what the criminal fraternity called a “fakement,” a piece of sheer fiction, produced for a pittance by some gin-ruined unfortunate employed by a printer of penny broadsheets.
Ancient Setty Wilkins turned his hand to many shifts to get his living. These days, he was a good deal more legitimate than in years gone by, but it was said that he once risked the Newgate gallows himself by forging banknotes.
The door of the workshop darkened, and Setty looked up to see the tall, lean form of Septimus Dacers entering.
“Vy, Mr. Dacers, as ever was!” he greeted heartily. “I ’eard Dandy Jem nearly croaked you with the blade of his snickersnee, an’ now they’re makin’ an Australian farmer of ’im. Not before time. I allus said he didn’t have brains enough to keep clear of either the hangman or Botany Bay for long.” Small, wizened, and gnome-like, Setty was of indeterminate age, and his jargon, tellingly, was largely the criminal “cant” of the previous reign of King William IV, which, around 1830, was replaced by a new underworld language to baffle the “New Police,” which had just created by Sir Robert Peel. He had the reversed v’s and w’s of previous generations of Cockneys.
The character of London was stamped all over him, and he possessed an almost uncanny knowledge of the city’s obscurest corners and of its myriad inhabitants. He cocked his head to one side and surveyed Dacers critically, then declared: “You ain’t lookin’ so bad arter a mill with Dandy Jem, an’ I ’opes you’re as good as I sees you.”
“I’m quite well, Setty, and improving every day, thank you,” said Dacers.
“Come, now, Mr. Dacers,” responded Setty with a change of tone, “you vants somethin’, othervise you vouldn’t be honourin’ me vith a wisit, vould you, old culley?”
“You’re shrewd as ever, Setty,” grinned Dacers. “I’m looking for a hint or two.”
“Not on behalf of the crushers, I ’opes,” said Setty, narrowing his eyes. Though he professed to be in a reformed condition, he still regarded the peelers as more a public menace than a benefit.
“No, you may be sure the police are not involved.”
“Good. Got to take care. A man never knows vots’s vot these days. So, if it’s information you’re arter, vot are you vontin’ to know?”
“Where do Americans congregate in London?”
“Vell, the American Church, Tottenham Court vay, if you means square-rigged, prim, an’ proper Americans—but, knowin’ your trade, I suppose you don’t. I expect it’s Americans more rough around the edges you mean.”
“Two I can identify and there’s a third I can’t, a carriage driver who might not be an American. I don’t know how you do it, but you seem to know what’s going on all over London, though you hardly ever leave Seven Dials, you old rogue.”
“There’s one gaff that’s always gathered a crew of different nationalities, Yankees included,” Setty Wilkins said. “The Blue Duck pub at Chandler’s Stairs beside the river, ’ard by Hungerford Bridge. It’s a pretty low boozing-den. Could be the place to try.”
“Thanks, Setty, only this pair would object to being called Yankees,” Dacers replied.
Setty Wilkins gave him a crooked grin. “So it’s got something to do vith the big rumpus in America and the bunch that fought the Yankees—the coves from Dixie, as I ’ear they calls it? I heard there was some of that sort lurkin’ around the Blue Duck.”
“’Nuff said,” responded Dacers. “I suppose the place is at its liveliest at night?”
“Of course, and it can be no end of a rough shop. So remember that wound you got off Dandy Jem. Watch your step, old culley.”
* * * *
Dacers left Setty’s lair and crossed the broken cobbles again, thinking of the old man’s parting observation, and a sudden cold logic took hold of his mind. Here he was, with a strapped-up knife wound and, while unarmed himself, was seeking one man known to go armed and two others whose potential for trouble was unknown. Why? To deliver a feeble message that they had best behave themselves or the police would be informed. All at once, the whole project appeared ludicrous.
He recalled Roberta Van Trask’s troubled face and the appeal in her eyes as she sought his help. It really was a matter for the regular police, but he had volunteered the limited assistance he could offer, hardly giving a thought to anything but the girl’s beauty and her distress. It was as if he had been mesmerised into it. Then he wondered if he was falling in love with Miss Van Trask.
Dacers, ran his thoughts, Amos Twells had the measure of you when he called you an interfering busybody, and you certainly are a damned fool of a busybody who fancies himself a dashing knight in shining armour. You might be blundering into something that’ll end with you suffering much more than a swell mobsman’s knife wound.
Then his inborn chivalry took hold of him as he recalled the way the girl squared her shoulders and displayed her determination to defend the reputation of her father. He believed Theodore Van Trask to be as honest and devoted a servant of his country as any man, and he was being wronged in some unspecified way. So what could an Englishman who abhorred the use of guns, and who did not own one himself, do but take her side—even if it meant recklessly going up against men with the famous transatlantic penchant for firearms?
Consequently, when another February evening descended and river mists were creeping up from the malodourous Thames, he made his way to the vicinity of Hungerford Bridge and the Blue Duck tavern. Garbed to visit the hostelry described by Setty Wilkins as “no end of a rough shop,” he was in a working man’s suit of fustian with a muffler and a greasy woollen cap. The labourer’s obligatory short clay pipe drooped from his mouth.
Old Setty Wilkins seemed rarely to leave his engraving shop, but it was as if, like some wizard concealed in a cave, he could send his disembodied spirit forth to wander in every region of the great city, even its murkiest and most dangerous nooks and corners, discovering all manner of goings-on. When Setty gave Dacers a tip, it usually proved worth following, and Dacers felt his usual confidence in the old man’s tip concerning the Blue Duck.
It meant searching the margin of the River Thames where a huge sewer laying project and the creation of a vast riverside improvement was under way. Old buildings had been torn down and many more were in process of demolition. There was a confusion of temporary sheds, builders’ machinery, and piles of construction material around the base of Hungerfod Bridge, recently reconstructed to replace one designed by the ingenious Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
He wandered through this dark and entangled scenery and eventually found the Blue Duck in a dogleg of a lane leading down to the river. He heard it before he saw it. A fiddle was scraping and there was a harsh roaring of a music hall song: Champagne Charlie. The building was another huddled relic of a much earlier age, as were so many in London’s riverside region. Feeble yellow lamplight did its best to struggle out of dirty windows.
He moved out of the way as two tattered figures, one with an arm around the other’s shoulder, lurched out of the door warbling in unsure unison:
“Champagne Charlie is me name,
Champagne drinkin’ is me game
I’m the idol of the barmaids
Champagne Charlie is me name.”
