The Devil's Company Read Online Free PDF Page A

more of what he knew of the dealer and of Bailor and what I was to say when I defeated him. I left confident that I could earn my five pounds without fail, but I also felt uneasy, for no man can have upon him twelve hundred pounds in negotiable bills and feel at ease. I wanted only to do what was asked of me and return with all deliberate speed.

    As I left the house I saw the servant waiting by the door to watch me leave. He had an air of suspicion in his eye and seemed to want to make certain I did not steal anything on my way out. I hardly knew why I should choose to do so when his master had entrusted me with so much ready money.

    Before leaving, I turned to him. “Mr. Cobb called you Edward, but Mr. Hammond called you Edmond. Which is it?”

    “Edgar,” he told me, closing the door upon my face.

    GIVEN EVERYTHING I KNEW of the plot Cobb had set forth, I came to one likely conclusion: The dealer had betrayed the plan to Mr. Bailor. He was, as I understood it, the only person besides Cobb, Hammond, and myself included in the secret; also, as he controlled the cards, no one else could have orchestrated things to so bad a result. He might well have offered some sort of amiable distribution of funds with Bailor. I thought to go find the scoundrel and pummel a confession from him before returning to Cobb’s town house, but my good sense held me back. It was certainly true that the dealer might have changed the outcome to favor Bailor, but I could not prove it, and I needed more information in order to proceed. That the dealer’s complicity was the most likely explanation did not make it the only explanation. I had seen animosity toward Mr. Cobb from both his servant and his nephew, and it was at least possible that one of them also had a hand in things.

    To salvage my honor, I concluded I had no choice but to return to Mr. Cobb, tell him all that had happened, and volunteer not only to recover his funds but also to discover how his plan had gone wrong. There was much I did not know about the man, and I could not vouch for his prudence. It might be, I thought, that he was too foolish to keep quiet about the scheme beforehand. It is possible Bailor might have found out from a friend or some such thing, and it seemed unwise to pursue any course without further information.

    I knocked on the door and the servant opened it at once, greeting me with his bill-like lips pressed into a sneer. “Weaver the Jew,” he said.

    “Edgar the child-strangling bootlick whom no one regards sufficiently to recall his name,” I answered, for I was angry and tired and had no wish to play games with the man.

    He showed me once more into the sitting room, where this time I did have to wait—perhaps three quarters of an hour—and every tick of the standing clock struck me like a blow. I felt very much like a man waiting for the surgeon to remove his kidney stones: I dreaded the operation but understood its inevitability and wanted it started that it might be over the sooner. At last Edgar returned and invited me into the parlor. Mr. Cobb, dressed in a sedate brown suit, stood in anticipation, smiling with the eagerness of a child who anticipates a sweetmeat. Sitting in an armchair across the room, lumpy nose lost in a newspaper, lurked Mr. Hammond. He raised his eyes toward me but then returned to his reading without comment.

    “I trust you have news, sir,” Cobb said. His hands clenched and unclenched.

    “I do,” I told him, when he sat, “but it is not good news.”

    “Not good news.” The smile flickered. “You do have the money to return?”

    Now my presence captured Hammond’s interest. He set down his newspaper and glared at me, his eyes, like the reluctant head of a turtle, just visible from under his bob wig.

    “I am afraid I do not,” I told him. “Something went quite wrong, sir, and though I do not love to offer excuses for myself, the matter was beyond my ability to alter. It is possible you may have been