Shifting from one foot to the other in the dock, Ned Roper cursed them, damned the girl for a treacherous little whore, and damned himself too for not recognising her as a cross-bred young shickster. His attorney, an elderly, bottle-nosed barrister with the appearance and manner of a failed schoolmaster, cross-examined the witnesses in vain. Every question brought an answer which made Ned Roper's case more hopeless still.
Might the cheque not have been tampered with after it had left Roper's possession? But by whom? Surely not by an illiterate coachman or groom? Well, then, might it not have been tampered with, out of malice, by some other person? But for what reason? Roper and the two customers were perfect strangers. What conceivable reason might they have for wishing to injure him? What advantage was there to them in doing so?
The defence went from bad to worse. Ned Roper knew the answers to some of the material questions, but not all the private-clothes peelers at Scotland Yard, he told himself, could have proved the truth in a court of law. The one thing he did not know was which of his many acquaintances had done him this injury.
During the course of his career, Roper had made so many enemies that it was profitless to speculate as to which of them had paid the witnesses who now appeared against him. There had been rival touts, in his early days, soundly thrashed after race meetings at Epsom or Newmarket as a warning to confine themselves to their own patch. There had been welshers, unable to pay Roper's rates of interest, whose arms or legs had been carefully splintered on his orders and who had been left in the agony of men broken on the wheel. There had been girls, too, abducted, "broken in," and then smuggled abroad in a drugged trance as "invalids," or strapped down inside a sham coffin, for sale to European "houses of joy." A few had even gone to the clandestine "maisons des supplices" in Bavaria or Austro-Hungary, where their torments were ended only by death. Such victims, presumably, had fathers, brothers, or lovers, who might sooner or later discover Roper's part in these transactions.
The arm of justice, when it struck at the command of "the swell mob," was infinitely longer than the arm of the law. Those witnesses who now gave evidence would have no idea of the identity of their employer, let alone of the injured men or women for whom that employer was acting. So many scores were outstanding against him that Ned Roper knew the futility of any attempt to identify this one.
As he listened to the evidence, he admitted to himself grudgingly that this "put up" was impeccable. The two clients, the groom, the coachman, the girl Elaine, were virtually the only witnesses of the transactions and they were all the property of his unknown enemy. On his own side, he might have called Coggin, but it was his counsel's view that, under cross-examination, Coggin would do more damage to the defence than to the prosecution.
When the evidence was finished, his lawyer made an arid and unimpressive little speech on Roper's behalf, a plea which was no more than a justification of the fee to be paid him. After the counsel for die crown had replied, the jurors seemed inclined at first to put their heads together and reach their decision without leaving the jury box. However, for the sake of apparent decorum, they shuffled out, smoked a pipe in the jury room, and then came back with their verdict. The tone of the proceedings had been so unambiguous that Roper felt no more apprehension than if sentence had already been passed upon him. Yet he was suddenly aware of Baron Martin, looking for all the world like a cantankerous old lady in white wig and red gown, staring directly at him.
"Edward Roper, if you have anything to say to the court before sentence is passed, you will make your statement now."
Roper was not in the least prepared for this. He held the edge of the dock firmly.
"I never altered that draft, your Lordship, and I can't say otherwise. I wish I may be damned if I know why those who have sworn against me have perjured themselves. I 'aven't a good character, I dare say, and there's many other things I wouldn't deny if I was charged with them. But I never was convicted of a crime, and I shouldn't stand here convicted of this one if the truth had been told."
Even as he heard his own words, Ned Roper knew that they sounded like the last desperate plea of a failed trickster. Baron Martin conferred in a whisper with his two brother judges and then turned to face Roper again.
"Edward Roper, you have been convicted of a forgery for which, as the law stood only a few years ago, you might have been hanged. Men are no longer put to death for this felony, but you are not therefore to be deceived into thinking that it is a crime of little consequence. It affronts the royal authority and destroys the very basis of all commercial trust and dealing. It remains in the eyes of the law one of the most heinous items in the calendar of crime. I am now to tell you that you will be taken from this place to a prison ship, and thence transported to a convict settlement beyond the seas, where you will be kept in penal servitude for the rest of your natural life."
It was a tribute to Roper's natural optimism that, in all those words, he clung to the fact that he had escaped death. He was to live, if only in a prison settlement in Australia. While they led him down the steps from the dock to the cells, he thought that even in such places there would be men who ruled and men who obeyed. Somewhere in that little world, Ned Roper would still be king.
For Ellen and the little fellow he must now be a dead man. But the loss was easier when he knew that they were better provided for than many a well-born lady and many a gentleman's son. So long as the secret of the bullion robbery was kept they, at least, would never be in want. Ellen had written to him twice since his imprisonment, indicating that she had taken the child with her into the country, for fear that she too might be arrested as Roper's associate and that the child might then be abandoned to the mercies of a Poor Law institution. She spoke of Lieutenant Dacre as though he were a benefactor rather than merely the administrator of Roper's wealth on her behalf.
At first. Roper had fretted over the tone of the letters, wondering if Verney Dacre were not at the girl's tail already. But now it made little difference to him. Indeed, it seemed all for the best if Nell should make a match with the handsome young dragoon whose sole contact with the criminal world had been through Ned Roper.
It was as well for Roper's peace of mind that the prison officers opened letters before they were handed to the prisoners. Thus he had not seen the envelopes which, though posted "somewhere in the country," in fact bore the postmark "London." It was as well, too, that he had not seen the girl in her attic room, writing at Dacre's dictation with the bruises of Coggin's powerful slaps still fresh on her face. Above all, it was as well for Roper that he went into captivity with faith, however misplaced, in Verney Dacre. The alternative was to face hopeless oblivion with a despair that killed most men by its slow but unremitting anguish.
Among the crowd of spectators pressing about the advocates' box was an ill-dressed, decrepit old man, a report-writer for the weekly papers, who attended most of the trials at the sessions house. As Roper was led down, the old man elbowed his way out of the court, hawking and sniffing, and walked to where the pugilistic figure of Coggin was standing a little way off. He spoke to Coggin, who listened, nodded, and handed the old man a half-sovereign. Then Coggin himself hurried away towards Snow Hill, where a hansom cab had stood waiting for the past hour. Coggin opened the door and said,
"Ned Roper goes down to Chatham, to the hulks, next week."
Then Coggin slammed the door and, as Verney Dacre tapped the roof of the cab with the knob of his stick, the driver jerked the reins and the horses jostled forward towards Holborn and Regent Circus.
Verney Dacre's visits to Langham Place were rare, but on the afternoon of Roper's trial it was essential to make certain arrangements there. In all the world, there were only four men and women to be disposed of. In a few months more, it would be safe enough to have Ellen and Jolie delivered into the hands of the keeper of a closed brothel in Marseilles or San Francisco. Jolie with her terror of the noose for her part in McCaffery's death, and Ellen, stupefied by gin, would be in no
position to create further problems. Coggin and Tyler, masters of their own "flash houses" in London, would be independent. As for Roper, whom Dacre had already removed from his list, he might as well be in his grave for all that he would ever hear or utter in a convict settlement.
It was a safe afternoon to visit the house in Langham Place, since Verity was attending the railway inquiry on Inspector Croaker's instructions. Verney Dacre had less of an appetite for Verity's destruction than Roper, but it gave a sense of completeness to see the man broken.
Dacre stepped from the cab, went up to the door, and hit it once with the knob of his stick. Tyler opened it and took his master's hat and coat. Dacre handed him the stick as well and said quietly,
"It ain't advisable to have that girl Ellen's brat in the house any longer. See to it that it's taken to the parish union this afternoon. Have it entered in the record as a foundling."
Leaving Tyler to carry out his order, Dacre climbed the stairs, unlocked the wicket-gate, and unbolted the door of Ellen's room. During her imprisonment in the barred attic, she had eaten less and less. The gin, which had been provided as a sedative, was now the sole consolation in her squalid captivity. Her hair was dishevelled, the bones of her face more prominent, and a pale, waxy sheen had replaced the warm bloom of her cheeks. Already the softness of her body had become thin and angular. She sat on the edge of the hair mattress, looking more like a deranged bedlamite in her dirty petticoat than" the smart young whore she had been a few weeks earlier.
There was no argument at first. She wrote at Dacre's dictation, the words chosen carefully, for this would be the last letter that Roper ever received from his mistress. There was a reference to a pony for little Harry Roper, and a gentleman's education, all of it under the benign surveillance of Lieutenant Dacre. Dacre was not, of course, referred to by name in the letters but always as "the governor."
It was when he took the paper from her that Ellen roused herself at last, pulling her shoulders back and looking round at him with vacant stupidity.
"Ned Roper'll break you when he's free again !" she sobbed. "Break you bone by bone!"
Dacre looked at her, realising that he had forgotten to allow for her ignorance of the law's technicalities.
"That's what Ned Roper won't do," he said softly. "Whoever put him up is a professional. Most thieves and mobsmen are free again, somewhen or other, but not a penman. When a man is lagged for penning, it's the full stretch, until they bury him in Botany Bay. Ned Roper ain't comin' back, miss. And oblige me by rememberin' that."
By the time her fuddled mind had absorbed this information, Dacre had closed the padded door and bolted it on the outside, so that when the storm of hysterical sobbing broke, it was scarcely audible. It was strange that a few weeks before he had offered Roper five hundred pounds for her. Now, with her wasting body and stupid, lacklustre eyes he would not have given a thousand farthings for her. Of the two, it was Jolie who still preserved her attractions in captivity.
While he was there, it seemed as well to look at the other girl and remind her that she was being kept safe from the constables, who were now pursuing their inquiries into the death of Thomas McCaffery with greater persistence. He opened the heavy bolts at the top and bottom of the stout door, and entered the room. A single sheet lay in disarray on the mattress. A bottle of gin stood unopened on the floor, the remains of the girl's last meal beside it. Of Jolie herself there was no sign. Dacre strode to the window and clutched the bars in his hands. One bar had been worked loose at the bottom. Its lower end could be pulled aside just far enough for a girl of petite stature to squeeze out on to the parapet. Dacre cursed aloud. But there was no way down except for a leap to certain death on the cobbles four floors below. From the parapet, however, it was possible to enter those attic rooms which were not barred or bolted.
Without wasting further time, Verney Dacre ran to the two unbolted rooms. As he had expected, the window of one of them was open, indicating that the girl had re-entered the house through it. She could still not have got down the stairs beyond the wrought-iron wicket-gate. And then Dacre realised that he had not locked the gate again on going to Ellen's room. Jolie must have timed her escape so that she crept along the little passageway and down the stairs while he was dictating the letter to Ellen. It would have been child's play for her to get down to the first floor or even the basement and escape from the house by that route.
Dacre leapt down the stairs, two or three at a time, in great crashing strides which brought Coggin out of the little parlour.
"Quickly," said Dacre, "there's a screw loose. That bitch Jolie has gone. She's got down through the house and on to the street. It must have been since I was up there, so she ain't gone far. But she must be fetched back quick, or she'll do for the lot of us."
Coggin opened the door and he and Tyler raced down the steps to the street.
"Wait a bit!" shouted Dacre, "what's she wearin'? What clothes were in the end attic room?"
"She 'adn't nothing but underthings of her own," said Coggin, hastily excusing himself. "There was only old clothes in the end attic. A page's suit for special evenings, with reddish breeches and a grey woollen coatee."
"Then she'll be wearing those most likely," said Dacre urgently. "Now the worst is that she may try to get to a police office, it ain't likely, but she may do. I shall take a cab for Whitehall Place to see if I can spot her on the way. If I don't, I shall work back again. More likely, she's trying to get shelter from some other girl on the street. Ask any you know, find if they've seen her, and then follow the way I'm going."
While Coggin and Tyler hurried through the crowded streets towards Regent Circus, Verney Dacre called a cab off the rank. The horse ambled slowly through the mass of carriages and twopenny buses, giving him time to survey the street on both sides. In the length of the Regent Street Quadrant there was no sign of her, nor down the Haymarket, nor in Pall Mall. She could surely not have got further than this. He ordered the cab to turn and go back by the same route. If, as he now feared, the girl had run eastward, to the criminal rookery of Seven Dials, she might be anywhere in a warren of buildings and alleyways.
He saw Tyler and Coggin easily enough, at the far end of the Quadrant, ordered the cab to pull up, and waved them towards him.
"Two girls saw 'er," Coggin gasped. "Reckon she must have gone for the Dials. P'raps the gaff in Monmouth Street. Said she was asking about being took into the Holborn refuge."
"Get in, quickly," said Dacre, grimacing impatiently. At least Jolie was too frightened to go to the police at once, but in a refuge like the Holborn Mission the McCaffery story would be drawn out of her in half an hour.
"If it's the Holborn Mission," said Dacre, "she must cross the Dials to get there. We shan't see her from the road. Cabman! St Giles's Church, and drop us there. Quickly!"
The cab crossed Regent Circus again and clattered away down Oxford Street, bouncing its occupants about with the swaying of the polished coachwork, St Giles's clock was striking three as they approached.
"Look!" said Coggin suddenly, and Dacre saw the strange figure flitting along the paving. The dark hair was hastily pushed up under a little cap, the grey woollen coatee worn open to disguise so far as possible the jut of a pair of trim young breasts. The waist of the maroon breeches was too narrow and their tight seat too softly rounded for the wearer to pass as anything but a girl masquerading in boy's clothes. Dacre flung the cabman a sovereign, shouted at him to wait, and jumped after Tyler and Coggin as the girl broke into a run. She gained the corner and vanished round it into the twisting alleys of Seven Dials.
The three men sprinted after her, turned the same corner, and found a wall facing them. To one side was a narrow passageway. As they veered into it, two men with the figures of Covent Garden porters barred their way, legs astride and arms akimbo. Several more men and women began to sidle from the doorways of tall, dark tenements, their movements furtive and hostile. Coggin and Tyler would have tried to fight their way
through, but Dacre called them back. Whether the porters were trying to save the girl from her pursuers, or merely defending their own territory, they would block the path for long enough to enable Jolie to get clear away.
Dacre and his companions doubled back, and took the next opening into the Dials. They ran parallel to the first alley down which the girl had disappeared, and saw her cross a gap at the far end of a long passageway. By the time that they had run the length of it, there was no sign of her.
She must, Dacre thought, be almost out of the Dials by now and within sight of the Holborn Mission. When they turned another corner, they saw her far ahead of them, almost beyond reach. Jolie looked back at her pursuers and swung to one side, disappearing again. Dacre, having outpaced his companions, spurted after her and rounded the last corner.
His heart jumped with relief. She had turned into a long courtyard ending in a high, blank wall. She tried vainly to find fingerholds to pull herself up and over it. There were none. The three men closed upon her, and though she struggled in their clutches, her movements were no more than those of a small trapped animal. They dragged her back to the cab and pushed her inside. At Langham Place, she allowed herself to be led into the back entrance of the house, her eyes bright with defiance but her body exhausted by the frenzy of her attempted escape. Dacre himself was still breathing heavily as he followed Tyler and Coggin into the house and bolted the door.
"Take the bitch to the other attic," he said bitterly. "Strap her wrists to the bed-frame, and see to it that she don't move again!"
In his cold fury, he harboured thoughts of murder. Though he had never killed a girl before, he was almost ready to slip the cord over this one's neck and tighten it with his own hands, while the other men held her. Only the prospect of having Tyler and Coggin as witnesses persuaded him to put aside the temptation.
SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman Page 21