A black carriage came down Whitmore Lane and stopped at the cottage at the end of it, where the cobbles gave out into wet fields. Its lacquered panels threw back the light of its own lamps. Four bay horses snorted steam into the November air and stamped against the cobblestones. The harness leather creaked. Two brass carriage lamps burned through the fog and threw light across cracked limestone walls, and the fog came apart in slow rolls where the horses breathed into it.
Arthur Lafferty put his eye to a gap in the warped shutters. A cloaked figure was climbing down from the driver’s bench. Inside the carriage, behind the window glass, sat a second man in formal morning dress. Lafferty’s fingers closed around the iron poker he kept beside the door.
The first knock moved the door in its frame and shook grit down from the lintel.
Lafferty opened it the width of one bloodshot eye. “You’ve come to the wrong address,” he called through the gap. “Return to wherever you came from.”
The cloaked figure raised his lantern. “You are Arthur Lafferty, are you not?”
The poker clattered to the floor. “I am Arthur Lafferty,” he said, and pushed his hands into the pockets of his patched wool coat.
“The attorney?”
“Yes, but I don’t try cases,” Lafferty said. It was his standard disclaimer, offered alike to strangers, clients, and creditors.
The coachman withdrew a black metal rod from his cloak and flicked his wrist. The rod telescoped out into a switch the length of a buggy whip. The crack came back off the cottage wall a half second later, and a dog began barking somewhere out in the fields.
The carriage door opened and the formally dressed man stepped down. His pinstriped morning coat showed no wrinkle from the journey. A gray silk cravat encircled his throat. A black top hat sat level on his narrow skull. Under his left arm he carried a leather valise stamped with the letter H above an engraved hammer wreathed in smoke.
He crossed the uneven stones in a straight line, his polished boots striking each one with the same force, and halted two yards from Lafferty. His heels clicked together.
“I am Mr. Charles Carrington,” he announced. “Attaché to Lord Hephaestus, proprietor of Hephaestus Blacksmith and Optical Instruments. I am at your service.”
Whitmore Lane at that hour smelled of wet ash, boiled cabbage, and the ditch behind the fields. His facial topography glared with gravestone eyes locked in canyons of cold contempt, and he kept them on Lafferty’s face.
“I’ve purchased nothing,” Lafferty said. “There must be a second Arthur Lafferty. It’s a common enough name.”
Carrington raised one gloved hand. Behind him a third man came out of the fog, a workman in brown corduroy and a canvas apron, carrying a polished oak box level in both hands and watching the box instead of the ground.
The workman set the box down on a cracked stepping stone. From his vest pocket Carrington produced a small purse of amber silk with a golden drawstring. The outline of a key showed through the fabric. He handed it to the workman, who took out a pewter key and unlocked the brass fittings.
Inside, on royal blue velvet, lay a cylindrical case of reptilian leather. Ivory beads formed zigzag patterns across its surface. Brass buckles secured the closure. It was about eighteen inches long.
The workman lifted the case by its strap and held it out. Thunder rolled off toward the Liffey. The horses pulled against their traces and the lamp flames leaned over inside their glass.
Lafferty kept his hands where they were. “If this is a delivery, I’ll want to see the invoice. I can’t accept goods I haven’t the means to pay for.”
“There is no invoice,” said Carrington.
“Then a receipt. Something I might sign, stating the condition it arrived in. If the contents prove damaged, I won’t be held -“
“There is no receipt.”
The case hung in the air between them. The workman’s left eye twitched.
Lafferty took it in both hands. “I’ll not be the man who drops it,” he said.
The leather was warm despite the November cold, and the ivory beads clicked against each other.
