Person or Persons Unknown Read Free

to perform both as coroner and as magistrate for an unspecified length of time.”
    “Can you do so much. Sir John?” I asked.
    “Oh, I expect I can,” said he. “I’ve had Mr. Marsden look up the procedures and read them to me, and they are simple enough. Nevertheless, I know how the Lord Chief Justice and his kith handle such appointments, and so long as a matter has been given temporary attention, they are pleased to let it run on indefinitely just so. I have no intention of allowing them to do that in this case. And so, I have set forth conditions. No need to go into them now. What you must know, however, is that these conditions are set out in this letter. Therefore I ask you, Jeremy, to put it directly into the hand of the Lord Chief Justice; if he is not there, then you must wait for him. My letter requires an immediate response — to wit, that he agrees or does not agree to my conditions. Let him write so on my letter — Mr. Marsden informs me that he left room aplenty for just such a brief reply. The point is, you must wait for that, as well. Be insistent. Be a pest, if you must. But bring back a reply.”
    “I shall. Sir John.”
    “Good lad.” He held the sealed letter out to me.
    And yet I hesitated as I took it. “There is but one thing,” said L
    “Oh?”
    “I have been scrubbing stairs up above and am not dressed proper for a visit to the Lord Chief Justice — that is, since I may have to wait for him.”
    “I do not quite understand.”
    “The Lord Chief Justice’s butler will not admit me unless I am dressed in my best.”
    “Oh, he will not, will he? Well …” In this, he sounded an aggressive note. Then, after a pause, he ended in a more conciliatory manner. “Indeed, hmmm, perhaps then you had better change your clothes. Though, I confess I do not like the idea of butlers dictating dress. I do not like the idea of butlers at all. But do be quick about it. I should like this settled as swiftly as possible.”
    With the best of intentions, I set out a short time later for the residence of William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in Bloomsbury Square.
    To my own mind, I looked quite the young gentleman as I turned down New Broad Court. A sudden spurt of growth in the spring had made necessary a new suit of clothes. My Lady Fielding bought quite as wisely and generously for me as she had for her son, Tom, mixing ready-made with cast-offs of good quality — even more generous, indeed, for she had purchased two pairs of ready-made breeches for me, the second of darker and more durable stuff that I might have them for quotidian wear. But as with Tom before me, my great prize was my coat — bottle-green it was, with white trim, and as the seller declared, “Barely worn by him for who it was bespoke.” Who would not feel a proper London gallant in such a coat?
    I had chosen this route in particular, intending to see one on whom I had lately come to dote. I knew her by her Christian name only, and that, she said, was Mariah. I doubt she knew my name at all, though I had given it her. Yet she met so many men each day, talked with them all, had more intimate congress with some — how could she be expected to remember one who would offer her neither money nor clever chit-chat in the mode of the day, but only dumb adulation and tongue-tied fascination?
    It was no more than two weeks ago that I first noticed her. I had stared across a narrow street at her, quite taken by her dark beauty — yet not by that alone, for I was struck direct by the notion that I had seen her before. Oh, I might have done, of course. London was then near as large as it is today, a city of a million or so inhabitants. I knew her to be a girl of the streets, from the way she stood and sought to capture the attention of men passing by. It seemed such as she were without number on this side of the Thames, and most of them right here in and around Covent Garden. Yet the sense of