The Ruby in the Smoke

  S. Lockhart - the S stood for Sally - stood up behind her cluttered desk; she was a remarkably pretty young woman of twenty-two or so, with blonde hair and deep brown eyes. The old lady took one step into the room, and then hesitated, because standing on the hearth in front of the coal fire was the biggest dog she had ever seen - as black as night and, to judge from its shape, a mixture of bloodhound, Great Dane and werewolf.

  "Down, Chaka," said Sally Lockhart, and the great beast sat peacefully. Its head still came up to her waist. "It's Miss Walsh, isn't it? How do you do?"

  The old lady shook the hand she held out. "Not altogether well," she said.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," said Sally. "Please - sit down."

  She cleared some papers off a chair, and they sat on either side of the fire. The dog lay down and put its head on its paws.

  "If I remember correctly - I'll get the file in a minute - I helped you with some investments last year," Sally said. "You had three thousand pounds - isn't that right? And I advised you to go for shipping."

  "I wish you had not," said Miss Walsh. "I bought shares in a company called Anglo-Baltic, on your recommendation. Perhaps you remember."

  Sally's eyes widened. Miss Walsh, who'd taught geography to hundreds of girls before she retired, and who was a shrewd judge, knew that look well; it was the expression of someone who's made a bad mistake, and has just realized it, and is going to face the consequences without ducking.

  "The Ingrid Linde," said Sally. "Of course... And wasn't there a steamship that sank as well? I remember reading about it in The Times - oh, dear."

  She got up and took a large book of newspaper clippings from the shelf behind her. While she leafed through it, Miss Walsh folded her hands in her lap and looked around the room. It was neat and clean, though the furniture was threadbare and the carpet worn. There was a cheerful fire in the hearth, and a kettle hissing beside it; the books and the files on the shelves, and the map of Europe pinned to the wall gave the place a businesslike look of purpose.

  As for Miss Lockhart, she was looking grim. She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and sat down, book open on her lap.

  "Anglo-Baltic collapsed," she said. "Why didn't I notice...What happened?"

  "You mentioned the Ingrid Linde. There was another ship, a schooner, not a steamship - that was lost too. And a third ship was impounded by the Russian authorities in St Petersburg - I don't know why, but they had to pay an enormous fine to have her released... Oh, there were a dozen things. When you advised me to buy into it, the firm was prospering. I was delighted with your advice. And a year later it was finished."

  "It changed hands, I see. I'm reading this for the first time; I cut out things like this so as to have them for reference, but I don't always have time to read them. Weren't they insured against the loss of the ships?"

  "There was some complication; Lloyds refused to pay out - I didn't understand the details. There was so much bad luck, and so suddenly, that I almost began to believe in curses. In a malevolent fate."

  The old lady was gazing into the fire, holding herself perfectly upright in the worn armchair. Then she looked at Sally again.

  "Of course, I know that's nonsense," she went on more briskly. "Being struck by lightning today doesn't prevent you from being struck again tomorrow; I'm quite familiar with the theory of statistics. But it's hard to keep a clear head when your money is vanishing and you can neither see why nor prevent it. I've got nothing left now but a tiny annuity. That three thousand pounds was a legacy from my brother and a lifetime's savings."

  Sally opened her mouth to speak, but Miss Walsh held up her hand and went on:

  "Now please understand, Miss Lockhart, I do not blame you. If I choose to speculate with my money, I have to take the risk that I shall lose it. And at the time, Anglo-Baltic was an excellent investment. I came to you in the first place on the recommendation of Mr Temple the lawyer, of Lincoln's Inn, because I have a lifetime's interest in the emancipation of women, and nothing pleases me more than to see a young lady such as yourself earning a living in this enterprising way. So I come to you again to ask for your advice: is there anything I can do to recover my money? I strongly suspect, you see, that it's not bad luck; it's fraud."

  Sally put her book of clippings down on the floor, and reached for a pencil and a notebook.

  "Tell me everything you know about the firm," she said.

  Miss Walsh began. She had a clear mind, and the facts were marshalled tidily. There weren't many of them; living as she did in Croydon, with no connections with the world of business, she'd had to rely on what she could gather from the newspapers.

  Anglo-Baltic had been founded twenty years before, she reminded Sally, to profit from the timber trade. It had grown modestly but steadily, and carried furs and iron ore as well as timber from the Baltic ports, and machine tools and other industrial products from Britain.

  Two years before it had been taken over, Miss Walsh thought, or bought out - could that happen? She wasn't sure - by one of the original partners, after a dispute. The firm had leapt ahead, like a locomotive when the brakes were taken off; new ships were ordered, new contracts were found, a North Atlantic connection was built up. Profits rose remarkably in the first year under the new management, which was what had persuaded Miss Walsh - and hundreds of others - to invest.

  And then came the first of the apparently unconnected blows which had brought the company to liquidation in just as short a time. MissWalsh had details of them all, and Sally was impressed again by the old lady's command of the facts - and of herself, because it was clear that she was now on the brink of poverty, having expected to live out her retirement in modest comfort.

  Towards the end of Miss Walsh's account, the name Axel Bellmann came into the story, and Sally looked up.

  "Bellmann?" she said. "The match manufacturer?"

  "I don't know what else he is," said Miss Walsh. "He didn't have any great connection with the company; I happened to see his name in a newspaper article. I think he owned the cargo the Ingrid Linde was carrying when it sank. She sank. I could never get used to calling them she, could you? Some kind of machinery. Why do you ask? Do you know of this Mr Bellman? Who is he?"

  "The richest man in Europe," said Sally.

  Miss Walsh sat silently for a moment.

  "Lucifers," she said. "Phosphorus matches."

  "That's right. He made his fortune in the match trade, I believe... Though there was some kind of scandal, now I think of it; I heard some gossip a year ago, when he first appeared in London. The Swedish government closed his factories down because of the dangerous working conditions in them -"

  "Girls with necrosis of the jaw," said Miss Walsh. "I've read about them, poor things. There are some wicked ways of making money. Did my money go into that, then?"

  "As far as I know, Mr Bellmann's been out of the match business for some time. And we don't know of his connection with Anglo-Baltic anyway. Well, Miss Walsh, I'm grateful to you. And I can't tell you how sorry I am. I'm going to get that money back--"

  "Now don't say that," said Miss Walsh, in the sort of tone she must have used to frivolous girls who imagined they could pass examinations without working for them. "I don't want promises, I want knowledge. I very much doubt whether I shall ever see that money again, but I am curious to know where it's gone, and I am asking you to find out for me."

  Her manner was so severe that most girls would have quailed. But Sally wasn't like that - which was why Miss Walsh had come to her in the first place - and she said hotly: "When someone comes to me for financial advice, I don't find it acceptable that I should lose all their money for them. And I don't want to be patronized when it happens. This is a blow to me, Miss Walsh, as much as it is to you. It's your money, but it's my name, my reputation, my livelihood... I intend to look into the affairs of Anglo-Baltic and see what happened and if it's humanly possible I shall recover your money and give it back to you. And I very much doubt whether you'd refuse to
take it."

  There was a glacial silence from the old lady, and a look that spoke thunder; but Sally sat firm and stared her out. After a moment or two a twinkling warmth appeared in Miss Walsh's eyes and she tapped her fingers together.

  "Quite right too," she said.

  And they both smiled.

  The tension passed out of the room, and Sally got up to tidy her notes away.

  "Would you care for some coffee?" she said. "It's rather primitive to make it on the fire, but it tastes all right."

  "I'd like that very much. We always used to make coffee on the fire when we were students - I haven't done it for many, many years. May I help?"

  And within five minutes they were talking like old friends. The dog was woken and made to move out of the way, the coffee was brewed and poured out, and Sally and Miss Walsh discovered that companionship which only women who'd had to struggle for an education could experience. Miss Walsh had taught at the North London Collegiate College, but she had never taken a degree; nor had Sally, for that matter, although she had studied at Cambridge, taken the examination, and done well in it. The university let women do that much; it just didn't give them degrees.

  But Sally and Miss Walsh agreed that the time would come ... though it was hard to say when.

  Eventually Miss Walsh stood up to go and Sally noticed her neatly darned gloves, the frayed hem of her coat, and the brightly polished old boots, now badly in need of resoling. It had been more than money she'd lost - it had been the chance of living in modest comfort and without worry after a lifetime of helping others. Sally looked at her and saw how, despite her age and anxiety, the old lady's posture was firm and straight and dignified, and found herself standing more straightly too.

  They shook hands, and Miss Walsh turned to the dog, which had risen to sit up expectantly when Sally stood.

  "What an extraordinary beast," she said. "Did I hear you call him Chaka?"

  "Chaka was a Zulu General," Sally explained. "It seemed appropriate. He was a present; weren't you, boy? He was born in a circus, I believe."

  She rubbed his ears affectionately, and the great animal turned and licked her hand with an enveloping tongue, his black eyes glowing with adoration.

  Miss Walsh smiled. "I'll send on all the documents I've got," she said. "I'm most grateful to you, Miss Lockhart."

  "I haven't done anything yet except lose your money for you," said Sally. "And it might turn out to be no more than it seems - things often do. But I'll see what I can find out."

  Sally's background was unusual, even for one who lived an unusual life, as she did. She had never known her mother, and her father (a military man) had taught her a great deal about firearms and finance, and very little about anything else. When she was sixteen he had been murdered, and she found herself drawn into a web of danger and mystery. Only her skill with a pistol had saved her - that, and a chance meeting with a young photographer called Frederick Garland.

  Together with his sister, Frederick had been running their uncle's photographic business but, for all his skill with a camera, he was quite unable to manage the financial side of it. They were on the verge of ruin when Sally appeared alone, and in deadly danger. In exchange for their help, she took over the running of the business, and her skill with book-keeping and accounts had saved them from bankruptcy.

  The business had prospered. Now they employed half a dozen assistants, and Frederick was able to turn his attention to private detection, where his real interest lay. In this he was helped by another old friend of Sally's - a boy called Jim Taylor, who'd been an office boy in her father's firm, with a taste for sensational novels of the sort known as Penny Dreadfuls, and who had the most scurrilous tongue in the City. He was two or three years younger than Sally. In the course of their first adventure he and Frederick had fought, and killed, the most dangerous thug in London. They'd both been nearly killed themselves in the process, but each of them knew that he could rely on the other to the death.

  The three of them - Sally and Fred and Jim - shared a great deal. Frederick would have been willing to share more. He was quite frank; he was in love with her, he always had been, he wanted to marry her. Her feelings were more complicated. There were times when she felt she adored him, that no one could be more fascinating and brilliant and brave and funny, and times when she felt furious at him for wasting his talents fiddling with bits of machinery, or disguising himself and prowling about London with Jim, or generally behaving like a little boy who didn't know how to occupy himself. As far as love was concerned, if she loved anyone it was Fred's uncle, Webster Garland, officially her partner in the photographic business: a gentle untidy genius who could create extraordinary poetry out of light and shade and human expression. Webster Garland, and Chaka: yes, she loved them. And she loved her work.

  But Fred - well she'd never marry anyone else; but she wouldn't marry him. Not until the Married Women's Property Act was passed.

  It wasn't that she didn't trust him, she'd said a hundred times it was a matter of principle. That one moment she could be independent, a partner in a business, with money and property that was her own; and the next, after a clergyman had pronounced them married, every single thing that was hers should become (in the eyes of the law) her husband's instead - that was intolerable. Frederick protested in vain, offered to draw up legal agreements swearing that he'd never touch her property, begged and pleaded and got angry and threw things and then laughed at himself and at her: no good. She wouldn't budge.

  As a matter of fact, it wasn't as simple as she claimed. There had been a Married Women's Property Act passed in 1870, which had removed some of the injustices, though not the worst ones; but Frederick knew nothing of the law, and didn't know that Sally's property could legally remain hers, under certain conditions. But because Sally was uncertain of her feelings, she stuck to this principle - and rather dreaded the passing of a new Act, since it would force her to decide one way or the other.

  Recently this had led to a quarrel and a coolness between them, and they hadn't spoken to or seen each other for weeks. She'd been surprised to find how much she missed him. He'd be just the person to talk to about this Anglo-Baltic business...

  She cleared away the coffee-cups, rattling them crossly as she thought of his flippancy, his facetiousness, his straw-coloured hair. Let him come to her first; she had real work to do.

  And with that, she settled down at the desk with her clippings book and began to read about Axel Bellmann.

  Extracts from

  DICKENS'S DICTIONARY

  OF

  LONDON,

  1879.

  AN UNCONVENTIONAL HANDBOOK.

  During the 1870s the son of Charles Dickens, who was also called Charles, compiled a fascinating guide to Victorian London, which Philip Pullman found invaluable when writing The Ruby in the Smoke.

  Bohemia. - It was for a long time the favourite theory among London writers on this subject, that to be a true Bohemian it was necessary to be drunken, disorderly, dirty, and dissipated. In process of time the London writer's type of Bohemian changed. Cleanliness, order, a respect for the outward observances of society, combined with an absolute disregard of every moral law and obligation, has been held up in many recent novels as the qualifications of a genuine Bohemian. Both these monsters, who have usually been described as belonging to the literary, artistic or dramatic professions, are far from representing the truth. Bohemianism may be said to be confined to no district, to no profession, and to no class. Your true Bohemian has emancipated himself from conventionalities and shams, and does his own work in his own way; neither seeking nor wishing, on the one hand, to interfere with his fellow-creatures who may hold different views, nor allowing, on the other, any undue interference with his own actions. In fact, it may boldly be said that tolerance and charity are among the leading characteristics of Bohemia.

  Docks. - The London dock system - the largest in the world - is entirely, or almost entirely, the growth of the present ce
ntury. The small basin, still known as the Greenland-dock, and forming one of the minor dependencies of the great Commercial-dock system, was in existence so long ago as 1660, when its tree-planted banks, snug little shady warehouses, and general easy going arrangement, must have been at least pleasanter, if not more profitable, than the relentless grind and scramble of the vast system of the present day, At this moment the docks of London cover a space of about 600 acres, and extend in an almost unbroken series from the Tower to Galleons-reach, beyond Woolwich.

  EAST AND WEST INDIA-DOCKS. - Before the repeal of the monopolies granted to the companies, these docks were exclusively devoted to the reception of ships trading from the East and West Indies. Since that date no restriction of the business of the port has applied. The dock company takes any business it can get. As might be expected, the exclusive location of the West India trade at the West India-docks for a period of twenty-one years, caused that trade to take so firm a hold up on those premises that the bulk of the importations from that part of the world is still directed there. This is particularly the case as regards the articles of sugar and rum - of rum especially. A very large proportion of the East India and China trade is directed to these docks, as is also the greater part of the Australian trade. The mahogany trade of the Port of London is exclusively centred here, and the same may be said as regards the importations of teak. The wool business of the company, for which extensive warehouses have been erected at the South West India-dock, is another feature. The premises of the company in town are very extensive, including the large warehouses in Fenchurch-street, Crutched Friars, Jewry-street, and Billiter-street. At Fenchurch-street and Jewry-street the cigar and indigo trade of the company is centred; the warehouses at Crutched Friars are for tea, and those at Billiter-street for feathers, spices, ivory, and china-ware, of which beautiful specimens are occasionally to be seen.

  Dress. - If all you care about is not to be stared at, you may now walk about most parts of London in any ordinary English costume. If, however, you wish to go into the park during parade hours in the season, to the "Zoo" on Sunday afternoons, the Horticultural Gardens, or any other fashionable resort, gloves, chimney-pot hat, orthodox morning coat, &c., are still essential. If you have business to transact you will find it also an advantage to be got up in conventional style. Evening dress is not de rigueur in any part of any of the theatres, though on the whole it predominates in the stalls. Don't wear a scarlet opera-cloak, however, if you can help it. It is commonly regarded by the initiated as strong evidence that its owner has come in with an "order". Ladies frequent the stalls as much as any other part. At the Italian operas evening dress is indispensable in every part except gallery. This rule is rigorously enforced to the smallest detail, and it is hopeless to think of evading it. If, however, you have no dress suit of your own, and do not object to wearing other people's, there are shops, in King-street, Covent-garden, Chandos-street, and elsewhere, where you can hire for the night. The usual prices are, for hire for the day, coat, 5s. ; vest, 2s. ; trousers, 3s. ; overcoat, 5s. Black suits are let for funerals at similar prices, and umbrellas at 2s.6d. per day. Of course, a deposit of the value of the articles has to be left during the hiring.