Maggie MacKeever Read Online Free Page B

advantage of cooperating with me. I have certain information in my possession, the publication of which would make life most uncomfortable for him.”
    “You would,” retorted the Chief Magistrate. “This mania of yours for collecting damning information may well land you in serious difficulties one day.” He was haunted by the thought.
    “Piffle! Life would be very dull indeed, did I leave other people’s business to them and confine myself to my own.” Dulcie brushed idle fingers along the windowsill. “Are you thinking I should have applied to you for assistance? I could not. It was you who committed Leda to Newgate, after all.”
    “So it was.” For a man who deprecated Lady Bligh’s involvement in what might be logically considered his affairs, Sir John was unaccountably relieved. “Save me your further blandishments. I will see Leda safely home. In return you might tell me what Ivor Jessop has to do with her, and why you are so interested in this recent outbreak of robberies.”
    “So I might.” Lady Bligh adapted an attitude every bit as provocative as those employed by the lightskirts who plied their trade in Covent Garden’s narrow streets. “Much as it distresses me to refuse you, in this case I think I must. But you are very kind to oblige me about Leda. I am very, very grateful to you.”
    “All the same,” said Sir John, “I would vastly prefer to see that particular troublemaker remain behind bars.”
    Dulcie stepped back, drawing the hood of her cloak over her again unruly curls. “Oddly enough, so would I.” By the time the Chief Magistrate thought to question this startling statement, the Baroness had gone.
     

Chapter 3
     
    Crump sauntered along the busy streets of the West End, passing by the fencing rooms in St. James’s Street and Gentleman Jackson’s Bond Street boxing saloon, as well as shops and smart hotels dedicated to serving the aristocracy. The haunts of the ton roused not envy but resentment in Crump. While walking in Mayfair he would call to mind the filthy slums and unlit streets of Westminster and Lambeth, those mazes of tumbledown houses and fever-ridden alleys where half-naked children played in open sewers and well-dressed gentlemen dared not venture even in daylight.
    Crump was a rotund, jovial-looking man with observant blue eyes and a balding skull adorned by a scant fringe of black hair. He was also one of that select group known commonly as the Bow Street Runners. And a good one, he thought, despite Sir John’s current annoyance with him, an annoyance inspired wholly by the fact that Lady Bligh, during the wretched Arbuthnot business, had not only placed herself in danger but had outwitted him. Crump twirled his gilt-headed baton. A race apart were the aristocracy, with blue blood flowing in their veins, and the Baroness Bligh was even further removed from the commonplace. She was as silly as she was lovely, deplorably frivolous, conspicuously crazy, and she furthermore possessed a happy knack of falling on her feet. It was to Lady Bligh that he owed his present engagement; due to her influence with the Chief Magistrate, Crump was at last to try his hand at solving these daring robberies, the most recent of which had taken place at White’s Club. Crump thought he would call at Bligh House later on to express his gratitude, there to be regaled by the Baroness with tidbits of tittle-tattle from high society, and just possibly to learn what had prompted her intervention in his behalf.
    He had been in the tavern across from Bow Street headquarters, sipping geneva and making the acquaintance of pickpockets, housebreakers and others of their ilk, when Sir John summoned him. The Runners were condemned for their practice of frequenting flash houses, for keeping company with thieves, but there were no few advantages in acting the part of a spy. In such places, where careless tongues were rendered further incautious by libations of gin and ale, an enterprising