In the reality of the Oriental and Turkish Baths, Verity pressed his ear to the grating, listening hard. Charley Wag's voice was easily identifiable by the intonation. But it was the other voice, bluff and throaty, which spoke first. It reminded Verity of an overweight, frog-eyed colonel who had commanded his regiment in the Russian War.
'I've been on the square with yo u, Mr Aldino, damned if I ain't! You've been paid for those papers and I shall be o bliged to you for giving 'em me! '
'One moment,' said Charley Wag with a voice like velvet, 'it is not my concern. I act as your agent only because you wish. What is in those papers is very bad business, but it is my sister who has them. I go between.'
'I ain't going to be put off, Aldino ’ said the other man. 'Either I get those papers or a reckoning shall be had.'
'You have the papers, milor,' said the Wag softly.
'All the papers!'
'Some papers,' said Charley. "The rest another time, eh? My sister is a greedy woman. She say, the more you dissect such things the better they cut up. You understand that, eh?'
The other man cleared his throat with a churning cough.
'See here, Aldino! You try screwing a fellow up too far, and you'll come up with nothing but a handful of shine-rag and the skin taken off your back. Don't think I couldn't hire a crew of ruffians to settle with you cheaper than I could pay all this.'
Charley Wag began to laugh, as though at a child's pleasantry.
'Signor! Why you do that? You got enough tin to buy all those things and the pretty pictures too! Why you want such nastiness? You don't forget what is in the letter, eh? You don't forget what happen to you if the truth is told?'
The other man roared like a wounded animal in his rage.
'You damned brute! You blackguard!'
And Charley Wag laughed and laughed, moving about a little as though he might be holding off a puny assault with one hand.
'You must buy from my sister, milor! My sister a very greedy woman!"
Verity, on tip-toe, tried to see if the grating gave any view of Charley Wag's steam-bath, but the iron slats were angled carefully upwards. It was the Wag who did the spying on the unwary and indiscreet couples who used the bath which Verity had hired. At that moment, both Charley and his visitor moved. There was the sound of a scuffle and their voices became indistinct. Verity decided that they must have gone into the finishing bath, from which the sound would not carry clearly to the grating. He could eavesdrop only by going out into the corridor and standing at the Wag's door. With the towel still wrapped round his loins, he walked softly into the passageway. It was only as he looked more closely at the door dividing the row of baths from the private apartments that he noticed that it was entirely smooth. There was no handle and no keyhole on the public side, no means by which it could be opened except by those inside. No search detail was going to burst in on Charley Wag unannounced. And despite the thickness of the door, the voices were louder here. The Wag was exultant and his victim, the fight terrified out of him, was pleading.
'I tell you,' said the Wag, 'you try to hit me twice. I hit you once for sure. And now I hit you again for sure, but this time with my bellissima. Where you want Charley should mark you, milor? You want it where it not show? You say where and Charley give it you, otherwise on the face.'
There was a quick movement, a scampering, and a scream of fear from the other man. Verity had been entirely unprepared for this development. He wondered whether duty required him to turn a deaf ear while some well-heeled weakling screamed and retched under Charley's blows and knife-wounds. Or should he break off the surveillance, reveal his identity, and prevent the fearful injury about to be inflicted upon the unknown lordling? Before he could give the matter any further thought, there was a bare footfall behind him. He turned and saw Simona and Stefania at his heels. Simona screwed her face into a mask of frenzy and screamed, 'Carlo! Carlo! ' The old duenna had emerged from the velvet entry curtains once more, followed by a pair of muscle-bound draymen. There was no doubt that they recognized Verity for what he was.
It was all timing now, he thought. He too shouted, 'C arlo! 'Carlo!' to the entire dismay of the others. He shouted as though his life depended on it, which in a sense it might do. To his relief, the trick worked. Charley Wag, hearing the uproar, cautiously opened the door a little on his side. Verity, the only one close to it, flung his weight forward at the most vulnerable point, his bare shoulder and upper arm numbed and bruised by the impact. But the door gave, as Charley Wag failed to hold it, and Verity was through the space in an instant. He threw himself back upon the panelling and the door slammed shut. Whatever the odds against him, the muscle-bound bruisers and their companions were now securely locked outside.
The room into which he had forced his way was the finishing bath, an oval pool some fifteen feet long set into the pink and white veining of the marble floor. Charley Wag, with the square and solid good looks which suggested a middle-aged Roman emperor, was wrapped in a towel so large that it might have served him as a toga. He stood six feet tall, his jaw set, his lips parted in a smile of derision, and his nostrils distended in expectation of a brawl. Crouched against the wall, wiping his mouth on the back of a blood-smeared hand, was a hatless, broken-down man in a shabby green coat. Verity was distracted by the incongruous appearance of the victim, thinking that Charley must have fallen on exceptionally hard times if he was obliged to fasten on such genteel paupers as this. He turned his attention, reluctantly, to the Wag.
The blade was eight inches long, thin and elegant, the dulled steel of its edges showing that it had been whetted to a razor's fineness. The handle was nothing but scarlet cord woven round a steel core. Verity felt a tingling vulnerability as he saw the knife-point angled precisely at his belly-button. At least there were none of the Wag's bullies in the room, but their arrival through some inner door of the apartments could only be a matter of a few minutes.
Circling carefully round Charley Wag, Verity consoled himself by thinking that he had fought bigger odds than this. Indeed, the sight of the stiletto gave him a moral advantage. He had been brought up to believe that an Englishman's weapons were his fists and that only women and cowards resorted to knives and such things. Beneath all the bravado, Charley would prove to be the craven degenerate of his type.
But that hardly solved the immediate problem. The Wag was hunched about ten feet in front of Verity, the blade tilted forward and upward, daring him to come on. Verity decided to accept the invitation. It was no good playing a waiting game. In a few minutes at the most the Wag's ruffians would reach whatever secret way led from the flash-house to the private baths. He must settle Charley by then and hold the door against them.
Charley Wag studied the portly, half-naked man, the belly folds and the faint quiver of surplus flesh. The face was the colour of port-wine from heat and exertion, the dark eyes narrowed and the black waxed moustaches bristling up with the scent of battle.
'Avanti! ' said the Wag softly, thinking that a slit from the pubic bone up the soft belly to the solar plexus would open the affair admirably. The man was going to die, of course, but Charley had to know who he was and why he came. A careful cut below the belt would take the fight out of the plump red-faced intruder and, if deep enough, would put him in such misery that he would tell his questioners whatever they wished to know in order to earn his quietus. Charley judged the distance and then stopped in amazement. The fat man had drawn the wet towel from his loins and was standing entirely naked.
Verity drew the towel through his fingers and flicked it with a snap at the Wag's knife-hand. It missed by several inches but the Wag stared in astonishment. What was this man that he played such games with an opponent who faced him with a steel blade? The towel flicked again, catching the Wag on the side of the face. It stung him sufficiently to make him step back with an oath. The oval bath set into the floor was just behind him and he moved warily. At the third snap, the towel wound itself round Charley's right arm, enabling
him to snatch it but causing him to drop his knife in the process. He began to reach for the fallen blade but Verity's huge clenched knuckles slammed into his face between nostrils and jaw, drawing blood from the nose and the torn lips. The Wag lurched sideways to avoid the bath at his back and in doing this he gave Verity an opening. From long experience of Cornish wrestling in his childhood, as well as criminal encounters later on, Verity knew that to get an opponent's head 'in Chancery' under his own arm, forearm tightening on the windpipe, was the readiest answer to any weapon. With a movement like an abortive standing-jump he got the Wag's neck in the crook of his arm and bent him with short, abrupt impacts, supported by the weight of his entire body. Charley bowed and cursed, gargling in his throat as the lever of Verity's forearm tightened.
'You just act very quiet and reasonable, my man,' said Verity breathlessly, 'if you know what's good for you!' And he brought a little more pressure to bear. Charley Wag gave a desperate gurgle and a rasping scream. His body seemed to slacken and crumple. Verity tried to hold him, half sensing what was coming, but Charley was on his knees and then, in a mere second, a red-hot pain streaked across Verity's right shoulder. All strength and leverage in the arm had gone, and the Wag was dancing free, fencing with the knife which he had retrieved from the floor.
Even the towel had gone, and it was now Verity who was held at bay. With every lunge of the blade, every withdrawal or evasion on his own part, the minutes were passing until the rear door would be broken in and the bullies of the Wag's flash-house must overpower their master's assailant. Twice Verity tried to close on the toga'd and muscular Wag. The first time Charley attempted the belly-cut but Verity swerved away with such improbable speed that he felt only the brush of the slicing blade, like the sting of a nettle. The second time he made the mistake of turning away too slowly, exposing his flank for an instant and allowing the dancing blade to flash diagonally across his rib-cage, laying open the flesh as though it had been soft butter and bringing a flow of blood over his hip. And then he began to despair. There was no way that he could fight the Wag without being cut to pieces, but unless he fought and won in the next few minutes he would be cut to pieces anyway, more leisurely but just as certainly. He was not fool enough to suppose that Charley would allow a spy to escape him.
With despair rising in his throat, Verity dodged the knife and managed to close on Charley in a last attack. The two heavily-built men gasped and sobbed for breath as they clutched at one another and the marble wall resounded to the slap of wet, blubbered flesh falling against it. Verity was almost driven back by the weaving blade. There was so much blood smeared on his body now that he could hardly tell how many times he had been cut under all the slipperiness. He held tight to the Wag's toga and smashed a blow to the jaw, with such effect that the man went spinning backwards, the toga unwinding as he tottered away and fetched up with a naked thump against the opposite wall.
But the knife was still there and the brawny body, now stripped of all covering, looked like the frame of a gladiator with its tensed muscles and olive colouring. Charley saw that the fat, pale sergeant was almost done for, his wind gone and his breath drawn in deep snorts. It was time to finish the matter. The Wag caressed the handle of the stiletto and took a step forward.
Just at that moment, behind Charley Wag, there was a scamper, a whimper and a splash. The shabbily-dressed man who had sat against the wall, covering his face with the back of his hand, had drawn a small package from the breast pocket of the battered green coat. As though coming to a sudden decision in the matter, he pulled himself to the edge of the oval finishing bath, ripped open the package and allowed a score of loose papers to flutter into the water. The ink upon them began to spread in pale blue drifts.
Verity bit back the exclamation that was on his tongue, catching the uncertainty in Charley's eyes. The Wag could not see what was happening behind him and had to know the origin of the sounds.
'Mario?' he called questioningly, but there was no reply. 'Mario? Alfredo?' Still receiving no answer and fearing an attack from behind him, he kept his knife blade angled to hold Verity and for an instant his face turned slightly towards the sounds and his eyes flicked to and fro. In that second Verity was upon him again, fighting with the desperation of a man who has been given an unexpected last chance. A savage blow to the Wag's wrist sent the knife clattering from the open hand even before the curse of pain was uttered. With unexpected agility, Verity shot out his foot and the knife spun, slithered across the marble and dropped into the oval bath with a plop. Now, he thought, it was all Cornish style.
'Mario! ' Charley Wag drew back, confusion clouding his dark eyes. 'Alfredo! Simona!' He was no longer asking but calling the assistance of anyone within hearing. Whatever the Wag's bullies might do to him later, Verity knew that he could win now. He slammed into his tall, burly antagonist. A massive blow with the right Fist directly above the Wag's heart stopped him and bowed him forward. A short upward jab took him on the jaw and lifted him as though he had risen in the saddle. But his footing had gone, his feet skated on the wet floor, his heels rose and he went down with a crack which Verity found deeply satisfying. At last, Charley Wag lay face down at the edge of the oval bath, quite senseless, his right arm trailing in the water.
'He ain't too bad,' said Verity for his own information. 'Why, he ain't bleeding half what I am. You over there! What was them papers you threw in the water?'
The florid-faced man, despite his shabby appearance, assumed a well-bred indignation.
'I don't know who the devil you may be, sir,' he said breathlessly, his composure returning, 'but it's none of your affair.'
'I'm a police officer," said Verity, closing on the man, 'and there ain't a caper you could name that ain't my affair!'
He looked at the pulpy drifts of paper in the pool. The leaves had been thin and had disintegrated quickly, the writing washed away almost as soon as the water swirled over the ink. A thin gruel of pulp a nd water was all that remained of the evidence in the great blackmail investigation. With that evidence intact, the case against Charley Wag and his accomplices would have been irrefutable. With the evidence in its present, ruined state, the Wag could not even be brought into court and the chances of a Private-Clothes man getting near him again were nil. For this, the men of the detail had worked since the previous year. Two of them had been beaten unconscious in a rear court of Beak Street by several of Charley's swells, whose delight in muzzling a peeler had led them also to garrot a young sergeant so severely that he never walked a beat again. The shabby military man, who now cowered before Verity, had brought it all to nothing. There was no mistaking the intention in Verity's eyes.
'Keep off me!' said the red-faced man. 'Keep off, damn you!'
Verity had him by the collar, shaking him frenziedly.
'Help me! Help me!' gabbled the man. 'Police! Police!'
'I'm the police,' said Verity quietly, and he hit the shabby military man with his big, bunched fist, so that the red face jerked back like a puppet's head on a wire. The breath was driven from the body as the man hit the wall, and then slid to the floor with a front tooth protruding at an absurd angle from his gaping mouth.
'And what I want you to remember,' said Verity, as though continuing an amicable conversation, 'is that you ain't got half what you deserve. You destroyed evidence what three good men nearly died to get, all to save your foul rotten carcase. Decayed you may be, but you got the manner of a gentleman, the look of having been a soldier, and you ain't no business to be a coward. And if you left some poor little wife to sit at home and weep for your debaucheries, and if there was some lady mother whose grey hairs you brought in sorrow to the grave, you done worse than turn your back to the enemy. All things considered, my man, I let you down light.'
At the door which led to the more public baths, there was a sudden hammering, though the lock could only be opened from Verity's side. It sounded from the hum of voices as though there must be a crowd of considerable size in the cor
ridor beyond. A loud and familiar bellow drowned the rest.
'Open this door at once, in the name of 'er Majesty! Open it up!'
For good measure a heavy boot crashed unavailingly against the stout panelling. Verity picked up the towel, wet and blood-smeared, and wrapped it round his middle. The blood on his bare flesh had thinned to a pale red with the water and perspiration as he walked majestically to the door. He opened it and stood before a score of men and women who had forced their way this far into the sanctum of Charley Wag. The whiskered face of Sergeant Albert Samson, red mutton-chopped, peered forward from the crowd.
SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments Page 5
