The Tiger in the Well (46 page)

He put down his knapsack slowly and crouched, holding out his arms, letting Harriet come to him.

"Look," she said, not letting him hold her, impatient. "Uncle Jim, look!"

She had a broken piece of macaroni in her hand, sticky and begrimed. She put it in her mouth and blew a feather off the palm of her filthy hand.

"Good game," said Jim. "That's a blowpipe. They have them in the jungle, where I've just come from. You going to come home now.? See Mama.'*"

She looked doubtful.

"There's Uncle Webster at home now, as well," Jim went on. "And Sarah-Jane. And I bet Mrs. Perkins has got some macaroni in the kitchen to play blowpipes with."

"Here," said the most beautiful voice Jim had ever heard. He looked up, astonished, to see a girl of fifteen or so, as wild as the rest of them, narrow-eyed, slender, dirty, but with a voice that you might hear in a dream and never forget. She was holding out a brown paper bag to Harriet. "Take *em home with ye, for yer dinner."

Harriet took something out of the bag and chewed it stolidly.

"Dried figs," the girl explained. "I found 'em in a sack. There's plenty more."

Jim stood up. The two boys were still looking wary, but the tension had eased.

"What happened.?" Jim said. "Was she in Clapham, then.?"

"Yeah,'* said the boy with the black eye. "Mr. Goldberg led the raid. We got her out."

"We dropped a Jordan on the wee man's nut!" said a boy at the door.

Jim blinked. Twice in one night! he thought. / was wrong. . . . "Good for you," he said. "You like reading.'*"

"Yeah," said the boy with the split lip. "I can read anything."

"I'll send you a pile of penny dreadfuls. I reckon you must've had some expenses, looking after this young lady. Here's five pounds for you. You've done a good job, the lot ofyer."

The money was received with shrewd nods. What they were approving was Jim's sensibility and perception in putting a reaUstic price on their efforts.

"Them penny dreadfuls," said the boy. "Don't send 'em here. This is just a kip. Send 'em to Mr. Goldberg's, in Soho."

"You're a pal of his, are yer.?"

The boy nodded.

"He's in jail, they tell me. In the tench."

"i'S nothing," the boy scoffed. "He'll be out. They can't hold him. They couldn't hold him in Russia, they couldn't hold him in Hungary. He escaped from this castle with a big round tower—^place called Kufstein. He climbed down the outside. If they think they can hold him in the tench, they don't know nothing."

Jim had been to Kufstein; he'd seen that castle. "So he's all right, is he, this Mr. Goldberg.'*"

Nods all around, particularly vigorous from Con and Tony.

"He shared his last cigars with us!" said Con. "There's no bloody side on him, mister."

"Right," said Jim, hoisting Harriet up and discovering too late that she'd wet herself thoroughly. "Let's go home, then, princess."

Harriet, mouth full of fig, waved good-bye regally with the brown paper bag as they set off along the busy street, whic was beginning to steam in the watery sunshine.

The Most Noble and Sacred Order

OF THE Emanation of the Blessed and Holy

Sanctissima Sophia

To whom it may concern:

I am writing this in order to correct a faulty entry in the Register of Marriages for the parish of St. Thomas's Church in Portsmouth, where I was rector from 1870 to 1880. The entry refers to a marriage solemnized on January the 3rd, 1879, between Arthur James Parrish and Veronica Beatrice Lockhart.

No such marriage took place. I myself falsely made the entry in the register, being at the time under personal and medical pressures of an intolerable order. I now regret my action profoundly and apologize humbly for the distress it has caused to innocent parties.

I beg that I may be excused any further involvement in this unhappy matter. I consider that I have discharged my responsibility to earthly truth, and intend to devote the remainder of my days to matters of far higher importance, namely the Salvation of my Soul and the contemplation of the Divine Mysteries.

G. Davidson Beech.

Margaret put down the letter and looked across her desk at James Wentworth.

"Hovi^ did you do it.?"

"I told him that if he didn't do it like this, he'd have to come to court and do it, but do it he would. Oh, he whined and twisted, but there was no way out. He's a contemptible piece of work."

"And what happened in court?"

"We won, of course," he said—a little smugly, she thought. *Together with Mr. Goldberg's notebook and Miss Lockhart's paper, it did the trick in five minutes flat. Everything's going to be restored. And I think you'll find that there's not much missing: he was a careful businessman. Very efficient. There'll

be a claim against him for any losses, and they'll be paid in full. All the paperwork will be done as soon as possible—"

"How soon is that?" she said. "I know lawyers."

"You don't know this one. It won't take long. Parrish has had the cheek to enter a claim for damages to his furniture, but that won't stand up. They're preparing the prosecution case against him at the moment, but it's taking longer than they thought; more and more stuff keeps coming to light."

"And what about Mr. Goldberg.'"' said Margaret.

'*That was more difficult. There's no doubt that the offense he's accused of, if it is an offense, is political, so extradition wouldn't be applicable, but they could still deport him if they had a mind to. And they did have a mind to—at least, the assistant commissioner in Lee's pocket did. So I showed him the affidavit sworn by the woman who ran one of the houses Parrish was taking money from, testifying to all the visits he'd made."

Margaret made a noncommittal sound; she wasn't sure how to talk about brothels without blushing. He went on. "The scandal would be appalling. He saw that, and so Goldberg's safe. He's going to be released this aftemoon, as soon as all the formalities are completed. Miss Lockhart's coming with me to meet him; so's Mr. Taylor."

"Jim's desperately curious," said Margaret. "He's Sally's oldest friend, you know. They're like brother and sister. He feels angry with himself that all this happened when he was away. And now he's heard so much about Daniel Goldberg— and he was such a close friend of Harriet's father. . . . Well. I think he's intrigued."

Next morning, behind Orchard House, Jim was repairing the glass-roofed structure by the garden wall with a lean, tough-looking man in his sixties, with a gray beard and short gray hair, who was even more sunburned than Jim.

As they carefully lowered another pane into position and trimmed away the putty, the older man said, "Tell me about this Goldberg, then."

Jim squinted up at the sun and brushed the hair out of his eyes.

"Well," he said, "he's . . .I'll tell you what happened. There's me and Sal and the lawyer all in this stuffy little room in the prison lodge, and making polite conversation— what a relief the rain's stopped, do they really need so many keys, and so on; and Sal was twitching like a flea. Finally we gave up talking and stared out the window. Then there was another jingle of keys, and the door opened, and in he came with a warder.

"He's a strong-looking feller; big shoulders, big hands. Dark—black hair, big nose, powerful eyes. And Sally's up on her feet as soon as the key turns in the lock, and he didn't seem to move and she didn't seem to move, but there they were, arms around each other, kissing as if they'd just invented it."

"Kissing, eh.'*" said the old man, amused.

"Words fail me, Mr. Webster."

"No, they don't," said Webster Garland. "You might fail to find them, but that's a different matter. No wonder she was all misty-eyed last night."

"I didn't know where to put me eyes. Nor did the lawyer. So we did the decent thing and left 'em to it. Anyway, they came out after another minute or two, or ten, and we were introduced properly."

"And.?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, I could tell at once. He's a good 'un. He's afraid of nothing, like Fred was. Just think: He rescues Harriet in Clapham, gets shot in the shoulder, marches all the way to Whitechapel, faces a howling mob—and tells 'em a story to keep 'em quiet till the police come. Oh, yes, there's no doubt about it. He's a tough one."

Webster Gariand nodded. "Good," he said. "That's all right then." He looked along at the house, where EUie and Sarah-Jane were hanging curtains in the breakfast room. "Good," he said again. "Come on, boy. Give me that putty. We've got all this to do before lunch."

On the Victoria Embankment, just below the Temple Gardens, Sally was walking slowly along. Harriet was holding her hand, watching everything solemnly.

They stopped near the Temple Pier, and Sally lifted Harriet onto the wall to look at the boats. Steam launches, barges, skiffs, lighters laden with coal or grain or bales of wool, all moving busily on the gray-green water; and the trundle of traffic behind them, and the distant movement of vehicles and pedestrians on Blackfriars Bridge to the left and Waterioo Bridge to the right. ... It all seemed innocent now, harmless. There was no threat lurking in them; she could walk with her child without having to hide, she had money in her pocket, she had a home to go to.

The city was a safe place. But not a good place, not yet. She and Harriet had just come from the mission in White-chapel, where they'd been to say thank you, and they'd found Angela Turner dealing with a woman so badly beaten by her husband that the doctor wasn't sure if she'd live. And she couldn't give all her attention to that because of an outbreak of typhoid in the houses down the street, and women were besieging the mission, begging for medicine.

So it went on. They'd visited Rebecca, too, at the Katzes', and heard of a number of Jews who'd been put ashore at Hull by a courier whom they'd paid to take them to America. He'd told them that they were in New York, then vanished with all their money. There was no end to it. The Tzaddik's empire had collapsed, but nothing had changed. There were plenty willing to fill the gap.

And there was so much for her to do. Not single-handedly: she'd leamed that lesson. Things got done in the world when you worked with other people. There were movements to join, things to learn, groups to organize, speeches to make. How strange it was; during that hour in the cellar with Ah Ling, her ancient enemy, she'd seen at last the work she was born to do. She felt absurdly lucky. To have real, important work to do, and to know it!

And there was Goldberg. That moment in the prison lodge

had caught them both unawares, and they'd been very formal afterward, very polite. But she was going to marry him. She'd decided that in the cellar too. He didn't know yet. She wondered when she'd tell him. It would be—oh, risky, challenging, stormy, even dangerous, because despite his respectable intentions—applying for British citizenship, starting his journal, eventually standing for Parliament—he had an instinct for trouble as unerring as Jim's. And there were those appalling cigars.

But he was the only man. The only man in the world who . . . who what.? Who measured up.

Born for it . . .

A gust of wind plucked the bonnet from her head, and she caught it just in time before it floated down to the river. Harriet laughed and said, "Again!"

"No," she said. "Once is enough. Let's go, Hattie. We're going to be late."

"See Dan," said Hattie, as her mother lifted her down.

"That's right. We'll go to Soho and see Dan. And I'm going to tell him something. And then . . . we'll go home and have some tea."

She hailed a cab and gave the address in Soho. As they settled down, Sally in the corner with Harriet on her lap looking out over the horse's back, with the reins coming down from above and the hamess jingling, she said, "And we won't let anyone be bad to us again, will we.''"

"Not bloody likely," said Harriet.

Also available from Knopf Paperbacks:

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SALLY LOCKHART BOOKS

by Philip Pullman

The Ruby in the Smoke

Sally Lockhart enters the seamy underworld of Victorian London in search of clues to her father's mysterious death. Pursued by villains and cutthroats at every turn, the daring sixteen-year-old heroine learns that she is the key to two dark mysteries-and it's worth her very life to find out why.

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The Shadow in the North

The year is 1878, and Sally Lockhart has gone into business for herself. When one of her clients loses a large sum of money in the collapse of a shipping firm, Sally seeks out the identity of an elusive industrialist—only to uncover a diabolical plot that could subvert the entire civilized world...

An ALA Best Book for Young Adults • A Booklist

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The Tin Princess

featuring characters from the Sally Lockhart trilogy

Three young Londoners-Adelaide, Becky, and Jim-journey to a tiny country high in the mountains of Central Europe. They're an unlikely trio to lead a nation, but before long, Adelaide and her friends are forced to fight for the crown-and their very lives!

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