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as she said the famous name, but his features did not soften. “It is Mr Oates ,” she said. “Mr Tobias Oates. You’d pick a pocket for Tobias Oates, I know you would.”
    “I’m afraid,” he said, stiffly, “I don’t know no Tobias Oates.”
    “Oh Lor.” She did not mean to laugh. “Where have you been?”
    “I was with Lord Logan,” said Jack Maggs, a little gruffly, “in Glasgow.”
    “You have surely heard mention of Captain Crumley?”
    “Captain Crumley, perhaps I did.”
    “Or poor Mrs Morefallen.”
    “I’ve heard her mentioned.”
    “It is all Mrs Halfstairs lives for—to see what Captain Crumley does about his son in prison. And now it is he who is to be our guest. This is a great day for Mr Buckle.”
    “Mr Buckle—he is a friend of Captain Crumley?”
    Mercy began to laugh, but something in the other’s eyes made her stop herself.
    “Mr Buckle is your new master,” she said very seriously. “He has a famous author to come to dine with him tonight. It is because of this he has been in bed these last three days.”
    “Your master is ill?”
    “He could not bear to become ill at such a time.”
    “He is sleeping?”
    “He would like to sleep, but it is everything he can do to keep his poor brain from boiling over. No, he stays abed so as he don’t fall sick. He would not miss Tobias Oates for the world.”
    “So do tell me, Miss . . .”
    “My name is Mercy Larkin.”
    “Did your master also make a friend of Henry Phipps?”
    “The gentleman next door? Oh, Sir, you must forget him .” Her almond eyes were almost grey and very still. “Now you’re going to stay with us.”
    He held her gaze. Even when there was a great crashing in the kitchen, he did not look away.
    “That’s how she calls for me,” she said. She thought his eyes angry. “She drops things.”
    “Then you should go to her,” he said.
    Mercy did not move.
    “You should be more careful, girlie,” he said.
    “It’s for you to be careful,” said Mercy. “If I was you I would be very careful indeed.”
    “What do you mean by that?”
    She did not exactly know, but she felt passionate and irritated. “They will be likely to have you dusting, and it was the dusting that so upset he who came before you.”
    “He gave his notice?”
    “Aye, with a gentleman’s duelling pistol. He blew his brains out.”
    “On account of dusting?”
    She was not sure she liked his features any more. “He could not tolerate it,” she said.
    He raised an eyebrow.
    “Beg your pardon?” she inquired crossly.
    “My pardon?”
    “Beg pardon, Sir,” she said, “but I thought you was making a comment.”
    “No,” he said, “nothing.”
    “Oh yes,” she insisted, “something.”
    She saw him hesitate.
    “Did you ever see Mr Phipps?” he asked at last. “How was he? What sort of man was he?”
    Mercy turned to face him. She was in a funny kind of passion she could not explain and Jack Maggs, seeing her face, somehow understood that she had become his opponent. He stretched to grab her wrist, but he was too slow. She giggled, turned, flipped the brass poker out of Mr Spinks’s lap so that it spun and clattered onto the tiled floor.
    Mr Spinks sprang to his feet and found, before him, a stranger holding a long white envelope.

6
    AT FIVE O’CLOCK ON Saturday Jack Maggs had been a man of substance, speeding towards London on the Dover Rocket. Now, at five o’clock on Sunday, he entered a stuffy attic which was, it seemed, to be his home awhile. It was not three paces from the squeaking door to the soot-stained dormer window, and he was across them in a trice, heaving up the stiff sash and thrusting his big head inquiringly out above Great Queen Street. Here he found no more interesting view than the melancholy apartments across the way and, in the immediate foreground, the slate tiles of the house next door to Mr Buckle’s. The latter, however, was obviously of particular interest to him, and had he been a master