Daniel turned to spy Sean Partry sitting crosslegged in a back corner, surrounded by ironmongery, tamping tobacco into a pipe.
Daniel picked up the glass, telescoped it to full length, and set its wide end into the vee of the missing diamond, which had thoughtfully been lined with a rag. This held it perfectly steady, while allowing him to swivel the narrow end to and fro. Putting his eye to it, and making some small adjustments, he was rewarded with a magnified view of some windows on the upper storey of the Tatler-Lock. Several were boarded over, or else veiled with remnants of sails. One was but a vacant window-frame. Through this could be seen the floor-boards of an empty room, starry with bird-shit.
“There is little to see,” Partry admitted. “Mr. Knockmealdown has a violent aversion to eavesdroppers.”
“It is very good,” was Daniel’s verdict. “The hunter who stakes out bait, must establish a nearby blind, from which to observe his quarry. But not too close, lest the beast nose him, and be put on his guard. This room shall do. And you are correct, Mr. Partry, about the glass. The opticks were ground by a master.”
A concentration of dust-bunnies and feather-shards marked the location of the previous tenant’s Bed and Engine of Revenue. This had been cast into the river and supplanted by more furniture of the plank-and-cask school, on which Threader and Kikin had already claimed seats. Orney moved towards the windows to mark Prudence’s progress downriver but pulled up short as he felt the balcony losing altitude under his weight.
“What have you told the proprietor about who we are, and what we are doing?” Mr. Threader was asking Saturn.
“That you are Royal Society men making observations of the daily currency of the river.”
“He’s not going to believe that, is he?”
“You didn’t ask me what he believes. You asked me what I told him. What he believes, is that you are City men investigating a case of insurance fraud by spying on a certain ship anchored out in the Pool.”
“Fine-our true purpose shall not be suspected as long as he is telling people that.”
“Oh no, he’s not telling people that. He’s telling them that you are a Sect of Dissenters forced to meet in secret because of the recent passage of Bolingbroke’s Schism Act.”
“Let the blokes in the tap-room think we are Dissenters then, is all I’m trying to say.”
“That’s not what they think. They think that you are Sodomites,” Partry said. This silenced Threader for a while.
“No wonder we are paying such exorbitant rent,” reflected Mr. Kikin, “considering the vast scope of activities going on in this one room.”
Partry had spread a trapezoid of sail-cloth over the planks in the corner of the room and was sitting on it. He’d have looked like a tailor, except that he was working with the tools of the thief-taker’s trade: an array of manacles, fetters, neck-rings, chains, bolts, and padlocks, which he was sorting, inspecting, and oiling. Probably this had done nothing to improve their reputation among the regulars drinking porter six feet below.
“What is it we are to put up for auction to-day?” Partry inquired.
Daniel stepped away from the window, handing the glass to Mr. Orney, and retrieved a small wooden chest he had earlier set down on a barrel-head. “Since you are a connoisseur of Opticks, Mr. Partry, you’ll find this of interest. It is a collection of lenses, some no larger than mouse’s eyes, but ground to perfection.”
Partry narrowed his eyes. “You think Jack the Coiner has gone to so much trouble to get a box of lenses?”
“I think he desires Hooke-stuff. I know not what, or why. By proffering these, we show him our bona fides. That is, we prove that we have Hooke-stuff to sell, for only Hooke made lenses like these. Whether Jack buys them or not, we’ll have his attention after to-day.”
“To-day, or tomorrow, or a week hence,” Partry corrected him. “There is no telling how long this will sit in the Tatler-Lock before Jack, or his deputy, comes round to appraise it.” With that Partry accepted the box from Daniel, and tucked it under a sort of pea-coat he had put on as protection from the rain. He descended the stairs. Saturn followed after, and through the floor the Clubb could hear him asking the proprietor to send up four mugs of flip.
And so the Stake-out commenced. Daniel dragged an empty crate over to the balcony and sat down where he could keep an eye on the Tatler-Lock. It was unlikely there’d be anything to see, but he felt he ought to do this for the sake of form. Four mugs of steaming flip arrived on the shoulder of a fascinated bar-maid. It was, as a rule, a winter beverage, but suited them in to-day’s weather. Orney produced an octavo Bible from his pocket and began memorizing it, oblivious to displays of withering scorn being directed his way by Mr. Threader. Kikin put on glasses and began to read an impressive document in Cyrillic letters. Threader grubbed a pencil out of his pocket and began to dash off notes using a barrel-head as desk. Daniel had not thought to bring anything to pass the time. Partry’s hobby of fetters and chains held no allure. But Peter Hoxton, who was avidly literate, had already strewn reading materials about the place, viz. an English translation of Spinoza. This was too weighty for Daniel’s mood. He picked up a libel instead.
A Diplomatick OVERTURE from the Queen of Bonny, to Her Britannic Majesty translated from the Africk by DAPPA, Ambassador to the Liberty of the Clink.
APOLOGY
Owing to a spell of confusion that hath gripped the mind of Mr. Charles White, and induced him to believe that he owns me, I have lately suspended my former habit, viz. of wandering about the Terraqueous Globe, for a life of dignified repose in the Clink where I am detained ’pon suspicion of having stolen myself. ’Tis a charge difficult to refute; for the Magistrate hath shrewdly asked me whether it was not true, that I was in possession of myself, and I, having always prided myself on being a self-possessed fellow, did answer in the affirmative. Whereupon the magistrate did bang his gavel and order me clapp’d in irons and dragged away to the Clink for the crime of receiving stolen goods.
My stationary habit has not been without benefit to the stationers of this and other Realms. For many of my old friends and relations, who had given up in despair of hitting such a restless target with a well-aim’d letter, have reached me here. Not a day goes by that I do not receive a weather-beaten and worm-eaten note from a far-off land. To-day I have got one that came in a ship lately active in the Assiento trade. This vessel came to London direct from the Slave Coast, bearing a chest laden with Spanish pieces of eight-part of the bounty due H.B.M.’s government, under the late Treaty of Peace, for the commerce between Africa (a great producer of Negroes) and the Caribbean (a ravenous gobbler-up of same). The treasure-chest was removed by Mr. White, who carried it ashore in the company of several fellows, all of them bedizen’d with curious silver-greyhound badges. Later the same company was spied across town in Golden-Square, paying a call upon the Viscount Bolingbroke, who keeps a fine house there; but alas, somewhere along the way, the chest had sprung a leak, and those pieces of eight had dribbled out into the streets of London. Upon Mr. White’s arrival at the Viscount’s house, the chest was observed to be nearly empty. In haste his Messengers re-traced their path through the city, hoping to pick up what had spilt, but alas, the coins had already been plucked up by ordinary Londoners. As most common Englishmen have never laid eyes upon a coin of silver-pounds sterling being as rare in England as plain-spoken Tories-no one recognized them for what they were. But seeing that each one was stamp’d with a face bearing the features of a Bourbon, these patriotic Englishmen took offence and flung the despicable medallions into Fleet Ditch, where they sank presently to the bottom. So the Assiento revenue is gone; though ’tis rumored among the Vault-men that on moonless nights a man resembling the Viscount Bolingbroke may be observed standing on the brink of that noisome arroyo, holding a cloak, and a fine suit of clothes, all embroider’d with Greyhounds, while a naked man splashes about in the flume below, like a pearl-diver in a Tropick lagoon, breaking the surface from time to time with a shiny new Bourbon piece of eight in his teeth. For which the man on the brink presently rewards him by tossing him an ear, much as a hunter doth take all the meat of the game while throwing the bones, gristle, amp;c. to his dogs, who are so foolish as to believe that they are being shown great favor.