Tod nodded, looking thoughtful. “I’ve also put in a call to have some torches installed on the exterior of the clinic to stay lit through the night. I thought it prudent, especially since I had to call for the window replacement and a few other bits of repair besides.”
“And paint?” Roland added, unnecessarily and with a sharp edge in his voice as his friend nodded.
“We can attempt to temper the threats as they arrive,” Tod said with a shrug, “but it is not going to solve the problem in any permanent way. The others are working toward solutions on that front. They have hired more doctors to take the focus offMiss Casper as a start. Something I have been asking them to do since before we even opened the doors of the damned clinic, ever since that day we cut off that shoreman’s foot. Do you remember that?”
Roland stared at him. He stared at him and did not answer.
It made Tod give a rare chuckle. “What am I saying? Of course you do. Anyway, it’s beside the point. We need to squash the bugs as they emerge for now until we can root out the nest. Do you agree?”
Roland made a noncommittal grunt, which actually got a flash of teeth from his friend.
“The problem is that they’re going to need someone to offer protection during operational hours as well. Someone to physically be there at the clinic when these inspectors and auditors and God knows what else comes poking around. We can’t use the kits for that.”
“I have other business during the daylight hours,” Roland said immediately. “You know that.”
“I know you say you do,” Tod answered with a shrug. “If you weren’t so damned secretive about it all, I might even believe you. As it is, this job is the only one I know for sure that you actually have, and I am at liberty to change its location and hours. I’ve done so before.”
“Because the roof caved in!” Roland snapped. “And I just went to do the same thing at your other club. That wasdifferent.”
“Was it?” asked Tod, reaching into his waistcoat and pulling out the thimble, which he rotated between his large fingers. “I seem to remember you getting up to quite a lot of matchmakingmischief of your own during that time. Hannah tells me you once offered to facilitate her designs on me in several creative ways.”
“I did— Not in so many words,” Roland stammered, blinking at the damned glinting silver bauble as it rolled. “That was different.”
“Was it?” Tod asked again. “Funny, I don’t think so.”
“It was,” Roland insisted, sounding weaker now, even to himself.
Tod sighed, glancing at the clock on the wall and tucking the thimble back away. “In any event, I’ve some logistics to work out, so you don’t need to start right away. Take the day tomorrow to see to any mystery business you might need to put on hold and to get a good night’s sleep. I’ll send instructions in the evening.”
“A day?” Roland repeated, balking. “A single day?”
“Yes. And it’s already started. Look at the time,” Tod said, taking the glass and placing it upside down in the washbasin. “Now get out of here. I want to go upstairs to my wife and daughter.”
“Tod!”
“Go on,” he said with a quirk of his lips. “I trust you know your way in the dark. If not, I’m happy to find a linkboy for you.”
And honestly, what could Roland say to that?
CHAPTER 3
It was already a chaotic day.
And that was without the graffiti and broken windows.
Mae had arrived early to find several men already at work washing away the rude sentiments scrawled in orange paint from the walls and measuring the panes for new glass. Amongst them, Rabbi Hirsch of the Clerkenwell Synagogue, an old friend of the Casper family, was standing with a metal bucket between his feet, peering up at the clinic through the shade cast down from his wide-brimmed black hat.
“Good morning, Rabbi,” Mae had called. “Is that paint you’ve brought us?”
“Miss Casper,” he’d answered, turning to grin at her through his half-shadowed visage. “No, indeed! It is limewash. For the walls.”
“Limewash,” she’d repeated, frowning. “Does that stop the graffiti from sticking if they come back?”
“I don’t think so,” he’d answered. “But it’ll slow fire if they try that next.”
It was, all in all, an appropriate start to the day.
She’d opened the doors to the Quaker matrons who brought breakfast every morning for the overnighters, which mostly consisted of the children staying quarantined through their chicken pox and a few in the infirmary too sick or hobbled to recover at home without requiring multiple trips back and forth by Mae herself.
