Jack, Knave and Fool Read Online Free PDF Page B

exactly what you saw from the time Lord Laningham appeared on the stage.”
    That I did in no more than a minute’s time. Sir John listened, concentrating carefully on what I had to say. He nodded when I finished.
    “And the last you saw of that bottle of wine, it was rolling around on the floor up there?”
    “That’s true, sir,” said I, “spilling its contents all round.”
    “Then take me up to the stage, for we must restore order somehow, clear the area, and find that bottle.”
    “Yes, Sir John. Grab hold my shoulder.”
    The crowd up on the stage seemed to have increased threefold by the time Sir John and I arrived. He tried shouting them down. Yet his considerable voice was lost in the tumult. Then had I an idea of what might be done. We stood in the midst of the orchestra, or where the orchestra had been minutes before. If I might but …
    “Here, Sir John,” said I, “let me help you up on a chair. If I can reduce them to something like silence, you may deliver one of your magnificent threats.”
    “Well and good,” said he. “Do what you can.”
    Taking my hand, he made it up to the seat of the chair. I then helped point him in the right direction and urged him not to move, lest he fall. Then did I go right swift to the orchestra’s loudest instrument, which stood untended.
    I picked up the mallets — covered in sheepskin they were —and I began beating upon the kettledrums as Tom O Bedlam might, making them boom forth like cannon, then rolling them out long and loud like thunder, then booming and banging again and again.
    When I looked up and saw all turned toward me, openmouthed in surprise, I knew that I must stop. Reluctantly, I did so. Then rang forth the stentorian voice of the great man himself.
    “I am Sir John Fielding, Magistrate of the Bow Street Court. I order you all to clear the stage at once. With the exception of Lord Laningham, members of his immediate family, and Gabriel Donnelly, the doctor in attendance, all must leave immediately. The Bow Street Runners have been sent for to enforce this order. All who remain in defiance of it may expect to spend the next month in Newgate Gaol.”
    What a rush there was! Musicians and chorus fled out the door at the rear of the stage. Those of the audience who had come up out of curiosity or concern left, as they had come, by the steps at either side. In less than three minutes, only Lord Laningham, Mr. Donnelly, and a grandly dressed woman whom I took to be Lady Laningham, remained there with us.
    But look as I might —and I spent the next ten minutes poking in every corner — no bottle of any sort was there to be found.

TWO
In Which I Play
the Constable
and Am Embarrassed

    The men of our table at the Crown and Anchor assembled once again in Sir John’s chambers back of the courtroom at Number 4 Bow Street. It had been over an hour since Lord Laningham had fallen so sudden ill upon the stage and died so ingloriously before hundreds of witnesses. While some had filed out immediately, aware that the musical entertainment was not likely to resume, which of course it did not, most remained, some no doubt out of concern for the aged noble, but the greater number simply to gawk at a man in the throes of death. At last death had come and taken him. Lady Laningham, who had knelt beside him through all, then gave the word and two servers of the Crown and Anchor hauled off the body between them to an embalmer nearby on Fleet Street.
    That done, Sir John had allowed back the musicians and members of the chorus to retrieve their instruments and music from the stage; then did he send me off to find the innkeeper and bring him hither. It did not surprise me that he who had acted as the master of the ceremonies proved to be the one I sought. He went most willingly to Sir John; I merely trailed after. Yet I was then sent off to find Annie and bring her to the table, so that I heard nothing of the question and answer that passed between them. Instead I