The letter comes when Oliver's near to abandoning the hope that one, or something like it, might. Not by the letter-carrier; both Mrs Phillips and Sarah are certain, when he asks each of them, that there was no knock, and that it was put through the door by persons unknown at some time between the five-thirty and six-thirty deliveries or one of them would have seen it sooner. The envelope is addressed informally, and not in a hand that he's ever seen, but the implications of that alone make him hasty to see the contents. It could, in all likelihood, be no more than a plea from a current or prospective patient, but an odd curl of tension in his stomach, like the momentary awakening of a sixth sense, seems to tell him that that isn't so. He takes it to the fireside in the drawing room to peruse carefully and at length. To his surprise, the note, directed to Dr Oliver BROWNLOW, with the Brownlow capitalized and underscored as if poking a little fun, has not much length to peruse.

Sir!

Lamb & Lark inn Aldersgate St is given good custom by one GENTLEMAN by name of Jack Dawkins. Suggest that you visit late on a Monday evening or a Friday same if you still wish to find your ACQUAINTANCE.

Oliver's put in mind of the way that the old-time broadsheets referred to a victim as 'a man', and the highway robber as 'a gentleman'. He turns the paper over and about several times, looking for some more explicit clue, but at last finds himself admitting defeat and not feeling overly sore about it. He has a place and, roughly, a time; the wherewithal to find Jack, rather than having to wait to be found, and for that he's grateful, suddenly more profoundly so than he knows how to express.

A friend, he had said to Sarah. When he repeats it to himself, it feels distinctly lacking, but he's at a loss as to what other term to use when Jack had never, until their last meeting, directly invited him to do so. Yet the question of what that more might mean now fascinates him, as if he had needed the possibility to be physically demonstrated to him. The days of curious showings and examinings between schoolmates hardly counting, Oliver's discreet sexual encounters have been purely with women, yet he's fairly aware of what occurs between men. That Jack has no objection whatsoever to the latter and has become frustrated enough to press the point seems obvious, but Oliver's still unsure of what degree to answer to. Their tie is one that they forged as boys, but that is now touched with men's understanding. He sits for a long time in the quietness, listening to the intermittent thump and chime of the clock, until Sarah comes in to light the gas, and he realizes that the light has faded and the room is becoming lost in shadows.

The fog lifts fractionally at the start of the week, as if in conjunction with Oliver's mood, the outlines of the city beginning to reappear. The weather is chill but bright during the day, with a little breeze blowing about, and when evening falls, the darkness has somewhat less of the murkish quality of past days. He travels through Holborn and past the twin sentinels of St Sepulchre's church on the north side and Newgate on the south, the one long accustomed to acting as gloomy messenger for the other. It's at St Sepulchre's that the great bell is sounded to mark a prisoner's end, and from the same church comes the clerk with the handbell, rung solemnly outside the condemned man's cell before his execution. In his adolescence, Oliver had had a recurring fancy that passing felons stopped to salute the walls of the prison and the gallows within, like highwaymen are said to have done at Tyburn tree. Half-morbid as it was, and no doubt without any truth to it whatsoever, it had seemed almost romantic.

Oliver's concern is that the inn might be an establishment where he's as likely to receive a split lip as a drink, or be robbed of the few pennies that it costs, not to mention anything else that he's carrying. For the second time in a few short days, though, he's surprised. Jack must be able to present himself as a man of at least reasonable credentials to make this his drinking house. The Lamb and Lark is a coaching inn that, as with others of its kind, has doubtlessly seen a drop-off in trade since the growth of the railways, but appears to have continued to make good. A long, high building with courtyard behind, it announces itself with a sign creaking gently from an iron bracket, on which the eponymous lamb and lark that surely last parted company in a country meadow meet again above the hustle of a London street. The frontage is white-painted and luminous in the dark; the cobbles, by contrast, are treacherous with mud, but this in no way does the inn any disfavour, expected, as it feels, with the busy comings and goings. The patrons give off the appearance of honest citizens; working men, tradesmen, merchants. Varying degrees of affluence rub shoulders both figuratively and literally. A small town carriage arrives, disgorges a large number of slightly crushed passengers, and departs again. Inside, once accessed through a small brick passageway, the bar room welcomes with the smell of tobacco smoke and a lively fire jumping and cracking in an inglenook.

The table in the window bay seems to Oliver to be the best place from where he might be able to watch the main door and the majority of the room, and, in turn, where he himself is most visible. If Jack opts to slide in through some as yet undiscovered side entrance, he might well notice Oliver even before Oliver sees him. He seats himself. When the landlord comes across to greet him heartily, a broad, good-humoured man with an enormous brace of keys at his belt, he asks for a porter. To his relief, he neither looks nor feels overtly out of place; some of the more prosperous merchants, in fact, are dressed more finely than him. The inn has quite the feel of a melting pot, a place where a man from most walks of life might blend in and go unnoticed.

He turns things over mentally while he sips. Now, he realizes that he's at a loss as to how to actually broach the subject of his visit with Jack; in this sort of environment, at least. Oliver has his speech already set out in his head, but exactly what Jack will do when they first see each other here, and what he will say in return, is something that refuses to come quite clear. He waits, observing his fellow patrons. As the bar grows busier, individual faces start to be lost, and it becomes harder to keep track of the new arrivals. Oliver finds himself craning his neck at regular intervals, and, after a time, the landlord approaches him again.

"Either you're waiting for someone, sir, or you're worried about who's waiting for you. I've won a few bare-knucks titles in my time if you could use the help."

Despite his current uncertainty, Oliver laughs a little. "I'm waiting," he says, and adds, "And enjoying your excellent porter, which is as strong as I like it."

"Imperial stout. Straight from the Hind Brewery, just up the road." The landlord folds his arms on the back of a chair, and rests his weight upon them. "Business, is it? Plenty of the traders'd rather talk in here than their premises. Better refreshments, better food, and better company." And he gestures as she passes to a plump and particularly buxom barmaid whose dress, although fairly modest, would have had its work cut out to completely disguise her charms.

"An old friend. I was told that he drinks here, but I'm afraid that I've missed him tonight."

"If he's a regular, I'll know him. Make it my duty to - wouldn't keep my customers, otherwise. How about you furnish me with his name?"

"Jack Dawkins."

"Dawkins? Been here for the best part of an hour."

Having only just taken another drink, Oliver now has to cough it uncomfortably out of his windpipe. Reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief, he throws a glance over his shoulder with the full expectation of seeing Jack standing there with a glint of derisive humour in his eyes. When he finds nothing of the sort, he quickly turns back. "Where?"

The landlord nods towards the stairs. A tall, slightly fastidious-looking man with macassared hair and appropriate sidewhiskers is seated at a small table there, heavily engrossed in the composition of a letter. Every so often, without looking up, he dips his pen into a small leather-bound travelling inkwell, and, as Oliver watches, once by error into his sherry glass. "Linen trader, ain't he? John Dawkins. Always comes into town on the weekly - if you want him of a Monday, here he'll be, regular as clockwork."

Oliver's spirits sink. "It isn't him," he says.

The landlord glances back at him. "Same monicker, wrong feller?"

"Yes, completely."

"Sorry to hear it. Ain't rare though; Dawkins."

"I know," Oliver answers, wearily. To be passed from pillar to post and come this far, only for it all to end in a case of mistaken identity, leaves him feeling depressed, and the idea of having to begin all over again, almost despairing. "I'd only hoped -" he says, and lets his shoulders rise and fall, leaving the rest of the words unspoken.

The other man watches him for a moment, then, straightening, gives him a sympathetic clap on the back. "I'll leave you to your drink. Have a free one on me if you like. Tell the girls that Tom says you're good for credit. What name is it, sir?"

"Brownlow."

"Have a good evening, Mr Brownlow." And he moves away once more, his sturdy shoulders manoeuvring him easily through the crowd.

Oliver pays the well-built barmaid when she bustles over for his cup. Although not truly beautiful, she has a round, merry face. "All the girls wish you'd stay a bit, sir," she says, when he hands over his pennies, "you're the handsomest man in here tonight," and Oliver manages a half-smile despite his mood.

"I'd stay if you promised to serve me," he says, sportingly.

The girl gives him a quick wink. "Just remember, we've got plenty of good food, but I ain't one of the dishes. I'll give you a kiss any time, though."

"I'm very flattered."

She grins. "I'm Kate."

"Then it's nice to have met you, Kate."

"You as well, sir." She jingles the coins a little, and appears to be about to return to her duties. Then, looking down as if by chance, she stops. She shakes her hand lightly, letting the coppers spread out on her palm, and picks one out, holding it edgeways between the thumb and forefinger of her other hand. Her previously cheerful countenance takes on a slight frown.

Oliver leans forward, puzzled. "Is anything wrong?" he asks.

Kate closes her fingers over the money. "Tom!" she calls across the room. "Snide coin!"

The next few minutes prove to be very odd indeed. That the penny is counterfeit - snide, they call such coins, and snide-pitching the practice of circulating them - can be of no question to anyone but a blind man. It looks only half as thick as the genuine article, the attempt at the Queen's portrait is risible, and several letters have been stamped the wrong way around, as if the forger were making coins for children's playthings. It's precisely how poor the copy is that makes Oliver certain that he would have noticed it among his own money; would have examined the thing the first time that he set eyes on it and then quite possibly reported it himself. That he didn't pass this coin, and that some sort of caper is being played out here is of no doubt to him whatsoever, but he can only begin to guess what his host hopes to gain from it. There are characters who set their marks up, making them appear to be the perpetrator of the crime, just to be able to pocket a reward. Oliver's more than willing to be hanged for his sheep, but not for a lamb.

The landlord, however, doesn't play out the role of an unreasonable man, nor one given to seeing a conspiracy where none exists. If this is indeed a trick, he displays a healthy respect for the one being taken. When Oliver offers to himself go out into the street and attract the attention of a policeman, he scratches his head, contemplatively.

"Now, look," he says. "Far be it from me to bring the weight of the law tumbling down on a feller over a misunderstanding. That just ain't my nature. Never has been. Smashers are bad for business, but customers seeing me having to call in the bobbies doesn't leave it too lively, neither. What would you say to having a talk with me in the back room, and deciding between us how to sort matters out?"

The far door leads into another passage with a parlour-room off it and a stairway going upwards. Oliver expects to be directed into the parlour, but it seems that he's mistaken in his assumptions; up the stairs he's hustled with a hand on his back until they emerge at the rear end of the gallery. Here, the guests' rooms take the sweet smell of barley and the bitterer one of hops from the light ale in the brewhouse behind. The landlord knocks upon the nearest door. It cracks open a little at the sound of his knuckles. His size blocks any seeing inside.

"Oliver Brownlow," he says, "as requested."

Oliver, now thoroughly stunned, begins to open his mouth to ask just who he really is and how he came to know a Christian name that Oliver's never given, but before he can speak, the door is tugged open. The narrow strip of the room's very familiar occupant expands to a broader one.

"Wotcher, Oliver," Jack says, leaning himself against the frame and crossing one boot over the other. "Hope you're in good sorts this evening. Permit me to make a proper introduction of Tom King, landlord of the Lamb and Lark, the nicest flash-house in London."

-oOo-

After the uncertainties of the past week, followed by the suddenness of Jack being deposited practically in his lap, so much is eddying around inside Oliver's head that he barely knows where to begin. He had closed the door of the room behind them with a dozen questions of his own on his lips that he feels that he's quite entitled to answers to. He's tired, and not a little angry, partly at having been played for a fool this week not once, but - he's quite sure now - twice. And partly at himself for being so; at his own arrogance, his presumption at the start that not only Jack but everyone connected to him should have unblinking trust and confidence in Oliver because of what he appears to be: a gentleman. It's been years since he's felt less like one. He turns to Jack, tired as he is feeling as though he could have made a quarrel of things. But then Jack's mouth moves in the first faint suggestion of a grin, with something in his eyes that might have been pure amusement but is too focused for that, too affectionate, and the impulse fades away almost as though it had never been.

"I always did say," Jack says, "that you were the rummest feller I ever met." He dips into his pocket, lifting out what Oliver immediately recognizes as his own watch. For a brief moment, he holds it in his hand, his fingers tightening around it in a way almost imperceptible to anyone not watching closely. Then a sorry expression flits across his face, and he shakes his head a little and hands the timepiece back to its owner, looking for all the world like his namesake; a jackdaw forced to drop its findings.

Oliver runs his thumb thoughtfully over the surface of the watch case where his initials are engraved, the clues beginning to fall into place. His own countenance must have shown something, because Jack adds, "Sharp like a pin, Davy is, and there ain't even a Jew what loves his money more. But he'll never let a pal get into trouble if he can help it. Those what makes a friend of him have got another pair of eyes for the backs of their heads."

Oliver exhales. "I feel as though I've had a pair or two of those eyes following me for the best part of the week. Though he'd have been happy enough to have my business."

"He'll do business with anyone what makes it worth his while."

"I'll take it as given, then, that he's every bit as dishonest as I was told when I was given his name. Particularly if he's a friend of yours."

"Bent as a nine bob note," Jack says, taking no offence to this. "And just as rare and worth double. Not all that bad a judge of character, neither."

"He didn't believe a word that I said," Oliver says, regretfully. "He wouldn't admit that he even knew who I was talking about at first - let alone where I could find you."

"Oh, he believed you, all right. If he'd have thought you was a bobby, or a detective, or just somebody what wanted to know more than was good for him, you'd never have had sight of him again, or your value-ables, and you'd have likely met up with some interesting coves who'd have given you a right royal welcome if you'd cared to make a second call. He just wanted to talk with me first so I could tell him for certain who you was and that you was my acquaintance what I'd mentioned from time to time, and Tom had to see that you wasn't being followed, because his establishment's where I live for the most part."

"Who did you tell him that I was? A toff, naive but well-meaning?"

"No, Oliver, I told him that you was the love of my life. So, what's afoot? Come and sit for a bit and tell me all about it."

Oliver tries to remember that, in the case of anything that Jack does or says, it's hard to tell what's real from forgery, so naturally does the latter come to him. As far as the material profits from his underhand activities go, he appears to be living quite well. The room is more than adequately furnished, a brass half-tester bed with a heavy woollen blanket partway over clean-looking linens taking centre stage. A great area of the floor has been laid over with a carpet printed with a blowsy flower and leaf design which, although not exactly in the best taste, certainly gives an opulent feel, and reminds Oliver in both respects of articles of clothing that he's witnessed Jack sporting at various times. It's a far cry from a kinchin den in Saffron Hill. The ale smell is wholesome compared to tallow-wick, gin and open sewerage. Some of the youngest boys' beds had had a distinct urine odour that Oliver had understood usually earned them either a taunt or a thump from their peers, depending upon their proximity to the source. Oliver thinks of Jack as advancing himself from a more primitive form, like the ancient creatures in the Vestiges of the Natural Order of Creation, rising out of the slime and reaching his version of dry land with nothing but sheer determination. The knowledge that there's barely a farthing of the cost that hasn't been stolen struggles with instinctive gladness at seeing him well and in comfortable surroundings. Slowly, almost infinitesimally, the scale begins to rise in favour of the second.

He sits down and tells Jack everything that he knows.

Jack in turn relates to him a yarn or three that Oliver would have received with at least a little scepticism had they not been already confirmed in part. Two other 'pals' had indulged in an afternoon's housebreaking at a nearby property, although there had not been a great deal to break, as a servant girl walking out with one of the pair had let them in. This young lady, very much into the spirit of things, had suggested that they go on to rifle the premises of Richard Manns, who did business with her master and was wealthy, but, satisfied with their initial booty, they had not wanted to take chances again too soon. Jack, however, requiring regular funding for his somewhat more lavish tastes, had decided to try his luck. He had watched the house for more than a week, taking particular note of the lights at night and deducing from these where Manns and the servants slept and the respective times that they rose and retired. On the nights of the burglaries, he had generally arrived in the area around or a little after midnight, and made his entrance when the police were being changed. He had accessed the property in no time on his initial visit with a skeleton key and passed undetected past a maid sleeping in the kitchen and the butler in the pantry.

Pleased with his loot, he had been saddened to discover that he had been put off from paying further calls by the new door locks. He had pushed back the parlour window catch with a knife and opened the shutters with a crowbar, a venture which had netted him a nicely full carpet bag of silver plate. As it would have been unwise to use the same trick on his next visit, he had clambered up the ivy and onto a wall at the rear of the house, walked along it, and then made his way up a waterspout and in through a garret window. As he had been about to continue down into the house, he had heard footsteps outside, and had just barely time to drop to the floor and crawl under the bed before a servant girl had walked in, closed the door behind her, and proceeded to remove every last item of clothing. There he had to stay, very distracted, until she had employed a basin of water for personal usage, put on a nightgown and out the light, and slept, allowing Jack to creep out of the room and go about his work. "Why she made such a job out of washing it out," he says, "I ain't got any idea. But someone must have been at her downstairs. I could have gone in the door instead and said 'Good evening' and they wouldn't have minded, nor noticed."

Oliver feels much the same tonight as he had upon seeing a pocketful of stolen jewels scattered in front of him on his kitchen table, in the sense that while he knows how Jack makes his living, he never has any burning desire to be told. It's cowardly, perhaps, on his part; this small wish somewhere to imagine his friend as something other than he is. Yet by telling him, Jack makes it impossible for him to do so. If Oliver wants one part of him, Jack seems to say, he must take it all, just as he takes all of the man that Oliver is. It shocks for merely a moment or two, then acclimatization sets in with disturbing speed.

"Why do you take so many risks?" he says. The question isn't rhetorical, but nor is it accusatory.

Jack puts an elbow on the arm of the chair and props his chin on his hand, as if inwardly contemplating the matter. For one of the few times in what's perhaps years, Oliver has the opportunity and time to examine him closely. In his childhood, he had fitted no image better than that of a black imp, a ball of wits and ill intentions scudding through the City. Grown, he's taller, but still retains a pixie-like quality. The turned-up nose that so well fits any airs he might choose to adopt is the same. The tips of his slightly protuberant ears show through his thick dark hair. His mouth is wide and soft; he has high cheekbones. He's an oddly attractive man, and Oliver imagines that he must not often have been left wanting for whatever company he's desired over the years; both female and male, if his behaviour is to be interpreted correctly. Oliver isn't so naive, or egotistic, as to imagine that Jack makes an exception for him alone.

"I like taking 'em," he says, "always have. The more I heard as a kinchin that nice things wasn't meant for the likes of me, the more I wanted 'em, and the more I meant to prove that I should have 'em anyway. A man what can't look after his goods don't deserve to have any, not when I can put 'em to better use."

"Even when he's paid for them honestly and you haven't?"

"Who's to say what's honest and what isn't? If a cove's in trade, and he can buy in a dozen candles for three shillings, but makes another cove buy 'em from him at seven shillings instead of telling him where he can get 'em for three, ain't he stolen those four shillings from him, same as if he took them from his pocket? I steal by rifling a feller's house, and he steals by making him pay for the privilege of walking through his door, and he don't keep his thieving to persons what can afford it. Everything's stolen and borrowed. We all come into this grand world with nothing, and there ain't any of us what are going to leave it with anything. So myself and the wealthy man engage in the mortallest of combats, that most exciting of battles: who's to enjoy it all in the meantime. If he mounts a challenge, I must rise to the occasion. The harder it is to win, the more I like it when I do. Thrill of the chase, like they call it. Did you ever fuck and try to wait it out, to make the spend better?"

"Is it worth risking your life for?"

"There's nobody who ain't thought at one time or another that he might risk his life for a fuck."

"Thieving," Oliver says, "not fucking."

"See, it's the same thing to me. It's living. And if you ain't living; if you ain't doing something what gives you a jump of the heart, or a cock-stand, then you might as well die and be done with it." Jack looks at him, intently. "Why was it that you decided that you was going to be a doctor? Why not be a gent of leisure?"

Oliver blinks at the abruptness of the question. "Because I had to help," he says. "Those who were suffering. Those who were poor and who the city had abandoned. Just as I was, once. I couldn't stand and look, and remember that, and do nothing. And," he adds, after a moment's consideration, "medicine interests me. It's a disgrace, how we chart the stars and hypothesize about other worlds, but still know so relatively little about our own physical functions. And absolutely ridiculous how little most of us want to know. Death and sickness from ignorance is what offends me. We have a universe to explore inside our skins."

"Anyone who knows how to breathe air, eat, piss, shit and fuck gets along pretty well, I find."

"If you'd read even half of the surgical and anatomy books that I have, you'd think of yourself as a lot more than that. The human body is the definition of a miracle."

Jack grins, suddenly. "Ain't you realized it yet? You've found what makes your heart jump as well. Your line of work makes you feel like you're living. The same," he adds, pointedly, "as what mine does."

They sit, looking at each other, the physician and the thief. The pair of them are like the two sides of a shilling, Oliver thinks; it had only depended on which way up the coin fell to decide the direction of each of their lives. Heads, and the thrower is a gentleman. Tails, and he's a felon. Polar opposites on the surface, they are yet made fundamentally out of the same metal.

"I was there when Bill died," Jack says. "I saw him hanging there, like he was on the gallows, before your old man came to get you. If that bobby wasn't so handy with his firearm, the mob would have had him instead. I swore that night I'd never be a bludger or a killer; I'd turn a barker on myself before I'd do to any girl what Bill did to Nance. Fagin always let us watch 'em hang the murderers. 'A nasty business, boys,' he'd say, 'very nasty indeed. A violent man always meets with a violent end. Let our friend on the scaffold be your teacher in that.' I swore it to myself. I'd go for a stretch, and fair do's to the man what sent me, but I wouldn't do nothing what I'd swing for."

Oliver closes his eyes. He can still feel, even now, the rolling, dizzying sensation of clinging to the beam, hugging it with his arms and knees, pressing his forehead to it. Memory isn't kind enough to reject the bad and retain only the good. A pistol shot explodes through the air, and Sikes spasms, chokes for a moment, and then falls. The weight of his tall, burly figure at the other end of the rope makes the wood creak sickeningly. A silence falls that's louder than the ringing in Oliver's ears. In the dirty, flickering light of the torches below, the beam is the ghost of a gibbet, the body beneath it horrifically and unnaturally suspended between heaven and earth.

"It won't happen," he says, "because I'll be damned if I'll let it. A person taking the law into his own hands and plotting a murder, using God's word to justify it, is obscene. The law isn't relevant any longer here. The man disgusts me."

"We live in disgusting times, and the sooner you realize that most every cove with money's a hypocrite, the better you'll get along living amongst them." Something shifts in Jack's face. "I ain't never been caught yet. That doesn't mean I ain't very touched that you was worried I might be."

"I know," Oliver says. He leans forward in the chair, his forearms resting on his legs. "But it isn't enough." When Jack makes a show of raising his eyebrows, he clarifies matters. "I thought that I'd be content with simply knowing that you were safe. But now I believe that I wanted more from the start. I wanted to see what I thought of as justice carried out; moral justice."

"Last time what I looked, I was a burglar, not a beak."

Oliver looks at him. As he does so, a series of arbitrary thoughts begin to come together in his brain, and finally create something that makes him feel as if he must have gone suddenly quite mad. He tries to unseat it, but it refuses to leave. I believe that it could be done, he thinks, if I were to have a part in it, and is immediately gripped not by horror at the idea, but a strange, grim delight.

"Jack," he says, "what would you think to a wager? A practical one?"

"Nobody'd say I wasn't a sporting man."

"So certain people that we both know insist. How would you rate your chances of successfully robbing Manns again?"

"I'd call 'em 'good'. And the likelihood of my trying it, after what you told me, 'better'."

"And if I were to help you do it?"

Jack eyes him. "Oliver," he says, presently, "sometimes you're a prince among men, and sometimes you just ain't right in the head, and I'm starting to wonder if it ain't more often the second one. In case you've poured out your brains tonight along with your heart, may I remind you that you're what's most commonly referred to as a gent, and a gent, I presume, what doesn't want to take a chance on his next address being Clerkenwell? I look out for you, and you don't peach on me; that's how it's always been." His mouth crooks. "May I ask if this is due to the way what our friendship's been blossoming of late?"

"Partly, yes. The rest of it's about me."

"Leave it, Oliver. This ain't your fight."

Oliver folds his hands. "Suppose that I were to tell you that whatever the value of the goods that you've taken, you could double it - triple it, several times over."

Jack cocks his head. "I've had a nice haul of plate and trinkets," he says, "but there ain't never been all that much cash around the house. What's your plan, guv'nor?"

"Upstairs," Oliver says, "his own bedroom. Manns banks for business as he must, but he doesn't favour the Threadneedle Street vaults for his gold; he's been self-assured enough to mention it. He keeps some considerable cash sums in the house in sovereigns at any given time. It's what he pays me from."

"I presume it ain't in a trunk under the bed?" Jack enquires.

"It's locked in a private safe," Oliver says, carefully. He watches Jack for his reaction to this information. Whether the lock of a safe in any way differs from the lock of a door when it comes to opening it illegally, he doesn't know. He knows, he realizes, very little. He's as much of a stranger in this world as Jack would be were he to seat himself behind the desk in his consulting room.

Jack touches a finger to his chin in apparent thought. "All the safes what I've seen had Bramah locks. That's to say, there's a round key with notches what go into the lock flat. A skeleton key won't work, or a wooden one. I've met fellers who broke the heads off the rivets with a hammer and chisel and took the top of the safe off, or forced the door with a jack-in-the-box, but that makes a right bloody row. You'd have someone up them stairs before you could say 'Bill Sikes'."

"You can't open it."

"Oh, I can open it. But I'd like to look it over first, nice and quiet, like. Walking in through the front door used to be our good friend Davy's speciality. You and me are going to call on him again."

"All right," Oliver says, wondering. "When?"

"I'll come and fetch you. You ain't changed residence in the past week?"

"Jack -"

Jack grins. "Oliver, I can be discreet. Whether it's business or pleasure."

"And is this business?" Oliver asks, softly.

"For the most part. But any sort of business what I might undertake with you would always be my pleasure."

Oliver knows for certain what the reason is that he would do everything that he's already done again, and twice over. This is the man who will always prevent him from being a gentleman; not for the past, nor for any forthcoming escapades that they might engage in together, but for the simple reason that there's nothing remotely gentlemanly about the way that he makes him feel.