"Eh?" Agar replied with an expression of elaborate innocence. "Screwsman?"
"Come, now," Harranby said. "You know what a screwsman is."
"I worked as a sawyer once. Spent a year in the north, working in a mill as a sawyer, I did."
Harranby was not distracted. "Did you make the keys for the safes?"
"Keys? What keys?"
Harranby sighed. "You've no future as an actor, Agar."
"I don't take your meaning, sir," Agar said. "What keys are you talking of?"
"The keys to the train robbery."
Here Agar laughed. "Cor," he said. "You think if I was in on that flash pull I'd be doing a bit of soft now? You think that? That's Blocky, that is."
Harranby's face was expressionless, but he knew that Agar was right. It made no sense for a man who had participated in a twelve-thousand-pound theft to be stamping out five-pound notes a year later.
"There's no use in pretending," Harranby said. "We know that Simms has abandoned you. He doesn't care what happens to you--- why are you protecting him?"
"Never heard of 'im," Agar said.
"Lead us to him, and you'll have a fine reward for your troubles."
"Never heard of 'im," Agar said sgain. "Can't you see that plain?"
Harranby paused and stared at Agar. The man was quite calm, except for his coughing attacks. He glanced at Sharp, in the corner. It was time for a different approach.
Harranby picked up a piece of paper from his desk, and put on his spectacles. "Now, then, Mr. Agar," he said. "This is a report on your past record. It's none too good."
"Past record?" Now his puzzlement was genuine. "I've no past record."
"Indeed you do," Harranby said, running his finger along the print on the paper. "Robert Agar... hum... twenty-six years old... hmm... born Bethnal Green... hmm... Yes, here we are. Bridewell prison, six months, charge of vagrancy, in 1849---"
"That's not true!" Agar exploded.
"---and Coldbath, one year eight months, charge of robbery, in 1852---"
"Not true, I swear it, not true!"
Harranby glared at the prisoner over his glasses. "It's all here in the record, Mr. Agar. I think the judge will be interested to learn it. What do you suppose he will get, Mr. Sharp?"
"Fourteen years transportation, at least," Sharp said, in a thoughtful way.
"Umm, yes, fourteen years in Australia--- that sounds about right."
"Australia," Agar said, in a hushed voice.
"Well, I should think," Harranby said calmly. "Boating's the thing in a case like this."
Agar was silent.
Harranby knew that although "transportation" was popularly portrayed as a much-feared punishment, the criminals themselves viewed banishment to Australia with equanimity or even pleasant expectation. Many villains suspected that Australia was agreeable, and to "do the kangaroo hunts" was unquestionably preferable to a long stretch in an English prison.
Indeed, at this time Sydney, in New South Wales, was a thriving, handsome seaport of thirty thousand. In addition, it was a place where "personal history is at a discount, and good memories and inquisitive minds are particularly disliked...." And if it had its brutal side--- butchers were fond of plucking poultry while it was still alive--- it was also pleasant, with gaslit streets, elegant mansions, bejeweled women, and social pretensions of its own. A man like Agar could view transportation as, at the very least, a mixed blessing.
But Agar was greatly agitated. Plainly, he did not want to leave England. Seeing this, Harranby was encouraged. He stood.
"That will be all for now," he said. "If in the next day or so you feel that you have something you wish to tell me, just inform the guards at Newgate."
Agar was ushered out of the room. Harranby sat back at his desk. Sharp came over.
"What were you reading?" he asked.
Harranby picked up the sheet of paper from his desk. "A notification from the Buildings Committee," he said, "to the effect that carriages are no longer to be parked in the courtyard."
__________
After three days, Agar informed the Newgate guards that he would like another audience with Mr. Harranby. On November 13th, Agar told Harranby everything he knew about the robbery, in exchange for the promise of lenient treatment and the vague possibility that one of the institutions involved--- the bank or the railway or even the government itself--- might see fit to present him with a stipend from the still-outstanding offers of reward for information.
Agar did not know where the money was kept. He said that Pierce had been paying him a monthly stipend in paper currency. The criminals had previously agreed that they would divide the profits two years after the crime, in May of the following year, 1857.
Agar did, however, know the location of Pierces house. On the night of November 13th, the forces of the Yard surrounded the mansion of Edward Pierce, or John Simms, and entered it with barkers at the ready. But the owner was not at home; the frightened servants explained that he had left town to attend the P.R. spectacle the following day in Manchester.
Chapter 49
The P.R.
Technically, boxing matches in England were illegal, but they were held throughout the nineteenth century, and drew an enormous, loyal following. The necessity to elude authorities meant that a big match might be shifted from town to town at the last minute, with vast crowds of pugilistic enthusiasts and sporting bloods following all over the countryside.
The match on November 19th between Smashing Tim Revels, the Fighting Quaker, and the challenger, Neddy Singleton, was moved from Liverpool to a small town called Eagle Welles, and eventually to Barrington, outside Manchester. The fight was attended by more than twenty thousand supporters, who found the spectacle unsatisfactory.
In those days, the P.R., or prize ring, had rules that would make the event almost unrecognizable to modern eyes. Fighting was done bare-fisted by the combatants, who were careful to regulate their blows in order to avoid injury to their own hands and wrists; a man who broke his knuckles or wrists early in a contest was almost certain to lose. Rounds were of variable duration, and the fights had no prearranged length. They often went fifty or even eighty rounds, thus lasting the better part of a day. The object of the sport was for each man slowly and methodically to injure his opponent with a succession of small cuts and welts; knockouts were not sought. On the contrary, the proper fighter literally battered his opponent into submission.
Neddy Singleton was hopelessly outclassed by Smashing Tim from the start. Early in the fight, Neddy adopted the ruse of dropping to one knee whenever he was struck, in order to halt the fight and allow him to catch his breath. The spectators hissed and booed this ungentlemanly trick, but nothing could be done to prevent it, especially as the referee--- charged with giving the count of ten--- called out the numbers with a slowness that demonstrated he'd been paid off smartly by Neddy's backers. The indignation of the fans was tempered, at least, by the recognition that this chicanery had the side affect of prolonging the bloody spectacle they had all come to witness.
With thousands of spectators standing about, including every manner of coarse and brutal ruffian, the men of the Yard were at some pains to operate unobtrusively. Agar, with a revolver at his spine, pointed out Pierce and the guard Burgess from a distance. The two men were than apprehended with great adroitness: a barker was pressed to each man's side, with whispered suggestion that they come along quietly or take a bit of lead for their trouble.
Pierce greeted Agar amiably. "Turned nose, did you?" he asked with a smile.
Agar could not meet his eyes.
"Doesn't matter," Pierce said. "I've thought of this as well, you know."
"I had no choice," Agar blurted out.
"You'll lose your share," Pierce said calmly.
At the periphery of the P.R. crowd, Pierce was brought before Mr. Harranby of the Yard.
"Are you Edward Pierce, also known as John Simms?"
"I am," the man replied.
> "You are under arrest on a charge of robbery," Mr. Harranby said.
To this Pierce replied, "You'll never hold me."
"I fancy that I will, sir," Mr. Harranby said.
By nightfall on November 19th, both Pierce and Burgess were, along with Agar, in Newgate
Prison. Harranby quietly informed government officials of his success, but there was no announcement to the press, for Harranby wanted to apprehend the woman known as Miriam, and the cabby Barlow, both still at large. He also wanted to recover the money.
Chapter 50
Winkling Out
On November 22nd, Mr. Harranby interrogated Pierce for the first time. The diary of his assistant, Jonathan Sharp, records that "H. arrived in office early, most carefully attired and looking his best. Had cup of coffee instead of usual tea. Comments on how best to deal with Pierce, etc., etc. Said that he suspected nothing could be got from Pierce without softening up."
In fact, the interview was remarkably brief. At nine o'clock in the morning, Pierce was ushered into the office and asked to sit in a chair, isolated in the middle of the room. Harranby, from behind his desk, directed his first question with customary abruptness.
"Do you know the man called Barlow?"
"Yes," Pierce said.
"Where is he now?" "I don't know."
"Where is the woman called Miriam?"
"I don't know."
"Where," said Mr. Harranby, "is the money?"
"I don't know."
"It seems that there is a good deal you don't know."
"Yes," Pierce said.
Harranby appraised him for a moment. There was a short silence. "Perhaps," Harranby said, "a time in the Steel will strengthen your powers of memory."
"I doubt it," Pierce said, with no sign of anxiety. Soon after, he was taken from the room.
Alone with Sharp, Harranby said, "I shall break him, you may be sure of that." The same day, Harranby arranged for Pierce to be transferred from Newgate Prison to the House of Correction at Coldbath Fields, also called the Bastille. "The Steel" was not ordinarily a holding place for accused criminals awaiting trial. But it was a frequent ruse for police to send a man there if some information had to be "winkled out" of him before the trial.
The Steel was the most dreaded of all English prisons. In a visit in 1853, Henry Mayhew described its features. Chief among them, of course, were the cockchafers, narrow boxes in a row with "the appearance of the stalls in a public urinal," where prisoners remained for fifteen-minute intervals, treading down a wheel of twenty-four steps. A warder explained the virtues of the cockchafer in this way: "You see the men can get no firm tread like, from the steps always sinking away from under their feet and that makes it very tiring. Again the compartments are small, and the air becomes very hot, so that the heat at the end of a quarter of an hour renders it difficult to breathe."
Even less pleasant was shot-drill, an exercise so rigorous that men over forty-five were usually exempted. In this, the prisoners formed a circle with three paces separating each. At a signal, each man picked up a twenty-four-pound cannonball, carried it to his neighbor's place, dropped it, and returned to his original position where another shot awaited him. The drill went on for an hour at a time.
Most feared of all was "the crank," a drum filled with sand and turned with a crank handle. It was usually reserved as a special punishment for unruly prisoners.
The daily regimen of Coldbath Fields was so debilitating that even after a shot sentence of six months, many a man emerged "with the steel gone out of him" his body damaged, nerves shot, and resolution so enfeebled that his ability to commit further crimes was severely impaired.
As a prisoner awaiting trial, Pierce could not be made to undergo the stepper, the shot-drill, or the crank; but he was obliged to follow the rules of prison conduct, and if he broke the rule of silence, for example, he might be punished by a time at the crank. Thus one may presume that the guards frequently accused him of speaking, and he was treated to "softening up."
On December 19th, after four weeks in the Steel, Pierce was again brought to Harranby's office. Harranby had told Sharp that "now we shall see a thing or two," but the second interrogation turned out to be as brief as the first:
"Where is the man Barlow?"'
"I don't know."
"Where is the woman Miriam?"
"I don't know."
"Where is the money?"
"I don't know."
Mr. Harranby, coloring deeply, the veins standing out on his forehead, dismissed Pierce with a voice filled with rage. As Pierce was taken away, he calmly wished Mr. Harranby a pleasant Christmas.
"The cheek of the man," Harranby later recorded, "was beyond all imagining."
__________
Mr. Harranby during this period was under considerable pressure from several fronts. The bank of Huddleston & Bradford wanted its money back, and made its feelings known to Harranby through the offices of none other than the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston himself. The inquiry from "Old Pam" was in itself embarrassing, for Harranby had to admit that he had put Pierce in Coldbath Fields, and the implications of that were none too gentlemanly.
Palmerston expressed the opinion that it was "a bit irregular," but Harranby consoled himself with the thought that any Prime Minister who dyed his whiskers was hardly in a position to berate others for dissembling.
Pierce remained in Coldbath until February 6th, when he was again brought before Harranby.,
"Where is the man Barlow?"
"I don't know."
"Where is the woman Miriam?"
"I don't know."
"Where is the money?"
"In a crypt, in Saint John's Wood," Pierce said.
Harranby sat forward. "What was that?"
"It is stored," Pierce said blandly, "in a crypt in the name of John Simms, in the cemetery of Martin Lane, Saint John's Wood."
Harranby drummed his fingers on the desk. "Why have you not come forth with this information earlier?"
"I did not want to," Pierce said.
Harranby ordered Pierce taken away to Coldbath Fields once more.
__________
On February 7th, the crypt was located, and the appropriate dispensations obtained to open it. Mr. Harranby, accompanied by a representative of the bank; Mr. Henry Fowler, opened the vault at noon that day. There was no coffin in the crypt--- and neither was there any gold. Upon re-examination of the crypt door, it appeared that the lock had been recently forced.
Mr. Fowler was extremely angry at the discovery, and Mr. Harranby was extremely embarrassed. On February 8th, the following day, Pierce was returned to Harranby's office and told the news.
"Why," Pierce said, "the villains must have robbed me."
His voice and manner did riot suggest any great distress, and Harranby said so.
"Barlow," Pierce said. "I always knew he was not to be trusted."
"So you believe it was Barlow who took the money?"
"Who else could it be?"
There was a short silence. Harranby listened to the ticking of his clock; for once, it irritated him more than his subject. Indeed, his subject appeared remarkably at ease.
"Do you not care," Harranby said, "that your confederates have turned on you in this fashion?"
"It's just my ill luck," Pierce said calmly. "And yours," he added, with a slight smile.
__________
"By his collected manner and polished demeanour," Harranby wrote, "I presumed that he had fabricated still another tale to put us off the mark. But in further attempts to learn the truth I was frustrated, for on the first of March, 1857, the Times reporter learned of Pierces capture, and he could no longer conveniently be held in custody."
According to Mr. Sharp, his chief received the newspaper story of Pierce's capture "with heated imprecation and ejaculations." Harranby demanded to know how the papers had been put on to the story. The Times refused to divulge its source. A guard at Coldbath who was thought to have g
iven out the information was discharged, but nobody was ever certain one way or the other. Indeed; it was even rumored that the lead had come from Palmerston's office.
In any case, the trial of Burgess, Agar, and Pierce was set to begin on July 12, 1857.
Chapter 51
The Trial of an Empire
The trial of the three train robbers was greeted by the public with the same sensational interest it had earlier shown in the crime itself. The prosecuting officials, mindful of the attention focused upon the event, took care to heighten the drama inherent in the proceedings. Burgess, the most minor of the players, was brought to the docket of Old Bailey first. The fact that this man knew only parts of the whole story only whetted the public appetite for further details.
Agar was interrogated next, providing still more information. But Agar, like Burgess, was a distinctly limited man, and his testimony served only to focus attention on the personality of Pierce himself, whom the press referred to as "the master criminal" and "the brilliant malignant force behind the deed."
Pierce was still incarcerated in Coldbath Fields, and neither the public nor the press had seen him. There was plenty of freedom for eager reporters to conjure up wild and fanciful accounts of the man's appearance, manner, and style of living. Much of what was written during the first two weeks of July, 1857, was obviously untrue: that Pierce lived with three mistresses in the same house, and was "a human dynamo"; that he had been behind the great check swindle of 1852; that he was the illegitimate son of Napoleon I; that Pierce took cocaine and laudanum; that he had previously been married to a German countess and had murdered her in 1848, in Hamburg. There is not the least evidence that any of these stories is correct, but it is certainly true that the press whipped public interest to the point of frenzy.
Michael Crichton - The Great Train Robbery Page 24
