SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman Read online

  "I will break your foul neck. Roper, before I have done with you!"

  "Constable! Constable! This way! And smartly, if you please!"

  Verity recognised the newcomer without knowing his name.

  "Why!" said the man. "It's Sergeant Verity! "

  "Leave me be," said Verity softly.

  "Best give you an arm," said the constable.

  "No!"

  Roper continued to stand insolently in Verity's way "Someone's done you villainy and no mistake. You ain't been robbed have you, old fellow? Best see you've not lost your watch."

  Without taking his eyes off Roper, Verity checked his own pockets. Watch, pocketbook, and keys remained. Even his handkerchief and loose change. Only a single piece of paper was missing. Inspector Croaker's reply to his request for fuller investigations into McCaffery's death. How could he have been so damnably stupid as to put it in his pocket and carry it from the Whitehall office?

  "Nothing gone, then?" said Roper softly. "Quite sure?"

  "Strikes me," said the constable slowly, "the same villains that beat the young lady in Panton Street just now have worked off their spite on Mr Verity too."

  "Stand out of my way!" said Verity again, and this time Roper stepped aside.

  "Call on my assistance, Mr Verity, at any time. Should Mr Croaker want a witness to what you have suffered, I'm your man."

  There was one blemish on Ned Roper's happiness. For safety's sake, he had to walk all the way to his expensive brothel in Langham Place, and wait until Tyler had bolted the door again, before he could release a series of thunderous guffaws which were heard all over the house, except in the pair of specially sound-proofed rooms. He flung open the door of his own private apartments and sat down, cross-legged, on the sofa, flourishing his silver-topped stick like a drum-major. In front of him, Ellen Jacoby stepped out of her black satin skirts and loosened her bodice. The sight of the tall blonde girl, with her thin smile, energetic hips, and long thighs, sent Ned Roper's hat skimming away like a top. His fawn coat and trousers followed it. On the velvet sofa, the girl's white skin shone brightly against the black pile. Roper's tongue flicked her nipples and his fingers played remorselessly between her thighs. Her head thrashed to and fro, eyes closed, teeth clenched on her lower lip. Her legs began to squirm and her hands gripped the sofa edges frantically. Ned Roper watched her for a moment and then grinned.

  "And now, my love," he said softly, "here's a reward for a good, clever girl!"

  "Why, Mr Verity!" Bella stood in the doorway, regarding her father's lodger with wide blue eyes and her charming mouth open in amazement.

  "Leave us, Bella!" said Mr Stringfellow, dabbing a wet flannel over Verity's swollen face.

  "Oh, Mr Verity!" cried the girl, scurrying forward into the room.

  "Clear out, miss!" roared Stringfellow. "Get upstairs this minute, or I'll have the strap off my wooden leg and leave the leather of 'un on your hide!" He pointed meaningly to the thong which secured a wooden stump that had served him as a left leg since the siege of Bhurtpore. The girl looked quickly and longingly at Verity, and then ran from the room, sobbing.

  "They meant you some 'arm, chum!" said Stringfellow, dabbing thoughtfully at Verity's jaw, "no mistaking that"

  "Walked into it," Verity mumbled. "Got took for a gull by a pair of whores, like any yokel from the shires."

  "Not you!" said Stringfellow. "They laid a snare, the whole lot of 'em. Superior numbers, Mr Verity. And what's a military man to do against superior numbers?" He looked at the torn coat, and added cheerfully, "Bella can do something for that."

  "Good of her," muttered Verity.

  "Goodl" said Stringfellow. "That ain't the word for it!" He helped Verity off with his shirt and regarded his back in silence.

  "However," he said at last, "in the event of an alliance between Verity and Stringfellow, what's to happen when the lord and master of the firm comes home at night in this state?"

  "Rifle Brigade was worse than this a dozen times before Sebastopol," said Verity calmly.

  "Maybe," said Stringfellow, wetting the sponge again, "but Paddington Green ain't Sebastopol and Miss Bella ain't Miss Nightingale. Not by a long chalk."

  "I've half a mind to give it up," said Verity. "They took one of Mr Croaker's letters from my pocket. God knows I couldn't have made a worse mess of it. I've a good mind to give up the police, and find a little inn somewhere."

  "There again," said Stringfellow philosophically, "little inns have their ups and downs, likewise."

  "Why, Mr Verity!" said Sergeant Samson with a broad smile. "You ain't struck it rich, 'ave you?"

  "No," said Verity shortly, "I 'aven't."

  "Special job, then? Coming in your Sunday best, and all?"

  "No."

  "And 'oo changed your face about like that?" "Fell down the stairs."

  "I'll say!" Samson thumped him on the back, causing Verity to gasp with pain, even after two days, " 'oo pushed you? Eh?"

  "Mr Inspector Croaker," said Verity grimly, bracing himself for the next comradely thump.

  "Why, Mr Verity!" said Bella. "It can't be such a bad thing as all that!" She pressed closer to him on the sofa until he could feel the warmth of her thigh penetrating to his own. He politely drew away a little and she closed on him again.

  "It was a very bad thing," he said, "very bad, Miss Bella."

  "But you didn't mean to do wrong?"

  "No."

  "Oh, Mr Verity, you did what was right! "

  She looked up at him, her eyes shining with admiration.

  "Yes," he said modestly, "I thought I did right."

  "Was it like facing the Cossacks?" she asked eagerly. "For Old England and the Queen?"

  Verity thought for a moment.

  "Yes," he said, "I suppose it was, after a fashion."

  "There!" she said. "There you are, then."

  She snuggled up closer to him on the sofa and they sat silently for a moment. It was Bella, unable to contain her admiration any longer, who broke the silence.

  "Oh, Mr Verity! " she cried happily. "I'm no end proud of you!"

  2 VERNEY DACRE

  5

  Lieutenant Verney Dacre, cavalry subaltern, now twelve years on the half-pay list, stood tall and narrow as a clock-case with his back to the open windows of the hired dining-room. His hands were clasped under the tail of his bottle-green evening coat, as though he were warming himself at a fire. From time to time, he brushed a hand over his limp blond whiskers, or with a silk handkerchief touched the corners of his blue eyes, which seemed to water gently but without respite.

  Dacre's beagle sat, alert, at its master's feet, with all its attention trained on his eyes. Very casually, Dacre reached out to the edge of the littered table, at which he had dined alone. Choosing a long spoon which lay between a plate of smoke-grey oyster shells and an empty bottle in a silver ice-bucket, he turned the metal handle over and over in the tall flame of an ornamental candle. Then holding the spoon carefully at the bowl, and without the least change of expression, he tossed it to the far side of the carpet, where it fell with a dull ringing. The dog pounced after it, rebounded with a shrill yelp, and then fretted round it, whimpering with subdued dismay, but not daring to touch the hot metal again with its chops. Presently it left the spoon and ambled back, resuming its obedient scrutiny of its master's face.

  "Dogs and women," said Dacre with a laconic drawl, "never teach them any other way, old fellow."

  A stocky, shabbily dressed man, who sat at his ease in a wing chair, but who had not shared Dacre's supper, laughed obligingly. Dacre retrieved his glass of brandy and warm water from the mantelpiece.

  "Well then, Mr Cazamian, what is it to be?"

  The stocky man got to his feet, bringing into full view a dark head of hair cropped almost to stubble."I'm your man, sir. Why, I told Mr Roper. I'm your man for whatever it is."

  "Are you now? Are y' really?" Dacre's was the voice of a man who had learned the dandified drawl of a c
avalry officer, but who had hardly been born to it. He turned to the window and looked down disapprovingly at the Derby Night crowd, which danced and jostled among the shrubs, iron pagodas, and coloured lights of Cremorne Gardens. As the girls in green and blue silks, with feathered bonnets, hung on the arms of their impoverished swells, the band struck up an American polka. A dark-skinned man was taking up a collection among the crowd for two Indian boys in turbans, who were showing off a pair of poodles ridden by monkeys in the racing colours of the Earl of Chesterfield and Lord George Bentinck.

  Dacre turned round and looked at the shabbily-dressed man again.

  "If you're anyone's man, Cazamian, it's the South Eastern Railway Company's. Ain't it?"

  Cazamian shook his head and leant forward, gripping the table edge, as if to emphasise his sincerity.

  "Not any more, nor for five years past. When Mr George Hudson and his bloody railway scheme went smash, he took my little fortune with him. When it's all a man has saved for his children, he don't forget easy. Two of them then, and only one now. But, I ask you, sir. It didn't harm that bastard Hudson, did it? No, sir. The railway is a monster as eats its own children. It's brought a curse upon the working man who trusted it. The railway ruined me. But now the working man may take back what he's owed. When it's a war, sir, it ain't robbery to take from the enemy."

  Dacre nodded.

  "All right, old fellow, there really ain't any need to go the whole animal upon the subject. I catch the drift."

  "Why do you think I owe Mr Roper that money?" Cazamian protested. "Only a-cos I would've tried to win back by gaming what I lost through Hudson's smash."

  "How much do you owe?" Dacre made it sound of little concern to him.

  "To Mr Roper? Forty quid. It might as well be four hundred."

  "The lure of yaller goold," drawled Dacre. "By God, Cazamian, you must have backed some lame nags!"

  "That's true," said Cazamian ruefully. He rubbed his forehead, grinned foolishly, and then became serious again. "But there's interest too. Mr Roper charges pretty steep."

  Dacre appeared to ponder the problem. He said, "Ned Roper ain't the sort to forget a welsher. He'll work it off on you. Not out of spite, but as a lesson to other bilks. At forty pounds, it won't stop short of a broken neck."

  "But I'm your man!" There was a trace of moisture on Cazamian's cheeks, drawn out by the warmth of the room, and he dropped his voice to a stage whisper, as though hoping to impress Dacre the more. "I'm your man for the dodge. Whatever it is!"

  "Proof, if you please," said Dacre calmly, "that is what I have come here for."

  Very slowly, watching Dacre's thin, arrogant face as hopefully as the beagle's eyes had done, Cazamian reached into his pocket. He pulled out a sheet of paper, wrapped around something hard. Dacre took it and unfolded the paper. It contained a large iron key, and on the paper was a message in Cazamian's spidery scrawl.

  This is a duplicate key to the Railway Office at Folkestone pier, removed by me on the 31st of May. If it is missed, they will change the lock, but won't for a few days. Charles Baptist Cazamian.

  Dacre sighed, sat down in a chair, hoisted his feet on to a space on the dinner table, and crossed them comfortably.

  "Cazamian, old fellow, I am moved by your trust in us. Especially as you don't even know my name, nor never shall."

  "Got to trust," said Cazamian philosophically, "ain't I? The mess I'm in, there's not anything worse can happen."

  Dacre nodded.

  "Sit down. Let me return the trust, but not the key." He took a cigar case from his pocket, chose a cigar and lit it, without offering one to Cazamian. "Now, Cazamian, to the point. I have been robbed. Robbed of a jewel, an imperial diamond worth more than you could earn in the whole of your life as a railway guard."

  "And you ain't told the police office, sir?"

  Dacre gave a wry twist of the mouth.

  "That ain't so dashed easy, old fellow. That bit of devil's glass belonged to my sister's husband. When he died, his family claimed it back from her, saying it was a family heirloom to which she had no legal right. She refused, because she said it was his gift to her outright. So they set the lawyers on her. At which point she died, and I collected the diamond, which she'd given me for safekeeping several months before."

  "And if they knew you'd got it," said Cazamian, "they'd be after you?"

  "Precisely, old fellow, but I ain't got it. Before I could get it abroad to Amsterdam and have it cut into smaller stones, it was stolen from me! But I can hardly go to the police office or advertise a reward for the confounded thing, can I? Wouldn't do, my dear chapl "

  "No," said Cazamian thoughtfully, "it wouldn't, I s'pose."

  "Fortunately," resumed Dacre, "I know who's got it and what he's going to do with it. In a few weeks from now he will send it abroad to Paris on its way to be cut. He will not take it himself for fear of me following him. It will go in a bullion box on the tidal train from London Bridge station to Folkestone, for the Boulogne packet. I shall know the day: it will be during July."

  Dacre blew a jet of greenish-grey cigar smoke at the ceiling and continued.

  "Mr Roper tells me that during July you are on the rota as guard of the tidal-ferry train. I require to travel with you in the guard's van from London to Folkestone on the night in question. I shall recover my diamond, I promise you. There will be no questions asked. Why, my thief can hardly go to the police either, can he? And now, Cazamian, are you still my man?"

  Cazamian was grinning with relief.

  "I am, sir. I am indeed for a trick like that."

  "Your reward will be somewhat larger than the sum of money which you lost in Mr Hudson's railway-share swindle.'"

  "Oh," said Cazamian, as if surprised, but without being pleased.

  "That's justice, ain't it, old chap?" said Dacre peevishly.

  "Oh, it is, sir," said Cazamian, taking the opposite chair. "But that ain't it. Don't you know how they carry diamonds and bullion?"

  "You tell me, old fellow."

  Cazamian shrugged.

  "It all comes in heavy wooden bullion-boxes with iron bands round them. Each box is locked, of course, and the bullion shipper stamps his own seal on the wax over the lock. The boxes arrive in the afternoon by a special wagon. The station master, with the railway police, meets them and takes them to his office to be weighed. When that's done, he and the policemen walk beside the boxes while they are wheeled to the tidal train. In the guard's van is an iron safe, made by Chubb, and the tool don't exist as would crack that. It has two locks, the station master has the key for one and the constable has the key for the other. One can't open it on his own. The guard stays in the van with it until the train gets to Folkestone. We only stop once, at Reigate. The safe comes out at Folkestone and two or three of the railway constables there stands over it on the pier until it comes to be put on the Boulogne steamer. On the steamer there's a double guard from our company and the Frenchies. Once it lands again, the agents of the two companies take it through their customs and sit with it all the way until it gets opened in Paris."

  "Good," said Dacre, nodding.

  "Good? It's anything but good, sir! Even if you could get near the safe, the tool ain't made that would force that lock." Dacre nodded his agreement.

  "And," continued Cazamian, "you ain't going to get the proper keys unless the station master and the police gives them to you. And even if they did, and you could open the safe, there's the bullion-boxes, which are locked and bound. Why, you might force the locks and the iron bands, but there ain't any way you could replace the seal without the bullion merchant kindly lending you his stamp. The jig would be up as soon as someone so much as looked at the boxes."

  Dacre contemplated the cherry-red tip of his cigar.

  "And that ain't the lot," said Cazamian decisively, "a-cos even if you was to do all that, they'd catch you with the weighing."

  "Weighing?"

  "They always do it somewhere, though not usually the sa
me place twice running. They weigh the bullion-boxes to make sure that the weight ain't altered since London Bridge. If one box were to weigh different, the jig would be up."

  Dacre smiled.

  "Splendid I" he said. "Superb!"

  "Is it still a runner, then?" asked Cazamian incredulously. "Oh, my dear fellow, this one is not only a runner, it's a winner!"

  There was a pause, during which Dacre's enthusiasm quietened. He stood up with his thin, pale face a mask of formality once more, in its frame of neat blond whiskers. His voice was dispassionate again.

  "You won't see me again, Cazamian, until we meet on the train, when I shall take back what belongs to me. Roper will tell you whatever else you need to know. In a day or two, he will also return the duplicate key of the luggage office to you."

  "And when you've got your jewel back?" asked Cazamian hopefully.

  "You shall have your reward, never fear. However, for the time being ..."

  Dacre opened his notecase and handed Cazamian a sheet of paper.

  Received from Charles Baptist Cazamian, Esquire, the sum of forty guineas, in full and complete discharge of all monies owed to me, and interest thereon, and June, 1857. Edward Roper.

  "Gesture of good faith," said Dacre. "Your debt is settled. But cross Ned Roper and he'll still have your neck, broken for you."

  "Never!" said Cazamian, his hands dry-washing together earnestly. "I'm your man, sir, you and Mr Roper."

  "Well," drawled Dacre laconically, "I do hope so, old fellow."