Read Online Shanghai Sparrow by Gaie Sebold - Free Book Online Page A

in the papers, stating that you were not of sound mind, and he feared for you and your sister.”
    “Did he.”
    “Lathrop was a local councillor. Much respected. Did he discover he had taken under his roof someone who was not worthy of his generosity? Someone whose behaviour, perhaps, did not reward his kindness and care? Who was, in fact, even at that tender age, a corrupt and unregenerate criminal?”
    Eveline stared at the curtain over the window. He came looking for me. He already knew who I was. What are you up to, Mr Holmforth? You want something from me, but you’re not all flattery and pretty words, are you?
    “Hmm,” Holmforth said. “It seems that you are capable of discretion after all. Well?”
    “Well what?”
    “Are you prepared to enter the Empire’s service?”
    “I still don’t know what you want me to do.”
    “You will work for Her Majesty’s Government, completing the tasks you would be set to the best of your ability, with absolute loyalty, absolute discretion, and absolute obedience. To this end, you will receive housing, clothing, food, and an education.”
    “Why me?”
    “Because you, Miss Duchen, may have the skills I need.”
    I, she thought. Not we, not Her Majesty’s Government. She stored it away.
    “And if I don’t?”
    “You may still be of use to the Empire.”
    He was doing his best to make her feel she’d no choice in the matter, but that was a trick she’d seen played on more than one mark. She’d done it herself. What he had, and she didn’t, was information. Knowledge, Ma Pether’s voice whispered in her ear. If you’ve got a brain and the means to fill it, you can outwit the Queen and all her ministers.
    She knew what her skills were: deception, trickery, lifting... any way of getting by on the wrong side of the law that she’d been able to find out about, she was good at, bar murder. Did the Empire need thieves and tricksters? Her brain raced. How much did he already know about what she could do? She wasn’t going to sit here listing every trick she’d pulled; for all she knew this could be some elaborate ploy to draw her in. To get not just her, but Ma and all the girls.
    His face gave nothing away. He might as well have been a stone angel in a churchyard, for all his expression betrayed. His eyes remained fixed on hers throughout, but she could read nothing in them except, perhaps, a cold curiosity.
    “For all I know they might want me to walk a high wire like in the circus, twirling a parasol.”
    “Under what circumstances do you imagine Her Majesty’s Government would require you to do such a thing?”
    “I dunno. P’raps Her Majesty might be bored and fancy a laugh?”
    “I hope you are not in the habit of referring to our Queen with disrespect.”
    “I ain’t disrespecting no-one. So you’d train me like a circus girl, would you?”
    “That is hardly likely to be necessary. You will receive a somewhat wider education than is normally available to girls, even of the highest class. Does the idea appeal?”
    She shrugged. “Depends if it’s useful. I can read and I know me numbers. I get by.”
    “You disappoint me. I thought the idea of knowledge might appeal to you. I understand you read for pleasure, as well as when it might be useful to... Ma Pether, you call her. Her real name is Fulshott, by the way.”
    Was that true? If it was, he knew far more than he should – far more than Eveline, and more, perhaps, than Ma.
    “How’d you find me?”
    “I made enquiries. It took time.”
    “Who peached?”
    “Is it relevant?”
    “It is to me.”
    “An intimate of the Pether household. He was most helpful, for the right sum.”
    An intimate... Bloody Bartholomew Simms. It had to be. There were no other men who hung about the place enough to be called an ‘intimate.’
    That tiny bit of knowledge fought against Eveline’s increasing chill. If Holmforth thought that hadn’t been enough of a clue, then he didn’t know quite as much as he