English terriers strained at their leather collars, as if tried beyond endurance by the faint, sour smells from the room above. Well apart from the general scrimmage, a great white bulldog with a head as round and smooth as a clenched boxing-glove slept and snorted on an old hall chair in total indifference.
The aproned proprietor of the Hope and Anchor bawled himself red in the face above the shouted conversations of the fanciers.
"Orders upstairs, gemmen, if you please. Leave the bar clear, gents, if you please."
Verney Dacre, tall and sharp, settled his steep silk hat more firmly on his head and folded his white gloves into his left hand. Fortified by brown sherry and game pie, he surveyed the heads of the crowd with eyes devoid of anxiety or self-consciousness. There was no sign of Ned Roper or Ellen.
"I'll be shot if I can see our friends, old girl," he said, as though hardly bothering to address the words to Jolie. "I shall be in the very deuce of a way with 'em if they ain't shown up."
Her almond eyes flickered in brief understanding, and then she pressed her slender, straight-boned young figure closer to his coat-tails as he pushed his way through the slow-moving press of men. At the foot of the stairs, he dropped their shillings into the hand of the boy stationed there- to take the money. Then, as he began to climb, he reached behind him and took the girl's hand, so that she was literally in tow.
The dingy yellow paper of the upstairs room was hung with discoloured prints of prize fighters from Corinthian Tom to Bendigo, and every hero of the turf from Eclipse to Running Rein. Several heads of dogs, grotesquely distorted by the taxidermist's art, were mounted in square glass boxes above the fireplace. But the great attraction was in the centre of the room, where the first spectators were pressing against the waist-high wooden walls of a white-painted oval arena. This was the pit, about six feet in length and garishly lit by a branched gas-lamp, which hissed and sputtered in a harsh brilliance immediately above it.
"You don't see them?" said Dacre peevishly, half turning to the girl.
"See them?" she whined irritably. "You might as soon see your grandmother!"
They could hardly hear one another for the squalling and barking of the dogs. The fierce heat of the gas in the shuttered room intensified the sweet scent of hot gin, and the earthy vapour of the sewer which rose from the wooden pit. At Dacre's elbow, a butcher's boy was forcing a peppermint rinse into the mouth of a reluctant puppy to prevent infection if the animal should be bitten on the lips or gums.
Then Dacre saw Ned Roper standing in earnest conversation with Ellen on the far side of the pit. At that moment Roper looked up and stared straight at him without giving the least sign of recognition. Dacre brushed perspiration from his forehead with the edge of his hand and moved cautiously through the crowd, approaching Roper from the back. He was not ten feet away, when Roper swung round suddenly, with the smile of a ferret, and spoke in a loud and swaggering greeting. His words were not addressed to Verney Dacre but to a shorter, fatter man whose shoulder was so close that Dacre could have touched him, but who had appeared to be positioned so that Ned Roper would not have seen him.
"Why, Mr Verity!" said Roper with his sharp neat smile, "you a ratting man? My dear Mr Verity!"
Verney Dacre knew that on the brink of disaster sudden stillness can be as dangerous as sudden movement. He moved with casual ease, turning so that his body was positioned between the plump, dark-haired man and Jolie. Only much later did he feel the cold shock of realising how, by never having seen Verity before, he would have betrayed himself but for Roper's well-timed outburst. For the moment, he fixed his eyes on Jolie and nodded at the doorway, willing her not to raise her voice in a shrill, familiar whine. With his hands on her shoulders, he drove her roughly before him, against the pressure of the crowd coming up the stairs. At the bottom of the flight she turned to face him, a faint flush under the gold tan of her cheeks at being handled in this manner.
"What's this bloody game?"
"It's no game, my girl," said Dacre softly, "there's a screw loose. Ned Roper's got that bastard Verity with him. If Verity sees you with me, then he knows the score and the whole scheme is no bono."
"You been hit a bit heavy, ain't you?" she said with pert satisfaction. "That fool Verity got one over on you!"
Verney Dacre denied himself the inexpressible luxury of feeling the back of his hand smacking her lips against her teeth.
"You stupid little whore," he said softly, "it's your face and Roper's they know at the police office, not mine. Go back to the cab and wait until I come."
"I ain't come here for that," she wailed, "not to sit all night in the cab."
"Then by God you'll sit in a lock-up until they take you before the justices," said Dacre, "you poor fool! It's your neck that's got a rope round it for McCaffery."
She was lost, the fine-boned mask of her oriental beauty stunned with dismay. Behind her, the proprietor of the Hope and Anchor was bawling up the stairway.
"Put up the shutters and light up the pit!"
"Wait in the cab!" said Dacre savagely, and the girl scuttled away like a frightened mouse.
In the upstairs parlour, the "Captain" had taken his chair and the first swarm of dark brown sewer rats slithered from the upturned wire cages into the arena, like a shoal of leaves tipped from a bag. With wet noses twitching, the creatures settled down to wash themselves, pausing from time to time to sniff at their unfamiliar surroundings. Roper, his hat tilted knowingly and his thumbs hooked in his lapels, acted with all the self-confidence of an habitue of the place.
"Now, Cap'an," he shouted to the man in the raised chair, "when is this 'ere match a-coming off?"
"Be easy, gentlemen," said the frock-coated umpire, "the boy's on the stairs with the dog."
A butcher's lad pushed his way round the pit, holding a bull terrier in his arms. The animal wrestled against his grip, maddened by the scent of rats in the arena.
"Lay 'old a little closer up to the 'ead," said a stout, florid woman, "else 'e'll turn and nip yer." She and her shopman stood with several other couples on two or three table-tops for a better view of the killing.
Verney Dacre moved slowly towards Ellen's back, past the troopers of the Horse Artillery in their unbuttoned tunics, and the barrack prostitutes whispering their familiar terms of business to a pair of pock-marked tradesmen's apprentices. He positioned himself where he might view Sergeant Verity, whom Ellen confronted like a familiar acquaintance.
"Me 'n Roper goes a lot to the Queen's Head in the Hay-market," she remarked confidentially. "It's the house as Jemmy Shaw keeps. He has some prime dogs there! Oh, my eye, ain't they handsome, though! Gentlemen meets there to show off their dogs. You mean to say you never been?"
"No, miss," said Verity in an ominous tone, "never been."
Dacre watched the tall girl admiringly. The pale oval of her face with its wide blue eyes, high cheekbones, straight nose and chin, was marred only by her wilful little mouth. With her blonde hair worn loose to make her appear younger, she looked like a delinquent child with a woman's body. She cooed derisively at the perspiring and scarlet-cheeked sergeant.
"Oh! You should go to Jemmy Shaw's Mr Verity! Shouldn't he, Roper? I mean, Mr Verity being so interested in dogs and ratting."
Roper half turned from the wooden pit, the quick ferret-smile flickering again under pale ginger moustaches.
"I fancy Sergeant Verity knows the Haymarket quite as well as you, Miss Ellen. Why, I expect he's had one or two scrapes that way as he never expected."
Ellen smoothed her dress with one hand and then began to stroke her long fair hair, as though this self-caressing gave her physical satisfaction.
"I don't think Mr Verity was quite himself that night," she said softly. "Why, he even wanted to send me to Mr Miles's house of sorrow.
Verity regarded the pair of them, goggle-eyed. His cheeks were flushed the colour of ripe plums, and his jowls trembled with the outrage of it all.
"Be damned to you
Roper," he said, barking out the words as though they might otherwise choke him. "Be damned to you for a brawling, boasting, ill-conditioned little reptile!"
"Save it all," said Roper coldly, turning to watch the ratting again. "Take your licking and don't squeal. You ain't the first jack that's been taught a trick, nor you won't be the last!"
Sergeant Verity's blunt, heavy head with its black hair plastered flat over the scalp for neatness, thrust itself forward in the manner of a game cock. Dacre thought at first that he was about to hit Roper with his clenched fist, but when Verity spoke he seemed to have regained his restraint a little.
"The treadmill in the house of correction ain't called a cockchafer without reason, Ned Roper. The way it makes a man run, he gets the skin took off his privates the first day. And it don't grow there again while the turnkeys have charge of him. And once you're put away there, crows shall sing like Jenny Lind before you see the light of day again! You'll have little enough left to pleasure your whore with after that."
Ellen elbowed her way between them and turned her blue eyes, in their doll-like innocence, on Verity.
"Don't be such a rummy cove," she said reprovingly, "Roper ain't done you no harm."
"Cross me, miss," whispered Verity, "and you have a reckoning to pay."
"But me 'n Roper's pleased to see you any time at Jem Shaw's," she said, taunting him with her eyes still, and nudging her hips towards him.
"Catching rats being a partiality of ours," added Roper, with no attempt to veil the insult in ambiguity. He turned his back disdainfully and made for the door.
"Roper!" bellowed Verity, lunging after him with all the sounds of a goaded drayhorse. "Roper! "
" 'Ere!" squealed Ellen, "don't go, Mr Verity! Ain't you partial to a serving of greens then, when you sniffed a girl's tail all the way down from town?" Then she laughed until a coughing fit seized her.
Verney Dacre had grudgingly to acknowledge to himself that Roper and his doxy had driven Verity almost hysterical with pent-up rage. As the black-suited sergeant lumbered towards the stairs, like an ill-tempered Pickwick in pursuit of his quarry, Dacre lodged his elbows on the rim of the pit, next to Ellen. A few feet away, an obese and snorting bull-terrier was lowered struggling into the arena. The rats huddled together against the wooden wall, while derisive shouts from the spectators greeted the overweight dog.
"Why don't you feed you dog, then? Bleeding shame to let the poor, suffering beast fade away I"
Ellen turned aside to Dacre, her forearm laid along the pit's rim.
"You seen Verity? Bugger followed us every inch from London Bridge. Ned Roper's getting windy." "No one but Verity?" "Not that we saw."
Dacre brushed his moustaches softly with the back of his hand.
"Then it's personal," he murmured, "not police duty. "He's going to see you broken for pure love of the thing."
"We flushed him out, though," she said, letting her tongue peep confidentially between her lips, "didn't we?"
"Where's Ned Roper gone?"
"He's taking our friend round the town. We bet he'd follow Roper and not me."
Dacre looked carefully round the room.
"Then here's the news for Roper," he said: "the railway office at Folkestone Harbour pier. The night after tomorrow at eight. There's another message for Cazamian. When he sees the boy from the luggage office walking down to the steamer with a policeman he's to go to the clerk in the office and query a bill of lading. It don't signify what, but he must make the clerk walk as far down as the train while the boy's away at the steamer."
"What if the boy ain't got occasion to go to the steamer?"
"He will," said Dacre, looking down at his hat brim as he polished it on his sleeve. "And tell Ned Roper to come tooled up."
There was a rising murmur of excitement as the terrier worried its twentieth rat. The chairman kept the time, holding out his watch at arm's length and looking at it as though it might explode. Still jerking spasmodically, the rat lay with its neck broken. Dacre ignored the girl, turning from her and giving his full attention to the sport as he joined in the cries of the terrier's backers.
"Dead 'un! Drop it! Good dog! "
A boy in high boots stood in the pit, sweeping the dead and dying rats into a central pile with a long broom. Then the dog seized another furry neck and smashed the creature against the wooden wall, leaving a strawberry blotch on the white paint. A spot of blood flicked upwards and landed in a crimson star on Ellen's white cuff. She gave a squeal of disgust and anger, while Dacre drew back, carefully disengaging himself from the incident. It was a portly tradesman, several inches shorter than Ellen herself, who edged forward with a quick tip of his hat as he offered her his cambric handkerchief.
"Can't have a little lady being upset," he said hopefully, as his arm went round her in a proprietorial manner. When this was not resisted, his hand sloped downwards a little across her hip, as though to satisfy him that such shape required no artificial moulding.
Verney Dacre walked casually to the door. Just before he reached it, Ned Roper, still immaculate in his fawn-coloured suit and blue stock, strolled in from the stairway. He looked the very pattern of a successful master of the rouge-et-noir tent on a large racecourse. He passed Dacre without a glance. At the top of the stairs, Dacre paused for a moment to view the bulky figure of Sergeant Verity, who gasped as if his heart must burst as he almost threw himself up the last few steps in order to keep Ned Roper in his sight.
Then Verney Dacre pulled on his gloves. He recognised in Verity the stubborn qualities of the men who had endured the savage winter of the Crimea and beaten die Russians into the bargain. He also sensed the stupidity that went with uncomplaining obedience. Verity was not astute, and that was no doubt a failing. But he was brave, loyal, and determined in a predictably plodding manner. Dacre smiled to himself as he thought how the very qualities on which the sergeant doubtless prided himself should be made the means of his destruction. Indeed, as he went down the stairs it occurred to him that for all their antagonism, Verity and Roper matched one another's mediocre abilities.
Outside in the cab, Jolie sat silent and a litde frightened beside him, while Dacre thought of what was going to happen to Sergeant Verity. It was no longer the luxury of revenge; Verity had unwittingly made himself part of Verney Dacre's scheme.
In the day-room of their hotel suite, Dacre rang for brandy and hot water. He sat well back in a Coburg chair, his long legs crossed and his feet resting on the sofa-table. Even in June, the fire was lit, glowing and fading alternately in the draught from the chimney. He lit a spill at the grate and set it to his cigar. The light glinted in Jolie's dark, vigilant eyes as she sat in a nursing chair and stitched at a button. In the Pavilion gardens, the band of the gth Lancers was playing "The Bird in Yonder Cage Confined" for the entertainment of the summer evening crowds. Dacre smoked with his eyelids half lowered, as though thinking.
"Why shouldn't we go out to the band?" said the girl, apparently resuming an earlier argument. "Where's the harm?"
Dacre half-turned his head to her, across his shoulder.
"I don't see the necessity." Then he turned full round. "Oblige me by goin' into your room and taking off your things for me. It's absurd to sit indoors in your cloak, when you ain't goin' out."
"Why take them off?" she asked, with the faintest tremor in her voice.
"Because I should like to see you without them."
In the eastern stillness of her beauty only her eyes betrayed hostility.
"Oh, should you?" she said, looking down at her needle, but not working it. "And what if I shouldn't like to show myself to you?"
"Pardon me, miss," said Dacre, swinging round from his chair, "but when a girl's paid for, her liking don't come into it. It ain't inconvenient to me to pay for what I take."
She raised her forehead a little, but not enough to meet his gaze.
"I'm not bought! " she said fiercely.
"That may be," he said with a yawn, "
but y' may be driven, for all that. I take no pleasure in knockin' a young woman about, but if it should come to that, you'll have cause to remember it."
She stood up and went into the other room, her face a diminutive reflection of the classic pride of the sphinx. Verney Dacre gave her a moment, yawned again, and set the bedroom door wide open. Jolie stood with her back to him, staring into the reflection of her own eyes in the mahogany-framed mirror of the dressing-table. Neither of them spoke. Then Dacre began to draw off his belt and the girl bowed her head a little, as though acknowledging defeat.
"You couldn't name the favour that can't be had for money!" she said bitterly, and untied the blue cloak at her neck to lay it on the dark mirror-gloss of the polished wood beside her gloves. Dacre felt an exultation greater than any lechery as she dropped her head forward, loosened the fastenings at her waist, and rapidly shed the turquoise skirt and underskirts like successive layers of skin. Without a word or a glance at him, she unbuttoned the tight-waisted jacket and dropped it carelessly on the other clothes.
Despite his first reluctance to use her as a mistress, Dacre felt a natural eagerness at the sight of her slim strong back, the pale gold of her skin, and the black gloss of her hair as it brushed loose against her bare shoulders. The whiteness of her tight bodice and pants seemed to make her thighs and arms glow a warmer tan by contrast. With her hands inverted behind her, she unlaced the bodice, and then stooped to unhook the buttons of her boots. Dacre ran his fingers across her brown, lightly muscular shoulders, as if testing the smoothness of the cool skin. His other hand moulded her hips, feeling the warmth of her body through her white cotton drawers. She pulled herself away at once and shed the knickers quickly, as if determined to give him no extra pretext for handling her.
SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman Page 9
