The Great Train Robbery (19 page)

Now Agar’s professionalism came into play. He was falling behind—at least five seconds off his count now, maybe more—but he knew that at all costs he must avoid confusing the keys. It was common enough for a screwsman under pressure to make two impressions of the same side of a single key; with two keys, the chance of confusion was doubled. Quickly but carefully, he hung up the first finished key.

“Thirty-five … thirty-six … thirty-seven, Lordy,” Clean Willy said. Clean Willy was looking out the glass windows, down to where the guard would be returning in less than thirty seconds.

“Thirty-eight … thirty-nine … forty …”

Swiftly, Agar pressed the second key into his third blank. He held it there just an instant, then lifted it out. There was a decent impression.

“Forty-one … forty-two … forty-three …”

Agar pocketed the blank, and plucked up his fourth
wax plate. He pressed the other side of the key into the soft material.

“Forty-four … forty-five … forty-six … forty-seven …”

Abruptly, while Agar was peeling the key free of the wax, the blank cracked in two.

“Damn!”

“Forty-eight … forty-nine … fifty …”

He fished in his pocket for another blank. His fingers were steady, but there was sweat dripping from his forehead.

“Fifty-one … fifty-two … fifty-three …”

He drew out a fresh blank and did the second side again.

“Fifty-four … fifty-five …”

He plucked the key out, hung it up, and dashed for the door, still holding the final blank in his fingers. He left the office without another look at Willy.

“Fifty-six,” Willy said, immediately moving to the door to lock it up.

Pierce saw Agar exit, behind schedule by five full seconds. His face was flushed with exertion.

“Fifty-seven … fifty-eight …”

Agar sprinted down the stairs, three at a time.

“Fifty-nine … sixty … sixty-one …”

Agar streaked across the station to his hiding place.

“Sixty-two … sixty-three …”

Agar was hidden.

The guard, yawning, came around the corner, still buttoning up his trousers. He walked toward the steps.

“Sixty-four,” Pierce said, and flicked his watch.

The guard took up his post at the stairs. After a moment, he began humming to himself, very softly, and it was a while until Pierce realized it was “Molly Malone.”

“The distinction between base avarice and honest ambition may be exceeding fine,” warned the Reverend Noel Blackwell in his 1853 treatice,
On the Moral Improvement of the Human Race
. No one knew the truth of his words better than Pierce, who arranged his next meeting at the Casino de Venise, in Windmill Street. This was a large and lively dance hall, brightly lit by myriad gas lamps. Young men spun and wheeled girls colorfully dressed and gay in their manner. Indeed, the total impression was one of fashionable splendor, which belied a reputation as a wicked and notorious place of assignation for whores and their clientele.

Pierce went directly to the bar, where a burly man in a blue uniform with silver lapel markings sat hunched over a drink. The man appeared distinctly uncomfortable in the casino. “Have you been here before?” Pierce asked.

The man turned. “You Mr. Simms?”

“That’s right.”

The burly man looked around the room, at the women, the finery, the bright lights. “No,” he said, “never been before.”

“Lively, don’t you think?”

The man shrugged. “Bit above me,” he said finally, and turned back to stare at his glass.

“And expensive,” Pierce said.

The man raised his drink. “Two shillings a daffy? Aye, it’s expensive.”

“Let me buy you another,” Pierce said, raising a gray-gloved hand to beckon the bartender. “Where do you live, Mr. Burgess?”

“I got a room in Moresby Road,” the burly man said.

“I hear the air is bad there.”

Burgess shrugged. “It’ll do.”

“You married?”

“Aye.”

The bartender came, and Pierce indicated two more drinks. “What’s your wife do?”

“She sews.” Burgess showed a flash of impatience. “What’s this all about, then?”

“Just a little conversation,” Pierce said, “to see if you want to make more money.”

“Only a fool doesn’t,” Burgess said shortly.

“You work the Mary Blaine,” Pierce said.

Burgess, with still more impatience, nodded and flicked the silver
SER
letters on his collar: the insignia of the South Eastern Railway.

Pierce was not asking these questions to obtain information; he already knew a good deal about Richard Burgess, a Mary Blaine scrob, or guard on the railway. He knew where Burgess lived; he knew what his wife did; he knew that they had two children, aged two and four, and he knew that the four-year-old was sickly and needed the frequent attentions of a doctor, which Burgess and his wife could not afford. He knew that their room in Moresby Road was a squalid, peeling, narrow chamber that was ventilated by the sulfurous fumes of an adjacent gasworks.

He knew that Burgess fell into the lowest-paid category of railway employee. An engine driver was paid 35 shillings a week; a conductor 25 shillings; a coachman 20 or 21; but a guard was paid 15 shillings a week and counted himself lucky it was not a good deal less.

Burgess’s wife made ten shillings a week, which meant that the family lived on a total of about sixty-five pounds a year. Out of this came certain expenses—Burgess had to provide his own uniforms—so that the true income was probably closer to fifty-five pounds a year, and for a family of four it was a very rough go.

Many Victorians had incomes at that level, but most contrived supplements of one sort or another: extra work, tips, and a child in industry were the most common. The Burgess household had none of these. They were compelled to live on their income, and it was little wonder that Burgess felt uncomfortable in a place that charged two shillings a drink. It was very far beyond his means.

“What’s it to be?” Burgess said, not looking at Pierce.

“I was wondering about your vision.”

“My vision?”

“Yes, your eyesight.”

“My eyes are good enough.”

“I wonder,” Pierce said, “what it would take for them to go bad.”

Burgess sighed, and did not speak for a moment. Finally he said in a weary voice, “I done a stretch in Newgate a few years back. I’m not waiting to see the cockchafer again.”

“Perfectly sensible,” Pierce said. “And I don’t want anybody to blow my lay. We both have our fears.”

Burgess gulped his drink. “What’s the sweetener?”

“Two hundred quid,” Pierce said.

Burgess coughed, and pounded his chest with a thick fist. “Two hundred quid,” he repeated.

“That’s right,” Pierce said. “Here’s ten now, on faith.” He removed his wallet and took out two five-pound notes; he held the wallet in such a way that Burgess could not fail to notice it was bulging. He set the money on the bar top.

“Pretty a sight as a hot nancy,” Burgess said, but he did not touch it. “What’s the lay?”

“You needn’t worry over the lay. All you need to do is worry over your eyesight.”

“What is it I’m not to see, then?”

“Nothing that will get you into trouble. You’ll never see the inside of a lockup again, I promise you that.”

Burgess turned stubborn. “Speak plain,” he said.

Pierce sighed. He reached for the money. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I fear I must take my business elsewhere.”

Burgess caught his hand. “Not overquick,” he said. “I’m just asking.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You think I’ll blow on you to the crushers?”

“Such things,” Pierce said, “have been known to happen.”

“I wouldn’t blow.”

Pierce shrugged.

There was a moment of silence. Finally, Burgess reached over with his other hand and plucked away the two five-pound notes. “Tell me what I do,” he said.

“It’s very simple,” Pierce said. “Soon you will be approached by a man who will ask you whether your wife sews your uniforms. When you meet that man, you simply … look away.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“For two hundred quid?”

“For two hundred quid.”

Burgess frowned for a moment, and then began to laugh.

“What’s funny?” Pierce said.

“You’ll never pull it,” Burgess said. “It’s not to be done, that one. There’s no cracking those safes, wherever I look. Few months past, there’s a kid, works into the baggage car, wants to do those safes. Have a go, I says to him, and he has a go for half an hour, and he gets no further than the tip of my nose. Then I threw him off smartly, bounced him on his noggin.”

“I know that,” Pierce said. “I was watching.”

Burgess stopped laughing.

Pierce withdrew two gold guineas from his pocket and dropped them on the counter. “There’s a dolly-mop in the corner—pretty thing, wearing pink. I believe she’s waiting for you,” Pierce said, and then he got up and walked off.

Economists of the mid-Victorian period note that increasing numbers of people made their living by what was then called “dealing,” an inclusive term that referred to supplying goods and services to the burgeoning middle class. England was then the richest nation on earth, and the richest in history. The demand for all kinds of consumer goods was insatiable, and the response was specialization in manufacture, distribution, and sale of goods. It is in Victorian England that one first hears of cabinetmakers who made only the joints of cabinets, and of shops that sold only certain kinds of cabinets.

The increasing specialization was apparent in the underworld as well, and nowhere more peculiar than in the figure of the “eel-skinner.” An eel-skinner was usually a metal-worker gone bad, or one too old to keep up with the furious pace of legitimate production. In either case, he disappeared from honest circles, reemerging as a specialized supplier of metal goods to criminals.
Sometimes the eel-skinner was a coiner who could not get the stamps to turn out coins.

Whatever his background, his principal business was making eel-skins, or coshes. The earliest eel-skins were sausage-like canvas bags filled with sand, which rampsmen and gonophs—muggers and thieves—could carry up their sleeves until the time came to wield them on their victims. Later, eel-skins were filled with lead shot, and they served the same purpose.

An eel-skinner also made other articles. A “neddy” was a cudgel, sometimes a simple iron bar, sometimes a bar with a knob at one end. The “sack” was a two-pound iron shot placed in a strong stocking. A “whippler” was a shot with an attached cord, and was used to disable a victim head on; the attacker held the shot in his hand and flung it at the victim’s face, “like a horrible yo-yo.” A few blows from these weapons were certain to take the starch out of any quarry, and the robbery proceeded without further resistance.

As firearms became more common, eel-skinners turned to making bullets. A few skilled eel-skinners also manufactured sets of bettys, or picklocks, but this was demanding work, and most stuck to simpler tasks.

In early January, 1855, a Manchester eel-skinner named Harkins was visited by a gentleman with a red beard who said he wanted to purchase a quantity of LC shot.

“Easy enough done,” the skinner said. “I make all manner of shot, and I can make LC right enough. How much will you have?”

“Five thousand,” the gentleman said.

“I beg pardon?”

“I said, I will have five thousand LC shot.”

The eel-skinner blinked. “Five thousand—that’s a quantity. That’s—let’s see—six LC to the ounce. Now, then …” He stared up at the ceiling and plucked at his
lower lip. “And sixteen … now, that makes it … Bless me, that’s more’n fifty pounds of shot all in.”

“I believe so,” the gentleman said.

“You want fifty pounds of LC shot?”

“I want five thousand, yes.”

“Well, fifty pounds of lead, that’ll take some doing, and the casting—well, that’ll take some doing. That’ll take some time, five thousand LC shot will, some time indeed.”

“I need it in a month,” the gentleman said.