Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly

I could make nothing of it.’
    The light was nearly gone. Ganymede looked over his shoulder again, and January guessed that the valet had stolen away from his master’s house. He wondered if ‘Marse Luke’ beat his valet, brother or no brother.
    What was it, he wondered, about those tiny, regular figures that caught his attention …?
    â€˜I told him,’ Mede went on, ‘it could be just a robber. Thieves break in hotels all over town, looking for a gold watch or a silver pen—’
    A pen
.
    â€˜He had a pen.’ January looked up from the notebook’s pages. ‘One of those new reservoir pens—’
    â€˜Yes, sir. He showed it to me on that first ride to the Capitol, told me how it worked. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.’
    The ink lines don’t change shape as a quill’s do
…
    That’s why all those tiny numbers look different
.
    A friend had showed him one in Paris some years ago. It had bled ink like a stuck pig.
    â€˜Silver?’
    â€˜Yes, sir. I’d never seen one before. Marse Luke takes steel-nib pens from the Navy, for his office upstairs, and Mrs Bray has a gold one downstairs, for doing the books.’
    â€˜And had he a gold watch?’
    â€˜He did, sir. He looked at it as I was driving him.’
    â€˜Could you describe it? Initials? Design?’ And, when Ganymede shook his head: ‘Anything else of value that you remember? Fobs? Fob chain? Pin?’
    â€˜He had a pin, sir. He wore an old-fashioned stock, like Marse Luke’s grandpa.’ The young man grinned a little, at some memory of that old man back in Kentucky. ‘What Grandma Bray calls a baroque pearl. Not round, but lumpy. It looked just like a tiny fist clenched up. He had a fob seal, but I never saw what it was. The top of it was shaped like a little chess-piece, when they don’t want to make a whole little soldier for a pawn, but just a ball on the top. More than that I don’t remember, sir—’
    â€˜That’s enough.’ January thrust the notebook into his pocket. ‘And thank you, Mede, more than I can say, for coming out here to meet me like this.’ He clasped the young man’s hand. ‘Now head on back, before you get into trouble with Mrs Bray.’
    â€˜Will what I told you help you find him?’ The valet’s expression told January more than words could have, about the old man’s friendliness and concern for someone he didn’t have to pay attention to at all.
    â€˜After all this time I may not be able to find him,’ January said. ‘But if one of those items turns up in a pawn shop, I may be able to find the man who took them off him.’
    Not even the twinkle of lamplight shone in the formless distance as January quickened his step across the bridge. He followed the curve of the road up the uneven banks of the creek, aware of how isolated this spot was. The moon had not risen and no light penetrated the shadows beneath the trees. He hoped the creak and rustle away to his left was a fox, or one of the capital’s ubiquitous pigs. He strained his eyes, seeking the movement—
    A fragment of breeze brought him the mingled stink of tobacco spit and dirty clothes.
    It was gone an instant later, but his heart froze in his breast.
    The breeze had come from his right.
    To his left, another rustle, which stopped the instant after his own footfalls did. Harness jingled somewhere as a horse tossed its head.
    Oh, Jesus
…
    He turned back toward the bridge and saw a shadow for a moment on the pale trace of the road.
    It disappeared into the trees, but he knew it for a man.
    The wagon in the black mists of K Street. The glint of lantern light on the barrel of a gun
.
    He reached down and slipped from his boot the knife that he would have been arrested for carrying. What good it would do him, he didn’t know: there were at least three of them, possibly a fourth somewhere in