Kept (40 page)

“Passed him in the corridor as I came by from first class, and gave him a nod.”

Mr. Pardew nodded his head in acknowledgement of this. He knew that a bare thirty minutes was allowed to him for the accomplishment of the first part of his scheme, but he knew also that the chance of its succeeding was now immeasurably enhanced. In half an hour the train would stop at Redhill, its first port of call. In that time, if he applied himself to his task, he could achieve a great deal. Reaching into the first of the travelling bags, he drew out, one by one, an assortment of items carefully assembled by him in Carter Lane three hours before. A pair of pincers, a two-pound hammer, several boxwood wedges, a pair of scales (the last abstracted on the previous evening from the kitchen in St. John’s Wood)—each followed the other onto a square of green baize cloth which Mr. Pardew had first laid out on the compartment floor. In so doing, he also laid bare the mystery of the cases’ great weight. Each was crammed to the rims with quantities of lead shot bound up in paper packets. It was beautiful to see Mr. Pardew do this. He had the look of a craftsman, a blacksmith arranging his tools
before the forge, an artist, even, bringing out his brushes and mixing a preliminary mess or two on his palette, and the consciousness that there was an artistry in what he did gave a flourish to his movements. And yet mingling with this was the sensation of absolute terror and foreboding: not that he might be discovered but that some crucial element in his scheme might be found wanting.

Two or three times in the deployment of his little armoury Mr. Pardew felt his hand straying towards the pocket of his coat. But he had a superstitious delight in completing tasks in what he conceived to be their proper order, and each time he managed to concentrate his mind on this preordained sequence. Finally, when the pincers, the hammer, the boxwood wedges and the scales (on which the flour of yesterday’s baking still lingered) lay upon the green baize square, he fished inside the pocket, scrabbling his fingers into the cloth in his anxiety, and drew out a pair of keys. Apprehending that only one of the safes was fastened, he quickly inserted first one then the other key into their locks. There was a second’s pause, during which Mr. Pardew tugged determinedly on the second key. Then the door of the safe swung open.

Grace, who had monitored the operations on the green baize square in a state of glassy-eyed bewilderment, like a man who watches a conjuror produce rabbits out of a tall hat previously exhibited as empty, contorted his face into an expression so extraordinary that Mr. Pardew, busy as he was about his work in the flicker of the lamplight, could hardly fail to notice it.

“What is it?”

“What if somebody comes?”

“Nobody will come. Dewar has the key. Did you not hear it turn a moment or so ago? We are sealed in until such time as he releases us. Well then?” For he saw that Grace’s gaze was still bent in fascination on the interior of the safe.

“A man,” Grace said slowly, not looking at Mr. Pardew as he spoke but at the floor, the ceiling and several other places besides, “a man could be hanged for this, surely?”

“Transported rather. This is not a capital offence, I believe.”

“I wonder you can take it so easy!”

“If we do not look to ourselves, there shall be no offence committed, and then we shall go back to London cursing ourselves for fools. You had better hand down one of those boxes, indeed you had.”

With an effort, the muscles of his arms straining beneath his black coat, Grace tumbled the first of the three bullion chests out of the safe. The chests, he saw, were stoutly made, each circled by an iron band secured to the wood by rivets, and locked fast. The puzzle of how his employer might be able to break his way into the first of these sanctums rose suddenly in his mind, and for a moment he watched with interest as Mr. Pardew, holding the pincers in his left hand while his right felt for the iron band, sized up his quarry. The pincers, Grace again saw, had been filed fine, so fine as to render them useless for most ordinary work. And yet, as Mr. Pardew twisted with them here and there, Grace divined that they were remarkably efficacious in raising the rivets an inch or so from the wood in which they were embedded, and that such a raising had the additional advantage of causing the lock to lose its reinforcement. Within a short time, and working with what seemed to Grace particular dexterity, Mr. Pardew had conjured into existence a crack—not large but of sufficient magnitude for a man to be able to insert a sovereign into it—between the lid of the lower part of the chest at its front. Then, taking four of the boxwood wedges in one hand and the two-pound hammer in the other, he belaboured them into place in such a way that, when the fourth had been secured, he could jar the lock free from the lid.

Mr. Pardew, as he worked, was conscious of two things. The first was Grace’s admiring stare, which, even though he despised the man, was not uncongenial to him. The second was a desperate anxiety lest in the heat of his task he should damage the chest. Knowing that the lock would be inspected, however casually, when the train reached Folkestone, he was careful to make it seem to appear intact. Neither did he allow any of the boxwood wedges to produce a crack that could not be hidden when the chest was resealed. It seemed to him, what with his admonition of Grace and the cautiousness of his preparations, that he had been at work for an hour at least, yet a glance at his watch assured him that a bare five minutes had passed. He gave a final tap
with his hammer at the fourth boxwood wedge, shook the lock with a little craftsman’s twist of his fingers, and prised open the lid.

“D——n my eyes,” Grace said.

“D——n them indeed,” Mr. Pardew observed. Once in the course of some earlier professional undertaking—not, as it happened, a criminal one—he had been invited to inspect a stack of bullion bars in a bank vault. There had been a dozen of them, of no great size, smeared over with some kind of wax used in their manufacture, and Mr. Pardew, respectful though he was of the sum of money they represented, had not been overly impressed. Here, on the other hand, were perhaps fifty, each the size of a tobacco pouch, lying in four neat rows. Mr. Pardew took one in his hand and placed it on the set of scales. The result confirmed to him something that his eye had already judged: that in the first of Messrs. Abell, Spielmann & Bult’s chests lay something like a hundredweight of gold. If Mr. Pardew’s inner self exulted in this fact, he was careful not to let the external self show it. He merely set hastily yet methodically to work, removing the gold bars in handfuls, placing them into the first and smallest of the travelling bags, while calculating in his mind the weight of lead shot needed to replace them. When the bag was full and the exact equivalent of shot had been substituted for the purloined gold, Mr. Pardew consulted his watch. Assuring himself that perhaps ten minutes remained until the train arrived at Redhill, he carefully closed the robbed chest, hammered down the iron bands and tapped each of the rivets back into place. Then, from the pocket of his coat, he produced a taper, a stick of red wax and some circular discs of metal.

“What’s them then?” Grace wondered.

“Dies,” Mr. Pardew told him, beginning to melt the stick of wax over the flame of the oil lamp and allowing the liquid to drip down onto the first of the metal discs. “No one will know these ain’t the merchants’ stamps, not on Folkestone quay at dead of night, but sealed up they must be or what we’ve been about will be plain to everyone.”

Almost at the moment that he restored the first of the bullion chests to the safe, Mr. Pardew was aware that the engine was beginning to lose speed. Extinguishing the lamp, he stood up, stretched his
arms to their fullest extent and pushed the heavily laden travelling case into the centre of the floor.

“We shall be in Redhill in a moment. You had better crouch down in that corner—there, where the safe comes closest to the wall.”

Grace did as he was bidden. Joining him, Mr. Pardew found that the corner of the compartment contained several pieces of ancient sacking. These they draped over themselves and lay half concealed in the darkness. Presently, as the engine slowed almost to a halt, they heard a key turn in the lock and became aware of Dewar stepping into the compartment. He did not exactly acknowledge their presence but could be heard moving cautiously to the door and throwing it open. There was a pause, a great hiss of steam from further down the platform and the noise of footsteps. “Where is it then?” Pearce’s voice enquired softly out of the darkness. There was a thud and an exclamation, as of some heavy object being propelled into the arms of one who is startled by its weight. No more than a few seconds later, it seemed to the persons concealed beyond the safe, the door had been pulled shut once more and the engine was moving off into the night.

Throwing off his coat of sacking, Mr. Pardew reignited the lamp with a sulphur match and turned again towards the safe. With the first case of contraband removed from the luggage van, his spirits had risen. The springing of the second bullion chest was accomplished in half the time taken by the opening of the first. When he prised it open, Mr. Pardew found to his satisfaction that it contained packets of American gold eagles and French Napoleons. Once more he and Grace set to work to replace them with the exact equivalent of lead shot. The third chest, split open in a trice it seemed, so dextrous had Mr. Pardew grown in his trade, revealed more rows of yellow bullion bars. Pausing occasionally in the weighing of his bags of shot to pass a hand across his sweating forehead, Mr. Pardew sensed that Grace was growing restive. Presently Grace remarked, “Notice anything?”

“Only that we shall be stopping in Tonbridge in twenty minutes, by which time we had best have finished our business.”

“There’s more gold than we’ve got the lead for. What shall we do?”

“What shall we do? Why, we shall leave it in the safe.”

“Leave it? What, prime gold just a-waiting to be took? Who’s to know that it was us?”

“Who’s to know?” Mr. Pardew’s face, as he peered up from behind the glow of the oil lamp, looked devilish. “Don’t be a fool. Did I not tell you the procedures? The safe will be weighed at Folkestone Harbour, while we sit here in the train waiting to go on to Dover, and these bags lie in the luggage van waiting for us to collect them. You might as well walk along the platform with a gold bar wedged in your hatband.”

“I only thought…”

“You had better think nothing at all. Each of these bags is nearly full. We shall have trouble enough carrying them as it is. You had better take that broom in the corner there and sweep the floor. A child could tell that we had been at work here.”

Looking at his boots, Grace saw that the boards of the compartment were covered with flakes of red wax and splinters from the bullion boxes. Whistling quietly to himself, he hastened to remove these traces of their activities while Mr. Pardew locked up the chests, hammered down the iron bands and secured their rivets.

“You’ve found your courage again, I see,” Mr. Pardew remarked during the course of these labours.

“There was no courage wanting,” Grace replied stiffly.

“Well, have some in store, for there is a great deal still to do.”

It seemed to Mr. Pardew as he issued this warning that long hours had passed since they had boarded the train, trackless days spent labouring by the dim light of the lamp, that he was like some benighted troglodyte of legend, condemned to live out his days far underground. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was barely a quarter past ten. The safe now shut up and the two travelling bags placed inconspicuously in the corner of the compartment, he became, by degrees, more aware of his surroundings. Grace was squatting with his back to the safes, his face waxy-pale in the half-light. Cold night air had begun to steal up from beneath the floorboards. It was no longer so hot. Again, the train was beginning to slow.

“Where’s this? I wonder,” Grace mused, almost as if speaking to himself.

Half an hour before, Mr. Pardew would have rebuked his clerk for his ignorance. His mind was racing on, though, reckoning up the several dangers that might await them in the next hour, and he allowed the spasm of irritation to pass.

“We are at Folkestone. Now, have a care that you do exactly as I say.”

A moment or so before he judged the engine would halt, Mr. Pardew slid open the door of the luggage van six inches or so and peered anxiously out. The stretch of platform was deserted. Fifty yards away a lamp blazed above the stationmaster’s office, but there were no other signs of life. Reaching to the compartment door, he found, as he had anticipated, that it was now unlocked, and that the train carriage into which it led was empty. Rapidly, he and Grace strode back along the train towards the first-class carriages. Gazing out into the darkness, Mr. Pardew saw a brace of porters and a gentleman whom he presumed to be a railway policeman moving sharply in the direction of the luggage van. In the distance Dewar’s voice could be dimly heard. Mr. Pardew realised that his heart was beating very fast. Well, a few minutes more would see them in Dover, after which the fate of their enterprise lay in the hands of the gods. He folded his hands across his chest, looked disparagingly for a moment at Grace and then stared out into the Kentish darkness.

MR. ROBT. GRACE: HIS RECOLLECTION OF THE NIGHT’S EVENTS

He was a cool ‘un, d——n him, that much must be allowed. No sooner are we stopped at Dover than it’s back to the luggage van to collect our bags. Precious heavy they was, too, but we made it look as if there was just ordinary togs inside. There’s the Dover Castle Hotel over the way—a tip-top place as I could see—and he says to me “What do you say to a little supper?” Naturally I’m game, so we sit ourselves down in the coffee room. While they’re a-cooking of the food—broiled fish it was, and devilish good—he takes a wander outside. Never said
a word to me, but I’d lay even money those keys are at the bottom of the Channel. And the hammer and the pincers and them dies, I’ll be bound.

Very late it is now, and no one much about. Just a single waiter left at the bar of the Castle to take our money (Mr. Pardew tipped him a half sovereign, which I thought was rash) and shut up shop. London train leaves at one, we’d been told. There’s a particular dodge we’re going to play now. The dodge is that we’ve to come to the station along the quay from where the foreign boats dock, them that comes from Ostend and Calais. Coming up to the station entrance—pitch-dark it was, with only a light or two showing—he stops and says to me, “You’ll need this, you know.” And blow me if he hasn’t somehow got the return halves of two tickets from Ostend to London Bridge. Just say that anyone’s crying out over a robbery of the mail train—why then, here’s proof that we’e been on the high seas all the time.

Inspector on duty at the station entrance. Stiff, tall cove of a kind I never did like. Looks at the tickets. Looks at the bags, tickets still in his hand. Looks at the two of us. I can feel myself wanting to drop the bag I’m holding and run, but Mr. P., as cool as a lettuce leaf, asks, is there anything the matter? Why yes, says the cove, where’s the chalk-mark on these here bags saying they’ve been examined by the Customs back in yonder shed? Oh C——t, I thinks, how are we to get out of this one? They’ll take us back to the blessed Customshouse and then there’ll be the devil to pay. But Mr. P. just smiles as if it’s the merest trifle in the world and says he don’t think the water guard would thank him for putting them twice to the same trouble, for we came over from Ostend the previous night and have been staying in the town. Anyway, the cove calls his mate, says: better put these gents through the Customs again surely, than risk a stripe for letting them through unchecked. Mr. P.’s nodding, saying something about that night’s steamer delayed, no question of us having just come over, and suddenly the tickets are back in our hands and we’re through.

Getting onto the London train I nearly faint, I’m so far gone, but Mr. P. has some brandy and water in a sody bottle and that revives me. What happens then I don’t much recollect, only that coming into
the Bridge, with the dawn about to break, blow me if there ain’t a peeler opening the door of the carriage. Again, I’m rare to throw him down and run, but bless me if the chap doesn’t ask if he can help with the luggage! Never did luck hold out so, only that it fell in the end, as it always does.