SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman (27 page)

Among the crowd of spectators pressing about the advocates' box was an ill-dressed, decrepit old man, a report-writer for the weekly papers, who attended most of the trials at the sessions house. As Roper was led down, the old man elbowed his way out of the court, hawking and sniffing, and walked to where the pugilistic figure of Coggin was standing a little way off. He spoke to Coggin, who listened, nodded, and handed the old man a half-sovereign. Then Coggin himself hurried away towards Snow Hill, where a hansom cab had stood waiting for the past hour. Coggin opened the door and said,

"Ned Roper goes down to Chatham, to the hulks, next week."

Then Coggin slammed the door and, as Verney Dacre tapped the roof of the cab with the knob of his stick, the driver jerked the reins and the horses jostled forward towards Holborn and Regent Circus.

Verney Dacre's visits to Langham Place were rare, but on the afternoon of Roper's trial it was essential to make certain arrangements there. In all the world, there were only four men and women to be disposed of. In a few months more, it would be safe enough to have Ellen and Jolie delivered into the hands of the keeper of a closed brothel in Marseilles or San Francisco. Jolie with her terror of the noose for her part in McCaffery's death, and Ellen, stupefied by gin, would be in no position to create further problems. Coggin and Tyler, masters of their own "flash houses" in London, would be independent. As for Roper, whom Dacre had already removed from his list, he might as well be in his grave for all that he would ever
hear or utter in a convict settl
ement.

It was a safe afternoon to visit the house in Langham Place, since Verity was attending the railway inquiry on Inspector Croaker's instructions. Verney Dacre had less of an appetite for Verity's destruction than Roper, but it gave a sense of completeness to see the man broken.

Dacre stepped from the cab, went up to the door, and hit it once with the knob of his stick. Tyler opened it and took his master's hat and coat. Dacre handed him the stick as well and said quietly,

"It ain't advisable to have that girl Ellen's brat in the house any longer. See to it that it's taken to the parish union this afternoon. Have it entered in the record as a foundling."

Leaving Tyler to carry out his order, Dacre climbed the stairs, unlocked the wicket-gate, and unbolted the door of Ellen's room. During her imprisonment in the barred attic, she had eaten less and less. The gin, which had been provided as a sedative, was now the sole consolation in her squalid captivity. Her hair was dishevelled, the bones of her face more prominent, and a pale, waxy sheen had replaced the warm bloom of her cheeks. Already the softness of her body had become thin and angular. She sat on the edge of the hair mattress, looking more like a deranged bedlamite in her dirty petticoat than" the smart young whore she had been a few weeks earlier.

There was no argument at first. She wrote at Dacre's dictation, the words chosen carefully, for this would be the last letter that Roper ever received from his mistress. There was a reference to a pony for little Harry Roper, and a gentleman's education, all of it under the benign surveillance of Lieutenant Dacre. Dacre was not, of course, referred to by name in the letters but always as "the governor."

It was when he took the paper from her that Ellen roused herself at last, pulling her shoulders back and looking round at him with vacant stupidity.

"Ned Roper'll break you when he's free again
!
"
she sobbed. "Break you bone by bone!"

Dacre looked at her, realising that he had forgotten to allow for her ignorance of the law's technicalities.

"That's what Ned Roper won't do," he said softly. "Whoever put him up is a professional. Most thieves and mobsmen are free again, somewhen or other, but not a penman. When a man is lagged for penning, it's the full stretch, until they bury him in Botany Bay. Ned Roper ain't comin' back, miss. And oblige me by rememberin' that."

By the time her fuddled mind had absorbed this informa
t
ion, Dacre had closed the padded door and bolted it on the outside, so that when the storm of hysterical sobbing broke, it was scarcely audible. It was strange that a few weeks before he had offered Roper five hundred pounds for her. Now, with her wasting body and stupid, lacklustre eyes he would not have given a thousand farthings for her. Of the two, it was Jolie who still preserved her attractions in captivity.

While he was there, it seemed as well to look at the other girl and remind her that she was being kept safe from the constables, who were now pursuing their inquiries into the death of Thomas McCaffery with greater persistence. He opened the heavy bolts at the top and bottom of the stout door, and entered the room. A single sheet lay in disarray on the mattress. A bottle of gin stood unopened on the floor, the remains of the girl's last meal beside it. Of Jolie herself there
was no sign. Dacre strode to th
e window and clutched the bars in his hands. One bar had been worked loose at the bottom. Its lower end could be pulled aside just far enough for a girl of
petite
stature to squeeze out on to the parapet. Dacre cursed aloud. But there was no way down except for a leap to certain death on the cobbles four floors below. From the parapet, however, it was possible to enter those attic rooms which were not barred or bolted.

Without wasting further ti
me, Verney Dacre ran to the two unbolted rooms. As he had expected, the window of one of them was open, indicating that the girl had re-entered the house through it. She could still not have got down the stairs beyond the wrought-iron wicket-gate. And then Dacre realised that he had not locked the gate again on going to
Ellen's room. Jolie must have ti
med her escape so that she crept along the little passageway and down the stairs while he was dictating the letter to Ellen. It would have been child's play for her to get down to the first floor or even the basement and escape from the house by that route.

Dacre leapt down the stairs, two or three at a time, in great crashing strides whic
h brought Coggin out of the littl
e parlour.

"Quickly," said Dacre, "there's a screw loose. That bitch
Jolie has gone. She's got down through the house and on to the street. It must have been since I was up there, so she ain't gone far. But she must be fetched back quick, or she'll do for the lot of us."

Coggin opened the door and he and Tyler raced down the steps to the street.

"Wait a bit!" shouted Dacre, "what's she wearin'? What clothes were in the end attic room?"

"She 'adn't nothing but underthings of her own," said Coggin, hastily excusing himself. "There was only old clothes in the end attic. A page's suit for special evenings, with reddish breeches and a grey woollen coatee."

"Then she'll be wearing those most likely," said Dacre urgently. "Now the worst is that she may try to get to a police office, it ain't likely, but she may do. I shall take a cab for Whitehall Place to see if I can spot her on the way. If I don't, I shall work back again. More likely, she's trying to get shelter from some other girl on the street. Ask any you know, find if they've seen her, and then follow the way I'm going."

While Coggin and Tyler hurried through the crowded streets towards Regent Circus, Verney Dacre called
a
cab off the rank. The horse ambled slowly through the mass of carriages and twopenny buses, giving him time to survey the street on both sides. In the length of the Regent Street Quadrant there was no sign of her, nor down the Haymarket, nor in Pall Mall. She could surely not have got further than this. He ordered the cab to turn and go back by the same route. If, as he now feared, the girl had run eastward, to the criminal rookery of Seven Dials, she might be anywhere in
a
warren of buildings and alleyways.

He saw Tyler and Coggin easily enough, at the far end of the Quadrant, ordered the cab to pull up, and waved them towards him.

"Two girls saw 'er," Coggin gasped. "Reckon she must have gone for the Dials. P'raps the gaff in Monmouth Street. Said she was asking about being took into the Holborn refuge."

"Get in, quickly,"
said Dacre, grimacing impatientl
y. At least Jolie was too frightened to go to the police at once, but in a refuge like the Holborn Mission the McCaffery story would be drawn out of her in half an hour.

"If it's the Holborn Mission," said Dacre, "she must cross the Dials to get there. We shan't see her from the road. Cabman! St Giles's Church, and drop us there. Quickly!"

The cab crossed Regent Circus again and clattered away down Oxford Street, bouncing its occupants about with the swaying of the polished coachwork, St Giles's clock was striking three as they approached.

"Look!" said Coggin suddenly, and Dacre saw the strange figure flitting along the
paving. The dark hair was hastily pushed up under a littl
e cap, the grey woollen coatee worn open to disguise so far as possible the jut of a pair of trim young breasts. The waist of the maroon breeches was too narrow and their tight seat too softly rounded for the wearer to pass as anything but a girl masquerading in boy's clothes. Dacre flung the cabman a sovereign, shouted at him to wait, and jumped after Tyler and Coggin as the girl broke into a run. She gained the corner and vanished round it into the twisting alleys of Seven Dials.

The three men sprinted after her, turned the same corner, and found a wall facing them. To one sid
e was a narrow passageway. As th
ey veered into it, two men with the figures of Covent Garden porters barred their way, legs astride and arms akimbo. Several more men and women began to sidle from the doorways of tall, dark tenements, their movements furtive and hostile. Coggin and Tyler would have tried to fight their way through, but Dacre called them back. Whether the porters were trying to save the girl from her pursuers, or merely defending their own territory, they would block the path for long enough to enable Jolie to get clear away.

Dacre and his companions doubled back, and took the next opening into the Dials. They ran parallel to the first alley down which the girl had disappeared, and saw her cross a gap at the far end of a long passageway. By the time that they had run the length of it, there was no sign of her.

She must, Dacre thought, be almost out of the Dials by now and within sight of the Holborn Mission. When they turned another corner, they saw her far ahead of them, almost beyond reach. Jolie looked back at her pursuers and swung to one side, disappearing again. Dacre, having outpaced his companions, spurted after her and rounded the last corner.

His heart jumped with relief. She had turned into a long courtyard ending in a high, blank wall. She tried vainly to find fingerholds to pull herself up and over it. There were none. The three men closed upon her, and though she struggled in their clutches, her movements were no more than those of a small trapped animal. They dragged her back to the cab and pushed her inside. At Langham Place, she allowed herself to be led into the back entrance of the house, her eyes bright with defiance but her body exhausted by the frenzy of her attempted escape. Dacre himself was still breathing heavily as he followed Tyler and Coggin into the house and bolted the door.

"Take the bitch to the other attic," he said bitterly. "Strap her wrists to the bed-frame, and see to it that she don't move again!"

In his cold fury, he harboured thoughts of murder. Though he had never killed a girl before, he was almost ready to slip the cord over this one's neck and tighten it with his own hands, while the other men held her. Only the prospect of having Tyler and Coggin as witnesses persuaded him to put aside the temptation.

The two bullies attended their master in the upstairs drawing-room during the rest of the afternoon. Verney Dacre perched silently on the sofa, his face set hard as he meditated thoughts of retribution. That an o
bscure littl
e street girl should have dared to jeopardise his masterpiece was such an affront that he could hardly think coherently in his fury. From time to time, Coggin and Tyler exchanged uneasy glances. They were growing fearful that their new employer, possessed by rage, would do something to Jolie which would put their necks in greater danger than anything which the girl herself might have had time to do during her brief period of freedom. When the evening had grown dark and the heavy curtains had been pulled across the windows, the hard lines of Dacre's thin face seemed to relax. He sat back against the arm
-rest of the sofa and said quietl
y, "Have the goodness to bring her down to me."

While Tyler fetched Jolie, Dacre gave Coggin his instructions. Presently Tyler returned with his prisoner, who still wore the absurd breeches in which she had escaped.

"Oblige me," said Dacre, "by mounting Miss Jolie over the rocking horse to take her lesson."

Knowing what lay in store for her, she stiffened her body in resistance against Tyler's, as he marched her to the tail of the horse. In the deadened silence of the drawing-room, th
e bully made her bend over tightl
y along the wooden back, strapping her wrists and ankles to the carved legs, while Coggin pinioned her at the waist so that her belly was pressed down firmly on the hard surface. Dacre sat on the sofa and lit a cigar. After his earlier fury, he now watched with total calm as the dark, slender beauty was bent forward, the soft, erotic swell of her hind cheeks broadening and stretching the tight seat of the breeches. Her glossy black hair straggled loose from its coiffure as she twisted her head round towards him, her dark eyes shining with anger. But her fierce gaze faltered when Tyler unbuttoned her breeches and eased them down, so that her full rear view was revealed to the three men. Her smooth young bottom had the tint of pale copper and was round as a full moon by contrast with her slim brown waist.

The leather switch was long and tapering. Coggin cut the air in a trial swish, and Dacre smiled as the little doxy's buttocks tightened apprehensively at the sound and the hatred in her eyes was replaced by panic. He was satisfied that the fight would soon be thrashed out of her and that she wasn't the sort to risk such a whipping again. He saw with approval how she flinched from the light touch of the leather as Coggin measured the switch across her rear cheeks. Yes, thought Dacre, the taming of Jolie was well in hand.

The first stroke landed with a report that rivalled a pistol shot and the girl's gasp of pain left no doubt that the quirt must have stung her backside like a scorpion. She twisted her wrists and ankles helplessly in their straps, while her behind jigged desperately with the lingering smart. Coggin shifted his stance, and the room rang with the sharp smacks of leather on flesh, each stroke given before the swelling torture of the last had begun to subside. Even before the whip had marked her seat seven or eight times, her cries had risen to unbridled screams.

On the sofa, Verney D
acre sat and watched expression
lessly. When the cigar was half finished, he raised his hand, and Coggin paused. The girl turned her face again, her nostrils flared, her cheeks wet, and her almond eyes trembling with fresh tears.

"We don't judge by caterwaulin'," said Dacre softly, "but by the speed with which the pupil learns her lesson."

He nodded to Coggin, who passed the switch to Tyler and then pressed the head of the rocking horse down once more. The "pupil" gave a wail of terror as her whipped cheeks were turned upwards again for Tyler's attention. Coggin whispered something in her ear, and Tyler laughed.

When Dacre's cigar had burnt to a dead stub, he stood up, coolly examining the marks of the whip embroidered on the pale gold cheeks of the girl's bottom and on the backs of her thighs. She was sobbing almost hysterically and her legs shook with an uncontrollable convulsive trembling after her ordeal.

"That will do," said Dacre quietly, "for tonight. Leave her as she is, however. I shall be obliged to read her a little curtain lecture to ensure that this distressin' performance ain't necessary on too many future occasions."

The two bullies grinned and withdrew. Dacre resumed his place on the sofa and spoke gently to the girl, who at length managed to calm her sobs and listen. Half an hour later, he left Jolie and the rest of Langham Place to supervision by Coggin and Tyler, according to instructions which he had carefully detailed. As he walked down the steps of the house, he thought it unlikely that they would ever see him again.

19

"Supposing you were to want my advice," said Sergeant Samson hopefully, "you'd stop 'aunting Langham Place and give your mind to Inspector Croaker's investigation. That railway inquiry of yours won't go more than another two or three days. You'd best think what you're going to say then about your ride to Folkestone on the bullion train."

Verity placed one large boot in front of the other, treading stolidly round the kerb as the two men swung into Margaret Street. He remained unmoved by Samson's suggestion.

"If it ain't a inconvenience to you, Mr Samson, you had better keep your advice. One thing I don't need is advice. I've had advice from you, from Mr Croaker, from a young person towards whom I have certain intentions, from her old father as well
. Much good has any of it done !
"

"Indeed!" said Samson warmly, "seeing you never took any of it!"

They plodded onwards in mutually imposed silence, which was ended at length by Verity.

"Information is more the thing than advice," he said quietly. "Go on telling about what those street girls were saying, about two whores locked up in a bawdy 'ouse somewhere."

"There ain't nothing to go on about," said Samson, "that's all there is. Three or four girls that had been told by another girl of two young blowens locked up by their keepers. They didn't know which girls, nor which whorehouse. It happens in such places all the dme. Stories like that aren't worth a pandy's spit."

They turned again, from Margaret Street into the mews which ran along the back of Langham Place.

"However," said Verity, "I never saw rooms quite so convenient for locking up as the attics in Ned Roper's bawdy house. Look!"

Samson followed the direction of Verity's finger and saw the four little windows perched precipitously at the back of the Langham Place house, some fifty feet above the mews yard. Even in the summer heat the windows themselves, behind their bars, were shut tight, and it might be doubted whether it were any longer possible to open them.

"Did you ever see such a prison as that?" said Verity thoughtfully.

"You don't know it is," Samson looked away from the brightness of the sky, "and there ain't no way you could find out if there's anyone in there. They couldn't get out, nor even throw a message down to you, so long as the windows are locked. And while I'm on duty here, you ain't going to scale that back wall, a-cos you'd kill yourself. Nor you ain't going in through the front door, since you ain't got your authority no longer. And you won't trick your way in, because once they see your phiz they'll either break your back for you or else call a constable and have you given in charge for trespass. There ain't nothing you cap do, my son, and whatever you may try is going to make matters worse."

Verity nodded.

"I don't say you're wrong, Mr Samson," he said after a pause, "but you ain't a subtle man, are you?" "Meaning?"

"Meaning," said Verity, "that as I have previously observed, there are men in this great city who believe themselves secure in their wickedness, but I will have them in a sure and inescapable snare."

"I daresay," said Samson sceptically, "but I don't see 'ow."

"Supposing," Verity removed his hat and wiped his forehead, "supposing there was someone in that room who was a prisoner. Now, you couldn't think of any way to ask them except by trying to force messages through glass that don't open, or else fighting your way in through the front door?"

"And you can?" inquired Samson, looking with undisguised amusement at his plump, perspiring companion.

"Today I can," said Verity smugly, "not every day. But today's a good sort of a da
y. Why, it's a joy to be alive !
"

"What the 'ell's that got to do with it?"

"Everything. Watch."

Samson looked at Verity with distrust.

"Now, I hope you ain't going to breach the public peace, my son," he began, "a-cos if you are
..."

Verity drew from the lining of his hat a little round of mirror glass, no bigger than the palm of his hand.

"There's no knowing what a man can't do, if he's only got a nice bright day," he said cheerfully.

Looking up at the sun, he tilted the glass and caught the light. Samson watched the bright disc of the reflection dance over the stonework until it reached the back of Langham Place. Verity steadied it, and the little blot of light moved gradually upwards to the closed and barred attic windows.

"No one ain't going to notice that," said Samson reasonably, "not even if they're in there. It'll get too faint, for one thing, and, for another, 'ow long do you spend watching the ceiling for secret heliographs?"

Verity trained the reflected light on the first barred window.

"I don't," he said, "but then I've never been a prisoner. Now if you are a prisoner, you ain't got much else to do but watch and listen."

Samson grunted, and Verity played the glass on a dark piece of ceiling just inside the window, which was all that he could reach. For ten minutes he jiggled it patiently.

"Now, see here," said Samson at lengh, "I got duties to perform.
Dooties!
I can't stand about 'ere all day."

"Just carry on, old fellow," said Verity preoccupied, "I'll be all right."

Samson thrust his head belligerently towards his colleague.

"One of those duties," he said firmly, "is shadowing you. Mr Croaker'd have me flayed and salted if I left you to cause more trouble."

Verity nodded and relaxed. He caught the sun again with his primitive heliograph and flickered it across the next barred window. Samson waited for several minutes and then said, "Empty, likewise!"

"No it ain't," said Verity.

"It bloody is!" Samson insisted, looking up. "There ain't nothing but your bit of glass shining on that ceiling."

"Look," said Verity quiedy, "look at my 'and. I ain't been flashing my glass for the last half, minute."

Samson looked. Verity had turned his little mirror to the ground. Samson looked up again. The brightness on the patch of ceiling was more subdued than Verity's, but it was unmistakeably there.

"Games!" said Samson hopefully, "a child playing games most likely. Why, there ain't been so much as a face at the winder, which there would have been if it was a strapping young doxy."

"You seen inside that attic," said Verity. "It ain't no nursery!"

"Then why don't die girl show herself at the bars?"

"Prisoners," said Verity sardonically, "is sometimes tethered so close that they can't reach the window. I daresay this one may be pushing a mirror about with her feet, for all we know." He flashed the
glass again in a flurry of littl
e movements, as if to acknowledge a message. Then he turned to his friend.