“We have been over this before. That Jack has a spy in Threader’s retinue I am willing to believe. But to say Mr. Threader himself is a hashishin is absurd!”

“Did you mark how quiet he was just now?”

“You call it quiet. I call it asleep. We have all been awake thirty-six hours!”

“You have learned from Arlanc how Jack builds power: he wheedles a small favor from someone, then comes back again asking for a larger one, and so on, until that person is ensnared, and has lost the power to refuse. Is it so difficult to believe that such a thing could have happened to an inveterate Weigher such as Mr. Threader?”

“I will consider it,” Daniel said, “on the condition that you will entertain another, just as repugnant possibility: that the Royal Society harbors another, of infinitely higher rank than Henry Arlanc, who is working in league with Jack the Coiner.”

“I CAME AS SOON AS I COULD.”

Daniel thought this very like Isaac: to open the conversation by defending himself against imagined allegations of tardiness. Since Daniel was the only man in the room (Saturn’s clock-shop along Coppice Row), some might see it as an excess of caution; but when you were him you could never be too sure.

“Stunning alacrity is the phrase I should have used to describe your response to my message,” Daniel assured him. “I did not expect you for another hour, and do not expect the rest of the Clubb to show up at all.”

In case Daniel’s reassurances were not in good faith, Isaac went on to bolster his rebuttal. “Some kind of storm has broken over the Court of St. James today. The Quality are all out in the streets-it is as if, at some moment in the middle of the day, every courtier and politician in London suddenly decided he was in the wrong place.”

“That is not a bad description of what happened.”

“I was at the Royal Society, going over some documents relating to Leibniz, and when I received your note, I found it nearly impossible to get out onto Fleet Street. At first I feared the Queen must have died; but the bells do not toll for her.”

“I know a few things about what happened at St. James’s today,” Daniel said, “but as you came hither, instead of going thither, I presume you are more concerned with happenings at Newgate.”

“When did he escape?” Isaac asked.

“Sometime during the night. Mr. Partry is there now, interviewing the gaolers.”

“As we could not trust Mr. Partry to keep Mr. Arlanc in the gaol, I see no reason to entrust him with further responsibilities.”

“It was not his task to keep Arlanc at Newgate but to deliver him there-which he did. There, the chains that Partry had put on him were removed, and replaced by much heavier ones, as is the usual practice of the gaolers.”

“It is also their usual practice to accept money to replace those heavy chains with lighter ones.”

“Indeed. After Arlanc had spent a night heavily ironed in the Condemned Hold, he got a new set of chains, which were so light as to be mere tokens, and he was moved-”

“To the Press-yard and Castle!?” Isaac shook his head, and turned his gaze to the traffic moving down Coppice Row. “Someone-obviously Jack, or one of his agents-came in and spread some money round the gaolers, then. They gave him a pleasant flat for a night and then looked the other way as he slid down a drainpipe. I should have anticipated it.”

“Perhaps the reason you did not, was that it does not really matter.”

“I serve under a solemn Indenture, Daniel. To me, the administration of Justice always matters.”

“Let me say it otherwise, then. All that was left in Arlanc’s future was punishment. We should not have gotten any more information from him. This much was obvious. So the tedious business of looking after his incarceration and trial moved to the back of your mind. As it did to mine.”

Both men now saw through the window Peter Hoxton and Sean Partry. They had been coming up Coppice Row from the general direction of Newgate. Saturn was walking in the lead, breaking a trail through the traffic, almost all of which was moving the opposite way.

This was Tuesday. Friday was a Hanging-Day at Tyburn. The streets would be impassable then, and on Thursday. Meat that was brought into the city on the hoof today or tomorrow would fetch a good price later in the week; accordingly, every few minutes a drover would come by, moving a small herd of doomed cattle down towards Smithfield. So the usual traffic of hay-wains, manure-carts, and holiday-makers coming back down from the open swales to the north of town, had to be crammed into the intervals between these herds. Northbound pedestrians, such as Saturn and Sean Partry, had a bad time of it. They entered the shop in a choleric mood, smelling of all the cow-shit they’d been forced to step in. But compared to Newgate this smelled like the gardens of Shalimar.

“There is not a man at Newgate but will aver that the disappearance of Henry Arlanc is a bottomless mystery,” Partry announced, with no preliminaries. “From which you may assume-as you likely have done already-that it was arranged by that infamous Black-guard Jack Shaftoe.”

“It was not worth your going to Newgate to collect that intelligence,” said Newton, who might have been getting ready to accuse Partry of padding his bill.

But Partry was too quick for him. “In attending so keenly to Arlanc, Jack has forgotten about another inmate, scheduled to be drawn and quartered on Friday, whose testimony might be more useful to the Clubb, and more damaging to Jack, than that of Arlanc.”

“Ah, you are speaking of that man who was convicted of coining some weeks ago, and whom you were planning to approach this week. I had quite forgotten about him,” said Daniel.

“Do not punish yourself, Doc, for Jack has forgotten about him, too, and therein lies our opportunity.”

“I have never heard of him,” Isaac protested.

“You’d know his name, if I spoke it,” Partry assured him, “he was caught up in one of your coining investigations some time ago, and duly convicted. But he made me swear I’d not reveal his name, and so you’ll not know who he is until Thursday evening, at the Black Dogg, in the cellar of Newgate Prison.”

“And then he shall be willing to talk to us of Jack?”

“Yes, sir-provided you come with guineas to put in his pockets.”

“A gratuity for Jack Ketch so that this coiner shall die a swift merciful death the next day at Tyburn. It shall not be the first time I have enriched Mr. Ketch thus, to further my pursuit of bigger game,” Isaac said, in a tone of exhausted resignation.

At this Partry nodded, and seemed satisfied-but only for an instant, because Daniel pulled him up short with a warning look, and a shake of the head. “Hold,” he said, “the transaction as you have set it forth won’t do.”

“What do you mean it won’t do?” asked Partry.

“Pray make yourself comfortable here, Mr. Partry,” said Daniel, moving toward the back door, and staring at Isaac until Isaac noticed, and began staring back. “Or down the street at the pub, if you please. I must go for a stroll with Sir Isaac, and discuss with him certain complications.”

Partry chewed his tongue for a few beats, and answered: “I shall husband my energies for yet another journey to Newgate and back. I wish you a pleasant stroll and a non-fatal.”

“I’ll see to the latter,” offered Saturn, and followed Daniel and Isaac out the back into the Court of Technologickal Arts.

“WHAT IS IT YOU WISH to shew me here?”

It was necessary for Isaac to ask this, for as always the Court was a riot of invention. One of Mr. Newcomen’s acolytes had come out from Devon with parts of an Engine, which had lately been put together in the middle of the yard to form a great smoking and steaming, sucking and thrashing terror, thronged with grimy admirers. In another corner, Mr. Hauksbee was trying out a new and yet more dangerous spark-maker, which had drawn in those few who were not fascinated by the Engine.