SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman (24 page)

"Well?" he said impatiently, "where's the cash, then?"

The groom said nothing. He stepped aside and to Roper's complete bewilderment revealed two men, a uniformed police sergeant and a constable, standing in the open doorway of the house.

"Mr Roper?" said the sergeant blandly.

"Yes." Ned Roper tried frantically to anticipate the business which might have brought them.

"Did you hand this person a cheque, payable to you on the account of Mr Charles Scott-Hervey at Coutts Bank?"

"Yes," said Roper with righteous relief. "You don't mean to tell me he was running off with the money!" "No," said the sergeant quietly. "Well then?"

"Did Mr Scott-Hervey hand you that cheque himself?" "Yes."

"And how long might it have been in your possession?" "Five minutes," said Roper thoughtfully. "Not more than ten, certainly." "And it passed directly from you to this person?" "Course it did," said Roper irritably, "why?" "How long ago was that?"

"Quarter of an hour, p'raps," said Roper. " 'ow the 'ell should I know?"

"A little bother over the sum payable, sir," said the young constable, "some apparent irregularity. Simply explained, no doubt, but being for so large a sum as seven hundred and twenty pounds, Messrs. Coutts naturally wished to take the precaution
..."

"Seven hundred!" said Roper aghast.

"And wanted in cash," the sergeant remarked. He and the constable regarded Roper with professional scepticism and thinly-disguised contempt. They knew who he was and what he was.

Ned Roper's brain refused to assimilate the fragments of information presented to it. They seemed entirely inexplicable. He had, of course, been prepared for trouble over the bullion robbery, even though the bullion was already disposed of and the resulting banknotes safely hidden. He had rehearsed to perfection every conceivable answer to the deepest questions that might be asked. But the business of a cheque for seven hundred and twenty pounds made no sense at all.

"Perhaps, sir," said the sergeant impassively, "we can now ask you to accompany us to Messrs Coutts in Piccadilly, in order that the matter may be clarified."

Before he could even gather his wits, Roper was sitting in a cab between the two men. Quarter of an hour more, and they marched like a file of infantry into the bank. There Roper saw the cheque. It was still payable to him, but twenty pounds had become seven hundred and twenty pounds by the plausible addition of a
"7,"
and the less plausible addition of "seven hundred and," the spacing of which had been judged in a way that would disgrace the most amateur penman. The script and the ink might otherwise have deceived a counter clerk, but the total effect of the draft was bound to rouse suspicion. Ned Roper needed time to think.

"I can't say nothing," he repeated, "nor I won't."

The sergeant looked at the constable. Roper offered no resistance as, for the second time in his life, the "darbies" were closed over his wrists and he was led, a spectacle for the summer crowds, to the lock-up of "C" Division. Metropolitan Police, off Marlborough Street.

Not far from Mr Hatchard's bookshop, a down-at-heel sporting gentleman, who had been lounging by the shop-front for the past hour, watched the two policemen and their prisoner go by. Then he pulled himself upright and shuffled away towards Pall Mall, where the twopenny buses started for Hammersmith. Sealskin Kite was soon to know that obligations had been discharged on both sides.

"Either Ned Roper forged a draft for seven hundred pounds, which is deuced rum, seein' the money he could make here, or he's been put up, which is more rum still."

As he spoke, Verney Dacre had his hand on the wooden mane of the rocking horse, dipping it rhythmically and letting it rise again. Ellen Jacoby sat on the velvet sofa of the upstairs drawing-room at Langham Place, her blue eyes wider than ever.

"But Ned ain't a penman," she whined, "nor never was."

"If he improved that cove's cheque for him, he was a penman, and no mistake," Dacre stepped away from the wooden horse. "Though why he should do it is a mystery. What matters now, young woman, is that Tyler will drive you to Horsemonger Lane Gaol, where you'll be let speak to Ned Roper in the presence of a turnkey. Now, as it's the only chance you'll have before the sessions come about and he stands trial, use the time well. So have the goodness to listen to what you must say."

The girl checked her whimpering a litt
le and Verney Dacre continued.'F
irst, you'll remember never to mention a name, not mine, not yours, nor any other. However, you'll tell Ned Roper that his governor knows it's all a plant and that he shall have the best attorney that can be bought. Tell him that, whatever may happen, his governor will see to it that every farthing of Roper's shall go to you a
nd the littl
e fellow. And then tell him that the friend he used to see at the Green Man has vanished off the face of creation and may have gone to fly a kite."

She watched him like a child learning her lesson.

"Can you remember all that?" Dacre asked sharply.

She nodded.

"Think so."

"And mention no names at all. Ned Roper's done murder in his time and if they were ever to find a noose for him, they'd very likely find a second one for you."

She bowed her head and began to weep silently in her despair.

"Someone has done him wrong this time," said Dacre softly, "and I fancy I know who. You may tell him that his old governor ain't goin' to rest until the man is discovered."

Ellen mopped her eyes.

"What about the boy?" she said doubtfully. "Mayn't his father see him?"

"It ain't allowed," said Dacre firmly. "The child stays safe here until you get back."

Verney Dacre waited until long after Ellen had returned from her prison meeting with Ned Roper. He stood at the window of the room, watching the evening sky above P
ort
man Square turn from flames of vermilion, to plum-coloured dusk, and then to smoke-grey. Within three days of the robbery he had put his two rivals safely out of the way and held bank notes to the value of twenty thousand pounds. He watched the last drunkards go shouting homewards and waited until only an intermittent cab clattered over the deserted cobbles, down the long procession of branched gaslights which led to Regent Circus. Then he summoned Coggin and Tyler to the upstairs room.

The summons was no surprise to either man. Each had separately concluded many months before that every stick in the house belonged to a bigger fish than Ned Roper. They did as Roper ordered, but never qestioned that their ultimate loyalties had been bought by the man whom Roper served. For several weeks they had known this man to be a slender, fair-haired young swell with the look of a cavalry subaltern. They had heard Roper call him "Mr Dacre."

Now, as the two muscular bullies stood before him, Dacre sat where Ellen had done, on the velvet sofa.

"Should y' like to know what has become of Ned Roper?" Dacre inquired superfluously. "Someone has settled a private account with him. It goes back a long way, they tell me, and it don't touch you or me, or anything in this house."

There was no mistaking the look of relief on the two ham-coloured faces.

"Should y' like to work for me and run the house directly for yourselves?" Dacre tapped his boot with a stick. "For six months there must be great care and no change. Then, if you please me during that time, you shall both have houses of your own, one here and another in Holborn."

The prospect of the means to unexpected wealth brought grins and murmurs of gratitude from the two men. Their heavy torsos seemed to writhe with an almost physical pleasure as they shifted from foot to foot.

"Ain't neither of us'd say no to that sir," remarked Coggin. "We're your men now or in six months' time."

"Very well," said Dacre, "but there's a screw loose, or there will be unless we prevent it. It ain't a man that betrayed Ned Roper in the first place. It was one of two girls, perhaps even both. Until the summer's over and Roper's out of it, one way or the other, neither of the doxies is to leave this building. They can live in one of the little rooms at the top with the barred windows. The door is to be bolted, likewise the gate on the stairs."

"If it's Roper's woman," said Tyler with feeling, "it's no more than she deserves. A spell of breaking-in, in those rooms, does wonders with girls that can't bring themselves to ply the trade."

"Ellen Jacoby," said Dacre softly, "and Jolie."

A smile spread slowly across Coggin's face at the thought of the two pretty prisoners who would be in his care.

"Don't you fret yourself, Mr Dacre, those little shicksters ain't never going to trouble you again."

"Oblige me," said Dacre, "by seein' to it at once."

He waited while his orders were carried out, then he made his way up the broad ovals of the staircase to the attic floor. Jolie was hunched in a corner of the cell-like room, her eyes glittering with a dark animal hatred. Ellen sat stupidly on the edge of a mattress, her dress gone and a glass clutched in her hand.

"See to it," said Dacre to Coggin, "that she has a bottle of 'skyblue' gin fetched up to her every day. Y' need only just wipe it on her lips and she'll suck like a baby at a teat. Keep her in a separate room, and if you want to take turn and turn about with her, you may."

The reference to a "baby" seemed to rouse Ellen a little.

"Where's little Harry Roper?" she said suddenly and wildly. "Bring him to me!"

Verney Dacre looked at her.

"A bawdy house ain't no place to bring up a child," he said sardonically. "And I don't choose to have the keepin' of a parish brat when I pay the poor rate and when the workhouse may bear the cost more comfortably."

He closed the door on her, hearing her hands beat feebly at it as he closed the bolt. A moment later the tall iron gate at the head of the stairs came to with a faint clang. Then, a key rattled in the lock. The footsteps of the three men died away into a deep silence.

17

"Sergeant William Clarence Verity, you are required by order of Superintendent James Gowry, 'A' Division, Metropolitan Police, to attend this investigation and to give such information as may be required of you by your superior officers. The investigation is carried out on the instructions of the Home Office, in consequence of certain allegations which have been made concerning your recent conduct."

Verity stood straight-backed before the long, polished table as Inspector Croaker outlined the procedure of an internal police inquiry, with a voice of unctuous satisfaction.

"Now," Croaker concluded, "you are to answer those questions which will be put to you by the visiting officer, Colonel Hanning, by Mr Bryce, of the Treasury, and by myself."

Verity assessed the two strangers. Colonel Hanning, with the drooping white moustache and sharp grey eyes of
a
retired regimental commander, might at least have
a
soldier's sense of fair-dealing. But the beak-nosed man with the smooth face and arched black eyebrows, "Mr Bryce, of the Treasury," was a good deal less welcome. Verity knew that "Treasury" meant "Treasury Solicitor's Office," and that the presence of such a man was a sure sign that they were trying to frame an indictment against him.

In full uniform, Verity stood at attention in what had once been the first-floor dining-room of Whitehall Place. Beyond the heads of the three investigating officers the window opened on a view of the river, sparkling in the light of the summer morning. Penny steamers, their thin black funnels trailing banners of black smoke, and the billowing brown sails of coal barges assured him that the life of the city was running its normal course while the bizarre little drama of Scotland Yard was acted out in this room. At his back, the escort. Sergeant Penzer, belched unobtrusively.

Croaker's eyes seemed small and glittering as he turned them upon Verity.

"Were you, Sergeant Verity, on the tidal ferry train which left London Bridge station for Folkestone at seven p.m. on the sixteenth of July?"

"Yes, sir," said Verity calmly, "but it was London Bridge to Dover, sir."

"Were you acting under orders?"

"No, sir. Rest day, sir. More of an excursion."

"Did anyone know you were going?"

"Never told a soul, sir. Didn't know myself until I got to the station. Spur of the moment, you might say."

"Could anyone else have known of your intention?"

"Don't see 'ow, sir."