SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman (8 page)

There had been fourteen that night, at several guineas a time, for they all paid for one or other of the best rooms, which cost a guinea extra. In Ned Roper's opinion, it was worth that guinea just to see the best room. The pink silk hangings of the bed matched the shades of the gas lamps, the gilded brackets of the lamps themselves were in the shape of naked girls holding a phallic torch. Then there were the gilt-framed mirrors and pier glasses, arranged so that the man might admire the scene on the bed from almost any angle. There were pastels on
the walls, in the style of Fra
gonard and the courtly painters of the eighteenth century, depicting plump, fair-skinned girls sprawling on pink or pale blue cushions as they submitted coquettishly to every variety of the act of love. Oh yes, thought Roper, it was worth a guinea of any gentleman's money. When Lieutenant Verney Dacre set a man up in business, he did it in the proper style.

The hussar captain, far gone in drink before ever he arrived in Langham Place, had parted with almost twenty sovereigns for wine and girls before the evening was over. Finally, possessed by some fantasy of being the tyrannical owner of a cotton plantation, he had insisted on taking Ebony to the upstairs drawing-room. Ellen had gone too, just to ensure that the charade remained a charade. The room had been carefully sound-proofed, so that nothing which happened there could be heard, even on the landing outside. Ebony, whose skin was closer to the colour of bronze than ebony, undressed and bent over a pair of folding steps, while Ellen secured her wrists and ankles. Both girls were giggling, knowing that the elderly captain of hussars was far too drunk to offer a real threat of violence. He picked up the birch-rod, which lay on the sofa, and paced about the room.

Then, after giving Ebony several half-hearted strokes with it across her bottom, he sat down heavily and complained of his stomach. But best of all, thought Roper, the poor gull was so overcome with remorse at having hurt the girl, for Ebony had suppressed her giggles and obliged him with some truly operatic shrieks, that he had pressed five more sovereigns into Ellen Jacoby's hands, to be passed on to Ebony as a consolation for her injuries. Much hope of that, as Ellen remarked later.

Before two o'clock in the morning, the festivities were over and Roper was able to sit in Ellen's little parlour and count the results of the evening's work. More than fifty sovereigns, and a cheque on Drummond's Bank for ten guineas. Even allowing for the "rent" to Verney Dacre, it was a fortune for one night's work. But just to be on the safe side, Roper took charge of the cheque. That should be his and his alone. Less than two years before, Ned Roper had been so poor that he had pledged his boots for one good meal. That should never happen again.

He was still sitting and contemplating his good prospects in the high-class "doxy" trade, and the glass of hock was growing -warm in his hand, when he heard a cabman's cry outside; jingling harness and iron-rimmed wheels fell silent as the cab stopped. A murmur of voices, footsteps on the pavement in Portland Place, and then two sharp knocks on the heavy door, blows which echoed through die silent house as if it had been a tomb.

Roper had a mirror fixed in the parlour, rather on the slant, so that by pulling back the edge of the heavy curtain he could see the reflection of whoever might be outside the door. It was a simple precaution. He recognised the tall, slender figure of Verney Dacre in top hat, evening cloak, and holding a silver-topped cane. Roper took a key from the drawer of the desk, since the door would not open from the inside without one, and went out into the hallway as Dacre knocked again.

"Well, Mr Dacre
!
"
said Roper with breezy insincerity, "rare pleasure and no mistake! "

"I ain't got time for that, Ned Roper," said Dacre briskly, handing his hat and cane to Roper as he would have done to a servant. "The job's put up and it's got to be slippy."

Roper nodded at the stairs.

"Come up. The drawing-room's free."

When they were alone in the sound-proof room, Roper turned to his acquaintance.

"So it's a runner, then?"

Dacre nodded.

"You saw Cazamian?" Roper inquired.

"I did. He's a safe one. I have a key, which Cazamian says will open the door of the Folkestone railway office. More to the purpose I have a note which says that he stole the key. Your Mr Cazamian is an employee of the South Eastern Railway Company and as such there is a very special and a very harsh law applying to him. If that note of his were to reach the wrong hands, Mr Cazamian would be working off a stretch in Botany Bay for the next fourteen years. See that you tell him, Ned Roper, and then see he don't forget it."

"He's our man, then," said Roper. "He don't know your name, however?"

"No," said Dacre contemptuously, "he swallowed the tale about the diamond, but it's part of the game that he doesn't know me."

Roper's thin lips parted in a smile, showing neat and carefully tended teeth.

"He believes the diamond story?"

"Oh yes," said Dacre, "why shouldn't he believe it? It's paid his debts already and it's going to bring him four or five hundred pounds. Who wouldn't believe it at that price?"

"But you ain't got a diamond, as such," said Roper confidently, standing with his back to the fender and his thumbs in his lapels. "Not as such, 'ave you?"

"I'm a careful man, Ned Roper," said Dacre in a long, impatient drawl, "and I've taken the pains to equip myself with somethin' worth more than diamonds or yaller goold itself."

Roper threw back his head and laughed dutifully, but without conviction.

"Oblige me," said Verney Dacre languidly, "by not acting the fool all the time. Fix this in your mind instead."

He sat down on the sofa, leaning back almost sleepily, his long absurdly thin legs crossed, and the blond petulent face holding Roper's ferret-like gaze.

"The bullion-boxes reach London Bridge in the late afternoon. Each one is bound with iron bands, locked, and with the bullion merchant's seal on it,which can't be replaced if the box is opened. The station master and his constables weigh the boxes and see them to the guard's van. In the van is a Chubb's safe, which no tool that you and I can think of would ever open. It has two locks. The station master has one key and the railway police the other, because it seems they can't even trust each other. The bullion-boxes go in, say a ton and a quarter of gold, and the safe is locked. The guard stays with it to Folkestone. Then they take it out and put it under a police guard on the pier until it goes on the boat for Boulogne. They have a double guard on the paddle-boat, French and English, and a double guard from Boulogne to Paris."

"It's not on!" said Roper indignantly. "Even if you square Cazamian, you can't open the safe or the boxes."

"Wait a bit, Ned Roper," said Dacre sofdy, "it's steeper than
that
.
Just in case some dishonest fellow
could
open the safe and the boxes, and replace the seals and lock the safe again, they weigh the bullion every so often to make sure that, even if they can't see it, it's still there."

"Then the jig's up," said Roper, his respect for Dacre no longer obsequiously paraded.

"No, old fellow," said Dacre more softly still, "that's just what it ain't. In the first place, they think everything's so safe that they aren't expecting trouble. And that's important."

"And in the second?"

"In the second place, how do they weigh the bullion on the journey? You can't put a ton and a quarter of gold and an iron safe on to a pair of scales as if it was a pound of flour. They must weigh the bullion-boxes themselves, and to do that they must be able to get them out of the safe. In other words, there's another set of keys on the way, and I'll wager it's at Folkestone! "

"Well then I" said Roper, as though his enthusiasm had never faltered.

"Well then," said Dacre, "being as it's nearly midsummer and London seems such a deuced tiresome place, I shall go to Folkestone for a day or two. You will come when I invite you,
if
I invite you."

"Whatcher mean?" asked Roper, frowning.

"What I mean, my dear fellow, is Sergeant Verity of 'A' Division."

"Oh!" said Roper, relieved. "That stupid bugger! I reckon we taught him a prime lesson! He needed scarin' off. He was getting wise to the McCaffery dodge. You seen the bloody way he was tackling Croaker about it. He knew about that squeak McCaffery, and that little bitch Jolie! "

Dacre paused for a moment before answering.

"I fancy, Ned Roper, that you are a stupider bugger than Verity will ever be. Now, I promise you, I hate Verity and his kind a great deal more than you will ever do. A fat, canting prig! But I know his type. The army's full of Verity and his sort. The more you hit him, the surer he'll come back. The Rhoosians couldn't stop him at Inkerman and nor will you. But I will. I have a plan for Verity that will make the beating you gave him seem like an act of charity by comparison."

"All right," said Roper ungraciously.

Dacre got up and walked round the table, picking up a blue china snuff box and examining it, as if trying to judge its value. Then he looked up at Roper and his eyes narrowed.

"It's very far from all right. Wherever you go from now on, Verity is likely to go too. Wherever the two girls go, he may go with 'em. They're both to be got out of circulation. As for you, watch for Verity. If you see him or any of his sort, take them round the town and then go to ground. They know you, Ned Roper, but I shall take very good care they don't know me."

"Someone must have known you were kicked out of your commission. They knew you thieved
..."

"I sold out!" said Dacre sharply. "And there is no court-martial conviction recorded against me. Now, you either carry out my instructions, or the whole thing is off!"

Roper smiled and shrugged his agreement.

"What about the two girls?"

"There's something more important than that," said Dacre impatien
tly: "I want the use of the littl
e bedroom at the back."

Roper led him across the landing and lit the gas in the tiny room. There was a single bed, a washstand with a cracked bowl, a jug of tepid water, and a slop basin. From his pocket, Dacre took a little box and the key which Cazamian had given him. The top of the washstand was an ideal surface for working on. Inside the box was a lump of wax, greyish-green and softened to the consistency of putty. Dacre laid it on the marble surface and pressed the length of the key deeply into it, making a second impression of the other side of the key. One migh be enough, but there was no harm in having another. From another pocket, he took his cigar case, empty now, and laid the two wax impressions carefully inside it.

Roper saw him washing his hands and went in just as Dacre was tipping the water into the slop basin. Dacre handed him the key.

"Give that back to Cazamian tomorrow."

"Why give it back?" Roper demanded.

"Do as I say."

Roper grinned and shrugged again. "And what about the two doxies?"

"
Ah!" said Dacre, relaxing a littl
e. "I was coming to that. Where are they?"

Roper led the way down to the first-floor landing, where a tall majolica vase stood on a corner pedestal. He pushed open the door of the bedroom which cost the clients an extra guinea. Ellen Jacoby, regal in her black silk and feathers, was standing proudly with her hands on her hips. She was looking down at Jolie who knelt before her in the absurd but yet intriguing jockey costume. The dark-haired girl was kneeling with head lowered and haunches in the air as she renewed the stitching at the hem of a pleat in Ellen's dress. The white tights displayed the outlines of her slender thighs and rounded hips as starkly as if she had been naked.

Dacre lounged in the open doorway, critically examining the girl as she unwittingly presented herself to him. He moved slightly, to view her from a different angle, his eyes running dispassionately over her body. He looked at the tall blonde, and then back to her companion again. Ellen glanced up and saw him surveying her willing seamstress. She muttered something to Jolie and the girl sat back on her heels, waiting defiantly. Dacre waited a while longer. She glanced back at him with a glitter of her dark little eyes with their rather Turkoman slant. He withdrew to the landing and spoke to Roper.

"The tall one in the black dress. I'll make the arrangements about her. She shall come with me now, and Verity will never find her."

"No, Mr Dacre," said Roper softly, "that you will not. Whatever else you want, you shall have. But Ellen Jacoby must stay with me. She'll be safe, I promise you. They won't find her."