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Harry.”
    Sanguine Harry said, “What concerns me is what the Magistrate says concerns me.”
    “And he’s concerned about my getting out of London, is he?”
    “He’s concerned about you getting your priorities in order, and he’s concerned about you doing it nowhere near him. He has long-term plans for you, for us, for our kind, for the whole of London and our influence, and he don’t want you being in the mix as some sort of wild card. Not gone forever, you understand. Just gone long enough so that people have time to forget Fagin. Come back as someone else.”
    “Someone else?” Fagin stared at him, swimming in confusion, drowning in bewilderment. “I am what I am, my dear.”
    “And whatever that is, we need you to be it somewhere else. It is”—and his voice dropped to an appropriate sense of gravity —“what Mr. Fang requires. Who are you to act in contravention of that? ”
    “Who am I indeed? That is the question in front of us, innit? And I have to be findin’ that out for meself, it seems.”
    “It seems so, yes.”
    When they reached the outskirts of London, Sanguine Harry drew the horse up and extended the purse to Fagin. Fagin stared at it, and Harry said to him with a sneer, “Why starin’? Flummoxed by someone just handin’ you a purse, rather than you tryin ’ to pluck it out of their pocket unawares?”
    Fagin snatched it from his hand and jingled it slightly, putting it against his ear. “Decent pay just for deliverin’ bodies. Perhaps I’ve been spendin’ me time in the wrong line o’ work.”
    “Then find a better one elsewhere. You’ll have somethin’ in your pocket just to attend to basic need. Creature comforts.” He gave a short, strangled laugh, amused at his own comment. Then he leaped down from the driver’s seat and watched as Fagin slid over to take the reins. Pointing, he said, “Give yourself the distance of time, of geography. Hie yourself to the Midlands . Scotland , perhaps. Make something new of yourself. Mr. Fang will see you anon.”
    “As you say, my dear,” said Fagin softly.
    He snapped the reins, and the horse began its slow, steady movement toward the King’s highway. Sanguine Harry remained where he was, his arms folded, not trusting Fagin for a moment, not moving from where he stood. A statue would have been more lively .
    Finally, when Fagin had dwindled to little more than a speck, Sanguine Harry growled, “Idiot,” in that low manner that was the very antithesis of mellifluousness, and shoved his hands into his pockets as he turned away.
    It was at that point that he realized his handkerchief was gone, along with his own purse, at which point he howled Fagin’s name in white fury, and Fagin, who by all rights should have been much too far away to hear, nevertheless did, and his toothless mouth smiled in amusement.
    “Idiot indeed,” said Fagin, and kept on going.

FOUR
    I N W HICH IS T REATED THE B EGINNING OF THE U NUSUAL E VENING W HEREIN THE A RTFUL D ODGER M EETS THE F IRST OF T WO Y OUTHFUL I NDIVIDUALS W HO S HALL B E OF S IGNIFICANCE
    H aving explicated in detail the circumstances that enabled several of our dramatis personae to leave behind the dire predicaments in which their previous biographer stranded them, it is now time to move forward an indeterminate amount of time—months, years, who can say? For time, like memory, is malleable to the needs of those who observe it. But we say again, as we already have, that the Artful Dodger is both older than when we left him and not as old as he will be when we eventually take our leave of him.
    His body had not grown tremendously in stature, but he was fast and wiry, lean, and with not an ounce of fat upon him. He had taken to carrying a walking stick, having helped himself to it when a swell had been discourteous enough to leave it leaning against the wall of a shop, a truly insulting action as it displayed an utter disregard for the talents of upstanding thieves such as the Artful.