The Hangman's Child

by Francis Selwyn

  But as he talked about the impossibility of passing off such a forgery, Pandy had chuckled like a happy child.

  'They know it can't be done, Jacko. And that's the very reason that it will be.'

  Impossibility was the centrepiece of his plan. With an eye for a lock and the bundle of blank bills that Saward had stolen from the printer, Pandy swore that a man might pull off a robbery whose proceeds would buy the crown and sceptre.

  Rann looked about him, picked up a discarded newspaper, wrapped it in the brown paper and returned it to the bottom of the secret drawer. On top of it, he laid the other two packages. It was enough to deceive casual inspection.

  Listening again, he heard the bed shifting, Saward gasping and the girl mumbling, as though he might be turning Pretty Jo. Rann pressed the little drawers and panels into place, closed the flap, and turned from the bureau. In the outer room, he slid the window-catch across, leaving it as Saward had last seen it. Taking the key to the heavy door from its hook, he let himself out on to the landing and went down the wooden stairs. But first he drew the little steel picks from the roll of soft leather and eased the three-slider lock until it snapped shut behind him. When Saward discovered his loss, he would first suspect Bragg's cronies.

  His penny-dancer stood in shadow by the broken pump. Rann gazed at the piled dark hair, the profile and the eyes that would have graced a Nefertiti, the delicate ears and neck. His memory held the images of a slim straight back, and trim thighs, hips coppery pale by contrast with her warm brown waist. With a pang of longing for her, he swore to himself that, in comparison, even the treasure of fifty crisp sheets of bank paper was dust and ashes.

  12

  Above the plumes of horse-chestnuts and lime trees, the sky over Battersea was smoke-grey with a threat of summer thunder. A metallic smell of rain hung in the air of Cremorne's riverside pleasure garden. Its Oriental Circus had given way to an encampment of fairground booths, the promise of an afternoon's entertainment. Children too young to assist, slept on straw under the shade of the carts. Donkeys and thin horses grazed hungrily upon the turf.

  Samuel, walking beside Jack Rann, wore the only professional costume that he had taken in his flight from Bragg, a well-tailored suit of clerical black, white tie and silk hat. In this he had worked the front-doors of Chelsea and Kensington as The Reverend Amos Prout, Secretary to the Archbishop of York's Overseas Mission. The mention of an Archbishop silenced all questions, and York was far enough from London to make enquiries difficult. Samuel's pathetic sincerity and copies of printed testimonials from converted heathen had proved, as he said, 'a choker' for his middle-class victims. He glanced at Jack Rann.

  'Why here? I was safe where I was.'

  'Safer here,' Rann said coolly. 'They'll come down that sewer one day. Where you won't find Bragg nor police is a kiddies show. We got to talk about Pandy.'

  They walked slowly past brightly streamered tents and booths. On the grassy spaces, men in silken vests and plumed hats appeared as jugglers or acrobats. A shrill uncertain note flared from the trumpet of the Punch and Judy Show.

  Pandy was in a house last summer,' Rann said quietly, 'Lord Mancart in Lowndes Square. A roof job as usual. In through the attic window and doing the top floors while them and their servants was at dinner below. That's when it all began.'

  Samuel turned a smooth elegant profile for the luxury of feeling the sun upon it.

  'Take much, did he?'

  'An impression.'

  'Took what?'

  Nursemaids in green and blue silks with feathered bonnets were hanging on the arms of impoverished swells. It was the furthest place in London from the men who wanted to take him back to Newgate and hang him.

  'Pandy did a safe in a wall, Sam. A little toy. Behind a picture where anyone'd look. He was going to take an item or two. Then he saw a key lying there.'

  'What use is a key, when the safe's open?'

  'Walk up!' bawled a showman, sharp enough to make Samuel jump. 'See The Dominion of Fancy, or Punch's Opera. Now, gents, look up your 'aypence! Who's for a farden or a 'aypenny?'

  Rann turned away.

  'This key had a label, Sam. Property of safe deposit vaults. Lord Mancart's key to his private deposit. In those vaults, they have a whole wall of safe deposits a man can hire.'

  Samuel gave a short laugh.

  'Behind a door thicker than the hull of a battleship. Supposing, Jack, you could get that far in the first place.'

  'Just listen, Sammy,' said Rann patiently. 'Pandy might have took a trinket or two, but he left them. He made an impression of the key in a tin of wax he always had in his pocket, when he went on business. No one knew he'd ever been there. Think what a man might do, if he had keys to all the deposits in a set of vaults!' 'Get any more keys, did he?'

  'He took it slow, Sammy. Opposite the vaults is premises where Mag Fashion found a corner, her also giving a ride to the owner from time to time. From there, Pandy could see who came and went at the vaults. Me and him followed forty or fifty of them last summer. We got it down to about fifteen or sixteen. Who they were and where they lived.'

  Samuel nodded with a grudging smile. He saw it now.

  'And that's why you wanted those houses in Portman Square visited and mapped out?'

  'More than those, Sammy. You gave us the way into the houses, where we couldn't get it otherwise. But Pandy pulled a stroke or two, cool as iced lemon. One we couldn't break. Big one in Belgrave Square, though it was empty for the summer except for the butler and housekeeper. House of the Honourable Fitzroy, who must know half the ladies' bosoms and backsides in Westminster.'

  He chuckled at the memory of it.

  'Mag Fashion drives up ladylike with me as servant. I ring the bell and ask the butler to come and have an urgent word with her, her having a tale of her sister of fourteen pregnant by the Honourable Fitzroy. The butler goes out fast to stop a shindy in the square. Sticks his head in the cab to hear what she says. In that time, Pandy was up the steps, in the door, and up the stairs. He skates through them empty rooms like a ghost on ice, opens a bureau and lets himself out over a back window sill twenty minutes later with no more fuss than a shadow.'

  'With another impression?'

  Rann shook his head.

  'No, Sammy. We never found all fifteen or sixteen keys. Nothing like. Though with houses being empty for the summer, we once spent half the night looking in one of 'em. But five impressions we got and five duplicate beauties Pandy made.'

  A broad-shouldered, bearded man in a sailor-suit, one leg replaced by a wooden furniture stump, stepped in their path.

  'Happy Family Exhibitor!' he said hopefully. 'See an assemblage of animals of diverse habits living friendly in one cage. Birds o' prey, with pigeons, starlings, cats, dogs, rats, and mice! Thirty-six hours at Cambridge without food - and not a animal ate by another

  Samuel looked at the gently moving chestnut trees.

  'So even if you got into the vaults, there's only five deposits you could open. You might come up with nothing but a handful of shine-rag.'

  Rann looked over his shoulder, then turned to his companion.

  'Sammy, Pandy swore that two of them keys were like twins. If anyone knew the truth of it, he would, having been a locksmith's boy. Even Pandy never saw how big this could be until he twigged that.'

  'Meaning?'

  'We reckoned they must have a hundred or two safe deposits with the same make of key. These are little keys, Sammy. There ain't no way you can vary a little key like that two hundred ways. Consequentially, two hundred locks might only have twenty or thirty different patterns of keys. Each key of those five might open half a dozen deposits. See?'

  'No,' said Samuel scornfully, 'they wouldn't have that.'

  'They must, Sam. After all, a man that hires a key won't know which of the other deposits it fits, even if he knows it fits any. And when he goes to his deposit, there's always a bank supervisor goes with him to open the main steel door and watch from a distance
. There's no chance he could get near any but his own.'

  Beyond the tight-rope dancers and the stilt-vaulters stood the largest canvas enclosure with its banner and a flag flying the Stars and Stripes. 'Mrs Jarley's Waxworks'. The little band outside, which had been playing 'All Among the Barley', struck up an American polka to signal the start of the show.

  'You still got copies of the five keys?'

  'Tomnoddy has, Sam. He never asked what they were but he kept them all the time I was away. That's why he gets his share.'

  'And you say you could open a dozen or two of them deposits?'

  'Yes, Sammy. Bragg and his mob got wind of something like a house done but nothing stolen. That's why Pandy was taken. And that's why, even when they was hurting him, he'd never have told them the truth. It's what all this is about.'

  'Gold and sparklers,' Samuel said, scepticism softening in hopeful laughter.

  Rann shook his head.

  'No, Sammy. Gold and sparklers has to be fenced. I daren't do it. The minute I try, I'll have Bragg or the law on me. I don't want jewels nor gold, Sam. They're no good to me now.'

  Samuel stared at the horse-chestnuts again, perplexed.

  'Then what's in it, Jack?'

  'A fortune,' Rann said. 'We'll talk about it in here. This place is safer than anywhere you've been for months past.'

  He dropped two sixpences into the hand of the money-taker by the canvas flap of Mrs Jarley's Waxworks and led the way inside.

  13

  The benches on the grass were half filled, the red curtains at the far end just opening. Mrs Jarley, in black dress and bonnet, commanded a liveried attendant to wind the mechanism. A waxwork monster, the Feejee Mermaid, appeared as a girl with a glossy and impassive face, concealed to the waist by long fair hair, a tail of green cambric from the waist down. The life-sized creature, looking-glass in hand, began to comb her hair in a series of awkward jerks. A piano sounded wave-like chords, as Rann led Samuel to the unoccupied rear bench.

  'Right, Sam,' he said gently, 'you know more about faking than anyone, seeing you served time for it. Take these and tell me what they are. Brought your glass?'

  Samuel nodded.

  'Two bank-bills here, thanks to young missy's penning. Which is a ringer?'

  Samuel took the oblongs of sky-blue bank-paper, crisp and thin. He held them under a horn-framed map-reading glass.

  Each appeared identical. Lines of printed copperplate script promised to pay the bearer a stated sum on presentation to the issuing bank, Messrs B.W. Blydenstein, Great St Helens, City of London, up to three months from the date of issue. The sum to be paid had been lately filled in, its figuring black and thick, like the first word of a lease on an indenture. Samuel turned the bill over. It was blank on the back, except where two holders had endorsed it as it passed from hand to hand. The endorsements were in red, signatures in blue, next to the bank's acceptance stamp.

  Samuel examined each bill, white hair slicked back from his smooth rodent face, an air of genial plausibility restored.

  'One's fake, seeing's both got the same serial number written in. Perhaps both. You might as well ask your little wriggler to copy your death-warrant, Jack Rann.'

  He offered the paper back but Rann made no attempt to take it.

  'How's that, then, Sam?'

  Samuel looked at him, the map-reading glass held aside.

  'What I can see in two minutes, banks would see in two seconds. You wouldn't get past the greenest counting-house clerk with these bits of paper.'

  'They're real bills, ain't they?'

  'Until they was interfered with.' Samuel's voice dropped as he scanned the blue paper again through his glass. 'Someone's took the original ink off. Written in new names and figures.'

  'Show me,' Rann said.

  Samuel held each sheet to his nostrils and breathed deeply.

  'Chlorine,' he said sadly. 'Smelling bad paper ain't a figure of speech, Jack. Every faker thinks a quill-pen full of chlorine will take off ink, so that bank paper can be written over. It'll take off ink, but not without a smell that lasts six months.'

  'Only supposing you put it to your nose,' Rann said.

  'They smell it before it crosses the counter. And once they see your Miss Jolly's writing, they'd sniff good and strong. What's the ink that was on here first?'

  'No notion, Sam. What might it be?'

  'Office ink made with gallnut and iron, as a rule, if not with logwood. Chlorine's the only thing that takes off both.' He studied the paper again and shook his head. 'You ain't used to blue paper, Jack. There's a reason why banks prefer it to white. Whatever takes ink off blue paper decomposes the dye. Where the writing was on blue, once you take it off, it leaves the paper yellow. When you come to overwrite, seeing you want different names or figures, you leave what they call yellow-spot round the edges of the new script. A yellow rim round the new writing. You mayn't see it but a bank clerk can twig it in a second.'

  'What about the beauty of the penning?' Rann asked. Samuel looked up again from the paper.

  'Copying script is a child's game, Jack. You think because your young piece has a neat hand to copy, your bills will pass? There's hundreds in the penal colonies for the rest of their lives thought just the same as you. Except the rest of your life wouldn't be that long, would it, Handsome Rann?'

  'Anything else amiss with that paper, Sam?'

  Samuel gave a sigh, looking through the glass once more.

  'How much more d'you want? Slum goods like this will hang you, Jack. All the care in the world won't alter the truth that chlorine turns blue paper yellow and smells a mile off. Apart from the printing that was on the bill to begin with, there's nothing genuine here but the bank's acceptance stamp.'

  Rann relaxed and said very quietly, 'The stamp's fake, Sam. It wasn't the writing I wanted to hear about. Pandy knew about chlorine and yellow spot. The bills I use will be blank to start with. The stamp is what I had to be sure of. If that passes, the job's good as done.'

  Samuel looked up, the scorn swept from his face.

  'Now there's a thing,' he said. 'How's that bank stamp done?'

  'Slate,' Rann said. 'Thin slate. We worked on it before I was fitted for killing Pandy. Young Jolly started with a pair o' school compasses, just to draw the circle of the stamp exact, and a steel sewing-needle fitted like lead into a pencil. We wet the ink impression of the bank stamp on a cancelled bill. With that we made an exact print on a hard dry potato cut in two. We strengthened that print and reversed it, then stamped it in white on slate. The compasses scratched the circle of the design. The rest she picked out with the steel needle.'

  Samuel looked at the stamp, then frowned at Cleopatra on the stage, touching the asp to her breast, lifting a pearl to her mouth until the clockwork ran down.

  'Simple idea,' Rann said, 'not simple to do. Took her a month and more before there was a stamp fit to use. Even then, slate splits after a dozen pressings. Still, before Pandy was coopered, we'd got a boxful - and we got 'em still. You think that stamp's genuine, Sammy? Then I got genuine acceptance stamps for half the banks in London and more than they'd care to know about in Paris and Hamburg. That's how it started.'

  'And you're the putter-up?' Samuel asked thoughtfully. 'A job that size?'

  Rann scowled. 'Everyone who gets a sniff wants to know who's the putter-up! Orator Hawkins wants to know, because Mr Bragg wants to know, because Flash Charley Fowler wants to know. All looking for a king of the Swell Mob. But I'm the putter-up, Sam. Me and Pandy and our girls worked on this job half a year. We got it sweet as honey and smooth as butter. Then a whisper comes to Bragg, so Bragg and Strap and Catskin come asking Pandy. And Pandy's dead, but they're no wiser.'

  'Stamp or no stamp, it can't be done,' Samuel said firmly. 'Even with new forms, you won't know what numbers to put on 'em. And you won't have the right signatures - not knowing the names of the holders that have traded 'em on.'

  'I'll know, Sammy. And if they're genuine, a bank can't
no more refuse you fifty pounds on a fifty-pound bill of exchange than it can refuse you twenty silver shillings for a gold sovereign. Better still, there's men that hold what they call bank post-bills for payment. They're only good for two weeks, but payable to anyone, same as money once they're signed.'

  'They know a dud.'

  'The banks won't see a dud,' Rann said softly and Samuel looked sharply away at the stage vampire, which pointed alternately to the moon and to its hungry mouth. 'Ask yourself, Sammy. A man signs over a bill of exchange to you. Or you buy a bill from the bank to cash for whatever the sum endorsed, or sell it on. You'd look at it close through a reading-glass?'

  'Not if it was a bank, perhaps,' Samuel said, 'otherwise, yes. I'm too long in the game to be a duffer.'

  'Once you'd looked and seen it right, you'd lock it in a safe or a deed-box, p'raps?'

  Samuel nodded.

  'And what then?'

  Samuel fingered his white clerical tie, still doubting the point of the question.

  'Leave it till it was cashed.' He shifted, as if something monstrous was forming in his mind. 'What else should I do?'

  'Suppose it was a thousand pounds. Two thousand guineas. Where'd you keep it then?'

  Samuel waved aside the mere suggestion.

  'All right, then. Deposit. Bank or vault. A bill that big.'

  Rann nodded again.

  'And you wouldn't keep going to look at it?'

  "Course I bloody wouldn't,' Samuel replied in a whisper. 'Not till I wanted cash. Why should I?'

  'And seeing as you found it genuine when you bought it, you wouldn't keep smelling it and looking through a glass to see if the paper had gone yellow. You'd have done that at the start, wouldn't you?'

  'You got the Devil's own nerve, Jack Rann!' Samuel said suddenly, with a laugh of pure delight.