“What knot is this?” I asked. I felt something uneasy churning within me. Some vague shape began to appear from the fog.
He rose to poke at the fire, working up, I presumed, the strength to tell his tale. After a minute or so of jabbing logs and sending sparks flying, he turned back to me. “I recently brought in a large shipment of wines—a very large shipment indeed. I import Portuguese wines as a matter of course, as you know, and there are one or two shipments each year to stock the warehouses and keep them full. This was one of them. As always, I purchased insurance upon the cargo to protect against this sort of thing, but it has done me no good. You see, the shipment arrived as it was supposed to, was delivered to the Customs House, and was registered there accordingly. Once it was unloaded, the maritime insurance ended, for the goods were considered safely delivered, but now they have disappeared.”
“Disappeared,” I repeated.
“Yes, the Customs House claims they have no record of my shipment. They claim my records are false, forged. Indeed, they have threatened me with prosecution if I choose to press the case, emphasizing as they do so the little justice members of our nation can expect in this country. I cannot understand it. I’ve dealt with these people for decades, you understand, and I have always provided the necessary payments to keep the customs men my friends. I’ve never heard a word of complaint from them, that I did not do my share or any such thing. I received no evidence that they were dissatisfied with my generosity. And now this.”
“They toy with you? They hold your cargo hostage?”
He shook his head. “There is no implication of anything of the sort. Indeed, I have spoken to my longtime contacts there, men I consider nearly friends, men who hate to see me harmed because they have grown fond of my payments. They are as perplexed as I am. But the result is, Benjamin, that until this cargo can be discovered I am in rather severe debt. I have letters of credit being called in, and it is taking an inordinate amount of shifting and accounting maneuvers to keep from being discovered and ruined. If it were a few coins you required, it would make no difference, but I cannot discover anywhere a spare twelve hundred pounds. Removing such a brick from my edifice would make the building collapse.”
“But the law,” I proposed.
“I have begun legal proceedings, of course, but you know how these matters are. It is all delay and blockage and obscuring. It should be years, I think, before there is any answer from the law.”
I took a moment to consider what I heard. Was it strange that my uncle should find himself in considerable debt at the same moment I did as well? No, it was not strange at all, it was design; I had no doubt of it. As Cobb had gone to such lengths to make clear, his nephew, Tobias Hammond, worked for the Customs House.
“Do you think, Benjamin, I could prevail upon you to look into this matter? Perhaps you could discover what has happened, and with that knowledge we might force a resolution more quickly.”
I slammed my hand hard against his desk. “I am sorry this has happened to you, Uncle. You have been ill used on my account. I see now that someone has undone your business to keep me from receiving relief.”
Briefly I told him of my dealings with Cobb, in part because I wished to know if he had any familiarity with these men and could tell me something of them. In truth, though, I wanted to explain to him all that had passed in the hopes that he would not judge me too harshly for whatever role I might have played in creating these troubles for him.
“I’ve never heard of either of these men. I can make inquiries if you’d like. If this Cobb has so much money to squander on making you his subject, he must be known.”
“I would appreciate anything you might tell me.”
“In the meantime,” he said, “you must discover what it is he wants.”
I hesitated for a moment. “I am not eager to do so. I cannot bear that I should be a puppet on his strings.”
“You cannot fight him if you don’t know who he is or why he would work so diligently to render you toothless. In revealing to you what he has in mind, he may also reveal to you the secret of how to defeat him.”
IT WAS GOOD ADVICE and I could not ignore it, at least not for long. Nevertheless, I was not yet prepared to return to Cobb. I wanted more counsel before I did so.
I made arrangements to meet my friend and frequent collaborator, Elias Gordon, at a coffeehouse called the Greyhound off Grub Street, where I expected to find him inside with a newspaper and a dish of chocolate or perhaps a drink of some more considerable strength. Instead, I observed upon my approach that he was outside the coffeehouse, standing on the street, ignoring the snow that fell with increasing strength, and speaking most heatedly with a person I did not know.
The man with whom he engaged in this hot discourse was far shorter than Elias, as most men are, but wider and more manful in build—indeed, as most men are. Though dressed a gentleman in a fine-looking greatcoat and an expensive tie periwig, the stranger’s face was red, his chest puffed out, and he spoke with the venom of a cornered street tough.
Elias had many fine qualities, but managing street toughs, or even rude men of breeding, was not among them. Tall, gangling, with long limbs too thin even for his slender form, Elias had always managed to radiate not only poise but a kind of good humor that I had many times observed the ladies found to their liking. So too did men and matrons, for Elias had, despite his humble origins in Scotland, risen to become a surgeon of some note in town. He was oft called upon to drain the blood and tend the wounds and pull the teeth of some of the best-situated families in the metropolis. Nevertheless, as with many men skilled at ingratiating themselves, he would inadvertently make enemies along the way.
I hurried forward to make certain that Elias would come to no harm. A man who has made his living through his fists learns perforce that other men do not love to be treated as children and overprotected, so I would make no overt threats to his enemy. Nevertheless, I hoped my presence would give some pause to any hasty violence.
The streets being mostly clear of all but pedestrians, I had no trouble crossing, and I soon found myself by Elias’s side.
“Again, sir,” he said, affecting a deep bow that caused his tie periwig to lurch forward, “I had no knowledge of your connection to the lady, and I am most sorry to have given you grief.”
“You will be most sorry,” said the other. “For first I shall pummel you like the street rubbish you are, and then I shall make certain that no lady or gentleman in the city allows so pernicious a Scots conniver as you into his home again.”
I cleared my throat and stepped forward, inserting myself between the gentlemen. “May I inquire the nature of this dispute?”
“Damn your eyes, I know not who you are, but if you are a stranger, be gone. If you are a friend of this knave, keep quiet lest I make my displeasure known to you as well.”
“This is a terrible misunderstanding,” Elias said to me. “A deuced mishap, is all. I formed an attachment to a most amiable—and chaste, let me say, very chaste—young lady, who it appears is engaged to marry to this gentleman here. May I present Mr. Roger Chance? Mr. Chance, may I present Mr. Benjamin Weaver?”
“Damn you, Gordon, I have no interest in meeting your friends.”
“Oh, but you may know Mr. Weaver’s name, for he is a celebrated pugilist—most skilled in the arts of violence and now famous as a ruffian for hire.” I may have been reluctant to insert myself into the fray, but Elias, it seems, was not reluctant to assert my qualifications. “In any event,” he continued, “this young lady I met—well, she and I formed a friendly but purely chaste—I believe I mentioned that—attachment. We merely discussed philosophical principles of interest to inquiring young ladies. You know, she showed a very keen understanding of Mr. Locke….” His voice trailed off as he, perhaps, came to understand the absurdity of his claim.
“And did these philosophical principles involve the removing of her petticoats?” Chance demanded.
“She had a question of anatomy,” Elias explained weakly.
“Sir,” I ventured, “Mr. Gordon has offered his apologies and pled ignorance. His reputation is known—”
“Reputation as a rascal!” Chance exclaimed.
“His reputation is known as a man of honor, and he would never have imposed upon an understanding between a man and a woman had he known it to exist.”
This was perhaps the greatest nonsense I had ever uttered, but if it would preserve my friend, I would deliver it most earnestly.
“This coward refuses to duel,” Chance said to me, “so I shall have no choice but to beat him like a dog.”
