Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

His worst fears were realized. The man had started across the street, glanced back into the store, and, not seeing the proprietor, knelt, presumably to tie his shoelace. But the lace was perfectly secured already; the point of this gesture was to pinch up some of the brick dust from the construction currently being undertaken — to match against similar dust Goodcastle had left on the rungs of the ladder or inside the apartment in Charing Cross, he thought in agony. The policeman deposited the dust in a small envelope and then continued on his way, with the jaunty step of a man who has just found a wad of banknotes on the street.

Panic fluttered within Goodcastle. He understood his arrest was imminent. So, it was to be a race to escape the clutch of the law. Every second counted.

He strode to the back door of the shop and opened it. “Boyle,” he called into the back room, where the round, bearded craftsman was putting a coat of lacquer on a Chinese-style bureau. “Mind the shop for an hour or two. I have an urgent errand.”

Bill Sloat was hunched over his cluttered, ale-stained table at the Green Man pub, surrounded by a half-dozen of his cronies, all of them dirty and dim, half-baked Falstaffs, their only earthly reason for being here that they did Sloat’s bidding as quickly and as ruthlessly as he ordered.

The gang man, dressed in an unwashed old sack suit, looked up as Peter Goodcastle approached and pierced a bit of apple with his sharp toadsticker, eating the mealy fruit slowly. He didn’t know much about Goodcastle except that he was one of the few merchants on Great Portland Street who coughed up his weekly ten quid — which he called a “business fee” — and didn’t need a good kick in the arse or slash with a razor to be reminded of it.

The shopkeeper stopped at the table and nodded at the fat man, who muttered, “What’s brought you ’ere, m’lord?”

The title was ironic, of course. Goodcastle didn’t have a drop of noble blood in his limp veins. But in a city where class was the main yardstick by which to measure a man, more so even than money, Goodcastle swam in a very different stream than Sloat. The gang man’s East-End upbringing had been grim and he’d never gotten a lick of boost, unlike Goodcastle, whose parents had come from a pleasant part of Surrey. Which was reason enough for Sloat to dislike him, despite the fact he coughed up his quid on time.

“I need to speak to you.”

“Do you now? Speak away, mate. Me ear’s yours.”

“Alone.”

Sloat harpooned another piece of apple and chewed it down, then muttered, “Leave us, boys.” He grunted toward the ruffians around the table, and, snickering or grumbling, they moved away with their pints.

He looked Goodcastle over carefully. The man was trying his hardest to be a carefree bloke but he clearly had a desperate air about him. Ah, this was tidy! Desperation and its cousin fear were far better motivators than greed for getting men to do what you wanted. Sloat pointed toward Goodcastle with a blunt finger that ended in a nail darkened from the soot that fell in this part of town like black snow. “You’ll come a cropper if you’re ’ere to say you don’t ’ave me crust this week.”

“No, no, no. I’ll have your money. It’s not that.” A whisper: “Hear me out, Sloat. I’m in trouble. I need to get out of the country quickly, without anybody knowing. I’ll pay you handsomely if you can arrange it.”

“Oh, me dear friend, whatever I do for you, you’ll pay ’andsomely,” he said, laughing. “Rest assured of that. What’d you do, mate, to need a ’oliday so quick like?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Ey, too shy to share the story with your friend Bill? You cuckold some poor bloke? You owe a sack of lolly to a gambler?...” Then Sloat squinted and laughed harshly. “But no, m’lord. You’re too bald and too skinny to get a married bird to shag. And your cobblers ain’t big enough for you to go wagering more’n a farthing. So, who’s after you, mate?”

“I can’t say,” he whispered.

Sloat sipped more of his bitters. “No matter. Get on with it. It’s me dinnertime and I ’ave a ’unger.”

Goodcastle looked around and his voice lowered even further. “I need to get into France. Nobody can know. And I need to leave tonight.”

“Tonight?” The ruffian shook his head. “Lord love me.”

“I heard you have connections all over the docks.”

“Bill’s got ’is connections. That ’e does.”

“Can you get me onto a cargo ship bound for Marseilles?”

“That’s a bleedin’ tall order, mate.”

“I don’t have any choice.”

“Well, now, I might be able to.” He thought for a moment. “It’ll cost you a thousand quid.”

“What?”

“It’s bloody noon, mate. Look at the clock. It ain’t easy, what you’re asking, you know. I’ll ’ave to run around all day like a chicken without its ’ead. Blimey. Not to mention the risk. The docks’re lousy with guards, customs agents, sergeants at arms — thick as fleas, they are... So there you ’ave it, gov’nor. A thousand.” He skewered another brown apple wedge and chewed it down.

“All right.” Goodcastle said, scowling. The men shook hands.