A man whistled at the sight of her long legs in the white stockings and she snarled at him to fake away off, then draped the cloak about her shoulders. 'Lean on me,' she told Sandman, who was limping and grunting from pain. 'You're in a bad bleeding way, ain't you?'
'Sprained ankle,' Sandman said. 'I don't think it's broken.'
'How do you know?'
'Because it isn't grating with every step.'
'Bloody hell,' Sally said. 'What happened?'
'Someone shot at me. A rifle.'
'Who?'
'I don't know,' Sandman said. The Seraphim Club? That seemed most likely, especially after Sandman had turned down their vast bribe, but that did not explain Jack Hood's assertion that there was a price on Sandman's head. Why would the Seraphim Club pay criminals to do what they or their servants were more than capable of doing? 'I really don't know,' he said, puzzled and frightened.
They had come from the rear of the theatre and now walked or, in Sandman's case, hobbled under the piazza of the Covent Garden market. The summer evening meant it was still light, though the shadows were long across the cobbles that were littered with the remnants of vegetables and squashed fruit. A rat slithered across Sandman's path. He constantly glanced behind, but he could see no obvious enemies. No sign of Sergeant Berrigan or anyone in a black and yellow livery. No sign of Lord Robin Holloway or the Marquess of Skavadale. 'They'll be expecting me to go back to the Wheatsheaf,' he told Sally.
'They won't know which bleeding door you're going in, though, will they?' Sally said, 'and once you're inside you're bleeding safe, Captain, because there ain't a man there who won't protect you.' She turned in sudden alarm as hurried footsteps sounded behind, but it was only a child running from an irate man accusing the boy of being a pickpocket. Flower sellers were arranging their baskets on the pavement, ready for the crowds to come from the two nearby theatres. Whistles and rattles sounded. 'Bleeding Charlies on their way to the spell,' Sally said, meaning that the constables from Bow Street were converging on the Covent Garden Theatre. She frowned at the pistol in Sandman's hand. 'Hide that stick. Don't want a charlie scurfing you.'
Sandman pushed the gun into a pocket. 'Are you sure you shouldn't be at the theatre?'
'They ain't ever going to get that bleeding circus started again, not that it ever did get started, did it? Dead before it was born. No, Miss Sacharissa's little night of fame got the jump, didn't it? Mind you, her name ain't Sacharissa Lasorda.'
'I never thought it was.'
'Flossie, she's called, and she used to be the pal of a fire-eater at Astleys. Must be thirty if she's a day, and last I heard she was earning her bunce in an academy.'
'She was a schoolteacher?' Sandman asked, sounding surprised, for few women chose that profession and Miss Lasorda, or whatever she was called, did not look like a teacher.
Sally laughed so much she had to support herself by leaning on Sandman. 'Lord, I love you, Captain,' she said, still laughing. 'An academy ain't for learning. At least not letters. It's a brothel!'
'Oh,' Sandman said.
'Not far now,' Sally said as they approached the Drury Lane Theatre, from which a burst of applause sounded. 'How's your ankle?'
'I think I can walk,' Sandman said.
'Try,' Sally encouraged him, then watched as Sandman hobbled a few steps. 'You don't want to take that boot off tonight,' she said. 'Your ankle's going to swell something horrible if you do.' She walked on ahead and opened the Wheatsheaf's front door. Sandman half expected to see a man waiting there with a pistol, but the doorway was empty.
'We don't want to be looking over our shoulders all night,' Sandman said, 'so I'm going to see if the back parlour's free.' He led Sally across the crowded taproom where the landlord was holding court at a table. 'Is the back parlour free?' Sandman asked him.
Jenks nodded. 'The gentleman said you'd be back, Captain, and he kept it for you. And there's a letter for you as well, brought by a slavey.'
'A footman,' Sally translated for Sandman 'and what gentleman reserved the back slum?'
'It must be Lord Alexander,' Sandman explained, 'because he wanted you and me to have dinner with him.' He took the letter from Mister Jenks and smiled at Sally. 'You don't mind Alexander's company?'
'Mind Lord Alexander? He'll just gawp at me like a Billingsgate cod, won't he?'
'How fickle your affection is, Miss Hood,' Sandman said, and received a blow on the shoulder as a reward.
'Well he does!' Sally said, and gave a cruelly accurate imitation of Lord Alexander's goggling devotion. 'Poor old cripple,' she said sympathetically, then glanced down at her short tartan skirt under the cloak. 'I'd better change into something decent or else his eyes will pop right out.'
Sandman pretended to be heart-broken. 'I rather like that Scottish skirt.'
'And I thought you was a gentleman, Captain,' Sally said, then laughed and ran up the stairs as Sandman shouldered open the back parlour door and, with great relief, sank into a chair. It was dark in the room because the shutters were closed and the candles extinguished, so he leant forward and pulled the nearest shutter open and saw that it was not Lord Alexander who had reserved the back parlour, but another gentleman altogether, though perhaps Sergeant Berrigan was not truly a gentleman.
The Sergeant was lounging on the settle, but now raised his pistol and aimed it at Sandman's forehead. 'They want you dead, Captain,' he said, 'they want you dead. So they sent me because when you want a dirty job done neatly, you send a soldier. Ain't that the truth? You send a soldier.'
So they had sent Sam Berrigan.
===OO=OOO=OO===
Sandman knew he should do something fast. Throw himself forward? But his ankle was throbbing and he knew he could never move quicker than Berrigan who was fit, tough and experienced. He thought of pulling out the pistol he had taken from his attacker in the theatre, but by the time he dragged it from his pocket Berrigan would already have fired, so instead Sandman decided he would just keep the Sergeant talking until Sally arrived and could raise the alarm. He lifted his left foot and rested it on a chair. 'I sprained it,' he told Berrigan, 'jumping onto the stage.'
'Stage?'
'At Miss Hood's performance. Someone tried to kill me.'
'Not us, Captain,' Berrigan said.
'Someone with a rifle.'
'Lot of those left from the wars,' Berrigan said. 'You can pick up a used Baker for seven or eight shillings. So someone other than the Seraphim Club wants you dead, eh?'
Sandman stared at the Sergeant. 'Are you sure it wasn't the Seraphim Club?'
'They sent me, Captain, only me,' Berrigan said, 'and I wasn't at the theatre.'
Sandman stared at him, wondering who in God's name had put a price on his head. 'It must be a great relief being dishonest,' he said.
Berrigan grinned. 'Relief?'
'No one trying to kill you, no scruples about accepting thousands of guineas? I'd say it was a relief. My problem, Sergeant, is that I so feared being like my father that I set out to behave in an utterly dissimilar manner. I set out to be consciously virtuous. It was exceedingly tedious of me and it annoyed him hugely. I suppose that's why I did it.'
If Berrigan was surprised or discomfited by this strange admission, he did not show it. Instead he seemed interested. 'Your father was dishonest?'
Sandman nodded. 'If there was any justice in this world, Sergeant, then he would have been hanged at Newgate. He wasn't a felon like the folk who live here. He didn't rob stage coaches or pick pockets or burgle houses, instead he tied people's money into crooked schemes and he'd still be doing it if he hadn't met an even cleverer man who did it back to him. And there was me, claiming to be virtuous, but I still took his money all my life, didn't I?'
Sergeant Berrigan lowered the pistol's cock, then put the weapon on the table. 'My father was honest.'
