It took Cantillon nearly an hour to change. When he came down the stairs, he was dressed for business in black coat, breeches, hose and shoes, but under his coat he wore a flamboyant yellow waistcoat, embroidered with designs in black and gold. It fit like the skin of a sausage around his portly frame.
“Let’s be off.” He stepped down into the street, and Justy caught the scent of wax and rose water. The lawyer had tried to tame his hair, pulling it back behind his head and tying it with a black ribbon. But the unruly orange curls were already working their way free.
Cantillon led, tossing questions at Justy over his shoulder. “I called your father a speculator, earlier. Do you know what that is?”
“Someone who makes a wager on the future value of something.”
“Very good. You paid attention to your father, then.”
“He once told me everyone’s a speculator. Whenever you buy something or sell something or lend somebody money, you’re placing a bet.”
They flattened their backs against a wall to make way for a handbarrow loaded with bright green apples.
“Your father was right. We’re all speculators. We all take risks. The problem arises when we take risks with other people’s money.”
The man handling the cart nodded gratefully to Cantillon as he eased his burden past. The lawyer leaned forward. “Excuse me, my good fellow.”
The carter stopped. “Sir?” He wore a long hessian smock and a wide cap, and his face was burned red.
“Are these your apples?” Cantillon asked.
“Yaas.” The man had a broad Dutch accent. He had probably risen at four in the morning to wheel his cart from the orchards up at Kip’s Bay.
“Do you grow them yourself?”
The man grunted a laugh. “No. The farmer grows. I pay the farmer to pick. Some my wife uses to make apple pies to sell. The rest I bring to the market.”
“May I ask where you get the money to pay the farmer?”
The man frowned, and Cantillon held his hands up. “I’m merely curious.”
The man shrugged. “Sometimes we have money. Sometimes I borrow from the farmer. He is my wife’s brother.”
Cantillon dug a coin out of his pocket. “Thank you, my good man. Here.”
The coin disappeared, and the man selected two large apples. He handed one to Cantillon and the other to Justy, then carried on his way.
Justy sniffed his apple. “The brother-in-law sounds like a sharp one.”
Cantillon shrugged. “He still takes a risk. But at least both the farmer and the carter know the apple business.” He started up the hill. “But imagine if the carter is more ambitious. He decides to buy every apple in the orchard. And instead of just borrowing from his brother, he borrows from every person in his village. And the people in the village don’t just lend him a few coins, but give him all the money they have.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they think he’s going to sell his apples for lots of money and they’ll get a nice return, of course. The question is, what happens if those apples don’t sell. Or they’re pilfered. Or lost.”
“Everybody loses their money.”
“Everybody loses everything. The whole village is ruined. And all because they put too much trust in one man, who made too big a bet.” He handed Justy his apple and hurried on up to Wall Street.
The Devil’s half mile. A narrow, cobbled corridor, flanked with tall, gray stone buildings that ran steeply downhill from Trinity Church to the East River wharves. It thronged with traffic. The sidewalks were crammed with people: messengers and clerks in their black coats; delivery boys in their shirtsleeves; shoeshine men with their boxes; crossing sweeps with their brooms and shovels. The noise was deafening: men shouting extravagant greetings or colorful abuse; merchants calling out the cost of their wares. And everywhere, all the time, the clatter of iron on stone, like a thousand hammers, as carriages and jigs of all shapes and sizes hauled up and down the hill, disgorging well-heeled men who hurried into the grand-looking buildings.
Cantillon peered at the traffic, waiting for an opportunity to cross the street. “Speculation on a large scale is dangerous. It has pushed us to the brink several times in the last decade alone.” He launched himself into a gap between two carriages, stepping left and right to avoid the pools of urine and piles of dung. He reached the other side, breathing heavily, and smoothed the lapels of his coat.
“And that’s why we need rules, you see? To be sure no single reckless individual can endanger the entire system. Ah. Here we are.”
The Tontine Coffee House was an imposing building of gray granite, three stories high, that took up half a Wall Street block. A staircase of blackened teak beams led up to a wooden entrance platform, head height above the street.
A sleek black carriage was drawn up under the platform, and two men stood beside it, making sure that none of the passing carts scratched the cab’s brass fittings or immaculate paintwork. The bigger of the men stared. He was about six feet tall, almost the height of Justy himself, but he had the bulk of a cart horse. He was well dressed, all in black, and wore his greasy hair long, but not long enough to conceal a King’s regulation brand on his forehead, a letter D for deserter. The man swung a big blackthorn stick up onto his shoulder and said something to his companion. The second man was a foot shorter, but almost as wide. He too was dressed from head to toe in black. Both of his ears had been cropped—the punishment for thievery—and his head was shaved. He stared at Cantillon and Justy, his eyes like two black stones in his wide, pale face.
Cantillon glanced at the carriage and hurried up the steps. Justy followed him up onto the platform, through a pair of wide oak doors and into the Tontine’s lobby.
As he walked across the wide room, Justy’s eyes were drawn upwards. A chandelier hung from the roof, as large as a mill wheel and bristling with three tiers of candles. But the sky-blue ceiling was so high and the room so big that the chandelier looked small. The room was lit by four high windows, one in each wall, below each of which hung a single enormous painting depicting people at work, in a field, in a shipyard, in a forest.
A dull roar, like rain on a cheap roof, came from a room on the left side of the lobby. Justy followed Cantillon to the entrance and stood for a moment, stunned by the noise. The room was long, perhaps a hundred feet, with ceilings as high as the lobby. The floor was made of oak, and the walls were whitewashed. Light streamed in through a number of high windows and reflected off a highly polished mahogany table. It ran the entire length of the space and was dotted with dozens of tiny white coffee cups, like the first scattering of a snow on a ploughed field.
The room was crammed with men, all shouting, arguing, laughing, scribbling, gesticulating. Justy had the impression of a hundred mouths, red throats, flushed faces, white teeth, chewing up business, mangling it, swallowing it, washing it down with cup after cup of the coffee that they poured out of tall white jugs into the tiny white cups.
Cantillon forced his way through the crowd. They passed close to a group of seven or eight young men, all expensively dressed, who were gathered around a tall, big-bellied man of about thirty. He wore a bright green jacket edged and frogged with gold material. His hair was teased into a white pompadour that bobbed and swayed as he talked.
“… a fabulous return. Sixteen percent. How could I say no?”
He caught sight of Cantillon and tapped the side of his nose, eyebrow raised. His companions laughed. The lawyer ignored him and pushed past to the table. He slumped into a chair.
“Bloody man,” he muttered.
A waiter appeared at his side. He was a big man, taller than Justy, but with heavy shoulders that strained a jacket that was so pristinely white that it made his skin look as dark as the mahogany table.
Cantillon glanced at him. “Rolls please, Thomas. And coffee, of course.”
The man nodded and disappeared into the crowd.
An enormously fat man in a long white wig appeared at the door. His face was caked in powder, and there were two red circles painted on his cheeks. He was immaculately and flamboyantly dressed in the French style: a rose-colored long-tailed coat, frogged and embroidered with thick gold thread, matching breeches, white silk hose and black shoes adorned with large silver buckles. A hush fell over the room.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said in a high voice.
The men broke into a spontaneous round of applause. The fat man beamed and pushed his way into the crowd, as the shouting and bargaining began afresh.
Another figure appeared in the doorway to the room. He was tall and thin, with a lined face. He looked about fifty, but his hair was jet-black. He wore it pulled sharply back from his face and tied with a black ribbon. He was soberly but expensively dressed, entirely in black.
He watched as people rushed to get close to the fat man, to slap him on the back and squeeze him by the hand. Suddenly, as though he had felt Justy watching him, his head turned. His gray eyes stared. He started across the room.
Justy turned to see the waiter easing through the crowd, holding a tray on one hand above his head. He placed a plate of rolls, a coffeepot and two cups with saucers on the table. Suddenly the thin man appeared beside him. Thomas froze as the man placed a hand lightly on his shoulder.
“The same for me, please, Thomas, if you would be so kind.” An English voice, but with none of the plummy, inbred overtones of the aristocracy.
Thomas kept his eyes down. “Right away, Mr. Colley, sir.”
Colley looked at Cantillon, who had given all his attention to pouring coffee.
“Good morning, Carrots.”
Cantillon’s jaw tightened. He stood slowly, adjusting his necktie. “Good morning, John.”
Colley’s cold gray eyes looked him up and down. “I do admire your waistcoat, old man.”
Cantillon flashed a grin. “Thank you. May I present my new assistant, Justice Flanagan? Justice, this is Mr. John Colley.”
Colley extended his hand. “A pleasure.”
His eyes dropped to take in Justy’s cream breeches and boots. “Dressed for hunting, I see. Very appropriate for a trader. We eat what we kill here.”
“I’m not a trader.”
Colley tilted his head back. “Do you even know what a trader does?”
Justy ignored the tension in his guts. “Buys low. Sells high. And makes sure he gets a sniff of the fish before it’s wrapped. That’s what my mammy taught me.” He paused. “When I was a wean.”
Colley’s eyes flashed. “You’ve got a spine, I see.”
He stood aside to let Thomas pass. The waiter’s hands trembled, and the cup rattled against its saucer as he placed them on the table.
Cantillon cleared his throat. “Mr. Flanagan has just returned from college in Ireland. Complete with a bachelor’s in law.”
“Indeed?” Colley glanced down at the bulge made by the knife in Justy’s right boot. He lifted the coffeepot and poured a long stream of the steaming black liquid into his cup. “So, what do you have planned for your new protégé, Carrots?”
“Mr. Flanagan will help me in my preparations for the conference next week,” Cantillon said. “Drafting the bill…”
“Oh yes, the bill.” Colley glanced at Justy over the rim of his cup and raised an eyebrow. “New rules to keep us all in our places. Heaven forfend that anyone should actually be allowed to make any money.”
Cantillon reddened. “I would have thought, John, that after the last panic, you of all people would recognize the need to curb excesses of speculation.”
“Yes, yes. You’re right, of course.” Colley let his cup and saucer clatter on the table. “It’s just all this rule making is so incredibly dull. Perhaps you’ll let me take Mr. Flanagan to lunch tomorrow. I can give him the traders’ view of things.”
“We have a great deal of work to do.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Carrots. It’s just lunch.”
Cantillon scowled. “Very well.”
“Good. Until tomorrow, then, Mr. Flanagan. One o’clock, in the lobby.”
He tossed a contemptuous glance at Cantillon. “And I promise not to poison his mind.”