David Liss - A Spectacle Of Corruption

“And why should she do so?”

“Because she is fond of me,” I said.

“She is fond of an impostor, though I have no idea who you be in truth. A Jacobite spy? The one they call Johnson?”

I laughed. “Nothing so remarkable, I assure you.”

“Then say who you are and speak what you want. I grow tired of this masquerade.”

I then leaned forward slightly, removed my hat, and plucked off my wig, allowing my natural hair to fall back behind me. “You used your influence to see me wrongly convicted. I will now ask that you use your influence to have that conviction overturned.”

It was Greenbill who recognized me. “I thought I knowed you from somewhere,” he said. “It’s Weaver.”

Dogmill’s jaw dropped. “Weaver,” he repeated. “Under our nose all this time.” He now looked at Greenbill and back at me. And he smiled. “Well, you’ve got yourself a bit of a problem, Weaver. You see, if it’s evidence exonerating you that you sought, you are a man short, for you cannot stand witness in charges leveled against you. Your friend’s testimony in this matter won’t serve you much good if he cannot corroborate it. Your voice will count for nothing, as you are implicated in these matters, so you might as well have remained hidden and far from me. I think I shall resolve this evening by bringing you to a magistrate, collecting a nice bounty, and forgetting about you. My sister might have been beguiled by you, but her sympathy won’t save you from the hangman.”

It was then that the door opened, and, as per our arrangement, Abraham Mendes walked in. He had no weapons drawn, but there were pistols visible in his pockets. He meant to make an impressive entrance, and with his bulky form and ugly scowl he did just that.

“No,” said Mendes, “but my oath will. I heard all that was said, and I’m afraid you’ve got some difficulties now, Dogmill, for you’ve two men who will substantiate Weaver’s claims, and all the Whiggish courts in the world can’t deny justice now.”

I could not restrain a simper. “Your position is not so strong as you once thought.”

“Mendes.” Dogmill spat. “This is some ruse by Jonathan Wild, then?”

“Mr. Wild ain’t complaining, but Weaver asked me to stop by, and I did it as a favor to him mostly.”

“You see, the matter is quite turned now,” I said. “I think you should look rather shabby before the courts when you have Mr. Wild, the thieftaker general, sending his lieutenant to testify against you.”

“It is a sad thing,” Mendes observed, “much like the tragedies of the stage. Once all of this is revealed, Mr. Melbury will have the advantage.”

Greenbill’s lips trembled, for he understood at once that he was to stand sacrifice for his master’s whims. “You bleeding curs,” he said. “I’ll negotiate your throats in my hands.”

“I for one,” I announced, “am getting quite tired of your misuse of words.”

He grinned. “Well, I do it on purpose, don’t I? It puts the likes of you quite off the mark in estimating me.”

“I don’t feel as though I’ve missed the mark,” Mendes said. “As you’ll find out when you come to your uncomfortable end at the bottom of a rope.”

“The only uncomfortable end is your arse, you buggering Jews,” he said, and raised his pistol at Mendes, fully prepared to eliminate my corroborating witnesses. Hertcomb and Dogmill shouted out, and with good reason- it is never wise to fire a pistol at such close quarters unless one be utterly indifferent to whom it might strike- and Elias opened his mouth in a pantomime of horror. Greenbill for all I knew was full of such indifference, but the rest of us were not, and we all dropped to the floor- all of us but Mendes, who appeared utterly indifferent to the prospect of a ball in his chest. The lead, however, hastily fired by an unsteady hand, missed its target entirely, lodging itself instead in the wall, where it propelled outward a nimbus of dust and smoke and chips of wood.

We all of us breathed our relief, but the duel was but half over. Seeing that Greenbill had spent his shot, Mendes retrieved a pistol from his pocket and returned fire, far more successfully than his opponent. Greenbill attempted to dodge the ball, but Mendes had either a better hand or better luck, and his adversary went down upon the floor. Within seconds a pool had begun to form around his neck.

He pressed his hand to the wound. “Help me,” he gasped. “Damn you all, get me a surgeon.”

We remained motionless for a moment, for there was not a superfluity of sympathy for Greenbill in that room. Mendes could hardly have cared if a man who had just tried to shoot him should be gathered to his fathers, Dogmill must surely have realized that the blackguard was of more use to him dead than alive, and I, for my part, felt that this man had received no more than he deserved.

“Is no one going to fetch a surgeon?” Hertcomb asked at last.

“What’s the use?” Dogmill said. “He’ll be dead before one gets here.”

Elias had only now recovered his senses. “I’m a surgeon,” he recalled, and began to rush toward the fallen man.

“No.” Dogmill stood between Elias and Greenbill. “You’ve done enough harm for one night. Stand back.”

“He’s a surgeon,” Mendes said, with apparent boredom. “He’s not lying. Let him through.”

“I presume he’s not lying,” Dogmill said, “but he will have to pass me to administer to that man.”

Elias turned to me, but I was disinclined to interfere. Here, after all, was more evidence against Dogmill if we needed it, and as to the porter- well, I could not but think that he deserved no better than he got.

Greenbill, groaning in pain as he was, seemed to understand that Dogmill stood between him and his only chance at life. He attempted to say something but could not, and his breath began to come out rasping and wet. We stood in silence for three or four minutes, listening to Greenbill’s gurgling breath, and then there was silence.

It is an odd way to pass the time, waiting for a man to die. I thought to lend him comfort. I thought, in his final moments, to torment him and tell him I knew his wife to be unfaithful. But I did nothing, and when he died I felt, all at once, that perhaps he had not been so bad as I thought. Perhaps I was the bad one, for doing nothing to save this life, wretched though it was.

“I’m glad that’s done with,” said Dogmill, who clearly had no such thoughts of remorse.

“It’s a deuced thing, all this shooting and dying,” Hertcomb said. “Dogmill, you told me there would be no mayhem. Surely this must qualify as mayhem.”

“Only just,” Dogmill said impatiently. He looked around the room for a moment. “Let us be frank,” he said to me. “You have threatened me, I have threatened you, and a very low sort of fellow is now dead at my feet. I propose we retire to another room, one with fewer dead men in it, open a bottle of wine, and discuss precisely how to resolve this difficulty.”

What else was there to say? “I agree.”

As these matters touched him very nearly, I sent a note to Littleton- to whom I had related some small portion of my intentions for the evening, and who had been on notice to come if called. Though he was certainly an important player, Dogmill would not countenance that Littleton join us in our negotiations. He would not sit on equal terms with a porter, he said. It was disquieting enough that he would have to sit on equal terms with a thieftaker and convicted murderer. For my part, I thought it very hard that my status as a convicted murderer should be thrown in my teeth by the man responsible for the killing for which I had been convicted, but I saw that his position was weakening and there was little to be gained by pressing the point. In the end, Dogmill agreed that the porter might remain in the room if he stood. Littleton took no offense, gratified as he was to witness Dogmill’s being pressed to the ropes, and would have agreed to stay on had he been asked to hang upside down.