SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman

by Francis Selwyn

  "You been letting a woman do man's work with you, Nell."

  She turned over on her side, facing him.

  "It ain't no harm, Ned," she said softly, "it was only in fun."

  "That ain't how Mr Dacre put it."

  "No," she said sharply, "he wouldn't. Mr Dacre wants me given a hiding. He'd fancy me himself, I can tell by his looks. But he knows he can't have that, so the next best thing in his book is to get me a broken jaw out of spite."

  "May be," said Roper sceptically. "What you do with a girl don't signify. It might be a game, and even if it weren't, a girl ain't got nothing that needs cod-buttons. But cross me with a man, Nell, and I'll break your jaw and 'is."

  Then she kissed him and settled her body to his. Her long legs moved with such energy that Ned Roper swore to himself that perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing to have been "cuckolded" by a woman first. But while Roper lay drained of tension and at peace with his companion, Verney Dacre stared at Jolie's vacant bed with a hate that ran like acid in his veins. Now he knew why the girl had been so cold with him, as she might be to all men. The sheet bore the imprint of two bodies upon it, and a black garter lay in one of the folds. He glanced towards the day-room of the apartment, where she awaited judgment, furtive but unrepentant. To put all his schemes in peril by dealing with her as she deserved was out of the question just then. With his hatred pent up in the narrow coffin of his breast, Dacre turned away from the bed. Swift vengeance and hurried sensuality were to the taste of men like Ned Roper. Verney Dacre had taught himself to taste satisfaction fully, and after a proper delay. When the proper moment came, Jolie should pay her debt with interest.

  "There ain't nothing in the world," said Roper jovially, "as don't look better when seen through a glass of Coke-upon-Littleton."

  He set the steaming pewter before Cazamian, and then sat down at the bare wooden table with another pot of his own. The grime on the tiny window panes of the Green Man was sulphur yellow, so that the far side of Tooley Street, where the great brick arches reared seventy feet upwards to bear London Bridge station and all its metal roads above the chimney pots of Bermondsey, seemed half lost in a fog.

  Roper drank, wiped his mouth, and glanced round the little room. Two girls, in shabby cloaks and feathered bonnets, sat at a table with a pair of clerks in tall hats, who had picked them up for a "spree." Along a black oak bench by the open hearth were several foreign seamen from Stanton's timber wharf, beyond Mill Lane and the bonded warehouses.

  Cazamian, his face pale and perspiring under the cropped, grizzled hair, had removed his cap, but the long coat would have betrayed his profession quite as easily.

  "I daren't stop more," he said anxiously. "If I'm found 'ere, Mr Roper, I'm done for, and so's your caper."

  "Ten minutes," said Roper easily, baring his teeth with hardly a smile, "ten minutes is all that is required."

  "You don't know how easy they sack a man," Cazamian grumbled, between sips of the toddy. "That was my trouble the first time. You imagine it, Mr Roper. Derby to Leeds and back, six days one week and seven the next. Then some of us goes to ask Mr George Hudson if perhaps we mayn't spend our Sundays like God-fearing men. Next thing is, Mr Hudson gives us all notice. I'd pawned my very boots, Mr Roper, to get the fifty pounds security I had to put down before they'd let me 'ave that job. And my family pledged as much again. I never saw much of that again, Mr Roper. Bloody 'udson took it with him when he went smash. So 'ere I start again on the South Eastern. But Mr Smiles and the directors don't believe in making a man soft by putting his money up. They hardens him like, by putting his wages down. Twenty-seven bob a week I started at. Twenty-four and a tanner it went down to seven years ago. Twenty-five and twopence it is now.

  As God's my judge, Mr Roper, those bastards owe me everything I can take. And I ain't anxious to get sacked before I've took it." .

  Roper's eyes missed Cazamian's gaze, and peered through the murky window towards a hansom cab that stood idly in the street. The seamen on the bench talked in some unrecognisable argot, while one of the whores broke tunelessly into song for the amusement of her hirers.

  "The first I met a cornet was

  In a regiment of dragoons.

  I gave him what he didn't like,

  And stole his silver spoons ..."

  An elderly woman in drab cap and dirtier shawl appeared at the hatch which served the bar.

  "Less of that, miss! " she called, "or I'll turn the lot of you out!"

  Cazamian said softly,

  "I daren't stay longer, Mr Roper. Not in the afternoon. I'll be missed for certain."

  "So long as you're of our party," said Roper smiling, "you'll stay where we need you. Of course, if you ain't of our party, old fellow, you have only to say the word."

  The foxy moustache lifted a little more as the smile broadened, and Cazamian read the promise of unspeakable forms of suffering in the sharp blue eyes.

  "However," remarked Roper almost at once, as he glanced through the window panes again, "it seems I don't have to keep you no longer. Cut along, old fellow and leave the reckoning with me. We always likes to treat a friend."

  The first seconds of Cazamian's ten-minute absence had hardly passed when Verney Dacre stepped from the buttoned-plush interior of the hansom. He crooked a finger round a half-sovereign and held it up, as if for the cabman's admiration.

  "I don't care to be kept standin' about while they fetch a cab off the station rank," he said coolly. "Have the goodness to wait here. I shall want you again in quarter of an hour or less."

  The man watched the elusive little coin.

  "No," said Dacre decisively, "you don't drink any part of it till you complete the journey."

  The station forecourt had been designed to appear more like a Venetian piazza than a railway terminus, complete with a smoke-blackened campanile. Dacre kept to the left and approached the concourse through the long and elegant arcade of shops, where women's trinkets, boots and gloves were set out behind bow windows which would not have disgraced Regent Circus or the Burlington Arcade. Under the arched glass canopy of the station itself, the hot stagnant air of the summer afternoon was thick with the taste of soot. A few City men, distinguishable by the silk sheen of their black hats and the heavy gold of their waistcoat chains, strode slowly to and fro, perspiring discreetly. Here and there a mother or a governess, absurdly overdressed for the heat in cloak and bonnet, waited with a little group of children for the summer train to Folkestone or Margate. But on the far side of the platforms, the tidal ferry train stood unattended at the place where it had been left since its arrival that morning. It was a long cortege of individual carriages, each strongly resembling the outline of the stage coaches from which they had evolved. The engine, its low line topped by two bell-shaped humps and a tall funnel, was deserted. Only at the near end, where the passenger luggage van stood, was there a solitary porter. Dacre approached the man.

  "You! " he said sharply. "Yes, you sir!"

  The man came forward slowly, his suspicion tempered by apprehension.

  "Name?" said Dacre briskly.

  The man stiffened, summing up the well-cut frock-coat and silk stock, and sensing an official inquiry. "Geddes, sir."

  "Geddes," said Dacre, as though with a certain distaste. "Very well, Geddes. The compliments of Mr Samuel Smiles, secretary of the company, to the station master. Two gentlemen of Mr Smiles' acquaintance have had their notecases snatched by urchins in the arcade. The urchins in question were seen to disappear into the campanile tower and may be making their den there. What is the station master and what are his railway constables doing about it? Mr Smiles will be obliged by an answer before four o* clock."

  Geddes looked at Dacre uncertainly.

  "Cut along! " said Dacre impatiently. "Your train will still be here when you get back, unless the guard should drive it away of his own accord! "

  With these final words, Dacre saw the realisation of defeat in the man's eyes. Geddes could hardly admit that
Cazamian, with his knowledge, was absent from duty. He ducked his head a little, mumbled an acknowledgement, and shambled off.

  Dacre waited until one of the iron pillars supporting the glass vault stood between them. Then he moved purposefully forward towards the unattended guard's van with its low roof. He stepped into its darkness, among the smell of straw and hot wood. When the bullion safe was in use, no precaution seemed too great, but when it stood empty through the summer afternoon, a single porter and the guard himself were regarded as an ample protection. The keys which Dacre had made from the wax impressions were bright and rough from the file. When he inserted the first in its lock, it turned as smoothly as in air. The other caught feebly, and he made a mental reservation about having filed it a little too close. But for all that, he felt the tumblers move, sensing, rather than seeing, that the lid of the bullion safe was now free. Much as he would have liked to explore the mechanism further, it was too great a gamble to be compromised at this stage. He turned the keys back in the locks, carefully withdrew them, and stepped out into the cloudy sunlight which filtered through the station vaulting. No one challenged him as he strode back towards the arcade, a figure of self-evident authority. He took the side steps down into Tooley Street, and beckoned his cab towards him. As the hansom whirled him away towards Albemarle Street, he caught sight of a man

  in frock-coat and trousers, accompanied by several constables in long belted tunics and chimney-pot hats, hurrying towards the towering campanile.

  Next day, several radical evening papers followed the Morning Chronicle in denouncing the current plague of hoaxes perpetrated against railway officials by idle and arrogant young officers of the Hussars or Lancers. "Gentlemen of fashion," said the radical press bitterly, "who are always ready with a sneer at the decent manners and honest occupations of their more plebeian contemporaries."

  II

  While the readers of the newspaper reports awaited a sequel to the campanile story, Sergeant Verity squatted in the velvet blackness of a dwarf-sized tent and fumbled with a thick glass plate. As a sole concession to the warmth generated by the heavy black material all round him, he had removed his hat, but the sweat still gathered in his dark, oiled hair and on his brow, running downward and soaking his tight collar where it rubbed most sorely. Beyond his little cone of darkness, in the brilliant light of June, he heard plainly enough the rattle of carriage wheels, the crash of the iron-rimmed cartwheels on cobbles, and the loud, hoarse hum of the street. From the general hubbub, there rose an occasional boisterous laugh or the jingling of a song, only to be lost again among the surge of voices and the tramp of footsteps.

  Holding the thick square of glass in its black sheath, Verity watched the world outside through the wide lens of Sergeant Samson's Ottewill Folding Camera. The polished sides of the box had been cared for so diligently by its owner that their gloss suggested the surfaces of a Hepplewhite table or a Chippendale commode. The rear half of the box slid in and out of the front, like a drawer in a desk, adjusting the distance between the lens and the ground-glass viewing screen at the back. For all Samson's pride in it, the Ottewill Folding Camera was far from new. To Verity, however, the world seen through its lens had an air of intriguing unreality, as though it were a shadow play or the Chinese shades.

  The glass plate in his hands still smelt faintly of alcohol and ether. With Samson as his guide, he had learnt how to dissolve cotton wool in the mixture and then coat the glass with the sticky collodion that it produced. Once the plate was washed over with silver nitrate, dried, and sealed in its black case, it could be used under almost any conditions.

  Turning his attention to the lens again, Verity lengthened the focus, until the view on the ground-glass screen was of a fine stone doorway, from lintel to pavement. To one so inexperienced in the matter, the clarity and magnification seemed breath-taking. Secure from observation himself, within the tent of black cloth, he settled down to watch the comings and goings at Ned Roper's bawdy-house. From time to time, he took a glass plate from its sheath, slid it into the slot in front of the viewing screen, removed the cap from the lens and took a "shilling portrait" of the doorway. But he always waited until a man and a girl, or a man alone, stood on the steps while their knock was answered. In the bustling street, the wink of the lens in the bright sun was hardly perceptible, and few of the passers-by stopped to watch an itinerant street-photographer at work. For ten years and more the sight had become too common to stir curiosity.

  Verity felt a secret pride in his strategy. Even though his was a private score to be settled with Roper, it seemed to him a system of espionage on which a detective policeman could be professionally congratulated. From a secure distance, he saw the clients come and go: hussar subalterns, swells in silk hats, and country gentlemen who had been caught within half a day of their arrival in the great Metropolis. As they walked from the pavement up the half-dozen steps to the door, they all seemed to turn and face the street while waiting for admission. Standing there quietly, too preoccupied to notice the black cone of cloth among the dark clothes of the crowds, they made a perfect subject for the patient photographer.

  "It couldn't be better," said Verity to himself, "if they was all sitting to Mr Archer for their portraits."

  He hummed a little tune and slid another glass plate safely back into its black sheath. When half an hour had passed, most of the plates were used, but it was nonetheless an aggravation to find the view from the lens abruptly blocked by an indistinct and immobile blur. With all the belligerence of a bull breaking through a hedge, Verity fought his way out from the black folds of the woollen cloth and stood upright and blinking in the afternoon glare.

  Not a dozen feet away, two girls were standing close together by the pavement's edge, their backs to the carriages as they watched the unattached male strollers, hoping for a "catch." The nearer of the two, who was blocking the lens, was a tall, auburn-haired young woman with a grave expression. Her brown cloak and red skirts were too shabby for one of Roper's women, Verity thought, and the sight of a small child clinging to her knees put the matter beyond doubt. Her companion, several inches shorter with broad hips and dark hair cropped to emphasise the urchin quality of her features, was dressed in a pale grey of equal shabbiness.

  Verity waited, assuming an air of professional indifference. A glimpse between the moving figures of the crowd showed the door of Roper's establishment open, and Roper himself standing on the steps with a male companion. They stood there in conversation. Verity pulled the cap from the lens and almost danced with impatience as he waited for the tall auburn-haired girl to shift her stance a little. At that moment she handed something to the other girl and stooped to attend to the child which was pulling irritably at her skirts. The view over her head, to where Roper was talking to a swarthy, bald-headed stranger, was clear. With a plate in the camera, Verity took their portrait. Though the girl straightened up again, her attentions to the child were by no means over. When she stooped once more, there was a fresh plate ready in the Ottewill camera. The two men were facing him and the focus was perfect at the second exposure, which promised to be as sharp as the work of any back-yard studio in Holborn or Lambeth. Verity straightened up, aware as he did so of the brunette's curious gaze. She tugged her friend's arm urgently, as if pulling her away.

  " 'e's done that again! 'e's took a portrait! " she squealed, and then shouted for Verity's benefit, "Did yer get a good picture of us?"

  Half-mocking and half-frightened at what they believed to be a photographic record of themselves, the two amateur whores scurried away, tle taller one dragging the child after her, the brunette looking back over her shoulder until they were safely round the next corner. Verity, in his moment of triumph, regarded them with magisterial indifference. Returning to the stagnant heat of his little tent, he watched through the lens as Roper escorted his client down the steps to a waiting brougham with all the professional unctuousness of a dishonest valet. The door closed again, and a long, uneventful ten mi
nutes passed in the sunlit street. Verity ran his hand ruefully over the horizontal creases in his waistcoat, conscious of not having eaten since breakfast.

  A little crossing sweeper, not more than ten years old, leant on his broom nearby and watched Verity at work. The grime on the child's face was as dark as coal dust on the features of a collier.

  "Here!" said Verity with a peremptory snap of his large fingers, "mind this for a minute or two and there's a copper for you afterwards."

  "Wery good, yer worship," said the boy smartly, taking up a sentry-like stance with his broom. Verity left him to his guard duty and strode away towards the little shop near Regent's Circus, where the black lettering on the gas globes above the door proclaimed Signor Flores' Confectionery.

  "Lumps of Delight, miss," he said to the little girl who served there: "Quarter. Quick-sharp, if you please." Even before he was out of the doorway, his fingers closed on the first soft Turkish sweetmeat in its thick powder.

  At a little distance down the street he thought at first that the child crossing-sweeper had fallen in a dead faint. But all too soon it was apparent that the huddled figure on the pavement was the tent of black cloth fallen upon the remains of Sergeant Samson's camera and its stand. As Verity lumbered forward and snatched away the cloth, his mind was dominated by the appalling and intimidating prospect of his next meeting with Samson. The polished sides of the wooden camera were splintered and its brass hinges warped, as though the whole box had been struck by some tremendous downward blow. He stared at the wreck in utter dismay.