The Revenge of Captain Paine by Andrew Pepper

leathery skin.
    The magistrate shrugged and dealt himself another card.
    As Yellowplush dealt it, Pyke again leaned over the table and whispered, ‘That card remains on the table in full view of everyone here. If you try to swap it with one of those duplicate cards you’ve fixed to the underside of the table, I’ll expose your squalid little scam. Nod once, to show me you understand.’
    Colour drained from the magistrate’s face and sweat leaked from beneath his wig.
    ‘Was that a nod?’
    Yellowplush didn’t seem to know what to do. His curly wig slipped farther down his forehead but he didn’t seem to have noticed.
    A crowd of faces had gathered around the table, watching their every move with a keen interest.
    ‘Did I just see a nod?’ Pyke said, louder so others could hear him.
    Yellowplush pushed his wig back up on top of his head and nodded. Pyke turned over his four of clubs. ‘Twenty-one. ’ He smiled at the glowering magistrate. ‘What? Has your luck finally run out?’
    When Yellowplush neither answered him nor turned over his cards, Pyke added, ‘Remember what I said about keeping your hands above the table.’ Then he reached out, plucked the card from the magistrate’s hand and tossed it on to the table. ‘Makes nineteen, if I’m not mistaken.’ Scooping up the coins and his own ten-pound note, he deliberately knocked over his ale glass, and watched as the brown liquid dripped on to the magistrate’s lap. Before Yellowplush could stop him, Pyke swiped the curly wig from his head and began to mop up the mess. An awed silence fell across the room. Whistling, Pyke continued his mopping-up work, until the table was dry, and then rinsed out the wig and placed it back on the magistrate’s head. Ale began to drip down on to Yellowplush’s face. There were a few nervous twitters from the very back of the room. Otherwise, no one said a word. As he arranged the wig on the magistrate’s head, Pyke added, ‘Lay a finger on me in here and I’ll make sure that every man and woman in this inn knows you cheat at cards.’ Then he wiped both hands on his jacket and stood up. ‘Now that’s settled, perhaps you’ll join me for some night air,’ Pyke said, so that everyone in the room could hear him.
    Insisting that Pyke go first, Yellowplush had prodded what felt like the end of his pistol into Pyke’s back before they had even departed the inn. ‘Tell me who you are and what you want right now,’ he whispered, ‘or I’ll squeeze the trigger and you’ll die a long, painful death.’
    Outside, on the street, Pyke turned around to face Yellowplush, whose shining face was as large as a turnip, barely visible in the gloom. ‘I’m an emissary from Sir Robert Peel. He’s taken an interest in your corpse and he asked me to investigate the matter further.’ Pyke expected that Yellowplush might be surprised by this revelation but the magistrate merely shrugged as though the matter were of no consequence. ‘I have a letter confirming this,’ he added, quickly, ‘if you’ll allow me to find it.’
    Yellowplush poked the pistol into Pyke’s chest. ‘I can’t understand why Peel’s so interested in our body.’
    ‘I don’t know. Like I said, he asked me to look into the matter and report back to him.’ Pyke waited, deciding not to say anything about Peel’s interest in Captain Paine and the threat posed by radicals.
    ‘Why didn’t you introduce yourself at the outset?’
    ‘Peel is a divisive figure,’ Pyke said. ‘In my experience, his name doesn’t always open doors.’
    ‘I know that, for a fact.’ Yellowplush reached out his hand. ‘Let me see the letter.’
    Pyke retrieved it from his pocket and gave it to the magistrate, who surveyed the content without much interest. ‘It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t kill you, leave you to bleed to death for what you did in the inn.’
    ‘You think Peel wouldn’t find out? Or that everyone in the inn who witnessed our card game loves you so