The Hangman's Child Page 17

  Before he could try the other lock, the distant clamour of Samuel's bell sounded. Rann cursed, gathering the watchmaker's pouch of key-steps, scrambling past the Yale door. As he closed it, the bell rang single notes. A false alarm? A passer-by with no interest in the spy-holes? A policeman too late on his beat to pause?

  In the strong-room again, he tried his key in the second lock. For some reason it engaged the talon but missed the levers. Yet he knew it must be right. He had worked it too far in or not far enough. By drawing back a little, still lodged in the talon, it turned its circle. As the second set of cogwheels moved, he felt the last pressure released from the main bolt of the steel door.

  Now it was a matter of collecting the carpet-bag and slowly turning the bolt-wheel at one side of the lock-plate. He heard the hushing sound of six steel bolts drawn back in unison. The heavy wheel served as a handle by which the weight of the door could be pulled slowly open.

  Jack Rann slid clear the shutter of the dark lantern, took his carpet-bag, and stepped into the darkness. Pulling the heavy door until it would appear closed behind him, he stared at the interior of the Cornhill Vaults.

  23

  Like caskets of the dead in a necropolis of the ancient world, rows of steel deposit boxes presented their blank silvered faces to the tawny flicker of the oil-lamp. There were more than he had imagined. They stood three tiers high on metal shelves, the lowest a couple of feet from the floor. Numbered in order, the ranks ranged down the longer walls to either side and across the shorter walls, as well as in two ranks back-to-back down the centre of the vault. The front of each was fifteen inches square and its depth about two feet. They were not designed for bulk but for confidential documents and small items of great value.

  Jack Rann walked down the aisles and saw that the numbering ran to 364. With the five keys cut by Pandy Quinn from the wax impressions of the autumn burglaries, he might open as few as five boxes or as many as fifty. Pandy's chance discovery that two of the stolen keys were identical had made the larger number possible.

  He walked slowly back along the ranks of steel, then stopped and listened. He was hidden from the spy-holes but might no longer hear Samuel's bell. At whatever moment he left the vault, there could be eyes at the spy holes. He and Pandy had seen no watchman at night. But if a watchman visited the premises, the unlocked doors would be found. The wheel would be turned, shooting six steel bolts across and trapping the thief in the vault. Samuel and even Miss Jolly might find a way out. It was a condition of his gamble that Rann would be beyond rescue.

  As in most safe deposits, the steel boxes were fitted with key exchangeable locks. Both the client's and the banker's keys would close a lock but only the client's would open it. Rann tried the locks with the first of his five keys. It opened nothing at all. Either his own wax impression or Pandy Quinn's copy had not been true. But here and there, as he tried the second key, he felt the first levers of the little locks move, the shank turning through a quarter circle. This time, the cut was true.

  A single key would fit several locks. This suggested almost a hundred varying patterns. At the first deposit box which his second key opened, he stared into a bare steel cavity. Neither he nor Pandy Quinn had considered that some of the safe deposits might be unused. The second proved as empty as the first.

  The third box yielded a will, two mortgages, and two leather boxes set with wine-tinted stones. Going through the papers, he found one inland bill of exchange, drawn on Drummonds Bank, Pall Mall East, six weeks earlier for £250 at three months notice. The paper had been endorsed twice and had seven weeks to run. It was Rann's first trophy.

  Some bills would be no use. He needed those drawn on banks for which Saward had stolen the blank forms. A number of these required the return of the bill to its bank for an acceptance stamp at each endorsement. For these, Miss Jolly's needle had carved a counterfeit stamp in slate. If a bill was genuine and unpaid, the previous endorsements registered, no bank need look closely at a stamp.

  Rann knew that in the next hour he must have enough bills for his penny-dancer to start work. By the lantern-light, he moved down the ranks of steel, trying each of the five stubby keys in each lock. One after another they jammed at a quarter turn. Only at the end of the first row did another move through a half circle. With time at his heels, he drew the steel drawer open, turned the key back to free it, and hurried on.

  Two locks opened in the next row and one in the third, completing the ranks that stood against the first long wall. He began on the centre ranks. Until then he had supposed the vault to be completely sealed from the light and air of the outside world. Only as he moved down the centre aisle did he notice a small square grating in the far corner of the ceiling and a watery flush of light from the early summer dawn. He looked at his silver-plated pocket-watch and saw that it was after four in the morning. Time had fled, like a malevolent genie stripping him of life. If Trent had chosen to return before Monday, the robbery might have been impossible.

  He began to search the steel boxes already open. In one hand he held a list of Saward's blank bill-forms with their values and dates, the names of banks where those were entered. He had opened nine drawers so far. Four held nothing. One had half-a-dozen inland bills of the London and Westminster Bank on pink treasury paper. They matched Saward's blanks. Rann chose the largest sums. Three for £200 and one for £500. Six weeks to run on each. On his list he marked the number of the box.

  He took two overseas bills from the next box, inscribed in copperplate on pale blue for the Bank of Montreal at £500 each, three bank post-bills written by hand, payable to bearer for £150. The post-bills had only two weeks to run but it was long enough.

  After half an hour he had matched a dozen of Saward's blank forms with those in the opened boxes. Some were for no more than fifty pounds, one was for a thousand. Counting as he went, he thought the total had passed £4,000. But the copying must begin at once.

  He and Pandy had known there was no way of concealing the robbery while it was in progress. Rann left the vault as it was, the steel boxes open. If he pushed the door of the vault a fraction of an inch to admit sound but not enough to show that it was open, he would hear Samuel's bell. A policeman might be staring through the spy-holes into the gaslight. But a policeman would not stand there long enough to risk being late at the points of his beat, where an inspector might be waiting. Rann decided to count to a hundred. If there was no sound of the bell, the policeman had either gone or not arrived.

  He counted slowly and heard nothing. Then, keeping his face from the shutters, he pushed the heavy door, slipped past and closed it again. It was a dozen steps to the Yale door. With the dark lantern in one hand and a leather wallet of bank bills in the other, he stepped into the darkness of the rear office and pulled the door behind him. There was no movement, no sound of alarm. Then he jumped as a hand touched his shoulder and a voice behind him in the darkness said,

  'Jack Rann!'

  The shock of it winded him. He turned with the lamp before him and saw the oil-light glimmer on the questioning beauty of her almond eyes.

  'What's wrong?' he gasped. 'What's gone wrong?'

  'Nothing,' she said softly, 'not now. But you were so long, Jack. I came after you this far.'

  He put the lantern down, wound his arms round her and said, 'Go back.'

  Miss Jolly shook her head, short and hard. 'I'll do the copies here. Make it easier.' 'The pens and inks . . . .'

  'Got them,' she cooed, teasing his doubt of her. 'There's gas in the workshop to see by.'

  'We can't risk gas being seen from there.'

  'Look at the shutter-crack,' she said patiently, 'it's morning outside.'

  He stared at her and saw that the robbery might be easier, not more difficult, than he and Pandy Quinn had imagined. On a table in the jeweller's workshop, she had set out pens, inks, and enlarging glasses. Counterfeit dies, carved in slate, were arranged and marked like the tidy-work of a seamstress. Rann laid out the bills
from the vault, chose the blanks from Saward's folder and watched her start on the first London and Westminster bill for £200.

  Fifteen minutes later she had copied the sums and dates, adding the signature and the serial number of the bill. She worked in a hand that Rann could not have told from the original. More difficult were the endorsements on the back 'Pay to - or order', written by the clerk in red and signed in blue, accompanied by the bank's stamp. He could not swear that Miss Jolly's version of these signatures was a true one. But the beauty of it was that the possessor of the bill would no longer have an original of the endorsements to compare it with. Moreover, the stamp of the bank as acceptor had been brought to perfection by months of practice. With the originals before her, Miss Jolly could place the counterfeit stamps exactly where each individual clerk habitually marked his own. No mere forger could have guessed the stamping habits of every clerk. Jack Rann smiled with relief. He truly believed that Pandy Quinn's masterpiece would not fail.

  'I'm going back,' he said presently. 'I'll be safe enough except when I come out again from the vault to the strong-room. An hour from now, stand at the door there. Open it a crack and bang on it once, about every minute, so long as you don't hear Sammy's bell and it's all clear. If I don't hear that bang, I shan't come out until I do. See?'

  She nodded and looked down, impatient to get on with her copperplate and signed endorsements. Rann kissed her on the neck, turning to the Yale door with a lighter heart.

  An hour was long enough to find eight more steel drawers that answered to four keys. Six yielded nothing. Of the others, one had a pair of Rothschild's bills on pink paper, the first for £250, the next for £600. Rann stared at the sums with a feeling of unreality. He still could not believe that mere paper could be transformed into heaps of gold coins. But Pandy Quinn had promised it was so, and Pandy had known the truth.

  At the second drawer, the promise was redeemed: Rann found the treasure that he knew must be somewhere in the Cornhill Vaults. It was the safe deposit of Lord Tregarva. Pandy had chosen with care the men whose houses were to be burgled and had sworn that Tregarva was the prize. There were more genuine bills of exchange than Jem Saward had ever possessed blanks. In a wooden box beside them lay rows of gold sovereigns, perhaps for payment of the men who melted and milled Tregarva's steel, some coins still in unbroken paper tubes, new-minted from the Bank of England.

  Suppose he abandoned the bills of exchange and settled for the gold? Pandy Quinn, his good angel, would not let him do it. His share of the coins alone would let him run but never hide.

  Rann waited his hour, then pushed the vault door a fraction. He listened and heard the distant knock of Miss Jolly's knuckles on the wood of the Yale door.

  On the table in the workshop lay completed copies of bills from the London and Westminster Bank, the Bank of Montreal, and bank post-bills. As his dancer worked on, Rann checked them through. The dates, serial numbers, sums to be paid and endorsements matched the originals like the most perfect images.

  The time had come to break off. Pandy had planned a robbery that would take a night and a day, perhaps a second night. Somewhen in the day, they would stop to eat and sleep. That interval was planned as carefully as the rest of the scheme.

  The bank-bills now copied must first replace those taken from the vault. The vault door would then be closed but not locked, good enough when seen from the spy-holes. The Yale could now be locked and easily opened again. No policeman at the spy-holes would have cause for suspicion. The carpet and the boards must be replaced in the rear office, though not fastened down. The bills that had been copied and the carpet-bag would be taken out. To return to the vault, Rann needed only a picklock, a pocketful of keys, and a smaller head-bar. The alderman head-bar, hammer, drill, and micrometer had done their work.

  Half-an-hour later, he followed Miss Jolly through the foundations and into the tailor's premises. Closing the cutting-room door, he led her to the stairs and up to Trent's rooms. Samuel waited, his smooth pale face drawn with anxiety but his voice chuckling with hope.

  'How'd it go, Jack?'

  Rann nodded and sat down in a Viennese armchair of fringed red velvet with a deep fan-shaped back. Samuel's amiable rodent face broke into a smile and he began a slow deep sound of merriment at the sight of the bills. But Jack Rann was already asleep.

  24

  When he opened his eyes, Samuel was watching Miss Jolly copy the last bank post-bill. Rann had fallen asleep in early afternoon. Now the light was full through the window over Sun Court. The bells of St Mary-le-Bow pealed for Evening Prayer.

  'Almost six, Jack,' said Samuel quietly.

  'It never is!' he yawned. 'We'll have to move, Sam.'

  He sat up in the velvet chair and saw a jug of milk next to a plate of bread and butter. Samuel watched him drink from the jug and fold a slice of buttered bread.

  'Move?'

  'Mr Trent,' said Rann through bread and butter. 'Last night we knew he was in Ramsgate. Tonight he could come back.' 'Why, when he's gone two nights?' Rann shrugged.

  'Not having all he hoped. Bit of a turn-up with Miss Mag, p'raps. Who knows? All I say is, we got to be ready tonight as wasn't necessary yesterday.'

  Samuel's eyes moved quickly. Rann stood up and put a hand on the bent shoulder.

  Tm only saying, Sammy, what might happen. That's all. If you see trouble while we're down below, take the bag and go straight down the next floor. If they're too close for you to get to the street

  door, the cutting-room ain't locked. Go in there. Wait for Trent to come up here, then go down.'

  But Samuel's self-assurance of a few hours earlier had wilted.

  'You never said

  'Sammy, we got to keep our eyes open, that's all. Goes without question, don't it?'

  He folded the bank paper that had been copied, slipping it into a leather handkerchief-case and closing it in the carpet-bag.

  'And don't forget the bell, Sam. So long as you play your tune on that we're safe.'

  In his pocket were the keys and picks. His lantern waited in the tailor's fitting-room. For his exit from the vaults he took only the short steel head-bar. Holding Miss Jolly by the hand, he led her through the cutting-room, under the floor to the rear office of the vaults.

  'We can't put up light once it's dark. There's just a crack in these shutters. They'd notice light if they was looking for it. We'd best finish before dark.'

  He left her, went cautiously back to the vault and placed her latest copies of the bills of exchange where the originals had been.

  Forty-four blank bills from Saward's bureau were now reduced to eight. The keys in his possession had opened seven more boxes. Three of them yielded nothing. The next held a dozen bills drawn on various banks in several denominations. Five were a match for Saward's blank drafts on Baring Brothers, Brown Shipley & Co., and the Union Bank Pall Mall. The sum of the first was £1,000, the second was for £150. The largest of the rest was for £3,000. All had been in the possession of Lord Mancart, himself a director of the provincial bankers Mitchell, Yeames & Co.

  Rann hesitated at the size of the payments. But each was validly endorsed. There was no reason on earth for a clerk to question them. Lord Mancart, a banker, would have a hundred such bills through his hands for endorsement every month.

  Best of all, Samuel, the clerical gentleman, had paved the way for a marriage settlement, the liquidation of funds in a wardship suit, and a partnership in a joint stock company. Two thousand pounds was not excessive. Several bills for trivial sums might draw more suspicion.

  In any case, a bank scrutineer would not look twice at his own firm's bona fide bills before payment was made. Those drawn on Baring Brothers, Brown Shipley, or the Union Bank Pall Mall could be confirmed as genuine within the hour. The designs themselves would defeat a mere faker. The Union Bank's paper was printed with a Greek key design too intricate to forge. Baring Brothers included an oak tree with a labyrinth of leaves, impossible to imitate. The endorseme
nts on both were genuine. It was Lord Mancart, presenting bills filled in by Miss Jolly, who must explain himself. Rann smiled at the neatness of Pandy's work.

  He was almost at the last box. It was unlike the others, half-empty but containing envelopes addressed to several men. The envelopes were sealed and he knew that he dared not risk betraying the robbery by opening them. All the same, he went through the pile and, as he did so, found one whose flap had been tucked in but not stuck down. It had a wax seal to identify it. There was a thickness of paper inside. He drew the contents out and stared at a sixpenny pamphlet of eight pages, crudely printed with a gallows emblem and black-letter gothic on its cover.

  'Be Sure Your Sins Shall Find You Out!' Being the Last Confession of James Patrick Rann, otherwise Handsome Jack, to be hanged at Newgate Gaol on the 21st of May for the Barbarous Murder of his friend Pandy Quinn in the Tap-room of the Golden Anchor, Hatton Wall, Clerkenwell.

  Rann blinked at the crudely printed paper, wondering if he had gone mad and was seeing only what lay in his mind. He glanced round him, looked down and read it again. Even the robbery of so many thousands of pounds went from his mind. He had known there were such catchpenny pamphlets printed for his death but his heart went cold and his stomach tightened at the sight of it. The courage kept up in the last few hours, dispersed like smoke. He felt sick with the dread of a trap.

  No sane man would waste room in a safe deposit to keep a hawker's pamphlet. It lay in the steel box because he was meant to find it. The secret that he shared with Pandy Quinn, the meticulous plan, had been no secret at all. He stood in the tawny oil-light and knew that he had been caught.

  Not caught by the police. So how and by whom? He took the last bills to the vault door, listened for Miss Jolly's knock and brought them to her. He said nothing. If he and she had been found out, the snare was too well rigged for them to escape it now. He sat and watched her copy the bills. But he sat with fists clenched on his knees and the ghost of Pandy Quinn warning him to get clear while he could. Two bills for £100 were left. The chance was no longer worth it.