So Lazarus had set himself up near Artillery Passage. Not a long hike. She didn’t have anything more important to do this afternoon, did she?

Spitalfields was full of pushcarts and pie sellers and shabby men lounging about the streets—Jews and Irish, a sprinkling of Germans and Italians, Lascar sailors and blacks. She blended into the polyglot crowd well enough. Her dress was dark cloth that could pass for ordinary. She wore no jewelry but her mother’s locket on a ribbon, and that looked like trumpery till you got close. Nobody’d guess she had a fortune in rubies in her pocket.

Scared the spit right out of her mouth, it did, going back to Lazarus. She might be doing something fairly unwise. But he was holding the last piece of the puzzle. No other way to get it but to go to him and ask.

She strolled past a church and up the next street. There were trees in the churchyard. Maples or oaks or something like that. The leaves weren’t just one green. They were lots of different greens, like different dye lots of silk. The birds on the iron railings were sparrows, with little brown bibs on them.

She kept walking, not thinking about where she was going. She’d just fool herself along, bit by bit.

For years, Papa kept her out of England so Lazarus wouldn’t take her back. Even now, Papa paid blood money to Lazarus—she didn’t even know how much—to leave her be. Today, she was walking right back into Lazarus’s hands.

She heard footsteps behind her. She was committed now. No turning back.

“Whotcher want with the Dead Man?”

Lazarus’s Runner was twelve or so, dressed in a miscellany of oversized clothing. He had the face of a choirboy and eyes devoid of humanity. She gave the sign again.

“The Dead Man don’t see every trull what ask ’im,” the boy said with heavy sarcasm.

She gave the second sign, the secret one, drawing her right finger on her left palm, crossing the lifeline. Then she showed him the cut on her thumb, the one shaped like an L.

The old eyes in the unlined face weren’t impressed. “I don’t know you.”

“Tell him Jess Whitby asks to see him.”

“Cooey . . . Jess the Hand. A flash mort.” There was ancient evil in that grin. This one would enjoy tearing her to pieces if Lazarus pointed his finger in her direction.

He left, running. She stopped worrying about the bauble. From here on, she was either under Lazarus’s protection, or she was his meat. Either way, it made her untouchable. Somebody would come soon to show her the padding ken. Lazarus wasn’t far now.

She slowed to watch boys knocking a stone back and forth with sticks. She was almost sure Lazarus wouldn’t kill her. Almost.

“This way.” It was the evil-eyed boy. She followed him down one street and up another. These big old houses had been rich once. They were cut into mean apartments now, with shabby folks sharing rooms. Everything here was makeshift and meager, a life of skimped meals, and patched clothes, and hanging on to respectability by a fingernail. Before she’d sold herself to Lazarus, she and Mama had lived like this.

The padding crib was in a sizable brick house, the biggest house on this part of the street. A pair of bullyboys sat on the front steps, enjoying the sunshine, throwing dice against the wall. She recognized them from the old days. They were brutal animals, just intelligent enough to be surprised and speculative as she went by.

Nothing had changed from when she’d lived in places like this. In the big front parlor Turkey carpets crisscrossed up and down the length of the floor. Lamps glowed through a haze of tobacco smoke. In untidy heaps of bedding in the corners, men, boys, and a few women slept in a litter of bottles and old cookshop meals.

This was where Lazarus held court. On a long table, silver platters and candlesticks, watches, chains, furs, purses, and even jewels were piled up, awaiting division. This was spoil. This was a demonstration of his power, if anyone who reached this point needed one. The best plunder of London passed through the lair of Lazarus.

There had been a Lazarus in London for three hundred years. When the old one died, a new one took his place. Lazarus was the Dead Man Risen, the Cunning Man, the King of Thieves. He was the master of the London underworld. When she was eight, he’d bought her soul.

Lazarus knew the moment she came in, even if he was pretending he didn’t. He sat in his big chair, talking to a couple of men. He’d be over fifty now, but he didn’t look it. He dressed simple—a belcher neckcloth and leather vest. Workingman’s clothing. He had a broad, brown, steady, reliable face. He was the kind of man you’d hire as coachman, till he looked straight at you, and you saw his eyes.

The Hand, nowadays, was a boy about ten, ragged, wiry, and keen. He sat, tailor-fashion, on the floor next to Lazarus, smoking a pipe. Back by the wall, a pregnant woman hunched on a sofa. Hair the color of cream fell down over her shoulders. Her arms hugged her swollen belly. Black John stood to one side, looking somber and scarred and intimidating as ever. His eyes were remote. At one time, she’d have counted him as a friend. No way to tell now.

Her horrid young guide evaporated. She walked into the room alone. Lazarus didn’t look up.

Well. What had she expected? She sighed and walked all the long way down the room to a spot a few feet from where Lazarus sat. Then, very simply, she knelt.


SEBASTIAN sat on the arm of the red velvet sofa and wound his watch. It kept his hands busy so they didn’t slam into Mr. Horace Buchanan, clerk at Whitby’s, snitch for the British Service.

“. . . that smelly animal rubbing itself all over the desk. I brought her the Morpeth papers to sign and she snapped at me. Told me to get out.” Buchanan lounged in his chair, expansive and at ease. “Well, I did, of course. But not before I saw she’d just finished writing a letter. And . . .” he paused significantly, “it was something she didn’t want me to see.”

“Did you manage to read any of it?” Adrian was politely attentive.

“I didn’t then, since she practically pushed me out of there. And naturally, I had to chase over half the warehouse to find MacLeish, since he’s never in his office when you want him, so I . . .”

Buchanan was a slender man in his thirties, with a well-starched cravat and gentlemanly hands. He’d paid for the expensive coat he wore by selling Whitby’s secrets.

Sebastian didn’t trust clerks who dressed better than he did.

“. . . supposed to do with the Morpeth contract since our esteemed proprietress was too busy playing with her pet to give me approval on the final terms. It isn’t as if I have nothing better to do.”

Adrian’s sober nod implied this was a world-shaking disclosure. Doyle, looking bovine and harmless, stood at the front window of the parlor, watching Meeks Street.

“When I got back from that, Pitney was in her office, helping himself to a cup of tea. He’s one of the favored few who stroll into her office anytime they want. They were talking cozy as turtledoves, the two of them. Then all hell broke loose. Old Pitney’s pounding the table, snarling like a dog, and little Miss Jessamyn’s laying down the law like a fishwife.” Buchanan pursed his lips. “Fine doings in a business office. Pitney kept telling her Josiah would forbid it. That’s all I could hear. He said Josiah would absolutely forbid it.”

“What was that, I wonder,” Adrian said.

“I don’t know. MacLeish came over and sent me back to my desk.” Buchanan brushed the sleeve of his coat. “But I do know Pitney got overruled. After a while he toddled off to open the safe, looking unhappy. It’s no work for a man, taking orders from a woman. I don’t know how Pitney and MacLeish stomach it.”

Sebastian put his watch away. Someday soon he’d find an hour to beat Buchanan to a pulp.

The clerk gave a wide-lipped smile. “Pitney came creeping back like a whipped dog. He brought her something—a little wrapped-up packet. Something from the safe.”

“What do you think Pitney brought her?” Adrian said amiably. “That little package. Did you see what it was?”

Doyle extracted an ivory toothpick from his pocket and began to pick his teeth.

“Something valuable.” Buchanan pinched the knit fabric of his pantaloons between thumb and forefinger and adjusted the fit over his knee. “That is, I didn’t actually see what he brought, but I watched Pitney come creeping by with it, clutching it to his bosom. He might as well have been wearing a sign, ‘I am carrying something immensely important.’ ”

“And then?” Adrian prompted.

“Well, she left, don’t you know? Just took her hat off the peg and left, right in the middle of the day, without a word to anyone. I . . . ah . . . took the opportunity to drop a few small matters on her desk. Receipts and so on. There was nothing on her blotter except for . . .” He swished the tail of his coat aside and drew a small letter from his pocket. “. . . this.”

Adrian held out his hand.

“It was what she was writing earlier, obviously. The letter she didn’t want me to see. You can see it’s addressed to her father. Normally, she’d hand letters over to the messenger boy.” Buchanan’s pale blue eyes slid from one man to another. “But she left it there on her desk. I thought that had to be suspicious. Since I was coming here anyway to drop off a few papers for Mr. Whitby, it was quite natural to pick this up and bring it along.”

Adrian kept his hand out. Buchanan held the letter tight, plucking at the corners.

“She meant for it to be delivered, and it had Whitby’s name on it. It could have been that she just forgot to give it to the messenger. She left in a hurry.” Jerkily, he laid it in Adrian’s hand and stood up. “I’ll just go ask Mr. Whitby if he has commissions for me. I’m not . . . Mr. MacLeish may ask me why I was out of the office.”