SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (17 page)

'But I
don't know where it is, Mr Kite. May I be shot if I do.'

'Course
you don't,' said Kite amiably. 'But Sealskin Kite knows.'

They were
interrupted by the opening of the door. The girl with the deformed head of
imbecility brought in a plate of poached eggs on buttered toast. She placed it
before Stunning Joe, bobbed to Sealskin Kite, and then withdrew.

'Eat your vittels and listen,'
said Kite more sharply. 'That jewel can be took now and never a word said. A
lot's happened since they put you away, Stunning Joe.'

'Such as?' Joe inquired.

'Such
as the poor Baron Lansing taking sick and dying, with never a word or sight of
the Shah Jehan clasp. All that he left went to his children, but never the
clasp. Not sight nor smell of it again.'

'Then who had it?'

'Not
my place to call Banker Lansing a rogue,' said Kite reasonably, 'but sure as I
sit here that clasp was never in the safe for you to steal. After your bitch
sung the whole caper to the law, Baron Lansing saw how he might improve
himself. If that jewel weren't in the safe, but if it was thought to be, he
might make his fortune from the London Indemnity insurers and ne'er lose a
stone of the clasp. What he could make on it later would double his luck.
Course,
you
might swear it was never in the safe, but who'd
believe a thief that was caught by the law?'

'He never took it to the grave with him?' said Joe.

'No,'
said Kite, 'he never did. Nor it didn't go to his family either. What else he
had was theirs by right and they took it. But the Shah Jehan clasp went another
way from the first. It never, never was at Wannock Hundred. Lansing's doxy had
it.'

'Doxy?' said Joe uncertainly.

'A
real young beauty,' breathed Kite, 'no more 'n eighteen years old. Cosima
Bremer. Set her up in a house in Brunswick Square in Brighton, easy to visit
from London or Wannock Hundred. Old Lansing pleasured her till one day he gave
himself a seizure at the game. Died in the saddle!'

For the first time Joe heard Sealskin Kite laugh.

'So Miss Cosima kept the jewel he gave her for
safety?'

Kite nodded.

'Safe
and sound in the big house in Brunswick Square. And there she sits all alone,
poor little mouse, with a great heathen jewel as her inheritance. She can't
sell it and she can't eat it. What's she to do? Why, my dear young sir, the man
that relieves her of such a burden does her a kindness.'

'Stop
a bit,' said Joe cautiously, 'you can't
know
she's got it, Mr Kite. Not
know it for a fact, that is.'

Kite chuckled again.

'The
London Indemnity insurers know it, Mr Joe. That's enough for me. There's a
watch on that house, day and night. Sometimes their own men and always the
police. When old Lansing snuffed it, his banking business was in very poor
health. He'd been putting aside a few little trinkets to be made off with in
the event of a smash. The Shah Jehan clasp was best of all. A little bit of
fortune when he and his doxy did their bunk. Now the law knows it and the
insurers know it. Course, they ain't got proof strong enough for a justice to
sign a warrant. But there they sit, front and back of Brunswick Square, like
two cats outside of a poor little mouse-hole.'

'And
you mean to have the jool, Mr Kite!' said Joe excitedly.

'I do,
Stunning Joseph. I do indeed. And here's the beauty ' of it all. I may take
that heathen treasure without fear of raising a shout. For when a jewel is
supposed to have been stole already, only kept back by the owner for purposes
of fraud, why there can hardly be a complaint when the party loses it in
earnest. He can't go to the police office and complain of being robbed of a
treasure that he's not supposed to have in the first place. Rich, ain't it?'

'Rich,' said Joe, nodding eagerly.

'And
that ain't the best of it!' Kite allowed the breath to buzz humorously through
his teeth for a moment. 'The best is that I have a spiderman to steal it for
me. The best spider-man of all the trade. And he won't be looked for, nor
suspected, nor even recognised. For all the world knows him dead and buried off
Portland a few hours since. You was worth springing, my dear young sir.'

'It’ll
have to be slippy,' said Joe thoughtfully, ‘What with jacks and insurers all
about it.'

'Why,'
said Kite humorously, 'we thought of that too. There's a tame jack among 'em. A
jack that was tamed special for you.'

'You bent him?'

'No,'
said Kite,
"but
we tamed
him. Mr Mole got him on a string. Verity. A big fat jack to be led by a ring
through his nose. And the best of it is that he never knows he's being led.
He's been through every hoop that Mr Mole held for him.'

'Then
you mean to have that jewel from under their eyes, Mr Kite?'

'Oh, I do,
Stunning Joseph. I do. If you can count so high, there's one hundred thousand
pounds to be had for it.' Joe looked startled.

'Never!'
he said. 'The law and the insurers never said above ten thousand when I was put
up at Old Bailey.'

'Ten thousand to you or them,' said Kite softly, 'ten
thousand to the rest of the human race. But to me, one hundred. thousand
straight. And I ain't told a living soul why. And I shan't start now.'

Joe looked up at the impassive
faces of Old Mole and Jack Strap as the two men guarded the door. He glanced
back at his host.

'I’ll
do my best, Mr Kite,' he said at last. 'I swear I will. I mean to show myself
grateful to you.'

'Course
you do,' said Kite. 'And don't we trust you to? After all, where's your other
friends? You might throw yourself on the mercy of the law, but that would be
ingratitude. And they'd take you to the hulks, strip the hide from your back,
and cut your backbone almost in two. Then you'd be shipped to do your time,
walking like a cripple and crying like a baby. So you ain't the sort to peach
on us.'

'You know that!' said Joe insistently.

'Course
we do’ said Kite. 'Even if we didn't, a man that's dead and buried won't be
looked for. Supposing he should be killed a second time, no man will look for
him and no man will hang for him.'

'I
swear, Mr Kite!' said Joe, suddenly frightened. But Sealskin Kite calmed him by
a gesture.

'Course
you do, Stunning Joseph. But a man like you is the only man for the job. A
right, tight friend. Why, Stunning Joe, I don't know that you aren't the only
sort of friend that a man of business ought to have! You being dead already!'

And
Sealskin Kite laughed a second time, louder than before.

SEALSKIN KITE'S LITTLE TICKLE

11

The mid-morning
sun burnt with a silver fire above the delicate ironwork of the Chain Pier. On
the placid surface of the water it was reflected like polished metal, slanting
a colourless glare down the busy little streets beyond the promenades. By
July the fresh white paint of shop-fronts and taverns had been raised and
blistered in the heat.

Beyond
the huddled little streets stood Folthorp's Royal Library and Reading Rooms.
Its Grecian elegance contrasted oddly with the oriental domes of the Queen's
pavilion which it flanked. Twice a day, in the middle of the morning and the
afternoon, Folthorp's became briefly the meeting place for visitors of rank and
fashion in Brighton. An elegant advertisement in brass letters on black glass
promised: 'Tables with newspapers and magazines, railway records, share lists,
army and navy lists. A newspaper room is set apart exclusively for ladies.' A
uniformed constable stood conspicuously near the glass door to deter youthful
beggars or liappyjacks', as they were known to Brightonians.

The
reason for Folthorp's brief popularity was easily explained. At eleven in the
morning and three in the afternoon, the latest share prices and financial news
were received by telegraph from London and posted up for the benefit of
subscribers. A man of business could take a house in Brighton for the summer,
yet still be as well informed as if he had remained in his villa in Highgate or
Hammersmith.

At
about quarter past eleven, the subscribers began to leave. Gravely-bearded men
in silk hats, the gold chains of hunter watches looped across their waistcoats,
stood in little groups outside and paused to pass the time of day. Their dress
and manner was quite as formal as if they had met on the floor of the Exchange
itself. A few men were unable to join their colleagues who now wandered away,
arm-in-arm, to the Turkish Baths of the Old Steine or to take Brighton Seltzer
at the German Spa in Queen's Park. These were the invalids whose tapestried
carriages or Bath chairs, each with its attendant, stood in a row outside the
reading rooms. Elderly and retired brokers, their morning and afternoon visits
preserved an illusion of continued vitality.

The
last of the old men hobbled out into the sunlight, the walnut colour and
complexion of his face just visible in the surrounding bandage which bound his
jaw and skull, as if he had been a martyr to toothache. His attendant, a dark
young man with a finely-trimmed beard and a tall hat stood behind the invalid
carriage as his master climbed in. It was the most elegant of all the Bath
chairs, built with the serpentine grace of a Park Phaeton, except that the
seat itself was a solid padded chair, covered with a rose and leaf tapestry. To
balance the two large wheels at the rear, there was a single small wheel at the
front with a long curving handle by which the occupant could direct the
carriage as he wished.

With a
sigh of contentment, the old man settled back in his padded chair and felt the
pressure of his attendant's arms on the handle behind him.

'Push
away then, my dear young sir,' said Sealskin Kite genially. 'Push away!'

Stunning
Joe leant forward and the carriage moved, slowly at first and then gliding more
easily as it picked up speed. Down East Street, towards the sea, the arbiters
of summer fashion displayed their dresses and bonnets as elegantly as in Regent
Circus. Joe looked briefly at Pocock's Family and Complimentary Mourning,
wondering for the first time if anyone was in mourning for him. The Jupon
Imperial and the Corsage Venus for Equestriennes were discreetly advertised by
Madame Virginie Dawney, 'Artiste en Corsets, Modes et Robes'.

'Why,
Joseph,' said Sealskin Kite with a chuckle, 'a man might almost think himself
nearer to Paris than London in this sort of a place. Eh?'

Joseph
agreed, and Kite chuckled again, as if to reassure him. Mr Kite had laughed and
smiled since the moment of their first meeting. Whenever Kite turned his face
to Joe, the smile was always there, impassable, impregnable. Once, Joe had come
into the room at the end of a conversation. Kite was reminiscing to Old Mole on
the subject of a welsher.

'And
he
don't
walk straight again, Mr Mole,' the old man was saying.
'Not
quite
straight.'

And
when Kite turned to Joe he wore the same frozen geniality on his face as when
he had given Old Mole his confidence.

They
came into view of the sea just where the fishing-smacks had been pulled up on
the shingle. The tight, strained rigging ran in indigo relief against blue sky.
Men with baskets of turbot on their shoulders walked in groups towards the
Market Street stalls. Smells of fresh mackerel, pitch and tar lay heavy in the
warm air. Sealskin Kite shifted in his chair, drawing a rug over his knees and
lighting one of Milo's best cigars.

'Don't
pay no notice to the Bedford Hotel this time, young sir,' said Kite pleasantly.
'We ain't going home there yet. Just push on a little more. You never seen the
beauties of Brunswick Square as yet. Mr Mole never took you, did he?'

'No,
Mr Kite,' said Joe, a little breathless as the invalid chair bumped over the uneven
paving of the promenade. ‘Never did.'

The
sun caught the waves with a tinsel glitter and Sealskin Kite chuckled again.

‘You'll
like Brunswick Square, Joseph. Ain't it where you're to make your fortune? And
ain't a man to love the place that makes him rich?'

'How rich shall I
be, Mr Kite? How rich, if I was to find that clasp for you?'