SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (22 page)

'Indeed, Joseph, I never do.
Why, a man of business can't bestow the value of an item more exactly than by
giving that item in its own proper person, can he?'

'But what am I to
do with it, Mr Kite?'

'As you will,
Joseph.'

The
dismay in the little spiderman's face was now visible to the other three men in
the room.

'Mr Kite! How'm I to go on if
all I got is this? I can't sell it, not for months at least. And I can't eat
it, Mr Kite! I'll take a hundred pounds instead.'

But Kite wagged a finger and gave a wicked little
smile.

'A
bargain is a bargain, little Joseph. And after saying so often how much you
meant to show yourself grateful, you could hardly do otherwise now, could you?
Why, my dear young sir, a man in your position had best cut his throat before
he turned against his pals and peached to the law. Only think, Joseph, only think
what waits for you when they take you to Portland again. You can't harm a
living soul but yourself. Take Sealskin's advice, my young friend. Don't he
speak to you friendly, like a true man o' business?'

His
mind numbed by the sudden reversal of Kite's mood and his own position,
Stunning Joe allowed himself to be led to the door of the suite. Jack Strap
thrust him out on to the landing and slammed the door again. For a moment Joe
hesitated. Then from beyond the closed door he heard a shrill, skinny clamour.
It rose piping and vibrant like a childish tantrum. Rising and falling, it
continued for a full minute and longer. It was at once vindictive and witty,
triumphant and plangent. It was the sound of Sealskin Kite laughing with
genuine amusement.

Along
King's Road the clouds stretched ash-grey to the eastern horizon. The shifting
tide was a dull steel colour except where patches of faint sun turned it pale
lavender green. The scarlet and blue of a regimental band was just visible
among the shrubs of Brunswick Lawns, where it played for a morning party.

Joe
clutched the velvet shape of the clasp and hurried onward. He was alone now,
alone despite the pretty bonnets and swinging crinolines along the rails of the
promenade, despite the men in their shallow straw hats, primrose gloves and
clay pipes. Last night, on an impulse, he had become the protector of the
little dancing-girl, Jane Midge. Now it was she who offered the sole hope of
protection to him.

Outside the Ship and the other
hostelries of the old town the carriage steps were being let down as the first
visitors of the day arrived. An elderly gentleman in high humour chortled to
his companion, 'Come on, my old Ten-and-a-half-per-cent! Out with the tin!'

Other voices
called for devilled kidneys or hock and soda in coffee rooms, the dark
interiors stocked with Gorgona anchovies, old bottled sherry, French mustard,
plovers' eggs, Bombay mangoes and Emmenthaler cheeses. Joe walked through the
sunshine, among the good humour and rich smells of food, like a leper tainted
by his disease. Two men got down from a smart Queen's coloured brougham,
outside the Royal Albion. Their velvet and silk, chains, lockets and puffy,
pink-tinted shirts were a match for their easy, fatuous conversation.

'Stay long?'

'Don't know.'

'Long as it's agreeable,
p'raps?' 'Just so.' 'Nice place.' 'That it is.’

Joe in
his misery cursed the world. He came at last to the tavern near the foot of the
Race Hill, quite expecting that the girl would have gone. But she sat on the
bed in the dusty little room, as if she had never moved. Now, instead of the
dancing costume, she wore a drab brown dress and there was a little pork-pie
bonnet beside her.

'See?' said Joe, more cheerful
than he felt. 'Told you I’d come back, didn't I?'

She nodded and he went to call for an ink and dip.

While
Jane Midge sat silent on the bed behind him, Joe perched at the little wooden
table and wrote in his scrawling laboured hand. By the end of an hour he had
covered two sheets and reached the limit of endurance. Then he folded them
together and put them in an envelope. He turned to the girl, studying the firm
features, the last fading liveliness of her brown eyes which had once animated
her face in easier times.

'From now on,' he
said softly, 'neither of us is going to be alone. We'll be together, you and
me. Understand?' She nodded doubtfully.

'Anyone asks, you got a protector. I can't say how we
shall

manage things but
we shall somehow. Do what you can with your dancing and
111
see you don't go hungry nor
cold. Where d'yer live?'

'Lodging
kens mostly,' said Jane softly. ''s twopence a night in the public ward. Not in
summer, though. Waste of tin, ain't it? Just as soon sleep in the parks or on
the pebbles. And there's the viaduct arches, come to that, where the railway
goes out to Clayton tunnel on the London line.'

Joe nodded
impatiently.

'You got any sort
of hiding-place?'

'Only
in me clothes.'

'That'll
do,' he said quickly, holding out to her the envelope with the two sheets of
writing. 'Take this and keep it. I’ll ask for it back if I need it. But if ever
I'm missing and I ain't said why, if ever you can't find me, you go to the
police office and you tell 'em it's a letter from Stunning Joe. All right?'

She slipped the
envelope into the bosom of her dress.

'Stunning
Joe,' she said thoughtfully. 'That's a funny sort of a name.' And then Jane
Midge put her arms about him and leant her head against his breast.

'Dancer,'
said Jack Strap, his jowls taut with disapproval. 'Goes as Jane Midge.'

Old
Mole nodded as the two men stood at the promenade rails and watched the little
yachts bucking in a sunlit swell.

'There's work to be done,
Strap. Work to be done by you and me. Mr Kite ain't in it. Fact is, Strap, you
never met Mr Kite. See?'

'
'oo's Mr Kite?' asked Strap, and grinned horribly at his own facetiousness.

Old
Mole nodded again and took out a paper packet. He counted out fifty sovereigns,
fresh and yellow from the mint.

'That's
for now, Mr Strap. There's five hundred more up for auction. Savvy?'

'Five
hundred?
'
The contortion of Jack Strap's
heavy face reduced the eyes to pig-like points of brightness in the pouched
flesh.

'One hundred when Jane Midge
is took to safe-keeping. One hundred likewise for Cosima Bremer. Two hundred
when Stunning Joseph is sent to his last long home. Got it?'

' 's only four hundred,' said Strap suddenly.

'Yes,'
said Mole, 'and there's one hundred more for a little piece of business
involving another young person. You'll be told.'

Strap chuckled at
his own good fortune. Old Mole interrupted him.

'Commissions
to be executed when and where you're told. See?'

The bully slapped his hands
together and rubbed them eagerly.

'Name 'em, Mr Mole. Name 'em!'

'
'nother thing,' said Mole. 'If all this comes safe through and Mr Kite's fancy
should canter home in Brighton races for the Bristol Plate, that five hundred
guineas doubles itself. One thousand guineas for yer trouble, Jack Strap!'

Strap
pocketed the sovereigns. Then, for all his stupidity, he rose to the occasion.

'Why, Mr Mole, and 'oo might
that gentleman be? I never had the pleasure o' meeting a party called Mr Kite.
Never did!'

He nudged his companion and
let loose across the shingle a great whinnying guffaw. Old Mole nodded again
and turned away from him, walking in the direction of the Bedford Hotel. Jack
Strap rested his back against the promenade rails and watched the passing
armada of crinolines. His mouth opened again, huge in its merriment. Then, in
his anticipation of the jollity to come, he slapped one hand into the other
with an impact which carried clear across the promenade.

From
the depths of his tapestried chair, Sealskin Kite twinkled at Old Mole like an
indulgent bachelor uncle. In the lines of the shrewd, mousy little face the old
man's excitement teased the sallow, scrub-haired mobsman who watched him
across the table. He tossed a scrap of paper in Mole's direction.

'What's this?' Mole's yellowed
mouth hung vacantly as he read it.

'List
of cheques, Mr Mole. Banker's cheques written by persons of great consequence
upon their accounts with Baron Lansing. Look at the names, Mr Mole! Old Sir
Aylmer Byrd. Young Lord Stephen with his racing stables! Mr Thomas Crawley
Esquire what keeps that fat doxy they calls the Female Hussar! All clients of
the Lansing bank! Why, Mr Mole, who could bother himself with that heathen Shah
Jehaney caper when he might have such clients as this?'

Old Mole put down the paper.

'Then,
Mr Kite, we'd best have the truth of things before they go further.'

Sealskin Kite sniggered like a
schoolboy, beating his little fists up and down on his knees with excitement
and triumph.

'So we
shall, my dear sir. Mr Mole asks the truth! And is there anything Mr Mole could
ask which his friend Sealskin Kite might deny him? Why, the truth is that
Banker Lansing — rest his cunning soul — was a bigger rogue than you or I! I
knew 'im, Mr Mole! And I knew the damned old reprobate for what he was!'

'Rogue?' said Mole cautiously.
'Over the Shah Jehan, you mean?'

'Shah Jehaney-haney!' shrilled Kite impatiently. 'No,
Mr Mole! Lord Lansing was banker to some of the greatest in the land. Specially
he was banker to men who didn't want quite all their private doings made
public. Nothing against the law, o' course. But Mr Crawley Esquire might choose
to keep that Janet Bond, the Female Hussar for a few months. No need for Mrs
Crawley to twig it. A nice discreet account with Baron Lansing and the whole
affair goes smooth as oil. And I tell you, Mr Mole, if you never met Banker
Lansing, you don't know what discreet was!'

Mole
looked blankly at Kite, still not catching the old man's drift.

'You
mean to blackmail 'em, Mr Kite, with your little list?'

Kite
shook his head in wondering disappointment at his crony.

'Mr Mole! Do I
look the poor wretch as must stoop to blackmailey? No, Mr Mole! 's their money
as old Kite wants! Every penny.

And then Kite explained the
neatest caper that Mole had ever heard of.

Banker
Lansing had seemed to die rich but Kite, who knew him better than most, knew
also how precarious were the affairs of the business in Pall Mall East. Lansing
had seen the crash coming but his trick with the Shah Jehan clasp was the least
of his misdemeanours. It had always been assumed that a banker could be trusted
beyond all question. But suppose he could not? Men like Lord Stephen and Sir Aylmer
Byrd wrote promissory notes, sometimes for as much as £5,000 or even £10,000.
These notes changed hands, endorsed by each holder, with almost as much ease as
Bank of England notes. Those who accepted them might take a small commission
for their risk, but they knew that risk was tiny. The names signed to the bills
were proof of their dependability.

Eventually
the notes would come home to the bank upon which the client had first drawn
them. There they were cancelled and the account was settled.

But suppose the
banker failed to cancel them? Suppose that he kept a dozen of these notes of
the largest denomination as his own investment against hard times to come? He
was the one man who could use them a second time, passing them fraudulently and
then withdrawing abroad, taking the proceeds with him. A dozen carefully
selected scraps of paper would yield him more than £100,000. The victims of the
fraud would know nothing until the bills were presented for payment a second
time. By then the dishonest banker would be far beyond their reach. If he was
lucky, it might be a month or more before his dupes discovered the extent of
their loss.

'Now,
Mr Mole!' sniggered Kite. 'Now then! Banker Lansing knew he'd have to do a
bunk soon enough. The dear old reprobate meant to bolt from his creditors
taking with him the Shah Jehaney nonsense and that young German naughtiness,
Cosima. But, Mr Mole, what was confessed to me was this. In the velvet lining
of the old blue box as held the clasp there was a slit made. And in that slit
was tucked a dozen slips of paper. See?'