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He could not bring back to memory any names or faces, but the smell of the back taverns was sharply familiar. Without thinking, he knew how to behave; to alter color like a chameleon, to drop his shoulders, loosen his gait, keep his eyes down and wary. It is not clothes that make the man; a cardsharp, a dragsman, a superior pickpocket or a thief from the Swell Mob could dress as well as most- indeed the nurse at the hospital had taken him for one of the Swell Mob himself.
Evan, with his fair face and wide, humorous eyes, looked too clean to be dishonest. There was none of the wiliness of a survivor in him; yet some of the best survivors of all were those most skilled in deception and the most i
They began a little to the west of Mecklenburg Square, going to the King's Cross Road. When the first tavern produced nothing immediate, they moved north to the Pen-tonville Road, then south and east again into Clerkenwell.
In spite of all that logic could tell him, by the following day Monk was begi
" 'Ello, Mr. Monk; I hain't seen you for a long time. Were yer bin?"
Monk felt a leap of excitement and studied hard to hide it.
"Had an accident," he answered, keeping his voice level.
The man looked him up and down critically and grunted, dismissing it.
"I 'ears as yer after som'un as'll blow a little?"
"That's right," Monk agreed. He must not be too precipitate, or the price would be high, and he could not afford the time to bargain; he must be right first time, or he would appear green. He knew from the air, the smell of it, that haggling was part of the game.
"Worf anyfink?" the man asked.
"Could be."
"Well," the man said, thinking it over. "Yer always bin fair, that's why I comes to yer 'stead o' some 'o them other jacks. Proper mean, some o' them; yer'd be right ashamed if yer knew." He shook his head and sniffed hard, pulling a face of disgust.
Monk smiled.
"Wotcher want, then?" the man asked.
"Several things." Monk lowered his voice even further, still looking across the table and not at the man. "Some stolen goods-a fence, and a good screever."
The man also looked at the table, studying the stain ring marks of mugs.
"Plenty o' fences, guv; and a fair few screevers. Special goods, these?"
"Not very."
"W'y yer want 'em ven? Som'one done over bad?"
"Yes."
"O'right, so wot are vey ven?"
Monk began to describe them as well as he could; he had only memory to go on.
"Table silver-"
The man looked at him witheringly.
Monk abandoned the silver. "A jade ornament," he continued. "About six inches high, of a dancing lady with her arms up in front of her, bent at die elbows. It was pinky-colored jade-"
"Aw, nar vat's better." The man's voice lifted; Monk avoided looking at his face. "Hain't a lot o' pink jade abaht," he went on. "Anyfink else?"
"A silver scuttle, about four or five inches, I think, and a couple of inlaid snuffboxes."
"Wot kind o' snuffboxes, guv: siller, gold, enamel? Yer gotta give me mor'n vat!"
"I can't remember."
"Yer wot? Don't ve geezer wot lorst 'em know?" His face darkened with suspicion and for the first time he looked at Monk. " 'Ere! 'E croaked, or suffink?"
"Yes," Monk said levelly, still staring at the wall. "But no reason to suppose the thief did it. He was dead long before the robbery.''
"Yer sure o' vat? 'Ow d'yer know 'e were gorn afore?"
"He was dead two months before." Monk smiled acidly. "Even I couldn't mistake that. His empty house was robbed."
The man thought this over for several minutes before delivering his opinion.
Somewhere over near the bar there was a roar of laughter.
"Robbin' a deadlurk?" he said with heavy condescension. "Bit chancy to find anyfink, in' it? Wot did yer say abaht a screever? Wot yer want a screever fer ven?"
"Because the thieves used forged police papers to get in," Monk replied.
The man's face lit up with delight and he chuckled richly.
"A proper downy geezer, vat one. I like it!" He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and laughed again. "It'd be a sin ter shop a feller wiv vat kind o' class."
Monk took a gold half sovereign out of his pocket and put it on the table. The man's eyes fastened onto it as if it mesmerized him.
"I want the screever who made those fakements for them," Monk repeated. He put out his hand and took the gold coin back again. He put it into his inside pocket. The man's eyes followed it. "And no sly faking," Monk warned. "I'll feel your hands in my pockets, and you remember that, unless you fancy picking oakum for a while. Not do your sensitive fingers any good, picking oakum!" He winced inwardly as a flash of memory returned of men's fingers bleeding from the endless unraveling of rope ends, day in, day out, while years of their lives slid by.
The man flinched. "Now vat ain't nice, Mr. Monk. I never took nuffink from yer in me life." He crossed himself hastily and Monk was not sure whether it was a surety of truth or a penance for the lie. "I s'pose yer tried all ve jollyshops?" the man continued, screwing up his face. "Couldn't christen that jade lady."
Evan looked vaguely confused, although Monk was not sure by what.
"Pawnshops," he translated for him. "Naturally thieves remove any identification from most articles, but nothing much you can do to jade without spoiling its value." He took five shillings out of his pocket and gave them to the man.”Come back in two days, and if you've got anything, you'll have earned the half sovereign."
"Right, guv, but not 'ere; vere's a slap bang called ve Purple Duck dahn on Plumber's Row-orf ve Whitechapel Road. Yer go vere." He looked Monk up and down with distaste. "An' come out o' twig, eh; not all square rigged like a prater! And bring the gold, 'cos I'll 'ave suffink. Yer 'ealf, guv, an' yers." He glanced sideways at Evan, then slid off the seat and disappeared into the crowd. Monk felt elated, suddenly singing inside. Even the fest-cooling plum duff was bearable. He smiled broadly across at Evan.
"Come in disguise," he explained. "Not soberly dressed like a fake preacher."
"Oh." Evan relaxed and began to enjoy himself also. "I see." He stared around at the throng of faces, seeing mystery behind the dirt, his imagination painting them with nameless color.
Two days later Monk obediently dressed himself in suitable secondhand clothes; "translators" the informer would have called them. He wished he could remember the man's name, but for all his efibrts it remained completely beyond recall, bidden like almost everything else after the age of about seventeen. He had had glimpses of the years up to then, even including his first year or two in London, but although he lay awake, staring into the darkness, letting his mind wander, going over and over all he knew in the hope his brain would jerk into life again and continue forward, nothing more returned.
Now he and Evan were sitting in the saloon in the Purple Duck, Evan's delicate face registering both his distaste and his efforts to conceal it. Looking at him, Monk wondered how often he himself must have been here to be so unoffended by it. It must have become habit, the noise, the smell, the uninhibited closeness, things his subconscious remembered even if his mind did not.