high desk above which a lamp burned brightly. Two further lamps lit the room to give it an almost cheerful look which contrasted markedly with the general darkness of the house.
Ikey did not bid her to be seated, though there was a small table and single chair some four feet from the desk. Mary moved past Ikey and placed her abacus flat upon the table and then returned to where she'd formerly stood.
'Well, what is it? Why 'ave you come? Show me, I 'ave no time to waste.' Had she been a man who might be carrying news of a rich haul, Ikey might have been more circumspect, he might have smiled at the very least, ingratiating himself, but such pleasantries were not necessary for a woman of Mary's sort.
'Please, sir, you 'ave granted me ten minutes, it will take some of this time to tell you me story.'
'Story? What story? I do not wish to hear your story, unless it is business, a story o' the business o' profit, some for who it is who sends you 'ere and some for yours truly! Be quick. I am most busy of mind and anxious to be about me work.'
Mary smiled, attempting to conceal her nervousness. 'You will assuredly profit from what I 'ave to say, kind sir, but I begs you first the small charity of your ears, no more, a few minutes to 'ear a poor widow's tale.'
Mary then told Ikey how she had been recently widowed from a merchant sailor who had been swept overboard in the Bay of Biscay. How she, penniless, had been forced with her darling infant twins to share a miserable room with a destitute family of five and pay each day from her meagre salary for an older child to mind her precious children while she worked as a laundry maid in a big house in Chelsea. How the husband of the mistress of the house took advantage of her desperate circumstances to use her body for his pleasure whenever he felt inclined and without any thought of payment. How one night a most frightful fire had swept through the netherken where she slept with her baby infants and she had been dragged from the flames but had rushed back to save her precious children.
'I bear the marks, good sir, the marks of that terrible tragedy!' She gave a little sob and withdrew the woollen mittens from her hands, holding them up to reveal her horribly blackened and mutilated claws. 'It were to no avail, me little ones was already perished when I pulled them from that ghastly inferno!'
'Ha! Burnt into two roast piglets, eh?' Ikey snorted.
Mary ignored this cruel remark. 'I lost me billet as a laundry maid 'cause of me 'ands and being burned an' all and not even a sovereign from the master of the 'ouse to send me on me way!'
At this point Ikey waved his hands, fluttering them above his head as though he wished to hear no more.
'Enough! I 'ave no need for a laundry maid 'ere, missus. Be off with you, at once, you will get no charity from me!'
'No, sir, you are mistaken,' Mary hastily exclaimed. 'I want no charity. I 'ave come to apply for the position as clerk, the same as what you was lettin' out you wanted, a clerk well acquainted with all manner of bookkeepin'.'
Ikey's face took on a look of bewildered amazement.
'A clerk? You come 'ere to offer your services as me clerk? A woman and a laundry maid is a clerk? 'Ave you gone completely barmy, missus?' Ikey thumped the side of his head with the butt of his hand. 'Bah! This is quite beyond knowing or supposing!' He made a dismissive gesture towards Mary. 'Go away, I'm a busy man. Be off with you at once, you 'ave already taken up too much of me time. Shoo, shoo, shoo!' He made as though to move towards the door.
Mary took the abacus from where she had placed it on the table. 'Please, a moment, sir, Mr Solomon! I 'ave a gift with the Chinee abacus, sir.' She held the abacus up in front of her. 'A most extraordinary gift what will make you very rich, sir!'
'Rich? That thing? A Chinee… why, it be nothin' but a bit of wire and beads! Coloured beads! What manner o' trickery is this? Beads and laundry maids and 'anky panky, roasted twins and drownings, gifts and very rich! Bah! Go! Be off with you at once!'
'Please, sir, I beseech and implore you. I ask for no charity, not a brass razoo, only for a test.' Mary appealed to Ikey with her eyes. 'Me abacus, that is, me beads and wire, against your astonishin' and well-known and altogether marvellous way with numbers. Ways what people talk about in wonderment.' Mary gulped. 'While I know a poor clerk like me 'asn't got no chance against such as your good self, it's a fair chance I'm a better bet than most men who count themselves clerks.' Then she added, 'And I am trustworthy, most trustworthy and not known to the beaks, you 'ave me word on that, sir!'
'Ha!' Ikey barked. 'Trustworthy by your own word! I am the King o' Spain and the Chief Justice by my own word!'
'No, sir, but the Prince o' Fences and known chiefly for just dealin' by the admiring word o' others,' Mary said quickly.
Ikey, despite himself, was impressed with this quick wit. He knew himself to be a positive wizard with numbers and calculations, and enjoyed the flattery, though he knew it to be false. Ikey's heart had never so much as skipped a beat in the vaguest general consideration of charity or goodwill or justice, not ever, not even once since he'd been an urchin selling lemons on the streets of Whitechapel. Though he didn't believe a word of Mary's tale, even had it been true it would have drawn no emotion from him. Mutilation was so common in his experience that he hadn't even flinched at the sight of Mary's grotesque hands. Children being consumed by fire was a nightly occurrence as soon as the weather turned cold. The scar on her face told him all he needed to know about her. Moreover, it annoyed him that Mary had shown not the slightest sagacity in the concocting of the story she told. The least he would have expected from her was a letter from a screever, slightly worn and faded and perhaps even somewhat tearstained, purporting to come from the captain of the vessel from which her imagined husband had been swept overboard and to testify to this tragic event. Such a document would be readily available for a shilling or two from any forger, a fundamental requirement if the slightest degree of deception was to be practised. In Ikey's opinion Mary clearly lacked the most elementary criminal mind and he could waste no further time with her. The contest of numbers, an absurdity of course, was a quick way to be rid of her, to send her packing, for good and all.
'Bah! Beads and wire against me! Impossible, my dear, quite, quite absurd, ridiculous, improper and impossible!'
Mary sensed from this outburst that Ikey's curiosity had been roused and, besides, his voice was somewhat mollified. She smiled, a nice, demure smile.
'Announce me any five numbers in any number of digits in any combination of multiplication, division, addition and subtraction you please,' Mary challenged. 'If I best you in this purpose, then I pray you listen to me plea for a position as your clerk.'
'And what if I best you, me dear? What will you give me?' Ikey liked the idea of a challenge and the ferret grin appeared upon his face.
Mary smiled and her pale countenance was momentarily most pleasantly transformed, for she had an even smile that would light up her face and cause her lovely green eyes to dance, though this was beyond the ability of Ikey to notice. Po-faced once more, Mary stooped to lift the hems of her skirt and the two dirty calico petticoats beneath to just above her thighs. What Ikey witnessed was a pair of shapely legs quite unencumbered.
'It is all I 'ave to give, but I know meself clean, sir,' she said, trying to imagine herself a respectable though destitute widow so that her words carried sufficient pathos.
'Ha! Clean by your own word! Trustworthy by your own word! Bah! Not good enough for the master o' the 'ouse to pay for, but good enough for me, is that it, eh?'
Ikey, who had been standing in front of Mary now moved over to his clerk's desk. He removed the ledger from it and placed it on the ground, then reaching for a piece of paper from a small stack placed beside where the ledger had been he laid it squarely in the centre of the desk-top. Then he fumbled briefly within the recesses of his coat and produced a pair of spectacles which he took some time to arrange about his nose and hook behind his large hairy ears. Then he removed the coat and hung it upon the coat-stand.
The absence of his coat made Ikey look decidedly strange, as though he had been partly skinned or plucked. Mary was surprised at how tiny he appeared standing in his dirty embroidered waist-coat and coarse woollen undershirt beneath. It was almost as though Ikey wore the heavily padded great coat, which stretched down to touch the uppers of his snouted boots giving the effect of a much larger man, to conceal from the world his diminutive size. That he should choose to remove it now so that he could more rapidly move his arms to write indicated to Mary that he had taken her challenge seriously. Or, otherwise thought so little of her presence that he
