SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob.

by Francis Selwyn

  'Now the money's known, Mr Kite, how much it is and so forth, what's Strap's share of it to be?'

  Kite knew perfectly well that Old Mole wished to know of his own share, not Jack Strap's. But he played the game for a moment.

  'There's £12,000 to be paid here and there,' he said casually. 'Paid to men for services performed. There's £50,000 I must have for my own trouble, I really must. And there's £30,000 which shall go half and half to you and Strap.'

  Mole was shocked and then angered on hearing that he, as Kite's second-in-command, was to get only £15,000 out of almost £100,000. But he knew better than to show his displeasure. Indeed it was Kite who took the initiative, turning his head a little as if just able to see Mole from the corner of his eye.

  'That's fair, ain't it?' he asked shrilly. 'That's fair, my dear young sir, to be sure! If you don't think so, Mr Mole, put it to Sealskin Kite like the man o' business he is.'

  ' 's fair, Mr Kite.' Mole could hardly get the words past the tightening of his throat.

  'It's more than any dozen men put together should earn in all their lives!' squealed Kite. 'There ain't an earl nor a baronite in the land as wouldn't stoop to pick up such a sum!'

  ' 's fair, Mr Kite!' snapped Mole. 'Ain't I said so?'

  'Course,' said Kite. 'I only say that £30,000 is half each for you and Strap. Suppose when Strap's work is done he never had the heart to claim his share. Why then, Old Mole, you must be his heir. It's you that holds all £30,000 in trust, you see. And a man could just imagine how Strap, the dear fellow, should never come to ask his portion. You can imaginey, that, Mr Mole? You can imaginey that? Hey?'

  Old Mole's heart leapt. The apprehension at so many deaths faded in the excitement of the one which meant most to him.

  'Yes, Mr Kite,' he said softly. 'I imagine it all right.' 'I thought you might, Mr Moley! I thought you might, Old Mole!'

  And the old man's amusement carried across the sunlit promenade like the high keening excitement of a rodent to its mate.

  Sixty miles away from Kite and Mole in their sunlit afternoon, two other men faced one another in a room from which all hint of summer was excluded. The director's office of the Union Bank was overshadowed by the counting-houses across the street and the huge shape of St Pauls beyond them. Its interior was dark, heavy with mahogany and buttoned leather. A few dim portraits in oils hung upon the oak panelling. Only the reds and blues of the Turkey carpet brightened the place, or the ivory stands, cut-glass ink-wells and polished brass bell upon the director's desk.

  The two men were like figures at a death-bed, sombre in knowing that there was nothing to be done which might alter the course of events. From his chair, the director looked steadily at the white-haired figure of Superintendent Gowry, Scodand Yard's most diplomatic senior officer.

  'Nothing,' said the director. 'Nothing to be done whatsoever, sir.'

  'A crime has been committed,' said Gowry, gently insistent. 'A fraud of the greatest magnitude.'

  The director winced. He was a thin abstemious man who knew no stimulant beyond the manipulation of money.

  'A fraud was committed by the late Baron Lansing,' he agreed cautiously. 'A very great fraud. He put the bills out a second time, they were endorsed by men who may have done so in all innocence. The names on the notes mean nothing. They may be men of reputation or thieves who assumed such names for the purpose. No, Mr Gowry, there is only one man to whom you can bring home the crime. The Baron Lansing. But Baron Lansing is dead and what remains of his estate would never pay the tenth part of the money stolen.'

  'The banks who took on Lansing's clients after his death might prosecute the matter,' said Gowry. Yet his voice implied a statement rather than a hope.

  The director's lips moved, a tremor just short of a smile.

  'To what purpose, sir? Imagine yourself a banker, Mr Gowry. Accept responsibility for the debt and it will cost you £10,000. No, £5,000 let us say. To be sure there is a cost. But you would pay it gladly, sir, to prevent the world hearing that men have been cheated by their banks. Why, Mr Gowry, there would be such a run upon the funds as would ruin a dozen commercial enterprises by tomorrow morning.'

  Gowry nodded and played his last card with the air of a man who accepted defeat even before the hand was dealt.

  'The clients, sir, the men whose notes of promise were put out a second time to defraud them? Will they be content to see the matter settled without a public noise?'

  This time the director smiled openly.

  'To be sure they will, Mr Gowry. To be sure they will. When such bills as these are drawn, even the noblest in the land become shy of investigations. Some of the money is put to innocent purposes and some is not. But you know as well as I, sir, that behind the story-book names endorsed on the cheques there are whores and their keepers, other men's trainers and stable managers, money-lenders and even blackmailers. No, Mr Gowry, when the notes are safely cancelled the men who wrote them in the first place will want only to see the scandal decently laid to rest.'

  'Then the banks will pay,' said Gowry gloomily.

  'They will,' said the director, 'rather than have it said that one house put a man under the hammer because he was swindled by another from whom the account was inherited.'

  Behind the white splendour of his military moustaches, Gowry's old face grew a deeper red.

  'Story-book names!' he said loudly. 'Somewhere beyond the story-book names endorsing those notes, sir, there are real men. Real men who have stolen £100,000 as surely as if they'd blown open your vaults to do it! What d'ye say to that, sir?'

  The director sighed patiently.

  'Our banks will stand the racket, Superintendent Gowry. Have no fear of that.' 'And nothing more?'

  'Lord Culham, heir to the Earldom of Stephen, Member for West Berkshire, proposes to bring in a bill next session asking the Commons to regulate the transfer of promissory notes.'

  'Bills and balderdash!' Gowry was on his feet now. 'And men must go free because they robbed by the pen rather than with a jemmy and cudgel! Fiat justitia, sir! Let justice be done though the heavens fall!'

  The director tapped his fingers on his polished boot.

  'No, Mr Gowry. No man allows the heavens to fall, however just his cause. Justice is dearly bought, sir, if it destroys England's trust in her banks and ruins the good name of a dozen noble families. Ask your own Mr Commissioner of Police. Ask Mr Home Secretary, if you choose. Only let our government grow strong and our finance prosper, sir. Then it can bear such robberies from time to time.'

  'And justice, sir?' asked Gowry bitterly. 'What of justice?'

  The director rose from his chair and held out a hand to his angry guest.

  'Where the heavens fall, Mr Gowry, there is no justice. Pray do not hesitate to tell me if I may serve you again at any time.'

  19

  A thin mist coming in with the evening tide chilled Stunning Joe through the black worsted cloth of the only suiting which now remained to him. During the past week the little spider-man had begun to show the signs of hunger more visibly, his face having the shrunk and wizened look of a starved child. He had searched the unfamiliar streets morning and afternoon for any sign of Jane Midge. Joe had heard the policeman's words at the door of the room in the Swell Mob ordinary, the promise of safety and protection. He guessed that it was not the law who had her now. Pretty Jane was safe in the keeping of Mr Kite's bullies, along with Joe's affydavy, as he called it.

  Hard against his breast, under the thin shirt, Joe had grown accustomed to the shape of the Shah Jehan clasp in its case. As he had protested when they forced it on him for his share of the plan, he could neither sell it nor eat it. Despite that, he thought, it might be the hangman's noose for Kite and the bullies who had taken Jane. Joseph O'Meara lived in a cold twilight world of his own, where the pangs of loss were numb and he saw the future as a time for calculating vengeance. The law might never touch Sealskin Kite, but Stunning Joe could do things which were beyond the law
's devising.

  By day he watched his chance carefully, stealing scraps of food and comfort as each opportunity presented itself. He was careful, more careful than he had ever been. To be caught and recognised by the authorities was the way to obscene suffering and a death whose horrors would have shamed the meanest creature. But the ordeal of prison had taught him patience. He might not save Jane Midge by waiting, for the child could be dead even now. But he believed as an article of faith that he had only to stay alive and watch quietly in order to destroy Sealskin Kite and his entire empire of suffering.

  With such consolation in his heart Stunning Joe moved through the summer crowds like a broken child whose enemies had no cause to fear him. At night he found the same resting-place that he had known with Jane Midge. The Chain Pier was deserted after sunset, except for the watchman who rarely moved from his cubby-hole at the landward end. Against the flush of starlight the graceful suspension wires hung in a series of loops from the iron arches of the decking, holding up the wooden promenade which ran out to the pier-head and landing-stage. Under each of the iron archways through which the steel cables rose and dipped, the pier received additional support by wooden piles rising from the shallows and, higher up, from the shingle of the beach itself. In the darkness, the little spiderman scaled the weed-hung timbers easily, vaulting over the wrought-iron railings and on to the deck of the closed pier.

  The four archways of cast iron stood like triumphal gateways across the narrow pier, each one a structure of Regency elegance with its cornice and pediment. At the base, the sides of the arch were thick enough to contain small shops or booths where refreshments or souvenirs were sold. The ornamental lamps above the cast-iron arches threw sufficient light for Joe to deal with the locks, though not enough to make him visible from the shore. As he had done with Jane Midge, he opened the little booths, taking a pie from one or a neatly ribboned cheese from another. Even in these trivial thefts his skill remained instinctive. He stole carefully, so that the pie-woman would not be quite sure next day if she had not counted wrong. The apple-seller would not see precisely that one pyramid of fruit was smaller than it might have been.

  After he had eaten, Joe would find the corner of the arch most sheltered from the night wind. There he would curl himself up and sleep. He woke always with the first cold light of the pre-dawn sky. Before the stirring of the watchman or the rattle of the earliest stable-door, the little spider-man was down the lichened timbers and moving away across the shingle.

  At last there came a night when Stunning Joe felt so weary from his constant searching that he took the only coin in his pocket and paid for an entrance to the pier half an hour before it closed. By this time he was tired of climbing, of walking, and longed only to throw himself down in a quiet corner and sleep the rest of his life away.

  He made his way the full length of the pier where the decking, no more than a dozen feet wide, broadened out at the landing-stage. There, across the base of the final arch, he sat and looked out across the dark water towards the French coast far beyond the horizon. He had been there for almost half an hour and the last strollers had gone when he heard a sound. It was not as much as the creak of wood, hardly more than a pressure of a man's boot upon the timber. Crouched in the shadows he kept motionless, only his eyes turning to catch sight of the intruder. The Figure standing over him was taller and stronger than the watchman. Its shoulders were those of a coal-heaver and its heavy pouched face loomed six feet above him.

  'Why, Stunning Joseph,' said Jack Strap humorously, 'you never meant to give yer friends the slip? Eh?'

  Joe pulled himself up slowly until he was standing with his back to the cast-iron flank of the arch. The top of his head was not quite level with the bully's shoulders. All hope of concealment was gone, he knew that. Only his wits could now avoid or postpone his destruction.

  'You never found me here by chance, Mr Strap,' he said admiringly. 'You never did!'

  Jack Strap chuckled.

  'Not quite, little Joseph. Jane Midge told us this afternoon. She'd been asked previous, of course. Only I never had put the question as strong as today. She's pining for you, Joe. We all are!'

  She was still alive then, Joe thought. She must be. If they wanted him badly enough they would never have finished her off until they were sure she spoke the truth. And now the only hope for her continued survival was that he should remain alive in spite of all that Strap could do.

  'What you after, Mr Strap? What you want with me and little Jane?'

  The big man chuckled again in the darkness.

  'Hold still, little Joseph. Hold still!'

  Stunning Joe knew that he was about to be killed. They would never have sent the towering bully for any other reason. Through his mind the thought passed repeatedly that as soon as he was dead it would be Jane Midge's turn. Now at least he was prepared.

  It came like the swish of a sword blade through the darkness, the heavy belt which had given Jack Strap his name. Joe sprang to one side, feeling the thick leather fan his cheek and hearing the heavy metallic impact of brass against the cast-iron arch.

  ' 'old still!' bellowed Strap. Once again the doubled belt with its lethal brass fitting swung down through the darkness. Joe scampered on hands and knees to escape, splinters from the rough decking of the landing-stage tearing at his bare palms. He was almost clear but the brass weight caught the fleshy part of his right upper arm with the force of a truncheon. Like a wounded animal he slithered and rolled away, a paralysing anguish spreading from shoulder to fingers. One blow to the skull and Jack Strap would finish him.

  At the wrought-iron railings he pulled himself up, one arm still hanging as though it might have been broken. For himself he cared nothing. If Jack Strap put him to death now with a single blow, quickly and surely, it would be the end of all his misery. It was for Jane's life that he fought. Pretty Jane under sentence by Jack Strap! Joe thought of the agony and humiliation which would make her death a blessing and he lunged away as the heavy belt scythed down through the darkness again.

  'You give me trouble, you bleeding little squeak!' roared the bully. 'You give me trouble and I'll see your dancing orphan weep herself dry afore she gets her quietening!'

  They faced one another, Joe with his back to the rails at the end of the pier-head, Strap in the archway of the promenade which led ashore. The width of the arch was no more than a dozen feet, all of it within range of the loaded belt.

  'You got no sense, Mr Strap!' Joe panted. 'You never thought that affydavy on her was the only one? There's two more copies. They'll be opened if I can't be found. They got your name in 'em!'

  It was a last despairing lie and it failed him at once. Strap grunted.

  'You could have six affydavies, with Mr Kite's compliments. When you can't be found and when you're known to be dead and buried off Portland, them papers is just someone's joke. You think they can hurt a respectable broker like Mr Kite? You're dead, little Joseph! You ain't no business to be wandering free!'

  Strap was coming for him now, the hideous doubled belt whirring at his side as he wound it through the air like a blade. In a few seconds more there would be nowhere on the little square of decking which was beyond its range. Joe looked helplessly about him, thinking of the sea below. But the wooden piles stretched out under the pier-head. A man who jumped would be broken by them before he reached the churning water. Jack Strap was hardly six feet from him now and Stunning Joe was ready to scream with terror. Then, quicker than he could think, he turned and snatched at the red warning light which hung on the end of the pier-head to guide shipping. It was no more than a large hurricane lamp suspended there. Like a bomb, Joe hurled it at the bully's feet. It shattered and burst into flame, the fire running across the planks as the oil spread.

  Jack Strap sprang back towards the archway, cursing the little spiderman but not daring to walk through the fire which now separated them. Worse still, the bully knew that the flames would be seen at once from the shore and that the
watchman with his assistants would be there in a moment more. Shouting obscenities and blasphemies, the assassin moved further away, following the last of the promenaders towards the pier-gates.

  While fire and darkness flickered alternately about him, Stunning Joe edged to the ornamental rails at the pier's end. He stepped over them, his toes on the thin edge of wood outside. Then he dropped down until his fingers held the rim of wood where his toes had lodged. In a few seconds he was hanging below the pier, lost to Jack Strap and the watchmen alike, moving hand over hand along the dry rusted girders. He reached the first damp timbers where they supported the pier-deck, but the tide still swirled beneath him. Then he launched himself on to the girders once more and made for the next wooden pile. At its foot the shingle was dry and he sprang down in three well-judged leaps. By the time that Jack Strap emerged on to the promenade, Stunning Joe was already hidden by the crowd. He looked back once at the pier-head but the flames had almost died away. Perhaps the Brighton Gazette or the Herald would spare a paragraph for the quirk of breeze which had lifted a warning lamp and smashed it on the decking. So far as the world was concerned it was no more than that.

  As he walked among the swells under the coloured lights, Joe knew what had to be done. There was no safety for him any longer, nor perhaps for the girl. Pretty Jane would die or live as her captors pleased. They would hunt him and destroy him, there was no escaping that. But suppose, Joe thought, suppose that before they did he could succeed in coming face to face with Sealskin Kite? And suppose that before anyone could stop him, he should kill Sealskin Kite as an act of open murder? A man had as well die on the Newgate trap as under the loaded belt of Jack Strap.