style="font-size:15px;"> “America was a divided house, remember, and in such a place there are many people, and what they do and say are often not what they appear. It was easy to quite inadvertently make an enemy, and fall into some dangerous situation. I fear that something of the kind has happened to my father.”
Septimus Dacers considered that point for a moment then said: “But he has not been in Washington for a long time.”
“We hear that, since the death of Mr. Lincoln, things are even worse in Washington,” said Roberta Van Trask. “Chickens are coming home to roost and all kinds of revenge is being taken. New and often grotesque rumours are flying about, mostly concerning the actions of people during the war. One says high-ranking people in the North were profiteering through illegal trade with the rebel South; another says Mr. Lincoln’s assassin, through an elaborate plot, was not killed by soldiers after fleeing into Virginia and is alive somewhere in Europe. Yet another makes the unbelievable claim that the Northern Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, was in the plot to kill the President.”
“So you think perhaps some new and damaging tale about your father has been concocted in the swamp of intrigue that is postwar Washington?” inquired Dacers.
“Yes, and I worry that these men might continue to harass him to either his ruination or his death,” she said with a half-suppressed sob.
“Miss Van Trask, on two occasions you referred to “these men”; does that mean there were others in this attack on your father besides the fellow calling himself Fairfax?”
“Two others certainly accompanied him, but did not enter the house,” she said. “When he left my father after my intrusion, he ran for the street door and was pursued by our butler, who is elderly and not very agile. I attempted to follow too, but,” she indicated her wide hooped crinoline, “a woman simply cannot run in today’s fashions. He flung the door open and got clean away. There was a brougham, a closed carriage, waiting outside the house. At the reins was a man bundled up in heavy clothing and with his hat obscuring his face. Fairfax leapt into the carriage and there was a third man inside who helped him through the door. I caught only a brief glimpse of him before the driver whipped up the horse and they sped away, but I have a strange feeling that I’ve seen that third man before, a long time ago, but I can’t think where. He was small and, for a moment, he looked at me with notably glittering eyes. I had the impression that he was a hunchback.”
“So,” Dacers mused, “we have your big man with a blond moustache and a powder burn who takes a drink of whisky; one who might be a hunchback, and a driver who, like most coachman in these winter days, looks like nothing but a bundle of clothing. If I locate these fellows, what I can do? You do not want the police involved, but I have no powers of arrest. I certainly want to help you but, at best, I could only warn them off with the threat of police action; after all, this so-called Fairfax did commit trespass and demonstrated threatening behaviour. But a warning might not be enough. A fellow who makes free with a Derringer pistol sounds like a desperate customer, and he might prove tenacious and show up again. There are a few haunts in London where I might find a lead on this crew. I’ll do what I can.”
Roberta Van Trask gave him a hesitant smile. “If that is the best you can do, and it offers some hope of success, then please do it. I’ll be grateful for anything that might take this terrible burden off my father’s shoulders,” she said.
“Very well, Miss Van Trask. Tell me, you arrived here unescorted. How did you travel?”
“By cab. Normally, I would have my maid, Esther, accompany me, but I wanted to see you strictly in private. Although Esther is completely trustworthy, I did not want my father or anyone from the embassy to know I came to consult you.”
“Then let me escort you as far as the cab stand at the corner of the square, and see you safely on your way. Not that I think you are a young lady who is easily frightened, but our ugly friends could have been watching your home and might have followed you.”
The American girl squared her shoulders and set her jaw decisively. “I assure you I am not easily frightened,” she declared firmly. “I’ll stand my ground against any threat to my father, but I’m obliged to you for your courtesy.”
An admiring smile crossed Dacers’ usually grave face, and she noticed how boyish it suddenly made him appear.
It was now fully dark outside and, after he had seen her safely off in a cab, Dacers paced homeward through the evening gloom thinking of the narrative he had heard. There was something deep and potentially dangerous in the happenings at the home of the American diplomat, and, only for the fact that police involvement might spark off the public scandal Roberta Van Trask feared, he would have liked to acquaint Twells with the matter.
“It’s the sort of case old Amos would grab with both hands,” he muttered to himself. “I’m not at all sure where to begin or where it will take me, but a lady in distress must be helped, so some sort of start must be made.”
CHAPTER TWO
DARK PLACES, DARK DEEDS
Dacers walked out early the following morning, after a night in which confused scraps of dreams containing pictures of Roberta Van Trask, various threatening men, and scenes from the war in America chased themselves through his slumbers. He breakfasted, then decided on a stroll to clear his head and think about the matter the American girl had placed before him the evening before.
The fog had cleared and, as usual, the streets were alive early. Vehicles of all kinds, from brewery wagons to the light donkey carts of costermongers, and from rumbling, crowded omnibuses to more elegant carriages, crowded the roads. On the footways, throngs of clerks, charwomen, milliners, and brisk, impatient men of business, as usual, elbowed and shoved each other, hastening to get to work on time and showing the lack of neighbourly consideration, characteristic of London at rush hour. The sooty form of the sweep, trailed by the even sootier apparition of his boy, laden with brushes, moved among them; milkmen decanted the day’s supply of milk in the areas of Bloomsbury’s substantial houses, then bellowed the traditional: “Milk below!” for the benefit of the cook and kitchen maids. On a street corner, a policeman was trying to mediate between an irate pedestrian who claimed he had almost been run over and a carter who protested his innocence, with the shouts of all three mounting while a ragged old man, hoping to cadge a penny, wailed an almost unrecognisable hymn which set a stray dog howling in a similar morose tone.
As Dacers turned into Russell Square, which was no more tranquil than anywhere else at that hour, old Setty Wilkins came to mind. Enigmatic old Setty was often worth consulting. There was no telling what might emerge from the aged man’s brimming vault of London knowledge, so Dacers turned his footsteps towards the Seven Dials.
In that tangled and insalubrious region of London, he came to a short street hemmed in by rickety property, some of it half-timbered and dating from centuries before. Over the door of a tumbledown structure, a roughly lettered board announced: “Seth Wilkins, Practical Engraver.” Dacers approached the door over a surface of broken cobbles and stagnant puddles.
Inside his shadow haunted workshop, Setty Wilkins lifted a small copper plate from an acid bath with metal tongs, shook off surplus acid, then pushed the end of his nose close to the plate, screwed up his eyes, and inspected the etching he had just completed. Setty was well-trained in his trade: in lines bitten into the metal was the neat depiction of a woman suspended from the hangman’s gallows. The old man gave a grunt of satisfaction.
“That’ll be capital on a confession fakement come the next time some fair beauty dances the Paddington frisk on the gallows in front of Newgate,” he rumbled to himself. He meant the plate would produce
