“Good-morrow, friend. Selling your coals off?”
“Ay, we’re doing a middling stroke of business this morrow.”
“How much a load? We shall want some ere long.”
“Charcoal, fourteen shillings; cannel, sixpence to ninepence, according to quality.”
Fawkes walked down the street, to avoid suspicion, into King Street, where he turned into the first shop to which he came. It happened to be a cutler’s, and he bought the first thing he saw—a dozen knives of Sheffield make. Had they been London-made, they would have cost four times as much as the modest shilling demanded for them. He then returned to Percy’s house, carrying the knives in his hand. Fawkes had now fully blossomed out in his new rôle of “Mr Percy’s man,” and was clad in blue camlet accordingly, blue being then the usual wear of servants out of livery.
“What is it, Johnson?” asked Percy, addressing Fawkes by his assumed name, when he came down into the cellar.
“It is a dozen of Sheffield knives, Master,” replied Fawkes a little drily: “and by the same token, our next neighbour is selling his coals, and looks not unlike to clear out his cellar.”
“Is that all?”
“That is all.”
Two of the conspirators looked at each other.