Smuggler's Moon Read Free Page A

Jeremy?”
    “Yes, Sir John, I—”
    “Where have you
been
, boy?”
    It had also been my experience that when I was addressed as ”lad,” then all was well, but should I be called ”boy,” I was then to expect the worst.
    ”Why, only to the Garden, Sir John. I—”
    “It is not a fit place to spend your time,” said he, interrupting again. ”There are too many of the young criminal element thereabouts. Your friend Bunkins, now that he is reformed, no longer lays about on the steps of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, as he once did. Why, praytell, should you go there, then?”
    “To do the buying for supper—at Clarissa’s request.”
    “What? Oh, I … I …” Taken off guard, he stammered for a moment as he sought to adjust himself. ”But did I not tell you that we were to meet with the Lord Chief Justice this very afternoon?”
    “Yes sir, you said that it was bound to mean trouble. But you did not say at what hour on the clock we were to depart.”
    “Well, never mind that. Did I not say the meeting was to take place in the afternoon?”
    “Yes sir, but—”
    “But me no but’s. Is it not now the afternoon?”
    I sighed. ”Yes, Sir John.”
    “Then let us be off.” He jumped up from the chair where he sat and, feeling about the top of the desk for his hat, he found it and planted it firmly upon his head.
    “I must bring what I have bought to Clarissa,” said I, shifting the packages noisily in my arms.
    “Well, yes, I suppose you must. I shall meet you at the door to the street.”
    “Done,” said I and hastened back down the hall and up the stairs. Yet I found when I reached the top that I could not quite manage the door latch, so full were my hands. I kicked at the door, but it did not budge until, after a brief pause, Clarissa threw it open.
    “Ah, Jeremy, just in time. I’ll need you to peel the potatoes.”
    “Sorry,” said I, pushing past her, ”but I must accompany Sir John to his meeting with Lord Mansfield.”
    I deposited the load in my arms upon the kitchen table, then made for the door.
    “Must I do it all myself?” Clarissa wailed.
    “Why not? Annie managed it so.”
    “Well I know that I’ m
not
Annie. You
needn’t
remind me of my limitations.”
    That I caught just as I started down the stairs.
    “Don’t worry,” I called back to her. ”You’ve hours before dinnertime.”
    By the time I reached the foot of the stairs and spied Sir John waiting by the door, it had occurred to me that I had not passed on to Clarissa the instructions given me by Mr. Tolliver on cooking the stew meat. There simply had not been time for that. Ah well, I assured myself. Lady Fielding had no doubt covered all that earlier. Besides, women knew all about such matters as cooking, didn’t they? It was second nature to them, was it not?
    “You had best fetch us a hackney,” said he to me. ”I have the feeling that we are awaited.”
    Sir John Fielding had often said to others within my hearing, ”If a man lacks one of his senses, then he must compensate by strengthening the other four.” Since he had lost his sight more than three decades before whilst in the Royal Navy, he had so strengthened his smell, touch, taste, and hearing that through them he could perform prodigies of ”seeing” with his blind eyes that astounded all but those who worked by his side each day. And if this were not sufficient, he seemed, during this same period of time, to have developed still another sense nearly as reliable, and even more impressive, than the other four. He would identify a visitor by his knock upon the door, a criminal by the tone of his voice, and who, among a silent dozen, had been discussing him only moments before he entered the room. Therefore, reader, I was inclined to take him quite seriously when he said that he had the feeling that we were awaited. And furthermore, I took it that his tetchiness regardingour departure had to do with his feeling that the meeting ahead was of greater