Page 55 of Molly Boys

“So was half of Whitechapel.”

“There was something about him,” Ev murmured as he watched the stooped figure retreat. “The way he stared at me. It was intense, uncomfortable.”

Franklin hurried after the stranger, but the man was quickly swallowed up in the bustle of activity. They scanned the vicinity, but the man was nowhere to be found.

Ev turned to look at the building from which the man had exited and noticed the sign mounted above the door.

The Black Orchid Shipping co.

“Coincidence?” he muttered to Franklin as he too glanced up at the sign.

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Franklin rumbled back as he strode toward the company’s door.

A small bell chimed as they entered into a shabby office. To one side, under a window with dirty panes, stood an empty desk piled with paperwork. Opposite that was a large scuffed cabinet with dozens of pigeon holes filled with packages.

The only clerk in the room glanced up from the other desk in the small room and stared at them in annoyance, as if their presence was an inconvenience. His eyes were squinted and his shoulders rounded by years spent hunched over ledgers.

“May I help you?”

“There was a man just in here. Slightly stooped, carried a brown leather satchel. Who was he?” Franklin demanded.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s askin’?”

“Detective Inspector Franklin, H Division.”

For a moment it didn’t seem like the clerk would answer.

“Mr Baxter,” he finally offered. “His family owns an ink factory or somethin’.”

“And his purpose?”

The other man lifted his chin. “I don’t see how it’s any business of yours?”

Dark eyes flashing dangerously, Franklin crossed the room and leaned down, bracing his hands on the desk and staring at the clerk. Ev had to admit, as his pulse raced a tiny bit, that he’d probably break under the weight of that look—only in an entirely different manner.

The clerk relented at the inspector’s unnerving gaze. “Every few months he has packages brought over from the Orient. Dunno what, we don’t ask.”

Franklin straightened up and looked around the office once more. “Who’s the proprietor of this place?”

“Mr Elias Black.”

“Where might I find him?”

He shrugged. “Dunno, he doesn’t come to the shipping offices, at least not since I’ve been here, and I’ve worked for Black Orchid for close to ten years. Mr Black sends his written instructions through a manservant, sometimes different ones.”

“I see.” Franklin nodded, and Ev saw his eyes flick to the empty desk. “Did you have a young clerk working here by the name of Charles Wakefield?”

“What of it?”

Franklin simply stared at him once more, lifting one brow slowly, until the man grunted and gave in.

“What do you want to know?”

“What was he like?”

Ev was a little taken aback. He’d expected him to ask about the day he disappeared or about his murder, not what the boy was like.

“Good lad, worked hard,” the clerk admitted grudgingly. “Kept to himself.”