Lacey Boggs’s con was to sing for tipsy gents after the theater while her accomplice dipped into their pockets. The dodge had not been pulling in the revenue it once did after Lacey passed a summer at Her Majesty’s pleasure and came out of the clink minus her teeth and plus a set of wooden dentures.

Garrick took Lacey by the elbow and propelled her beneath a gas streetlight, so that her head bonged against the pole.

“Here, what’s all this rough stuff?” she objected. “I’ll ’ave your hand for a spittoon, mate.”

The bluster was replaced by terror when Lacey realized exactly whose hand she had just threatened.

“Oh, not you, Mr. Garrick. I never meant you. Be rough all you like, I know there’s no harm in you.”

Garrick tightened his grip on Lacey’s elbow. “There’s harm in me, Lacey Boggs. Gallons of harm and hurt, a-waiting to be spilled onto some poor unfortunate.”

Lacey smiled, and Garrick saw that she had taken to dying her wooden choppers with lime. “Not me, Mr. Garrick. Ain’t I always done as asked to the letter? Who was it that located that French count for you? The one what was brutally murdered...” Lacey’s eyes went wide and she covered her mouth with her hand. “I never meant that you had nothing to do with that. A fine gent like yourself... Coincidence, surely.”

Garrick had no patience for this bleating woman. “Calm yourself, Lacey. The harm in me is not for you. I have a job, that’s all. Do you remember my boy, Riley?”

Lacey’s face muscles relaxed. “Aww. I remembers him. Cute little beggar with the wonky eyeballs. Suffers with the nervosity a bit, I’d say.”

“That’s him. I need you to find him. Employ whomever you need. Have old Ernest send a pigeon to the theater if I cannot be found.”

Lacey sniffed, as though she could smell a sovereign. “London is a big place, Mr. Garrick. Three million souls big. Could you give a girl a clue?”

“I shall be generous. Two clues I have for you. Firstly, Riley may fly to the Old Nichol, for he is well aware of the abhorrence I hold in my heart for that disease pit.”

“And the second?”

“It is possible that he travels with an Injun maiden. A pretty lass, but dangerous.”

Lacey Boggs clacked her wooden teeth in rumination. “An Injun in Old Nichol. That fox will hunt herself, so she will.”

Garrick took a sovereign from his supply. “There is another sov to go with this if you are successful. If not, I will be reclaiming this one from your dead hand. Do you understand me, wench?”

Lacey Boggs shivered as though suddenly cold, but one hand flicked from below her shawl to claim the coin. “I understands. Find the boy and send word.”