Beer, Porter, Spirits’ and Tobacco,” and he pushed open a creaking door, allowing a tide of raucous din to gush out. Inside, partially enveloped in a pall of tobacco smoke, was a jostle of roughly-clad men, some labourers, some seamen, many obviously foreign; river boatmen mixed in with garishly-gowned, painted women, plainly “dollymops” operated by the madams of riverside houses of joy. Fiddle and bellowing lungs continued the song.
He pushed his way through the crowd to the bar lined with loungers. Behind it sweated two barmen under the direction of a bald, obese man with a red face, clearly Mr. Tooley.
It was from the landlord that Dacers ordered a glass of grog while aware of mistrusting glances from those lining the bar, and from Tooley himself. A stranger, even one matching much of the clientele in dress, did not go unnoticed at the Blue Duck, it seemed.
Tooley pushed the mixture of rum and water across the counter and, over the din of the customers’ roaring, a new song, addressed Dacers with point-blank inquisitiveness: “Not your usual port of call, this gaff, is it?” His voice was heavy with suspicion, which was also reflected in his small eyes.
“No,” said Dacers. “Just looked in thinkin’ I might spot a cove I’m acquainted with. Seems he might come in here now and again.” There was an authentic touch to his mock Cockney.
“Not a disguised peeler, are you?” asked Tooley, point-blank again.
Dacers gave a dismissive laugh mingled with a touch of scorn. “Not any kind of peeler and never likely to be, but I’m lookin’ for a big bloke, American. with a fair moustache. Matter of business,” he tapped the side of his nose. The gesture, indicating business of a most private and personal nature, was readily understood by Josiah Tooley.
“I see,” said he. “I just don’t want the scandal of an arrest in here. It could give the place a bad name an’ that ’ud be a real disgrace.”
Dacers slyly took in the tough, drunken, and shifty-looking patrons and the over-painted dollymops. “I s’pose you’re right,” he replied without batting an eye.
Tooley said: “Can’t say I knows this bloke you mention, but there’s lots come in here at different times, and I can’t remember ’em all. It’s a very popular house, y’see. An’ very respectable, like I just told you.”
“I sees that,” confirmed Dacers, stone-faced.
Behind Dacers’ back, just visible beyond a phalanx of standing drinkers, hooting a boozy chorus, the door opened and two men entered. One was tall, heavily-built, and with a fair moustache. His companion was shorter, stocky, and with a pugnacious face under a billycock hat of the style favoured by the horse-racing community. Josiah Tooley, looking past Dacers, noticed them and suddenly said: “Well, I hopes you find your man, but I think you’ve been misinformed. He don’t sound like anyone who comes in here, ’Scuse me, I have to do things.”
He walked along the area at the back of the bar, moving remarkably quickly for one so corpulent, slipped out into the crowd of drinkers. He made directly for the pair who had just entered and were beginning to negotiate a passage through the throng of imbibers.
Dacers was still facing the bar and Tooley made urgent gestures to the two men, indicating that they should turn and head back to the door. In a tone just audible over the din of the singers, he warned: “Get out! Bloke at the bar’s snoopin’. Asked about you. Get out, quick.”
The pair turned, quickly strode to the door and exited with Tooley following. Out in the cold air, the man with the fair moustache asked in a slow drawl representative of the Southern American states: “Is he from over the pond?”
“No, an Englishman, dressed up in a fustian suit and black cap. Says he ain’t a crusher but I ain’t so sure. If he is one, he ain’t going to say so, is he? He’s got the style of a regular working cove but them detectives is smart at acting. You told me t,o warn you if anyone came asking about you, Mr. Fairfax.”
“Thanks, Josh. He’s fishy, all right. We ain’t expecting anyone to look in on us. We’ll make his acquaintance in due course. We’ll maybe give him a little persuading to mind his own business.”
“Don’t be too hasty, Cal,” cautioned the pugnacious man in the billycock in a drawl similar to his companion’s. “Maybe we should just blow out of here quietly. We could be laying up a heap of trouble for ourselves if he’s from the police.”
“That’s right. Watch what you’re about,” hissed Tooley in a sudden panic. “If he is a peeler and you croak him or injure him, I’ll have every crusher in London charging in on me!” He retreated back to the door and gave a last anxious warning before entering: “Remember, if you gives him a towelling, don’t do it anywhere near my gaff!”
Tooley slipped back into the rowdy depths of his drinking den where Septimus Dacers was still facing the bar, absorbing the sight of the assorted humanity crammed into the smoky confines of the Blue Duck.
There was a scattering of races and colours; men from the open sea and others whose variety of boats rode the Thames; a few soldiers in scarlet tunics and gin-sodden men in tatters from the lower depths of the city, mostly slumped over the tables. Dollymops in borrowed plumes belonging to their bawdy house mistresses sat on the knees of leering drunks or canoodled with them in corners. All not otherwise engaged roared a hoarse chorus of another popular song the sweating fiddler was grinding out, The Ratcatcher’s Daughter:
“Her pa caught rats
And she sold sprats
All round and about that quarter;
And all the gentlefolk thereabout
Loved the pretty little Ratcatcher’s daughter.”
Every Tom, Dick and Harry’s in the place except the one I’m looking for, thought Dacers, unaware that the man he sought and his companion had already entered the premises and been shooed away by Tooley. He reflected on how stupid he was to put faith in Setty Wilkins as in some sort of oracle. How on earth could Setty, living in Seven Dials as a near recluse, know anything of what went on down here near Hungerford Bridge? He concluded that probably Josiah Tooley told him the truth when he said the man Dacers sought was unknown in the Blue Duck, and it would be fruitless to stay there any longer.
He finished the fiery tasting grog, turned and pushed his way through the standing mass of drinkers, and headed for the door.
As he came out of the tavern there was a brief blossoming of lamplight from the door, which illuminated him. Two bulky black figures, crouching just out of the ambit of the light, stirred and there was a whispered sentence: “That’s him—fustian suit and black cap!”
Before Dacers realised that a couple of men were lurking close to the door, there was a sudden scuffle of boots and a pair of heavy bodies came lunging out of the shadows, barging into him and almost knocking him off his feet, sending his breath gusting out of him. The aggression of the man who called himself Fairfax had won out over the caution of the one in the billycock.
Dizzy with the notion that a veritable avalanche of human bodies had fallen on him, Dacers nevertheless perceived by the dim light that the larger of the two had a moustache, probably fair in colour. Fairfax! he thought as his senses reeled.
Two pairs of hands grabbed his clothing, and he was shoved backwards on his heels, with a force that caused the healing knife wound in his side to jab a sharp pain through his ribs. Within the Blue Duck, the drinkers
