The Potato Factory

Finally, after a process of elimination in which his careful mind examined every detail of his escapades over the past two days, Ikey arrived at the correct solution. Sparrer Fart had been the perpetrator. Ikey recalled how the young pickpocket had moved close, begging for the half sovereign he withheld from him. Such was the curious nature of Ikey Solomon's mind that he congratulated himself for having trained both Marley and Sparrer Fart – Marley for the foresight he showed in recruiting the urchin and young Sparrer for the way he had executed the plant.

Ikey was aware that he had finally come to the end of the line, which, in this event, was dangerously close to the end of a rope. All of England was braying for the noose to be placed around his scrawny neck, the public having believed the scurrilous twaddle in the pe

In Ikey's mind, though, there was a more urgent need in his life than the business of avoiding the hangman. He must, at all costs, contact Marybelle Firkin and retrieve the letter of credit for delivery to the bankers Coutts amp; Company before the seven days for its presentation expired. Ikey faced what appeared to be an impossible task. He had just three days to lodge the note in person and found himself trapped, a prisoner of His Majesty, locked in a guarded cell.

Moreover, and to Ikey's enormous chagrin, if he failed to present the letter of credit and lost the money he would not even be permitted to enjoy the satisfaction of shopping Silas and Maggie the Colour. To inform on them would be to indict himself as surely as if he had been caught with the bill paper in his possession. Ikey, for once in his miserable life, had been simply and elegantly foiled by a man with a mind like a suet pudding and a woman who wore wooden clogs.

However, having paid much for it in a lifetime outside the law, Ikey was possessed of a good mind for legal procedure. He knew that in England a man could be sentenced in a magistrate's court to be transported for stealing half a crown or a fat goose. But should he be able to afford the costs involved in a rigorous defence in a higher court, he had a much greater chance of avoiding transportation even though the crime committed be a hundred times more extravagant in its nature.

Ikey comforted himself that it could be argued by a good barrister that the two fake five pound notes found in the lining of his coat might well have been planted, the offending and obvious tear in his coat being the evidence to show how simply this might have been done without his knowledge.

This argument, if successful in casting some doubt in the mind of the judge, could be further supported by a timely stroke of great good fortune. Abraham Van Esselyn, who had taken full advantage of his twin afflictions and admitted nothing in his trial, had been sentenced to fourteen years transportation and had hanged himself in Cold Bath Fields Gaol just three days previously. The deaf mute, never able to share the joy of social intercourse with his fellow man, had finally decided to take his leave of the silent world around him. Ikey's defence could therefore proceed unencumbered by evidence of collaboration with his erstwhile partner.

Ikey's case could be built around the premise that he, a simple man, inexpert in the ways of machinery, was merely the landlord of the premises, unaware that amazing works of counterfeiting longtails were being created by the Frenchy foreigner, a deaf mute unable to communicate in the English language. Ikey had merely knocked on the door of the basement premises, accepting the rent due to him in an incurious and routine ma

Similarly, Mary Abacus had declared Ikey to be her landlord and her testimony had implicated him in no other way. It was on this issue of being the duped landlord for both prisoners that Ikey's case would depend. In this way the burden of proof lay with the prosecution and, as always in such cases, the silver tongue of an expensive advocate could be used to its greatest effect.

It was a neat enough argument, though as an initial defence Ikey knew it had little chance of working at his first trial in the magistrate's court. Here he would almost certainly be indicted. The scuttlebutt in the pe

However, in the Court of Appeal at the Old Bailey where a fair trial could be guaranteed, and in the hands of a good barrister, this argument could be made to seem most compelling, or, at the very least, it would cast some doubt on the serious nature of the case against Ikey.

Ikey had just three days to contact Marybelle Firkin and lodge the letter of credit. To a man of less fortitude this might have seemed somewhat of a forlorn hope. But Ikey had been in more than one tight spot in his life and, in his mind, formulated a plan which, with Bob Marley no longer his go-between, depended almost entirely on Ha

To bring to fruition his plan to lodge the credit note on time Ikey was obliged to tell Ha

Ikey would therefore need to concoct a story which convinced Ha

Alas, his escape had been thwarted by his betrayal and premature arrest and it was Ha

Ha