Free The Masters of Bow Street by John Creasey Page B

muscles could do to shift the wheels.
    But shift them he did - even on that morning.
    It was grey and overcast, with a spit of rain in the air, enough to make one’s clothes damp, one’s hair wet and the cobbles slippery, so that it was difficult to guide the cart. Alone, seen by hundreds and noticed by none, he started the cart moving and was soon at the Bell Hotel, where a porter was waiting to unload; next he made several calls in Covent Garden piazza, going to back entrances and seeing none of the fading splendour.
    By nine o’clock this round was done, and he pushed the empty cart through heavy rain, finding it almost as difficult to control as when it had been full. He was given a cup of thin vegetable soup and was then loaded and sent off again, this time towards Holborn. Horses and carriages splashed mud over him and the canvas sheet covering the packages in the cart and the yoke and baskets, making progress much slower and more difficult. Most of the people at the roadside were bowed against the rain; many brought their capes from their shoulders and covered their heads. The wooden posts driven along the road to separate horse-drawn vehicles and horses from those who walked were bent and broken because of so many accidents. Close to Newgate Street a solitary rider, going much too fast, swung into the path of a coach-and-four coming from Holborn. The driver tried to swing his horses away but the near-side front wheel crunched into one of the posts and a horse squealed as it banged a knee against another post. The rider went on, ignoring the shouts of the driver and passers-by. A crowd soon gathered. At the fringe a boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, with a skeletal face and huge, hungry-looking eyes, darted forward and snatched at the packages beneath James’s canvas, but a man saw him and cuffed him away.
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ James said gratefully.
    ‘They’re thieves before they can walk,’ the man growled. ‘You be careful with your master’s goods, boy.’
    ‘Be sure I shall use my best endeavours, sir.’
    Wherever he went during the next two hours he was haunted by that skeletal face, the hungry eyes, and the venom in the voice of the man who had prevented him from being robbed. Passing a grocer’s shop in Holborn there was a roar of ‘Stop thief!’ and the boy, the same one, came racing out of the shop, the owner or his man rushing after him, but stopping as the rain struck him like a wall of cold water. The little thief got away, hugging a loaf.
    The big man shook his fist and roared: ‘If I catch him he’ll hang as sure as my name’s Jack Roberts!’
    And the child could no doubt be hanged; or might at least be transported.
    James Marshall went on and delivered his goods and walked back a different way from the road he had come. Whenever he could use a different route, or enter a lane or a yard he had never seen before, he would do so even if it meant running part way back to make up for lost time. He had four journeys to make, and whatever time it was when they were done, he could go home.
    Tonight, it was half-past eight. There was still enough strength in his wiry legs to enable him to run through the rain towards his home, and as he was about to turn into the narrow lane, he stopped, despite the rain, and splashed into a puddle where the cobbles had worn thin. For along the street was a rare sight here: a coachman, sitting in his cape and cockaded hat on the high seat of a coach-and-pair. The man stared at him blankly, and James turned into the lane, wondering who had come to see Mr. Leonard, the owner of the house. Once inside, he could hear the rain pelting on the wooden roof and sides, and a stream of water was coming from the landing where a window was broken.
    He opened the door of the larger of the two rooms, and again he stopped, utterly still, more astonished this time than he had been at the sight of the coach-and-pair. For he heard the unmistakable voice of John