SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman

by Francis Selwyn

The two bullies attended their master in the upstairs drawing-room during the rest of the afternoon. Verney Dacre perched silently on the sofa, his face set hard as he meditated thoughts of retribution. That an obscure little street girl should have dared to jeopardise his masterpiece was such an affront that he could hardly think coherently in his fury. From time to time, Coggin and Tyler exchanged uneasy glances. They were growing fearful that their new employer, possessed by rage, would do something to Jolie which would put their necks in greater danger than anything which the girl herself might have had time to do during her brief period of freedom. When the evening had grown dark and the heavy curtains had been pulled across the windows, the hard lines of Dacre's thin face seemed to relax. He sat back against the arm-rest of the sofa and said quietly, "Have the goodness to bring her down to me."

  While Tyler fetched Jolie, Dacre gave Coggin his instructions. Presently Tyler returned with his prisoner, who still wore the absurd breeches in which she had escaped.

  "Oblige me," said Dacre, "by mounting Miss Jolie over the rocking horse to take her lesson."

  Knowing what lay in store for her, she stiffened her body in resistance against Tyler's, as he marched her to the tail of the horse. In the deadened silence of the drawing-room, the bully made her bend over tightly along the wooden back, strapping her wrists and ankles to the carved legs, while Coggin pinioned her at the waist so that her belly was pressed down firmly on the hard surface. Dacre sat on the sofa and lit a cigar. After his earlier fury, he now watched with total calm as the dark, slender beauty was bent forward, the soft, erotic swell of her hind cheeks broadening and stretching the tight seat of the breeches. Her glossy black hair straggled loose from its coiffure as she twisted her head round towards him, her dark eyes shining with anger. But her fierce gaze faltered when Tyler unbuttoned her breeches and eased them down, so that her full rear view was revealed to the three men. Her smooth young bottom had the tint of pale copper and was round as a full moon by contrast with her slim brown waist.

  The leather switch was long and tapering. Coggin cut the air in a trial swish, and Dacre smiled as the little doxy's buttocks tightened apprehensively at the sound and the hatred in her eyes was replaced by panic. He was satisfied that the fight would soon be thrashed out of her and that she wasn't the sort to risk such a whipping again. He saw with approval how she flinched from the light touch of the leather as Coggin measured the switch across her rear cheeks. Yes, thought Dacre, the taming of Jolie was well in hand.

  The first stroke landed with a report that rivalled a pistol shot and the girl's gasp of pain left no doubt that the quirt must have stung her backside like a scorpion. She twisted her wrists and ankles helplessly in their straps, while her behind jigged desperately with the lingering smart. Coggin shifted his stance, and the room rang with the sharp smacks of leather on flesh, each stroke given before the swelling torture of the last had begun to subside. Even before the whip had marked her seat seven or eight times, her cries had risen to unbridled screams.

  On the sofa, Verney Dacre sat and watched expressionlessly. When the cigar was half finished, he raised his hand, and Coggin paused. The girl turned her face again, her nostrils flared, her cheeks wet, and her almond eyes trembling with fresh tears.

  "We don't judge by caterwaulin'," said Dacre softly, "but by the speed with which the pupil learns her lesson."

  He nodded to Coggin, who passed the switch to Tyler and then pressed the head of the rocking horse down once more. The "pupil" gave a wail of terror as her whipped cheeks were turned upwards again for Tyler's attention. Coggin whispered something in her ear, and Tyler laughed.

  When Dacre's cigar had burnt to a dead stub, he stood up, coolly examining the marks of the whip embroidered on the pale gold cheeks of the girl's bottom and on the backs of her thighs. She was sobbing almost hysterically and her legs shook with an uncontrollable convulsive trembling after her ordeal.

  "That will do," said Dacre quietly, "for tonight. Leave her as she is, however. I shall be obliged to read her a little curtain lecture to ensure that this distressin' performance ain't necessary on too many future occasions."

  The two bullies grinned and withdrew. Dacre resumed his place on the sofa and spoke gently to the girl, who at length managed to calm her sobs and listen. Half an hour later, he left Jolie and the rest of Langham Place to supervision by Coggin and Tyler, according to instructions which he had carefully detailed. As he walked down the steps of the house, he thought it unlikely that they would ever see him again.

  19

  "Supposing you were to want my advice," said Sergeant Samson hopefully, "you'd stop 'aunting Langham Place and give your mind to Inspector Croaker's investigation. That railway inquiry of yours won't go more than another two or three days. You'd best think what you're going to say then about your ride to Folkestone on the bullion train."

  Verity placed one large boot in front of the other, treading stolidly round the kerb as the two men swung into Margaret Street. He remained unmoved by Samson's suggestion.

  "If it ain't a inconvenience to you, Mr Samson, you had better keep your advice. One thing I don't need is advice. I've had advice from you, from Mr Croaker, from a young person towards whom I have certain intentions, from her old father as well. Much good has any of it done ! "

  "Indeed!" said Samson warmly, "seeing you never took any of it!"

  They plodded onwards in mutually imposed silence, which was ended at length by Verity.

  "Information is more the thing than advice," he said quietly. "Go on telling about what those street girls were saying, about two whores locked up in a bawdy 'ouse somewhere."

  "There ain't nothing to go on about," said Samson, "that's all there is. Three or four girls that had been told by another girl of two young blowens locked up by their keepers. They didn't know which girls, nor which whorehouse. It happens in such places all the dme. Stories like that aren't worth a pandy's spit."

  They turned again, from Margaret Street into the mews which ran along the back of Langham Place.

  "However," said Verity, "I never saw rooms quite so convenient for locking up as the attics in Ned Roper's bawdy house. Look!"

  Samson followed the direction of Verity's finger and saw the four little windows perched precipitously at the back of the Langham Place house, some fifty feet above the mews yard. Even in the summer heat the windows themselves, behind their bars, were shut tight, and it might be doubted whether it were any longer possible to open them.

  "Did you ever see such a prison as that?" said Verity thoughtfully.

  "You don't know it is," Samson looked away from the brightness of the sky, "and there ain't no way you could find out if there's anyone in there. They couldn't get out, nor even throw a message down to you, so long as the windows are locked. And while I'm on duty here, you ain't going to scale that back wall, a-cos you'd kill yourself. Nor you ain't going in through the front door, since you ain't got your authority no longer. And you won't trick your way in, because once they see your phiz they'll either break your back for you or else call a constable and have you given in charge for trespass. There ain't nothing you cap do, my son, and whatever you may try is going to make matters worse."

  Verity nodded.

  "I don't say you're wrong, Mr Samson," he said after a pause, "but you ain't a subtle man, are you?" "Meaning?"

  "Meaning," said Verity, "that as I have previously observed, there are men in this great city who believe themselves secure in their wickedness, but I will have them in a sure and inescapable snare."

  "I daresay," said Samson sceptically, "but I don't see 'ow."

  "Supposing," Verity removed his hat and wiped his forehead, "supposing there was someone in that room who was a prisoner. Now, you couldn't think of any way to ask them except by trying to force messages through glass that don't open, or else fighting your way in through the front door?"

  "And you can?" inquired Samson, looking with undisguised amusement at his plump, perspiring companion.<
br />
  "Today I can," said Verity smugly, "not every day. But today's a good sort of a day. Why, it's a joy to be alive !"

  "What the 'ell's that got to do with it?"

  "Everything. Watch."

  Samson looked at Verity with distrust.

  "Now, I hope you ain't going to breach the public peace, my son," he began, "a-cos if you are ..."

  Verity drew from the lining of his hat a little round of mirror glass, no bigger than the palm of his hand.

  "There's no knowing what a man can't do, if he's only got a nice bright day," he said cheerfully.

  Looking up at the sun, he tilted the glass and caught the light. Samson watched the bright disc of the reflection dance over the stonework until it reached the back of Langham Place. Verity steadied it, and the little blot of light moved gradually upwards to the closed and barred attic windows.

  "No one ain't going to notice that," said Samson reasonably, "not even if they're in there. It'll get too faint, for one thing, and, for another, 'ow long do you spend watching the ceiling for secret heliographs?"

  Verity trained the reflected light on the first barred window.

  "I don't," he said, "but then I've never been a prisoner. Now if you are a prisoner, you ain't got much else to do but watch and listen."

  Samson grunted, and Verity played the glass on a dark piece of ceiling just inside the window, which was all that he could reach. For ten minutes he jiggled it patiently.

  "Now, see here," said Samson at lengh, "I got duties to perform. Dooties! I can't stand about 'ere all day."

  "Just carry on, old fellow," said Verity preoccupied, "I'll be all right."

  Samson thrust his head belligerently towards his colleague.

  "One of those duties," he said firmly, "is shadowing you. Mr Croaker'd have me flayed and salted if I left you to cause more trouble."

  Verity nodded and relaxed. He caught the sun again with his primitive heliograph and flickered it across the next barred window. Samson waited for several minutes and then said, "Empty, likewise!"

  "No it ain't," said Verity.

  "It bloody is!" Samson insisted, looking up. "There ain't nothing but your bit of glass shining on that ceiling."

  "Look," said Verity quiedy, "look at my 'and. I ain't been flashing my glass for the last half, minute."

  Samson looked. Verity had turned his little mirror to the ground. Samson looked up again. The brightness on the patch of ceiling was more subdued than Verity's, but it was unmistakeably there.

  "Games!" said Samson hopefully, "a child playing games most likely. Why, there ain't been so much as a face at the winder, which there would have been if it was a strapping young doxy."

  "You seen inside that attic," said Verity. "It ain't no nursery!"

  "Then why don't die girl show herself at the bars?"

  "Prisoners," said Verity sardonically, "is sometimes tethered so close that they can't reach the window. I daresay this one may be pushing a mirror about with her feet, for all we know." He flashed the glass again in a flurry of little movements, as if to acknowledge a message. Then he turned to his friend.

  "You may be the most honest officer in the Detail, and in time you might learn the art of constabulary vigilance," he remarked, "but you ain't a subtle man, Mr Samson, are you?"

  "Don't prose so," said Samson, "just tell me what you want doing."

  Verity considered this, folding one large red hand into the palm of the other, behind his back. He kept step with Samson until they reached Great Portland Street.

  "Tell Mr Croaker," he said at length, "tell him of the two doxies locked up in a whorehouse and likely to be 'orribly murdered. And then tell him about the barred windows in Langham Place."

  "And tell him, I suppose, that I let you flash mirrors into the house?" Samson suggested with heavy irony.

  "No," said Verity after a little thought, "tell him you flashed the mirror. He may form a 'igher opinion of you, in consequence."

  That evening, Verity reached Samson's room in Great College Street just after eight o'clock. The little window on to the shabby back court was open, but a stale smell of boiled beef lingered in the folds of the dingy curtains and the sagging chairs.

  "Well?" he inquired hopefully.

  "No," said Samson, "it ain't well. Mr Croaker knew you was at the back of it. I ain't half been roasted ! As for the Langham Place 'ouse, you can forget about it. There's a constable on special watch to make certain that people like you don't get the Division into any more complications over it."

  Verity's eyes bulged, frog-like, with indignation.

  "Look 'ere," he protested, "they ain't going to incriminate themselves with a police officer at the door. Let him be took off!"

  "He's there," said Samson, "and that's the end of it."

  Verity paused. Then he picked up a brown paper parcel which he had been carrying with him and held it out to his colleague.

  "What's this?" asked Samson suspiciously. " 'ave a look and see."

  Samson opened the paper wrapping and stared in astonishment. He lifted his face to Verity and it seemed as though his eyes were about to flood with tears.

  "A Captain Fowkes," he said, with the faintest tremor.

  "I promised to make it good," said Verity, "and here it is."

  Samson put the package down and pumped his friend's right hand with prolonged solemnity.

  "You didn't have to do that," he said, "bellows and all!"

  The camera sat on the table, fully extended, like a black concertina.

  "I'm only sorrier than I can say about the old Ottewill," said Verity amiably. "And not one of my portraits came to anything."

  "I suppose they didn't" said Samson philosophically. "Suppose?"

  "Well, we only brightened the couple you was interested in."

  "Interested!" said Verity hotly. "I was interested in 'em all."

  This appeared to displease Samson. He said, "I was thinking of washing them plates with collodion, to use again."

  "Brighten 'em!" Verity seemed almost to dance with impatience. "Go on! Brighten 'em!"

  "They wouldn't have much on. Not by this time."

  "Brighten 'em up and see! "

  With the moral obligation of a new Captain Fowkes camera still heavy upon him, Samson gave in. Half an hour later, the first of the twenty undeveloped plates which Verity had exposed in the Ottewill folding camera was drawn from its black sheath and the glass bumped heavily into the bowl of pyrogallic acid. Presently Samson drew it out, held it up, and shook his head.

  "Black," he said, "black as your hat. And the salts have dried out quite hard.

  "Try another," Verity insisted with undefeated eagerness.

  Samson tried.

  "Hello," he said, "something here! Not much, but something."

  A moment later, with a black card behind the glass. Verity was looking at his first shilling portrait of Langham Place, with an anonymous man and girl standing on the steps. Eight plates yielded pictures of some sort. Twelve more were black. Six of the pictures showed men alone, two were of men and girls.

  "Could be anyone," said Samson knowledgeably. "You don't always get much of a likeness. Especially not at first."

  "They all look like someone or other," said Verity sadly, "but not so that you could be sure. That one looks very like the young subaltern at the railway inquiry that paid for Major Habbakuk's funeral. Only it can't be him."

  "Can't it?"

  "No. The young gentleman was in Ireland until the day of the Victoria Cross parade. These portraits were took days before that."

  "Unless he was lying."

  "Yes," said Verity patiently, "but then if he was lying at the inquiry, and this is his portrait, it's plain as a pikestaff why he was lying. Ain't it?"

  "Is it?"

  "Yes. Well-born young gentlemen with an itch for visiting bawdy-houses ain't in the habit of saying so to their families, nor to public inquiries. Instead, they swear they were in Ireland, or Hindoostan, or Timbuctoo. Yo
u ought to know that, Mr Samson."

  They cleared away the "brightening" paraphernalia. Then Verity said helpfully.

  "I'll lend you a hand to do over those plates that came out black, so's you can use them again."

  "Why?" asked Samson, "there ain't no hurry."

  Verity shifted his feet awkwardly. He laid a hand on Samson's arm.

  "Look, old fellow. I know you only just got your Captain Fowkes camera, but I suppose I couldn't have a loan of it, and a little pyrogallol? Just for tomorrow?"

  A great sadness spread over Sergeant Samson's features.

  "Can't exactly say 'no'," he remarked bitterly, "can I?"

  "You've no notion," said Verity, "how obliged I should be."

  Samson nodded gloomily. Then he looked up.

  "Only remember," he said coldly, "tomorrow I shall be the officer that watches Langham Place, and you ain't going to get close enough to that house to take a portrait the size of a penny stamp."

  Under Verity's armpits the thick, camphorated serge seemed to cut like a blade into tender flesh. It had even appeared at first that he would never get his peacetime bulk into his old No. I Dress (walking-out) of Her Majesty's Volunteer Rifle Brigade. At his broad waist, he felt the chronic minor discomfort of a fold of skin which seemed to overlap by an inch or more the white blanco'd belt with its dry chalky surface. Yet for all that, in the scarlet tunic with its gold lace, the forage cap, the white webbing, and the three stripes worn proudly on his arm, he looked the perfect picture of a senior infantry sergeant. And there, on his breast, was the little mark, where the Crimea Medal had been pinned.

  Catching sight of his reflection in the window of the cab, Verity seemed to look at the face of a vaguely remembered acquaintance. It was remarkable what change could be brought about by the disappearance of a flat, black moustache, and the addition of a forage cap, worn well down and at a slant.