The Great Train Robbery

by Michael Crichton

  The real difficulty centered around the fourth key. Pierce knew that the fourth key was in the possession of the bank's president, Mr. Trent, but he did not know where—and this lack of knowledge represented a formidable challenge indeed, and one that occupied his attention for the next four months.

  A few words of explanation may be useful here. In 1854, Alfred Nobel was just beginning his career; the Swedish chemist would not discover dynamite for another decade, and the availability of nitroglycerin "soup" lay still further in the future. Thus, in the mid-nineteenth century, any decently constructed metal safe represented a genuine barrier to theft.

  This truth was so widely acknowledged that safe manufacturers devoted most of their energies to the problem of making safes fireproof, since loss of money and documents through incineration was a much more serious hazard than loss through theft. During this period, a variety of patents were issued for ferromanganese, clay, marble dust, and plaster of Paris as fireproof linings for safes.

  A thief confronted with a safe had three options. The first was to steal the whole safe outright, carrying it off to break open at his leisure. This was impossible if the safe was of any size or weight, and manufacturers were careful to employ the heaviest and most unwieldy construction materials to discourage this maneuver.

  Alternatively, a thief could employ a "petter-cutter," a drill that clamped to the keyhole of the safe and permitted a hole to be bored over the lock. Through this hole, the lock mechanism could be manipulated and the lock opened. But the petter-cutter was a specialist's tool; it was noisy, slow, and uncertain; and it was expensive to purchase and bulky to carry on a job.

  The third choice was to look at the safe and give up. This was the most common outcome of events. In another twenty years, the safe would be transformed from an impregnable obstacle to a mere irritant in the minds of burglars, but for the moment it was virtually unbeatable.

  Unless, that is, one had a key to the safe. Combination locks had not yet been invented; all locks were operated by key, and the most reliable way to break a safe was to come prepared with a previously obtained key. This truth lies behind the nineteenth-century criminal's preoccupation with keys. Victorian crime literature, official and popular, often seems obsessed with keys, as if nothing else mattered. But in those days, as the master safe-cracker Neddy Sykes said in his trial in 1848, "The key is everything in the lay, the problem and the solution."

  Thus it was Edward Pierce's unquestioned assumption in planning the train robbery that he must first obtain copies of all the necessary keys. And he must do this by gaining access to the keys themselves, for although there was a new method of using wax "blanks" and inserting them into the locks of the actual safes, this technique was undependable. Safes of the period were usually left unguarded for this reason.

  The true criminal focus was upon the keys to the safe, wherever they might be. The copying process presented no difficulty: wax impressions of the key could be made in a few moments. And any premises containing a key could be cracked with relative ease.

  But, if one stops to think of it, a key is really rather small. It can be concealed in the most unlikely places; it can be hidden almost anywhere on a person's body, or in a room. Particularly a Victorian room, where even so ordinary an item of furniture as a wastebasket was likely to be covered in cloth, layers of fringes, and decorative rings of tassels.

  We forget how extraordinarily cluttered Victorian rooms were. Innumerable hiding places were provided by the prevailing décor of the period. Furthermore, the Victorians themselves adored secret compartments and concealed spaces; a mid-century writing desk was advertised as "containing 110 compartments, including many most artfully concealed from detection." Even the ornate hearths, found in every room of a house, offered dozens of places to hide an object as small as a key.

  Thus, in the mid-Victorian period, information about the location of a key was almost as useful as an actual copy of the key itself. A thief seeking a wax impression might break into a house if he knew exactly where the key was hidden, or even if he knew in which room it was hidden. But if he did not know where in the house it was, the difficulty of making a thorough search—silently, in a house full of residents and servants, using a single shaded lantern that threw only a "bull's-eye" spot of light—was so great as to be not worth the attempt in the first instance.

  Therefore, Pierce directed his attention to discovering where Mr. Edgar Trent, president of the firm of Huddleston & Bradford, kept his key.

  The first question was whether Mr. Trent kept his key in the bank. Junior clerks of Huddleston & Bradford took their dinner at one o'clock at a pub called the Horse and Rider, across the street from the firm. This was a smallish establishment, crowded and warm at the noon dinner hour. Pierce struck up an acquaintance with one of the clerks, a young man named Rivers.

  Normally, the servants and junior clerks of the bank were wary of casual acquaintances, for one never knew when one was talking to a criminal out of twig; but Rivers was relaxed, in the knowledge that the bank was impregnable to burglary—and recognizing, perhaps, that he had a deal of resentment toward the source of his employment.

  In this regard, one may profitably record the revised "Rules for Office Staff" posted by Mr. Trent in early 1854. These were as follows:

  1.

  Godliness, cleanliness and punctuality are the necessities of a good business.

  2.

  The firm has reduced the working day to the hours from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

  3.

  Daily prayers will be held each morning in the main office. The clerical staff will be present.

  4.

  Clothing will be of a sober nature. The clerical staff will not disport themselves in a raiment of bright color.

  5.

  A stove is provided for the benifit of the clerical staff. It is recommended that each member of the clerical staff bring 4 lbs. of coal each day during cold weather.

  6.

  No member of the clerical staff may leave the room without permission from Mr. Roberts. The calls of nature are permitted and clerical staff may use the garden beyond the second gate. This area must be kept clean and in good order.

  7.

  No talking is allowed during business hours.

  8.

  The craving of tobacco, wines or spirits is a human weakness, and as such is forbidden to the clerical staff.

  9.

  Members of the clerical staff will provide their own pens.

  10.

  The managers of the firm will expect a great rise in the output of work to compensate for these near Utopian conditions.

  However Utopian, the working conditions of Huddleston & Bradford led the clerk Rivers to speak freely about Mr. Trent. And with less enthusiasm than one might expect for a Utopian employer.

  "Bit of a stiff, he is," Rivers said. "Snapping his watch at eight thirty sharp, and checking all to see they are at their places, no excuses. God help the man whose omnibus is late in the traffic of the rush."

  "Demands his routine, does he?"

  "With a vengeance, he does. He's a stiff one—the job must be done, and that's all he cares for. He's getting on in years," Rivers said. "And vain, too: grew whiskers longer than yours, he did, on account of the fact he's losing the hair up top."

  During this period, there was considerable debate about the propriety of whiskers on gentlemen. It was a new fashion, and opinion was divided on its benefits. Similarly, there was a new fashion in smoking, called cigarettes, just introduced, but the most conservative men did not smoke—certainly not in public, or even at home. And the most conservative men were clean-shaven.

  "He has this brush, I hear," Rivers went on. "Dr. Scott's electric hairbrush, comes from Paris. You know how dear it is? Twelve shillings sixpence, that's what it is."

  Rivers would find this expensive: he was paid twelve shillings a week.

  "What's it do?" Pierce inquired.

  "Cures headaches, dandruff,
and baldness, too," Rivers said, "or so it's claimed. Queer little brush. He locks himself into his office and brushes once an hour, punctual." Here Rivers laughed at the foibles of his employer.

  "He must have a large office."

  "Aye, large and comfortable, too. He's an important man, Mr. Trent is."

  "Keeps it tidy?"

  "Aye, the sweeper's in every night, dusting and arranging just so, and every night as he leaves, Mr. Trent says to the sweeper, 'A place for everything, and everything in its place,' and then he leaves, seven o'clock punctual."

  Pierce did not recall the rest of the conversation, for it was of no interest to him. He already knew what he wanted—that Trent did not keep the key in his office. If he did, he would never leave the place to be cleaned in his absence, for sweepers were notoriously easy to bribe, and to the casual eye there was little difference between a thorough cleaning and a thorough search.

  But even if the key was not in the office, it might still be kept in the bank. Mr. Trent might choose to lock it in one of the vaults. To determine if this was so, Pierce could strike up a conversation with a different clerk, but he was anxious to avoid this. Instead, he chose another method.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Swell

  Teddy Burke, twenty-four, was working the Strand at two in the afternoon, the most fashionable hour. Like the other gentlemen, Teddy Burke was decked out, wearing a high hat, a dark frock coat, narrow trousers, and a dark silk choker. This outfit had cost him a pretty, but it was essential to his business, for Teddy Burke was one of the swellest of the swell mobsmen.

  In the throng of gentlemen and ladies who browsed among the elegant shops of this thoroughfare, which Disraeli called "the first street in Europe," no one would notice that Teddy Burke was not alone. In fact, he was working his usual operation, with himself as dipper, a stickman at his side, and two stalls front and back—altogether, four men, each as well-dressed as the next. These four slipped through the crowd, attracting no attention. There was plenty of diversion.

  On this fine early summer day, the air was warm and redolent of horse dung, despite the busy working of a dozen street-urchin sweepers. There was heavy traffic of carts, drays, brightly lettered rattling omnibuses, four-wheel and hansom cabs, and from time to time an elegant chariot rode past, with a uniformed coachman in front and liveried servants standing behind. Ragged children darted among the traffic and turned cartwheels under the horses' hoofs for the amusement of the crowd, some of whom threw a few coppers in their direction.

  Teddy Burke was oblivious to the excitement, and to the rich array of goods on display in the shopwindows. His attention was wholly fixed upon the quarry, a fine lady wearing a heavy flounced crinoline skirt of deep purple. In a few moments he would dip her as she walked along the street.

  His gang was in formation. One stall had taken up a position three paces ahead; another was five paces back. True to their title, the stalls would create disorder and confusion should anything go wrong with the intended dip.

  The quarry was moving, but that did not worry Teddy Burke. He planned to work her on the fly, the most difficult kind of dip, as she moved from one shop to the next.

  "Right, here we go," he said, and the stickman moved alongside him. It was the stickman's job to take the pogue once Teddy had snaffled it, thus leaving Teddy clean, should there be hue and cry and a constable to stop him.

  Together with the stickman, he moved so close to the woman he could smell her perfume. He was moving along her right side, for a woman's dress had only one pocket, and that was on the right.

  Teddy carried an overcoat draped across his left arm. A sensible person might have asked why a gentleman would carry an overcoat on such a warm day; but the coat looked new, and he could have conceivably just picked it up from a fitting at one of the nearby shops. In any case, the overcoat concealed the movement of his right arm across his body to the woman's skirt. He fanned the dress delicately, to determine if a purse was there. His fingers touched it; he took a deep breath, praying that the coins would not clink, and lifted it out of the pocket.

  Immediately he eased away from the woman, shifted his overcoat to his other arm, and in the course of that movement passed the purse to the stickman. The stickman drifted off. Ahead and behind, the stalls moved out in different directions. Only Teddy Burke, now clean, continued to walk along the Strand, pausing before a shop that displayed cut-glass and crystal decanters imported from France.

  A tall gent with a red beard was admiring the wares in the window. He did not look at Teddy Burke. "Nice pull," he said.

  Teddy Burke blinked.

  The speaker was too well-dressed, too square-rigged, to be a plainclothes crusher, and he certainly wasn't a nose, or informer. Teddy Burke said carefully, "Are you addressing me, sir?"

  "Yes," the man said. "I said that was a very nice pull. You tool her off?"

  Teddy Burke was profoundly insulted. A tool was a wire hook that inferior dippers employed to snare a purse if their fingers were too shaky for the job. "Beg your pardon, sir. I don't know your meaning, sir."

  "I think you do, well enough," the man said. "Shall we walk awhile?"

  Teddy Burke shrugged and fell into step alongside the stranger. After all, he was clean; he had nothing to fear. "Lovely day," he said.

  The stranger did not answer. They walked for some minutes in silence. "Do you think you can be less effective?" the man asked after a time.

  "How do you mean, sir?"

  "I mean," the man said, "can you buzz a customer and come out dry?"

  "On purpose?" Teddy Burke laughed. "It happens often enough without trying, I can tell you that."

  "There's five quid for you, if you can prove yourself a prize bungler."

  Teddy Burke's eyes narrowed. There were plenty of magsmen about, sharp con men who often employed an unwitting accomplice, setting him up to take a fall in some elaborate scheme. Teddy Burke was nobody's fool. "Five quid's no great matter."

  "Ten," the man said, in a weary voice.

  "I have to think of me boys."

  "No," the man said, "this is you, alone."

  "What's the lay, then?" Teddy Burke said.

  "Lots of bustle, a ruck touch, just enough to set the quarry to worry, make him pat his pockets."

  "And you want me to come up dry?"

  "Dry as dust," the man said.

  "Who's the quarry, then?" Teddy Burke said.

  "A gent named Trent. You'll touch him with a bungler's dip in front of his offices, just a roughing-up, like."

  "Where's the office, then?"

  "Huddleston & Bradford Bank."

  Teddy Burke whistled. "Westminster. Sticky, that is. There's enough crushers about to make a bloody army."

  "But you'll be dry. All you've to do is worry him."

  Teddy Burke walked a few moments, looking this way and that, taking the air and thinking things over. "When will it be, then?"

  "Tomorrow morning. Eight o'clock sharp."

  "All right."

  The red-bearded gentleman gave him a five-pound bill, and informed him he would get the rest when the job was done.

  "What's it all about, then?" Teddy Burke asked.

  "Personal matter," the man replied, and slipped away into the crowd.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Holy Land

  Between 1801 and 1851, London tripled in size. With a population of two and a half million, it was by far the largest city in the world, and every foreign observer was astonished at its dimensions. Nathaniel Hawthorne was speechless; Henry James was fascinated and appalled at its "horrible numerosity"; Dostoevsky found it "as vast as an ocean . . . a Biblical sight, some prophecy out of the Apocalypse being fulfilled before your very eyes."

  And yet London continued to grow. At the mid-century, four thousand new dwellings were under construction at any one time, and the city was literally exploding outward. Already, the now familiar pattern of expansion was termed "the flight to the suburbs." Outlying areas
that at the turn of the century had been villages and hamlets—Marylebone, Islington, Camden, St. John's Wood, and Bethnal Green—were thoroughly built up, and the newly affluent middle classes were deserting the central city for these areas, where the air was better, the noise less bothersome, and the atmosphere in general more pleasant and "countrified."

  Of course, some older sections of London retained a character of great elegance and wealth, but these were often cheek to jowl with the most dismal and shocking slums. The proximity of great riches and profound squalor also impressed foreign observers, particularly since the slums, or rookeries, were refuges and breeding places for "the criminal class." There were sections of London where a thief might rob a mansion and literally cross a street to disappear into a tangled maze of alleyways and dilapidated buildings crammed with humanity and so dangerous that even an armed policeman did not dare pursue the culprit.

  The genesis of slums was poorly understood at the time; indeed, the very term "slums" did not become widely accepted until 1890. But in a vague way the now familiar pattern was recognized: a region of the city would be cut off from circulation by newly constructed thoroughfares that bypassed it; businesses would depart; disagreeable industries would move in, creating local noise and air pollution and further reducing the attractiveness of the area; ultimately, no one with the means to live elsewhere would choose to reside in such a place, and the region would become decrepit, badly maintained, and overpopulated by the lowest classes.

  Then, as now, these slums existed in part because they were profitable for landlords. A lodging house of eight rooms might take on a hundred boarders, each paying a shilling or two a week to live in "hugger-mugger promiscuity," sleeping with as many as twenty members of the same or opposite sex in the same room. (Perhaps the most bizarre example of lodgings of the period was the famous waterfront sailors' "penny hangs." Here a drunken seaman slept the night for a penny, draping himself across chest-high ropes, and hanging like clothes on a line.)