Ikey opened the sealed envelope and examined the letters within. He shook his head and grinned in admiration as he read Maggie the Colour's letter. Ikey looked up at Marybelle, who once again had her mouth full. 'You done good to sign, my dear.'
Marybelle swallowed, and with her mouth now empty she reached for a chicken leg and waved it in Ikey's direction. 'They be after ya, Ikey Solomon.' Still holding the chicken leg, she took up a roasted potato, popped it into her mouth and continued talking, with her mouth full. 'We wasn't followed 'cause the people they sent didn't know to follow me.' She frowned. 'But they'll be lookin' for ya, mark me words, they's a right pair o' villains them two!' She giggled. 'I wished them meesa meschina!'
Ikey laughed. 'More like they wished me!' he said.
Marybelle sucked the flesh of the entire chicken leg from the bone with a soft plop and commenced to chew. Ikey's hand went into his coat, and he withdrew it holding the copper tube he'd ordered in the shape of a cigar container, though somewhat thicker and longer. He placed it on the table beside the letter of credit.
'They aim to do ya in before ya gets 'ome wif that there letter o' credit. That's what 'er letter was all about, weren't it, Ikey? Do ya in, steal yer letter and then claim the contract's been broken!' Marybelle cocked her pretty head to one side and gave Ikey an ingenuous look. 'What's an irrevocable letter o' credit? What's all the fuss about, any'ow?' She pointed to the letter on the table. 'That don't look like no paper what's worth dying for!'
'It's money promised what can't be unpromised once it's been presented from one bank t'other,' Ikey said, trying to stay vague. 'You're perfectly right, my dear, they'll be after trying to stop me gettin' to a bank in London.' Ikey shrugged. 'It's only natural ain't it? You did good not to be followed, my dear. I 'ave made plans, we will make good our escape.'
Marybelle smiled, shrugged her shoulders and looked expectantly at Ikey. 'Ya said I done good, we wasn't followed, so where's me fortune what ya promised?'
Ikey dry-soaped his hands, his shoulders hunched. 'You've done special good you 'ave, my dear, you've done it perfect and exact and splendid. I couldn't 'ave asked for no more, 'cept one small thing?'
'What?' Marybelle asked suspiciously, holding another large piece of chicken poised in front of her greasy mouth.
Ikey reached across the small table, picked up the copper cylinder and unscrewed the smoothly fitting top. He carefully rolled the letter of credit into a tight cylinder itself, which he then neatly slipped into the copper container and screwed the top back on.
'Will you take this letter o' credit back with you to London tonight, my dear?'
Ikey placed the cylinder in front of Marybelle, then he announced he was giving her the rights to future instalments of paper from Thomas Tooth and George Betteridge. 'Until I returns to London to live, my dear, though I daresay that be never.'
'This bill paper to come, is it still kosher? I knows yer doin' a runner, Ikey. The law ain't on to it is they?'
Ikey cleared his throat and answered truthfully. 'They is and they isn't, I expects. O' course now, at this very moment, I suppose the Bank o' England will be goin' over the mill at Laverstoke with a fine-toothed comb, though I'll vouch if them two, Tooth and Betteridge, 'ave the good sense to lie low for a while, they'll find nothin'. Give it two months, maybe three or even four to be completely on the safe side, and the scam can be brought back intact. Clean as a whistle, free as a bird, kosher as the Beth Din! The bill paper be worth a king's ransom, keep you in nosh for the rest of your life!'
'Only if you knows 'ow to get rid of it, Ikey. I ain't got no contacts what wants bill paper.'
Ikey raised his eyebrows in surprise, 'Why, my dear, you sells it to them two you met in the bank today!'
'What? Do business wif that filth?'
Ikey shrugged. 'They's villains, but the best, my dear. We're all villains, given 'arf a chance, everyone in the whole world is villains. But in me experience there be two kinds o' villain, them what's got a bit o' class and them what ain't.' Ikey's dark eyes shone. 'That letter Maggie wrote today, that be most excellent. That be topnotch thinkin', nacherly nasty nogginin', my dear!' Ikey spread his hands wide. 'That's a rare combination what you doesn't find too often in the business o' villainy, brains and the stomach to act.' He paused, scratching the tip of his nose. 'You take my word for it, they be your natural customers, my dear! All you does is wait a year, then come down here with the bill paper what you 'as accumulated, startin' again in four months.' Ikey leaned back. 'You'll make thousands, my dear, thousands and thousands. Your table will be the envy o' dukes and duchesses. The King himself, I dare say, will come to 'ear o' your fine banquets.'
Marybelle picked up the cylinder and waved it at Ikey. 'And what if some villain they send catches me wif this on me way to London?' She drew the cylinder across her throat. 'That's what 'appens.'
'They won't find it will they?' Ikey said puckering his lips. He pointed to the cylinder. 'It be made to be put in a place what a man 'asn't got and a lady 'as. A place where your average villain ain't likely to go pokin' about without your express permission, if you knows what I mean, my dear?'
Marybelle's pretty blue eyes grew large and then shone with delighted surprise. She gave a little squeal, running her fat, greasy fingers along the cylinder's smooth surface.
'Jesus, Ikey! You bleedin' thinks o' everyfink.' In between her laughter she managed to gasp. 'Methinks it will be a tight fit… ha-ha-ha-ha! But wif all the bumpin' o' the coach to London… ha-ha-ha-hee-hee!… I daresay it will bring a lady o' me proportions, oh, goodness lummy, oh, oh… a good deal o' pleasure on the… ha-ha-hee-hee!… journey 'ome!'
Chapter Thirteen
Ikey returned to London three days after he had left Marybelle Firkin at the inn with a pork pie stuck in her gob and his precious cylinder safely tucked away elsewhere on her large person. Waiting in the back room of a chop house in Houndsditch until well after dark when a light snow storm, churned with frequent wind flurries, began to fall and which he judged would further conceal his passage, Ikey slipped into the rookery of St Giles and soon thereafter let himself into the seemingly abandoned building which housed the Methodist Academy of Light Fingers.
Creeping up the rickety staircase, he appeared suddenly and to the utmost surprise of half a dozen boys who were playing a game of cribbage by the light of a solitary candle. Huddled beside the hearth directly behind them were as many boys again wrapped in rags and old blankets against the bitter cold.
'Now 'ow many times 'as I told you, keep a sharp eye!' Ikey admonished. 'The lad what's supposed to be watchin' out is asleep on the landin', lushed out and smellin' o' gin!' Ikey sucked at his teeth and wagged a mittened finger at the urchins seated crosslegged around a box. 'Gentlemen, gentlemen! Cribbage in this kind o' light ain't no good for the senses. You'll lose your touch, the light of a candle dulls the mind and makes it too easy to palm a card or deal a crooked 'and. Brightness be what's called for, where everything can be seen, clear as daylight, open and negotiable as a whore's cunny.'
The boys laughed loudly at this last remark but Ikey held up his hand for silence. 'A cardsharp to be warranted any good must make 'is play in the best o' conditions. We'll 'ave no second-rate broadsman spreadin' the flats in darkness in my school o' learnin'! A trade ain't worth 'avin' if you're not the best there is at it.'
His young pupils crowded about him. 'There's a people what's lookin' for ya, Ikey, is ya in lavender then?' a young tooler named Sweetface Mulligan enquired.
'Perhaps I is and perhaps I ain't, it all depends on who is lookin' and whether it be opportunity knockin' or disadvantage breakin' down the door.'