I have seen men abuse their servants, treat them no better than animals, but there was a cruelty here that made me wish to strike back. What have I set in motion? I wondered, as I glanced over at Dogmill’s hard face. But I never once considered changing my plans. Dogmill, in all likelihood, had murdered Walter Yate and ordered matters so I would hang for his crime. He might kick every servant in the kingdom before I would run away from him.

“Well, then,” Hertcomb said, “I’ll be off, shall I?”

Dogmill waved a hand dismissively and shut the door behind him. He then gestured for me to sit with an impatient flick of the hand. “As to my sister,” he said, as though we had been before in the midst of a conversation, “do not think to take her prattlings as anything but silly nonsense got from reading too many romances. She speaks thus to everyone and creates all manner of mischief in doing so, but she is a good girl all the same. She is a very good girl, and a man ought never to be caught by me in a mistaken notion concerning her. If you think that because you’re a gentleman I’ll treat you better than my manservant, you shall be unpleasantly surprised. I spare nothing to propriety where the welfare of my sister is concerned.”

There was a tenderness in his voice I found surprising, and though I liked Miss Dogmill, I thought that her brother’s affection for her might be a means of exploitation. “I promise your foot shall have no need to seek my arse,” I said. “I found Miss Dogmill to be delightful company and nothing more.”

He smacked his lips together. “I never asked that you evaluate my sister’s company, and your opinion of it cannot be relevant to whatever business you bring here. Now, what is it I can help you with, Mr. Evans?”

I told him what I had told his sister- viz., that I was newly arrived and in the tobacco trade.

“Jamaica tobacco is not fit for a dog. And I have never heard your name before, even in the context of foul Jamaica weed. Who is your purchasing agent?”

“Mr. Archibald Laidlaw in Glasgow,” I told him promptly, making use of the name Elias had provided in the fictitious biography he had penned. I was grateful both that he had produced a document of such detail and that I had taken the trouble to read it carefully. I cannot say how I would have hummed and hawed otherwise. “I do not know if his reputation has extended so far south, but I am told he is of some importance in North Britain.”

Dogmill turned as red as a Norfolk apple. “Laidlaw!” he cried. “The man is nothing but a pirate. He sends his own cutters to meet his ships when they are still at sea and unloads them there- all to escape the Customs.”

Strong words, I thought, considering what Mendes had told me of Dogmill’s own practices. Yet I knew well that men can see the faults in others far more easily than they can in themselves.

“I have never met him and know nothing of his practices. I am merely used to selling him my goods.”

“You ought,” he said, “to sell your goods to a better man, and you ought to make a habit of learning the nature of the men with whom you trade.” Here was something else. Though I sat more than six feet away from him, I realized that I felt a sudden and unexpected flash of fear for my safety. I was not used to being afraid of other men, but there was something about the way he sat, his muscles gone taut, that made him seem like a barrel of gunpowder on the verge of ignition.

I should not get what I wanted from him if he sensed my anxiety, so I offered a warm smile, the smile of a merchant who cares only for his trade. “You are certainly right, sir. I have often found it hard to find a purchasing agent in London, where the docks are full of the tobaccos of Virginia and Maryland. It is for that reason, now I am arrived here, that I thought of setting myself upon such a trade. As you are well known as the most respected purchasing agent in the city for tobacco, I had hoped I might impose on you for some advice on navigating the waters of such a business.”

Dogmill had begun to redden again. “Mr. Evans, I cannot say how affairs are conducted in Jamaica or in any of His Majesty’s other primitive domains, but I can assure you that in London it is no common thing for a man to provide the secrets of his business to a competitor. Did you believe you would walk in here and I would instruct you on how to take money from my own pocket?”

“I had not thought of it in those terms,” I said. “I know you do not trade in Jamaica tobacco, so I did not consider myself a competitor.”

“I do not trade in Jamaica tobacco because it is ghastly, and I do my utmost to keep it from the ports of London because it is so devilish cheap. I am afraid you will get no help here.”

“If you will but give me a moment to explain myself further,” I began.

“I have given you too many minutes. Perhaps you are unaware of it, but in this country we have a regular institution known as Parliamentary elections, and as I am the election agent for Mr. Hertcomb, whom you have just met, my time is shorter than that to which even I am used. I must therefore bid you a good day.”

I rose and bowed very slightly. “I thank you for what time you have granted me,” I said.

“Yes, yes,” he answered, and turned to some pages on his desk.

“I should add, sir, that your words are not offered in the spirit of brotherhood. You say that you don’t know how we do business in Jamaica, so I will take one more instant of your time to inform you that in Jamaica men of a particular trade, even those whom we might regard as competitors, as you so style it, know the value of the trade itself over the interests of any one man in it.”

This was all rubbish, of course. I knew no more how men conducted business in Jamaica than how they conduct business in the most hidden depths of Abyssinia, but I found myself warming to my performance and was of no mind to do anything but indulge myself.

“We work together to strengthen the trade before we work apart to line our pockets,” I continued, “and this manner of doing business has served us very well.”

“Yes, yes,” he said once more. His pen scratched away at his paper.

“I have heard that your trade has dropped off somewhat since your father’s time, sir. I wonder if perhaps a more open disposition might not help you to restore your family to the pinnacle of its glory.”

Dogmill did not look up, but he ceased his writing. I could see that I had stuck him in his tenderest part, and I could hardly keep from smiling at the trueness of my aim. I might have left then, but I was not quite ready.

“Can it be that there is something else, Mr. Evans?” he asked.

“One more thing,” I admitted. “Would you have any objections to my calling upon your sister?”

He studied me for a moment. “Yes,” he said at last. “I would object most assuredly.”