It fell open at the last written page. “Was OR htiw CL taSC'O.”
Still as incomprehensible as ever. What foreign tongue might use the English word WAS? After this the script became hurried and agitated. This last page was what Paddy had been writing when I had come in on him. “Was OR htiw CL ta SCO.” This last word intrigued me. I muttered it out loud to myself a few times. I knew Italian and Spanish had words that ended in o, but surely not an apostrophe then o.
I put the book down on the counter as the waitress leaned across to deliver my coffee. I took a sip, enjoying the rich frothy taste. As I stared at myself in the mirrored wall, my gaze wandered down to the black book on the counter. In the mirror I could read one of the words, HTIW had become WITH.
Suddenly it hit me. This wasn't written in a foreign language at all. Paddy himself had given me the clue when he had spoken about Cockneys speaking entirely in slang. He had been raised on the streets of London, where the delivery boys and apprentices hid their conversations from their masters by speaking what was known as backslang. I had heard of it and read about it in books, but I had never encountered it in my own life until now. I understood that backslang consisted of ordinary words pronounced backward. So the word “saw” became “was.” It had been simple but effective as a secret language of the Cockneys in London and was equally effective here. If the book was lost or stolen, most New Yorkers would be as stumped as I had been. The first sentence on the page now read, “Saw KL with LE at DELS.:” Kitty and Lord Edgemont at Delmonico's. Of course. Then I went on. The next page was scribbled hastily but there was a bold black doodle in the left margin. It looked as if Mr. Riley had attempted to draw a bull. “Saw RO with LC at O'CS.” This one made no sense to me. I hadn't come across an RO or LC in his cases, but if I guessed correctly about O'CS, then Paddy had indeed stopped off at O'Connor's on his return home that night, and had overheard something that disturbed him. I worked out the words, one by one, and came up with the following: “Can't believe what I heard. Just talk? Wouldn't go through with it? Not the type. Should check, tell someone.”
Suddenly I felt quite exposed, sitting reading this at the counter. Paddy had wanted me to summon Daniel Sullivan. He had muttered as he lay dying in my arms that it was too big for him. I closed the book, shoved it into my purse and hastily finished my coffee. The first thing now was to take another look at Paddy's office, to see if any of his cases contained mention of RO or LC.
The sky had cleared while I had been eating, and steam was rising from wet sidewalks. I crossed the square, entered Fifth Avenue and turned into the alleyway. A group of young boys was playing on the cobblestones. As I started up the steps to Paddy's office, their playing ceased and they became unnaturally quiet. I turned to look at them and found they were staring at me.
“You can't go up there, miss,” one of them called to me.
“Why not?”
“It ain't safe. You might fall through the floor.” “The firemen said no one was to go in,” another boy chimed in.
“The building was on fire?”
Delighted, excited faces looked up at me and they all started yelling at once …‘There was flames coming out of the window and everything. You shoulda seen it. And then the engine come and the hoses went whoosh and there was a whole lotta smoke.”
“When was this?” I asked with a sinking heart.
“Why, they only left half an hour ago. If you'd been here earlier you'd a seen it all.”
Half an hour ago—the fire engine I had seen galloping past. I ignored the boys' warning and pushed open thedoor. The place stank of smoke, but the back window was wide open, so there was plenty of fresh air coming in. The front office wasn't too badly affected, although walls were singed and blackened and the piles of papers were now reduced to charred scraps. I went through to the back office, treading very cautiously, as the firemen's warning had been valid. The floorboards here were blackened and scorched. They might indeed easily give way. It was here that the fire had raged. Where the file cabinet had been there was a blackened, sodden pile of ash.