Roper's thin lips parted in a smile, showing neat and carefully tended teeth.
"He believes the diamond story?"
"Oh yes," said Dacre, "why shouldn't he believe it? It's paid his debts already and it's going to bring him four or five hundred pounds. Who wouldn't believe it at that price?"
"But you ain't got a diamond, as such," said Roper confidently, standing with his back to the fender and his thumbs in his lapels. "Not as such, 'ave you?"
"I'm a careful man, Ned Roper," said Dacre in a long, impatient drawl, "and I've taken the pains to equip myself with somethin' worth more than diamonds or yaller goold itself."
Roper threw back his head and laughed dutifully, but without conviction.
"Oblige me," said Verney Dacre languidly, "by not acting the fool all the time. Fix this in your mind instead."
He sat down on the sofa, leaning back almost sleepily, his long absurdly thin legs crossed, and the blond petulent face holding Roper's ferret-like gaze.
"The bullion-boxes reach London Bridge in the late afternoon. Each one is bound with iron bands, locked, and with the bullion merchant's seal on it,which can't be replaced if the box is opened. The station master and his constables weigh the boxes and see them to the guard's van. In the van is a Chubb's safe, which no tool that you and I can think of would ever open. It has two locks. The station master has one key and the railway police the other, because it seems they can't even trust each other. The bullion-boxes go in, say a ton and a quarter of gold, and the safe is locked. The guard stays with it to Folkestone. Then they take it out and put it under a police guard on the pier until it goes on the boat for Boulogne. They have a double guard on the paddle-boat, French and English, and a double guard from Boulogne to Paris."
"It's not on!" said Roper indignantly. "Even if you square Cazamian, you can't open the safe or the boxes."
"Wait a bit, Ned Roper," said Dacre sofdy, "it's steeper than that. Just in case some dishonest fellow could open the safe and the boxes, and replace the seals and lock the safe again, they weigh the bullion every so often to make sure that, even if they can't see it, it's still there."
"Then the jig's up," said Roper, his respect for Dacre no longer obsequiously paraded.
"No, old fellow," said Dacre more softly still, "that's just what it ain't. In the first place, they think everything's so safe that they aren't expecting trouble. And that's important."
"And in the second?"
"In the second place, how do they weigh the bullion on the journey? You can't put a ton and a quarter of gold and an iron safe on to a pair of scales as if it was a pound of flour. They must weigh the bullion-boxes themselves, and to do that they must be able to get them out of the safe. In other words, there's another set of keys on the way, and I'll wager it's at Folkestone! "
"Well then I" said Roper, as though his enthusiasm had never faltered.
"Well then," said Dacre, "being as it's nearly midsummer and London seems such a deuced tiresome place, I shall go to Folkestone for a day or two. You will come when I invite you, if I invite you."
"Whatcher mean?" asked Roper, frowning.
"What I mean, my dear fellow, is Sergeant Verity of 'A' Division."
"Oh!" said Roper, relieved. "That stupid bugger! I reckon we taught him a prime lesson! He needed scarin' off. He was getting wise to the McCaffery dodge. You seen the bloody way he was tackling Croaker about it. He knew about that squeak McCaffery, and that little bitch Jolie! "
Dacre paused for a moment before answering.
"I fancy, Ned Roper, that you are a stupider bugger than Verity will ever be. Now, I promise you, I hate Verity and his kind a great deal more than you will ever do. A fat, canting prig! But I know his type. The army's full of Verity and his sort. The more you hit him, the surer he'll come back. The Rhoosians couldn't stop him at Inkerman and nor will you. But I will. I have a plan for Verity that will make the beating you gave him seem like an act of charity by comparison."
"All right," said Roper ungraciously.
Dacre got up and walked round the table, picking up a blue china snuff box and examining it, as if trying to judge its value. Then he looked up at Roper and his eyes narrowed.
"It's very far from all right. Wherever you go from now on, Verity is likely to go too. Wherever the two girls go, he may go with 'em. They're both to be got out of circulation. As for you, watch for Verity. If you see him or any of his sort, take them round the town and then go to ground. They know you, Ned Roper, but I shall take very good care they don't know me."
"Someone must have known you were kicked out of your commission. They knew you thieved ..."
"I sold out!" said Dacre sharply. "And there is no court-martial conviction recorded against me. Now, you either carry out my instructions, or the whole thing is off!"
Roper smiled and shrugged his agreement.
"What about the two girls?"
"There's something more important than that," said Dacre impatiently: "I want the use of the little bedroom at the back."
Roper led him across the landing and lit the gas in the tiny room. There was a single bed, a washstand with a cracked bowl, a jug of tepid water, and a slop basin. From his pocket, Dacre took a little box and the key which Cazamian had given him. The top of the washstand was an ideal surface for working on. Inside the box was a lump of wax, greyish-green and softened to the consistency of putty. Dacre laid it on the marble surface and pressed the length of the key deeply into it, making a second impression of the other side of the key. One migh be enough, but there was no harm in having another. From another pocket, he took his cigar case, empty now, and laid the two wax impressions carefully inside it.
Roper saw him washing his hands and went in just as Dacre was tipping the water into the slop basin. Dacre handed him the key.
"Give that back to Cazamian tomorrow."
"Why give it back?" Roper demanded.
"Do as I say."
Roper grinned and shrugged again. "And what about the two doxies?"
"Ah!" said Dacre, relaxing a little. "I was coming to that. Where are they?"
Roper led the way down to the first-floor landing, where a tall majolica vase stood on a corner pedestal. He pushed open the door of the bedroom which cost the clients an extra guinea. Ellen Jacoby, regal in her black silk and feathers, was standing proudly with her hands on her hips. She was looking down at Jolie who knelt before her in the absurd but yet intriguing jockey costume. The dark-haired girl was kneeling with head lowered and haunches in the air as she renewed the stitching at the hem of a pleat in Ellen's dress. The white tights displayed the outlines of her slender thighs and rounded hips as starkly as if she had been naked.
Dacre lounged in the open doorway, critically examining the girl as she unwittingly presented herself to him. He moved slightly, to view her from a different angle, his eyes running dispassionately over her body. He looked at the tall blonde, and then back to her companion again. Ellen glanced up and saw him surveying her willing seamstress. She muttered something to Jolie and the girl sat back on her heels, waiting defiantly. Dacre waited a while longer. She glanced back at him with a glitter of her dark little eyes with their rather Turkoman slant. He withdrew to the landing and spoke to Roper.
"The tall one in the black dress. I'll make the arrangements about her. She shall come with me now, and Verity will never find her."
"No, Mr Dacre," said Roper softly, "that you will not. Whatever else you want, you shall have. But Ellen Jacoby must stay with me. She'll be safe, I promise you. They won't find her."
Dacre laughed.
"You ain't married her, old fellow?" "No," said Roper uncertainly.
"Dammit man! Then you've fathered a child on her! Why not say so?"
"Eight months since," said Roper quietly, "a boy."
"Say no more, old fellow. I'll put the other one out of harm's way. Your woman will be safer with you. What's the other little minx like?"
"Jolie?" said Roper. "Bit of temper
ament. Ain't been properly broken to the saddle yet!"
The two men laughed.
"All right," said Dacre, "let's see what the cavalry can do! "
"She's hot enough," said Roper. "Handle her right, and she'll be at you like a monkey up a stick."
Then Roper went and spoke to the two girls. Dacre watched from the doorway, while Jolie received her orders without any reaction beyond an enigmatic glance, and this time she submitted while Dacre's eyes ran over her, as they might have done over a filly at Tattersall's. It was little more than an hour later, when the girl and her box were accompanied by Verney Dacre to the opulent seclusion of his apartments in Albemarle Street.
7
"It isn't right, Mr Verity, and you know it," said Sergeant Samson.
He walked the next three hundred yards in great thought and then added,
"It's more than not right. It isn't natural."
"Yes," said Verity absent-mindedly, "it isn't."
They strode in perfect step towards the vaulted glass roof of the Great Western terminus at Paddington, there to await the unlikely arrival of Albert Groat, the mad rapist of Gloucester, reported to be making for the anonymity of the great metropolitan wen.
"Look," said Samson, "Sealskin Kite was burgled. Crabstick of "T" division swears he got it from one of his men who's been pleasuring the cook. Went through the house like the charge of the Light Cavalry at Balaclava. Broke the ornaments. Smashed up the desk. Stole some little things."
"What for?" asked Verity.
"Exactly." Samson adjusted his tall hat a little and strode onwards, Verity breathing heavily beside him. "An amateur. It ain't anyone who knows Kite, or knows the things he'll do to a man who's caught at that game."
"That's a fact," said Verity, gasping a little at the pace.
"And Kite, of course, ain't come to the police office, as he means to take his man himself." "So he does," said Verity abruptly.
"Obliging of him, no doubt," said Samson. "And then there's Ned Roper, who everyone would like to see working the treadmill and eating oats. And what does he do? Comes to Inspector Croaker, to tell him of the state he found you in, along the Haymarket that night, and begs Mr Croaker to call upon his services as a witness at any time that your assailant may be apprehended."
"I told Mr Croaker," said Verity coldly, "I fell up the stairs."
"Down the stairs," said Samson reproachfully. "It was down the stairs last time."
They reached the great glass and iron canopy, under which the steam and smoke gathered in a cloudy atmosphere of its own, and there they stood, conspicuous as if they had been wearing uniform, among the clatter of wagons and the snort of engines.
"But you can't deny there is something very peculiar about the behaviour of the criminal element just at present," said Samson gravely. "Unnatural. Like fearful prodigies foretelling some dire event." It was a phrase he had gathered from a Hoxton melodrama at the Britannia and had now made his own.
"I'll tell you what, though, Mr Samson," said Verity softly, "there are men in this city who believe themselves secure in their wickedness. But I will have them yet in a sure and inescapable snare."
Samson looked at him with respect, thinking that the fiery preaching of Verity's Wesleyan boyhood in Cornwall might have taught the Hoxton melodramas a trick or two. And then Samson and Verity waited dutifully until relieved from their watch. By which time, Albert Groat, who had never contemplated leaving his native haunts, had "coopered" a girl on a field-path near the Badminton estate.
8
Union Bank,
4, Pall Mall East,
London.
5th June 1857
Sir,
In accordance with your instructions to us of the 2nd. instant, we have today despatched 300I. in specie per South Eastern Railway Company to await your collection from the Railway Office at Folkestone Harbour Pier. An early acknowledgement of receipt will oblige.
I have the honour to remain, sir, Your obedient servant,
Charles London Estcourt, Secretary, Union Bank.
To
Lieutenant Verney Dacre, 19th Dragoon Guards, The Grand Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone.
Verney Dacre folded the sheet of paper into his notecase and smiled almost imperceptibly. It was, of course, entirely safe to use his rank and former regiment for several years to come. The previous September, the 19th Dragoons had been marched on board two superannuated East India sailing vessels at Gravesend for the slow route round the Cape to Calcutta. The latest news of the native rebellion in India suggested that one troop had been cut to bits when the mutineers sacked Lucknow, while most of another squadron was annihilated as the Sepoys overran Cawnpore. If Dacre laid claim to a continuing and honourable connection with the regiment, he was unlikely to find anyone still in England to contradict him.
He turned his eyes upon the girl beside him, watching the glimmer of cheap stones in her ear-rings and the energy of her brown, fine-boned hands as she clenched the reins in her little fists. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion and exhilaration as she chopped with her slender switch at the quarters of the off-horse of the carriage pair.
"There ain't no call to destroy them," said Dacre peevishly. "They may be only dumb brutes, but the livery stables charge the devil for them in season. Let the reins go a bit, and they'll pull easier."
The harness brass and the glossy backs of the yearlings flashed in the bright marine sunlight to the accompanying rumble of wheels and clinking of bridles. On its india-rubber bearings the fairy shape of the swan's-neck Pilentum seemed to roll in air above the glittering spokes of its wheels. Top-hatted or crinolined, the strollers on the parade turned to admire the elegant little carriage with its ultramarine lines and hood, its panels an airy imitation of canework in white and amber paint. A few noticed the languid hussar-like figure of Verney Dacre, with his faded fairness, and his long, narrow blue eyes expressing total indifference to all around him. He wore his right arm in a black silk sling, as though it had been broken. It was not, but a small part of his scheme required that it should seem so. He judged it best, therefore, to be seen being driven on the parade by Jolie, the golden tan of her skin shaded by the blue hood of the carriage and by the pink straw bonnet, which matched the skirts she had gathered tightly round her legs.
"This is a great bore," he said at length. "There is nothing else to be seen here."
"I should like to go on, though," said the girl.
"I daresay you should. Nevertheless, have the goodness to turn back to the hotel."
The water had ebbed from the tidal harbour where the railway ran out along the pier. Several men in high boots scooped and shovelled their way along an empty channel between shining grey flanks of mud, a runnel dug out twice a day so that the keel of the Boulogne steamer might clear the sea bed before full tide. A group of stranded fishing-smacks and several colliers, their tall stacks and red paddle-wheels idle, lay like dead sea-monsters among the green slime and weed of the harbour stones. The halyard of the harbour flagstaff hung limp and the little wooden lighthouse seemed to dwindle to a toy in the morning heat. Away from the sea, the laughter of a wedding party at an open window of the Royal George overlaid the prolonged dirge of a minstrel band. An infinite perspective of posters announcing Cooke's Imperial Circus, with ventriloquist, Indian jugglers, and infant phenomenon, faded in a bright shimmering distance.
Jolie still brooded on Dacre's order to turn the carriage back. Her eyes flicked to one side, as though she was half looking at him.
"I'm not your bloody slave girl," she said, blinking fiercely, "though you may think so."
"Ain't you, though?" said Dacre, half-amused.
"Not yours, nor Ned Roper's. I know McCaffery was up to some dodge of Roper's. Half of what I know could put Ned Roper in quod."
Dacre laughed, and dropped hjs half-smoked cigar carefully on to the road.
"If you suppose I care a damn for that," he said softly, "you are most stupendously mistaken."
&
nbsp; "Am I?" There was a rising slyness in her voice, but this only reassured him. He shifted against the cushions a little, in order to watch her as he spoke.
"Swearing a fellow's life away, even a simpleton like McCaffery, is an uncommonly serious business, my love. It's quite the best thing that one of us should protect you."
She blew a derisive, farting sound with her tongue.
"That for your protection! " she said bravely.
Dacre appeared to look sad.
"I don't care to see a girl hang," he said, "that's all. I daresay they'd put Ned Roper to tread the cock-chafer for a year or two, but they'd fly a black, flag for you at Newgate. Over the water to Charley you'd dance, my girl, at eight sharp. It's a long polka, too. None of the poor doxies ever has the tin left to bribe Jack Ketch to pull on their legs and end it smartly."
He watched her body grow tense and felt, for the first time in their four days' acquaintance, a desire for her, a bizarre lust to enjoy her while she was still trembling with the fear of what he had described.
"I only did what Ned Roper made me," she said, half indignant and half pleading.
Dacre yawned with monumental indifference.
"Did y' now? Oblige me by not grippin' those reins like a madwoman. These two nags may be only park hacks in summer and cover hacks in winter, but they don't need their heads pulled clean off."
In their first hours together, he had concluded that fright was beneficial to her. Indeed, she herself had almost seemed to invite it by several half-hearted little threats of rebellion. Dacre had, of course, known girls who appeared to find a strange reassurance in the threats or the blows which their protectors used upon them. Why that should be so, he could not tell, and cared even less. This doxy, according to Roper, had been an undertaker's mute as a child, sleeping on coffin lids in the carpenter's shed, and eating such scraps as might have been given to the shop cat. Even if fear failed to subdue her, her greed for possessions after a childhood of such poverty made her an absurdly easy mark for a man as rich as Dacre.
SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman Page 7
