now that my first bit of luck turned out not to be so lucky after all - now that I did not manage to take it first bounce -I should not like to make any great promises. This here caper is not the low toby, nor the high toby, but the very tip-top or what you might call the celestial toby: these jobs - and I have seen a few insurance frauds and one rigging of the market on something like the same scale, prepared very careful and damn the expense - are always run by gentlemen who have just one confidential agent as you might call him that hires the underlings, always at two or three removes, and sees to all the details. Always at two or three removes: if I was to pick up the Quaker and the flash cove, who certainly belong to the race-course mob, they would be no use to us - they would have no idea of the men who were behind the dummy that recruited them. The confidential agent is the only one who can peach on his principals, and they take good care he does not do so by having a hanging felony to hold over his head: or by some surer way, if things begin to go a little wrong.' Stephen and Sir Joseph exchanged a covert glance; the practice was not unknown in intelligence. 'And this chap looks after himself in much the same fashion all the way down the line. I shall go on looking for Mr Palmer, of course, and I may find him; but even if I do, I doubt we shall learn anything about the men at the head of the affair.'
