Inside this door was the stronghold, a dozen or more bullion boxes bound with iron bands and bearing a stamped seal across their locks. In one wall was an iron door with a large inset key-lock.
'Depending on the size of your boxes, sir,' said Snowden doubtfully, 'they might be fitted into the vault itself. But if they can't fit, would you find our stronghold here to be satisfactory?'
'More than that, sir,' said Dacre effusively. 'Why, sir, the jewels that lie in your stronghold shall be safer than in the Tower of London.'
'Without disrespect to your Tower, sir,' said Snowden with a polite smirk, 'we like to think such things may be as safe here.'
He led the way back through the various processes of coining and refining. Before the main steel doors, he paused while two uniformed guards patted him down in a rapid search. Director of the Mint he might be, but it was more than their jobs were worth to let him know that any man could leave the vaults with the contents of his pockets unchallenged. Dacre and Morant-Barham submitted to the same indignity, followed by Willson Moore whose honest, lightly freckled face coloured slightly at the very thought of being suspected.
'You see, sir?' said Snowden cheerfully. 'Even I am not my own master here. Merely the servant of the Treasury Department. And now, sir, I bid you good-day. I regret that I cannot be here tomorrow to receive you myself, but Captain Moore will attend to all your needs. I shall do myself the honour of waiting upon you when you return to collect His Royal Highness's treasures.'
Verney Dacre brought his heels together and ducked his head.
'Servant, sir!'
Morant-Barham imitated the same parody of acknowledgement. The two men took their leave, striding smartly and in step down the approach of the Grecian portico.
Inside the carriage, Dacre threw off his plumed hat, rolled back against the dark buttoned leather, and threw up his fists with a cry.
'By God, Joey! We're in! Devil take me if that crib ain't as good as cracked already! Huzzah for Charley Temple!
He never knew the turn he did us, but it's every inch the way his doxy showed it to be, walls, flues, drains, the whole damn show!'
'I do hope so, old fellow,' said Morant-Barham, his sunburnt cheeks flushing under his dark whiskers. 'I don't even care for standing in the beastly place. Gives a man a mouth that's dry as a whore's cranny for a pull of hock-and-seltzer.'
Dacre crowed in his delight.
'Dammit, Joey, but ain't it a prize? Did y' never see such yaller goold? Damn great lumps of the stuff, big as a dray-man's skull ? The smell and the touch of it! I don't care, old fellow, if I must be hanged for it. I can't cry off now, no more than you could jump off your handsome young Khan bitch when you know you must spend or be damned! There ain't a whore in the world that can pleasure a man in his mind with such beauty!'
For all his flushed excitement, it seemed that Morant-Barham was by far the cooler of the pair, Dacre's eyes now-glittering with an almost insane zeal.
'Joey,' he said, the whisper almost a hiss of madness, 'come tomorrow, y' may have to black your face if the worst happens. It ain't likely but y' may. I think, however, I was right. I'm in already. What I've got under the seat of this very cabriolet shall melt steel doors and burst time-locks in two. Damme if it shan't tell one number in a million on the figure-lock, and have the last gold coin out of the stronghold and into our pockets!'
'Oh?' said Morant-Barham sceptically. 'And what might you have there?'
Dacre reached down under the seat and gave an energetic tug. He handed to Morant-Barham a bundle of three old and rather dirty sacks.
By the time they reached the Florentine fortress of the Hotel Continental once more, all Morant-Barham's ill humour had vanished and he was roaring with delight at the scheme. 'Whores in hellfire!' he bellowed, deeply flushed, eyes swimming and mouth agape. 'Ain't it a tickler? Dear God, Dacre, old fellow, they're on the hip and they don't know it!'
The two men composed themselves in order to step out into the sunshine as tall, slim and dignified staff officers, marching briskly under the hotel canopy and disappearing into the cooler and darker interior. It was left to Cowhide, as coachman, to drive round the corner, strip the transfer of the royal insignia from the door panels, and return the carriage to the livery stables.
Dacre and Morant-Barham strode quickly across the blue-carpeted lobby of the great hotel, where travellers lounged on gilt sofas behind the New York Herald or the Pennsylvania Chronicle, gaining the broad flight of stairs with their polished mahogany rail and the ascending pillars of the gas-globes at either side. Such comings and goings had grown so frequent in the Continental itself that they were already less noticed. The two men strode up the curving stairway to the third floor, where 'Colonel Dempster's suite' lay at the end of a carpeted passageway and behind two sets of doors.
Lucifer, his pale effeminate face watching anxiously through the crevice of the doors, opened them at their approach. Neither he nor Cowhide was privileged to share the details of Dacre's plan. They knew only that it had something to do with bleeding Captain Willson Moore of his fortune by blackmail, which necessarily involved confronting him at his place of work. The suite at the Continental was, in effect, a length of one corridor, sealed off from the rest and self-contained behind its locked double doors. In its rooms, Maggie and Jennifer languished, under the constant care of Lucifer and two minor accomplices of the slave-dealer Hicks: Raoul and Bull-Peg.
Dacre hardly paused to look at Lucifer, striding on into his own rooms with Morant-Barham, stripping off the uniform and tossing its items on to the bed. Lucifer hurried after him.
'Well?' snapped Dacre, stripped to his shirt. 'Don't I pay my way, then?'
He tossed a small purse of gold coins to Lucifer, who caught it fumblingly.
'Keep it,' said Dacre, more civilly. 'The poor mark had nothing more in his pockets. He shall bleed rich, however!'
Lucifer shook his head.
'It ain't that, captain, it ain't that at all. Only he sent a note to you here that was given in not five minutes ago.'
Dacre snatched the envelope from Lucifer's hand and ripped it open.
Captain Willson Moore presents his compliments to Colonel Dempster and does himself the honour of looking forward to receiving Colonel Dempster's visit and instructions tomorrow in the forenoon. Captain Moore, standing engaged the latter part of the morning, would take it as a particular personal obligation if Colonel Dempster should find it convenient to call upon their mutual concerns before eleven o' clock.
Dacre crumpled the paper in his hand in an ecstasy of triumph. He swung round upon Morant-Barham, his mouth distorted in a rictus of delight, and contempt for Willson Moore.
'The honest little sprat!' he snorted. 'Damned if he ain't took the bait and pin right into his gut! Only ask the desk-boy downstairs, Joey. I swear y' shall find a feller that would be in New York tomorrow night, to save young Miss Maggie from perdition, must be away from here at eleven in the morning to catch his train!'
Joey Morant-Barham smacked one fist into his other palm, joining Dacre's laughter.
'Trust me Joey - and see if it don't all go smooth as milady's rump!'
Later that evening, Dacre drew on his gloves. Morant-Barham opened a door to the room where the assistants of Lucifer and Cowhide kept watch. Raoul was sleek and swarthy, Bull-Peg a pink and white giant whose skull was smooth as an egg. To these rooms, in private suites with private servants, no hotel flunkey ever penetrated. Dacre had chosen this one as a luxuriously furnished cell.
While their guards sprawled in a pair of cane chairs, Maggie and Jennifer lay on the two beds, staring into space. Morant-Barham came, as usual, before setting off with Dacre. He hoped to be remembered by the girls, when they came into his possession, as the friend who had protected them during the time of their greatest danger. To make escape doubly difficult, both young women had been left with no clothing but their white singlets. Maggie lay on her side, knees drawn up and her back to her warders, han
ds pressed together between her thighs. Jennifer was on her belly, her head resting on her folded arms. The manner in which her singlet was pulled up at the back betrayed Lucifer's vindictiveness after the attempt to betray Dacre to Willson Moore.
Morant-Barham's heart beat faster at the sight, and at the knowledge that in a few days more the girls would both be his. Even now, as he stood between the beds, both girls turned inward towards him. He spoke softly, promising them safety from any malice by their guards, and that when they were his he would be the lover of both, as they should continue to be lovers themselves. He took Maggie's pale hand, which she gave easily and limply, and led it to stroke Jennifer's face. The Asian girl, in a frenzy of hope and reliance upon him, took his own free hand and kissed it eagerly. Morant-Barham vowed softly to them that he would not only allow their mutual affection to blossom, he would encourage it by every means. Maggie, in return, promised herself as his woman, while Jennifer whispered pledges of love in its more exotic forms, which almost stopped Morant-Barham's breath at the thought of them.
'Dammit if you ain't the luckiest of all,' said Dacre at the head of the stairs, 'dammit if you ain't!'
Morant-Barham gave a modest laugh. Dacre, at the hotel entrance, clapped on his tall hat and glanced at the street bunting which proclaimed a royal visit.
'Right and tight, Joey! And now, seeing there ain't a jewel more precious in the world than loyalty, let's show these fellows that we ain't to be outdone in the matter!'
Like many thoroughfares in Philadelphia, Juniper Street had lately been disfigured by the drab wooden telegraph poles which marched in two ranks down either side. The telegraph, which had linked Boston to New Orleans, was a mixed benefit. On the occasion of a royal visit, however, the citizens had quickly used the poles to suspend ribbons and banners of welcome. These were mingled with other displays proclaiming the imminent triumph of Lincoln and the Republican party in the Pennsylvania poll, whose result was to be proclaimed on the very evening of the Prince of Wales's arrival.
As the autumn dusk began to gather on the day before, the workmen of the city were still occupied in the last preparations, with bunting and ribbons in red, white and blue. Two men, on either side of Juniper Street, were engaged in hoisting a bold canvas banner so that it might swing between two of the poles. Its trite good wishes GOD BLESS THE PRINCE OF WALES! were mirrored on a thousand other strips of canvas and in the thumping rhythms of the brass bands who prepared for His Highness's welcome with the now familiar song.
On the more westerly of the two poles, the workman in his dark clothes was high above the deserted roadway. which seemed an oasis of calm by contrast with the brightly-lit and fashionable pavements of Chestnut Street no more than twenty or thirty yards away. He made fast the end of the banner. Only at this height was it apparent that the banner was not a single strip of cloth, as might have been supposed, but a double-sided slogan which was in effect a long canvas cylinder. Nor was it held by mere cords, a stout strip of wire being stitched under its upper surface, running from post to post.
Verney Dacre finished his adjustments. Holding his position by the pressure of his knees on the post, he drew out a fine, spidery wire, which disappeared into the recesses of the canvas tunnel. The wire was weighted at its free end with a cloth-bound ball of wood, about the bulk of a large apple. The telegraph pole stood several feet away from the guttering of the building on that side of Juniper Street. The roof itself, enclosed by a low parapet was not quite flat, having a slight tiled slope running to either side. For aesthetic reasons, however, this departure from classical form was easily hidden by the little parapet from those who viewed the building at street level. Beyond the peak of the roof rose an even more unclassical chimney. But it was hardly four feet above roof level on the far side of the tiled expanse. This ensured that it too was concealed from street level, though its presence was betrayed by a steady column of smoke in a changing variety of colours.
Making allowances for the awkward twist of his body, Dacre aimed with care and with great gentleness. A fool would have been too vigorous, he told himself, and would have spoilt the game. He lobbed the padded ball and heard it land softly, just on the far slope of the roof, where it ran down and bumped gently in the hidden gutter. It was not as he had wished in every detail, but it would do. The thin wire between the ball and the canvas banner would hardly have been visible on the brightest day at ten feet, let alone at twenty feet in the middle of the night.
Gingerly, he descended the post and found Joey Morant-Barham waiting for him on the far side. Dacre gasped, as much with the relief of tension as from any exertion.
'The bird's in the coop, old chum! Dammit, Joey, I shall be in no end of a wax if it's all as easy as this! Where's the fun if a fellow ain't stretched over a furlong or two?'
'Should you like to stand here and come to smash?' said the younger subaltern sourly. 'Or shall we get the business done ?'
Dacre laughed at Morant-Barham's sudden fierceness, following him to the far side of the road. On this side, Juniper Street remained what it had been for more than fifty years, a row of ramshackle tenements still overlooked in the ostentatious rebuilding of the prosperous 1850s. As the main thoroughfares of the city had grown in importance, the old houses of the little streets had become motley apartments for clerks, artisans and decayed gentlefolk. The occupants of each floor, with their brawling families and whining children, lived on threadbare carpets or bare boards, indifferent to the welfare of their neighbours. Dacre might have bought out any household in the district, but he had contented himself with the upper and attic floors of the present house. In the two lower storeys and the basement, the crowded families shrilled and squabbled. As he and Morant-Barham climbed the bare communal staircase, a woman's voice shrieked wildly.
'Have a care! The boy's on the stairs with the dog again!'
They saw no dog and no boy before they reached their own floor and Dacre closed the door behind him.
'The window, Joey! See where we stand!'
From the lower of the two rooms which they occupied, the banner was slightly above them and several feet further down the street, as well as being a yard or more out from the wall of the building.
'That's as near muffing it as any cove might come!' said Morant-Barham nervously.
Dacre leant over the sill, stretched, and caught the wire where it wavered in mid-air.
'May I muff it as well next time, old fellow. The rest is held by nothing but a loop of cord on that post, which a flick with a pole might dislodge. And if it don't, Joey, tie a taper to the pole and burn it off! It ain't likely to catch the canvas alight but if it should, you shall have it at arm's length and may quench it at leisure.'
'Well, old boy,' said Morant-Barham softly, 'I do hope so!'
'It looks like enough a banner, don't it?' Dacre inquired. 'May I be shot if there was ever so fine a thing as loyalty for filling a man's purse. And now, open the basket over there, Joey, like a good fellow. I swear I may be famished if I don't get a glass of cham and a wing of chicken soon.'
10
The wagon which moved slowly down Chestnut Street in the early sun looked more like a pauper's hearse than any other form of conveyance. It was long and dark with hosted designs upon its windows, even the two black geldings which pulled it moving at a funeral pace among the brightly-painted carriages and the lumbering horse-buses on their central rails. Morant-Barham broke the silence with a nervous, braying laugh.
'To think that a fellow might crack such a crib with three old sacks for his jemmy! They ain't likely to believe it, Dacre, not even if it was to be told them in a yard of letterpress.'
Dacre remained tense and moody.
‘It ain't sacks, Joey, it's what rules a man's head and eats his heart. Don't I tell you that the picks to the finest locks are always made of flesh and blood? And a man that will be master of that must make slaves for himself, whether the law wishes it or not.'
He nodded cursorily at a muddle of po
sters, plastered one on top of the other on a derelict wall, the name LINCOLN standing out from the blur of words in bold black type.
'Ain't Maggie as much my slave as the handsome young Khan bitch?' he inquired. 'And must I have a law to make it so?'
Morant-Barham sat in silent disapproval of this reference to Jennifer. Presently, Cowhide reined in the horses. His two passengers, both dressed in black suits and silk hats, got down from the coach and walked in step up the approach to the portico of the Mint. The military guard at either side of the door stared impassively, but alert, at the black vehicle with its precious cargo.
Willson Moore, his auburn curls uncovered and his anxious face creasing into a sudden smile of relief, welcomed them. Dacre bowed in the same clipped parody of his normal manner as he had used the day before.
'Why, sir,' he said, 'may I be damned if I remembered to ask Mr Snowden about the gold key yesterday.'
'Key, sir?' Captain Moore's young face was a study in shifting impatience.
'Damme, sir, for the box with the royal ingot. Ain't it got a key?'
With almost unceremonious speed, Moore led them up the marble staircase to the offices and sent for the box.
'Deuce take it,' said Dacre with every show of vexation, 'no key. Never fear, sir, one shall be fetched for you tomorrow. It ain't in your curator's charge, by chance? A fellow can hardly open the casket without it.'
Moore swung round and questioned the man who had brought it.
'Very well, sir,' said Dacre conclusively. 'No key. Be sure, sir, I shall have it for you when I come tomorrow.'
They moved back downstairs, where two blue-uniformed guards had now taken up position at the rear of the wagon with a low trolley. Dacre gave a command to Cowhide and, like the hearse it resembled, the wagon was opened at the back.
Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal Page 11
