"I was jist a-sweepin' for a lady across the road when it happen," said the boy shamefacedly, "when the two gentlemen with the iron bracket slipped and dropped it. Right across the cloth it went. Wery sorry the gentlemen was, and said they'd be back in two minutes to settle up for any damage. Only they ain't come back," he concluded superfluously.
"It's not even as if it was mine!" said Verity helplessly.
He was still pondering this when the boy touched his sleeve confidentially.
"You was lucky, you was, yer worship," he said gently, "you might 'ave been in there when it happen."
Verity looked at him, still clutching in his hand the packet of plates which he had carried to the shop and back. He felt a sudden chill in the heat of June.
"That's just where they thought I was! " he said, his eyes widening with consternation and anger. "When they didn't see me standing by it, that's where they must have thought I was! They bloody well meant to cooper me! That's what!"
That evening, in the attic room in Great College Street, Westminster, which served for his lodgings, Sergeant Samson said for the third or fourth time,
"It ain't the cost, Verity. Money can't mend it!"
"So soon as I can, I'll pay the account in full," said Verity firmly. "There's better cameras than that can be got for five sovereigns from Gilbert Flemming's in Oxford Street. I'll do it so soon as I can. Only don't go prosing on about it, there's a good fellow. They meant to do for me. They thought I was still in there—and I might've been!"
The room was almost in darkness and he could just make out the black bulk of his colleague as Samson rocked the heavy glass plate in a dish of liquid. On his fingers, Verity felt the wrinkling from the astringent film of pyrogallic acid.
"What beats me," said Samson, watching the dish carefully, "is why you can't just settle with Roper, man to man. There's enough dark corners, ain't there?"
"It won't do," said Verity, growing stern.
"I don't know about that," said Samson beginning to reminisce, "they don't squeal after, not hardly ever. I 'ad trouble once with a great cove in St Giles's. When it came to, he let me knock him down with no more fight than a baby. In the pushing about, I bent his left thumb and finger back so far that they bust right across. I promised him next time it'd be his right hand. Let him try a lock or a pocket with fingers like a bunch of old twigs. You've no idea how useful he was to me ever after."
The glass plate rattled against the dish once more, as Samson drew it out of the pyrogallol solution.
"That's the two of Ned Roper and his friend," he said with exaggerated patience. He set a match to the mantle and held the two squares of glass against the light. Both were uniformly and deeply black.
"I took their portraits!" said Verity with some indignation.
"That's as may be," said Samson, putting the plates down again, "but the art of portraits ain't learnt in one afternoon."
"Keep 'em!" said Verity optimistically. "I've heard they sometimes brighten a bit with keeping."
"Have you?" Samson nodded glumly. "That's what all the sharps tell their poor gulls when they hands them a no bono plate. 'Only keep it, sir, and you'll see it'll soon brighten up!' I'm surprised you ain't tumbled to that trick before. I'm rather afraid you had a bad afternoon of it."
"Oh?" said Verity stubbornly. "I get so close to the secret of the conspiracy that they think it worth killing me! Close as McCaffery ever got! I don't call that a bad afternoon. If you was half as good a hand at constabulary vigilance as you are at shilling portraits, Mr Samson, you might go a very long way indeed! "
Sergeant William Clarence Verity, of the Private Clothes detail, Whitehall Office, presents his compliments to Inspector Croaker and has the honour to draw Mr Croaker's attention to complaints made by the public to Sergeant Verity in respect of the premises known as 84, Langham Place. These complaints concern misdemeanours and felonies committed by street women and their keepers who frequently resort to this house. It has been brought to Sergeant Verity's notice that the dupes of these women are robbed and physically assaulted on the premises, the proceeds of such robberies being kept in the charge of a woman of low repute, Jacoby, common law wife of the keeper of the house. The victims of such assaults have been left upon the area steps without coats or jackets, and even without trousers, to the great scandal of the public peace. Sergeant Verity appends a statement by Mr Julius Stringfellow, of Paddington Green, to this effect.
Sergeant Verity is also informed that the house is a resort of men of depraved taste and morals for criminal intercourse with female children of tender years. Among further information offered is an allegation that the premises are used to harbour felons who may thus evade the pursuit of police constables, and that a concealed way has been made, opening from the premises into a stable-yard on another street.
Sergeant Verity therefore requests that Mr Croaker may take steps to obtain a justice's warrant, whereby officers of the Division may enter these premises in search of the proceeds of various robberies, and of evidence of other felonies and misdemeanours.
Sergeant Verity has the honour to remain Mr Croaker's obedient humble servant.
W. Verity, Sgt. 10th of June 1857
Inspector Croaker is in receipt of Sergeant Verity's communication of the 19th instant. Mr Croaker must observe at the outset that the memorandum does not appear to have been copied into the letter-book. Sergeant Verity will have the goodness to make such copy at once and not to allow the omission to occur in the future.
Mr Croaker is also bound to observe at once that the evidence submitted to him by Sergeant Verity is in no way substantial enough for any application to be made to a justice. A house of ill-repute is not amenable to search as such. Sergeant Verity should know this, and, if not, he will learn it for the future. There appears to be no corroborated evidence, in this instance, of the robberies of persons as alleged by Sergeant Verity's informants. Mr Croaker is surprised to learn that the other forms of disorderly conduct alluded to have not been suppressed by Sergeant Verity and the other officers of the Division in the proper discharge of their duties.
Mr Croaker regrets to hear that instances may have occurred in which females in early womanhood may have forfeited their virtue in the manner described. He must, however, observe that the duty of the police is to enforce the law as it at present exists. By that law, a young woman is competent to consent to her own seduction at 12 years of age. If Sergeant Verity has corroborated evidence that children of more tender years have been criminally abused, Mr Croaker will expect to hear it. Mr Croaker finds it necessary to remind Sergeant Verity that the cause of virtue is not aided by a feebly based prosecution which ends in the acquittal of those accused.
Finally, Mr Croaker is aware that the tenant of the premises referred to is Edward Roper, with whom Sergeant Verity appears to be conducting some personal feud. If Sergeant Verity's communication is prompted by any such vendetta, Mr Croaker must reprimand him severely. Should Sergeant Verily ever attempt to incriminate Mr Roper by unsubstantiated assertions, Sergeant Verity may render himself liable to prosecution for attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Mr Croaker remains &c.
H. Croaker,
Inspector of Constabulary 21st June 1857
"Pervert the course of justice! " The broad nape of Verity's fleshy neck glowed with indignation. He glowered across the bare wooden table, on which lay the remains of a supper of broiled bones, ham and eggs, and bottled stout. Stringfcllow, to whom a dinner-table was only a dinner-table so long as the meal was in progress, busied himself in poking dust from the crevices of a harness brass with the corner of a handkerchief. In an old green shooting coat, a billicock hat, arid brown breeches, he looked the perfect image of self-confidence.
"Not what I should have written at all," he remarked, clouding the brass with his breath. "First into the Redan you may have been, Verity, but you ain't got a hand for a letter."
"You 'ave, though?" said Verity with some scepti
cism. Stringfellow hoisted himself up.
"I don't know but what I mightn't 'ave. Getting into a whorehouse in Langham Place ain't no worse than breaching the walls of Bhurtpore with a line of Cherry-pickers."
"What about the letter?" Verity insisted.
"Well," said Stringfellow, "I never was at a dame school, and on my soul I ain't no sort of cove with a pen in my hand. But I can compose after a fashion when the fit is on."
He lifted the latch on the wooden doorway of the lean-to and bawled into the interior room of the litde mews dwelling.
"Miss Belial Bring a ink-and-dip! Sharp !" Bella, brushing back stray blonde curls with one hand, and holding a little wooden writing-tray in the other, flitted into the low-ceilinged scullery. Verity, who was burnishing the pimpled leadier of new boots with a hot iron, in preparation for plain clothes duty at the Victoria Cross parade, looked up at the girl. At his gaze, the colour flooded into Bella's plump young cheeks.
"Sit down," said Stringfellow brusquely, "and take 'un all down as I say."
Verity listened. With the leather ironed smooth, he had burnished the toe-caps of the boots to a pair of black mirrors before Stringfellow finished.
"There !" said Stringfellow finally. "Now tell me if you ever heard a letter that was the like of that ! A daughter's innocence ruined! The mother demented with grief ! The ultimate suicide of both! And all that along o' a 'ouse of abomination in Langham Place, run by a villain called Roper! Now, 'ear the sorrowing father and 'usband plead for the safety of 'is one ewe lamb, lured to that place of sin! See 'im beg the protection of the common law, on bended knee! Behold 'im, spurned by the haughty Croaker of the Whitehall constabulary! Oh, the pity of it, my friends, the pity ..."
"Your daughter ain't made away with herself," said Verity with some heat, "nor she ain't never been in a 'ouse of sin. And I was given to understand that the late Mrs Stringfellow went off with the cholera."
"Draw it mild, old fellow," said Stringfellow reproachfully. "You ain't ever going to see the inside of Roper's whore shop unless we pitch it strong."
"Pitch it strong as you like," Verity remarked, "you won't shift Mr Croaker. He's hard as a file. Why, he wouldn't turn a hair if you and all the cabmen of the city, and all their wives and daughters, hanged yourselves in a row outside his window."
"But this letter ain't going to Mr Croaker," said Stringfellow with a flourish of his stick. "Take your eyes off the lodger, Miss Bella, and write at the bottom, 'To the Right Honourable and Right Reverend Secretary, The Society for the Suppression of Vice, Essex Street'." He turned to Verity again. "Your Mr Inspector may be 'ard as a file, sir, but I once had the honour to drive this right reverend gentleman from Hyde Park Gate to Exeter Hall. Mean as a ferret and sour as vinegar! Shouldn't wonder if he was to make your Mr Croaker feel quite poorly for a day or two."
Anonymous in regulation tunic and tall hat, Verity marched among the other members of the search detail, following Inspector Swift towards the plain black wagon. Two parallel benches accommodated the twelve constables.
"A reverend gentleman it was," said Sergeant Samson furtively, "came calling on Mr Croaker. You wouldn't believe how Mr Croaker took on afterwards."
"That's all gammon!" said Meiklejohn, a youngish, fair-haired sergeant with a Scots brogue. "One of the light-fingered gentry turned evidence as to the whereabouts of Joe the Magsman and a hundredweight of silver plate. That's the lay."
The horses sprang forward at the crack of a whip and the whole conveyance bounced and rattled across the cobbles. Verity sat in silence as the wagon rumbled the length of Nash's elegant quadrant, and then drew into a mews somewhere just beyond Regent Circus. Much as he wanted to see the inside of Ned Roper's establishment, he hoped that Joe the Magsman, rather than Stringfellow's letter, had been the reason for the search. By arrangement with Inspector Swift, the uniformed men were to lead the assault, the plain clothes detail following up as soon as any prisoners had been taken or any suspects cleared out of the way. Swift's strategy on these occasions was to keep the plain clothes detail, even though wearing uniform, out of sight of those whom they might subsequendy have to hunt. Verity, knowing that a
uniform alone would hardly conceal him from Roper, was duly grateful.
As Swift, two sergeants and four constables, marched up the steps in a phalanx, the remaining officers were drawn up in a line on the pavement below with all the precision of infantry awaiting the order to advance. Swift set up a thunderous knocking at the door which must have alerted all the occupants. Verity and Samson drew back a little to see if there was any attempt at an escape over the roof. After a long minute, the door was opened and the six uniformed men disappeared through it at a run, as if Bill Sikes and all his confederates might even then be swarming out through the skylights. There was an obscure scuffle, somewhere within the lighted vestibule, a scream of agony which was clearly heard in the street, and two heavy blows followed by almost complete silence.
A crowd of spectators from among the passers-by was beginning to gather at the steps when Inspector Swift reappeared and beckoned Samson and Verity.
"Quick as you can, my boys," he said in a jovial whisper, "the woman Jacoby and two bullies are under detention in the little parlour. Make your way through the rest of the house smartly as you can."
As the two men moved through the entrance hall, Verity began to imprint on his memory the plan of the house. One side of the ground floor was taken up by the front parlour and the well of the stairs behind it. On the other side, a long "music room" ran from the tall front windows with their deep velvet curtains and pelmets, to the smaller bow-window, overlooking the mews yard at the rear of the house. A fine Broadwood grand piano, French polished to a deep chestnut gloss, and a dozen little chairs with tapestry seats and fluted legs made up the furnishings. The sheen of the parquet floor confirmed that this was the "introducing room," where officers and gentlemen drank and danced with the girls until they found partners to match their tastes.
Above the black and white tiling of the entrance hall, the wrought-iron balustrade of a graceful staircase ascended in a series of diminishing ovals to the coloured glass of the skylight, far above. Sunlight falling through the lofty stairwell threw diffused patterns of rose and turquoise on the pale oak panelling. Verity and Samson climbed to the first floor, half of which was occupied by the most expensive of the bedrooms with its pink-shaded lamps, nude statuary, and large gilt-framed mirrors. The room was unoccupied, as was the first of the two smaller bedrooms on the floor. At the door of the second room a uniformed constable, his tall hat still firmly on his head, stood at ease. He brought his feet together at the two sergeants' approach, without quite standing at attention.
"Three persons detained, Sergeant," he said proudly, "on Mr Inspector Swift's orders. One male person and two female. The male person claims to have been accosted by the women and brought here. Seems the small rooms is let by the hour during the afternoons for any street woman with the money. An accommodation house, you might say. They all refuses to give their names, except that one girl calls herself Adeline and the other Elaine. I'd say they was aliases."
"Aliases," said Sergeant Samson knowledgeably, pushing open the door.
The room was the smallest and shabbiest so far, no doubt let to street girls for that reason. A washstand, two small chairs, and a large iron-framed bed stood as if in a whitewashed cell. A silk top-hat, a gold hunter, coins and keys, lay on the washstand. On the chairs were a pile of skirts, a frock-coat, and a pair of trousers. The man lying back in the bed was in his fifties, more than a little drunk, and grinning stupidly through his grey mutton-chop whiskers. Though his shoulders were covered by his shirt, Verity had no doubt that he was naked otherwise under the sheet. Completely revealed on top of the sheet, a naked girl lay either side of him. The elder, who had called herself by the newly fashionable name of Adeline, was a fleshy adolescent of sixteen or seventeen. Her companion, Elaine, was no more than fourteen or fifteen. She seemed a
younger version of the elder girl, with the same narrow, insolent eyes, the same snub nose and lank brown hair hanging loosely down her back. At Verity's entrance, neither girl made any effort to conceal herself beyond rolling over on her stomach with a squeal of amusement and grinning back at him over her shoulder. The man too, knowing the powerlessness of the law on private premises, joined in the laughter, placing a well-manicured hand on each of his young mistresses. Verity looked at the two girls with distaste, taking in their blackened feet and mud-spattered calves, the sores at elbows and knees, and the constellations of tiny red spots across their buttocks. For all his experience, it still dismayed him that a man of evident wealth should endure the embraces of two girls whose worst diseases were probably infinitely more horrible than any visible blemishes. He closed the door to a shout of derisive amusement and climbed the stairs again with an involuntary shudder.
The second floor revealed two small bedrooms and the upstairs drawing-room, with its padded door and its deadness of sound-proofed space. It seemed more like a nursery than a drawing-room, since a painted rocking-horse stood in the centre of the carpet casting a long shadow in the dying sun. There were two Coburg chairs and a heavy sofa in blue velvet, a riding switch of bamboo cased in leather thrown at random on its cushions.
SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman Page 13