SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman

by Francis Selwyn

  He edged Cazamian towards the door and held it open.

  "I mean it," said Cazamian sincerely, "I'm your man, whatever the jig may be."

  "Obliged, I'm sure," said Dacre. "But one piece of advice, my dear chap. If you're going to speculate again, horses is a deuced long chance. Getting down to the pasties on the old green baize is more the style. Especially if you've got a good set of fingers for the cards."

  It had to come next, but it was the only part of the whole scheme which left Dacre's mouth dry with fear. He rang for his servant and entrusted the beagle to him, to be returned to the house in Albemarle Street. Then, pushing his way through the noisy, lurching crowd in Cremorne Gardens, he called a cab off the rank in Cheyne Walk.

  "Sealskin" Kite lived near Hammersmith Mall, in the new "Stock Exchange suburb" which ran north to Shepherds Bush, and from which professional men could now travel leisurely to the City by rail. Kite's was one of the detached villas, large enough to contain a wife, several children, a governess, a parlourmaid, a kitchenmaid, and a cook. Both the parlourmaid and the governess were required to provide certain discreet services for the pleasure of their employer.

  Alone among his neighbours, Kite drew his income from a source other than the Exchange, or the Temple, or rack rent streets east of St Paul's and south of Waterloo. The turf had made Kite a rich man—so rich that now he had men who threatened and maimed and even killed on his behalf without even knowing his name. Kite himself was a merchant banker of the underworld, who could turn goods into gold, gold into notes of credit, and notes of credit into goods, bonds, or stock, with flawless dexterity and impunity. It was more than five years since Kite had even seen a racecourse. When he read of a stable-boy beaten half to death for refusing to wound a likely winner, or an awkward bookmaker garotted and robbed, he shook his head and wondered as emphatically as his neighbours what the world was coming to.

  Kite never begrudged the cost to the parish rates of Poor Law institutions. He subscribed for the relief of "distressed trades" and dropped half a crown into the collection plate of a respectable chapel every Sunday morning. It was no hypocrisy on his part. Kite felt a genuine warmth of heart when helping the deserving poor. For the undeserving poor, and most of all for the petty pilferer and the mean sneak-thief, Kite harboured a disgust that frequently became an irrational fury. He would willingly raise the honest man who had fallen on hard times, and would as willingly have throttled with his own hands a thief who took the humblest man's cherished trinkets. Kite was extremely dangerous, but he was necessary to Dacre's scheme.

  Dacre knew what must be done but, for all that, he still had half a mind to turn back as he walked past the railings of the spacious houses. The palms of his white, bony hands sweated and his heart seemed to be beating in his throat. To do what must be done, while facing the penalties of the law, was bad enough. To do it in the knowledge of what Kite or Kite's bullies would do if they caught him, left him almost sick with fright.

  In a patch of deep shadow by the railings he unfastened his cloak. At least Kite himself would not be in the house. Not on Derby Night. There were several heavy objects in the lining of the cloak. Dacre chose a screwdriver, two short lengths of chain, and four metal clamps. He screwed two clamps to adjacent railings, a length of stout chain held taut between them. Reaching up, he repeated the operation at a higher point, so that the six feet of sharp-topped railings now had "stirrups" at two-foot intervals.

  Dacre took off his cloak, rolled it up and tied it. Then he tossed it cautiously over the railings, where it fell with a muffled impact on the grass. Nothing for it now, the job was on. It took him one stride on to the low wall, two up the railings, two down the other side, and a jump to the grass. He listened carefully, but there was no sound of alarm.

  Being a perfectionist, he would have liked to remove the stirrups so that no passing policeman should catch a glimpse of them, and replace them on his way out. But it was dark by the railings, and he judged that it was worth leaving them in position in order to guarantee a quick retreat. The police were not his most feared enemies on this occasion. He stripped off his bottle-green evening coat, and slipped a black Balaclava helmet and mask over his features. He drew from the cloak a roll of canvas containing the tools of his trade. Folding the coat and cloak, he left them together under a laurel bush.

  The house seemed to be in total darkness as he crossed the lawn, until he saw a narrow strip of light between the curtains of a ground-floor room at the back. The front then. Not what he would have preferred, but at least it was some little distance from the road.

  He chose a window whose curtains were open. The interior was dark and, presumably, unoccupied. It looked like the drawing-room. The first tool from the canvas wallet was an eight-inch iron bar with right-angled projections, pointing opposite ways, at either end. Gently, he eased one projection between the window frame and its wooden surround. The wood squealed and splintered a little as he gradually increased the leverage. Then there was a sharp crack. Dacre paused, listened, repeated the process on the other side of the frame, and then twice more at a higher level. The frame was now loose enough to be prised outwards by half an inch and the sash handle-pushed back, with a chisel blade. So much for the "New Patent Hermetic Window Fastener." He slid the window up, holding it above himself while he stepped over the sill, and then lowered it without a sound.

  Dacre was standing in the drawing-room, certainly not where a man like Kite would keep his private papers and dearest possessions. He tried the handle of the door to the hall and was surprised to find it locked. Standing there with his hand sweating on the china handle, Dacre told himself that "Sealskin" Kite was too careful a man by half. From the canvas wallet came an instrument with a handle like a key, but ending in a fine metal hook. For a minute or two he tried all the usual positions and movements with it in the lock, listening hard all the time. The lock showed not a sign of yielding. In the warmth of summer, Dacre was trembling with cold. He chose a stronger piece, a slender metal tube with carefully crenellated prongs at either end. This time there was more leverage. He found the place, turned the skeleton key gently, and eased the lock back.

  For some reason, they had left the hallway in darkness, but there was a distant light shining through a glass door, and this showed him the stairs. He could hear voices, at least two women and a man. One of Kite's retainers, no doubt. Not a stair creaked as he reached the first floor of the house. There was darkness everywhere, except that the long landing was faintly illuminated by light shining upwards through a back staircase. There was not a sound of breathing, the Kite children were presumably beyond the next, narrower, flight of stairs.

  Dacre guessed that the main front room on this floor would be Kite's "study," for want of a better term. The door looked solid enough. He tapped lightly on one of the panels. The deadness of the sound was more than the deadness of wood. From the canvas wallet, he took a wooden tube containing an awl, so sharp that it could only be carried in a container. It bored through the panel of the door like a fork going through cheese. Then, after an inch or so, it stopped.

  Dacre tried once more, with the same result. The panels of the door had been reinforced by the new insurance fad of sheet metal on the inside. This was Kite's room. To have used the old lag's method of a knife on a large compass arm to cut a circular hole, would have been useless. Nor was this a lock to be picked. If the job could be done at all, it must be done by the cracksman's masterpiece, the jack-in-the-box.

  Dacre assembled it quickly. A horizontal stock of solid brass mounted on a horizontal iron cylinder below. Dacre turned the sharp screw which ran through the cylinder so that it bit into the wood of the door, just below the lock, and held the brass stock level with the keyhole. Through the barrel of the heavy stock ran a powerful screw whose point could be turned into the lock. It had a spherical head, drilled through to take a lever on which maximum pressure could be brought.

  Dacre inserted the lever and began to wind the heavy b
rass screw into the keyhole. The jack-in-the-box, properly used, would bring a pressure of three tons against the mechanism of an ordinary lock, and Dacre could feel the tension building up. From below he heard a woman's laugh, and then a man's. One more turn of the lever. There was a rending sound, far greater than the snapping of a lock, and the door burst open under the force of the instrument. Dacre cursed to himself, and listened. The voices below him were silent. However, he moved noiselessly into the room, still alert for footsteps, and went quickly to work.

  Closing the forced door behind him, he lit a candle. In the centre of the room was what he was looking for, an escritoire in the bowed shape of a Carlton House table. Two miniatures of a child's face, no doubt one of Kite's dead, had been placed in the centre of it on ornamental stands of chased silver. Dacre picked up the first stand, complete with its miniature, and dropped it into a bag. He took the second miniature from its stand, added the stand to his bag, and then, putting the little picture under his heel, he ground it to fragments. With a fine chisel, he burst open the drawers of the writing-desk, tipping papers in a pile on the floor. From one of the drawers he took what looked like a diamond necklace but would, almost certainly, prove to be paste. However, it had no doubt belonged to one of Kite's past loves and, as such, would prove useful. He added it to his bag. Then, for good measure, he selected a bundle of letters from the papers on the floor and took those as well.

  A dog barked, outside the house, but not very far from it. Dacre folded the canvas wallet away and moved back to the landing, holding the proceeds of the theft. As he stepped gently down the stairs and across the hallway, he could hear the man and woman moving about at the back of the house. There was activity in front of the house as well, by the gateway in the iron railings. In the darkness, Dacre entered the drawing-room, gently raised the forced window, and stepped on to the path outside. Two men were walking slowly up to the house from the double iron gate, and the wheels of a cab rattled away into the distance towards Holland Park.

  There was a bush between Dacre and the two men. As soon as they had passed it and were waiting for the front door to be opened to them, he sprinted over the soft turf towards the tall railings. The dog was barking again and he sensed that someone had let it loose. Without stopping to look, he retrieved his coat and cloak, stripped off the mask and Balaclava helmet, pitched the garments over the railings, and put his foot in the chain stirrup to follow. There was even time to remove the two stirrups before he walked, slowly and with his heart-beat gradually quietening again, towards the twopenny bus which ran between Hammersmith and Regent Circus.

  6

  It had been the most successful night of all behind the securely barred door and heavily curtained windows in Langham Place. Ellen Jacoby had presided over the customers, the girls, and the cash with all the aplomb of an experienced madame. Ned Roper felt an almost paternal pride in the girl.

  Four or five Oxford men, fresh from the Epsom course, had stumbled noisily in and joined the dancing in the large drawing-room downstairs. Undergraduates they might be, but Roper doubted that they would ever graduate in anything but the Racing Calendar or Bell's Life in London. There had also been several clubmen in evening clothes, from White's, Boodle's, or the Guards'. There was even an elderly captain of a hussar regiment in full dress uniform, which he had been wearing at a regimental dinner, complete with medals bearing the Alma and Inkerman clasps.

  Tyler and Coggin stood guard just inside the door to deter unwanted visitors. In their makeshift footmen's livery, they still gave the appearance of muscle-bound coal-heavers. Even when a customer wanted to leave, Tyler or Coggin had to open the stout front door with a key on the inside. The door had no catch, so that it was equally effective for keeping intruders out and keeping unwilling girls in.

  In a little parlour just to one side of the doorway, Ellen Jacoby, in black silk and peacock feathers, kept the desk and the cash-box. Beyond her, beckoning the customers forward, was Jolie, wearing a fancy dress which Ned Roper thought was the most stunning Derby Night idea since Eclipse first won the race. Her black hair was tucked up under a jockey cap, she wore a close-buttoned green jacket to her waist, and a pair of close fitting white breeches down to her black boots. Carrying a light crop, she led each arrival to the dancing, jostling crowd in the smoke-filled drawing-room. Roper watched and grinned. He detected from the girl's impatient little movements that there was hardly one of the men whose white-gloved hands did not come into sharp contact with her trimly clad body.

  In a bedlam of waltzes and polkas, the other girls of the house, plump, blonde Sarah; Rebecca, the tall graceful brunette; Charlotte, the green-eyed redhead; Ebony, the copper-skinned mulatto, and several more, danced with their partners. The girls' red or blue dresses were carefully arranged to show their breasts to the nipples and their legs well above the knee. At intervals, one of them would come running out to Ellen, followed by her client. A second, much larger sum of money than the entrance fee would change hands, and the girl would lead the way upstairs.

  There had been fourteen that night, at several guineas a time, for they all paid for one or other of the best rooms, which cost a guinea extra. In Ned Roper's opinion, it was worth that guinea just to see the best room. The pink silk hangings of the bed matched the shades of the gas lamps, the gilded brackets of the lamps themselves were in the shape of naked girls holding a phallic torch. Then there were the gilt-framed mirrors and pier glasses, arranged so that the man might admire the scene on the bed from almost any angle. There were pastels on the walls, in the style of Fragonard and the courtly painters of the eighteenth century, depicting plump, fair-skinned girls sprawling on pink or pale blue cushions as they submitted coquettishly to every variety of the act of love. Oh yes, thought Roper, it was worth a guinea of any gentleman's money. When Lieutenant Verney Dacre set a man up in business, he did it in the proper style.

  The hussar captain, far gone in drink before ever he arrived in Langham Place, had parted with almost twenty sovereigns for wine and girls before the evening was over. Finally, possessed by some fantasy of being the tyrannical owner of a cotton plantation, he had insisted on taking Ebony to the upstairs drawing-room. Ellen had gone too, just to ensure that the charade remained a charade. The room had been carefully sound-proofed, so that nothing which happened there could be heard, even on the landing outside. Ebony, whose skin was closer to the colour of bronze than ebony, undressed and bent over a pair of folding steps, while Ellen secured her wrists and ankles. Both girls were giggling, knowing that the elderly captain of hussars was far too drunk to offer a real threat of violence. He picked up the birch-rod, which lay on the sofa, and paced about the room.

  Then, after giving Ebony several half-hearted strokes with it across her bottom, he sat down heavily and complained of his stomach. But best of all, thought Roper, the poor gull was so overcome with remorse at having hurt the girl, for Ebony had suppressed her giggles and obliged him with some truly operatic shrieks, that he had pressed five more sovereigns into Ellen Jacoby's hands, to be passed on to Ebony as a consolation for her injuries. Much hope of that, as Ellen remarked later.

  Before two o'clock in the morning, the festivities were over and Roper was able to sit in Ellen's little parlour and count the results of the evening's work. More than fifty sovereigns, and a cheque on Drummond's Bank for ten guineas. Even allowing for the "rent" to Verney Dacre, it was a fortune for one night's work. But just to be on the safe side, Roper took charge of the cheque. That should be his and his alone. Less than two years before, Ned Roper had been so poor that he had pledged his boots for one good meal. That should never happen again.

  He was still sitting and contemplating his good prospects in the high-class "doxy" trade, and the glass of hock was growing -warm in his hand, when he heard a cabman's cry outside; jingling harness and iron-rimmed wheels fell silent as the cab stopped. A murmur of voices, footsteps on the pavement in Portland Place, and then two sharp knocks on the heavy door, blows which
echoed through die silent house as if it had been a tomb.

  Roper had a mirror fixed in the parlour, rather on the slant, so that by pulling back the edge of the heavy curtain he could see the reflection of whoever might be outside the door. It was a simple precaution. He recognised the tall, slender figure of Verney Dacre in top hat, evening cloak, and holding a silver-topped cane. Roper took a key from the drawer of the desk, since the door would not open from the inside without one, and went out into the hallway as Dacre knocked again.

  "Well, Mr Dacre!" said Roper with breezy insincerity, "rare pleasure and no mistake! "

  "I ain't got time for that, Ned Roper," said Dacre briskly, handing his hat and cane to Roper as he would have done to a servant. "The job's put up and it's got to be slippy."

  Roper nodded at the stairs.

  "Come up. The drawing-room's free."

  When they were alone in the sound-proof room, Roper turned to his acquaintance.

  "So it's a runner, then?"

  Dacre nodded.

  "You saw Cazamian?" Roper inquired.

  "I did. He's a safe one. I have a key, which Cazamian says will open the door of the Folkestone railway office. More to the purpose I have a note which says that he stole the key. Your Mr Cazamian is an employee of the South Eastern Railway Company and as such there is a very special and a very harsh law applying to him. If that note of his were to reach the wrong hands, Mr Cazamian would be working off a stretch in Botany Bay for the next fourteen years. See that you tell him, Ned Roper, and then see he don't forget it."

  "He's our man, then," said Roper. "He don't know your name, however?"

  "No," said Dacre contemptuously, "he swallowed the tale about the diamond, but it's part of the game that he doesn't know me."