On Ikey's arrival at the lodgings of the actor and his tailor son there was soon a frenzy of activity as Reuban Reuban clipped and trimmed Ikey's hair until it was short and much to the latest fashion, brushed close and forward to the forehead. Then he trimmed the sideburns in the shorter vogue allowing an inch or more between the side whiskers and the commencement of the beard, which he then clipped short and close to the face. With expert hands he shaved the remaining whiskers from Ikey's face and completely removed his moustache. The result was such a transformation of appearance that Hannah herself would have had great difficulty recognising her husband. Ikey had shed fifteen years in age and his appearance was of a man of handsome demeanour. His looks, occasioned by the wildness of his hair, scraggy beard and length of the nose which rose from his hirsute face like a mountain peak above the forest line, now looked well proportioned and passed well for that of an upper-class English gentleman.
It was Abraham who was next to work upon the transformation of Ikey. He stripped him quickly, though Ikey whimpered at the removal of his beloved coat, until Ikey stood stark naked, his only adornment a chain to which was attached a small medallion of gold which hung about his neck. Commencing with woollen long johns, piece by piece Abraham refurbished him from his under garments to a fine frock coat until his subject stood before him square rigged and every inch the prosperous City gentleman. Ikey, shown his new visage in a mirror, came near to fainting from the shock of witnessing the remarkable re-creation of his personage. Abraham's final act of sartorial brilliance was to produce a top hat and silver-topped malacca cane. Carefully brushing the nap of beaver fur with the elbow of his coat, he placed the hat upon Ikey's head, whereupon he handed him an elegant pair of pigskin gloves and the cane.
'Blimey! You looks a proper toff, Uncle Isaac!' Abraham exclaimed, well pleased with his work. 'You could pass for the Guv'ner o' the Bank o' England, walk right through the door, you could, no questions asked!' He turned and shouted to Reuban Reuban who, shortly after having trimmed and shaved Ikey, had departed to another room. 'Come see, father!'
'Me coat, where's me coat?' Ikey called out in alarm.
'Your coat? Why it be upon your back, Uncle Isaac!' Abraham's expression changed and showed sudden consternation. 'You'll not be wearing that coat?' He pointed to the greasy heap upon the floor. 'That'd be dead give away, that would an' all!'
'Ang it up! 'Ang it up!' Ikey commanded in an agitated voice, dancing from one foot to the other in his shiny black gentleman's boots.
Abraham looked momentarily confused, but then hastily took the coat hanger from which had hung the frock coat Ikey now wore, fitted the collar of Ikey's coat about it and suspended it from a hook behind the door.
'Now leave us, if you please!' Ikey said, his composure regained.
Abraham, in somewhat of a sulk, left the room. He was disappointed at Ikey's complete lack of interest in his clever tailoring and the remarkable change he'd brought about to such an unpropitious subject.
Ikey quickly rummaged through his overcoat, putting the contents of all its secret places into the few available pockets in the frock coat. All the bits and pieces that had a known and accustomed place. Cards, promissory notes, pencils of red and blue, string, wire, keys of innumerable configurations, money in small denominations, purses of various sorts containing various amounts, some filled with sixpences, others with shillings. Money in soft and hard, betting slips and receipts for the care of his two little ratters, the terriers he would so sorely miss, a magnifying glass and an eye piece for the assessment of jewellery, spectacles, pincers, pliers, tongs and probes. Each piece filed in its own place was now removed and flung onto a horrendous junk pile within his frock coat pockets, as though they were to be discarded willy-nilly as fuel to a bonfire of Ikey's past.
Finally Ikey took the long cigar-like cylinder containing the letter of credit from the breast pocket of his coat. He folded the letter neatly, added it to several other documents which Reuban Reuban had obtained and placed them in a leather wallet stamped with his monogram in gold on the outside cover. This was yet another small detail prepared by the actor, who had already put a small silver card container beside the wallet which carried the precise cards Ikey had instructed him to print. This too carried the letters I S inscribed upon it.
Whimpering like a newborn puppy, Ikey took leave of his coat. The loss of his beloved coat seemed almost more than Ikey could bear, for his new outfit felt altogether alien to him. It stiffened his joints and rubbed in strange places, so much so that he thought of himself as being not just transformed but as if somehow he had sloughed his old body, and mysteriously come upon a new one. One moment he was Ikey Solomon and then, with a little trimming, shaving and the application of new linen and half a bolt of suiting, he had been created into some curious unknown personage.
The smell and touch of the new cloth enveloped Ikey's bony body and added to this strange feeling of otherness. He wondered for a moment whether it all might drive him mad, his urgent mission with Coutts amp; Company quite forgotten as his newly tonsured head was utterly confused.
It was at this precise moment that Ikey saw himself in his old personage walking into the room, with wildly flying grey and gingered hair, scraggly beard and untidy, shaggy brows, his nose rising majestic between two small obsidian eyes looking directly at him. He saw old Ikey reach behind the door and take his beloved coat from its hook and place it upon his thin, angular body. He observed himself at once become stooped, his neck lowering itself tortoise-like into the shiny collar of the coat. His chin came to rest upon his breast, and, most remarkably, how, with all this doing, a sly, furtive expression had crept upon his former face.
Suddenly his nephew appeared in the doorway, a rude intrusion standing directly behind the vision. Abraham placed a flat-topped, broad-brimmed hat upon the apparition's head identical to the one Bob Marley had discarded at the Academy of Light Fingers. Ikey now observed himself standing in front of himself so completely that he pushed the fingers of both hands deep into his mouth. The astonishing manifestation before him was a more perfect likeness of himself than he knew himself to be.
'Not the fingers, Uncle Ikey! No gentleman swallows 'is fingers,' Abraham cried.
'What say you, Ikey?' Reuban Reuban asked. 'Do I well fit your personage? Is the likeness true, my dear?' His voice was thin and carping in the exact timbre of Ikey's own and his hands imitated perfectly the other's mannerisms.
It was not a moment more than half an hour later when Moses Julian, dressed in the expensive livery of a private house and accompanied by Abraham, similarly dressed as a footman, drew their carriage to a halt in a lane leading directly into the Strand. Inside sat Ikey and his remarkable likeness to his former self, Reuban Reuban, who touched Ikey's knee in a quick salute and slipped out of the coach even before it had completely come to a halt. Whereupon Moses urged the horses on and the coach moved away and soon enough came to the end of the lane and turned into the Strand.
The afternoon was already beginning to darken from the smog and the general effects of the fog so that the thronging humanity who moved along the crowded sidewalk were of a mind much occupied with their own progress in the failing light, so took no interest in the Jew as he made his way among them.
Nor, within a moment of turning into the Strand, could the coach have been recognised in the numerous-ness of similar carriages and coaches and hackneys that jammed and pushed their way along the great choked thoroughfare where they were yet further hidden by the smoke from the flares that ostensibly guided their way.
Abraham had the previous morning posted himself outside the bank to observe the protocol of a gentleman's manner of entering the premises. Thus he observed that, alighting from his coach, a person of quality would be greeted by the doorman, who would summon an usher from the interior of the bank. This bank officer, in all appearance a man of some mature age and authority, dressed in a frock coat and square rigged in the best of form, would immediately appear armed with a small silver salver which he would proffer in an obsequious manner while requesting the gentleman's personal card be placed upon it. At this point, of course, the doors were once again closed and Abraham had no way of knowing the manner of the client's further progress within the august establishment.
Abraham had returned home by way of Newgate Gaol, where he had informed Ikey of the manner of obtaining entry to the bank and Ikey had instructed him in the exact manner of the cards he required Reuban Reuban to have printed for the occasion.
It was just before the hour of two o'clock in the afternoon and the more important officers of the bank were returning to work from luncheon at their club when Ikey's carriage approached Coutts amp; Company on the Strand.
Abraham looked to see whether Reuban Reuban had arrived on foot. When he spotted him standing close to the wall of the bank, half concealed behind a Doric column, he tapped the roof of the carriage to tell Ikey that all was in order, and waited for Ikey's return tap to tell him to signal to Reuban Reuban to proceed. The two return taps came promptly and Abraham signalled to his father to proceed by appearing to rub an itchy nose and then smacking his gloved hands together as though against the cold.
Reuban Reuban commenced to walk boldly up the steps of the bank to where the doorman waited. Though boldly is perhaps an exaggerated description for he walked in the manner of Ikey, which none could even in their wildest imagination call bold. Ikey, watching from the interior of the carriage, saw the doorman stiffen slightly as Reuban Reuban drew nearer. Ikey, his instincts sharpened by a lifetime of experience with the mannerisms of a policeman, knew at once that he was a member of the constabulary. In as much as it was possible from the interior of the carriage he looked about to see if there were others, but could see no suspicious characters who might be miltonians, that is to say, policemen out of their official uniform.
Reuban Reuban halted beside the doorman and while Ikey could not hear what he said the doorman allowed that he should enter without apparently requesting his personal card or summoning an usher or in any manner following the form which Abraham had so carefully observed the previous morning. The door opened and Reuban Reuban disappeared into the interior of the building followed closely by the doorman. A few moments passed and a new doorman was seen to take the place of the old one, a man who stood more easily and assumed more naturally the accustomed nature of his task.
The interior of the bank comprised a large central hallway which at first seemed entirely composed of marble, with huge pillars of the same material supporting two storeys of gallery above which the offices of the partners were located and where the clerks worked at their ledgers. At one end of the impressive hallway were a set of brass tellers' cages and a stairway leading downwards, presumably to the underground vaults. At the other end was a similar stairway, though this one led upstairs to the galleries and carried a heavy banister of gleaming brass and was carpeted in brilliant red. Brass rods secured the carpet to the hinge of each step and they too shone with a brightness which gave the effect of a pathway leading heavenwards to untold wealth.
Reuban Reuban barely had time to take all of this in when he was accosted by an officer of the bank whose quick, sharp steps tapped out on the marble floor showed him to be most purposeful in his confrontation. Reuban Reuban was also aware that the doorman had remained and stood directly behind him as though to block any retreat he might contemplate. Several other men seemed now to have mysteriously emerged from behind the marble columns and were seen to be pacing the polished marble floor, although no work of banking seemed to be taking place in his immediate vicinity.
'Good day to you, sir,' the bank officer greeted Reuban Reuban. 'May I be of service?'
Reuban Reuban smiled unctuously and shrugged his shoulders in an admirable imitation of Ikey. 'Some other time maybe. I 'ave just remembered, uh… all of a sudden, if you knows what I mean. With the greatest respect to yourself, sir, I 'ave urgent business I must complete elsewhere!' Reuban Reuban turned towards the door again, only to see several of the men who had but a moment ago been contemplating their own business converge on him. He started to run towards the door but in a moment was grabbed from behind. It took only a few moments longer for several of the men to reach him and he was thrown roughly to the floor where he was quickly manacled by the doorman.
Reuban Reuban was pulled to his feet and immediately observed a small man with a very large red nose wearing a top hat exceedingly tall for the remainder of his size, approaching him.
'Ikey Solomons, in the name of the law, I arrest you,' Sir Jasper Waterlow shouted, so that his voice echoed through the hall and up into the galleries.
As they led Reuban Reuban away the galleries overlooking the entrance hall were soon filled with clerks and bankers observing the dramatic arrest. Even the partners had emerged from their offices to share in the excitement.
Sir Jasper Waterlow, not wishing to let the auspicious moment pass without some show on behalf of the Bank of England and his own future prospects, had deliberately shouted his orders of arrest at the uppermost tone of his voice so that all within the Coutts amp; Company bank might witness his triumph over Britain's most notorious villain and know that the Bank of England, like God, is not mocked.
Indeed, Sir Jasper Waterlow had just reason to congratulate himself. He had only a matter of some two hours to prepare his entrapment of Ikey. Hannah had informed him of the possibility of Ikey's escape that very morning, after Ikey had left the King's Bench courts upon the postponement of his hearing. By pre-arrangement she had met Sir Jasper in a coffee house on the Strand and acquainted him of Ikey's intended escape and his need to visit the premises of a certain bank, though she did not inform him of the name of the establishment until she had extracted in writing from Sir Jasper certain assurances and conditions. The first of these was that Ikey should be allowed to visit the bank and transact his business and that he would be arrested only on his way out. The second was that regardless of the outcome of Ikey's trial for forgery, he receive a sentence of transportation for his attempt to escape from custody.
Sir Jasper had no choice but to accept. The sentence Hannah had asked for was more or less a foregone conclusion and so presented no barriers. Furthermore, an arrest made after they had Ikey trapped within the confines of a building which could be easily surrounded, with additional men also placed within its interior, seemed much the better method of operation. Therefore, he issued Hannah with the written assurances she required. He told himself that she had previously delivered Ikey, as she had promised, with the counterfeit notes planted on his person. Now, when he might well have successfully escaped, she was once again informing on her husband. He therefore had no reason but to accept her information as genuine.
Sir Jasper told himself that whatever Ikey's business with Coutts amp; Company, it could hardly be the concern of the Bank of England. He had therefore given the chairman of Coutts amp; Company permission to process the transaction. This had occurred in a hastily contrived briefing when he had arrived at the bank with twenty City policemen in plain clothes. The senior bank officers were to allow Ikey to enter the premises and to afford him the normal protocol involved in making a transaction. Sir Jasper insisted that refusal by the bank to comply with this instruction would only be permitted if the transaction Ikey Solomon required was not a legitimate request for the bank's services, or would in some way threaten or undermine the safety or finances of Coutts amp; Company or of the Bank of England itself.
To ensure that the staff would go about their business in a normal manner Sir Jasper requested that one of his policemen, dressed in the uniform of a doorman of the bank, should replace the doorman on duty and that the doorman, along with the remainder of the bank's staff, be told nothing, other than that he should resume his normal duty when the policeman at the door was seen to escort Ikey into the interior of the bank.
The arrangements had all been finalised in great haste and Sir Jasper had no opportunity to consult the directors of the Bank of England. He was well aware that his instructions to Coutts amp; Company might have been beyond his authority as chief City policeman and Upper Marshal of London. With Ikey's sudden and most fortuitous panic and resultant attempt to escape the premises of the bank, Sir Jasper had even more reason to be pleased with himself. There would now be no awkward official enquiries as to why Ikey, upon visiting the illustrious private bank, had been allowed to make a transaction which, in every likelihood, resulted in remuneration to him as a consequence of a crime against the people. He had fully met Hannah's requirements, both as a gentleman and a police officer, and it had cost him no compromise with the law.
Moreover, there was much talk in parliament by the supporters of Sir Robert Peel of the organisation of a new police force, and Sir Jasper could see his candidacy for the position of its head much improved by both the first and second arrests of Ikey Solomon.
Ikey watched from the carriage as Reuban Reuban was led out of the bank manacled and surrounded by a dozen police officers out of uniform. A black maria, that is to say, a horse van drawn by two well-conditioned horses and built in the manner of a closed box with a door at the rear and no windows excepting narrow ventilation slits, appeared from the alley beside the building. Reuban Reuban was unceremoniously bundled into the back of it, whereupon the door was locked and three of the policemen mounted the platform protruding from the back of the van to further guard the villain residing within.
The crowd had halted and immediately formed around the van and on the steps of the bank and someone shouted, 'It be 'im, Ikey Solomon, the Jew forger!'
Almost at once the crowd grew angry and converged on the black maria. Despite the plain-clothes policemen who attempted to protect the van, part of the crowd pushed past and beat their fists against and commenced to rock the black maria, threatening to overturn it, so that the horses grew restless and began to stamp upon the ground and throw their heads up in alarm. The three men on the platform at its rear were forced to use their truncheons with fierce abandon, raining blows down upon the shoulders and heads of the angry attackers. The crowd had commenced to chant, 'Ikey! Ikey! Ikey!' and the coachman, working his police rattler so that the other coaches in the vicinity might move clear, finally managed to get the horses underway and direct the van into the stream of passing traffic. Though several urchins, skilled in the ways of dodging the traffic, followed the police van, they were quickly discouraged by the three policemen protecting the artful Reuban Reuban within.
Ikey watched until the crowd began to disperse, but with the sidewalk still somewhat crowded, Moses Julian moved Ikey's carriage forward to come to a halt directly outside the bank, whereupon Abraham alighted from the rear of the carriage, opened the door and with some ceremony, took Ikey's elbow in his white-gloved hand and guided him with care to the surface of the cobbled pavement.
Ikey moved quickly up the steps to the doorman, who, as is the nature of his profession, had been alert to his arrival at the moment his coach had pulled up. He had tugged at the lapels of his overcoat and adjusted his gold-braided top hat, conscious of the well-polished carriage and the livery of its retainers, and was therefore hardly surprised at the conservative, well-dressed gentleman who stepped from it onto the sidewalk.
'Good afternoon, sir!' he had offered in a manner akin to the military and which suggested both efficiency and respect, saluting Ikey.
Ikey grunted, though it was a well-modulated and upper-class grunt. 'Foreign transactions?' he asked, in a clipped and imperious voice.
'I shall call you an usher at once, sir.' The doorman opened the door, lifted his hand and crooked a finger to denote a requirement from someone within, whereupon he further opened it for Ikey to pass through.
It had all occurred just as Abraham had suggested and was quite unlike the reception Reuban Reuban had received. Ikey breathed a silent sigh of relief; the bank, it seemed, had assumed its normal routine. It felt like his lucky day.
Nathaniel Wilson, Coutts amp; Company's foreign transactions officer, had spent the morning with the ambassador from Chile, who had wanted to discuss the final interest rate for the public issue of a loan for his government, a part of which was being underwritten by the bank. The ambassador had plied him with glasses of an atrocious sherry he claimed was the pride and joy of the pampas and Wilson, who had finally departed to take luncheon alone at his club, in an attempt to be rid of the taste of bad sherry had imbibed rather too generously of a bottle of excellent burgundy, and followed it with two glasses of vintage port. The wine had left him thoroughly disgruntled and a little inebriated. The ambassador had demanded a shaving of one-tenth of one per cent of interest off the loan and towards the end had stamped his feet and brought his fist down several times hard upon the table and behaved in an altogether inappropriate manner. Wilson did not find foreigners in the least agreeable. Furthermore, he was not looking forward to facing the bank's senior partners with the Chilean ambassador's demand. He had returned only a few minutes after Reuban Reuban had been taken away in the police van and, as was his usual custom, entered the building through a private entrance to the side of the bank. He had repaired directly to his office on the first gallery, taking the back stairs used by the staff, and was therefore quite unaware of the excitement which had taken place in the bank before his return.
The usher knocked on Nathaniel Wilson's door, the two rapid knocks required to indicate a bank employee of inferior status to the occupant.
'Come!' the banker called.
Wilson looked up as the elderly usher opened the door and observed that he was carrying a salver.
'What is it, Coote?' he said with annoyance. 'I was not aware of any appointment at this hour.'
'No, sir, gentleman says he's from Germany.' Coote placed the salver containing Ikey's card on the desk. 'He requests an urgent interview, sir.'
Wilson reached for the card with obvious distaste. Ikey's card was well printed on expensive board and, in the manner of a man confident of his position in life, it contained no detail other than a name and address.
Herr Isak Solomon 114 Bunders Kerk Strasse, Hambourg Nathaniel Wilson looked up at Coote. 'German Jew?'
'No, sir, English. Well spoken, proper gentleman.'
Nathaniel Wilson threw Ikey's card back into the tray. 'You will inform Mr Isak Solomon that I shall see him, but that I regret it must be a short interview as his appointment comes as an unexpected but not entirely convenient pleasure.'
Coote returned shortly with Ikey and Nathaniel Wilson rose from behind his desk to greet him. 'Ah, Mr Solomon, are you aware that the name Solomon has much been in the news lately?' He offered his hand to Ikey. 'Indeed a coincidence, what?'
Ikey removed his pigskin gloves, then his top hat and placed the gloves within the interior of the hat and gave it to Coote together with his cane, deliberately keeping the banker waiting. 'Oh? And why is that, Mr Wilson?' he replied in an incurious voice as he moved forward and finally took Wilson's hand, barely touching it before releasing it again.
'Ikey Solomon, or is it Solomons? Notorious forger chap. Arrested several days ago for counterfeiting, it seems he got away with a fortune in sham Bank of England notes, devil of a mess, what?' Wilson concluded.
'Really?' said Ikey in bored tones. 'I've been abroad, you see. Now, I am aware you do not have much time, so I shall be brief. I wish to lodge a letter of credit with you from the Birmingham City and Country Bank and require you to transfer these funds to the First Manhattan Bank on New York Island.' Ikey withdrew an expensive leather folder from the interior pocket of his frock coat and placed it on the desk in front of him.
Nathaniel Wilson opened the leather folder and quickly examined the documentation, his eyes seeking the letter of credit. He was immediately struck by the large amount of money involved. His time would not be wasted, as the bank's commission from the transfer transaction would be considerable. It was therefore in a much more respectful manner that he conducted the remainder of the negotiations and verifications.
Not more than twenty minutes later, with the Coutts amp; Company certificate of deposit safely in the folder, and with effusive assurances from the banker of the utmost of service available at any future occasion, Ikey was escorted by Coote down the red-carpeted stairway with its brass banister, across the hall of polished marble, through the imposing doors and down the steps to where Abraham and Moses Julian waited beside the carriage. Ikey paused as Abraham held open the carriage door for him and handed Coote a sovereign.
'Good day to you, Coote,' he said in his newly acquired accent.
'Bless you, sir,' the old man replied warmly. 'It's been a pleasure.'
The notorious luck of Ikey Solomon had once again held. With a pinch more, a soupcon of the same, he was on his way to America.
In his mind there formed yet another conclusion which he was most hard put to ignore any longer.
It was Hannah who, on both occasions, had betrayed him.
The thought of Hannah's betrayal brought Mary to Ikey's mind, Mary who had not betrayed him when she could have turned King's evidence and given witness most damaging to his case and, by so doing, spared herself the boat.
Ikey now felt a rare and genuine pang of conscience within his breast. Mary was in Newgate, incarcerated in a dungeon cage with a dozen other foul wretches and he had made no attempt to acknowledge her presence. This sharp stab of guilt almost immediately transformed itself into a surprising softness of feeling for Mary. It was an emotion not altogether different to the crisis of feeling which had overcome him in the coach to Birmingham. Ikey wondered in some panic whether there was a connection between the interior of coaches and his soft-headedness, for he was possessed suddenly by a compelling need to send fifty pounds to Mary so she might ameliorate the rigours of her transportation and be supplied with the necessities required on the troublesome and dangerous voyage to Van Diemen's Land. He would urge Abraham to seek her out in Newgate, acquaint her of his good wishes and give her the money as a token of his great esteem.
Ikey was uncertain as to whether this generosity came about because of the tender feeling for Mary which had come so overwhelmingly and unexpectedly upon him, or whether he wished only to ensure the continuance of his luck by putting right his bad conscience towards her. He knew only that he felt compelled to comply with this strange dictate which otherwise made no sense to his head and yet seemed so powerful to his heart. He told himself, though to no avail, that he was being foolishly generous with a gesture which could show him no future profit as he would not, in the further course of this life, see Mary again.
This last thought left Ikey in a surprisingly melancholy mood, for he realised how the routine of his life had been brought undone and how much a sustaining and pleasant part of it Mary had become.
This further onrush of sentiment led to an even more surprising gesture than the money Ikey told himself he had effectively thrown away. In fact, so foolish was the new thought that he feared some mischievous golem had possessed him. Around his neck he wore a gold chain from which was suspended, in the exact size and weight of gold in a sovereign, a medallion which commemorated the battle of Waterloo, and which carried a likeness of the Duke of Wellington on one side and a crescent of laurel leaves on the other. Nestled in the centre of this leafy tribute, fashioned in a small pyramid of words, was inscribed: I Shall Never Surrender Ikey, shortly after his release from the hulk in Chatham and while working with his uncle, a slops dealer, that is to say a dealer in workmen's and sailor's clothes, had won the gold medallion at a game of cribbage from a sergeant in the Marines. It had been won fair and square and also while Ikey was legitimately employed, a conjunction of events which was never to occur again in his life, and so the medallion was a significant memento and had come to assume an importance to him. He always wore it under his woollen vest, where the warmth of its gold lay against his scrawny chest unseen by any other. Like the tattoo of the two blue doves on his arm, which, as a young man, had signified his secret and now entirely forsaken hope that one day he might find his one and only true love, the Wellington medallion was his special talisman.
At each narrow escape from the law or at the hands of the various people who would harm him, he had come to think of it more and more as the reason for his luck. Now he decided that if his luck should hold to the point when later that very night he would slip aboard a cargo vessel bound on the rising tide for Denmark, Mary should have his Wellington medallion.
Ikey, having determined this course of action, tapped on the roof for the coach to come to a halt, whereupon he bade Abraham come and sit beside him in the interior. As the coach moved on towards the docks he told Abraham in great detail what he was to do and say to Mary, his speech punctuated with a sentimentality Abraham had not thought possible in the man he knew Ikey to be. Ikey then took the medallion from about his neck and handed it, together with fifty pounds, to the young tailor to deliver to Mary.
In truth, it must be supposed that the concerns of the past few hours had greatly affected Ikey's mental state, for at the moment of this decision, if he had paused to consult his head and not pandered to the susceptibility of his heart, it would have declared him insane.
Ikey was giving Mary his luck.