The Devil’s Acre. Matthew Plampin

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      Hastings, God save him, made a low sound indicating concurrence; the ministers, however, were drifting off like untethered barges on a canal, slowly distancing themselves from the gun-maker and the attention he was attracting.

      The fractious noblewoman was unconvinced by Sam’s solid reasoning. ‘You cannot honestly believe that, Colonel. Surely you must understand that firearms generate violence in the exact way that liquor generates drunkenness. Put a revolver in a man’s grasp and he will long to use it at the very first opportunity!’

      There was no curtailing her now. On and on she went, enlarging on her theories about Sam and his business with furious vigour. Growing more angry, he considered mentioning the Kaffir War, and how much easier it might have been on the British Army if they’d had his revolvers; or perhaps the efficacy of the Colt six-shooter in the ongoing American struggle against the barbarian red men. He thought better of this, though. It was pretty certain that the self-righteous drab before him would not be won over by talk of proficient savage-killing.

      ‘You must agree, somewhere within you,’ she was saying now, almost imploringly, ‘that it is the religious duty of men of ingenuity and engineering skill – men such as yourself, Colonel Colt – to aid the peoples of the world, not provide the means for them to destroy one another.’

      The ministers were gone now, swallowed up by the company; Sam’s speedy path to the higher levels of government, such an unlikely stroke of goddamn luck, had closed. Hastings had stuck loyally by the gun-maker’s side, but was entirely cowed by this lady and therefore useless. Colt’s tolerance for his aristocratic adversary, this creature of England’s grandest houses and rolling private parks, suddenly left him.

      ‘Unfortunately, precious few of the world’s troubles will find a solution in these fine sentiments alone,’ he declared with an air of curt finality. ‘As I’ve said, ma’am, my revolvers are tools, that’s all, designed and manufactured to the best of my ability, and intended to help disputing parties reach a condition of peace as quickly as possible.’

      The woman stared back at him in horror; Sam thought for a second that she was about to strike him with her fan. ‘The only peace to be attained by revolvers will be due to one of the parties being dead!’ she spluttered. ‘How on earth can you stand here and –’

      ‘It’s all very well and good for you to take issue with me,’ Sam interrupted again, sticking his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, ‘but I’ll wager that you ain’t never had to really struggle for anything. You’ve never reached your end through sheer perseverance, have you, ma’am, or earned your due through honest goddamn effort? I am a businessman, and guns are my business. And that’s all there is to be said.’

      The lady had nothing with which to counter this thumping rebuttal, her pale, wide-set eyes registering her defeat. She was clearly not used to being addressed with such simple honesty. Sam felt a certain shortness of breath, and hotness around his ears. He noticed the bank of staring faces behind her, every one slack-jawed with shock, and realised that he might have been shouting. That milksop Buchanan was drawing near, no doubt to rush in and mollify the blasted woman – to apologise for the unspeakable rudeness of Colonel Colt. Sam decided that he wouldn’t stay to witness this. He wouldn’t be made to feel shame for defending himself.

      Hastings was standing very quietly at his elbow.

      ‘Enough of this, Tom,’ he said, turning away. ‘I’m leaving.’

      

      The gun-maker’s exit from the reception room and descent down to the entrance hall passed in a wrathful blur. Only the form of a short, blond, neat-looking Englishman, inserted directly in his path at the base of the stairs, prevented him from storming straight out into the night. Sam drew up, taking in the fellow irascibly. He was no servant, but no lord either. Was he a lackey of one of the ministers, come to upbraid him – or an embassy man, laden with the Ambassador’s chidings? Not caring to hear either, Sam made to push past, bellowing for his surtout and hat, wishing to God that he had some whiskey.

      ‘That should not have been permitted, Colonel,’ this blond man said, ‘the way you were treated up there. Lady Wardell should not have been allowed to have been so impertinent towards a businessman of your standing. Mr Buchanan really should have intervened.’

      This won him another moment of Sam’s time. He stood, wordlessly challenging the man to hold his interest.

      ‘She is something of a fanatic,’ he continued dryly, ‘always toiling in the service of some great cause or other – and only content when raising funds for the religious education of the poor, or the dispatching of missionaries to distant cannibal isles. You are most fortunate, as an American, that she did not also take you to task over the dreadful unwholesomeness of slavery.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I cannot help but suspect, in fact, that she only came here tonight in search of trouble.’

      ‘Yes, well, some women ain’t all maple sugar,’ Sam answered warily. ‘What the devil d’you want?’

      The blond man made no reaction to this hostile tone. ‘My name is Lawrence Street, Colonel, and I am a long-standing admirer of your inventions. I was deeply impressed by the pistols included in the display of the Great Exhibition, and have followed your fortunes closely ever since.’

      Sam’s surtout and hat arrived. He put them on, thanking this Mr Street for his kind remarks, genuinely welcoming the approbation after his mauling by Lady Wardell.

      ‘I wished to say, also, that you must not fret over the loss of your chance with Clarendon and Newcastle,’ Street went on. ‘You must realise that our government, like your own, is rather out of sorts at present. The Earl of Aberdeen, although a fine man by all accounts, is a most unsatisfactory Prime Minister, and he has staffed his cabinet with men as ill-suited to their posts as he is to his. Not, of course, that those two upstairs would be particularly suited to any; but they certainly have no notion whatsoever of the pressures of the international stage, or of the changing nature of modern conflict. Many feel that when a war of any magnitude arrives – and the sense among us is very much that it will, before too long – Great Britain will be found sorely lacking, thanks largely to the glaring inefficacy of our Lords Clarendon and Newcastle.’

      This speech was delivered swiftly and softly, and heard only by Sam; Street had made it inaudible even to the servants standing directly behind them. It had the clear ring of expertise. This was an operator of the smartest variety. Sam regarded his companion anew. Mr Street was about his age, with cold, rather inexpressive eyes and a head of the most astonishing white-blond hair. There was something jerky and puppet-like about him, which his small stature served only to accentuate; he was plainly a political, desky type who’d spent his years within the cramped confines of the city, well away from wood, field and stream. But his calm, calculating face, framed by the full whiskers of an intellectual Englishman, told Sam that Lawrence Street was also someone with whom he could talk seriously – and who might well prove useful.

      They walked together towards the embassy doors. Sam’s mind was occupied now by a vision of a vast marching army, of two or three marching armies in fact, thousands upon thousands of men, each and every one of them wearing a new Colt Navy upon his belt.

      ‘Mr Street, did I hear you say that there is to be war in Europe?’

      Street nodded. ‘It is believed so; in Europe or on her fringes. And Great Britain will not be ready. We need your guns, Colonel, and soon. Yet you have just seen for yourself how lightly our ministers wear their duty – and how easily they are distracted from it.’

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