“There will be extra coin in it,” Munro told him, and we climbed aboard.
St. Giles was the perfect place for someone who wanted to disappear. So dangerous even the police dared not patrol its streets.
It was a place of crumbling tenements side-by-side with doss houses, a beer hall, and any number of taverns where numbers were run and other transactions made by women with no other way to support themselves.
Munro jerked my cap even lower over my face.
“Keep yer head down, speak to no one, and stay close. Do ye ken?”
I nodded.
How we could possibly find Brodie here, among the shadows of buildings and other shadows that moved here—men, women, even children who appeared with thin grimy faces in the flickering light from a tavern, then disappeared just as quickly as we passed?
Then a hand clamped over my shoulder. Munro was there, even as I slipped my hand to my pocket and the revolver I’d slipped in there before leaving Sussex Square.
“Leave off!” he threatened, and the light from the tavern glinted off the blade of the knife in his hand.
Just as quickly as the man had appeared, he disappeared once more into the shadows.
“Come along,” Munro said in a low voice. “And keep to the street, away from the buildings.”
I nodded as we continued toward the glow of lights from a tall building at the end of the street. Laughter, music, and wildshouts spilled out onto the street in front of a beer hall, the lights inside hazy with smoke.
Munro climbed the steps and I followed. A man of equal size with a badly scarred face immediately blocked our way.
“That will be a quid to go inside,” he informed Munro, then added, “Each.” He held out his hand.
Munro shoved that hand aside, even as I saw the blade in his other hand, held low at his side.
“I’m here to see MacGregor.”
“Who’s here to see ‘im?”
“Munro, with a friend. Stand aside, or I’ll cut ye from yer bollocks to yer gizzard.”
The man grunted. “I’ve heard that name, along with another.”
“Then, ye know well enough to stand aside,” Munro replied.
“Wot is the trouble here?” another man asked as he came up behind the man at the door.
“This one says that he knows you. Don’t know about the other one.” He gestured to me.
“I know ‘im.” The second man nodded to Munro. “Let ‘im pass, the other one too,” he added with a look in my direction.
The beer hall was loud, raucous, and teeming with customers as we followed MacGregor to a long bar where he shouldered his way through, then stepped behind the counter.
“He’s not about yet. What will you be havin’?” he asked Munro.
Munro nodded. “Beer.”
I shook my head at the look the man then gave me.
Whether or not he saw through the disguise of my clothes, I had no way of knowing. There was no comment made. MacGregor, a fellow Scot by the name, simply accepted it.
“He’s been gone since before noon. No way of knowin’ when he will return,” he informed Munro as he returned with a stout mug of beer.
“Anyone else about askin’ for ‘im?”
