SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman

by Francis Selwyn

  These points were vital in Dacre's plan. To turn from the main line down to the harbour, the train had first to pass over the points. Then the points were changed and the train, backing over them, turned away from the upper level and down a curved branch of railway track to the Harbour Pier. The tidal ferry train might be advertised as "direct" from Reigate to Folkestone Harbour, but the construction of the permanent way was such that it was obliged to stop for about ninety seconds while the points were changed. According to Verney Dacre's previous observation, it might be more than ninety seconds, it might even be a little less.

  Standing close to the off-side door of the van, which faced away from platforms when the train was stationary, Dacre felt the first change in the rhythm of the wheels. The sliding door could not be opened or fastened from the outside, but only by raising or dropping into iron brackets a solid metal bar inside the van. He raised the bar on its pivot and slowly drew the door across, revealing the pale streaks of chalk cliff flashing past them as the train began to lose speed before the points. Of all his tools, the only one which Dacre had not returned to the carpet-bag was a large hammer.

  Soon the grinding and screwing of metal signalled that the brakes of the train had been applied, and it passed at walking speed over the points. At the screech which was the prelude to complete braking, Dacre motioned his companion towards the open door, watched him jump and saw him set off along the cutting, running low beside the stationary carriages. Dacre himself remained on the footboard for a moment, gently sliding the door across with as much care as if it had been some delicate mechanism. Once the door was closed, it could be fastened again only if the raised bar inside were dropped into position. Cazamian might do that if he were first to reach the van, but that risk was too great. Dacre judged the point at which the pivot of the bar would be on the inside of the boarding. Then he hit it a hammer blow with all his strength on the outside of the wood. There was no response. He struck it again, and this time heard the fall of metal. How far the iron bar had lodged in its sockets was a mere guess, but now he found it impossible to move the door from the outside.

  And then Dacre jumped from his perch and ran with his head ducked below the pale rectangles of light which were cast by the carriage windows. He could see Roper's head and shoulders in dark silhouette, marking a carriage in which no lights were burning. The engine whistle shrieked and the wheels of the carriages began to turn just as he drew level. Roper flung the door wide, Dacre jumped, and as he pulled, himself into the carriage the rhythm of the train grew loud enough to obscure the sound of the door being slammed behind him.

  It puzzled Verity that Roper should have travelled so late, unless he were proposing to spend a night or more in Dover, and that he should have come without his doxy this time. At Reigate he was no more than two carriages' distance from Roper, and had kept such a vigil that no man could have entered or left Roper's carriage unobserved. At a little distance from Folkestone, he discovered that he could hear the sound of voices from the other carriages, fragmentarily, by keeping his own window lowered.

  Roper was evidently not alone, he caught the strident, bragging tones of the man once or twice, though without being able to distinguish precisely the words that were spoken. Of what was said by one of Roper's travelling companions, he heard little more. The tone of the man's voice was one which Verity had heard often enough before, the languid drawl of the St James's Palace dragoon, still affecting the English of the reign of William IV or even the Regency. Such voices and personalities had come to be thoroughly despised by the riflemen of the Crimea, who compared their own hardships with the easy affluence of the "peacock bastards" in the lancers and hussars.

  Verity just managed to hear the voice instructing someone, for God's sake, to "put up some yaller light, or let a fellah have a glim or two," and then to say something about "travellin' on to Paris or Roome and break the Pope's nose." Beyond that, there was nothing.

  The wheels of the carriage jolted over the crossing and then ran more evenly alongside the platform of the Harbour Pier. Verity put on his tall black hat, the brim tilted a little over his eyes, and shifted so that he might see if anyone so much as opened the door of Roper's carriage to get down on to the platform. Almost at once, the door opened and Roper stepped out, striding away down the platform. Verity followed him, dodging and peering among the crowd of travellers, until Roper pushed his way into the refreshment room. Through the window. Verity watched him in the brightly lit interior, holding a glass of steaming toddy and favouring the serving girl with a thin, whiskery smile.

  With a sense of some relief, he realised that Roper was not leaving the train at Folkestone but travelling on to Dover, as he had expected. A few seconds before the departure whistle, the man left the refreshment room and ran to a carriage in the middle of the train, apologetically pushing himself in among a family party for the last fifteen minutes of the journey. At Dover, Verity was out first, watching for Roper to emerge and carry his luggage from the van. Instead, it was a porter who carried the luggage to the rank, where several hansom cabs still waited in the warm darkness. As usual, a railway constable was in attendance at the rank to take down the number of each cab and its destination. Verity strained to catch the words called out by the porter. "Number sixteen. Wellington Arms, Walmer!" The driver cracked his whip and the cab rattled away across the cobbled courtyard. Verity watched it go. There was no hope of carrying out an overnight surveillance at Walmer, since he had to parade for duty before Inspector Croaker the next morning. But though he might not be able to do it, there was one man who could take over the task for him. Julius Stringfellow must now show that he was as good as his word.

  "Here," said Verity, clutching at the porter's sleeve, "what time does this train go back to town, my man?"

  The porter disengaged himself and looked superciliously at the fat, unkempt traveller, his tall hat askew and his clothes hanging baggily about him. This was no moment for respect.

  "Twenty-five minutes," he said grudgingly, and turned away.

  Verity stood in deep thought for a while. Then he turned and walked resolutely back towards the harbour station and the telegraph office.

  Ned Roper waited until the cab was safely round two corners, and then he banged with his stick upon the roof. The wheels slowed and the cabman opened the little roof-hatch.

  "Were you the one he said 'Wellington Arms, Walmer' to?" Roper inquired.

  "Yes, sir," said the cabman firmly.

  "Damn the fool!" said Roper in mock-frustration, "that's the other passenger. I'm for the Dover Castle Hotel."

  "Ain't that easy sir. Very strict the railway constables is about destinations being entered."

  "Look," said Roper ingratiatingly, "set me down at the Dover Castle. Drive on to Walmer or not, as you please. And here's the sovereign for the Walmer fare and another half sov into the bargain. It's worth that much to me for a night's proper rest before I take the shilling sicker for Boulogne tomorrow."

  "Right-o, guv'nor," said the cabman cheerily, and turned off towards the Dover Castle.

  Five minutes later, Ned Roper and his carpet-bags crossed the vestibule of the hotel.

  "Mr Archer," he said to the footman, "travelling from Ostend to London, a private room reserved for dinner, for Mr Archer and one other gentleman."

  The footman bowed slightly, turned, and led Roper and the two luggage boys down a broad passageway, brightly lit by the glare of gas brackets.

  Verney Dacre sat patiently at the table in the private room, surveying the fine linen, cut-glass, and silverware. He looked up at Roper as the door closed.

  "I passed your cab on the way up, standin' idle in the road. As for that jack of yours, damned if he ain't called the dogs off and started back for London Bridge on the ten o'clock."

  With that, the two men began to laugh.

  "Come on, though," said Dacre at last, "I'm so famished I swear I may die if I don't get a good tightener soon."

  The clock of St
James's Church chimed the half hour as Dacre and Roper walked down the East Cliff road towards the Harbour station. Ahead of them, the starlit night was blacked out by the mass of the Western Heights. In half an hour more, at 2 a.m., the night ferry train, from Dover to London Bridge, would be on its way.

  Each of the two men carried his own carpet-bags, but the weight was much less than when they had contained lead-shot. More than a hundredweight of the gold ingots had been carefully distributed in the coffin and neither man now carried more than half a hundredweight distributed among the leather bags. However, even this was a burden over so long a distance and neither of them spoke as they walked, firmly but breathing heavily, along Townwall towards the harbour.

  Just short of the station, Dacre stopped.

  "Have the goodness," he said, gasping a little, "to throw away your other ticket and take this."

  Ned Roper looked at the proffered slip.

  "Ostend to London Bridge?" he said foolishly.

  "Take it!" Dacre picked up his bags again. "It's worth a hundred times what it cost. It makes us passengers from Ostend on this evening's boat. If there's a screw loose over the bullion, there's an even chance of showing that we were on the high seas all the time that the ferry train was between London Bridge and Folkestone."

  Roper began to cackle with delight, but Verney Dacre ignored him and made for the palely lit outline of the railway office. They had hardly reached it when a dark figure approached them.

  "London Bridge, gentlemen? May I find you your carriage, gents?"

  Ned Roper showed every sign of clinging on to his carpetbags unless forcibly parted from them, but Verney Dacre set his down for the porter to carry.

  "Tickets, genl'men?" said die porter hopefully. Dacre handed them to him and the man looked briefly at the details.

  "Ostend steamer?" he said casually. "Then I fear I ain't able to take you to your carriage. All steamer luggage has to go through the custom 'ouse for opening and inspection by the waterguard before it goes to the train."

  It seemed to Verney Dacre that he stood dumbfounded by the impact of this information for a full minute, though it could hardly have been more than a few seconds. Worse still, as he fought for words, he saw Roper reaching inside a pocket for what could only have been a life preserver to strike down the porter in the full light of the station lamps. Dacre took a step to place himself between the two men, and turned his most arrogant manner upon the porter.

  "I don't believe," he said contemptuously, "that the water-guard officers would thank us for putting them to the same trouble twice. We came by last night's Ostend steamer and have been stopping at the Dover Castle since. You may see the receipted bill, for that matter."

  He reached in his pocket, as though for a sheet of paper, and waited. The porter wavered, judged that a handsome tip was about to elude him if the argument was pressed further, and gave way.

  "You need only have said, sir," he murmured ingratiatingly. "There ain't no call for yesterday's passengers to go through the waterguard at all.

  Dacre followed him down the platform to a first-class carriage in which the oil lamps were already burning."

  "Thank you," he said, handing the man a half-sovereign, "we'll have the bags with us. I don't care to be kept standin' about the luggage van at London Bridge waitin' for them."

  He sat back against the cushions, closed his eyes and kept them closed until the train had begun to move. When he opened them again, Ned Roper was holding a gold coin between thumb and forefinger, holding it close to the lamp for admiration. Seeing Dacre's eyes upon him, he hastily put the gold Eagle down and opened his other hand in a litde gesture of reassurance.

  "It was only two or three," he said reasonably. "They change hundreds of foreign coins at hotels like that. And no one even knows we were there. After all, half of it's mine, ain't it?"

  Dacre was too tired for anger, too weary even to feel disgust. He closed his eyes again, and slept.

  Daybreak began just before they reached Reigate once more. Dacre looked carefully on both sides of the train and then felt a sudden exultation. In the station yard, beyond the further platform, a pair of black horses, their heads bowed a little, waited patiently in the shafts of an elegant hearse. He saw plainly the outline of Coggin in the driver's seat. The bully had been told to expect a companion who might, or might not, join him from the Dover train at Reigate. It was never Dacre's intention that there should be such a companion. For him, the appearance of Coggin and the hearse at Reigate was merely a signal that the entire plan had operated without fault.

  At London Bridge, he and Roper took separate cabs for Euston, and then a single one to the Great Western Terminus, though on the way they gave the driver new instructions to take them to Camden Town. At Camden Town, they walked to Chalk Farm, and there called a cab off the rank for Langham Place.

  As they drove through the mean streets of north London, the sky blue with the coming day, Verney Dacre stared without thought or feeling at the shoeless children curled asleep on doorsteps. Already at street corners, the homeless poor and early workers were gathered round breakfast stalls, blowing saucers of steaming coffee drawn from the tall tin cans with their fires glowing underneath. The cries of a little slattern girl screaming watercresses through the sleeping streets made him turn his head. He looked at Roper, whose auburn whiskers were parted in a confident smirk, now that the work was over. Poor mark, thought Verney Dacre, he was not to know that for him only the triumph was over, and the long agony was about to begin.

  13

  At four o'clock on the following afternoon, at the Gare du Nord, the Chef de Surety of the Messageries Imperiales turned two keys in the locks of the bullion safe. In the presence of several armed guards of the Banque Imperiale and three négotiants from the French bullion vaults, the boxes were laid out, unlocked and their lids raised for inspection. The Chef de Sûreté leaned forward and then, without warning, fainted clean away into the arms of the Directeur of the Banque Imperiale, who chanced to be standing immediately behind him.

  14

  "I ain't saying," remarked Stringfellow carefully, "that there ain't no such hostelry as the Wellington Arms at Walmer. And I ain't saying there is. What I am saying is that I have walked the highways of Walmer until I know them as well as I know my own phiz. And I ain't found any such. More than that. I have been into every inn and made careful inquiries about a friend of mine corresponding to the description of your Ned Roper. I'll swear he's never been near Walmer. He never was going there. He must have known you were salting his tail again. It's how you were put down before. Verity. You got no eye for superior numbers."

  Verity spat on a boot and rubbed it with a scrap of cloth.

  "A soldier ain't to be put down by superior numbers," he said severely, "and I ain't sure I was put down. I shouldn't be surprised if Ned Roper wasn't telling me more than he thought when he took that cab for Walmer. And I shouldn't be surprised if superior numbers wasn't to be what hung him in the end."

  4

  SERGEANT VERITY AT BAY

  15

  "Sealskin" Kite's fingers played on the table's edge as defdy as though it were the keyboard of a Broadwood or an Erard. The hands were soft and plump as a dowager's, though marked on their backs by a scattering of pale brown freckles. Kite's head, round, plump and bald, the eyes and mouth pouched by ample flesh, reminded Verney Dacre of the old white bulldog curled up on the parlour chair at the Hope and Anchor. Then Kite turned to Dacre.

  "You tell me, sir, what man o' business don't suffer the same hardships. Why, let me see, it must be ten years since I was last on a racecourse—me, Sealskin Kite!—and more than that since I saw the inside of a gaff."

  He stared at Dacre defiantly, as though inviting contradiction.

  Mrs Kite, the third and most grotesque member of the trio, laid a hand on her husband's arm.

  "You're a wearing old soul to a 'ooman," she said, winking confidentially at Dacre, "and that's the truth."


  Dacre brushed his moustache self-consciously with his right hand and gave a slight, unsmiling acknowledgement of her affability. In her black bonnet and shawl she had a complexion that was brown and wrinkled as a nut by contrast with Kite's pale smoothness. Dacre still stared with amazement that such a dull pair of codgers should be monarchs of the underworld, and the terror of petty thieves, magsmen, or whores alike.

  Then Mrs Kite lifted the silver tea-pot and tilted it over a cup. The pot was evidently over-filled, for it spurted hot tea beyond the cup and on to the linen cloth.

  "Drat the creetur! " said Mrs Kite ambiguously. She swung round in her chair and gestured towards a servant girl in a plain grey dress, who hovered near the doorway.

  "Charity! Work'ouse! Come here this minute! Take this pot off and fill it properly. And p'raps our visitor would like to try a new-laid egg or two. Likewise a few rounds of buttered toast, first a-cutting off the crust in consequence of tender teeth."

  She waved the girl away and favoured Dacre with another hideous smile. This time he made no attempt to return the pleasantry. Two days before the bullion robbery had been committed, he had made this appointment with Kite, offering several hundredweight of bullion for sale, and Kite had evasively agreed to the meeting. Now, within twelve hours of carrying the gold back from Dover, Dacre had come to seal the bargain. There was a certain aptness, he thought, in concluding a sale in the very room through which, a few weeks earlier, he had entered Kite's villa as a burglar.