Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

"Mr Iversen," I said. "Why have you brought me here?"

"You will be more comfortable in a moment." He leaned forward in his wheeled chair and studied my face. "Wriggle your limbs as far as you are able. Now lean back a little, now forward. Does that not feel better? Now, more water?"

I drank greedily this time. Mr Iversen refilled the mug from a jug on the table beside his chair. The cripple was attired as he had been before, in a black, flowing robe embroidered with necromantic symbols in faded yellow thread. His crutches were propped against the bottom of the coffin. On the table was a pocket pistol.

My eyes travelled on, and I discovered we were not alone. Seated by the window with his back to us was another figure in a dusty suit of brown clothes and an old-fashioned three-cornered hat.

"You're a fool," my host observed in a friendly tone. "You shouldn't have come back. You should have gone far, far away. Seven Dials is not a safe place for the inquisitive. I tried to give you the hint on your last visit. Still, one cannot expect old heads on young shoulders, I suppose."

"A hint?" Anger spurted through me. "You call those bullies of yours a hint? What do you want of me, sir?"

"The truth. Why did you come back here yesterday?"

All my words might win me was a kinder way of dying. I was tired of the lies, so I told him the truth. "I came back because of that bird of yours." I saw understanding leap into his eyes. "The one that says ayez peur."

"That damned fowl." Iversen's fingertips tapped the butt of the pistol. "I put up with it for the sake of the customers, but I could stand it no more. I hoped I had seen and heard the last of it."

"I've drawn up a memorandum," I said. "It covers all the circumstances of this business, including my visits to Queen-street, since I first met Mr Henry Frant."

"Ah yes. And you've had it witnessed by a brace of attorneys and sent a copy to the Lord Chancellor. Come, Mr Shield, don't play the fool. You would have gone to the magistrates long before this if you had intended something like that."

He was in the right of it. I had indeed begun to write such a memorandum on my last evening at Monkshill-park. But it lay unfinished in my room at Gaunt-court.

"No," Iversen went on. "I do not believe it for a moment. Not that it matters. We shall soon have the truth out of you."

Neither of us spoke for a moment. The room was heavy with a strange, sweet odour. I looked at the two figures before me, Iversen seated beside the coffin, and the old man in an elbow chair by the barred window. I heard as if at a great distance the sound of the world going about its business. There were noises in the house, too, feet on the stairs, a tapping from below and a woman singing a lullaby. There was life around me, and it was full of wonders, a sweet thing that I could not bear to part with.

"Sir," I said to the man in brown. "I appeal to you. I beg you, help me."

The old man did not reply. He gave no sign he had heard me.

"His mind is on other things," Iversen said.

I turned back to him. "If you wish me to answer your questions with any coherence, sir, you would find me in a better condition to do so if I had something to eat. And I would be obliged if I might use the necessary house."

Iversen laughed, exposing a set of false teeth made of bone or perhaps ivory, and clearly expensive; they reminded me of the tooth-puller and curious possibilities stirred once more in my mind. "You shall have your creature comforts, Mr Shield." He levered himself to the edge of his chair, thrust himself upwards by exerting pressure on the arms and in one, practised movement seized a crutch and placed it under his right shoulder. For a moment he stood there, swaying slightly, gripping the side of the coffin with his free hand, with an expression of triumph on his face. He was a big man and he loomed over me like a mountain. "But first I must relieve you of the contents of your pockets."

His big hands worked deftly and rapidly through my clothes. He removed my pocketbook, my purse, my penknife and the red-spotted handkerchief which the boys had given me on the eve of my departure from Monkshill. He gave each item a brief examination and then dropped it in the pocket of his robe. At last he was satisfied.

"I shall desire them to bring you a pot directly. And something to eat."

"They will not expect me to stay here – in this coffin?"

"I can see that would be inconvenient. There is no reason why you should not be lifted out. They will keep a watch on you, after all."

"It will not be easy for me, or for them, if they do not untie my hands," I pointed out.

"I do not think untying you will be necessary, Mr Shield. A little inconvenience to you or even to them is neither here nor there." Mr Iversen picked up the pistol from the table and dragged himself towards the door. He glanced back at me. "Until we meet again," he said with something of a flourish, a gesture that raised the ghost of a memory deep within my mind.

He dragged himself on to the landing, leaving me alone with the old man in the fading light of an April afternoon. I listened to his hirpling progress along the landing, and his clumping descent of the stairs.

"Sir," I hissed at the old man. "You cannot sit there and permit this to happen. He intends to kill me. Will you be an accessory to murder?"

There was no answer. He did not stir a muscle.

"Are you Mr Iversen's father, sir? You would not wish your son to stain his soul with the blood of a fellow human being?"

Apart from my own ragged breathing, I heard nothing. The room was suddenly brighter, for the sun had come out. Motes danced in the air before the window. The arms and rails of the chair were grey with dust. A suspicion grew in my mind and became certainty. The man in brown could help no one.

I waited for relief for well over a quarter of an hour, to judge by the distant chimes of a church clock, while my need for the chamberpot grew ever more pressing.

At length the door opened and the two men dressed in rusty black entered. They had kidnapped me today; and I believed that they had pursued me yesterday evening, though I had not seen their faces clearly so I could not be completely sure. I wondered whether they had also attacked me on my visit to Queen-street in December. The first man bore the chamber-pot, swinging it nonchalantly as he walked. The other carried a wooden platter on which was the end of a loaf, a wedge of cheese and a mug of small beer. He put the platter on the windowsill, close to the elbow of the man in the brown suit. Both men were clearly used to his silent presence, for they did not give him a second glance.

"Is that a waxwork?" I asked in a voice that trembled.

"You won't see one of them at old Ma Salmon's." The first man put the pot on the table. "That's Mr Iversen, Senior, sir, at your service."

They heaved me from the coffin, which was resting on a pair of trestles. They derived a simple and ribald pleasure from my fumbling attempt to use the pot. Fortunately, in a moment they were distracted by something they could see from the window.

"You wouldn't think she had such white skin," said one of them.

"It only looks like that because of the cuts," said the other, jingling a bunch of keys in his pocket. "If you was nearer, you'd see the blemishes, you take my word for it."

They continued discussing the subject in a detached and knowledgeable manner while I buttoned my flap as best I could with two hands tied. Their remarks were delivered with such an air of assurance that they might have been a pair of critics contemplating a portrait they did not much care for in the Exhibition Room at Somerset House. Still hobbled at the knees, I shuffled a little closer and found that, craning over their shoulders, I could look down into the yard.