Page 95 of The Trick of the Treasure
Sometimes, the girl had her priorities wrong. He frowned at her. “Yes.”
Unmoved by his displeasure, she grinned as he strode into his office. “Funnily enough, he looks quite like you,” she said cheekily.
It was enough to make him pause, his fingers on the door handle.
David.
He had thrust the pain associated with his brother to the back of his mind over the last couple of days. He was so used to doing so by now that it hadn’t even been difficult. Only the unease had remained like the background hiss of a gas lamp. Was Johnny David? And if so, why was he avoiding Solomon? Because of that childish quarrel Solomon could no longer explain?
His heart thundered as he hung up his coat and hat and turned to face the door. Had his visitor come to explain, to make things right? Or at least tell him what was wrong? Was this greatest mystery of his life about to be solved at last, for good or ill?
Or had Johnny come to tell him there was no connection but some random similarity in appearance?
As soon as the man walked through the door, Solomon knew.
Recognition stabbed him.
Wishful thinking. He might have been looking in a mirror as far as the man’s features went. Johnny was tall and lean, his limbs muscular from years at sea. But his hair was longer,wilder. There was a scar across one side of his face, probably from a knife fight, and another across his knuckles where they grasped a seaman’s kit bag. He was roughly dressed, and his eyes were hard. Not with hate, just with life.
For a moment they looked at each other.
Mechanically, Solomon stretched out his hand, indicating the comfortable chair. Johnny sat, though he looked anything but comfortable. He placed a familiar card on the low table.
“Mr. Grey?” Johnny said.
Solomon quirked his lip, inclining his head. “Mr. Grey.”
Johnny blinked. “I doubt it. Look, mister, I don’t know who you are. Some people got doubles, looks like we do, but the truth is I don’t know who you are.”
“I’m Solomon Grey and I believe I am your twin brother. I don’t think you can have forgotten that.”
Johnny smiled. It was a very odd smile, containing genuine amusement as well as cynicism and something that might have been shame.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Grey. I have forgotten everything I ever knew before my illness.”
“Illness?” Solomon repeated stupidly. “When?”
Johnny shrugged. “Nine or ten years ago. Something like that. I woke up in a hospital in Marseilles. Didn’t know my own name, where I was born, how old I was, nothing. Funny thing was, I spoke English, though I understood French. They told me I’d come off a ship and assumed I was a seaman. Seemed they were right. Ships were familiar.”
“And you can read,” Solomon said, gesturing to the card.
Johnny’s lips quirked in a smile eerily like Solomon’s. “Don’t make me a gentleman like you, though.”
“But you allow the possibility.”
“Oh, I allow any possibility. So what is my story, then? Who am I?”
A lump had formed in Solomon’s throat, so constricting he could barely get the words out. “David Grey. I believe you were born in Jamaica in the same hour as me. Our father was William Grey, an English plantation owner. Our mother was Lillian, a Maroon.”
“Oh. I see.”
“I doubt it. They were married. We inherited the estate between us, only you were lost. You vanished during the slave revolt of 1832.”
“That’s a lot of time I don’t remember.”
As it had more than once before, a horrible fear came to the fore. “Were you a slave? Did they enslave you?”
Johnny shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “One good thing about no memory. If I was, I don’t recall it. I get paid like anyone else. Though there’s certain ports I still avoid.”
