Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob.

by Francis Selwyn

  Joe looked up from his food.

  'You was watching? All the time?'

  Old Mole shook his head solemnly.

  'You've no idea, little Joseph, no idea whatsoever how you've been watched over these past months.'

  'And you sweetened MacBride? A flint-hearted brute like him?'

  Old Mole grinned again.

  'Jimmy MacBride got weaknesses, Joe. Ain't we all? Likes

  his helping of nancy.' ‘MacBride?'

  'What could be told might put him on the hulks for good. And he knows it. But let him act reasonable, and he can stiff all he wants, with Mr Kite's compliments.'

  Stunning Joe blew out his cheeks.

  ‘You must a-wanted me bad,' he said. 'You really must, Mr Mole.'

  'True,' said Old Mole. 'And Mr Kite more so. You wouldn't believe how set Mr Kite was on having you sprung. The things have been done for you, Stunning Joseph!'

  'And my young person, Mr Mole? What about her?'

  'Millbank, Joseph, the penitentiary. She'll be there five years if she's there a day. Arranged the matter. Same block as where Missy Ludd is boss. Sad accidents can happen there, Joe. Vicki Hartle bathed in water boiling fresh from the copper. A good scrubbing or two with them wire brushes. Fed on piping gruel to get the beauty of it warm. Why, being locked alone in the dark on bread and water’ll be heaven on earth for your Miss Vicki. Scores is settled, Stunning Joe, have no fear.'

  But Joe was on his feet, the quick dark eyes glinting with anger.

  'I don't want none of that, Mr Mole! Just let her rot there Five years and forget it. I seen enough cruel tricks these past few months and I don't wish 'em on a living soul. Let the law have her, Mr Mole, but Missy Ludd ain't to touch her!'

  Old Mole nodded submissively and spread out his hands.

  'As you want it, Joseph. Then Missy Ludd shan't raise a hand to her. I'd say them hulks had made you a changed man, my son. What they call humane. Mind you, there's times when a man can be too humane for his own good. But that's between you and the bitch that done you harm.'

  Old Mole turned to the door, as if about to leave, and then swung back again.

  ‘In course, you'll be seeing Mr Kite this afternoon. I’ll have some togs for you before that. Act sensible, Stunning Joe, and remember your pals and what they've done for you. That way you won't go far wrong.'

  He moved towards the door again, but Joe called him, getting to his feet once more.

  'Mr Mole! That heathen clasp was never there, never with them other jools in the safe. I had no chance to make away with it. You got to believe that.'

  'I believe you, Stunning Joe,' said Old Mole reasonably. 'Who wouldn't?’

  'I never so much as seen it, Mr Mole. And if I knew where it might be, ‘I’d tell you and Mr Kite straight off.'

  Old Mole's yellowed mouth hung open again but there was no longer any semblance of humour in its grin.

  'Oh, you would, Stunning Joe,' he said reassuringly. 'Yes, you would. Not at first, p'raps. But you'd marvel at the things you might tell once your mind was put to it proper.'

  The waves on the shingle were no more than a distant thunder as the afternoon sun caught the dark gloss of mahogany furniture in Sealskin Kite's parlour. There the old man sat, hunched in his chair. Kite's face was brown and wizened as a walnut, so that he seemed the twin rather than the husband of the old woman who now sat beside him. Mrs Kite squirmed in her seat as she adjusted her black bonnet and shawl.

  Sealskin Kite had never seen a police office. His closest acquaintance with a constable was when he saw an officer standing protectively at the gate of his stockbroker villa near Hammersmith Mall, touching his hat as the master's carriage rolled in. Kite was the merchant banker of the swell mob, a man who could turn goods into gold, gold into notes of credit, notes of credit into goods, stocks or bonds. In a long life he had worked with great dexterity and complete impunity. His neighbours saw in him a benign and childless old man, who contributed to the relief of 'distressed trades', and dropped a gold sovereign into the collection plate of the chapel which he attended on Sunday mornings.

  The turf and the whorehouses of the Haymarket were the basis of his wealth, though he had long passed beyond such obvious means of subsistence. He had not been on a racecourse for a dozen years, and he knew no more of the Haymarket than could be seen from a closed carriage driving between Regent Street and Pall Mall.

  At this stage of his life, he really had no idea how great his investments might be in this group of betting offices or that, in property whose tenants lived by prostituting themselves in the ill-lit streets near Piccadilly. From time to time he read of vengeance exacted on a rival bookmaker or a recalcitrant debtor. An iron stave might break a man's legs so that they would mend again and allow him to walk with a little difficulty. Or, if the crime warranted a second blow, he would do no more than sit out the rest of his days by a street wall, a tin cup collecting the coppers of those who were moved to pity his destruction before they hurried on their way.

  Sealskin Kite could not have guessed, to save his life, which of these injuries were carried out in his own interests. The men who inflicted them were employed by others who themselves were strangers to Kite. When he read of a man crippled by his attackers, or a young woman disfigured, he folded his copy of The Times or the Morning Post and shook his head in dismay. Then he would turn to the old woman at his side and lament that he had no idea what the world was coming to.

  All of which made it very odd that Kite should have involved himself personally in the plans for robbery at Wan-nock Hundred. In the normal way of business he would never have allowed himself to be seen with Old Mole, let alone Stunning Joe or a common bawdy-house bully like Jack Strap. Yet the prize of the Shah Jehan clasp had swept away all his sense of caution.

  And still Joe himself could not understand it. Sealskin Kite was not a man to covet the bauble for himself. He had little taste for beauty or splendour of that kind. Why, then, should he want it desperately enough to spring Joe O'Meara from the dark prison-hulks? Even if the clasp could be found and stolen, Kite would never find a buyer for it. It was too easily identified. Even its separate stones would hardly escape detection. And if the stones had to be cut and reset, losing much of their value in the process, why not steal a different treasure in the first place?

  Such were the thoughts which had occupied Joe O'Meara in the hours preceding his audience with Sealskin Kite.

  In the sunlit parlour, Kite and his wife snuggled in their adjoining chairs, their shrewd old faces peering up like two mice in a glove. Old Mole and Jack Strap stood either side of the door, like footmen. Jack Strap was a fat, grizzled bully, whose age might have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty. His jowls hung in lines of sullen despondency but there was no mistaking the strength in his shoulders, broad and powerful as a coal-heaver on a Thames wharf.

  'Come, my dear young sir!' said Kite, the little eyes twinkling in the old bulldog head. 'Be seated by me!' He beckoned Joe to the chair which was placed on the side opposite to Mrs Kite.

  When Joe had perched himself uneasily in the place of honour, his host took O'Meara's hand between his own.

  'Sealskin Kite keeps open house, sir. Always did and ever shall. You may call for what you choose, sir. Whatever you do not see here shall be sent up at once.' He turned to the old woman beside him who was rattling the plates on the table. 'A new-laid egg or two for the young gentleman, my sweetness. And a round of buttered toast.'

  Mrs Kite nodded, taking her dismissal in good part. She got to her feet and the train of her black dress scurried over the carpet towards the door, which Old Mole held open for her.

  'Now,' said Kite turning to Stunning Joe. 'And now welcome, my dear sir! Welcome again to all your friends!’

  Joe had determined to say his piece early.

  'I shan't forget, sir!' he said quickly. 'I shan't forget what was done for me, Mr Kite, nor what I owe to them that did it. Try me and see.'

  Sealski
n Kite smiled, shaking his head gently from side to side, as if such gratitude was beyond all expectation.

  'Mr Mole,' he said, without turning his face from Joe. 'What is the news today from Portland?'

  'Buried him, Mr Kite. Buried him just on noon in the name of Joseph O'Meara. Seems that Surgeon Doyle was quite poorly after last night's frolic. His assistant had to do the business. Surprised to find Joe dead in his sleep, of course. But no question of it. Thought he might have been smothered to death, yet who'd want to do that?'

  They had murdered for him then, Joe thought. A man smothered, a body without mark upon it. Kite looked at him, took his hand again and smiled. In the intervals of speech, the old man's breath came in a faint buzzing sound as if he was always framing words even though he might not utter them.

  'Only tell me what you want, Mr Kite,' he pleaded. 'Only tell me and I’ll do it for you.'

  Kite patted the hand and then released it.

  'My dear young sir, ain't I a man of business? And what's a man of business to do unless it's to protect his investment?'

  'If I knew where that heathen clasp was, I'd tell you, Mr Kite,' said Joe earnestly. 'And I'd fetch it for you this minute.'

  Kite clicked his tongue and shook his head again, as if speechless with admiration of Joe's loyalty.

  'But I don't know where it is, Mr Kite. May I be shot if I do.'

  'Course you don't,' said Kite amiably. 'But Sealskin Kite knows.'

  They were interrupted by the opening of the door. The girl with the deformed head of imbecility brought in a plate of poached eggs on buttered toast. She placed it before Stunning Joe, bobbed to Sealskin Kite, and then withdrew.

  'Eat your vittels and listen,' said Kite more sharply. 'That jewel can be took now and never a word said. A lot's happened since they put you away, Stunning Joe.'

  'Such as?' Joe inquired.

  'Such as the poor Baron Lansing taking sick and dying, with never a word or sight of the Shah Jehan clasp. All that he left went to his children, but never the clasp. Not sight nor smell of it again.'

  'Then who had it?'

  'Not my place to call Banker Lansing a rogue,' said Kite reasonably, 'but sure as I sit here that clasp was never in the safe for you to steal. After your bitch sung the whole caper to the law, Baron Lansing saw how he might improve himself. If that jewel weren't in the safe, but if it was thought to be, he might make his fortune from the London Indemnity insurers and ne'er lose a stone of the clasp. What he could make on it later would double his luck. Course, you might swear it was never in the safe, but who'd believe a thief that was caught by the law?'

  'He never took it to the grave with him?' said Joe.

  'No,' said Kite, 'he never did. Nor it didn't go to his family either. What else he had was theirs by right and they took it. But the Shah Jehan clasp went another way from the first. It never, never was at Wannock Hundred. Lansing's doxy had it.'

  'Doxy?' said Joe uncertainly.

  'A real young beauty,' breathed Kite, 'no more 'n eighteen years old. Cosima Bremer. Set her up in a house in Brunswick Square in Brighton, easy to visit from London or Wannock Hundred. Old Lansing pleasured her till one day he gave himself a seizure at the game. Died in the saddle!'

  For the first time Joe heard Sealskin Kite laugh.

  'So Miss Cosima kept the jewel he gave her for safety?'

  Kite nodded.

  'Safe and sound in the big house in Brunswick Square. And there she sits all alone, poor little mouse, with a great heathen jewel as her inheritance. She can't sell it and she can't eat it. What's she to do? Why, my dear young sir, the man that relieves her of such a burden does her a kindness.'

  'Stop a bit,' said Joe cautiously, 'you can't know she's got it, Mr Kite. Not know it for a fact, that is.'

  Kite chuckled again.

  'The London Indemnity insurers know it, Mr Joe. That's enough for me. There's a watch on that house, day and night. Sometimes their own men and always the police. When old Lansing snuffed it, his banking business was in very poor health. He'd been putting aside a few little trinkets to be made off with in the event of a smash. The Shah Jehan clasp was best of all. A little bit of fortune when he and his doxy did their bunk. Now the law knows it and the insurers know it. Course, they ain't got proof strong enough for a justice to sign a warrant. But there they sit, front and back of Brunswick Square, like two cats outside of a poor little mouse-hole.'

  'And you mean to have the jool, Mr Kite!' said Joe excitedly.

  'I do, Stunning Joseph. I do indeed. And here's the beauty ' of it all. I may take that heathen treasure without fear of raising a shout. For when a jewel is supposed to have been stole already, only kept back by the owner for purposes of fraud, why there can hardly be a complaint when the party loses it in earnest. He can't go to the police office and complain of being robbed of a treasure that he's not supposed to have in the first place. Rich, ain't it?'

  'Rich,' said Joe, nodding eagerly.

  'And that ain't the best of it!' Kite allowed the breath to buzz humorously through his teeth for a moment. 'The best is that I have a spiderman to steal it for me. The best spider-man of all the trade. And he won't be looked for, nor suspected, nor even recognised. For all the world knows him dead and buried off Portland a few hours since. You was worth springing, my dear young sir.'

  'It’ll have to be slippy,' said Joe thoughtfully, ‘What with jacks and insurers all about it.'

  'Why,' said Kite humorously, 'we thought of that too. There's a tame jack among 'em. A jack that was tamed special for you.'

  'You bent him?'

  'No,' said Kite, "but we tamed him. Mr Mole got him on a string. Verity. A big fat jack to be led by a ring through his nose. And the best of it is that he never knows he's being led. He's been through every hoop that Mr Mole held for him.'

  'Then you mean to have that jewel from under their eyes, Mr Kite?'

  'Oh, I do, Stunning Joseph. I do. If you can count so high, there's one hundred thousand pounds to be had for it.' Joe looked startled.

  'Never!' he said. 'The law and the insurers never said above ten thousand when I was put up at Old Bailey.'

  'Ten thousand to you or them,' said Kite softly, 'ten thousand to the rest of the human race. But to me, one hundred. thousand straight. And I ain't told a living soul why. And I shan't start now.'

  Joe looked up at the impassive faces of Old Mole and Jack Strap as the two men guarded the door. He glanced back at his host.

  'I’ll do my best, Mr Kite,' he said at last. 'I swear I will. I mean to show myself grateful to you.'

  'Course you do,' said Kite. 'And don't we trust you to? After all, where's your other friends? You might throw yourself on the mercy of the law, but that would be ingratitude. And they'd take you to the hulks, strip the hide from your back, and cut your backbone almost in two. Then you'd be shipped to do your time, walking like a cripple and crying like a baby. So you ain't the sort to peach on us.'

  'You know that!' said Joe insistently.

  'Course we do’ said Kite. 'Even if we didn't, a man that's dead and buried won't be looked for. Supposing he should be killed a second time, no man will look for him and no man will hang for him.'

  'I swear, Mr Kite!' said Joe, suddenly frightened. But Sealskin Kite calmed him by a gesture.

  'Course you do, Stunning Joseph. But a man like you is the only man for the job. A right, tight friend. Why, Stunning Joe, I don't know that you aren't the only sort of friend that a man of business ought to have! You being dead already!'

  And Sealskin Kite laughed a second time, louder than before.

  SEALSKIN KITE'S LITTLE TICKLE

  11

  The mid-morning sun burnt with a silver fire above the delicate ironwork of the Chain Pier. On the placid surface of the water it was reflected like polished metal, slanting a colourless glare down the busy little streets beyond the promenades. By July the fresh white paint of shop-fronts and taverns had been raised and blistered in the heat.

/>   Beyond the huddled little streets stood Folthorp's Royal Library and Reading Rooms. Its Grecian elegance contrasted oddly with the oriental domes of the Queen's pavilion which it flanked. Twice a day, in the middle of the morning and the afternoon, Folthorp's became briefly the meeting place for visitors of rank and fashion in Brighton. An elegant advertisement in brass letters on black glass promised: 'Tables with newspapers and magazines, railway records, share lists, army and navy lists. A newspaper room is set apart exclusively for ladies.' A uniformed constable stood conspicuously near the glass door to deter youthful beggars or liappyjacks', as they were known to Brightonians.

  The reason for Folthorp's brief popularity was easily explained. At eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon, the latest share prices and financial news were received by telegraph from London and posted up for the benefit of subscribers. A man of business could take a house in Brighton for the summer, yet still be as well informed as if he had remained in his villa in Highgate or Hammersmith.

  At about quarter past eleven, the subscribers began to leave. Gravely-bearded men in silk hats, the gold chains of hunter watches looped across their waistcoats, stood in little groups outside and paused to pass the time of day. Their dress and manner was quite as formal as if they had met on the floor of the Exchange itself. A few men were unable to join their colleagues who now wandered away, arm-in-arm, to the Turkish Baths of the Old Steine or to take Brighton Seltzer at the German Spa in Queen's Park. These were the invalids whose tapestried carriages or Bath chairs, each with its attendant, stood in a row outside the reading rooms. Elderly and retired brokers, their morning and afternoon visits preserved an illusion of continued vitality.