But that shock was immediately overtaken by a second one, for just at that moment, the door to the snooker hall opened, and the barmaid walked out looking determined. It was horrible to see her at large, out from behind her bar. I had made the thing happen by willing it not to, and all I could do was turn away from her as she approached and move towards the main door.
'Evening, gents,' she said, as she approached the door in my wake.
Only Sampson responded.
'Rain's coming in,' he said, and even as he did so, she pushed the door closed, saying,'… Lot of other strange articles besides.'
The door shut on her voice, and on the band of burglars. I was outside and they were in. Here was freedom at last – I could run away and give the alarm. But instead I just stood there and counted to five before the door crashed open and they all came out in Indian file, Sampson at the head, saying:
'Will you walk alongside me, little Allan?'
Why had I remained? Perhaps the answer was something to do with the biblical words quoted by friend Lund: 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' Sampson placed his right arm very gently about my shoulder, but his friendliness was not a safe guide to anything. As we walked, his free arm was rummaging in one of his pockets. He picked out two tenners and handed them over to me, saying, 'More to come later… Now do you have any questions for me, little brother?'
'Yes'1 said. 'Where are we going, and what are we doing?'
We were certainly not going towards the Lost Luggage Office, but had turned left into the tracks and shadows of the Rhubarb Sidings, where half a dozen wagons stood solitary. They'd either been a train or were destined to become one but, it being Sunday evening, any shunting would most likely be put off till morning. So they just stood, like a lot of people in a room who didn't get on, and would not speak to each other.
'Tonight' said Sampson, 'we're going to have away two thousand pounds.'
I immediately thought of the new villas along Thorpe-on- Ouse Road. You could buy the whole row for two grand. Sampson – the explanation completed as far as he was concerned – was now striking out across the tracks towards the buildings that lay behind the Lost Luggage Office. These were workshops where until lately a good many of the Company's engines had been built, but now the work had been moved, perhaps to Carlisle. I'd read of the change somewhere. The door of the first empty engine shop stood open. The inside was dark. I couldn't see a bit, but could guess at the size of the place by the extra coldness, and the ringing sound of a man's boots. It was the newcomer, the youngster, going on ahead. Hopkins was now standing alongside me, Sampson having moved forward with the new bloke.
'What's going off?' I asked Hopkins.
'… Scouting around for the bull's-eye they left lying about on the last visit,' he said.
For a minute nothing occurred except for bell-like sounds from the shed interior.
A light then flickered from twenty yards off, like something looking for balance. The bull's-eye lantern had been found. We moved towards it, as the little flame was replaced by a wide, soft red beam. It roved in a half circle around the shed showing a lake of oil on the stone floor, a row of barrels, a tangle of broken bogeys, and then a sight that stopped the breath on my lips: a long locomotive swinging in the middle of air, like a bear rearing on its hind legs. Nobody spoke, for it looked like a hanged man, too. It was Sampson had hold of the lamp; he played it over the dangling engine. It was only a boiler in fact, swinging at a forty-five-degree angle, suspended at the firebox end from the chains of an overhead crane.
The beam was at rest now, showing nothing but dust and cinders moving in the cold air – a red cloud. We caught up with Sampson, and he moved off again. Presently, he came to a stop, with the light steady again, picking out a tarpaulin. The young bloke pulled it away, to reveal not one but two cylinders half buried in a pile of coal with a sackful of stuff lying between them.
'There's the acetylene,' said the young bloke, 'and there's your oxygen.'
The second cylinder was a little bigger than the first – both were taller than a man. The first was the white one that we'd nicked from the goods yard. The second – the oxygen cylinder – was the colour of rust.
'Now, will it act?' said Sampson, and he fished in the sack for a tool with which he unloosened the top nut on the cylinder. The oxygen came out, with the sound of a man with his finger to his lips saying 'Shhh!' for a long time.
'… Tell you what'd be a bit of a lark,' Sampson said, over the noise of the leaking gas,'… send a bloke in here at night, give him a box of matches… put him to search out the cause of this noise. He'd find it all right… but it'd be the last thing he did.'
He turned towards the young bloke, saying, 'What do you reckon to that, Tim?' Silence for a moment, before the young bloke answered: 'You'd need a fair amount of oxygen to cause a bang. It's the acetylene that's the dangerous stuff.' Sampson thought about this for a minute, before asking: 'Can I smoke when I'm on the job?' 'That's right out,' said the young bloke. Sampson and Tim were now heaving the oxygen cylinder on to their shoulders. Sampson then directed his lamp towards the second cylinder and the sack, before flicking the light towards Miles Hopkins. 'You and Allan take the tank, mate,' he said. 'And you…' he added, flicking the beam at the little clerk,'… you fetch the sack.' He and the young bloke led off, with the red beam of light showing the way between the black objects inside the shed. The two of us had all on to carry the cylinder -1 was beginning to see why I was needed. Behind us, the little clerk was saying: '… Only moved under special certificate, those things are.' We all walked on, as the clerk continued: 'A carbon of every document touching the movement of inflammable gases is forwarded to a special office at the clearing house.' He was at my heels now, saying: 'You seem a little out of your element here, pal.' 'Stow it,' I said. There was just the length of the cylinder between myself and Miles Hopkins, and I didn't want the clerk planting suspicions in his head. 'You're just the quiet sort, I suppose.' 'Aye,' said Hopkins from up ahead, 'and we could do with a few more like him.'
Chapter Twenty
We came out of the old loco erecting shop, and turned right, heading still further into the railway lands, and away from the city proper. We were in a place not meant for boots, but for wheels, and it was stumbling progress that we made towards wherever we were going. We'd left the Rhubarb Sidings behind now, and come to the railway and carriage sidings that lay alongside the dozen lines coming from the south into the station.
After a couple of minutes, we stopped for a breather, setting the cylinders down on the black track ballast before a row of sleeping carriages – Great Northern and North Eastern Joint Stock – and that's just what they were doing: sleeping. They screened us from the running lines leading to the station, so I could not see the train that went rocking past just at that moment with a tired, Sunday-night rhythm. Only it was probably Monday by now.
We trooped on, crossing the running lines. Why were there no watchmen about? The betting was that Sampson had fixed them, too. We crossed the 'up' tracks, and were about to step on to the 'down' lines when the young bloke pointed right. A train was at a stand within the station, down side. It would be heading out shortly. We set down the cylinders, and watched as it fumed under the great station roof. We could see the guard's green lamp moving on the platform alongside the locomotive, and what a fuss-box the bloody man was: to and fro, back and forth beside the boiler of the engine. The cylinder cocks were opened presently, however, and the engine began to move through its cloud of steam.
It rocked along in our direction, and every one of us turned to face away, yet the driver, a friendly sort, gave two screams on his whistle, and not only that (I couldn't help but turn about, so catching a glimpse of this), he also stuck his head out of his side window, and waved at us. He had to stand at a crouch as he did it, for all North Eastern Company engines had the cab windows placed too low. So the fellow had put himself out to be amiable, and got nowt in return. It would
be nothing to him, though: he would have his mate to talk to, the tea bottle waiting on the ledge above the fire doors, the prospect of some good running on clear Sunday night lines. I admired the man – already gone from sight, Doncaster bound – and I hated him at the same time.
We picked up the cylinders once again, and I thought of Edwin Lund, searching the Gospels in the Lost Luggage Office, trying to seek out God's way. Was it God who'd set me down on the tracks and not up on the footplate? I had no answer to that, so I thought again of Lund: he was the winder; he turned the rope and I skipped. He had kept back the detail of the Lost Luggage Office burglary. Why?
Valentine Sampson and the young bloke were far ahead by now. Sampson was not over bright; he was not as clever as Lund or Miles Hopkins. But he was the striking arm, the man whose actions dictated the fate of his fellows. He walked steadily on, and I could see now that he was making for the south-side roundhouses: the first was the engine shed that stabled those North Eastern locomotives kept south of the station. It was in the cinder triangle between the lines leading into the station mouth, and those swerving away directly north towards the marshalling yards, goods yards and goods station.
Beside it lay the Midland roundhouse. The Midland was the main foreign company holding running rights into York, and such a company was entitled to its own shed, just as a government has its embassies overseas, but Sampson was paying that one no attention, for of course the blokes who booked on there had not been on strike. Their wages had not been brought to the shed week upon week to remain uncollected. We moved forwards, toward the pillars of a water tower, and Sampson motioned us to remain as he walked on with the young fellow yoked to him by the cylinder.
The two disappeared into the North Eastern roundhouse.
'Isn't there a watchman in there?' I said out loud, to nobody in particular.
It was the clerk who answered:
'Reason it out,' he said.
'Eh?' I said.
'Paid off, en't he?' he said. 'Like all of us.'
I nodded, looked away.
'How come you don't know that, mate?'
I made no answer. He was too curious by half, that bloke, and now he was looking at me sidelong. Had he seen me about the station? Might very well have. And if so would the glasses do their work? I heard a church bell floating across the darkness. It was the strike of one. The wife would be worried sick, or had she already become accustomed to my late hours? Sampson was now at the shed mouth, beckoning us on. Hopkins and I entered with our cylinder a minute later, the clerk coming along behind clutching the sackful of extra kit. And now he took over from the young bloke the task of escorting Sampson to the important spot.
As they went off to the eastern side of the shed, I looked about me. It was the first time I'd been in an engine shed since the accident at Sowerby Bridge, and it was quite fitting, for I was returning to steal off the profession that had disowned me. The shed was a roundhouse, as I've said: tracks like the spokes of a wheel, the engines sitting upon them like a gathering of witches in the darkness, with the turntable in place of the boiling pot. Their high smokeboxes gave them a haughty look. There were sixteen stalls in all, only a dozen occupied. Sampson, or the young chap, had hung a dark lantern on the turntable crank handle. Another small allowance of light spilled in from the shed mouth, showing a shining pool of black water in the packed cinders. If the engines in this shed were to be used in the morning there'd be fire-raisers in here from four a.m. at the latest.
The clerk was in fidgets beside me, rattling the articles in the sack. Hopkins was smoking – the first time I'd seen him do so.
Sampson was coming back towards us. There was a revolver in his hand, and it was more of a relief than anything to finally clap eyes on the thing. The young man followed behind, looking sheepish-like. He was making towards the clerk, and I thought: he's going to do him, but no. Gesturing back to the young man, he said: 'Now you'll take no harm, but you must wait until the job's done.'
Sampson looked at the clerk, who was looking at the gun.
'How many poor buggers have had a taste of that, then?' the little bloke asked.
I looked across at Hopkins, who was shaking his head. The little ink spiller was past finding out.
'Four,' said Sampson, 'since you ask.'
I put two and two together: the detectives at Victoria… and the Camerons.
Then the clerk gave voice to my own thought:
'And I suppose two of those were the Cameron boys. I knew those lads – one worked at our place.'
Long silence. Sampson broke his gun, looked down at the cylinders, perhaps weighing up whether he could spare a bullet on the little clerk.
'I enjoyed that business,' he said, shutting the gun sharply and looking up. 'Clean sweep, you see. Once you've done one, what's the point of leaving the other hanging about in the world? I mean, it's fucking untidy. No earthly use to any living soul, the pair of 'em, and one's absolutely cracked into the bargain.'
All the men about ought to be given into the charge of the police without further ado. But it was past time for worrying about that. My job was to keep alive.
Hopkins crushed his cigarette stump under his boot. I heard a train go jangling past beyond the shed walls.
'Here, you,' Sampson was saying to the little clerk, 'show us your writing hand?'
'I'm right-handed,' the clerk said brightly. 'What of it?'
Sampson had picked up an old, dead lantern. He passed it over to the clerk, saying, 'Cop hold… right hand.'
He walked away ten paces, and asked the rest of us to step back from the clerk. He raised the gun, and I thought: this is worse than all; this is the point at which I must step in. But I did not, and the gun was fired and the lamp shattered. In the silence that followed Hopkins folded his arms, and I looked at Sampson. He was now side on to us, drinking whisky from the bottle.
The clerk was holding his hand under my nose, seemingly overjoyed that it was still attached to him. 'Five hundred invoices a day,' he said, making a writing motion, '… and demurrage bills are a great scarcity across my desk, I can tell you that.'
Sampson walked over to the clerk, and presented him with the whisky bottle; the clerk drank.
'Pass it round,' said Sampson.
As the bottle came my way, Sampson led us all off the part of the shed he'd visited a moment before. We were approaching a little brick room built on to the shed wall. The door to it was shut, and the two cylinders stood outside: the big man and the little man (as I thought of them), waiting to be put to work. The little clerk had the key, or a key, and he opened the door without being asked. We all then crowded inside. There was a gas lamp, which Sampson lit with a match, immediately turning it to the lowest setting. The room was somewhere between an office and a workshop. There was a desk, a metal cabinet, boxes of papers; boxes of engine bits. I made out some corks for oil pots, an old whistle, tins of screws. A smaller version of one of the shed's church windows was set into the back wall, and in the corner was the safe. It was about four foot high, with a metal crest on the front showing a lion and a snake in a tangle. Woven in between them was a ribbon on which appeared the words 'Croft and Son', and then something in Latin that probably meant: 'If you think you're going to break into this bugger, think on'. There was an ordinary lock, an American lock, I thought – a knob that you turned to find certain numbers. It was the opposite case to that of the Lost Luggage Office, in that they'd obviously not been able to find, or buy, the man who held the key or knew the numbers.
Sampson and the young fellow were now putting their boots to the top of the very dignified safe, and kicking it over. It fell on its back with a mighty crash, making matchwood of the desk chair on its way.
'Can we not bring it away?' said Hopkins, looking on. 'We're right underneath the fucking window.'
Sampson pointed at me, 'Fetch us a tarpaulin, won't you?' all friendliness quite gone, for now the business was under way in earnest.
I went out into the
darkness of the shed, and Hopkins followed, although he then diverted away towards the shed mouth. Had he reckoned on me bolting? I walked between the locomotives. There was a Class R… also a Q Class, with its weird glass roof let into the cab top – that would give you a view of the clouds going in the opposite direction as you ran along. From the shed mouth, Hopkins was watching me as I looked at the engines. I fancied he knew that I was able to see them for what they were.
I saw a tarpaulin: folded over the boiler of a tank engine, like a horse blanket. I yanked it down, making a cloud of dust and muck; and a black lace was left dangling from my fingers: a cobweb. The sight of the thing checked me: I had given nothing but aid to this operation so far, and every new piece of assistance I gave made me less of a detective and more of a burglar. I wiped away the cobweb, and hauled the tarpaulin towards the little office. Hopkins closed with me as I did so, and I looked past him, beyond the shed mouth where – five hundred yards off – a figure was walking towards one of the cabins set between the tracks. Company man on a late turn. He might've had his hands in his pockets. At the same time I heard another train come rattling up, but it didn't go by the shed mouth.
Hopkins followed me into the crowded little room, where the cylinders – big man and little man – stood in place. Lengths of rubber tubing were now connected to the taps on their tops, and these came together in the brass blowpipe that rested in Sampson's hands. It was a double gun, able to mix the two gases.
'Put that against the window,' he ordered when he saw me with the tarpaulin, so I moved around the desk. The thing was pretty stiff, and stood up of its own accord. I made a kind of cone of it, and it shut out the window pretty well.
'Good-o,' he said, so I'd got points for that, as well as everything else.
With stout leather gloves now on his hands, Sampson was removing his hat, putting on a pair of goggles. They were like the eye shades sometimes worn by the blind but they gave Sampson the look of one who could see everything, just as though they were a pair of giant black eyes. He had not troubled to protect his suit, which surprised me.
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