All this I reported to Sir John, and though he was greatly pleased, he set me to the next task, which was to make a fair copy of Mr. Mobley’s statement of the night before and label it as such.
“For,” said he, ‘you may be certain that Sir Patrick had one of his spies present, and it should not be long until we hear from the Solicitor-General direct or through an emissary.”
As usual, he was correct in his assumption. Yet because I set to work upon it straightaway, I had finished the copy and had it ready by the time the young lawyer from the office of the Solicitor-General arrived with a formal written request for Mobley’s statement. In his presence I read the request aloud to Sir John, who made a proper show of resistance. He stormed and huffed a bit and declared that the Solicitor-General had no right, et cetera, but in the end he instructed me to fetch the statement from Mr. Marsden and deliver it to him. I made as if to do as he instructed, wandered about a bit, and then returned to hand it over to Sir John. (It had been folded and tucked away in the pocket of my coat all along.)
“I wish this to be sealed,” said he to me in his most solemn manner. “I want no meddling done by this message-bearer nor anyone else.”
“Sir,” said the young lawyer, “I would do nothing of the kind.”
“No doubt you would not, yet in this way I may also make plain to Sir Patrick that I surrender this to him only under duress.”
Then I hastily melted the wax, allowed it to drip upon the paper, and pressed Sir John’s signet ring firmly into the warm, wet seal. He ordered me to hand it over to the young man, and I did so with a face as solemn as his own.
The fellow was barely out of earshot — if that — when the magistrate pulled me close and said in a voice louder than need be that I had better bring the original to Lord Mansfield, lest I make a liar of him — that is, Sir John.
“How do you mean that, sir?” I was quite puzzled by what he had said.
“1 mean that in an hour or, more likely, less than that, either the young man who just paid us a visit, or perhaps even the Solicitor-General himself, will return and demand the original. I shall be quite sympathetic but not, ultimately, very helpful, for I shall inform him that the original has been supplied to the Lord Chief Justice at his request.”
“Did he request it?”
“Well… no. That is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration on my part. Perhaps I had better not add that.” He grinned rather boyishly at having been caught out. “I shall assure Sir Patrick that the copy provided him is in every way the same as the original. It is, isn’t it, Jeremy?”
“Oh, yes, sir — all except ‘Fair Copy,’ which was writ across the top.
“Well, then, you can see why it is important that we get the original to Lord Mansfield, for if we do not, then I am a liar — and that is not how I wish to look upon myself. “
And so I made ready to go to the great house in Bloomsbury Square. Just before leaving, I was surprised when Sir John ordered me to wear a brace of pistols for my trip across the city. It was not near dark; nevertheless, he seemed to fear that I might be robbed on the way.
“I want no one to look upon that document you carry except Lord Mansfield. If you should be stopped, threaten to shoot dead him who stops you. But if one should move against you, or otherwise detain you, don’t shoot him dead. You may, however, shoot to wound. The leg, I believe, is the best place.”
This was indeed sobering. He had never, in my memory, described circumstances in which I might discharge a pistol at another human being.
Therefore, I made the journey to Bloomsbury Square in a most watchful state, always aware of the near weightless burden that I carried in my right coat pocket. The statement, read and signed by Percival Mobley, which filled near four pages of foolscap, was accompanied by a note from the magistrate dictated hastily as an afterthought. All were folded together letter-style, sealed, and stamped with the impression of Sir Johns signet ring. The pistols were belted over the coat in such a way that the holsters in which they sat were fixed tight over the coat pockets; it would have been quite impossible for any pickpocket, no matter how light-fingered, to have thrust his hand inside and come away with the documents I carried.
I did not alter my route — though perhaps, upon reflection, I should have — but went north to my destination by the swiftest, most direct way I knew. Consequently, I arrived a bit earlier than I had expected. The Lord Chief Justice had not returned from his day at the Old Bailey Court — or so I was informed by Lord Mansfield’s butler. Fully expecting to be barred from the house, I took a place a step down from the door, folded my arms before me, and prepared to await the arrival of his coach. Armed as I was, I thought I made a rather imposing figure there. Yet the butler remained standing in the open door and looked critically upon me.
“Do you intend to remain there?” he asked.
“And why not?” said I.
He answered with another question: “Why not take a walk round the square?”
“Because I wish to be here at the moment Lord Mansfield arrives from Old Bailey.”
“Why is it so important that you greet him at his doorstep?”
“So that I may deliver a document.”
“Is it of such importance?”
“Important enough so that Sir John instructed me to shoot if anyone should try to take it from me by force.”
“Oh, I see,” said the butler. “Perhaps you’d better come inside.” I accepted the invitation, even though it was reluctantly given. He indicated that I was to sit on the bench there in the vestibule. I was about to take a place there, when my curiosity demanded that I put a question to him: “Why did you invite me in? I’m not dressed as you usually require for entry.”
“No,” said he, “but you’re wearing pistols.”
“Had you thought I would shoot if I were not admitted?”
“Goodness, no! But it really wouldn’t do to have one such as yourself waiting at the door of the Lord Chief Justice displaying a brace of pistols. It might be thought by the neighbors that you were an assassin.”
“I shouldn’t suppose that Lord Mansfield would care what the neighbors thought.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t,” said the butler, “but I do.”
With that, he left me, and as I watched him go, I thought what an odd sort of man he was. Were all butlers as he was? No, I knew that was not so. Of all the butlers I had known, I believed I liked best the one who served the last true Lord Laningham. His name had been Mr. Poole. I hoped that he and the rest of the servants who ran that great house had managed to find employment in other houses. I had passed by what had been the Laningham residence in St. James’s Street and was astonished to find it boarded up, its hedges in need of trim, weeds growing in a wild swarm — all this in six months. In another six it would be well on its way to a truly ramshackled state. Who would occupy it? Would there ever be a true heir to the Laningham title? What a sad business it was.
Ruminating thusly, I do not believe I heard the butler’s footsteps in the hall until he crossed the open space just beyond the vestibule. Yet the sudden clatter brought me from my reverie and to my feet.
“He comes,” announced the butler in a manner most important. “Did you not hear the horses?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so,” I mumbled. “I must’ve.”
“Stand well behind me as I open the door,” he instructed me. “I’ll not have the master greeted by a man wearing pistols as he enters his own house.”
For all the butler’s concern, Lord Mansfield seemed to pay little attention of any sort to me as he strode through the open door. He growled something unintelligible to the butler and walked past me as if I had not been present. Not wishing to be rude, I nevertheless felt I had to do something to detain him. And so I boldly cleared my throat and coughed.