Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [101]
He walked past the omnibus stop, turned the corner, and hurried down the long, drab street. He hailed a hansom and climbed in, shouting directions.
Albie’s rooming house was familiar: the wet matting just past the door, then the bright red beyond, the dim stairs. He knocked on the door, aware that there might be a customer already there. But his sense of urgency would not let him wait to make a more convenient arrangement.
There was no answer.
He knocked again, harder, as if he meant to force it if he were not admitted.
Still there was no reply.
“Albie!” he said sharply. “I’ll push this door in if you don’t answer!”
Silence. He put his ear to the door and there was no sound of movement inside.
“Albie!” he shouted.
Nothing. Pitt turned and ran down the stairs, along the red-carpeted hallway to the back where the landlord had his quarters. This establishment was different from the brothel where Abigail worked. Here there was no procurer guarding the door. Albie paid a high rent for his room; customers came and went in privacy. But then it was a richer, different class of clientele, far more guarded with their secrets. To visit a woman prostitute was an understandable lapse, a little indiscretion that a man of the world turned a blind eye to. To pay for the services of a boy was not only a deviation too disgusting to be condoned, it was also a crime, opening one to all the nightmares of blackmail.
He knocked sharply on the door.
It opened a crack and a bilious eye looked out at him.
“ ’Oo are yer? Wot d’yer want?”
“Where’s Albie?”
“Why d’yer want ter know? If ’e owes yer, it’s nuffin ter do wiv me!”
“I want to talk to him. Now where is he?”
“Wot’s it worf?”
“It’s worth not being run in for keeping a brothel and aiding and abetting in homosexual acts, which are illegal.”
“Yer can’t do vat! I rent aht rooms. Wot vey does in ’em ain’t my fault!”
“Want to prove that to a jury?”
“You can’t arrest me!”
“I can and I will. You might get off, but you’ll have a rough time in jail till you do. People don’t like procurers, especially ones who procure little boys! Now where’s Albie?”
“I dunno! Honest to God, I dunno! ’E don’t tell me where ’e comes an’ goes!”
“When did you see him last? What time does he usually come back—and don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“Abaht six—’e’s always back at abaht six. But I ain’t seen ’im for a couple o’ days. ’E weren’t ’ere last night, and I dunno where ’e went. As God’s me judge! An’ I carn’t tell yer more’n vat if yer was to send me ter Horstralia fer it!”
“We don’t send people to Australia anymore—haven’t done for years,” Pitt said absently. He believed the man. There would be no point in his lying, and he had everything to lose if Pitt chose to harass him.
“Well, Coldbath Fields then!” the man said angrily. “It’s the truth. I dunno where ’e’s gorn! Nor if n ’e’ll be back. I bloody ’ope so—’e owes me this week’s rent, ’e does!” Suddenly he was aggrieved.
“I expect he’ll be back,” Pitt said with a curious sense of misery. Probably Albie would come back. After all, why shouldn’t he? As he had said himself, he had good rooms here and an established clientele. The only other possibility was if he had found some single customer who had developed into a lover, possessive, demanding—and wealthy enough to set him up somewhere for his own exclusive patronage. Such windfalls as that were pipe dreams for boys like Albie.
“So ’e’ll be back!” the landlord said testily. “You plannin’ to stand there in the passageway like a devil’s ’ead till ’e does, then? You’ll scare orf all the—visitors! It ain’t good fer a place to ’ave the likes o’ you standin’ there! Gives a place a bad name. Makes people fink vere’s suffink wrong wiv us!”
Pitt sighed. “Of course not. But I’ll be back. And if you’ve done anything to send Albie away, or any harm has come to him, I’ll have you down to Coldbath Fields quicker than your rotten little feet’ll touch the ground!”
“Fancy ’im, then, do yer?” The old man’s face split in a dirty grin, and he seized the chance to kick Pitt’s foot out of the doorway and