Bruce Alexander - An Experiment in Treason

“We’ll do it my way, hear? ” he shouted simultaneously.

Yet, just as quick, Mr. Perkins pulled his club from his belt and brought it down sharply upon the big man’s forearm. Such a blow would have broken the arm of most men, and though it did not break his, it caused him to release his grip on Bess’s hair. She jumped quickly a safe distance away from him.

“We’ll leave you here,” said Constable Perkins to him. “And for your information, sir, all that Bess told you is correct, right down to the little buttons that don’t button anything.” He turned to her then. “Come along, ” said he. “We’ll see you to your door.”

George Burkett stalked off toward the entrance to the King’s Pleasure. But then, of a sudden, he halted and whirled about.

“Let me give you something to think about. Mister One-armed Constable. If anything should happen to that arm you got left, you’d be in one hell of a bad situation, wouldn’t you?”

“Is that a threat?” Mr. Perkins called back.

“Naw, it’s just something for you to think about.” And so saying, he threw open the door to the King’s Pleasure and swaggered inside.

‘Twas I who was escorted home by the other two. We had Uttle to say, except to agree that we would do naught to help Burkett further. Inwardly, I knew well that I had done far too much in offering him the names of the five who, according to my theory, had seen the letters from Lord Hillsborough’s residence into the hands of Benjamin Franklin. It was now public record what Dr. Franklin had done with them.

When the constable and Bess had seen me to the door to Number 4 Bow Street, it was not much beyond eleven on the clock, yet it was late enough, so that only Mr. Baker, of all the Runners, was present. I called a halloo to him as he stuck his head out to see who had entered. Then did I start up the stairs, thinking how good it would be to have my old bed back — tomorrow night. Tonight, it seemed, I would be back on the pallet, sleeping before the fireplace.

When I opened the door to the kitchen at the top of the stairs, I found Clarissa sitting alone at the table, a loaf of bread and a bowl of butter before her, as well as a small pot of tea.

“Ah,” said she, “it’s you. I’d been hoping you’d come along.”

“Why? So you might tell me all about your lovely afternoon in Vauxhall Gardens?” I seemed to have decided to make things difficult for her.

“Ah, so you heard about that. Would you like some tea?”

“If there’s any left. I heard something about Vauxhall, sketchy but reliable — from Mr. Donnelly.”

I took down a cup and sat down at the table near her.

“There’s plenty of tea,” she said. “I just brewed a pot. And what about some bread and butter? I had no dinner, you know. I’m quite famished.”

“I don’t mind if I do have a piece, and yes, butter would be nice. Thanks.”

And so she tended to the tea and all, and before we knew it we were having a proper little meal there in the kitchen.

“I knew you’d missed dinner,” said I, chewing lustily on my quarter-loaf. “I came in a few minutes late and sat clown at the table and no one would say anything, and then, right after dinner, they went up to Sir John’s little room …”

“The one he calls his study?”

“That’s right. But I was not invited. They seemed determined to keep all from me.”

“Oh, they would, wouldn’t they!”

“What do you mean?” I was a bit alarmed at what she had just said.

“Well, it was all about you, of course.”

Now I was more than a bit alarmed. “You miut explain yourself. And please begin by assuring me that you re not laying the blame on me for staying to listen in on Sir John’s interrogation of Benjamin Franklin.”

She sighed a deep sigh. “No, I don’t claim that. The fault — if fault there be — was mine, and perhaps a bit Molly’s as well.”

As Clarissa told it, upon Tom Durham’s arrival weeks past she had been encouraged by Molly to use him in order to make me jealous. She played at it rather halfheartedly, commenting to me upon Tom’s handsome appearance, following him about “like a lovesick puppy,” just to see what it might be like to play such a role, and to see if indeed it might have some effect upon me. Yet so far as she could tell, her ruse worked not at all. I was the same — somewhat distant, absorbed in my studies of the law and by the work done with Sir John — in short, just being myself.

But if she had only known how greatly I was affected by the game she played, she would in no wise have thought me indifferent. Just when I had at last put proper value to her and learned to treat my feelings for her in earnest, it seemed that she was to be taken from me.

“I was JO disappointed when you refused to come along to Vauxhall this afternoon,” Clarissa said to me, “that I fear that I became spiteful and foolish. I flirted quite shamelessly with Tom on the way there. And once we had had the sweet cakes and goodies that Molly had prepared, and she and Mr. Donnelly had settled down to spark, ‘twas I and not Tom, who suggested we leave them and go for a walk. Again I flirted rather dangerously, implying, I fear, that I was offering more than I wished Tom, in all truth, to take. Yet I was not so brazen that I was prepared, when we were out of sight of the others, for Tom’s impetuous response. He threw me down in a pile of fallen leaves and jumped atop me. It was all I could do to get out a couple of healthy screams. They were quite effective, though. Not only did they bring Molly and Mr. Donnelly a-running, they quite paralyzed Tom, so that, let me assure you, I am still intact.”

With that she ended her tale and looked up at me hopefully, expecting a comment, forgiveness — or something. Instead, I offered her a lawyerly sort of question.

“Do you intend to tell this in full to Sir John and Lady K?”

“Do you think me mad? No, you heard the raw and unedited version. I’ve discussed all this with Molly so that our stories would match precisely, and she told me just what I dared say, and what I did not.”

“That’s good, ” said I. “Follow her advice. Tom can take care of himself.”

“That’s just what Molly told me,” said Clarissa, subduing a smile. “But really, you know, he’s quite safe from my vengeance. I shall tell them, ‘It’s all a misunderstanding.’”

“And am I safe from your vengeance?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you must have thought me terribly unresponsive. I believe you used the word ‘distant.’”

“Yes, yes, I did.”

“Is that how I seem?”

“Most of the time — or some of the time, anyway.”

“But I am not near as unresponsive as you think, ” I declared. “Nor did Molly’s plan for you go amiss.”

“Again I must ask what you mean.”

“She encouraged you to believe that if you paid attention to Tom, I would immediately become jealous. Well, indeed I did become jealous.”

“Jeremy!”

“Yes, of course. Do you think me a blockhead? I am no crude, unfeeling fellow, no matter that I may appear so to you.”

“But no!” said she. “I would never think such of one as fine and intelligent as you. There was never any but you.”

“I feared the worst, Clarissa. It seemed likely to me that Tom would leave London engaged to you.”

As that she pulled a most fearsome face.

“Truly I did,” said I, “and I was terribly sad at the thought. Until Tom Durham came along, I supposed we might be engaged. I wanted you for my own, and I wanted you most awfully, yet …”

“Yet what? What should stop us?”

“Well, for one thing, I have no money, nor do I have prospects of earning any. And, well, there are other practical considerations.”