Read Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) for Free Online Page B

think happened to McArdle’s coal?” Jack asked a quarter mile later.
    “Somebody took it.”
    “
Which
somebody?”
    Miss Hennessey twitched at her skirts. “Somebody who did not want to freeze to death this winter.”
    Oh, she’d get along with Mama famously. “You don’t think it was taken to be sold?”
    “If the missing coal was the orts and leavings strewn about the loading shed, then it’s not good enough quality to sell, and the thief
    isn’t very good at stealing. Selling a quantity of stolen coal quietly would take some doing in a place where gossip moves on the slightest
    breeze.”
    This was why Jack didn’t shove the magistrate’s job off on some other unsuspecting fool: He liked puzzles, whether they dealt with how to get
    supplies to a garrison on the other side of a flooded river, or how to find the culprit who’d stolen Nancy Yoder’s fancy tablecloth from the
    honeysuckle hedge outside her laundry.
    “Why do you say the culprit was stupid?” Given the current state of England’s criminal laws, any thief was either stupid, desperate, or
    perilously prone to adventure. In the not too distant past, mere children had been hung for stealing a spoon.
    “The thief was not stupid,” Miss Hennessey said, “but inept. He or she took both the lowest-quality coal and possibly the only coal
    McArdle would notice was missing.”
    She was… right. The coal yard was an enormous dirty expanse, with great black heaps enclosed by a single fence. Much of the coal was under tin roofs,
    none of it particularly secured. McArdle would not have noticed a few hundred pounds missing from among tons and tons of inventory.
    His wife, however, had noticed that somebody had essentially tidied up one corner of the coal yard.
    “The thief wasn’t lacking in sense,” Jack said, mentally moving facts and suppositions around. “He took only as much as he could
    make off with in an hour or two, and he chose a time when nobody would notice his activities.” The days were at their shortest, Christmas having just
    passed, and that meant long evenings when most were snug in their beds.
    “To somebody with a family to keep warm,” Miss Hennessey said, “that two hours of larceny might make a very great difference.”
    Jack turned the cart up the lane to Teak House. “If I catch that person, he’ll be in a very great deal of trouble.” Though McArdle would
    not have sold the stray bits and piles of coal littering his loading shed. Civil damages would be difficult to prove as a result. “McArdle will be
    wringing his hands over what amounts to coal dust for the next six months.”
    He’d also be strutting around the Wet Weasel every Friday night, asking Jack when the thief would be brought to justice.
    “Tell McArdle to get a dog,” Miss Hennessey said. “Even a friendly dog will set up a racket if a stranger comes on the premises. The cost
    of a large dog and the expense of feeding it will likely exceed the value of the stolen coal over the dog’s lifetime, but McArdle can well afford the
    expense. He cannot afford for a more ambitious thief to take advantage of his sloppy business practices.”
    “A dog. I should tell McArdle to get a dog?” Jack brought the cart to a halt in the stable yard, but made no move to climb down. He would never
    have thought to suggest McArdle purchase a dog.
    “My Aunt Theodosia’s bitch whelped almost two months ago,” Miss Hennessey said. “Mastiff-collie crosses from the looks of them.
    Enormous creatures, but quite friendly. Your mother might fancy one.”
    Mama would never be caught with anything less than a purebred, though Jack had always liked dogs.
    “I’ll consider it.” He set the brake and leaped to the ground, then came around to assist the lady from her perch.
    The instant Miss Hennessey’s feet touched solid earth, she stepped back, her gaze fixed over Jack’s shoulder in the direction of the manor
    house.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    “Nothing is