The Streets

by Anthony Quinn

  I walked back to the desk and turned up the lamp. The room swam into focus, and I had the impression of myself as a character just sidling onto a stage, about to speak. Presently I heard footsteps outside, the door swung open and Sir Martin entered. He had a cigar in blast and the air of a man who could spare no more than a businesslike five minutes. The humourless virility he projected, the wide-stepping gait and his long aristocratic jawbone were so commanding as to make me rather afraid.

  ‘There you are. Kitty said you wished to speak to me.’ He walked to his desk, and opened the clasp on a silver box. ‘Cigar?’

  I shook my head.

  He settled, and opened his palms expansively. ‘So?’

  ‘There’s a question I’ve been pondering. How much are you worth?’

  Elder tucked in his chin, puzzled. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘What do you estimate your personal fortune to be?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You’ve made a great deal of money, though, from property?’

  ‘Amongst other things, yes,’ he replied, cautious amusement in his voice. ‘May I ask what is –’

  ‘And I imagine that whilst money accrues from this property, the rights and the well-being of your tenants – those in Somers Town, say – would not be of particular consequence to you.’

  He said, a little haughtily, ‘I think you misunderstand. It is not my business to collect the rents.’

  ‘I know. You have others to do that for you – Walter Moyles, for instance, and his crew of bullies.’

  He shrugged. ‘I have a great many in my employ. Their names are not all known to me.’

  ‘Allow me to try another. Condor Holdings – is that name known to you?’

  He paused at that. He was surprised, but not greatly. ‘What exactly have you in mind to say to me, sir?’

  I took a breath. ‘That you launched a plan of clearances to make yourself a fortune. That you concealed your ownership behind a puppet company and, after that was discovered, a series of fake names. That you colluded with the Social Protection League to segregate the poor you had displaced into rural labour camps. I think that is all, in outline.’

  He betrayed nothing beyond a small tightening in his jaw. Seeing the monkey’s cage he moved to it and flipped back the cloth, reintroducing its occupant. But when he next spoke something had altered in his tone. ‘That cut on your nose. Did you ever consider how easily it might have been your throat instead?’

  ‘I saw what happened to Alfred Kenton, drowned in the Thames. And my own dear friend was murdered in front of me, on the street. I realise I’ve had a narrow escape.’

  ‘That you did so was out of my respect to your father. Others were not inclined to be so lenient. What you hoped to achieve – well, the safe progress of society –’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘I’ve already heard your friend Sprule’s thoughts on that subject.’

  ‘You have heard, but evidently not understood.’ He stared at me, and gave a little shake of his head. ‘Sprule is too zealous, but he is essentially right in his prognosis. In time a great majority of the city’s poor will die out, as a failed subspecies. It is inevitable. Until then, it behoves us to guard against their degrading and contaminating the general health of society. They must not drag down the rest. That is a central imperative of our survival.’

  ‘Society will survive without having to imprison the poorest elements of it. You regard the indigent of Somers Town as a criminal class – that is your mistake.’

  ‘Ah . . . how then do you regard them?’

  I held his gaze. ‘As vulnerable people preyed on and destroyed by those who should most have helped them.’

  He took a long pull on his cigar, and pushed himself up from the desk on which he had been leaning. ‘Well. On that we must differ. If that is all –’

  ‘No, that is not all. There is blood on your hands. I intend to make known the infamies you have licensed.’

  He sighed with impatience – this was too much. ‘How? You think I have signed my name to anything?’

  ‘Probably not. But I dare say you have documents that link you to Condor Holdings. In your safe there. You oughtn’t to leave your keys lying about,’ I added, throwing them onto his desk. He straightened up. He must have known I had found them in the lock of Ferdinand’s cage. ‘Please to open it,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing would induce me,’ he replied with contemptuous calm.

  ‘This might.’ Jo’s knife was already in my hand, pointed at him. ‘I anticipated your resistance. Be assured, I would gladly use it.’

  His eyes gleamed hard. ‘You must be insane. I will not –’ He stopped himself there, seeming to reconsider his position. His corrugated brow cleared. ‘Very well then . . .’

  He picked up the ring of keys, and went round behind his desk to remove the painting that shielded the wall safe. I detected an odd alacrity in his movements, as though he were actually keen to open it. He had just clicked through the combination when I suddenly realised why – Cool the hands – and vaulted over his desk in the instant he was pulling back the door. I held the knife to the side of his neck. ‘I’ll take that,’ I said. He had his hand on a pistol, which I had recalled some burglar once telling me was a common appurtenance of Kensington safes – they generally held more to protect. With my other hand I relieved him of the weapon, a double-barrelled thing with a plain wooden stock. I took a few steps back.

  ‘Now – empty it,’ I said, and cocked the pistol to make sure he understood. The coldness of his glare could have frozen the Thames in summer. He reached inside and withdrew a strongbox, a quantity of folded banknotes and yellow kidskin bags that clinked. (Why did I think of doubloons?) I looked past him at what remained in there. ‘Those too, if you please.’

  Out came a sheaf of documents, the top one sealed with wax and tied in a black ribbon. For the first time he looked ill at ease. He kept the papers in his hand, saying, ‘These things are of no value –’

  ‘Then you will not mind surrendering them to me,’ I replied, pocketing the knife and holding out my free hand. Instead he threw the papers onto the desk; his expression, his tense posture, suggested a strong reluctance to have their contents disclosed. I was going to pick them up when there came an abrupt knock at the door. Kitty breezed in – and pulled up. I watched her face pass very rapidly from dumbstruck to disbelieving.

  ‘David –?’

  Of course I saw how grotesque was the scene she had stumbled on: the friend she thought she knew training a pistol on her father, the contents of his safe emptied upon the desk. I might as well have been wearing a mask and holding a bag marked SWAG. Elder gestured innocence with his raised hands, and said to her, in a tone touched with sorrow, ‘Kitty. I’m afraid this young man has deceived us – he has come here intending to rob the place.’

  Kitty, colour draining from her cheeks, stared at me. ‘What are you – have you gone mad? Please tell me what’s happening.’

  Elder tried to interpose himself, but I repelled him with a straightening of my gun arm. Kitty gasped in surprise. ‘I see how this looks,’ I said, ‘but I’m no thief. I am here for evidence relating to your father’s property company – papers that will reveal his unscrupulous dealings and the exploitation of many hundreds of his tenants. I’m sorry, Kitty, but – your father is a wicked man.’

  ‘“A wicked man”?’ repeated Elder, wounded dignity in his voice. ‘Sir, you are talking to my own daughter – d’you imagine she would for a minute entertain such gross absurdity?’

  I looked in appeal to Kitty, who (my hopes rose at this moment) looked very unsure as to whether my accusation were absurd or not. ‘David, would you, please, put that thing down – I implore you,’ she said with a gulp.

  I wish I could have obliged her, but matters had advanced too far. I only shook my head, and in the hiatus Elder spoke up urgently.

  ‘My dear, listen to me. Go and fetch Mr Hardwick. He’s in the garden. Tell him a robbery has bee
n foiled – and the culprit awaits arrest.’

  Kitty’s indecision was writ in agony on her face. Any thought of a peaceable resolution to the impasse had been scuppered by the word arrest. I held a gun; her father held his ground. What to do?

  ‘Catherine! Fetch Mr Hardwick,’ he repeated, ‘now.’

  She flinched at the sudden asperity of his voice, and I knew that my fate was narrowing. Our eyes met again, and compassion glistened in hers. But mostly what I saw there was horrified dismay. ‘I’m sorry, David,’ she said quietly, and as she turned away I said her name; without looking back, she faltered, and then hurried on.

  And how those small moments would cost me. With my body half turned I had slackened my guard for an instant, and now Elder stood, like a duellist, squinting along the barrel of a revolver.

  ‘I always keep another one to hand,’ he said with the philosophical air of a man used to outwitting his opponents. ‘Now. Step towards me, here, and put the gun on the desk. That’s the way.’ Over at the cage Ferdinand, perhaps scenting disruption in the air, made short hostile grunts. He shushed him. ‘The game is up, Mr Wildeblood.’

  ‘I should wait to hear what Hardwick has to say about those papers first.’

  Elder gave a pitying laugh. ‘It’s quite beyond you, isn’t it? The police will do what I pay them for – as I said, there are many in my employ.’

  ‘You think that putting me in prison will save you? The truth is going to come out.’

  He shook his head. ‘I see too well that prison will put no trammel on your tongue. Alas, it will grieve your poor father, but . . . your destination is elsewhere. I should say the river’s a fine and private place.’

  So there it was. They would dispatch me the same way as Kenton, perhaps to be washed up at low tide some day, a bloated bundle of flesh with eyeballs pecked from their sockets. Whilst he had been speaking, the racket from Ferdinand’s cage had waxed in agitation. There was a pause, then the creature – as if its tail had been bitten – gave vent to a full-throated screech. Elder, still pointing the revolver but distracted, took his eye off me, and without thinking I snatched up the table lamp and hurled it at his head. He ducked and it crashed against the cage; in the seconds it took him to right himself I had darted across the room and out the door.

  I tried to make myself think at the same time as I was bolting helter-skelter along the corridor and thence by a sharp right turn into the rooms I’d traversed earlier that evening. I blessed the serendipity that had obliged me to discover their layout, for I was soon in front of the side door by which I’d entered. I twisted the knob. Locked!

  ‘Sir?’ came an enquiring voice. It was the servant I’d seen lighting the lamp before.

  ‘This door,’ I cried, ‘have you the key?’

  He nodded, tensing at my wild-eyed panic.

  ‘Then quick, man, open it – an emergency outside!’

  We both heard the alarums sounding within the house – the hunt for the thief had begun – but the servant fortunately assumed I was running towards the ‘emergency’ rather than away from it, and obliged me by unlocking the door. I was through there like a scorched ferret before I heard the first warning cry. The back garden swallowed me up in its velvety blackness, but there was no use in hiding here – I’d seen that fail once already. Quick, quick, decide! I told myself, careening onwards. The lawn was damp and hard underfoot, and my panting breath whitened against the dark. Here was the wall, with the park on the other side, and I looked for the ancient garden door that Kitty and I had once passed through. As I felt my way along the clammy brick and its tangled curtain of creepers I heard male voices calling to one another from the house; looking back I could see figures with lanterns, glimmering down the lawn. My fingers clutched the iron handle of the gate and I pulled on it. It was shut fast, with a deadlock.

  I looked up at the wall, which I suppose was about fifteen feet high. Grasping the wizened and leafless creeper in both hands I began to shinny upwards, finding toeholds in the brickwork. I had no time to check whether it would hold my weight, nor did I care that the gnarled branches were cutting into my palms. I was still climbing when a shout went up, ‘That’s him, there! On the wall,’ and other voices rose in excited support. Desperation made me scramble the rest of its height, and as I was clambering onto the ledge I heard another booming command from below. ‘Stop there!’ A pistol shot cracked through the air. I straddled the wall for a moment and looked down to see Elder himself, drawing a bead on me. ‘Get down, sir, or the next one will be through you,’ he called. I peered over the side, considering the drop. It was either this way, or the Thames.

  I swung my leg round, bracing myself to jump, when a woman’s beseeching cry of No! pierced the night. Without looking I knew it to be Kitty. At the same instant I heard another shot, much closer to me, and I jumped. The ground below seemed to rise very abruptly to meet my plummeting weight, and a flash of terror – at broken bones, or a broken neck – was gone almost before it had registered. Landing on a fortuitous flower bed snatched the air from my lungs, but aside from a throbbing in my side – a jagged branch, probably – I was unharmed. I brushed off the dirt from my hands and knees. Ahead lay the inky expanse of Kensington Gardens, with a screening line of trees distantly picked out by the moonlight. I plunged forward, reckoning it only a matter of minutes before the key to that door was found and Elder would be on my heels. As I ran all I could hear was the sound of my own agitated breathing. I lost my footing a couple of times as the parkland dipped without warning, then I was up again and heading for the firefly tips of gas lamps a few hundred yards away to the right.

  The pain in my side still troubled me – perhaps the cut was deeper than I first thought – but I pressed on heedless, listening for sounds of pursuit. My pace had fallen off by the time I reached the row of lamps, which showed a long carriage path quite empty of traffic. Hard by, the Serpentine glittered black. I checked the wound under my shirt, and found it slick to the touch; not a pricking branch after all, but a puncture from a lead ball. I should have known Elder would not miss, even in poor light. I was breathing heavily. I walked on a few paces until I heard the distant clop of horses coming through the dark. I hesitated, wondering if I should flag them down to ask for help, but then an instinct warned against it. I hurried off the road and concealed myself behind a thick-waisted oak tree – and listened as the two horsemen slowed to a trot. A voice said, ‘I thought I spied him here,’ and there followed a short exchange between them. The other’s voice, unmistakably, was Elder’s. ‘He can’t get far with that wound – and the police have his description.’

  Once they had jogged out of sight I took stock. Where should I go? The police would make for my lodgings in Islington, so that was out. A hotel might be dangerous, and probably unaffordable in any case. I was keeping to the dirt footpath alongside the trees, fearful of Elder’s doubling back up the road. As I approached the gates at Hyde Park I saw the silhouettes of helmeted figures, a picket of bobbies evidently about to disperse through the park in search of a fugitive. Over the road and beyond the wall I could hear passing traffic on Knightsbridge. I judged the road dark enough to shroud me – wrongly, as it transpired. Halfway across one of the policemen raised his lantern. It was enough. ‘Oi – over there!’ A whistle blew, and he started to run towards me. I covered the last stretch of parkland at a sprint, vaulted the hip-high wall and cried in agony as I landed on the pavement: the wound was a white-hot poker in my side, and each step seemed to suck it in more deeply. No matter – keep moving. On reaching Hyde Park Corner I simply dashed into the road, provoking an outraged oath from a ’bus driver as he swerved past me. A glance back suggested I had lost my pursuer – no, there he was, looking about – and then I was dodging the traffic as it flowed from out of the dark. Lungs aching, I urged myself along the thoroughfare until – a mercy! – a cabby spotted my frantic signal and pulled up. I climbed aboard and said, ‘Somers Town,’ before I changed my mind and told him to head for Sev
en Dials. No policeman would be looking for me there.

  I pulled the doors to, and sank back into the seat. I didn’t know whether the police had spotted me or not; more troubling was the way every jolt of the vehicle thrust into my side. Blood was leaking through my shirt and down my leg. A hospital? No – Elder would have men searching there, too. I must have dozed on the journey, for in a matter of minutes the cabby was rapping on the roof. I managed to climb out.

  ‘Sure you’re all right, sir?’ he asked.

  We were at the top of St Martin’s Lane, in the thick of the swarming night hordes. I staggered a little, and I suppose he thought I was drunk. I paid the man off, not trusting myself to speak, and began to walk. To where? I had no idea. I turned left and found myself in a dreadful winding street of tumbledown tenements and grog shops. Strangers paid me no heed – wandering drunks were unremarkable in this neighbourhood. I was shivering like a greyhound (my coat was back at the Elder mansion) and sweating at the same time. A terrible and immediate urge to lie down had seized me, it was the only thing that could possibly salve the molten hole burning through my side. Please God . . . I stumbled against a doorway, and saw that it was a dosshouse. They would have a bed I could lie upon. A knock brought a sunken-eyed keeper to the door, and once he had taken my money (‘fourpence the night’) I was conducted up two flights of stairs to a room overlooking the street. Two of the four beds were already occupied by slumbering forms. He pointed to a cot in the corner, with a little truckle underneath. ‘You won’t mind sharin’,’ the man said, but I already had my head on the pillow. He didn’t appear to notice I was bleeding on his floor.