The Devil's Company (2 page)

His friends laughed. He sneered. “Ten pounds? You must be mad. Have you never been to Kingsley’s before?”

“It’s me first time in London, for all it matters. What of it? I can assure ye that my reputation is secure in my native land.”

“I know not what back alley of Edinburgh from which you come—”

I interrupted him. “’Tis not right you address me so. Ken ye I’m the Laird of Kyleakin?” I boomed, having only a poor notion of where Kyleakin was or if it was a significant enough place to have a laird at all. I did know that half the North Britons in the metropolis claimed to be laird of something, and the title earned the claimant more derision than respect.

“I have no concern for what bog you call home,” Bailor said. “Know you that at Kingsley’s no one plays for less than fifty pounds. If you cannot wager such an amount, get out and cease corrupting the air I breathe.”

“Fie on your fifty pounds. ’Tis no more than a farthing to me.” I produced a pocketbook, from which I retrieved two banknotes of twenty-five pounds each.

Bailor inspected them to ascertain their legitimacy, for neither counterfeit notes nor the promise of a dissolute laird of Kyleakin would answer his purposes. These, however, came from a local goldsmith of some reputation, and my adversary was satisfied. He threw in two banknotes of his own, which I picked up and proceeded to study, though I had no reason to believe—or to care—if they were not good. I merely wished to antagonize him. Accordingly, I peered at them from all angles, held them up to the burning candles, moved my eyes in to study the print most minutely.

“Put them down,” he said, after a moment. “If you haven’t yet reached a conclusion, you never will unless you summon one of your highland seers. More to the point, my reputation is known here, yours is not. Now, we begin with a fifty-pound bet, but each additional wager must be no less than ten pounds. Do you understand?”

“Aye. Now let us duel.” I placed my left hand on the table with my index finger extended. It was the agreed-upon signal to the dealer that I wished to lose the hand.

Even in such times when I often played at cards, I never much relished cacho, in which a man must make too many decisions based entirely on unknown factors. It is, in other words, a contest of chance rather than skill, and I have little interest in such. The game is played with a shortened deck—only the ace through the six of each suit included. Each player is dealt a card, he makes his wager, and then the circle is repeated twice more until each player possesses in his hand three cards. With the ace counting as a low card, whichever man has the best hand—or, in this case, the better hand—is declared winner.

I received an ace of hearts. A poor start as, in this simple game, hands were often won simply by a high card. I grinned as though I had received the very card I most desired and threw ten pounds into the center of the table. Bailor matched my bet, and my confederate dealer presented to me another card. The three of diamonds. Again, a poor showing. I added another ten, as did Bailor. My final card was the four of spades; a losing hand if I ever saw one. We both put in our ten pounds and then Bailor called me to lay my hand flat. I had nothing of value; He, however, presented a cacho, three cards of the same suit. In a single hand he had unburdened me of eighty pounds—approximately half as much as I might hope to earn in a year’s time. However, as it was not my money and I had been instructed to lose it, I could not much lament its passing.

Bailor laughed as rudely as a puppet-show villain and asked if I wished to further mortify myself by playing another hand. I told him I would not shrink from his base challenge, and once more I signaled the dealer that I wished to lose. Accordingly, I soon lost another eighty pounds. I now began to affect the countenance of a man agitated by these events, and I grumbled and muttered and gulped angrily at my wine.

“I would say,” Bailor told me, “that you have lost this duel. Now be gone with you. Go back north, paint yourself blue, and trouble no more our civilized climes.”

“I’ve not lost yet,” I told him. “Unless you are such a coward that you would run from me.”

“I should be a strange sort of coward who would run from taking your money. Let us play another hand, then.”

Though I may have had some initial reservations about my involvement in this deception, I began now to develop a genuine loathing of Bailor, and I looked to his defeat with great anticipation. “No more of these lassie wagers,” I said, opening my notebook and taking out three hundred pounds’ worth of notes, which I slapped down on the table.

Bailor gave the matter a moment’s consideration and then matched my wager. I placed my right hand on the table with the index finger out—the signal that I would now win, for it was time to present this man with his unhappy deserts.

I received my first card, the six of clubs. A fine start, I thought, and added another two hundred pounds to the pile. I feared for a moment that Bailor would grow either suspicious or afraid of my bold maneuver, but he had offered the challenge himself and could not back down without appearing a poltroon. Indeed, he met my two hundred and raised me another hundred. I matched the bet quite happily.

The dealer presented our next cards, and I received the six of spades. I attempted to hide my pleasure. In cacho, the highest hand possible is that of three sixes. My employer’s man meant to assure my victory. I therefore put in another two hundred pounds. Bailor met the wager but did not raise it. I could not be surprised that he grew uneasy. We had now both committed to eight hundred pounds, and its loss would surely hurt him a great deal. He was a man of some means, I had been told, but not infinite ones, and none but the wealthiest of lords and merchants can relinquish such sums without some distress.

“You’re not raising this time, laddie?” I asked. “Are ye beginning to quake?”

“Shut your Scots mouth,” he said.

I grinned, for I knew he had nothing, and my Scots persona would know it too.

And then I received my third card. The two of diamonds.

I strained against the urge to tell the dealer he had made a mistake. He had meant to give me a third six, surely. With so much of my patron’s money on the table, I felt a tremor of fear at the prospect of losing. I quickly calmed myself, however, recognizing that I had been merely anticipating something far more theatrical than what the dealer had planned. A victory of three sixes might look too much like the deception that we, indeed, perpetrated. My collaborator would merely give Bailor a less distinguished hand, and our contest would be determined by a high card. The loss for my opponent would be no less bitter for its being accomplished by unremarkable means.

All about us the crowd had grown thick with spectators, and the air was warm with the heat of their bodies and breath. It was all as my patron would have wished. I glanced at the dealer, who gave me the most abbreviated of nods. He had seen my doubt and answered it. “Another hundred,” I said, not wishing to wager more as my store of Cobb’s money grew thin. I wished to have something left should Bailor raise the bet. He did so by another fifty pounds, leaving me with fewer than a hundred pounds of Mr. Cobb’s money on my person.

Bailor grinned at me. “Now we shall see, Sawny, who is the better man.”

I returned the grin and set forth my cards. “Not so bonny as I would like, but I’ve won with less.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “but this time you would have lost with more.” He laid down his own cards: a cacho—and not only a cacho, but one with a six, five, and four. This was the second highest hand in the game, one I could have bested only with three sixes. I had lost, and lost soundly.

I felt a dizziness pass over me. Something had gone wrong, horribly wrong. I had done everything Mr. Cobb had said. The dealer had shown every sign of being Cobb’s man. I had delivered the signals as planned. Yet I must now return to the man who hired me and report that I’d lost more than eleven hundred pounds of his money.

I glanced over at the dealer, but he would not meet my eye. Bailor, however, leered at me so lasciviously that I thought for a moment that he wished for me, and not his whore, to return with him to his rooms.

I rose from the table.

“Going somewhere, Sawny?” one of Bailor’s friends asked.

“All hail the Laird of Kyleakin,” another called out.

“Another hand!” Bailor himself shouted. “Or shall we call this duel concluded, and you the loser?” He then turned to his friends. “Perhaps I should take my winnings and buy all of Kyleakin and cast out its current master. I suspect I have quite a bit more than I should need upon this very table.”

I said nothing, only wanting to escape from the coffeehouse, which now smelled to me intolerably of spilled wine and sweat and civet perfume. I wanted the shocking cold of the winter night air to wash over my face, that I might think of what to do next, contemplate how things had gone wrong and what I might say to the man who had entrusted me with his wealth.

I must have been walking far more slowly than I realized, for Bailor had come up behind me before I had reached the door. His friends were in tow, and his face was bright, flushed with victory. For a moment I thought he meant to challenge me to a duel of another sort, and in truth I would have welcomed such a thing, for it would have eased my mind some to have the opportunity to redeem myself in a contest of violence.

“What is it?” I asked of him. I would rather let him gloat than appear to run. Though I was in disguise and any behavior I might indulge would not tarnish my reputation, I was still a man and could not stomach flight.

He said nothing for a moment, but only gazed upon me. Then he leaned forward as if to salute my cheek, but instead he whispered some words in my ear. “I believe, Mr. Weaver,” he said, addressing me by my true name, “that you have now felt the long reach of Jerome Cobb.”

CHAPTER TWO

T FIRST LIGHT I ROSE FROM MY BED, NEITHER RESTED NOR REFRESHED, for I had not slept as I turned over in my mind the events of the previous night. I made every effort to understand what had happened, as I anticipated the unpleasant meeting in which I would inform Mr. Cobb that, rather than delivering him his revenge, I had made him a staggering eleven hundred pounds the poorer. More than that, his intended victim had anticipated the ruse, and Bailor had offered yet another humiliation to Mr. Cobb. I had given serious consideration to at least a dozen possibilities to explain how I had come to such a turn, but none made sense save one. To understand why I reached such a conclusion, however, I should retreat a step and inform my readers of how I came to such a pass.

I had been in Mr. Cobb’s employ for less than two days before my unfortunate encounter at Kingsley’s Coffeehouse. I received his summons on a cold but pleasantly bright afternoon, and having nothing to prevent me from answering him, I attended his call at once at his house on Swallow Street, not far from St. James’s Square. A fine house it was too, in one of the newer parts of the metropolis. The streets were wide and clean compared to much of London, and they were said to be, at least for the moment, comparatively free of beggars and thieves, though I was about to observe a change in that happy state.

The day was clear and a welcome winter sun shone upon me, but this was nevertheless London in the cold months, and the streets were slick with ice and packed snow, turned to shades of gray and brown and black. The city was thick and heavy with coal smoke. I could not be outside but five minutes before my lungs felt heavy with the stuff, and not much longer than that before I felt a coat of grime upon my skin. Come the first break of warm weather, I would always venture outside the metropolis for a day or two that I might repair my lungs with clean country air.

As I approached the house I observed a manservant on the street not half a block before me, walking with a large package under one arm. He wore a red and gold and pale green livery and held himself with a haughty bearing that bespoke a particular pride in his station.

I reflected that nothing attracts the resentment of the poor with greater rapidity than a proud servant, and as though the world itself responded to my thoughts, the fellow was now set upon by a crowd of a dozen or more ragged urchins, who appeared to materialize from the cracks between the buildings themselves. These unfortunates, full of grotesque glee, proceeded to dance about and tease him like demons of hell. They had nothing more original to say than
’Tis the popinjay
or
Look at him—he thinks he’s a lord, he does
. Nevertheless, even from my rear vantage point I could see the manservant stiffening with what I thought was fear, though I soon realized my mistake. The urchins continued their harassment not half a minute before the servant lashed out like a viper with his free hand and grabbed one of the boys by the collar of his ragged coat.