by Robin Adair
Dingle ordered another rum and pondered. Who was the man and what could he want? Not a thief; it was obvious there was nothing to steal from a penniless man. A shirt-lifter? Well, Dingle could either flee or fight him. Or sell him what he wanted. No, he shook his head; it would have to be either of the first two options. Any road, why not find out? He settled his score, pocketed the change and went out to the nearby vacant ground, called Thornton’s Paddock. The stranger stood in half-shadow, lit only dimly by the lamp glow from a distant window and a weak tavern lantern.
‘Let us not waste time,’ the stranger said, and Dingle decided that the voice resembled, but could not be, that of the magistrate Rossi, who was a Froggy, or something like that.
The voice continued, ‘I want you to rob a place for me. I can provide the means of entry. The rest is up to you.’
Dingle weighed the words. So he wanted a store picked over for valuable stock, or a wealthy household burgled for cash or plate. Yes, it might well be worth a few dollars for a quick visit.
‘Why can’t you do it?’ he asked.
The shadow sighed. ‘You are a thief …I have, shall we say, other talents.’
‘What’s in it for me?’ asked Dingle.
‘At least a thousand – pounds.’
Jesus, thought Dingle. That’s as much as a labourer could make in – what? – fifty years! He stared at the blur. ‘What the hell do you want me to rob – the Bank of England?’
The man laughed and pointed to a stone building opposite. ‘Oh, no. Just the Bank of Australia.’
The Bank of Australia – sneered at as the Squatters’ Bank – was two years old and the creation of the Exclusives, the name for the widely hated would-be aristocrats who fought to control the colony. It was their counter to the People’s Bank, the Bank of New South Wales, older by nine years, which sat further along the main road.
While the Bank of New South Wales had its chambers in a building shared with a dingy tavern, the Thistle Inn, its rival traded in a new structure of solid sandstone. It oozed wealth, Dingle thought – and impregnability.
He frowned. ‘Why me?’ he asked bluntly of the shadowy stranger.
‘Your record, shall we say, speaks for itself.’
James Dingle shook his head ruefully. He hadn’t been a very good thief. His not so grand larceny was to steal a cow, for which he had been transported for seven years.
Still…‘How do I know this isn’t some trap? That you’re not an agent prov—, whatever they call it, a spy for the charleys?’
‘You don’t. But does twenty on account sway you?’
Dingle thought, but only for a moment. He put out a hand and grabbed the proffered money purse. ‘I’m in.’ He weighed the coins in his hand: they felt right. ‘Do you have keys?’
He could just see the mysterious client shake his head. ‘Not quite. But come over here.’ The man led the way across the paddock and stopped abruptly.
Dingle stared. He saw nothing. ‘So?’ he said.
The stranger looked around and, seeing they were unobserved, pointed downwards. ‘There’s your way in.’ Dingle found he was staring at a rusty metal grille. Of a drain? The man seemed to read his mind and nodded.
‘The drain below goes, apparently, alongside – maybe beneath – the bank’s strongroom. Your job is to find out and, if it does, to get in. Strip that room and deliver to me what I will soon stipulate.’
He handed over a slip of paper. ‘Here is the name of a man who can help, even though he is not yet aware of it. He worked on the building of the bank and has boasted of the drain being an Achilles heel. He needs some prodding and leadership. From you.’
Bravado, and probably drink, made Dingle put the question: ‘How do you know I won’t keep something back? Even keep the lot …and bugger you?’
The stranger paused. ‘Because I will know exactly what you’ve taken – it will hardly be kept secret.
‘Also, because of this.’ The sharp point of a dagger was suddenly pressed into James Dingle’s throat, pricking the skin. ‘And, because of this.’ He held a second sheet of paper in front of the burglar’s wide eyes. ‘You can’t quite make it out? Never mind. It bears the names of your wife and the boy in your house – your child?’ The stranger shoved the paper into his captive’s pocket.
‘Oh, yes, have no doubt. I’ll kill them – before your very eyes. Then I’ll kill you. And don’t imagine you could outrun my organisation. So, just don’t be greedy – and don’t change your mind, or the same punishments will follow.’ He removed the dagger and stepped back.
‘All right.’ Dingle touched his throat and felt what he was certain was blood on his finger. ‘All right.’
As if nothing untoward had happened, the shadow continued, ‘You will store and secure the spoils until I send for them. Remember, it is important that I have it all by the middle of the third week in September. My agent will call to collect. You may keep only the banknotes and divide them as you will. All else is mine. And I must have a japanned black metal box lodged there. It is clearly marked “T. M., 95th Regiment, 1811”.’
Weighing his desire for the money against the threat of violence, Dingle didn’t argue about his fee. Anyhow, it was more than he’d ever made before. But he did have a fair query: ‘How will you know when I have it?’
The stranger laughed. ‘As I think I said, I don’t believe it will be any secret.’
‘But I won’t recognise your man.’
‘Oh, yes, you will. He – or she – will say they are there on my behalf (you and they may call me Colonel Moulin) and you will be presented as proof with half a medallion. It will match this half I give you now.’
Back in the bar, equally shaken and excited, Dingle scanned the first sheet of paper. The name, and an address, written there referred to someone called Thomas Turner. He frowned at the second note; he would have to send his woman away to safety – the boy, too, even though he wasn’t blood kin. The backwards-slanting writing style aroused his interest. You didn’t come across many cack-handers; they usually had it beaten out of them in childhood.
He then studied the fragment of medallion. Although it was clearly delicately wrought or embossed, the design was now incomplete and unclear. The man-made break cut cleanly across the relief motif depicted upon it.
Dingle decided that it was an insect of some sort. Perhaps a fly.
Chapter Eight
Money is like muck, not good, except it be spread.
– Francis Bacon, ‘Of Seditions and Troubles’ (1625)
The very next day James Dingle tracked down Thomas Turner, who was laying bricks – or should have been – on a building site in Harrington Street, perched high in the rough old area known as The Rocks.
Turner was idle because a new load of bricks had not yet arrived. The kilns were not far away, south on Brickfield Hill, but the hard part was getting the bricks up the hill from George Street. Turner had been pleased to learn that the wagon expected was pulled not by a span of oxen but by a team of twelve convicts. He was not, he rationalised, callous, simply practical. Whereas he and his mates would have had to unload the 350 bricks from an oxcart, now the human beasts of burden could double as hod-carriers.
So Turner was happily able to slip off for a drink at the Brown Bear with his new friend, James Dingle. He professed not to know the mysterious Colonel Moulin, but when Dingle overcame any suspicions by offering him an equal share, Turner unburdened himself. Yes, he believed he had been loose-lipped about the drain and its proximity to the vault. But why not? It was the simple truth. He produced from memory a plan of the underground intersection.
He was firm on one thing: he would take a share but could not physically take part in the actual robbery – he feared his known involvement as a worker on the bank building would mark him instantly as a suspect. And he couldn’t take interrogation under the lash.
He could help one more time, however. At four o’clock the next morning, accompanied by Dingle, he expanded on his
sketched plan by quietly and carefully pacing the grounds around the bank and the manhole. Avoiding the night watch, which patrolled from the beating of tattoo to the first work drums of the morning, the pair took streetsurface measurements with a broom handle and a length of twine.
Now Turner was certain he could say with reasonable accuracy how far along the drain from the grating the underground strongroom lay.
He saved this warning for when they were safely back at Dingle’s house: ‘The bricks in the drain are frail, but then you’re up against solid stone.’
Dingle nodded. ‘Then we need Sudden Solomon.’
‘He’s a founder, a blacksmith!’
‘Aye. And also one of the best coiners in London. It was only possessing a bad pound note that got him fourteen years. He can make or borrow the tools we need for that stone wall.’
And Sudden Solomon – no one quite knew why William Blackstone was so called – agreed. ‘My tools will make no more noise than a mouse gnawing,’ he boasted. He had trained as a whitesmith in tin and in silver and was capable of exquisite work.
Another convict, George Farrell, and a freed man named John Creighton (or was it Clayton?) also joined the gang.
They were now ready and eager to go to work – but when was the problem. At first glance, Sundays seemed the only days on which the men were freed from work to dig, but that was illusory. As convicts, Farrell and Blackstone were committed to church musters. Even ticket-of-leave men on parole had to arrange attendance at services.
Thus, Saturday nights were the only safe times to penetrate the bank. At any moment the gang would have to be as quiet as Sudden Solomon’s mouse-like instruments, since the bank’s managing director, Mr Thomas McVitie, lived on the premises.
There was another cause for care: the drain came perilously close to the floor of the tavern that adjoined the bank. This pot-house bore an unusual name – Keep Within Compass – on its sign, which depicted a male figure framed by a drafting compass – a warning, no doubt, to keep within the bounds of good behaviour (even though many visitors entered the premises with the firm intention of getting as drunk as a lord).
Apart from the danger of giving the game away to startled drinkers, there was unpalatable food for thought in the identity of the publican, Mr John Redman. He had once been Chief Constable of the town – and there was another reason why criminals would not want any contact with him: many believed he had been a public hangman, for which he would have received nine shillings and sixpence a neck, plus the victim’s clothes and the perquisite of selling pieces of the fatal noose at a shilling an inch. One turning off would earn the hangman more than a labourer made in a week. Colonial Jack Ketch or not, John Redman had a reputation for unbending rectitude.
The next Saturday, after dark, Dingle, Blackstone, Farrell and Creighton drifted towards the drain. Creighton’s job that night was to patrol the area discreetly and keep watch. The others climbed down into the underworld.
There they repeated the string-and-broomstick measures Turner had taken at street level. At the point they believed to line up with the strongroom they set to work to break through the first barrier, the brick wall of the drain. The bricks soon fell, but the stone thus revealed slowed their efforts. In some places the walls were nine feet thick. A week later the project was still faltering.
On the third Saturday – their last chance to meet the mid-September deadline – there was further delay. The bank staff left late and it wasn’t until ten p.m. that the gang could enter the drain and resume digging.
Their luck was running out and their plans were in tatters, so they agreed that they would persuade or, if need be, bribe a clerk to overlook Farrell and Blackstone not mustering for church – so they could all work throughout Sunday to the finish. Another freed lag, Valentine Rourke, was enlisted to help.
Well after the drums had beaten for first service that morning, Blackstone’s tools weakened the last sandstone block that was barring entry. Farrell, the smallest of the robbers, squeezed through the gap.
This was not the time or place for partying. The tunnel was by now more noxious than ever: the close air was heavy with the reek of sweat and more ordure – the diggers had often relieved themselves on the muddied walls. Ignoring the disgust of his fellows, one had even deposited his dung on the floor. Nevertheless, muting their excitement, the men now celebrated their success by broaching a bottle of rum.
The dangers of daylight delayed the moving of the treasure trove up to and across the paddock in any case. Not until after seven p.m. was it deemed safe to remove slowly, bag by bag, chest by chest, the booty from the vault. By turn the thieves cautiously carried it to Dingle’s house nearby and buried it under the dirt floors.
The looting went smoothly, until two-thirty on the Monday morning … It was then that James Dingle climbed into the paddock, leaving Farrell alone below. He closed the grille and looked around carefully. He carried nothing yet, in case the area was not clear.
His precaution paid off. Two armed police watchmen loomed suddenly out of the dark. Such patrolmen were familiar figures – they had been first formed as a body in the second year of the infant colony thirty-nine years earlier – but they could always test a miscreant’s nerve.
One of them, Constable Robert Melville, they knew. The other, Constable John Quinn, was curious. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
They’d all rehearsed for such an eventuality. Dingle said he was drunk and was going to get a glass of rum. ‘And,’ he confided, ‘I’m bursting to ease myself.’
Something nagged at Constable Melville. Although it was raining and he and Quinn were spattered, Dingle seemed dry, but he shrugged it off and told the man to move on.
Dingle started off, but felt a chill of fear when his escape was suddenly cut off and Quinn called, ‘Oy! Stop!’ After a pause, he added, ‘I thought you wanted a leak, urgent?’
Dingle relaxed.
‘Get on with it, but be sharp!’ said the watchman.
So eager was the thief to please (and he thanked God he had drunk deeply of the bottles below and could make his water) that he didn’t notice (or much care) that his stream was aimed not on the dirt or a wall, but straight at the drain cover.
At nine o’clock that Monday morning, the chief teller opened the door to the dark stairs that led down into the strongroom. He reached blindly, from long habit, for his cash box, the daily float, left overnight on the second step.
His fingers moved in blank space. The box was gone. When he returned with a lamp he found the chamber almost bare. Valuables, papers, everything appeared to have vanished. And he discovered the ragged hole.
He called the banker, Mr McVitie, who sent for the town’s senior constable, George Jilks. He, in turn, called for the Chief Magistrate and Police Chief, Captain Francis Nicholas Rossi.
Captain Rossi, an excitable, thick-accented Corsican, raised eyebrows when his first action was to insist on summoning two most unusual assistants. One of these, they knew, was a convict and itinerant worker. The other? Well, everyone knew he was mad.
Chapter Nine
You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?
– Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals (1775)
The characters in question had been idling near the town waterfront when Captain Rossi sought them out.
One, a sternly handsome, hawk-featured man, perhaps nearing thirty years, was popular ticket-of-leave felon on parole Nicodemus Dunne, the Running Patterer. At that intriguing stage of life, when the optimism of youth had not yet been extinguished but the advantages of maturity were there to be tapped, Dunne had already put aside such dramas as the soldier’s execution and the fiasco at the theatre.
The other, William King, the Flying Pieman, was a free settler in his early twenties, a failed schoolteacher who now sold pies on the streets. However, it was his eccentricity and outlandish dress that marked him out. With garish coat and a hat billowing streamers, he once wheeled a barrow one mi
le, took fifty flying leaps, picked up fifty stones a yard apart, then carried a live goat weighing eighty pounds for two miles.
The two young men recognised Captain Rossi’s sturdy carriage and its two horses even before they saw the lawman’s excited face. The Patterer hoped it was good news at last – for he knew that something, apart from the usual waves of crime in the colony, had been worrying the Police Chief of late.
Dunne and King had been in the odd situation of both congratulating and comforting each other, after their recent adventure with the Captain * had resulted in success – but at what a price! Someone close to the Patterer had been killed. And, during his work on that case, Dunne had learnt a terrible secret about his tarnished birthright. The Pieman, too, had seen old wounds reopened.
But now, as the carriage careered off to the ravished Squatters’ Bank, they hoped to push all that into the past.
The press of the crowd jostling in George Street at the impressive entrance to the Bank of Australia was intense but mostly good-humoured, even celebratory. Few ordinary souls were upset at the spreading news of the robbery. They had just gathered in the hope of enjoying the discomfort of any well-heeled depositors who might appear to bemoan their lost wealth. Any old road, it was a moment in history: the colony’s first bank job.
As Nicodemus Dunne pushed his way through to the porticoed doorway, accompanied by Captain Rossi and William King, he overheard one grey-haired spectator excitedly compare the crush to the chaotic street scenes that had occurred when the New South Wales Corps – the rapacious ‘Rum Corps’ – had revolted against official attacks on their racketeering and boldly arrested the then Governor, William Bligh, with a vigour to match that of his mutinous crew on the ill-fated ship Bounty years before. Those soldiers claimed that Bligh had cowered under a bed, but who could believe that of the captain who had taken his loyal sailors 3615 miles to safety in an open boat?
