The Dollar Prince's Wife

Cobie answered him in his most sardonic mode. ‘All of them, sir, all of them. Everything is for sale, including salvation, and may be bought either by money—or by love. If your conscience will not allow you to help such a sinner as I am, then I shall take the child elsewhere to find those who are not so particular, but who will offer us assistance.’

The money was back in his purse and he was striding to the door. Oh, the damnable, monstrous arrogance of him, thought the Captain—but Lizzie’s rescuer had said ‘us’, associating himself with the child, and he would be failing in his Christian duty to refuse her succour because of the nature of the man who was asking for it on her behalf.

He thought that the stranger had a contempt for the whole world—himself included. He must not allow that to sway him. There were two souls to save here—not one. In some fashion it was not the child who had the greater need.

He said to Cobie’s back, ‘Wait one moment. There is a home where I may place her temporarily, where she will be safe. We have a shortage of permanent accommodation.’

‘More fallen sparrows than you can deal with?’

‘If you like.’

‘Then I will make you a proposition. Take Lizzie Steele into your permanent care, and I will give you enough money to buy, equip and maintain a house large enough to give shelter for up to twenty such, where they may be schooled and cared for until they are old enough to make their own way in the world.’

‘Dare I believe that you mean what you say, sir?’

‘No one,’ Cobie told him, and his voice was deadly, ‘has ever had reason to doubt my word, whether what I promise be good or ill.’

‘I must know your name, sir.’

Cobie considered. He had no wish to tell the Captain the one by which high society knew him, but he had never hesitated to use another when it seemed more profitable, or safer, to do so. He did so now.

‘I told Lizzie that I have no name. I was born without one. You and she may call me Mr…’

He hesitated; some freakish whim was urging him to give his true father’s name, Dilhorne. He compromised, finished with a grin, ‘…Mr Dilley. John Dilley.’

The Captain thought that he knew that he was being lied to. He watched Cobie fling the purse back on the table and pull his sketchbook from the poacher’s pocket in his cape.

Cobie began to write in it. He looked up and said, ‘Your name is…?’

The Captain said stiffly, ‘Bristow, Ebenezer Bristow.’

‘Well, Captain Ebenezer Bristow, my man of business will call on you tomorrow. At what time?’

‘I am here from four in the afternoon.’

‘At four-thirty, then. Have some of your financial advisers present. My man will arrange with you whatever needs to be done. The money will come through him. Should you wish to contact me, you will do so through him. You will not attempt to trace me—if you do, you will forfeit what I am offering you. You understand me? I have a mind to be an unknown benefactor.’

He laughed the most mirthless laugh the Captain had ever heard. ‘That is what you will tell your superiors—the money comes from an unknown benefactor.’

He tore out another sheet, wrote on that and thrust it at the Captain.

‘That is for you to keep. You will give it to my man when he calls tomorrow. Now you may tell me where you propose to place Lizzie for the time being—so that I may call on her, and satisfy myself that she is being well treated.’

Stunned by this unexpected bounty, the Captain picked up the paper.

‘Why are you doing this, Mr Dilley?’

‘A whim. Nothing more.’ Cobie was short.

‘And the others? What of them?’

‘What others?’

‘The others mistreated at Madame Louise’s house. Those not so fortunate as Lizzie.’

Cobie’s smile was wolfish. ‘Oh, you must see that I cannot rescue all of them. But those who run the trade there, and those for whom they run it, will I assure you, pay, in one way or another.’

The Captain could not quite believe him. In his world golden young men did not arrive from nowhere, playing at being Nemesis on behalf of stricken children.

‘You must be rich,’ he said at last.

‘Oh, I am,’ Cobie was affable. ‘Most enormously so. Far more than you, or most people, can conceive. Neither Midas nor Croesus could compete with me. And all my own work, too!’

‘Does it not frighten you? Make you unable to fear God, since you can dispose so easily of his creatures?’

‘Oh, no one does that, Captain. No one is disposed of easily. No, I never dispose…I simply give events a push, or a shove. Avalanches start that way. As for fearing God, I gave that up eight years ago when I began to prefer people to fear me… Now I will say goodnight to Lizzie, after you inform me of her destination.’

‘She will be going to a man and wife I know in Bermondsey who care for homeless children. At 21 Sea Coal Street.’

He hesitated. ‘You will be careful with her, I trust. It would be unkind of you to give her expectations beyond the station in life to which it has pleased God to call her.’

‘Believe me, I wouldn’t do that, Captain Bristow, sir,’ Cobie told him, ‘even if God was pleased to place her in a pervert’s power, you may trust me not to do so!’

‘But He sent you to save her.’

The Captain was determined to have the last word, but Mr Dilley was of a different mind.

‘Oh, but think of all those whom He does not save!’

Ebenezer Bristow gave up. Whatever his private thoughts about the man before him, he must not forget that he was offering the Salvation Army a splendid prize.

Cobie saw that Bristow was struggling with his principles. Self-disgust overwhelmed him. It was brutally unfair to taunt a man who had dedicated his life to serving others, particularly when he, Cobie, was dedicated to serving no one but himself.

For the life of him he could not explain the impulse which had led him to snatch from the feral clutches of Sir Ratcliffe Heneage the child who was now being cared for in the other room. Once he had done so, could he live with the knowledge of what was happening in the upper rooms of Madame Louise’s splendid house?

For no reason at all he shivered, shook himself, pulled out his magnificent gold watch, and snapped it open.

‘The hour grows late, I must leave you. Remember, my man will be here tomorrow, so be ready for him. Goodnight to you, sir.’

He turned on his heel and prepared to take his arrogant splendours away with him.

Captain Bristow, possessed by he knew not what, said to Cobie’s retreating back. ‘I bid you have a care, Mr Dilley. Those who fly too near the sun may have their wings burned away. God is not mocked.’

Cobie swung his head round, showed the Captain his splendid teeth, and said softly, ‘Oh, no, Captain, I never thought he was.’

Moorings Halt was exactly as Dinah remembered it: warm in the early afternoon sun, its flower-beds flaming below the enamel notices advertising Mazawattee tea and Swan Ink. The station cat was curled up on one of the green-painted benches. Sanders, the porter, sat in his little sentry-box.

He rose and helped Dinah and her maid, Pearson, to lift her luggage on to the station platform.