A Good Man (21 page)

It wasn’t long before Dunne saw that these shady strangers threw their ownshadows. He began to notice strange people and peculiar occurrences in the street outside the house. One morning while raking leaves, he observed a furniture van that sat in the roadway for two hours, then drove away without making a delivery. Another day a workman spent most of the morning up on a ladder checking a gas lamp – and peering into the upper windows of the Hind house. There were others, a suspicious birdwatcher with binoculars, and a man who walked a fat old dog for an eternity, toing and froing up and down the same few blocks near the Hind property until the animal sat down and refused to move, and his owner had to carry the exhausted animal off in his arms.

Then one October afternoon, as Dunne was greasing the hubs of Hind’s carriage, he glanced up and saw a figure framed in the double doorway of the carriage house. The fellow had carefully posed himself there to create a picture of devil-may-care self-assurance. His thumbs were hooked in the armpits of his waistcoat; his bowler was cocked down over one eye; he was flicking a toothpick up and down in his jaw. “Now that’s a landau to beat all landaus – a regular beauty,” he said, and sauntered over.

Without offering a reply, Dunne dipped into the grease and resumed lubricating the wheel. This did not discourage the stranger; on the contrary, it drew him in even closer, so close that he filled Dunne’s nostrils with the cloying smell of his pomade.

“Getting ready to take Mr. Hind’s American friends on a sightseeing tour? Toronto displays itself to advantage this time of year, the colour of the leaves and what not. Don’t you agree?”

“I ain’t stupid. I know why you’re here,” said Dunne.

The man produced a gold sovereign, waggled it at him enticingly. “It’s yours, mate, you give me the Yankees’ destination.”

“I never know where they’re going,” said Dunne. “Hind gives me their hour of departure. But if you take a gander at a railway schedule, it ain’t hard to figure where they’re likely headed.”

“So what’s their hour of departure?”

“Hind ain’t give me my marching orders yet. But there’s time yet. He always gives a day’s notice.”

“Well then, you and I are the best of friends already,” said the man. “Aren’t we?” He pressed the sovereign into Dunne’s palm. Dunne stood staring down at the engraving of St. George’s horse trampling the dragon. When he looked up, he saw the man’s face was stretched in a wide, elastic grin that revealed a notable gap in his front teeth. He looked ready to swallow him whole.

“The name’s McCorkle. And yours is –?”

“Dunne.”

McCorkle tipped his head in the direction of the door and smoothly suggested, “I think we should step outside. Just in case someone happens to come to find you to run an errand. In that case, I’ll be looking for a certain house and you’ll be giving me directions.”

Dunne followed him out into slanting sunshine. From a neighbour’s yard, the smoky incense of burning leaves wafted over them. A blue jay cocked its head at McCorkle, its attention captured by the piece of chalk he was casually tossing from hand to hand. “So when you get the departure time from Hind, this is what you do. Note the hour here,” he said, writing down
10:45 a.m
. on a plank of the carriage house. “Make the figures small. We aren’t a commercial concern – no need to advertise,” he said. “I’ll be checking it regular. When I get the hour” – he swiped the wall with his sleeve – “gone.” He handed Dunne the chalk.

Dunne thought for a moment. “I wonder why a fellow happens to carry chalk with him everywheres,” he said.

“In my line of business,” said McCorkle, “there are plenty of things to mark. Maybe a carriage of interest, or maybe a door that needs looking into or opening. By my associates, I mean. But those are details you don’t have to bother your head about.”

“Well, if it’s your line of business maybe you ought to think longer and harder about the marks you leave lying about. No numbers,” Dunne said. “Do it so.” He drew four lines, ran a diagonal through them. “Five.” Marked another four and slashed them with another diagonal. “Ten. Say it’s ten forty-five, I take it to the lowest hour. Ten o’clock. It don’t hurt any of you fellows to kick your heels in the train station waiting a few minutes. I put a little dot on top of the lines if it’s a.m., a dot under them if it’s p.m.” Dunne illustrated, then wiped his marks clean. “If Hind was to catch sight of a number like 10:45 writ down on his property, it’s likely to remind him of a time he just give me. It’s likely to make him wonder. But this looks like somebody counting off something. What? Maybe the number of days until it’s time to grease the wheels on the carriage again. I might say that if I was asked.”

McCorkle shrugged. “If you’re so damned skittish – do as you like.”

“I like best what’s in my interest. And I ain’t said I’m about to do it neither.” Dunne paused. “I’m just saying how’s the right way to do it if a fellow
was
to do it. The way I’m thinking now is that a damn sovereign ain’t worth losing gainful employment for.”

McCorkle jabbed the dust of the lane with the toe of his boot. “If we had a permanent arrangement, more sovereigns would follow in due course. Seeing how well-placed you are, that could be advantageous to both of us.”

“I think you better explain how that arrangement would work.”

“I take it you post the family letters?” asked McCorkle. Dunne nodded. “Then it shouldn’t be difficult for you to drop me a note when you learn Mr. Hind is receiving guests. Send it to Dan McCorkle, care of the Brandywine Tavern, Front Street. Once I am alerted, we’ll proceed just as we have discussed today. I, or someone else, will check the carriage house wall until we receive news about when Mr. Hind’s guests are leaving” – he flashed a smile – “on business.”

“And how do I get paid?” said Dunne. “You didn’t happen to mention that.”

“If you have a bank account it could be deposited there.”

“I don’t trust banks. I want cash laid in my palm,” said Dunne.

Irritation showed on McCorkle’s face. “The other servants may begin to speculate if we’re seen too much in one another’s company – as you have already proved, the help knows more than one would expect.”

“Whenever I tip you about visitors, the next Thursday afternoon I’ll come to the Brandywine. That’s my half-day off. You can give me my money then.”

“I have my duties. I can’t be dancing attendance on you. My time is valuable.”

“I’ll be saving you time aplenty. There’ll be no need to keep men hanging around watching the house like you do now. You got a departure time, all you have to do is be at the station, board the same train, and follow them. As far as your precious time goes, you got a bargain.”

McCorkle sucked his cheeks. “All right,” he said at last. Then he added, “You’re a dark horse, Dunne.”

“Yes, I am,” said Dunne. “And nobody rides me for nothing. Remember that.”

Dunne finds it sweet to recall how good it had been to strike Hind in his soft spot, hit him in the breadbasket of his nigger love. Sweeter still to know that he had no inkling his plans were being confounded. There’s the difference between a man such as Michael Dunne and those cocks of the walk that have to crow and flap their wings, let everyone know they’ve had a triumph. Knowing he’s won is satisfaction enough for him. After all, secrets are power. Let them loose in the world and the power escapes with them.

Just as the newspapers had helped him to deduce the reason for his employer’s gloom that past summer, now they helped him deduce who the whiskey-drinking Yankees were. He put two and two together and decided the old man was aiding and abetting crimpers and substitute brokers. As people said, the conflict raging to the south was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. The wealthy had a way to escape the draft that had sent poverty-stricken New Yorkers on a wrecking spree. For three hundred dollars, an exemption from conscription could be purchased from the government. Men of lesser means, for whom raising such a sum was a stretch, could buy themselves a substitute, negotiate a cheaper price with some hungry wretch.

But the article writers pointed out that the flesh dealers couldn’t get enough recruits in the United States to supply the demand. The crimpers had now come to Canada and were tricking gullible farm boys into selling themselves into military servitude for a few Yankee dollars. Worse still, there were claims that young men were being shanghaied, filled with beer and strong cider, then spirited across the border in the dead of night, or simply tapped on the head with a cosh, aded into a wagon, and bundled off against their will. Editorials demanded that an end be brought to the chicanery and kidnapping, reminded the government that the recruitment of British subjects by a foreign power was a crime, and that it was their duty to protect honest citizens from these thugs. But from everything Dunne read, the trade in cannon fodder seemed impossible to suppress. If a broker was promised two hundred and fifty dollars from some boy’s family to find a replacement for him, and the broker could nab a Canadian hayseed for fifty, it made perfect sense to Michael Dunne why men would run the risk of arrest and continue in such a profitable business.

Not that Dunne thought Hind was helping crimpers and substitute brokers for hard cash; he was sure his employer believed he was furthering God’s holy work by assisting the Union to harvest soldiers for its army. But as far as Dunne was concerned, Hind had as good as opened his house to slavers. If trading in black flesh was an offence in the sight of God, wasn’t it a hundred times worse, a thousand times worse, to buy and sell a white man? Hind would sooner wash the feet of a darky with his tears than give a man who had been his
slave
for two years, who had practically got down on his knees and begged for a chance to better himself, the slightest consideration. The old hypocrite had put his thumb to Michael Dunne’s head and pushed him down just as his own father had. People who did that paid a price. Hind’s would be to pay wages to a man working against him. It delighted Dunne to serve two masters, Hind and McCorkle, betray the first in the interests of the other, and pocket the money of both.

And so it went on for months, chalk marks rewarded with sovereigns, although as far as Dunne could see without much effect on the tide of brokers and crimpers. They still continued to arrive from the States. When he questioned McCorkle about what results were being obtained, all that McCorkle could do was make lame excuses. He said that the crimpers were slippery fellows and careful not to incriminate themselves. They needed to be caught red-handed to provide the evidence a court required to convict them, and that was a difficult thing to do. But, McCorkle added smugly, the mere fact that they knew they were being watched was making them so cautious that their catch was growing ever smaller and smaller. That was almost as useful a result as putting them behind bars. Dunne knew what to think of that explanation. McCorkle was a bungler and so were the people who worked with him.

Then something occurred that changed Dunne’s comfortable situation. He found it necessary to report some bad news to McCorkle. Several articles of Mrs. Hind’s jewellery had gone missing, and everything pointed to the substitute brokers having stolen it. Mr. Hind felt this as a crushing blow, twice over. The men he was aiding had abused his hospitality, and reporting the theft was out of the question. The police would oblige him to answer questions about the people he had entertained and that meant compromising himself. So when Mrs. Hind unleashed her ire on him for the loss of her geegaws, her husband contritely offered a solemn pledge never to entertain people of that sort again.

Never would Dunne have believed that Hind would so easily draw back the hand he had extended to pull the Negro out of the mire. The goose that laid the golden eggs had been well and truly cooked. The crimpers and substitute brokers would never again darken his master’s doorway. It was all over.

But two days later Dunne received a message from McCorkle asking him to drop by the Brandywineavern at three o’clock on his next half-day off. Something needed to be discussed. When Dunne presented himself McCorkle was not alone. Sitting beside him was a tiny man with a shovel-shaped beard, deep-set eyes, and an aggressively crooked nose whom McCorkle introduced as Stipendiary Magistrate Gilbert McMicken. The title signified nothing to Dunne, but the moment McMicken opened his mouth he knew this little bantam ruled the roost. Turning to McCorkle, he said in a harsh, scraping voice, “Off with you.”

Surprise glimmered on McCorkle’s face, surprise quickly succeeded by disappointment. “Shall I wait outside or –”

“No reason to wait. I don’t know how long this will take.”

When McCorkle had left, the magistrate said matter-of-factly to Dunne, “I’m a frank man. McCorkle urged me not to meet with you. He thinks you may have lost your nerve and tattled to Hind. He sees no other explanation for his sudden break with the crimpers.”

“Here’s the explanation,” said Dunne. “They lifted his wife’s jewellery. She laid down the law to him. Said she wouldn’t have them in her house again. I told McCorkle all about it.”