'It ain't that I wish to be churlish,' said Morant-Barham, with a good-natured laugh to prove it, 'but how is all this money to be got?'
Dacre smoothed the plan flat.
'It's to be got in the course of one night, Joey. Between six in the evening, when the locks go on, and seven the next morning when they come off. There's a night-watch, but they ain't trusted near the gold. They're carrying guns, of course, but they can't get into the refining-shops or anywhere but the outside offices.'
'Why not?'
'Here,' Dacre's bony finger traced a line just behind the entrance vestibule. 'Short of a ton of gunpowder, a man won't get near the gold except through that door. Plated steel and weighs several tons. It ain't just locked, Joey. A fellow might soon come to terms with a lock. There's a devilish clever cove by the name of Sergeant who built this one and geared it to a clock. From six in the evening until seven in the morning, there's three inches of solid steel, tight as a curate's purse, closing the keyhole on the inside.
A fellow can't even chisel out the entire lock, for it's fitted from the far side of the door. At seven in the morning, the wheel that the clockwork keeps turning will move round so that the steel is clear of the keyhole. And then you may open it with a key. It ain't to be broke, Joey!'
'Then you'll never see inside!' said Morant-Barham peevishly.
'It ain't to be broke, Joey! But no more am I! Now, have the goodness to attend to me again. A fellow that could get past the time-lock might get to the refining-shop and the rest of the machinery. Not that he'd find gold there, unless he could scrape a peck off the crucibles. Between him and the stronghold wing stands another door with a lock that never saw a key. It's all numbers, Joey. A man that knows the seven figures he must turn the dial to can open it in a minute. Otherwise, he might as well go home and forget it.'
'And you know it, Dacre! You must, by God!' Dacre shook his head.
'I don't, Joey. No one knows it. The man who closes the lock may choose any figure in a million and may alter it every time he closes the lock. Once it's shut, he must either tell you what the secret is, or you must break into his skull for it. It's a lock that is never set except by the Director himself or his private secretary.'
'Then you must rack it from them!' said Morant-Barham furiously.
Dacre laughed.
'If you suppose, Joey Barham, that I shall do anything of the sort, y'are most monstrously misled. I trade in masterpieces, old fellow. When this crib has been cracked, there's not a soul who shall know when or how. Not a lock forced, not a door scratched, not a man spoken to in ill-temper. That's the art of it, Joey. After the time-lock and the figure-lock, however, there's nothing but a Double Treasury lock in the door of the vault, and one of Mr Yale's cylinder locks on each of the bank boxes. If I ain't sprung that lot in five minutes, Joey, then I deserve to be hung.'
'May I be damned if it's to be done!' said Morant-Barham, sitting down heavily on the sofa again. 'There isn't a way past that time-lock. The night ain't long enough for you to try every setting of the figure-lock, even if you'd nothing else to do. And if you found it in the end, they'd change it before the next night! Where's the good of being able to open vault doors and cylinder locks, when you'll never so much as see them? I don't mean to cavil, old fellow, but it can't be done - any of it!'
'Joey, Joey,' said Dacre gently, as if he were soothing a crying child, 'ain't that the beauty of it? It can't be done! You might go to the Treasury or the police tomorrow and tell them the tale. They'd laugh in your face. It can't be done, old chum. And that's why I shall do it. By God, I ain't come this far without knowing what needs doing in the matter. The Khan girl's plan was a gift from the gods, and damned if they ain't given me one other.'
'You've a partner inside?'
'Just you and me, Joey. One week from today!'
'Time-locks that can't be broke?' said Morant-Barham sceptically. 'And a figure-lock that must be set at one in a million ?'
Verney Dacre brushed his fair whiskers gently against the flush of excitement in his spoilt, petulant face.
'Joey, Joey,' he murmured to himself, 'I'm through those locks already, as sure as I stand here!'
Morant-Barham lay on the sofa in the stateroom as the steamer carried them past the Battery and towards their landing. He listened to the details of the plan, sometimes gasping, mouth gaping with delight, sometimes sniggering with sheer pleasure at the neatness of it. He thought that even if the gleam in Dacre's eye bordered on derangement, there was after all a way through the time-lock and the figure-lock, as the scheme unfolded. Once the cracksman had mastered the locks and was in that part of the building where even the most trusted officers of the night-watch could not follow, he was master of the place until morning.
And when Dacre described the means by which the entire contents of the gold vault might be shipped effortlessly out of the Federal Mint, Joey Barham rolled hopelessly about the sofa, roaring and tearful in an ecstasy of mirth. His scepticism had gone. It could be done - every last half-dollar of it, Joey thought.
Dacre left him and slipped into the adjoining room. Maggie was still in her short white vest and close-fitting cotton pants, though now she was standing before a long mirror, shaping her hair on top of her head, as though trying a selection of styles. She let it fall, so that it hung in a blonde tail behind her, down to the level of her shoulder-blades. Dacre knew- that the next few minutes were as important in his plan as any time which might be spent in manipulating a mere lock. Maggie was a pet English-born acquisition, a common shop-girl whom he had drilled until she was the most expensive young whore in the house which he operated in New York. There was a sulky petulance about her but she had learnt not to show it to the man who was virtually her master. Not that Dacre had so far broken her lips for her, but Maggie maintained a romantic attachment to another girl of the house, 'Tawny Jenny', and Dacre had left her in no doubt that Jennifer, with her Indian beauty, would suffer for the blonde girl's sins.
He stood behind Maggie, holding her jaw firmly with one hand, keeping her face to the mirror so that he could watch her expression as he spoke. With his other hand he undid her pants and let them fall, so that she stood only in the short vest. Maggie stood tense but still, knowing that she had little choice in the matter.
'Now, miss," said Dacre softly, 'you know what must be done?'
'Yes,' she said, in a low soft voice with the hint of a Celtic lilt, 'I know. I've been told often enough.'
Dacre's hand caressed the pale satiny warmth of Maggie's bare hips.
'Y' love Jennifer, do y' not? There ain't much doubt, to judge by the way you sniff that young Bengali bitch's tail half the day and most of the night!'
The anger in Maggie's eyes was quickly subdued.
'Very well,' Dacre continued. 'Now, Miss Jennifer ain't exactly a free agent in the matter, having cost me money to buy in the South and bring here. And if you think you may walk off the premises with her, miss, you shall find that Cowhide and Lucifer will contradict you both.'
‘I never meant that,' said Maggie, hardly audible.
'So y' say, so y' say, miss.' Dacre's hand lightly mapped the fair-skinned smoothness of Maggie's body, stroking over the marble-whiteness of her twenty-year-old belly whose childish flatness had gone and whose first firm outward curve was just perceptible. He brushed the little growth of fair hair at her thighs. The girl lowered her hazel eyes but moved slightly in response. He lifted his hand, touched the side of her waist, and weighed the full ovals of Maggie's bottom. Again she arched backward to him, as if in submissive compliance.
'Now, miss,' said Dacre gently, 'it's no secret that you'd rather have your Jenny doing this for you than me or any man. And tonight you shall decide. When you see your beau, Captain Moore, tonight, you shall give your message and give it well. If he comes to you at a run next week, as he will if you bid him properly, you shall be free. And Tawny Jennifer shall go with you as bride or groom, and a purse of gold for you both.'
/> Maggie was arching and pushing herself into his palms now, showing an innocent delight and eagerness to redeem the promise.
'But, Miss Mag,' said Dacre with a hint of paternal affection and warning, 'if the message ain't given the right way to Captain Moore, and if he don't come at a run, then things must go otherwise with you and your Jennifer. A fellow like me can't afford losses on all sides and must sell up to pay his way. Now, a Khan girl may be a Moslem beauty but Jennifer's shade of tawny makes her a slave in states not far from here. And that's where she must go, Maggie, to earn her price on the auction block. Now, she may find a kind and loving master who buys her, or she may find a cruel one who delights in what can be done behind closed doors. But whichever it is, she and you must part. It ain't that I wish it, but needs must if you lose Captain Moore.'
Maggie drew forward from his caressing, prepared to turn and push herself into his arms.
'Promise us we may go,' she whispered, 'Jenny and me together, when it's all done. You shall have whatever you ask from us.'
'Then I can't make it plainer, Maggie,' he said gently. 'What must be done is best for all of us. You and I, and your handsome Jenny.'
Well trained in her profession, Maggie began to arch and round her broad young bottom restively against Dacre. Turning in his embrace, she raised her lips to him, so that he caught the warm sweet taste of her mouth, her lips themselves as sensuous as the velvet of a flower petal. She slipped down, kneeling at him in a lascivious gesture of submission, while Dacre brushed back the veil of her blonde hair and held her face between his hands.
Presently they moved toward the bed with its white satin cover, the girl drawing her master after her by his fingers. As she did so, Maggie held her free hand behind her to excite him further by coyly shielding what they both knew she must reveal fully in a moment more. Maggie's stockily seductive figure, the blonde curtains of her hair, were shared with a thousand working-girls in shops and mills. Dacre knew that it was he, as whoremaster, who had endowed her with talents to ensnare men of wealth and intelligence. She even managed a slight blush, beside the bed, as she took the white singlet, the only garment she wore, and pulled it well up above her waist, her eyes watching Dacre to seek his approval for this display. He patted her forward, watching her scramble onto the white satin and then turn on her back to receive him.
Dacre had enjoyed her a dozen times before. Now, as then, he explored Maggie's secrets fully, hearing her murmur at the cool metal caress of his ringed fingers. As their bodies closed together, he observed the dreamy wandering of her eyes, the fluttering of Maggie's eyelids as they opened and closed, shutting at last in a secret reverie as her body matched the movements of his own.
'Why, Mag,' he said, when it was over, 'y' may have chosen a handsome young Khan girl for a sweetheart, but damme, there's more to you than a sapphist, ain't there?'
She turned her head aside, as though from a blow. Then she reached and touched him, as if to lure him down upon her once more. Her voice was soft as she sighed, 'Please!' Dacre laughed.
'Oh no, Miss Maggie! You ain't forgetting what's to come tonight I trust! A doxy may have a taste, but she ain't to make a glutton of herself before the main serving!'
She turned round towards him, shaking back the long golden tresses from her face, and her eyes were so hard that he really thought she might try to strike him with her trim little fists. Dacre laughed, almost good-naturedly, to take some of the sting out of his jibe. He got up and attended to his appearance.
'And there again,' he said ambiguously as he was about to close the door behind him, 'you ain't to forget your tawny Jenny either.'
The lights of the city were close on both sides of them by this time, and Morant-Barham was crushing out his cigar as Dacre returned to the stateroom. Thinking of the two girls and their eventual disposal, Morant-Barham said anxiously.
'It ain't for me to argue the matter, but a lot has to be taken on the trust of Maggie and the Punjabi bitch. They mayn't know much about the caper, but once we're gone they could tell enough for a fellow to find himself in the wrong box.'
'Never a word,' said Dacre, picking up his gloves and stick.
'But young Maggie won't do this except on a promise of a purse of gold and having the Khan girl for her own, free and away.'
Morant-Barham's sun-reddened face with its black moustaches was a study in youthful scepticism. Dacre adjusted his silk hat in the pier-glass.
'Joey, old fellow, I'm damned if after all you haven't lived this far and never learnt the first rules of a gentleman's conduct.'
'Meaning?'
'Meaning,' said Dacre, 'that I never met a man of sense who believed that promises to a whore were ever obligations of honour. And now. my dear boy, we'd best see to the night's business.'
8
The night's business, like most of Lieutenant Dacre's other commerce, was carried on close to the notorious Five Points area of slums and alleys, between Broadway and the river. It reminded him more than anything else of the Seven Dials rookery in London with its lowering tenements, overflowing gutters, and narrow ill-lit footpaths. It was a disagreeable area and Dacre's visits to it were rare as his visits had been to the Langham Place house in London. For the most part, he left it in the capable hands of Joey Barham, ably assisted by Cowhide and Lucifer. No one who knew the well-dressed young lieutenant with his house in Westchester county would have imagined that this could be his source of revenue. They would have found it still harder to imagine why a man who had no need of the revenue should follow such a trade. Verney Dacre's weaknesses were few, but he admitted to himself that there was a real satisfaction to be found in the prostituting of young women. Like many philanderers, he hated his young victims quite as much as he loved them. In his narrow breast and his bitter blood, he felt a savage delight at the debasement of Maggie, Jennifer, and their entire sisterhood. It surprised him that the American nation should, just then, be making such a caterwaul over slavery. A man that could enslave his victims regardless of laws and institutions was the only sort of fellow for Lieutenant Dacre.
In company with Morant-Barham and Maggie, he passed through the narrow ways of the Five Points, the gaslight flaring on the stagnant pools of the choked gutters and the slimy condensation of the cobbles. Coarse and bloated faces scowled at the elegant young men from their narrow doorways. In the succession of decaying taverns, coloured prints of Washington, the American Eagle, and Queen Victoria, showed dimly in the oil-light through the small grimy panes of the windows. A pock-marked girl, about thirty years old, covered with bruises and her upper lip swollen, whined for their attention as she slouched against one of the doorposts. The room behind her was packed with sailors from the nearby wharf, the loud din of the place overlaid by shouts of merriment and the tinkling of a guitar.
The narrow passage opened into a decaying square of houses, their exterior walls blotched by damp and patched against collapse by pale areas of rendering, as though the very fabric had become diseased. Wooden stairs, damp and rotting, led up the exterior of the buildings to the higher floors, where the fugitives from tavern and grog-shop huddled by candlelight. Dacre swung his stick and looked about him.
'Ain't it a regular break-down, though?' he said languidly.
The walls beyond the square bore designs of ships, forts, and flags in coloured chalk. A sign directed the pleasure-seeker to a flight of stairs leading down to a large, smoky basement, where it was just possible to glimpse pairs of negro girls dancing together and awaiting their customers. Outside the place, a dark-haired little man with a barrel organ was grinding out a sentimental song, accompanying a girl of fourteen or fifteen. She was dressed up in clothes that were ten years too old for her, a crinoline and mantle, a straw hat with a flame-coloured feather in it, the entire outfit worn and shabby. Her voice was coarsened by street singing, but it was still strong and appealing.
'The older woman snuffed it,' said Morant-Barham for Dacre's benefit. 'Now he takes his daughter round sing
ing, dressed in her mother's clothes.'
Dacre gave a short hum of disapproval. Maggie, dropping back a pace, fumbled in her pocket, drew out the hollow half-dollar, and slipped it quickly into the girl's hand. Dacre caught the movement, however, and exchanged with Morant-Barham a look of hopelessness.
By now, he was almost on his own territory, where the alleys became less shabby and more gaudy, opening out into courts and little squares which were close enough to Broadway to have been once fashionable and picturesque. Albion House, or the Albion, was as plain-fronted as a prison, except for its one plate-glass window, through which the hesitating customer had a glimpse of the 'Introducing Parlour' with its chandelier and polished floor.
At the opening of the square, towards Broadway itself, Dacre was pleased to see that two of the girls, Pauline and Sue, had been carefully placed. The two young women worked as a pair, Sue with her soft pale body and cropped blonde curls acted the slut. Pauline with a firmer body, dark eyes with long lashes, cropped dark curls, and pretty snub-nose, played the refined whore. Any man who accepted their invitation was accompanied to their room by both of them. He was then made to pay extra either for the privilege of one girl leaving or for having them both at once. Occasionally, he would pay to see Pauline and Sue as one another's lovers, an act which they performed with stupefying lack of conviction.
The most important clients were, of course, received by-appointment. Even so, there was a little knot of men at the plate-glass window, which was protected on the inside by a wire mesh. The plain facade of the house was some indication that it had been built to keep eager intruders out and reluctant girls in. Dacre glanced at the coarse, laughing faces, peering through the glass, and then saw Maggie's features tighten in ill-concealed anger.
The men with their caps and pipes were watching Jennifer. She was an object of curiosity both for her Asian beauty, which was rare in the Five Points, and for the sullen challenge with which she dismissed their gaze. Her high cheekbones gave just a slight upward slant to the outer corners of her dark, deeply expressive eyes. The features of her olive-toned face were straight and firm, sloping to the prominent jawlinc of her type. A sheen of black hair, combed from its central parting, ended in a pretty tangle between her shoulder-blades.
Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal Page 8
