Die I Will Not Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bear tavern, did not immediately reply. Instead, he exchanged a derisive look with fellow Runner Dugger Farley, who stood nearby, casually holding the arm of their prisoner while he conversed with an acquaintance and quaffed ale with his other beefy hand. Farley loomed over the culprit, a man about forty years old, hunched over, defeated, with mud on his trousers and a deep rent in his shabby coat. Desperate eyes gleamed from his haggard face.
    â€œAs you see, I am occupied.” Chase did not care for the journalist Gander, who made frequent sport of the Bow Street men in the press. In his last effort Gander had developed his witticisms around the theme of “bulldog” Runners drawing “badger” malefactors into the open and seizing them in an obstinate grip. The point being that there was nothing to choose between them in terms of “animal propensity”: the one fiercely grasping his portion of the forty-pound reward for a capital conviction, the other clutching his illegal gains.
    Chase turned his eyes toward the door. To Farley, he said, “The prosecutor should be here soon. Put the prig at a table and let’s see if he can identify him.”
    â€œWhy bother? We got what we need.” Farley held up the packet of fine muslin handkerchiefs they had pulled from the thief’s trousers after dragging him into a corner of the tavern to search him to the accompaniment of drunken shouts of encouragement from the tavern’s customers.
    â€œJust do it.”
    Obligingly, Farley took the prisoner to a table and sat him down, ignoring the protests of two men whose raucous drinking song had been interrupted.
    Gander still hovered at Chase’s side. “I will await the completion of your business.” After pausing to exchange a few words with Farley, the journalist moved away to stand in front of the taproom fire. He ordered a pint from a barmaid.
    Ignoring him, Chase nursed his own drink and tried to feel more interest in the proceedings. Of late he’d been troubled by a lingering sense of boredom and discontent. He stood guard for the Regent on state occasions, attended the occasional ball to lend protection to the nobles, raided disorderly houses, or chased down culprits from the never-exhausted fund of petty thieves who peopled the streets. He sometimes went out of town employed on private inquiries, which helped to break the monotony. But he knew it was not really dissatisfaction with his job bothering him. Rather, it was the growing realization his life was empty. Upon this thought, he touched his coat pocket where reposed a letter from Abigail, an American woman who had nursed him after the battle of Aboukir in ’98 and borne him a son named Jonathan. She had not wanted to marry him; instead, she opted to return to Boston to raise their child in more affluence than Chase could offer.
    Now she had sent word that Jonathan had joined the crew of a privateer as cabin boy to sail the seas in search of fat British birds to pluck—merchant ships carrying valuable cargos. For Chase, a former first lieutenant in His Majesty’s navy who had become a cabin boy at the same age, this was unsettling news. Pride in his son was uppermost. Yet he worried for Jonathan’s safety and wrestled with the knowledge that his own flesh and blood served the enemy. Since the Americans had almost no navy of their own, they relied on privateers to conduct the war, with unanticipated success. The many stings inflicted by these rampaging pirates could not sit well with an Englishman. So on this gloomy March night Chase was in no mood for sly, slinking Fred Gander.
    The door opened, and the shopboy, radiating triumph, preceded his master into the taproom. He had served his employer well, first in trailing the thief to his hole in a ramshackle building, then in fetching the Runners to arrest him. He brought the linen-draper over to Chase’s table.
    â€œHere’s Mr. Scoldwell,