The Vicar
He drummed his fingers on the desk, his signet ring gleaming under the candelabra, enhancing the engraved C. Who the devil were the Peelers? Two of them had delivered Mason to Newgate.
Had Mason told the investigators anything?
And where was Alberts? Had he really set sail?
Too many questions, not enough answers. The guard at Newgate had known the Peelers’ names and was bribed easily enough to let D.B.
slip into the cell. But Mason had taken any secrets to the grave.
The idiot was lucky he’d been incarcerated or the end wouldn’t have been so quick and silent.
The counterfeiting was only the means to an end.
Gunpowder made him the real blunt. He bought the saltpeter from unscrupulous British agents abroad, paying for it with fake banknotes.
By the time the ruse was discovered, he had his product, and the agents were unable to report a crime without incriminating themselves.
He chuckled. There were radicals all over the world who needed gunpowder, willing to pay a high price. The opium was getting too risky, and this venture was proving very profitable.
But he was losing too many men in a short period of time. True, some by his own order, but as his mother pointed out, that was business. With men on their scent, he needed to slip into the shadows for a while. DB would do the same—the one man he couldn’t afford to lose. His assassin.
The Home Office was spinning their wheels like a wagon stuck in the mud. Any agents who had come close to finding out his identity were dead. He and DB would emerge again in the summer and take care of the Peelers. They had no idea who they were dealing with.
But they would soon find out.