the corner shop. The unknown shadow was perhaps fifteen steps behind him. Sebastian could hear the man pick up his pace lest he lose his quarry.
He came around the corner quickly, a man with several days’ worth of grizzled beard on his face and the pasty flesh and bloodshot eyes of someone who spends too much time in gin shops. Stepping away from the wall, Sebastian grabbed the man by the arm and shoulder to swing him around and slam him face-first against the bricks.
“’Oly ’ell!” yelped the man, his head craning around sideways, eyes wide as he attempted to see who’d grabbed him. “Wot’d ye want to go and do that fer?”
Sebastian tightened his hold on the man’s arm and bent it back at an awkward angle. “You’re following me.”
“Oy! That ’urts, it does.”
“Why are you following me?”
“She said ye wanted t’ talk t’ me. Never said nothin’ about ye meybe manhandlin’ me.”
“Who? Who said I wanted to talk to you?”
“Miss Grace.”
“Grace Calhoun sent you?”
“Aye. Said ye wanted t’ know ’bout the nob what got shipped off t’ Botany Bay back in ’ninety-six.”
Sebastian took a step back and let the man go. “You’re the cracksman?”
The man turned cautiously to face him, then set about straightening his clothes with a calm dignity. “Not anymore. Cain’t hold it against a feller wot ’e did in ’is salad days, now, can ye?”
“And what do you do now?”
“Got me a dolly shop in Cheapside, I do. Down by St. Mary-le-Bow.”
A dolly shop was—ostensibly—a pawnshop. But most dolly-shop owners were also to some extent fences. “So you’ve graduated from theft to receiving, have you?”
The man looked affronted. “Me? No. Never.”
“Right. What’s your name?”
The former housebreaker snatched off his hat and clutched it to his chest with a bobbing little bow. “Tintwhistle. Mott Tintwhistle, at yer service.”
Sebastian eyed the man’s haggard, lined face. “How good is your memory, Mr. Tintwhistle?”
The retired cracksman wet his lips with his tongue. “Works better wit a few quid and meybe a bit o’ Blue Ruin t’ lubricate things.”
“That can be arranged.”
* * *
They retreated to the George and Dragon at the corner of Bond and Brook streets, where Sebastian bought a bottle of brandy and two glasses from the stunned barman and retreated to a dark corner lit by a guttering candle.
“Now, tell me how you came to know Nicholas Hayes,” said Sebastian, splashing alcohol into the glasses.
Mott Tintwhistle threw back his shot and smacked his lips. “Right good stuff, this. Better’n Blue Ruin any day.”
Sebastian poured the man another generous measure. “Nicholas Hayes.”
“Aye.” Tintwhistle pursed his mouth and took a more judicious sip. “’E was staying at the Red Lion in them days, ye see.”
“Yes.”
A strange, faraway light shone in the cracksman’s eyes. “Miss Grace, she’s a fine-lookin’ woman yet today. But twenty years ago, she was somethin’ else, I’m tellin’ ye. Reckon we wuz all more’n a bit in love wit ’er.”
Sebastian took a slow sip of his own brandy. “Yes?” he prompted when the man paused as if momentarily lost in thoughts of the past.
Tintwhistle swiped a hand across his mouth and took another drink. “Well, when she asked me t’ ’elp that young nob, I done it.”
“Grace Calhoun asked you to help Nicholas Hayes?”
“Aye.”
A vague suspicion was beginning to form in Sebastian’s mind. But all he said was “So you broke into the Earl of Seaforth’s house?”
“Me? No. I jist ’elped that young gentleman get into ’is da’s ’ouse and take wot was ’is t’ take. That’s all.”
“Hayes was with you?”
Tintwhistle nodded. “Normally I liked to work alone, ye see. But that young nob, ’e insisted on comin’ in wit me.”
“I suspect he wanted to maintain control over what you lifted.”
Mott Tintwhistle gave a heavy sigh of longing undiminished by the passage of years. “Wouldn’t let me take nothin’. Coulda been set fer life, I coulda, if I’d ’ad me way.”
“So what did you take?”
“Next t’ nothin’! ’E wanted me t’ break into a strongbox in the old man’s library. Like somethin’ out o’ the Dark Ages, it was, covered wit strips o’ iron and bolted t’ the floor in a cupboard. When I first seen it, I says, ‘Jig’s up, me lad; I ain’t clever enough t’ git us into that. I’ve heard o’ these things, and they take one o’ them fancy keys ye gotta insert jist right.’ But ’e says no, it’s all a hum, that what looks like a keyhole is jist fer show. And then ’e slides away this bit