Adam watched as they trudged away from the mission house. Jinkinson was not among them. Their pastor was easy to identify. He stood just outside the door of his chapel, looking more pleased than pained to see his flock depart. The Reverend Elisha Dwight was an imposing young man. In contrast to the stooped and hunched figures leaving his Tabernacle, he was tall and solidly built. His pink cheeks and flourishing beard radiated the kind of health and well-being they would never possess. His black and perfectly fitting suit shone like the finest handiwork of a West End tailor.
Adam looked down at his own shabby and ill-fitting attire and wondered what the reverend would make of him. However, it was too late to worry that he was inappropriately dressed for a social call. He pushed his way though the departing congregation and approached the Tabernacle’s minister.
‘I believe you might be able to help me, sir,’ he said.
‘The Lord may help you, my good man, and I am but the poor instrument He uses for His soul-saving work.’
In their own way, Dwight’s words were encouraging but his expression was one of irritation. He was not happy, his face said, to be accosted like this when his pastoral duties had temporarily come to an end. He looked like a man with his mind more on his dinner than on saving souls.
‘I must apologise for the guise in which I present myself,’ Adam said. ‘This is not usually how I dress each Sunday.’
‘The Lord in His infinite wisdom looks beneath the outward show and sees the quivering spirit lurking in the very depths of a man’s being.’
‘I’m sure He does, but it is not my quivering spirit that troubles me most at the moment.’
‘How else, then, may I help you?’ The reverend’s patience was clearly fraying.
‘My name is Carver. I am looking for someone. For a Mr Jinkinson of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’
The reverend started very slightly. He retained the forced smile which had decorated his face since Adam first saw him but it obviously took an effort to do so. He stared at Adam for a moment, pondering his options, and then gestured behind him.
‘Let us enter the dwelling place of the All-Conquering Saviour, Mr Carver, and we will speak further.’
Two women, dressed all in greys and browns, were still loitering outside the door of the chapel. Despite the plain clothing they had chosen for church attendance, they were very obviously prostitutes. The reverend waved them away. The Tabernacle, it seemed, was now closed for business. The women moved off with obvious reluctance.
‘Poor, painted butterflies they are for the rest of the week.’ The reverend had recovered his poise and his taste for fine language. He sighed unctuously as he ushered Adam into his chapel. ‘Lost and polluted souls. Forced to tread the unforgiving stones that pave the streets of this modern Babylon. Condemned to a ceaseless round of dissipation that must end in everlasting damnation.’ He spoke as if he personally would be willing to step in to save such straying sheep but a more unforgiving judge above might make his intervention useless. Eternal torment could well be their regrettable but unavoidable fate. ‘Only on the Lord’s day and in these humble surrounds do they cast off the gaudy trappings of sin.’
Adam took the opportunity to examine the humble surrounds of the reverend’s domain. There was little to see. The walls of the Tabernacle were whitewashed and so too was the ceiling. Several rows of cheap wooden chairs stood in the centre. At the far end of the room was a long table. He felt the need to make some comment on the bare chapel but could think of nothing to say.
‘Your altar, I presume,’ he said at last, nodding in the direction of the table. It was the wrong remark to make.
‘Indeed not, sir.’ Dwight sounded deeply insulted. ‘An altar is an example of Romish mumbo-jumbo. I will not have one here in my holy Tabernacle.’ He cast his eyes heavenwards, perhaps, Adam thought, in search of any further popish practices hiding in the upper part of his chapel. ‘That is our table of communion.’
Adam was unsure of the distinction between an altar and a table of communion but he chose to say no more on the matter. Instead, he launched himself immediately on the subject of his visit. ‘I believe you know Mr Jinkinson, Reverend.’
Dwight allowed his eyes to roam around the confines of the building, as though the answer to Adam’s question might be lurking in a corner of the room for him to discover. He seemed to be debating with himself whether or not to make any reply. The appearance of a stranger dressed in tattered fustian and yet speaking in the accents of the educated classes clearly puzzled him. He was curious to learn what Adam wanted but reluctant to commit himself too far by admitting too great an acquaintance with Jinkinson.
‘I think I may have run across the gentleman in question from time to time,’ he said cautiously, after a lengthy pause.
‘He is one of your…’ Adam wondered what the correct word might be. ‘One of your flock.’
‘Most certainly he is not, sir.’ The reverend was swift to deny any pastoral connection with the missing man. ‘Jinkinson is nothing but a blackguard and a rogue.’
‘So you do know him.’
Dwight realised that he had now said too much to continue quibbling over the extent of his familiarity with the missing man. He bowed his head to indicate that, although it pained him to acknowledge it, he did indeed know Jinkinson.
‘Do you have any notion, Reverend Dwight, where Mr Jinkinson might be? His friends have not seen him for several days.’
Dwight made no reply. Instead, he waved his arm towards a long, wooden instrument with a glass front, which was hanging on the right-hand wall of his chapel.
‘Over there is what I call my spiritual barometer, Mr Carver. Come, let me show you how it works.’
Adam could see some kind of dial covered with writing on its front. He followed his host as the clergyman pushed past one of the rows of chairs and made his way towards the wall.
‘When the pointer is directed to the right,’ the reverend gentleman began to explain, ‘it is moving towards glory of the spirit and contempt for carnal lusts. When it is in the middle, it indicates a soul in a state of spiritual indifference. When it travels towards the left…’ Here Dwight heaved another of his unctuous sighs. ‘It moves through all the stages of damnation.’
As the two men approached the spiritual barometer more closely, Adam could see some of the gradations on the left. Minus thirty — ‘Visits to the theatre and the pleasure gardens’; minus forty — ‘Parties of pleasure and drunkenness on the Lord’s Day’. Minus seventy, which seemed to be the lowest point to which a lost soul could sink, was simply marked ‘Perdition’.
Dwight paused for a moment. Adam wondered if perhaps he was about to tap the spiritual barometer as he might a more conventional instrument before taking its reading. But the minister merely peered briefly at the dial before carrying on.
‘By my reckoning, Jinkinson has reached minus fifty-five, Mr Carver, and is heading ever downwards. Ever downwards. He is an ancient reprobate. When a soul is so lost, it matters not where its physical vessel might be.’
‘So I would be right in thinking that you have no notion of his present whereabouts?’
‘For all I know, he may have departed this transitory scene. If he left with his sins still fresh upon him, I tremble for his immortal soul.’
Dwight did not look as if he was trembling. If anything, Adam thought, he seemed rather stimulated by the thought of Jinkinson’s possible damnation.