“Oh, they are, right enough, and his father can pay any price. He is Lord Lammermoor. Your fellow Archibald had the bad luck to be born a second son. He will inherit nothing. His elder brother takes it all. And so Papa feels it incumbent upon him to set Archibald up in business, and the business his son has chosen is politics, which can indeed be quite lucrative. However, it is of them all one of the most insecure, and so Lord Lammermoor has insisted that his second son be educated in a profession so that he may have something to fall back upon.”
“So Archibald Talley is the second son of a great lord,” said I, musing.
“Yes, and that means he will be granted favor and helped along his whole life through. It is a great advantage to be even the second son of a nobleman — as you will, I’m sure, discover in your career to come.”
(Ah, reader, how I liked the sound of that!)
“But let us put such matters aside,” he resumed. “Now, as I recall, I began to rant in this unholy manner when you asked politely if I wished to dictate some letters. Let us indeed do that. There is one that demands special attention.”
“And what is it, sir?”
“I received an invitation from the Lord Chief Justice to serve on a commission of some sort. Since I am in his debt in the matter of Constable Cowley, I think it prudent to accept.”
“Then,” said I, pulling a chair up to his desk that I might sit opposite him, “let us pen it at once, and I shall deliver it this very afternoon to the manse in Bloomsbury Square.”
Thus the letter was written and, as I promised, brought that day to the residence of William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of the King s Bench. Neither Sir John nor I could reckon then what an important part that missive would play in our lives, nor that it would greatly, even fatally, affect the lives of others.
It was perhaps a week later that I came to learn a bit more of this commission of which Sir John had spoken so lightly. As it happened, it was a day that started badly for me. No sooner had I returned from a morning buying trip to Covent Garden than Mr. Marsden called to me that Sir John wished to see me as soon as I had done with the groceries I had bought us. And so I hauled the packages up the stairs and put them away in those places which our young cook, Annie, had designated as proper for storage. What I had done for her upon occasion I now did as a matter of routine — all this since her schooling had begun. Yet withal, I begrudged her naught.
Then at last to Sir John, who awaited me in his chambers. Somewhat abstracted was he, evidently deep in thought, so that he failed at first to perceive my polite tapping upon his open door. There was indeed nothing wrong with his hearing, but there were times when he did concentrate so upon his thoughts that he became quite oblivious of all else. And so I knocked loud upon the door, knuckle against wood, and called his name.
“Ah, Jeremy/‘ said he, “come in, lad, come in. I’ve an idea — oh, call it an exercise — that may interest you.”
“Oh? And what is that, sir?”
“To make it quite clear, I shall need you to locate a particular file of cases for me.”
“And where might it be?”
“Well, in truth, lad, I’ve no idea at all. I simply tell Mr. Marsden to put the files away, and he does it. If you ask him where he has it stored, I’m sure he can tell you.”
“Certainly, Sir John, but what shall I look for? What title has been put to it?”
He put two fingers to his chin and rubbed it reflectively as he considered the matter I had put before him. At last he declared, “Now, that is a good question. We can’t very well find it if we know not what title he has put to it, can we?” Frowning, he lapsed once more into silence. Then said he, “I have it! Just tell him we are looking for the red file. That should be all he needs to know. There was a very good reason for calling it the red file, which I shall reveal to you when you have found it.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll be back with it as quick as ever I can.”
So saying, I left in quest of Mr. Marsden, curious what might be in this mysterious file, and eager to know to what use Sir John would put it. I found the court clerk not in his alcove, where I first looked, but standing on the doorstep to Number 4 Bow Street, puffing away at his morning pipe. When I told him my purpose in seeking him out, he began to shake his head slowly, a look of deep concentration upon his face.
“The red file, is it?” said he.
“Yes,” said I, “do you remember it, sir?”
“Oh, I recalls it right well. It’s just I can’t bring to mind when it was I put it away. Y’see, the when of it would tell me the where of it.”
I nodded my understanding as he knocked ash and a wad of spent tobacco into the palm of his hand and allowed it to drop down onto the walkway. “Lets go along inside,” said he. “P’rhaps I can advise you what boxes to look in.”
“Well, if you would not mind, sir, I’m sure it would be a great help.”
But it was not. We returned together to his alcove — a scrivener’s table surrounded on three sides by sturdy boxes filled with files — where he stood looking at each one thoughtfully. He designated three that I might try, each marked with dates many years before.
I had bare begun on the first of them, when a thought occurred to me. “Mr. Marsden,” said I, “is the file truly red, or has it simply a mark upon it?”
“Oh, well, I’m not quite sure. But it seems to me, now that I think back upon it, that I had an artist’s brush for makin’ signs and some red ink, and I just painted a great red stripe across the top of the file, Sir John asked me to mark it in some such way.”
“Did he say why he wished it so?”
“Oh, he did, but his reason now escapes me.”
“And the title of the file?”
“That also.”
So there was naught to do but look for a great stripe of red along the top. That indeed should have made it easy to locate, and might have were it not for the disorder of the individual files. Papers — notes and foolscap pages — seemed to have burst higgledy-piggledy from each one, obscuring those behind it. It would take a great effort and much time to put them all in order. Mr. Marsden’s court session notes were accurate and complete, yet he was rather careless of how he disposed of them when done. Now, I thought, if I were Sir John’s clerk … (I often had such exaggerated notions of how I could set the world to right.) The red file was not to be found in the first three boxes designated by Mr. Marsden, nor in the next three, nor in any of them piled round in his alcove. When I had been through them all, he shook his head sympathetically and suggested that since it was near noon, and the days session of his magistrate’s court would soon begin, I might wish to carry my search to the file boxes kept in Sir Johns chambers; in that way, I would cause no bother and make no disturbance.
That is what I did, yet with no greater success than I had earlier had. These files seemed to be in better order, yet in contrast the boxes were dustier and more numerous. As a result, it took at least as long to examine these as the rest in the clerk’s alcove. Indeed, it must have taken well over an hour, for just as I opened the last box, Sir John entered the room and halted just inside the door.
“Jeremy?” he said. “Is that you?”
“It is, Sir John, and I’ve still not found the red file.”
“Hmmm. . well … it must be somewhere about.”
As he took his customary position in the chair behind his desk, I continued my search. I saw no red stripe. There was no such file. I came to doubt its very existence. Had I been sent upon a fools errand? I could not believe that Sir John would intentionally put me on the track of an object he knew could not be found. Yet perhaps it had long ago disappeared without his knowledge. It might have been borrowed by the Lord Chief Justice. Not knowing its contents, I could not say who else might have taken it away, but of course there might be a great many.