The non-drinking customs men chorused: “Queen Victoria, God bless her!”
They failed to see hunchbacked little Mr. Fortune hastily slip out from the group of officers behind whom he lurked and move under the cover of a deckhouse. Behind their very backs, he nimbly and noiselessly descended the companionway. He disappeared into the dank river mist creeping over the cobbles of Liverpool’s cargo cluttered docks.
CHAPTER ONE
A LADY IN DISTRESS
Detective Inspector Amos Twells of Scotland Yard stood outside the vast oaken doorway set in the forbidding wall of London’s Newgate Prison, with Septimus Dacers at his side. He lit his pipe and blew out copious volumes of smoke, as if trying to fumigate his whole person after he had endured the prison’s foul atmosphere.
“Well, now you’ve seen them with chains on their arms and legs and ticketed for the Australian boat, you know that Dandy Jem and Skinny Eustis are out of our hair for good,” he commented. “The colonies underneath the world are welcome to them. I’ll admit I regard you as an interfering busybody, Dacers, as I do all of you so-called inquiry agents. If you wanted to be a detective why didn’t you start at the bottom by joining the force and braving the dangers of the streets as a plodding peeler? But I’ll own you did a capital job collaring that ugly pair of swell mobsmen, especially after Jem came close to filleting you with that huge knife. You’d hardly meet a danger as severe as that even if you were a regular policeman.”
Septimus Dacers, tall, lean, and clean-shaven in contrast to his companion whose face was fringed by muttonchop sidewhiskers, was a few weeks off his fortieth birthday, but he looked on the slightly older Twells almost as a father figure. He chuckled, knowing that the ever-complaining Twells, while a holy terror to London’s wide assortment of villains, had a heart as good-natured as it was lionlike. Twells and his fellow Yard officers might scorn those who set themselves up as private detectives, but they had learned that calling on Dacers for occasional assistance was always a worthwhile move.
Twells noted that his chuckling caused Dacers’ face to reflect a spasm of pain.
“How are the ribs?” he asked.
“Still bandaged but improving. The bandages will be off soon. Luckily, the knife didn’t really penetrate, but I had a bad enough cut along my side.”
“I’d like to shove that knife down Dandy Jem’s throat,” growled Twells. “Still, there’s some comfort in knowing they’ll put him on a hard enough diet in New South Wales. Did old Lady Caroline Braithwaite slip you a handsome reward for snatching her jewels out of the sticky fingers of the mobsmen?”
“She did very handsomely by me,” said Dacers. “Very handsomely indeed.”
“That’s another thing you fellows have over us,” snorted Twells. “You stand to net a pretty tip as well as a fee, where we have to make do with only a policeman’s pay.”
Dacers grinned and answered with mock pity: “Ah, it’s such a shame that tipping a peeler can be construed as bribing an officer of the law.”
The pair walked down gloomy Newgate Street, which was even gloomier than usual under a leaden sky this late February of 1866. Both men felt the satisfaction of knowing that two of London’s most glib-tongued confidence tricksters of the “swell mobsmen” variety had been transported for life. They were caught after some sharp detective work, with Dacers aiding the Metropolitan Police, and with some highly dangerous scuffling at its climax.
“What’s your next move?” asked Amos Twells.
“To take the omnibus back to Bloomsbury”
“Where your ever accommodating landlady, Mrs. Slingsby, will doubtless feed you sumptuously, then you’ll put your feet up while I still have hours of duty before me,” grumbled Twells.
The two parted company, with Dacers going in search of the Bloomsbury omnibus, smiling to himself and reflecting that Twells never changed. He would not be content without something to complain about.
The winter evening was drawing in, and the first wisps of a threatening fog were beginning to appear in the streets. On the pavements, jostling pedestrians were, as usual, hugging the inner portions of the footways, avoiding the kerbs where the wheels of passing carts and carriages were throwing up gouts of horse foulings. The air was increasingly chilly, and Dacers began to look forward to a relaxed evening in warmth and comfort.
When he arrived at the lodgings he had occupied since his first struggling years, he opened the street door to find his landlady, Mrs. Slingsby, waiting in the hall. She was a statuesque widow whose rather severe exterior disguised a tender nature.
“Mr. Dacers, you have a visitor,” she announced. “A young lady, an American, I think. Miss Roberta Van Trask. I told her I expected you to return fairly early, and put her in the parlour rather than have her waiting in your rooms. I made her comfortable with some tea.”
At the mention of the visitor’s name, Dacers’ eyes widened. “Miss Van Trask, how surprising,” he said. “Thank you, Mrs. Slingsby.”
“You know her, then?” said Mrs. Slingsby, her sharp features brightening. She made no secret of her hope that her bachelor lodger would one day find what she called “a nice wife.”
“I have that honour,” he answered, and his landlady’s face brightened a little more.
He entered the parlour, hoping none of the unpleasant odours of Newgate Prison lingered about his person, and found a woman in her middle twenties sitting in the usual rather awkward position due to the wide crinoline skirts of the period. She wore a trim velvet jacket and had a small hat on neatly braided black hair. Her attractive, open face would have been more attractive still had she not looked distinctly troubled.
“Miss Van Trask, this is a most unexpected pleasure,” he greeted. “I’m sorry I was not here when you arrived.”
The girl smiled rather wanly. “That’s all right, Mr. Dacers, your landlady was very kind to me.”
“And how is your father?” Dacers asked, drawing a chair closer to his visitor and sitting down.
“His general health’s a great deal better than for some time, though I fear all is not well with him in other respects. I called on you, hoping you can help.”
“I will if I can, you may be sure,”
“Mr. Dacers, I know you can be trusted,” she began, dropping her tone as if frightened of being overheard. “I knew that quite instinctively when you first came to our home to escort my father on his mission to Liverpool a couple of years ago, and, of course, Scotland Yard recommended you to Mr. Adams in the most glowing terms. You looked after my father excellently. He still speaks of you with admiration.”
“And I admire him, Miss Van Trask. It was more than a pleasure to travel with so learned and pleasant a gentleman, even though it was the first time I ever carried a revolver on an assignment.”
“A revolver, yes, that brings me to the reason for my being here,” Roberta Van Trask said. “I’m sure what I have to tell you will go no further, but I am very worried about my father. I fear his position with the diplomatic service of the United States may be in danger.”
Septimus Dacers was surprised. He could hardly imagine that a man so manifestly devoted to his country’s well-being as Theodore Van Trask, who held a key position in the United States Embassy under Ambassador Charles Francis Adams, the son of the late President John Quincy Adams, could endanger his standing through any dereliction of duty. He had escorted Van Trask to the US Consulate in Liverpool on a most urgent mission, on which they carried vital documentsb and he had taken the measure of the man.
“Tell me more,” he pressed.
“It concerns a visitor my father had a few days ago,” said the girl. “A rather coarse man and an American—a Virginian. One cannot live in Washington as long as I