The Blind Beak

by Ernest Dudley

  Some of the courage which had drained from her at the sight of him now began to return and her eyes flashed. ‘Caught red-handed.’

  ‘Not exactly, I have been here some time. I did not require all that long to lift your jewels.’ Her expression became puzzled and then she turned at the maidservant’s voice outside the room. ‘Remember,’ Nick rapped under his breath, ‘what you are to tell her.’

  She eyed his pistol for a moment. ‘Do not disturb me yet. I will call when I require you.’ A puzzled silence, a muttered grumble and then receding footsteps. Mrs. Devenish returned her perplexed glance to Nick. ‘You mean you deliberately awaited my return?’

  ‘I fancied what I have to tell you might be of interest.’ She hesitated irresolutely and then reached for a chair and sat down. ‘Forgive me if finding me here came as something of a shock,’ he went on smoothly. ‘What I have to say may also occasion you some slight surprise.’ She merely gazed at him blankly. ‘It was Lord Tregarth engaged me,’ Nick continued, and she gave a start, ‘to rob you. His motive — he resents the prospect of your disposing of the gifts he has made you, in order to obtain money with which to support your new lover.’

  She rose to her feet with a gasp. ‘What monstrous lies are you saying? He could have told you no such thing.’

  ‘I would have no object in informing you of this unless I thought it to be true.’

  ‘A lie,’ she cried. ‘I have no new lover, only Lord Tregarth. It is no secret,’ she flung at him. She began to wring her hands in bewilderment. ‘I am at a loss to understand what all this means. You would not seem to be an ordinary thief.’ He gave her a sardonic bow and she went on. ‘And you tell me this fantastic tale.’

  ‘Lord Tregarth was lying, then, when he informed me of the motive for his plot to recover the jewels he gave you?’

  ‘Why should he tell you all this?’ — giving him an up-and-down glance of disbelief — ‘an individual like you, a stranger — ’

  ‘We had met before.’ But, catching his reflection in the mirror, shabby and haggard, pistol glinting in the candlelight, he could not blame her for doubting him. He began emptying his pockets, placing the contents on her dressing-table. She watched him with calculating eyes as if mentally checking off each item. ‘Shall we say,’ he suggested, ‘a practical joke where I was to be the victim, you but his unsuspecting accomplice. But for a fortunate chance, earlier’ — he threw a glance at the window — ‘I might have been snared by his jest. As for these they would have been safely returned to you.’ He was mentally upbraiding himself, allowing his drink-sodden wits to overlook the extraordinary coincidence, which at any other time must have aroused his immediate suspicions, of Lord Tregarth acquainting himself with a rogue like Shadow who, in turn, had put him in touch with, of all people, Nick Rathburn.

  And he had not perceived those two Bow Street Runners skulking in the shadows of the garden he would by now have been caught in the trap so cunningly laid for him. He regarded Mrs. Devenish speculatively. Her white shoulders gleamed in the soft candlelight, which cast a provocative shadow between the rounded boldness of her decollete. ‘Since my frankness has saved you any harm from this ill-devised comedy, perhaps you would reciprocate by accommodating me with your carriage for my return to my lodgings?’ Her look was quizzical. ‘It is late for walking,’ he explained and with a raised eyebrow in the direction of the windows, ‘unsavoury characters are abroad.’

  She hesitated and then gave a shrug. ‘You are quite the most extraordinary thief. But it is right you should be conveyed safely home. I will see the carriage is ready for you at once.’

  A little later, a cloak thrown about her against the misty night air, Mrs. Devenish at his request accompanied Nick to the gate. Chatting lightly they proceeded along the path, and he could imagine the baffled expression on the faces of the watchers in the shadows awaiting him, expecting he would quit the villa as instructed by the wily Lord Tregarth. That glimpse of them from the bedroom window had warned him he had been lured into yet another trap set by the Blind Beak.

  The revelation of Shadow’s treachery came as no surprise. He knew the wooden-legged rascal’s philosophy to be even more cynical than his own, and capable of cold-bloodedly betraying a friend with never a qualm, so long as the price be high enough. Offering a fervent prayer of gratitude to his lucky star which continued still to shine over him, a sense of exhilaration bore him up at having once more triumphed over his ruthless adversary at Bow Street. The measure of that inexorable determination to destroy him was indicated by the lengths to which, even enrolling Lord Tregarth as an ally, the Blind Beak had gone.

  Opening the gate he experienced the added uneasy sensation Mrs. Devenish herself might be a willing party to the machinations directed against him. He thanked her for facilitating his departure, while her smile in the light of the carriage-lamps was seemingly innocent.

  ‘Do you believe,’ she murmured, ‘I shall speak to his lordship most sharply concerning his manner of amusing himself at my expense.’ He made an appropriate reply, almost convinced of her sincerity, and stepping into the carriage directed to be driven to the Blood Bowl Cellar, off Fleet Street where, dipping into the guineas jingling in his pocket, he planned to celebrate his luck.

  Barely half an hour later he was lounging casually over his drink and chewing reflectively upon a clay pipe-stem, far away in his mind from the noisy scene about him, for it was a rendezvous notorious for flash coves, thieves and their doxies, together with shifty-eyed fences on the look-out for any with stolen property to dispose of, when his attention snapped back to the present at the entrance of a familiar tub-like figure attended by two sturdy individuals who also sported the unmistakable red waistcoat. A sudden quiet had fallen as, with a faint smile, Nick wondered who might be the object of the newcomers’ unwelcome concern. Even when they approached him he remained unconcerned, raising his glass nonchalantly at the foremost of the trio.

  ‘Good evening, Mr. Rathburn.’ Mr. Townsend pulled out a chair for himself and, elbows on the table, faced Nick, a sly smirk upon his rubicund face.

  ‘And what, Mr. Townsend, have I the pleasure of buying you in the form of refreshment?’

  ‘Nothing, Mr. Rathburn, thank you all the same, since I should not have time in which to drink your health.’

  ‘What duty, Mr. Townsend, requires your vigilance so urgently as leaves no leisure for a convivial glass?’

  ‘The duty I now pursue,’ came the ponderous reply, ‘which is to require your company to Bow Street.’

  Nick grinned at him disarmingly. ‘Your invitation bears a pressing tone, and yet I do not fancy accepting it.’

  ‘Fancy or otherwise, you will do well not to refuse,’ and Mr. Townsend threw sidelong glances at his two grim-visaged companions.

  A faint premonitory tremor rippled under Nick’s scalp as he involuntarily harked back to the means whereby he had a short while since outwitted his foes, searching for any flaw, any contingency he had failed to foresee. ‘A Mrs. Devenish,’ the other was continuing relentlessly, ‘on returning home tonight to her villa by Marylebone Fields surprised an unexpected visitor. This person escaped, and with some jewellery, but not before his description had been noted, which suits you in every detail.’

  ‘I cannot be but flattered by the delectable Mrs. Devenish’s interest in my physical appearance.’

  ‘You do not deny being discovered by her tonight?’

  Nick shrugged airily. ‘Since we had a private matter for discussion between us my presence there should be not entirely incomprehensible, but that at the conclusion of our meeting I took my leave with so much as a single item of her property adhering to my fingers is as absurd an accusation as it is unjustifiable.’

  ‘Which being the case, according to the words of your mouth, you raise no objection to being searched.’

  Mr. Townsend, rising to his feet, that smirk upon his face, leaned towards him. The other two individuals had moved roun
d to him with alacrity, and again that crawling sensation seeming to cause each separate hair above the nape of his neck to rise on end. He stood up with lazy grace, his veiled glance flickered with slow, studied insolence over the others’ faces. There came a sudden movement from the Bow Street Runner on his left and a hand plunged into his coat-pocket, reappearing to the accompaniment of the man’s triumphant grunt, and from whose thick, horny palm, a flat, diamond-encrusted brooch, glittering and winking, met Nick’s momentarily transfixed gaze.

  Simultaneously with the realization he had been tricked at the last, his reflexes urged him into immediate action. With a bitter curse, ramming the table into Mr. Townsend’s protuberant stomach so that he collapsed with an agonized groan, knocking the other police officer off-balance, in the same movement he smashed his clenched fist savagely into the face of the fellow clutching the brooch Mrs. Devenish must have contrived slyly to plant in his pocket. The cellar was in an uproar, everybody on their feet with yells of encouragement, some leaping upon the tables to roar their admiration, and anyone in his path giving way before his desperate rush, he reached a narrow door in a corner of the cellar and vanished from sight.

  He was speedily followed by both of Mr. Townsend’s officers — the former still lay breathless the table atop of him and not a soul showing any concern — wrenching the door open after their quarry. Having stumbled about in a winding passage, shortly the pursuers found themselves back where they were, with frustrated expression and uttering baffled oaths, Nick having taken a secret stairway known to but few habitues of the Blood Bowl, and, closing its cunningly concealed entrance behind him, he ascended to the darkness of Fleet Street and was lost in the labyrinth of alleys and lanes that lay beyond.

  25.

  Throughout the rest of that night and next day Nick remained hidden in a deserted hovel of rags and sticks in an encampment huddled about a deserted copse near Melancholy Walk, St. George’s Fields lying across the river, which sheltered straggling vagrants. Listening to the rain beating against the leaky roof, for a thunderstorm had burst just after dawn, he felt grateful towards the elements, which were as discouraging to the Bow Street Runners out searching for him.

  Darkness fell again, bringing with it a cessation of the downpour, and Nick decided to venture forth and find somewhere to eat. No morsel of food or a sip of drink, other than rain-water cupped in his hands, had he tasted since his escape from the Blood Bowl. And so, a slouch hat purchased on his way to shade his face, he ate ravenously that evening of roast veal in the dim corners of a low eating-house in the Tottenham Court Road, hidden behind a daily newspaper which reported his escape from Townsend. On the same page he read one of Sir John Fielding’s advertisements: ‘Nick Rathburn did evade arrest by the Bow Street Runners last night. He is wanted for housebreaking and is a notorious criminal, aged about thirty, five foot ten inches in height, very slender, of pale debauched countenance and dark eyes and hair, the latter being marked by a white streak. He did wear a shabby attire. Whoever will discover or apprehend him so that he be brought to justice shall have one hundred guineas reward to be paid by Sir John Fielding at Bow Street Police Court. If any person knowingly conceal him from justice it is a felony and they will be prosecuted for the same.’

  Even as, with a twisted smile, he concluded reading, a shadow fell across his corner and a piece of paper slapped on the table. ‘A proclamation,’ a pockmarked individual growled as Nick glanced quickly up at him, ‘from the Blind Beak. And you can lay this Nick Rathburn by the heels there is a hundred guineas for your trouble.’ Nick thanked the fellow for his advice and the other moved away distributing more copies of the proclamation. The story of his escape was now all over the town, as he discovered for himself later, drifting from ale-house to tavern and gin-shop to night-cellar, everywhere receiving fresh evidence of his notoriety. No one but seemed to be discussing him. Suddenly, it seemed, he had become the most-talked-of personage in all London.

  By the early hours of the morning he had contrived to remain unchallenged, though there had been instances when, coming under the shrewd eye of a stranger, he had decided discretion was the better part of valour and faded swiftly into the safety of the dark street. He was reaching the conclusion if he were to continue to evade capture he must obtain for himself both new clothing and more money. He recalled mention by some passing flash-house acquaintance of a pawnbroker in Drury Lane, offering not only a selection of fashionable attire, obtained mostly from impoverished players disposing of their wardrobes, but a large quantity of jewellery, not forgetting any takings on the premises not safely stowed.

  He set out for the pawnbroker’s shop and on reaching it discovered there was a side-entrance along a narrow, dark alley. He encountered little difficulty in forcing the lock and entering. Quickly he selected from the dim mustiness of the overflowing shelves and crowded counter a black velvet jacket with breeches to match, a ruffled shirt, elegant black hose, diamond buckled shoes and all finished off by a top-hat a la mode. He had discarded his seedy attire for the magnificence of this new wardrobe and was buckling round his waist a silver-hilted sword he had taken a fancy for when voices from upstairs, apparently those of the pawnbroker and his wife talking to each other in frightened tones, reached his ear. Nick raised his voice. ‘Do you shoot dead,’ he called, as if addressing a band of confederates, ‘the first person who dare show their face.’ Promptly the tremulous murmuring above ceased. His bluff having thus succeeded in gaining him a little more time, Nick added to his booty a gold watch, a diamond ring, grabbed a handful of money, both gold and silver, and betook himself off.

  The following morning he had taken lodgings off Cheapside for himself and his latest charmer, Moll Frisky, she of the volatile charms and soft pointed fingers that could be at once caressing and grasping, lovingly teasing and greedily covetous. It was all one to him, for back of his mind lay the knowledge his time was running short, the remaining hours of freedom few. This must be the case, however he skulked in the darkest corner of the Rookeries, or hid in the most wretched thieves’ kitchen. Always some creeping rogue, mouth watering at the prospect of that hundred guineas reward, would be on the alert for his appearance, ready to betray him.

  Now he knew that, while he possessed the wherewithal to attempt it, now, while the going was good, should he quit the town, shake the dust of London off his feet for a long time, if not for ever. And he wished he was free yet to seek fresh fields: Bath or Bristol, York or Chester, or across the Border, Edinburgh. There were a score of cities where the Bow Street Runners would find it next to impossible to trace him and where he might still find easy cribs to crack and pursue his reckless course with less danger to his skin. But like some player in a piece whose every scene he must enact and every line he must speak is already written for him and he must not deviate from his role, so Nick was impelled to play his part to the final curtainfall, London his stage and audience. The echo of the hated Blind Beak’s words would haunt him, ringing with unerringly true perception back of his mind: ‘It is you who are destroying yourself.’ And still he found himself drawn, like the needle to the magnet, to the abyss-edge. It was as if he longed to taste the vault-cold breath of doom in his throat and, while on one hand elude death’s inimical embrace, on the other seek it out as if it were a gladly welcome friend.

  Enjoy life then, as boldly as he may, and so he strutted in his new magnificent attire, enlivening tavern and boozing-den with his rakehell carousing, Moll on his arm; even on one occasion, still more daring and following a riotous dinner, he drove with his doxy in a hackney-carriage past the Stone Jug itself. His fabulous luck held for two days and nights. The third evening he was sat drinking alone in a St. James’s bagnio, Moll having deserted him, his pocket now considerably lightened, pondering where next he could strike to augment his depleted funds. Presently he informed one of the girls he was leaving and a hackney be fetched for him. The sultry-eyed harlot threw him a long glance, but no premonition of imminent disaste
r disturbed his equanimity as a few minutes later he paused unsteadily at the street door, top-hat tilted rakishly over one eye. Boldly he stepped into the waiting carriage, and met a brace of pistols prodding him in his stomach, while two pairs of hands grasped each arm and he was forced back into the seat by a Bow Street Runner on either side. Above the pistols loomed the familiar rubicund features of Townsend.

  ‘Now, Mr. Rathburn, do you sit quiet. You are going with us for a little ride.’ Nick fought savagely, behind him the voices of those who, rushing from the bagnio, crowded the pavement.

  ‘Murder,’ he shouted. ‘Help, for God’s sake. I am attacked by rogues. I am murdered. Help me, for Christ’s sake.’ But no one moved, only the shrill peals of mocking laughter from the bagnio’s whores answered his cries, the handcuffs snapped over his wrists and, followed by a shout from the mob, the hackney drove off towards Bow Street.

  A little later he found himsetf stood in the same spot from where, in company with Casanova, he had the last time faced that massive black-bandaged figure. Mr. Bond, shooting a look at him over his spectacles, was reading out the charge. Sir John Fielding’s double chin was sunk upon his cravat while he sat there quiescent, for all the world as if he had never heard mention of the prisoner’s name before. Townsend, himself giving evidence, described how Mrs. Devenish had raised the alarm upon returning to her Marylebone Fields villa, to discover she had been victim of a robbery.

  Nick, his teeth bared in a cynical grin, glanced about him occasionally to observe the spectators; rabble off the streets with no better home to go to jostling with the blades and rakes of the beau monde, together with journalists waiting to pick up a tidbit of news, the fetid air made less noisesome by the perfumes of several fashionable darlings and the scented powders and pomades of those beaux to whose arms they clung, come to feast their fascinated gaze upon the scene. Nick, befettered now about his legs as wdl as at the wrists, yawned with simulated boredom to express his utter lack of interest in the proceedings as they took their customary course.