No Good Deed 71

The dishes had been cleared by Lucasta herself, her bulk seeming to absorb all the light in the already gloomy room. My dining companion cocked an eye-brow at me and instructed the negro woman to bring us two cigars. I was expecting the arrival of what were vulgarly called 'cheroots' in the Americas. Properly called the Tuscanian, this cigar was near ubiquitous amongst the less discerning. However, to my surprise, two fat figurados lay on a silver salver alongside matches and a cutter. The wrapping was as dark as rich loam, the curved sides sensual. Eileen cut both cigars before handing me the first, she struck a match with a flourish on the floor and lit my cigar. She smirked, and I wondered if she had any care at all for convention or decorum.

It was a truly fine cigar. I felt as contented as ever I had been since arriving in the Americas.

'Cuban, then?' I asked.

'Oh yes, Mr Northrup. One of Señor Ybor's finest. El Principe de Gales, a noble name for a noble brand.' She laughed and plucked a dark brown strand of tobacco from her lower lip.

'So,' I paused, savouring the smoke and odour. 'In what place? And what might be the appropriate time?'

A stream of the heavy smoke blew directly into my face, her words followed behind.

'There is a plantation no more than four miles from the mint. Campion Galloway's fief. His grandfather named it Molasses.'

'Sugar cane?' I coughed a little smoke. Eileen laid her cigar down on the table.

'Not at all, the slaves pick cotton and the owner grows fat. I have no idea why it is named so.'

'And when might the appropriate time be, my sweet?'

She pulled a pepper-pot pistol from her skirts and said,

'No time like the present, Mr Northrup.'

The firearm did not, in fact, look particularly fearsome, but I doubted that woman would carry anything which would not perform its task with an efficiency to match her own. I ground the stub of my cigar on the salver on which it had arrived and leaned back in the chair.

'Perhaps not, I had hardly thought to go anywhere at gunpoint.'

'You have some papers, Mr Northrup. I need to see them.'

The hideously patterned carpet-bag was yet outside with Ishmael, if he had not disappeared in search of alcoholic libations.

'I have no papers with me.' At least this last was not a lie.

She raised the ridiculous pistol,

'You are expendable, Mr Northrup, we can find another cat's paw at very short notice and at very little cost.'

'My good woman,' I could not resist the urge to provoke her, 'I was expecting no remuneration.'

'The papers,' she waved the diminutive hand-gun and I told her that Ishmael had them in the carpet bag.

'Well then, let's go.' She stood and linked her left arm with mine, using it to cover the pistol barrel, which was placed snugly against one of my ribs. I was sure we made a handsome couple as we left the whores' canteen.