Artful Dodger Jack had been named once for his talents in dodging the grasping hand of the law, and so he's remained in spirit, having neatly avoided the fates - prison, transportation, the noose - that typically befall his contemporaries, and that many years ago abruptly ended the career of his self-proclaimed boyhood hero Jack Sheppard. Sheppard had been immortalized in ballads and broadsheets within his own lifetime, and in pantomime on the stage within two weeks of his execution. Oliver is fairly certain that the Jack would sooner be somewhat less famous but in a better state of health, and that this is where he and a ghostly Sheppard have somewhere along the way doffed their hats to one another and parted company. That robbery has been to both, at various times, a jaunt and a lark is where they remain joined in spirit.
From the ink spilled about him and his excursions around the city in between confinements, it might be deduced by readers that Sheppard's downfall was his complete lack of desire to be discreet. On the morning that Oliver wakes to some indistinct sound that might have been inside his head, and at last lights a candle and ventures down to the drawing room to find Jack half-dozing on the sofa there in his stocking feet with his hat on his lap, he deduces that the Artful Dodger's desire to be so is selective. He puts the candlestick down on the card table and folds his arms.
"Jack," he says, in acknowledgement.
Jack opens one eye. "Allow me to express my full approval, Oliver, of your residence. Very nice. Handsome but tasteful. Really ought to get yourself some better door-locks fitted, though."
"To secure the house from burglars? Or from guests?"
"Guests what happen to be burglars." Jack swings his feet to the floor and reaches for his boots. He cuts quite a handsome outline himself in a dark coat and trousers set off by a more flamboyant damson-coloured waistcoat embroidered with sprigs of tiny flowers, clothes which, despite the early hour for it, are clearly for visiting rather than working. Around his neck is knotted a cravat which rather reminds Oliver of the ridiculously oversized thing that had been on display beneath his chin the day that they met. While the boys' clothing had been restricted to what could be filched that would fit them, it seems decidedly fitting to his nature that Jack's eye had been drawn to the most ostentatious. "You always was an innocent at heart," he adds, busily lacing, and then, glancing up, "and I always was the one to cure you of it."
"And I always was the one who could peach you in an instant," Oliver answers, with a small smile.
Jack smirks back at him. "Not any longer, since you decided that you was up for a bit of financial revenge. There ain't much to choose between the two of us now."
"That isn't altogether true, but I do see your point."
"My point, my old covey, is that you was just a late bloomer." Jack finishes tying his boots and looks up at the fixture above them. "Have you got gas in here?"
"Downstairs and in the kitchen, but not upstairs. The girls usually turn it on first thing, but I will do in a moment. And you're lucky that I walked in on you before either of them did."
"Pretty girls, are they?"
"If it matters in any way," Oliver replies, finding it difficult to maintain a straight face.
"You must have heard a different meaning of the word 'lucky' to what I have, then. But I ain't one to complain much." Jack rouses himself from the sofa, and moves across to stand near. The candlelight makes his eyes look darker and softer, and the lack of distraction in the stillness of the house sharpens Oliver's physical awareness of him, as if the barriers created by sound are currently absent. Deliberately, he reaches up and straightens Oliver's collar, brushing off imaginary specks of dust. "You'll do for me. Most definitely."
Oliver can sense the sparkle that he sees in the other man's eyes being reflected in his own as Jack's fingertips skim off the edge of the starched material and graze his skin, very lightly, in a way that could appear almost accidental to an onlooker. "This collar is new on."
"Am I being falsely accused of having dirty hands?"
"I didn't say that."
"I could soon get 'em dirtier, if it took your fancy."
"Not while standing in my drawing room."
"May I take it from that that you might be agreeable to dirtying other places in your fine house?"
Oliver hesitates. "I'm not sure," he says. The gentle banter between them turns a corner and goes off course. Yet he knows that he's spoken his thoughts, and furthermore, could not have done anything else; at least one part of him, it seems, is still honest. Jack's closeness, and the sudden pleasure that rises up in him at the touch of skin on skin, makes him feel as though he could be agreeable to a number of things. That Jack should incite such a thought in him seems less surprising due to his male sex, and more so for his simply being Jack. Familiarity, it would appear, does not always breed contempt. It feels not uncomfortable, and yet extremely peculiar.
Jack grins a little, ruefully. "It's all right, mate," he says. "Just wanted to let you know that the offer stands. I reckon it wouldn't take us long to get some other things standing, too, if you'd give it a try."
Oliver exhales, half in laughter, the momentary awkwardness dissipating. "I have no doubts about your past talents. Up skirts or down trousers."
"You got me banged to rights on that," Jack admits. The distant squeak of a door punctuates the quiet, followed by the creak and give of the upstairs floorboards. A moment or two later, footsteps sound on the stairs, accompanied by soft voices; Sarah first, then the shriller tones of Hester behind. The water will be on down in the scullery soon, and the kettle for Mrs Phillips's tea; Sarah will be in to clean and light the fire, as mortified as ever to find him in the cold and unfed, despite his choice in the matter. Here, at the cusp of the day, swings the door between Oliver's two lives, and here he must invite Jack over the threshold if things are to go as planned. As ever, Jack takes care of the issue himself. Briskly, he smooths down Oliver's shirt and waistcoat front.
"Well," he says, "now that I'm above stairs, ain't you going to give me a grand tour?"
They tour. Jack displays the same appreciation for all of Oliver's living rooms. He goes over the study with a vexing degree of interest, tugging open bureau drawers and leafing through books. Some of the case studies in the Journal of Medical, Surgical and Obstetrical Science and Practice draw more than a few mild jibes, but he balks at the autopsy records, saying irreverently that he hopes that when he finally croaks, a few righteous gents in the vicinity will rush him off to a nice quiet grave before Oliver or his friends can lay a finger on him, and then voicing a heartfelt wish to move on to the consulting room. Here, both Oliver's certificates and diploma in their oakwood frames and his glass-fronted cabinets of instruments are duly acknowledged, the former with all proper respect, and the latter rather more dubiously. "I ain't sure what half of those are for," Jack says, "and if they was anywhere near my personal body, I ain't sure whether I'd want to know or not, either."
He prefers the microscope. Intrigued, he lets Oliver light its slim paraffin lamp, set up slides, and adjust the objective lenses to bring into magnified clarity the cells of frog's skin, the hexagonal lattice within the cross-section of a geranium leaf and the forest of hairs and needled jaws belonging to a half-transparent spider. Leaning lightly over Jack's shoulder where the other man sits at the desk, Oliver points out the mass of corpuscles in a preserved droplet of blood and explains how the haematoglobulin protein flushes them red.
"I've acquired a good few boxfuls of these. I could show you a section of human liver or a slice of diseased vertebrae, if you'd be interested."
"Think I'll stay with the blood. I ain't had breakfast yet, and I don't want to lose my appetite."
Oliver smiles. "It is known as morbid anatomy," he says, and then, a slightly impish urge coming over him, "How about a curiosity, for want of a better word?"
"Oh, miniatures, like? I've seen 'em for sale. Although why anyone'd want to peer at a picture of St Paul's through a glass when he could get a better view standing outside it, I can't say."
"No, something quite organic." Oliver opens a cabinet drawer and shuffles through a tray of slides until he turns up the object of his search. He secures it on the microscope's stage, and gestures to Jack to observe. "How would you identify this particular specimen?"
Jack bends over the eyepiece, perusing the mount of tiny, threaded cells. "Whatever it is," he observes, sagely, "I hope it don't spread too fast."
"Very fast indeed, but harmlessly as often as not. And frequently, I believe, it's quite welcomed."
"Oh, is that so? And where would a medical man such as your good self find this specimen?"
"That would depend very much on the circumstances, but a patient of the male gender is always a good place to begin looking."
Jack draws back in the chair. A dark eyebrow approaches his hairline with the same momentum that starts to curl his lips. "Being outside of the profession myself and ignorant of correct terms, may I instead, Oliver, call it 'spunk?'"
"I'd write spermatozoa on the cover, personally." Oliver feels his own mouth twitching again. "But yes - you may."
"I beg to know whether the doctor ain't above producing his own samples."
"He isn't, but not for microscope slides."
Their gazes meet for a second, and then both of them succumb to the joke, grinning like boys. This, Oliver thinks, as much any desire, is what makes it right; this gift that Jack gives him of permission to be himself.
"Thank you," Jack manages to say at length, at least somewhat seriously, "for the demonstration. Very impressive indeed. Though I have to say, no matter how close you look at bits of people what you already know are diseased, it ain't going to make it go away any quicker, or stop 'em getting it in the first place."
Oliver moves to sit on the corner of the desk. "Microscopes have been showing us marvels for three hundred years that we never knew to exist before. One day we might be able to see diseases."
"Oliver, if you don't know what a disease looks like, I'd like to show you a feller with a bloody wipe, and another one what's taken up residence in the shit-house. And then ask the one what licensed you as a doctor some questions."
"If a man were to die of arsenic poisoning, I could have a test carried out that would show arsenic present in his body tissue and the contents of his stomach. If he's been sickened by foul air, it stands to reason that we ought to be able to find physical evidence of that poison too."
"Before he dies, I'd hope," Jack adds.
"Take the German paper by Friedrich Henle that was circulated, and the Italian by Agostino Bassi."
Jack throws him a look of utter disbelief. "Sorry, Oliver. I must have been dining with Lord Aberdeen and the Chief Commissioner on those days, and had to forsake my constitutional to the British Museum library."
Oliver inclines his head, apologetically. "Doctor Bassi," he says, by way of explanation, "examined diseased silkworms in Italy and found small, living spores on their bodies. If healthy worms were placed alongside, the spores could soon be found on them also, and then they too quickly died. Doctor Henle's papers draw from another Italian physician. He proposes that disease is caused by parasitic organisms - passed by touch, or soiled linen, or through the air - that invade human and animal bodies and multiply inside."
"Oh, really?"
"Think on it. If a bacterium - a type of microscopic animal - can be only barely large enough to detect, suppose that a spore were smaller still?"
Jack draws himself up in the chair. "Oliver," he says, "if I was to swear to report to you any spores unfamiliar to me what I happen to notice flying about, would there be any danger of a plate of something from your kitchen?"
Oliver pauses, then relaxes and smiles. "Two, at least," he replies.
The doorknob rattles, and Sarah comes in to pull the curtains. Upon seeing the unexpected visitor, she emits a small, confused, "Oh!" and retreats a step or two to hover at the threshold. Oliver stands, reassuringly.
"Do go about your work, Sarah - we were about to leave the room. May I have breakfast for my guest as well. He'll be more than happy with the same as me."
"Delighted," Jack puts in.
"Yes, Doctor. Mrs Phillips'll be down directly." Sarah smooths the folds of her apron a little; a light, nervous movement. "I'm sorry, sir; I didn't know that a gentleman had arrived -"
"It's quite all right," Oliver says. "It was something of a surprise visit." Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jack watching with an expression of what appears to be the greatest amusement. "Jack," he says, "may I introduce Miss Sarah Macinnery. Sarah, Mr Jack Dawkins."
Sarah looks quite lost now. From time to time, Oliver experiences the sensation of stepping back from himself, and observing his own words and actions as an outsider, and it's often only in these moments that he's fully aware of the subtle differences in how he and others of his class interact with the armies of varying sizes who run their households. His innate feeling that his servants are on more of a par with him than is considered correct is on display in a manner that is even less so. Although they might have grown used to most of his eccentricities over time, being formally presented to a guest is clearly still beyond imagining. "Good morning, sir," she says, uncertainly.
Jack rises and inclines his own head with a solemnness in which Oliver suspects that only he would detect both the extent of the mockery, and the fact that it's squarely aimed at him. "And a fine morning it should always be, was I under the good Doctor's roof and certain to wake to sweet greetings what cause the uplift of the body and soul."
Oliver coughs in a manner that draws both Jack and Sarah's attention, though for differing reasons. "Sarah, may I have hot water upstairs for my shave, please. Mr Dawkins will make himself comfortable in the drawing room with some tea; there are plenty of newspapers, and I'm sure that the Ottoman question will interest him. Or perhaps the Eclectic Review will appeal to his intellectual nature."
"I'm a man of fine tastes," Jack confirms. He watches until Sarah closes the door behind her, then looks back at Oliver, twitching his eyebrows questioningly. Oliver returns a stern frown, and shakes his head. Jack shrugs. "Can't blame me for being curious. There's those who would, if you wouldn't."
"With anyone who didn't want it as I did and agree to it," Oliver says, firmly, "I wouldn't."
"Queer how I'd swear that I've been in full agreement, then, because I still ain't got anywhere."
"No," Oliver acknowledges, and then adds, more softly, "but I haven't asked you to stop."
Jack also approves heartily of breakfast, which he wastes no time in pitching into: cold tongue and sole, and buttered eggs. The rolls are from the day before, the bakers' boy only just having arrived for the orders, but a warm in the oven has softened them, and they're very acceptable with preserves; one dish of pear, plum and apple jam, and one of blackcurrant. Oliver invariably takes to the study with just a pot of tea upon rising at an ungodly hour, and makes use of the more peaceful time until the deliveries begin to bring his correspondence up to date. Today, seated further towards the front of the house than usual, he takes the opportunity as they eat to imagine that he's never heard the noise of the early morning before and listen to it anew: the dustman's bell and his call of, Dust-ho! as he halts periodically, and the clang of the milkman's smaller can being lowered through the railings of the area. He almost feels himself part of a different world that exists only while his fellow members of middle-class society sleep; as if he has the clairvoyant ability to see things hidden from others. Jack's presence always seems to re-introduce him to experiences, both great and small, that he has long left behind.
Mrs Phillips enters after the meal is over, and also seems rather taken aback by the visitor, but recovers herself as speedily as ever, and says that she will certainly discuss the week's menus with Oliver later in the day, the laundry, which comes back today, and the accounts. There's a school of thought that bachelors are both partly feminized by their necessary attention to domestic concerns, and deprived of the sanctuaries from business that the living rooms of their homes ought to be by their direct interactions with the servants as employers. Not only does Oliver hardly feel that this applies to his uncle, but he's inclined to view the household as a less painful version of the treadmill in the workhouse, in that every occupant has his part to play in keeping it running satisfactorily for all of their benefits. As a boy in Bloomsbury, he had delighted when he was not at lessons in running errands, fetching and carrying, and opening the door to the letter carrier's double rap. His uncle had had to call him to his side during his first weeks in the house to tell him gently that he was not expected to clean boots there. He still feels restless when idle or tardy; unsettled, as if he hasn't been put back into his proper place. When he tells Mrs Phillips that there will be no surgery this morning due to his appointment, he feels an unpleasant pang of conscience.
"Yes, Doctor. Ought I to tell the patients to call later in the week, or advise them of the whereabouts of another physician?"
Oliver hesitates. "Please tell them that surgery will be open for three hours immediately after dinner instead," he says. "I'll take a light meal this evening."
He's quite sure that a gentle smile disturbs her otherwise flawless composure for a moment. "Yes, sir, of course."
Jack, on the other hand, is shaking his head almost before she's left the room. "Oliver, you ain't been caught yet. You don't need a punishment."
"No," Oliver replies, "but neither do my patients, save the one."
Jack untucks his napkin from his collar, and wipes his mouth deliberately fastidiously. Depositing it upon his plate, he throws Oliver a wink. "Well, then? Ready to gather the troops, are we, my captain?"
Oliver takes a short breath, then rises from his seat. "Lead on," he says.
In the hallway, Sarah hands them both their hats and coats, and Oliver his walking cane after looking about her, expecting to also find one for Jack. "I'll be returning home in time for my usual luncheon," he tells her, "but very likely not before then. Mr Dawkins and I have an extended call to make."
"Yes, Doctor."
Oliver deliberately looks across his shoulder to where Jack's contemplating the barometer on the wall as if trying to decide upon the best way to slip it inside his coat unnoticed. He's not certain whether this is actually the case, or whether he simply never expects Jack to fundamentally change. He turns back to her. "Thank you, Sarah," he says, trying to express the full implications of the word through his eyes.
For a moment, she looks confused, and then she says, "Oh!" for the second time that morning, and her cheeks flare rapidly. She quite clearly remembers his words about scoundrels and rogues, and is now unsure of what to do about being in immediate proximity to one. "The gentleman, sir, who..."
"Who wasn't a gentleman," Oliver finishes, quietly, in confirmation.
He lets his gaze drift briefly over the familiar shades and outlines around him; the gold-leaf wallpaper that had already been hung when he took the house and that he had quite favoured; the print of the road in Athens leading to the Acropolis that hangs opposite the drawing room. Soon Jack will leave, and Oliver's home will return to its natural state, with nothing to show that he's been through it; comfortable, well-ordered, and suddenly rather unexciting for the most part.
'Your line of work makes you feel like you're living,' Jack had said, and Oliver would not dispute it for a second. Yet in recent days, it's no longer seemed to be enough.
Jack leads on, and he follows.
-oOo-
"The thing with a fence," Jack says, "is that you got to know you can trust him. He knows what you look like and most probably where you live, and he can peach you any time what he likes. So you trust him because he's reliable, or you know you can trust him because you got as much on him as what he's got on you. Fagin always had old Bill over a barrel, because if everyone started peaching everyone else, Bill'd come out of it a lot worse than what any of us would. So Bill never did trust him, and a right nasty affair that was for us all. But Davy's the reliable sort. He'll do right by us."
"Is he your partner?"
Jack shakes his head. "Work alone, don't I? I'm my own man. I'll take a partner for a job if I need one, but I don't like to. Live alone, too," he adds, "always best not to start depending on someone."
Oliver begins to open his mouth to ask another question that he's been curious about the answer to, but Jack cuts the possibility off by striding ahead as they approach the cab stand on High Holborn. Despite Jack having the shorter legs, Oliver has to walk briskly to keep up. He doesn't feel confident about besting him were they ever to be in a flat-out sprint together; the former Artful Dodger has been accustomed to having to move smartly in both pursuit and escape for too long. By the time that he reaches the stand, Jack has already almost completed the discussion with the first driver in line. The Holborn stand is one of the few in the city open all around the clock, and the drivers of the early morning hours have to do without the ease of 'sheltering' in a nearby inn while a boy watches the horse and cab, which at least eliminates the chances of a collision or a fallen horse being increased by an intoxicated cabby. Swathed in their capes, they shiver a little in the keen air. At this hour, the mist is still ash-grey; largely untainted as yet by the smoke and blacks that will soon evolve it into one degree or another of what is termed a 'London particular'.
As he climbs into the cab, Oliver absently recalls a tale of a passenger smothered by a winter fog who was suddenly struck by the realisation that the horse was boldly going forth up the steps of a house instead of along the road. Jack clambers in beside him, and the stout waterman, whose greatcoat turns him into the shape of a giant bell, shuts the doors in front of them. Jack takes up Oliver's walking cane and uses it to rap in a showy way on the roof of the cab, causing the conveyance to rock into motion so violently that both of them are compelled to make an undignified grab for the handles on the insides of the doors to avoid being almost flung out over the back of the horse in front. Jack thumps the roof again with the cane, this time in less of an aristocratic fashion.
"Oi! You got paying customers in here! My companion might be a physician, but he ain't in the habit of needing to heal himself!"
"I drive how I drive! You don't like it, you walk it!"
Oliver manages, with some force, to retrieve his cane. "Take a little more care, please!" he calls up, and then, with a flash of inspiration, "This man's wife is at time, and I'm the doctor for the confinement!"
The driver gives a disparaging bark of laughter audible even over the sound of the hansom's wheels as they start to move. "I got four of my own," he shouts back, "and they all wanted it their own way, too!" And the rumble increases in volume over the granite setts as they swing out into the street and pick up speed.
The cab rattles along through Broad Street and into the new road, Endell Street, that had been built shortly after Oliver completed his schooling, partly to help manage traffic in the area and partly to cleanse it of a scant few of the many slums. On the left stands the workhouse of St Giles-in-the-Fields and St George. As a boy, Oliver would have simply tried not to let his thoughts linger for too long on similar places. Now, he feels the instinctive pang of distress of a man of medicine possessed of the knowledge of what passes for infirmaries and nursing under the poor relief of many parishes. The ticking on the narrow iron bedsteads will be dirty, the blankets ragged, the coals for the house brought into the wards and shunted into the cellars through holes in the floor and producing obnoxious smells that combine with those endemic to the bedridden who are unable to wash by themselves. Such a miasma must be conducive to all manner of ailments. The breeding grounds that could be created for malevolent spores, if truth were ever to be found in the theory, hardly bear thinking about. He has a sudden desire to wash his hands, repeatedly.
Jack bumps Oliver's shoulder with his own, utilizing the bounce of the hansom to do so. When Oliver turns, he finds the other man sitting with his arms folded and his head tilted to one side. "Penny for your thoughts?" Jack says.
Oliver returns a small smile, and shakes his head. "They aren't worth as much as that. I just have a bee in my bonnet about certain matters, as the Scotchmen say."
Jack's gaze flickers to the irregular collection of brick buildings that form the workhouse as they pass. "We done bloody well for ourselves," he says. "Places like that never gave nobody nothing, so the sharp ones go out and find it. One of life's winners, that's what you are. Just like me."
For some reason, the idea has never before occurred to Oliver. "Were you a workhouse boy, too?"
"Might have been, once," Jack says, mysteriously. A faint grin crosses his face. "Fagin always said us boys was all hatched in a gutter by the sun. Liked that notion, somehow. But we're two peas from the same pod, you and me."
"Yes," Oliver says, slowly, "I've only been beginning to realise that recently."
They disembark on St Martin's Lane, and Oliver is taken into the pawnshop not through the front door this time, but by a back entrance accessed by an alley behind that runs from a little court. Jack refers to this as the tradesman's entrance, a statement which he finds a fine joke, and even more so when he alerts the proprietor to their arrival by way of a secondary bell. When Davy bobs his head around the door and sees them, he shuts up the shop very promptly, and up a little staircase they go to the rooms where he lives above his premises. Although this is only their second meeting, he's as affable to Oliver as he is to Jack once proper introductions have been made, and serves them both with a tankard of ale. He listens with the utmost interest to Jack's telling of the tale, then looks at Oliver and grins from ear to ear. Davy is as cheery and clean-looking as Jack is dark and sly, but cut from the same cloth. Jack appears to be immensely satisfied with himself. "I told you how he was bent," he says to Davy, sounding as pleased as he might were he personally responsible for the fact.
"There are mitigating circumstances," Oliver points out, "largely centred around you. And I don't intend to keep any of the money for myself. If we were to succeed."
"Oliver, I don't care if your intentions is to put your share in the poor box at the police courts."
"Thank you for the suggestion; I may just do that."
Jack turns to Davy. "I could weep, I could."
Davy manages to control a snigger. He takes a mouthful of ale, and smacks his lips a little, thoughtfully, then turns to Oliver, contemplating him with very bright blue eyes. "Oliver... Oliver is all right, ain't it, between friends?"
"Of course."
"Then, this safe is upstairs in the house?"
"The master bedroom. Apparently Manns likes to be certain of having plenty of gold close at hand."
"This ain't a complete mystery to me, personally," Jack puts in.
"Undoubtedly, but I think that he also likes to have as little recorded in his ledgers as possible. He's something of an enigma, by all that I've heard. It's said that his background isn't known, so there may or may not have been wealth in the family, but to all appearances, both he and the money for his first business venture came from nowhere."
"Interesting feller," Davy says, with a slow nod. "But I ain't as interested in him as what I am in his cash."
"That *is* what I anticipated, given how Jack described you," Oliver says.
Jack shrugs. "Never let it be said that I ain't a reputable character witness."
"Jack knows me pretty well, but not as well as I know him. He's sung a few of your praises to me too." Davy quirks his mouth in a fashion that makes Oliver wonder exactly what sorts of songs Jack has been singing. "How much is it that we're talking about here?"
Oliver adjusts himself slightly in his seat. He's beginning to himself feel like a villain from one of the penny dreadfuls, skulking in low places and plotting with his fellow mischief-makers. He wavers. And then he looks at Jack, and he remembers Jack taking him by the hand as he wandered alone on the street, and he remembers his dream.
"This is only speculation on my part," he says.
"Naturally," Jack says, pleasantly.
"After engaging a few mutual acquaintances in conversations about business, I made a rough calculation of Manns's probable income. I also considered how much of it it would likely be necessary for him to bank or keep in other trust, coupled with how much it would be preferable or reasonably practical for him to retain as gold at any given time. My guess would be that there's an absolute minimum of five hundred pounds in that safe, and quite possibly over one thousand."
Jack and Davy exchange glances. Davy's eyebrows twitch, suggestively. Jack gives a low whistle, and leans back in his chair, tilting it onto two unsteady legs with a boot braced against the table. His manner is casual, but his eyes glint with all the delight of a boy's.
"If I had that money under my roof," he says, "it'd be a worry to me."
"Wouldn't be able to sleep at night," Davy agrees.
"I say that we ought to do the cove a good turn and relieve him of this troublesome burden of his."
"Only what any man with a kind and considerate nature would do."
"You said that you wanted to look at the safe first?" Oliver asks.
Jack nods. "Without leaving any evidence of my having called again. Last thing what we want is our good friend Mr Manns having a fit of nerves come over him sudden, and removing what's left of his pretty things to securer premises."
"You want a key, dontcher?" Davy says. "A door key's what I mean, not a screw."
"I do indeed."
"Where exactly do you intend to get that from?" Oliver says, in confusion.
Davy leans forward, propping pointed elbows on the table top. "Has Manns ever been known to have a latch-key on his person?"
Oliver nods. "At almost all times, surprisingly. I carry mine so that if I have to go out to a patient late at night, my servants don't have to sit up. I doubt that the consideration is the reason behind his preferences. But it's in a pocket, I believe."
"What if someone who couldn't get near the housekeeper's keys without getting himself noticed, but had a good reason to get close to our mark, could lift that key?"
For a moment, Oliver has no idea what it is that he means, but it slowly begins to dawn on him as he looks from Davy to Jack, and then back to Davy. Both of them are now not just smiling at him, but positively smirking, and the more disbelieving he feels his expression becoming, the wider their smirks grow. "You can't possibly," he says, "be suggesting what I think you're suggesting."
"Fancy having a try, Oliver?" says Jack. "P'rhaps you're better at keys than what you are at wipes."
"If you was to get the key to me," Davy explains, "I can press it in a block of wax in a moment. Then I pass it back, and you replace it. Or if you can't, you drop it on the floor, on a carpet where it won't make a sound, and let him find it. He never knows what's happened, and I get the right blank at a lock-shop and fit a new key from it."
"And what would you be doing in the house?" Oliver manages to ask.
"The servants' bells are a good flim-flam. Feller can pretend to work on 'em in any room what he likes and not get a second look. I'll be a step or two behind you."
"Everyone believes him," Jack says, "on account of that innocent face what he's blessed with. That's what he used to do. Say how he was the baker's boy and rifle the kitchens, or the piano-tuner, and leave the pianoforty sounding as bad as what it ever was, but the cupboards with a few movables less. Right angel of virtue, he looks like."
"And Jack looks like what he is," Davy adds, in a cheerful manner.
Jack inclines his head. "Thank you, mate, I'm flattered. Wouldn't have it any other way."
"Jack," Oliver says, helplessly, "I'm not a pickpocket. You and I both know that. I'd be noticed in an instant. I couldn't pick pockets when I was at the best height for it, let alone now."
"Oliver, I always clocked a born dipper the first time I saw 'em. Some proper lessons is all what you need. I'd be delighted to be your teacher, and there ain't no better day to start than today."
Before Oliver had been apprenticed from the workhouse, Bumble, the beadle, had told him sanctimoniously that he was both an ungrateful and thoroughly wicked boy, and that he had most undoubtedly been so before he had even departed his poor mother's womb. Now he wonders if the man, otherwise a fool, had been closer to the truth than he knew, and whether it's a part of what draws he and Jack together.
Somewhere in his memory, he hears a voice politely enquiring of him, 'Is it gone?' and his boyish self replies, 'Yes, Mr Fagin! Look!'