Fire Catcher Read Free Page A

hardly believe it!’ His hands fell on the contents. He eased out a Jack of Spades and Ace of Clubs, turning them this way and that. ‘I thought they were lost forever. However did you find them?’
    Charlie shrugged. ‘Mud from St Giles. A few questions.’
    ‘I can begin work again,’ said the card maker happily. ‘I’ll finish two packs today. Who was the thief?’ he asked, still smiling down at his returned print plates.
    ‘Two young girls from the St Giles slums,’ said Charlie. ‘Desperate types. Not yet twenty and barely a tooth left between them. Skin and bone.’
    ‘What explanation did they make when you caught them?’
    ‘The usual,’ said Charlie. ‘They’d been gifted the plates. Couldn’t remember who by.’
    ‘Gifted playing-card plates?’ snorted the card maker in disbelief.
    ‘Any lie is worth trying when the noose hangs near,’ said Charlie.
    ‘They’re on their way to Tyburn then,’ said the card maker with satisfaction. ‘I will go watch them swing.’
    ‘They went yesterday,’ lied Charlie. ‘Hanged with the religious sect who plotted to assassinate the King.’
    ‘A shame,’ said the card maker. ‘But I am glad enough to have my plates back. You are a man of your word.’ He reached for his hanging pocket and then paused.
    ‘But I’m forgetting,’ said the card maker. ‘What would you say to a trade? Information for pay.’
    ‘I’m a thief taker,’ said Charlie, holding out his hand for payment. ‘If it’s a rigged dog fight or a boxer with the pox, trust me, I know it.’
    ‘No,’ the card maker licked his lips. ‘It is something else.’ He pointed. ‘About your key.’
    Charlie hesitated. The secret of the key still haunted him. He’d tracked his mother’s killer last year. But Blackstone had died of plague before answers were found. The locked chest had vanished with him.
    Charlie was London’s best thief taker, but this was the one mystery he hadn’t yet solved.
    ‘What kind of information?’ he asked.
    ‘Somebody was in here,’ replied the card maker, ‘asking about the symbol on your key.’
    Charlie considered. You didn’t say ‘somebody’ if a man had come looking. And no respectable woman came to a coffee house. Which meant she was a whore. Or a spy.
    The card maker waited hopefully, fingering his hanging pocket.
    ‘I’m listening,’ Charlie decided, withdrawing his outstretched hand.
    ‘There was a girl here,’ said the card maker. ‘Dressed fine, but whorish. Like those who hope to be the King’s mistress. She was asking about the symbol on your key. Drew it with chalk,’ he added.
    Charlie cocked his head thoughtfully.
    ‘Why was she looking for the symbol?’
    ‘I only overheard part,’ admitted the card maker. ‘She was asking about the Magnus Opus. Then she drew your key. Said she was looking for information.’
    ‘The Magnus Opus?’
    ‘It’s an alchemist’s idea,’ said the card maker. ‘Latin. They argue over what it means. An elixir of life, gold from lead.’ He shrugged. ‘Many men are obsessed with its discovery. But she was the first woman I’d heard asking.’
    ‘Pay me half,’ Charlie decided, ‘and tell me where she went.’
    The card maker hesitated. ‘I lost some business with my missing plates. I was hoping . . .’
    ‘Half,’ said Charlie, flexing his fingers meaningfully. He watched as the card maker counted out coins into his hand. Then he looked up expectantly.
    ‘She left with a man,’ said the card maker, as Charlie dropped the coins into his coat.
    ‘She found a man who knew about the symbol?’
    The card maker shook his head.
    ‘He was just some drunk lord. He offered to pay for her . . . her company,’ continued the card maker, making an obscene gesture with his hands.
    ‘And?’
    ‘She accepted. Bartered for a sum that made us whistle. The man suggested they go to Fetter Lane. He said there were rooms there. Rooms where men can . . .’
    ‘I know them,’ interrupted