The Major and the Pickpocket Read Online Free

through the assortment of narrow alleyways behind Maiden Lane before finally sidling into the shadows of an empty doorway and listening hard.
    Nothing. No pursuers. No Charleys. With a sigh of relief the young thief sauntered off northwards whistling The Bold Ploughboy’, cap pulled down low over forehead, hands thrust deep into shabby greatcoat; because, although it had stopped raining, the February night was still damp and cold. One hand encountered a leather wallet, and those bright green eyes were troubled, just for a moment, at the memory of its owner; then the youngster strolled onwards. Doubtless the dark-haired swell was rich enough not to miss it over-much.
    Carefully avoiding the clusters of hard-drinking men who gathered around Bob Derry’s Cider Cellar, the pickpocket, now munching on an apple filched earlier from a fruit stall, chose a secret way through the warren of courtyards that lay behind Drury Lane; then at lastcame to a halt, gazing up to where a flickering lantern illuminated a faded inn sign. This was the Blue Bell tavern: a pretty name for a low-life inn run by a steel-tongued landlady called Moll. Frowning briefly at the thought of Moll, the youth straightened his shabby coat and marched through the crowded, smoky taproom to push open a small side door into a private parlour, occupied only by a group of men clustered intently round a card game. The sudden draught from the door made the tallow candles flicker. Three of the players leapt to their feet, their hands clutching their cards. Then the fourth one, a gangly young fellow with rather startling tufts of red hair, grinned broadly. ‘No cause for alarm, lads! It’s just our Tassie, bin up to her usual tricks, no doubt.’
    The men sat down again. Tassie closed the door with a deft kick, pulled off her cap and threw it defiantly on the table as her long golden hair tumbled around her shoulders. ‘What do you mean, ‘tis only me?’ she challenged. ‘Haven’t you missed me, all of you?’ No reply. Sighing a little, she let her keen eyes rove over the well-worn cards splayed out on the table. ‘Fie, Georgie Jay, if ‘tis whist you’re playing, then I hope you remembered to keep the guard on your pictures, as I told you last night!’
    Then the girl sat among the men, quite at ease, as the sturdily built, black-haired man in his thirties whom she’d addressed as Georgie Jay, looked frowning at his cards. ‘God’s blood, but you’re right, Tassie,’ he said.
    ‘Course she’s right,’ said the red-haired lad, still gazing admiringly at the newcomer. ‘There’s no one to beat our Tassie at cards.’
    ‘Or dice,’ grinned Georgie Jay. He patted the girl’s shoulder and turned back to the game.
    The girl let her fair brow pucker a little. ‘Weren’t you—worried about me, Georgie?’
    ‘Why, lass? Should we have been?’
    She shrugged. ‘Not really. I helped the cups-and-sixpence man up on the Strand.’
    ‘Old Peg-leg? Did you make much?’
    ‘Didn’t get the chance. We were chased off by the Charleys.’
    ‘Good job you can run fast, then.’
    ‘Indeed.’ Tassie stretched out her legs in their over-large boots and leaned back in her chair, her hands in her pockets, secretly a little upset that they weren’t more troubled by her encounter with the Watch. She decided to say nothing about the dark-haired man and his wallet, though at one time she’d have told Georgie Jay everything, for he was the undisputed leader of this motley crew of travellers, and had been like a father to her ever since he’d found her eight years ago, alone on a country lane. ‘We work when we can,’ he’d told her, ‘and when we can’t—for times are hard for poor folks like us—why, then, we take a little from those who have enough and to spare!’ Yes, Georgie Jay had been her saviour and protector, and she would always be grateful to him. But things had changed. Oh, how they had changed.
    Moll, the buxom landlady, had just come into the