by A. A. Glynn
Meakum fished in his pocket, found a sixpence, and handed it to the sweeper. “Thank you,” he said. “I see I was mistaken. I saw him from a distance and thought he was a Dr. Jones I knew some time ago.” The crossing sweeper touched his hat brim again and Sam Meakum strode off. Now he knew the name of the snooper and what he was—a private detective. Private he might be, but that was no guarantee that he was wholly detached from the official police. And he had tailed Meakum and his companions from the Blue Duck to Hertfordshire and back. Who did he represent? Who put him on to their enterprise?
The answers might soon emerge. For Fortune, who had discovered the address of the snooper, had indicated that he had plans for him.
And that thought awakened fears in Sam Meakum. For he knew Fortune to be vicious in ways more sophisticated than the addle-headed Cal Tebbutt. Fortune made sure that almost all his past life was kept a close secret but, from what little he allowed to emerge, Sam Meakum had gleaned that he was a hard case indeed, and had indicated that he was not averse to killing. He had the snooping detective, Dacers, on his mind ever since becoming aware of him, and had voiced some dark hints as to how he should be dealt with.
But, if Dacers had any connection with the London police and he was disposed of messily, with his killing coming to light, consequences would be dire in the extreme for the Dixie Ghosts.
Meakum was as tough as his pugnacious appearance suggested and not short of courage, but he had a healthy attachment to his own skin, and had no desire to end his life receiving the fumbling professional services of “Old Cal”—Mr. William Calcraft, the Crown’s frequently drunk-on-duty Public Hangman.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AT BLINDMAN’S YARD
Dacers strode warily among the rubble and builders’ detritus scattered for a good distance along the river shoreline close to Hungerford Bridge. It was early evening and the shades of night were rapidly descending. The windows, lit by gas and lantern in the middle distance, were largely those of government offices, by tradition, established on this northern side of the river. Not far away was the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, where the back door of the detective department opened into a small yard whose name became synonymous with the department: Scotland Yard.
Close to the river’s edge, amid the spreading evidence of Joseph Bazalgette’s huge, on-going river improvement project, he was searching for Blindman’s Yard. At first, he blundered among structures either partially built or partially demolished.
Seemingly, he was quite alone then he was aware that there was someone behind him and a heavy hand dropped on his shoulder causing him to jump. A well-known voice boomed: “Well, Septimus, what’re you doing up here in this country?”
Dacers turned and looked into the broad, whisker-embellished visage of Detective Inspector Amos Twells, of Scotland Yard. “Pursuing some complicated riddle, I’ll be bound,” declared Twells. “Is it one you’d care to share with the Yard? After all, we’ve put a crust or two your way over the years.”
“I’m doing nothing important. Just taking a constitutional.”
“Gammon! The river is no place to take a constitutional. These engineering fellows have done wonderful work but they’ve yet to properly conquer the great stink,” laughed Twells. “Care for a pint of ale? There’s a quaint little grog shop just a stride away, the Blue Duck, well known to the force. You can enjoy the sight of most of the customers fleeing the moment I show my nose there.”
“No, thank you, I’ll continue my walk, then think of an early supper.”
“Ah, the excellent Mrs. Slingsby! I’ll wager she spoils you with good suppers. Ah, well, enjoy it, but I know you’re up to something.”
“You’re too much the detective, Amos,” said Dacers, trying to sound as light-hearted as possible.
Inwardly, he knew he ought to tell Amos Twells what he knew about the Dixie Ghosts, although he had only hearsay evidence gathered by his eavesdropping and the sight of the engraved letterhead; he had no knowledge of the literature the group had put out. But his promise to Roberta Van Trask—who thought him such a chivalrous Englishman—had to be honoured. If her father had had any role in the affairs of the three Southerners, she wanted to keep Charles Francis Adams and the US Embassy staff in ignorance of it. And that meant saying nothing to the Metropolitan Police.
It was his hope that Theodore Van Trask would ultimately be shown to be clear of any involvement with the Dixie Ghosts, which would leave him free to pass on what he knew to Scotland Yard. For the present, however, he must ensure that he kept his promise to Roberta Van Trask.
Detective Inspector Twells squinted at Dacers’ face. Even in the fading light, he could discern the signs of his recent run-in with the two Americans. He nodded and grunted: “Ah, yes, Septimus, you’ve been in a mill recently, unless you’ve taken to the bottle and can’t keep your legs on course, but I know you’re not that kind of cove. Well, it’s your business, so get on with it.” He moved off in the direction of Scotland Yard, where he was due to do a turn of night duty.
Knowing that he could be venturing into certain trouble if any of the three Dixie Ghosts were around, Dacers had taken precautions when his curiosity prompted him to enter their territory. He wore a thick topcoat, a hard, low-crowned hat, and a muffler to partially hide his face.
He walked cautiously through the dark and sinister riverside townscape with its broken buildings, jumble of building materials, idle steam engines of construction, and, here and there, attenuated stumps of some of the great, cylindrical pillars which had supported the demolished old Hungerford Bridge created by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It was haunted by shadows and the eternal stink of the great river.
As he passed the remnants of one of the pillars, a dark-clad, black-moustached young man, one of two who had been concealed behind it, stepped out and considered his back as he disappeared into the gloom. He quickly returned to the rear of the broken pillar.
“Do you figure he’s one of them, Jim?” he asked.
His companion, who had watched the man from his concealment, gave a short laugh.
“No, Irvine. That’s an Englishman and I’d stake a fortune on it. You can’t live in this country as long as I have and hobnob with Englishmen over all the seven seas without knowing one by the cut of his jib,” said James Bulloch. “It’s a strange thing how you may tell an American, be he Yankee or Southerner, by his style as you may an Englishmen. It’s hardly different from telling a ship’s nationality by the colours she flies. I don’t doubt that man is associated with the building work going on here.”
“Sooner or later, we’ll catch sight of them,” said Irvine Bulloch. “And I hope it’s sooner. There’s little pleasure in hanging around this locality.”
Septimus Dacers walked over the broken, littered ground with his eyes skinned for Blindman’s Yard, blundering into structures partially built or partially demolished. Suddenly, he found it: a cobbled track, slanting upward between the remains of two walls, one of which bore an ancient plaque bearing the words: “Blindman’s Yard.”
In his ample coat pocket he carried what the criminal world called a “neddy,” a short wooden cudgel that could deliver a stunning blow. He had no intention of taking more of the kind of punishment handed out at the Blue Duck by Meakum and Fairfax.
He walked boldly into Blindman’s Yard and found it to be a short lane lined with the older type of riverside buildings which Bazalgette’s imaginative project for renewing this portion of London would soon sweep away. In fact, several at the entrance point to the lane had already been reduced to rubble.
Deeper in the deserted lane, eerie and ominous in its quietness, he found a huddle of once black- and white-timbered buildings, rendered grimy by smoke. Their roofs sagged and slanted crazily, and they had probably survived the Great Fire of London of 1666. All were closed up and probably condemned. Faded lettering above the lintels of their doors told of the purposes they once served: “Ships’ Chandlers,” “Pies and Mashed Potatoes,”
“Nets and Fishing Tackle,” and “Barber and Apothecary.”
He found number five, a building squeezed in among a group of slanting ancient neighbours, its frontage a little cleaner than the rest, as if some recent tidying had been done on it to make it look still active.
Like the other premises, it was closed up, but a square of paper had been fixed in one of the many paned little windows. Dacers read it: “RD, Temporary Offices. If closed, kindly leave a message in letter box and a principal will contact you.”
Dacers grinned. So, this was their way of keeping at arm’s length from those who might travel to London, seeking their office after having seen their letterhead! RD obviously meant “Resurgent Dixie,” but the initials did not convey the full title of the venture to the world at large. Probably, the Dixie Ghosts only visited the place to pick up mail and had established living quarters elsewhere. With the frantic construction work going on all around, they could disarm inquirers with the tale that their permanent offices would be in the new buildings that would rise under Bazalgette’s scheme. Their Blindman’s Yard premises were indeed temporary and, when all the loot was gathered in, the Dixie Ghosts would decamp from them swiftly and for good.
Night was falling fast, bringing a chill rising from the river. He walked around to the rear of the crouching huddle of buildings and found that their backs faced a narrow, cobbled alley without any form of backyard or enclosure. Small, old-fashioned windows were set in the back walls of the shops.
He was looking at the upper rear windows of number five when he saw the grubby curtain pulled across it suddenly twitch, then remain still. So there was somebody in an upper rear room in which there was no light! And he was pretty sure that there was enough natural illumination in the alley for him to be visible to the watcher. He slipped his hand into his pocket and took a tight grip on the neddy.
Just as he began to make a discreet exit from the alley, Dacers heard the scrape of boots at one end of it. He turned and saw two dark and bulky figures bearing down on him—Meakum and the man who called himself Fairfax were coming at him with determined strides.
Another footfall from the opposite end of the alley caused him to turn his head and he saw the small shape of a humped man—Fortune—coming just as determinedly. Having seen him from the rear window, they must have left the shop by its front door then walked around the opposite ends of the tumbledown block to enter either end of the alley. Dacers took the neddy from his pocket and prepared to use it. The three had him cornered in the confined space of the narrow alleyway and they were clearly out for trouble. He was up against bigger odds than at the Blue Duck but he was determined he would not take the pounding he took on that painful occasion.
For the first time, he had a good look at Fortune who was now very close to him. Even in the poor light, the hunchback had a memorable face: lantern-jawed with high cheekbones and remarkable glittering eyes beneath thickly grown brows. He could quite see why Roberta Van Trask could not believe there were two men with the same face, and the hunchback she glimpsed in London was the man without a hump, seen in Washington.
Fortune sprang at him with an agility astonishing in one with a spinal infirmity.
“Damn, you!” he snarled. “You’re going to get your hash settled for good and all.”
He clawed for Dacers’ throat just as Dacers swung the neddy. He contacted with the side of Fortune’s head, knocking him to one side and, within the same split second, Fortune’s two henchmen grabbed him from behind.
They hauled him backwards on his heels, but he twisted out of their grip, lashed out blindly with the neddy and smote Meakum across the nose, bringing a gurgle of pain from him. Then grasping hands seemed to come out of the gloom as the trio clutched at him at the same time, barging into him with their combined weight. Again, as in the assault at the Blue Duck, he noticed the strong aroma of whisky from one of the attackers.
His knees buckled and he went down to the cobbles. All three men piled on top of him and, gasping for breath, he was almost crushed by their bodies. He wriggled and squirmed against the combined pressure and, still with the neddy in his grasp, he tried to free his arm to use the weapon, but he was pinned down too tightly. He somehow managed to work his left arm free of the pressure and launched his bunched fist into the thick of the melee, making satisfying contact with someone’s mouth.
His assailants piled more pressure on him and one hit him a dizzying blow across the head. Suddenly, he was being hauled up to his feet. He tried to swing the neddy into action but a fist hit his upper arm and seized the short cudgel, snatching it out of his grasp. Now he was standing, held up by the three.
His hat was gone, and he was almost totally winded, but he still tried to find the energy to kick at the legs of the trio as they began to manhandle him, forcing him against the back wall of the row of shops.
Then, a speedily delivered rabbit punch to the back of the neck momentarily stunned him. It was swiftly followed by a fist crashing against the side of his head, and the whole murky world of Blindman’s Yard closed in on him as he lost consciousness.
His senses came swimming up out of darkness he knew not how long after the attack. He was aware that he was lying on rough boards, and that he was indoors in a dimly-lit room. The air was musty and, as his head cleared, Dacers focussed his eyes on a point of light some distance off. It resolved itself into a window, covered with a curtain through which an uncertain illumination, possibly the early dawn, filtered.
Slowly, it came to him that this was the window he saw from the alleyway from which someone watched him. He was therefore in the upper back room of the old shop in which the Dixie Ghosts had set up their headquarters.
A grating voice, which he recognised as that of Fortune said: “He’s conscious. Throw some water over him!”
Somebody moved and clumped off over creaking floorboards. A couple of minutes later, he returned and a spout of icy water was dashed in his face. He spluttered, shook his head, and realised that three partially perceived figures were squatting beside him.
“Mr. Dacers, the detective,” it was Fortune’s Southern drawl again. “We’re haunted by you, my friend, but not for much longer. You’ve followed us for the last time, and we’re going to be good and rid of you. First, who’s behind you? Who put you on to us? Are you tied up with anybody from the U.S. Embassy?”
Dacers struggled to find his voice. When it came it was a dry croak, but he managed to make it defiant: “Nothing to say.”
Fortune snorted. “Really? I guess we’ll see about that in due course. Meantime, thanks for walking into our hands the way you did, saving us a deal of trouble. We know a lot about you, Dacers. We know where you live, for instance, and would you believe that my colleagues and I spent a deal of time figuring out means of grabbing you as you left your house, but there are several snags in your square during the daylight hours. There are too many potential witnesses: the policeman on the beat, the old crossing sweeper, and the cabmen who hang around the cab stand at the further end of the square. Not much chance of grabbing you at night, either, short of breaking in and snatching you from your bed, but that would be too hazardous. Then you came to us right off your own bat—so very obliging.”
Dacers was wondering how Fortune knew his name and, at the same time, was trying to think up an answer to his gloating monologue. His thoughts became dominated by Roberta Van Trask and the need to save her father from whatever it was that he feared and was certainly connected with these men in some way. He made a steely resolution that he would not reveal to them anything he knew about their scheming or anything about himself.
Fortune had only paused for breath and he began to speak again in his languid Southern drawl: “We have plans for you, Mr. Dacers, real plans, not the half-baked efforts of our Mr. Tebbutt, here, who would have you believe he’s a blue-blooded Fairfax. He figured the tide would carry you away when it rose after he almost tipped you into the river but had it all wrong. Mr. Tebbutt, I fear, is too fond of
hard liquor and, because it impairs his thinking, he frequently goes wrong.” Fortune, it seemed was very much out of sorts with Tebbutt, who claimed to be a Virginian aristocrat.
“Hell, I only had a couple of drinks,” complained one of the shadowy figures squatting alongside Fortune.
“Two too many,” rejoined Fortune sharply. “That’s the trouble with putting up at Josh Tooley’s saloon. The liquor’s too close at hand. Well, there’ll be no fumbling this time. It’s the river for you, Mr. Dacers.”
“Have a care,” interjected Meakum with a nervous quiver in his voice. “We know he’s a detective. He’s sure to be friendly with the London coppers. If he’s found in the river right here in the heart of the city, there’ll be an all-fired hue and cry. The Limey authorities will make gallows meat of us in no time.”
“Stop bellyaching,” growled Tebbutt. “You were just the blamed same at the Blue Duck, squawkin’ with the jitters when I suggested putting him in the river.”
“Only you were too damned stupid to drop him into the river. You merely dumped him on a mudbank,” growled Fortune disdainfully. “Well it won’t be like that this time. We won’t put him in here. He’ll go in further upstream, in the country and very well weighted. He’ll never be found among all the reeds and weeds out that way.”
He leaned forward, bringing his face closer to Dacers’, and the improving morning light creeping through the grubby window showed his fanatically glittering eyes. “You can be assured it’ll be a boss job, with no half measures. If I put him in the river, he’ll stay with the fishes for good and all.”
