From the Deep of the Dark Read Online Free Page A

alert and watchful.
It’s never made easy. Not for me.
    So, this was the way the ambitious young tyke had found to get back at him. Making him look a fool in front of the board. He glanced around. Billy-boy had vanished. No doubt sniggering all the ways back to the board’s headquarters. What would Dick say to the two new extra State Protection Board intelligencers waiting outside, waiting to see if their mark made a bolt for it?
Just a mistake. Sorry about that. A murder? No, it was a fall while walking the dog. It all looks the same when you get to my age.
And with a royalist rebel somewhere inside the building, no doubt cultivating contacts on the staff under the guise of being a relative or peddler. If the rebel troublemaker spooked, if he scarpered now, it would be Dick Tull’s head on the block, not the royalist’s.
    Old Cutler appeared leading a pair of footmen, two younger versions of himself in black livery, bearing trays jingling with delicate porcelain cups and raisin-encrusted biscuits. Well, there was no need for the night to be a complete waste of time, not now that Dick was freed from young Billy-boy’s disapproving gaze.
    With the police constables’ attention focused on the bounty of the unexpected brew, and the serving staff distracted by the presence of the constables, Dick expertly removed a pair of silver candlesticks from the mantelpiece and slipped them inside his great coat. He could tell from the heft of the ornamental showpieces that they were solid silver, nothing cheap about them. They would be worth a pretty penny in the pawnshop off Ruffler Avenue where Dick kept his lodgings. That was the good thing about working for the State Protection Board, he was protected from the sort of questions asked when producing such candlesticks for sale – or even worse, getting the kind of lowball price offered to a common criminal trying to fence his wares. Dick just had to open his leather wallet and flash his silver badge of state, and all questions would gag to a faltering halt in the pawnshop owner’s mouth.
    Lord Chant won’t miss it, not with factories full of toilers like me stamping out wealth for him every day. Sweating his workers in this cold, day in, day out. A new pair of silver candlesticks falling into his pockets every hour. Well, these two are for poor old Dick, so thank you, my lord commercial, here’s to you and your fat pockets, padded with more money than you can spend in a dozen lifetimes.
    Dick slipped back outside, to the cab halt where the hansom cab should be, finding only a single board officer waiting – with no sign of that sly little chancer, Billy-boy. Their cab had vanished, along with the second agent watching the gates. With a terse exchange of words, Dick discovered that their mark had come out of the mansion gates while he and the constables had been inside the house. Only a couple of minutes ago, the second agent had let their mark reach the end of the street on foot, then the agent casually set off in the hansom cab, taking Billy-boy along in case he needed an extra pair of boots to drop off and follow the mark through the streets on foot. Had the rebel been spooked by the arrival of the police? Pray he wasn’t lost in the narrow alleyways of the capital.
    Billy-boy’s done his work well this night. I’ve been royally rogered. He’ll get the commendation for following our mark back to his nest. I’ll be left looking like an idiot. Perhaps he’ll be giving orders to me earlier than I expected, now. Ambitious little sod.
    Dick Tull put off the remaining officer’s questions about the constables’ business inside the mansion. Their masters in the board would hear about this night’s tomfoolery soon enough, when the inspector inside the house got back to his warm offices in Ham Yard and started complaining about his time being wasted by the civil service, by the peculiar gentlemen.
    Dick stood there for a moment, angrily brooding, as the remaining agent left