Adam felt that this was a pardonable exaggeration of the facts. After all, it might well be that there were others looking for the enquiry agent and, if there were, the likelihood was that it would be with unfriendly intent. But his words had no effect on Ada. After her brief furry of animation at the thought of harm coming to Jinkinson, she had returned to her original state of passivity.
‘Don’t know where ’e is, sir,’ she repeated. ‘I ain’t seen ’im for weeks.’
Adam ran his hand through his hair and tried another tack. Perhaps the girl might know of the old dandy’s favourite places in town.
‘Did you ever spend time with Mr Jinkinson? Did he take you on any excursions? On the river?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Or to one of the dance halls? To Highbury Barn, perhaps?’
‘I ain’t never been to Highbury Barn, sir.’
‘To a public house, perhaps?’
But Ada had decided that she would say no more. She stared down at her hands in her lap and refused to look at either of the men. The noise in the rest of the room was even louder than when they had entered. Raucous singing now rose from the table where the three soldiers were carousing. Adam wondered whether there was anything he might say that would prompt the woman into speaking.
‘Did Mr Jinkinson ever speak to you of another gentleman, a gentleman named Garland?’
Ada continued to gaze at her red and chapped hands. She said nothing but an unmistakeable look of fear passed across her face. She shook her head again, more violently than before. Adam had a sudden moment of inspiration. He remembered his conversation about Garland with Mr Moorhouse. He recalled the rumour about the MP that he was a ‘devil with his maidservants’.
‘Did you work once for a gentleman named Garland, Ada?’
Adam could see that tears were now falling silently down the girl’s cheeks, but she still said nothing. She continued to shake her head. It was obvious enough what the answer to his question was. He could not bring himself to press the girl further. He stood up and motioned to Quint that they should leave. One last question now occurred to him and he turned again to the girl.
‘Did Mr Jinkinson ever speak Greek to you, Ada?’
The young prostitute did now look up. She was bewildered. Her eyes flickered back and forth between Adam and his servant.
‘For gawdsake, guv,’ Quint said. ‘The girl ain’t going to know Greek from the bleating of sheep on the way to Smithfield.’
‘Did Mr Jinkinson ever use odd words in your hearing?’ Adam persisted. ‘Words that you couldn’t understand?’
‘’E was always using funny words.’
‘Words that were not English?’
Ada shrugged helplessly.
‘Were they French, perhaps?’
‘’E was parleyvooing with some Frog waiter down Dean Street once,’ Quint remarked conversationally. ‘When I was after him.’
‘Never mind that now, Quint. I wish to know what Ada heard him say, not you.’
But the girl was growing even more anxious under the inquisition. She looked desperately at the manservant.
‘She don’t know what you’re talking about, guv.’
‘I think she does, Quint.’
The girl was now moving her hands restlessly in her lap. Quint, glancing over his shoulder from time to time, had seen a new development that demanded their attention.
‘Harry Fadge has come downstairs, guv. I reckon maybe we ain’t welcome no more.’
The one-eyed giant who guarded entry to the brothel had indeed descended to the cellar room and was moving purposefully towards them. He looked displeased and his displeasure, as Quint knew and Adam guessed, was not something to be ignored.
‘You have nothing more to tell us, Ada?’
‘Let’s go, guv. Let’s go while we’ve still got the legs to do the going with.’
Unceremoniously thrusting aside those unlucky enough to find themselves in his path, Fadge was now only a few tables away from them. One of the soldiers, pushed in the chest, attempted to remonstrate with him. Fadge stopped briefly and, without saying a word, threw a punch which immediately felled the infantryman. The soldier tumbled to the floor amidst screams from the women at his table. Fadge continued on his way. He appeared to be snarling and shaking his head, his resemblance to a bear in killing range of its prey even more marked than before.
‘Ada?’ Adam prompted.
‘Yew Ferrion,’ the girl said. ‘’E was always talkin’ about some bloke called Yew Ferrion. How he was to be all right once he found out about Yew Ferrion. That’s foreign, ain’t it?’
‘Thank you, Ada. You have been most helpful.’
With as much dignity as he could muster in the circumstances, Adam retreated by a roundabout route towards the door, holding out his hands towards Fadge in what he hoped was a placatory manner. Quint, with the unerring instinct for self-preservation that had been the cornerstone of his career thus far, had already disappeared. Fadge continued to bare his teeth and growl unmistakeable threats. Deciding that dignity was a luxury he could no longer afford, Adam turned and ran for the door, stopping only to overturn one of the tables in Fadge’s path. Followed by the protests of half a dozen whores outraged by the loss of their drinks, he reached the stairs and raced up them. He charged through the egg-yolk yellow room and the mauve tunnel and into the street. He had no idea of the direction in which he should run. For several minutes, he dodged first left and then right through the backstreets until he ended in a cobbled courtyard. He appeared to have left the pursuing Fadge far behind him. From here, a dozen or more narrow crooked alleys ran off in every possible direction. Adam stopped to consider which one of them to choose. He was still standing, panting with exertion and debating whether one of the filthy little lanes was likely to lead back to familiar territory, when Quint appeared suddenly at his shoulder.
‘Thought you was never going to get out of there,’ his manservant remarked. ‘Bow Street’s this way.’
‘I am ashamed of our cowardly withdrawal.’ Returned once more to streets he knew, Adam had regained lost courage. He was now regretting their hasty retreat. ‘Should we have allowed some decayed bruiser to frighten us, Quint? Some brothel bully with one eye? We were just beginning to get the girl to talk.’
Quint, who had seen plenty of bare-knuckle men fight, from Bendigo and Ben Caunt to Sayers and Heenan, wasn’t so sure that Fadge was the duffer Adam was implying.
‘Maybe you fancy swapping haymakers with an old pug, guv, but I don’t. Didn’t you see what he did to that soldier boy?’
‘What had stirred the man to action? Why did he come roaring at us like the bull of Bashan when he had welcomed us to that den only a few minutes before?’
Quint shrugged. ‘Dunno, guv. I reckoned I’d squared it with ’im. But he must ’ave twigged me.’
‘Twigged you?’ Adam was puzzled. ‘What was there for Fadge to twig?’
Quint, looking as close to sheepish as he was ever likely to get, scratched his chin and refused to meet Adam’s eyes.
‘’E may have found out I didn’t exackly tell him the truth.’
‘And what is the truth?’
‘It took me bleeding ages to track that girl down, you know.’ Quint thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his blue fustian trousers and stared at his master with sudden defiance. ‘In and out of pubs and case-houses, asking questions here and there. Do you know ’ow many women there are on the grind called Ada? Bleeding ’undreds.’
‘I appreciate your devotion to the task I set you, Quint, but you leave my question still unanswered. What did you say to that doorman?’