A silence followed. It was ended by a deep digestive howl which rose, plaintive and agonised, from Inspector Croaker's martyred entrails.
13
Old Mole and Jack Strap had cared for him like a brother. On the evening of Stunning Joe's entry to the house in Brunswick Square, Sealskin Kite had been in London, on public view at a Mansion House dinner for the distressed weavers of Spitalfields. It was a customary precaution. Until their master's return on the next day, Mole and Strap treated Joe like 'a schoolbook 'ero', as he kept telling them. A lesser man than Kite would have hesitated to entrust the stolen treasure to his underlings. But they knew what a man might expect who cheated the old Sealskin. In any case, neither Old Mole nor a mere bully like Jack Strap could have got the Shah Jehan clasp further than the next pawnbroker.
On the evening of Kite's return, Stunning Joe was under the protection of Jack Strap at a Swell Mob ordinary near the Race Hill. The large open saloon was brilliantly lit by gasoliers, its walls covered by mirrors and gilding. A bar ran the full length of the saloon, the coloured bottles glowing beyond the sweep of polished mahogany. The room was divided by a wooden partition, four feet high with a gate at its centre. On one side were the unaccompanied women, on the other those who had found male escorts. Waiters with small trays of drinks, sandwiches and cigars served the tables scattered about the areas. There was a constant scraping of chairs and popping of corks. Several unaccompanied men were making assignations with the girls across the partition by the traditional gesture of raising a glass. Stunning Joe's ears rang with the din and the infrequent, bellowed conversation of Jack Strap. His eyes smarted from the acrid fog of cigar smoke.
The attention of the men and women in this section was drawn to a further room which opened out of the saloon and where the 'entertainers' appeared from time to time. These were generally young street-girls who performed dances to earn the coppers thrown to them by the men. The floor of this further room was bare, the benches round the walls suggesting that it was used for the communal dancing with which the race-week evenings ended. A band of four bearded and dark-skinned men, their clothes shabby and their hair unkempt, sat in one corner of this room. They provided an accompaniment with fiddle, cornet and a pair of flutes.
Joe O'Meara started as Jack Strap slapped one hand into the other with an ear-splitting impact.
'Jane Midge!' bellowed the bully appreciatively. 'Lookee there!'
Stunning Joe glanced up at the girl who had appeared on the deserted floor. She was about fourteen years old, a pretty girl dancing in an eastern costume as an excuse for showing her arms, legs and belly. Jane Midge was not particularly tall, but she was quite well developed and her skin was clear, suggesting that she had only recently been orphaned or turned on to the streets for some reason. Her straight brown hair was worn loose, though cut short above her shoulders, and a brief appealing fringe slanted on her forehead. There was a cautious playfulness in her brown eyes, which illuminated a firm young face with clear, strong lines in her nose and chin. Her finely-set lips opened in a smile which displayed the most perfect teeth Joe had ever seen in a girl's mouth.
The eastern costume was simple enough. A cardboard diadem was the headpiece which fitted over her hair. A green silk halter sloped from her shoulder, enclosing her breasts. Beneath the leather waist-belt with its glass 'jewels', she wore tight fleshings from waist to knee, in the same translucent green.
In her dancing she was anything but professional, though this made no odds to Jack Strap who growled and guffawed his approval. As the flutes and fiddle struck up, the girl made sinuous motions with her bare arms, as if to suggest the allure of a harem dancer before her master. Standing sideways to the spectators, she began to sway her trim adolescent thighs and hips in time to the music. Joe glanced at Jack Strap. The bully's mouth was open, his eyes glistening, his breath coming harshly like a faint and distant murmur of delight.
The girl tilted her chin coquettishly at her admirers, pressing her upper teeth on her lower lip in a teasing and provocative grimace. Still she sheltered her loins from their view. Joe could see why. The thin green silk of the fleshings was tight enough and transparent enough to show the firm pearly texture of the limbs beneath. It was clear that the girl had not been brought up to this life and, for all the merriment in her eyes, her natural timidity had not been subdued. A single coin rang derisively on the floor near her feet, and Joe felt his anger begin to rise.
The men grew bored and turned to their cigars or shrub. Their women, dyed and painted as marionettes, caught Jane Midge's gaze and smiled vindictively at her. The youngster had thought herself clever enough to be their rival and now she was learning a bitter lesson.
Stunning Joe cursed them all, their amusement at the young dancing-girl's predicament, caught between modesty and necessity. All the cocksureness had gone from her eyes now. In an attempt to hold their interest she turned her back and swayed the firm young hips again, watching the men and women over her shoulder. Jack Strap grinned as the taut transparent silk gathered in a little sheaf of creases between the rear opening of her legs and pulled, smooth as drumskin, over the cheeks of Jane Midge's bottom. But Stunning Joe had had enough. Several more copper coins rattled on the floor. Joe got up, brushing aside two spectators who stood in his way, and seized the girl in the middle of her dance.
He took her bare arm' and led her to the door where he knew the staircase began. The customs of such houses were simple. Among hoots of encouragement from the crowd and a grin from Jack Strap, Joe put his money on the bar, and dragged the unwilling girl up the stairs.
It distressed him that she was too frightened to listen to his protests. In the shabby little room with its linoleum, plain mattress and china ewer, he turned his back on her and drew the curtains. The gas was already lit and when he looked round again he was dismayed at what she had done. The halter and headpiece lay on the mattress. She was just stepping out of the silk fleshings. Joe looked at the firm elasticity of the young body, the small formed breasts, the flat belly, the incurve of bone-pattern at the base of her spine, the taut, smooth buttocks.
'No!' he said, exasperated. 'Yer don't 'ave to!'
In the mirror he caught sight of them, Jane Midge with her firm young figure nude and pale, he with his stunted growth. They looked like a pair of children playing a game. Jane caught the weariness in his eyes.
'You don't like me!' she wailed. 'After all that, you don't!'
Joe touched her shoulder.
'Course I do,' he said gently. 'Who wouldn't? But you're to do as I say. Stay here. Room's paid for. All night and tomorrow too. 'ungry, are you?'
She shook her head, sitting on the stained mattress. Joe squatted down and looked into her face. He saw the same hopelessness now as he had seen in the eyes of the men on the hulks. All the grinning merriment which pretty Jane Midge assumed for her dance was now gone. She might as well have been on the hulks, he told himself. But there was no need. For her, as well as for him, the whole bloody world was a hulk.
'I gotta go and see someone,' he said gently, brushing the youngster's brown hair back from her face. 'I'll be back as soon as I can. Then it'll be all right. Wait here. See?'
'Yes,' she said, her voice sounding tearful though the dark eyes were dry. Joe comforted her a moment longer. Then a boot crashed against the door.
'C'mon Joseph!' bellowed Strap from the passageway. 'Your friends is missing you.'
Joe kissed the girl clumsily on the cheek and stepped to the door.
'Get dressed,' he said. 'I'll be back. That's a promise.' Jack Strap was in great humour.
'Mr Kite sent for you,' he said.' 'ad yer greens all right? I could fancy chasing pretty Jane's arse for her meself if there was time! 'ere, Joseph! You never let her go? You silly little bugger! What they do to you on that hulk then? Or did you hook it in such a hurry that yer whatsits got left behind?' And Strap grinned hugely at his silent companion.
Stunning Joe followed Jack Strap up the thickly c
arpeted stairs of the Bedford Hotel. Sealskin Kite's suite of rooms opened off the first-floor landing. Strap was dressed with unaccustomed elegance, russet suiting and silk hat disguising the crudity of his muscular figure. The interior of this, the most exclusive of the Brighton hotels, was designed like a temple of the ancient world. Doric columns and a balustrade turned the first-floor landing into the atrium verandah of Greece or Rome, looking down into the well of the vestibule below.
Jack Strap tapped once at the main door of the suite and the two men were admitted. Sealskin Kite, the old woman beside him, and the sallow figure of Old Mole, were like figures in a family bereavement. Everything in the room exuded a sense of luxury and extravagance, from the Italian sideboard and the Venetian mirror-frames to trefoil grates with their ormolu of burnished steel.
Sealskin Kite and his wife were snuggled together on a settee of fringed velvet. They stared at Stunning Joe simultaneously. In the shrewd old faces there was now a common look of accusation and the indignity of betrayal. Joe, who had been about to smile at them in recognition of a mutual triumph, suddenly let his jaw go slack. Something, it seemed was badly out of place. Mrs Kite turned her gaze aside from Joe, as if unable to bear the sight of him, and scuttled from the room. After a long pause, during which Mole and Strap took up position behind their master, Kite spoke. In one hand he held the red leather jewel case, from the other he dangled the glory of the Shah Jehan clasp as though it had been a soiled rag. For the first time, in Joe's experience, the old man was not smiling.
'Now then,' said Kite at last, 'now then, my young friend! What d'ye call this? Eh?'
Joe swallowed, suddenly and compulsively nervous.
' 's the clasp, Mr Kite. I meant to show meself grateful. And I did.'
Kite waggled the clasp which still dangled from his right hand.
' 'Course it's the clasp, little Joseph! Don't I see it? Sealskin Kite ain't blind, though you may wish him so! Sealskin Kite may take his ease in an invalid carriage, his legs ain't what they once were. But he ain't blind’. And by God he ain't blind, least of all, when a trick's put up against 'im!'
The panic began to rise in Joe's gullet until it almost stopped his breath. He wanted only to throw himself before Mr Kite, to make the old man see that he had been nothing but brave, loyal and true to every promise.
'God's my witness, Mr Kite, I never had so much as a thought of tricking you!' In his terror Joe could not produce a voice louder than a whisper. He watched the cruel satisfaction kindling in the eyes of Old Mole and Jack Strap. With a rag to stop his mouth, they could practise pain and death upon a victim even here, in the most famous hotel in Brighton. Perhaps it was only a joke, Mr Kite pretending anger to amuse his friends by Joe's discomfiture. 'I owe you everything, Mr Kite. Me and any that come after me shall bless your name for what you done. I couldn't trick you! How?'
The fury of the little old man had mottled his face and flecks of saliva spun from his lips as he talked.
'Then Sealskin Kite is blind, sir? You call him blind? An old loon? This is the present you bring him, after all he does for you?'
The last words rang in Joe's ears like a scream. 'Ain't it the clasp?'Joe whined. 'Ain't it, Mr Kite?' 'The devil take the heathen rubbish, and you with it!' Joe started as the old man caught up the Shah Jehan clasp
and flung it petulantly on the carpet, like a sulky child with a toy. The other hand wagged in the air.
'This!' squealed Kite. 'What d'ye take this for? Eh?'
'Case,' mumbled Joe. 'Case as belongs to the jool.'
Kite leant forward, his mouth twitching as he sought for words to convey the force of his displeasure.
'That's just what it ain't, sir! Just what it ain't!'
'May I be struck dead, Mr Kite,' said Joe softly, 'if that ain't the case the jool was in.'
Kite hissed back at him.
'If it ain't, little Joseph, things shall be done to you as shall make you wish yourself back on the hulks under the drummer's lash! This was never the case that Banker Lansing had made for his clasp.'
'It's the only one I ever saw, Mr Kite. There was nothing at Wannock Hundred that time. Neither jool nor case.'
He was calmer, now that he understood the cause of Kite's anger. There was only one thing to be done, tell the truth as he knew it. If that would not save him, then there was no safety to be found at all.
'There was other cases, Mr Kite, hid in the back of the drawing-room piano. But they was full of nothing, just glass and trumpery.' '
Kite had ceased to listen. His head lolled forward on his chest and he appeared to be talking to himself.
'You lost Sealskin Kite a fortune,' he murmured. 'Sealskin Kite had a fortune almost in his hands, and you let it slip from him.'
'Listen, Mr Kite,' said Joe gently, 'I'll go back. Only tell me what it is and I’ll go back to that house and get it for you. And if I'm caught, I'll take me chance, 'fact, I'll make such a fight that I won't be took alive, not to be sent back to the hulks. Only say the word, Mr Kite.'
But Kite's energy seemed spent by his anger and he made no acknowledgement of having heard the offer. It was Old Mole who stepped round the settee and took the little spiderman by his arm.
'Seems you'd best be put in your quarters, Stunning Joseph. What's to be done in your case must need a little sleeping on.'
The room in which he was confined was the smallest of the suite. Visitors to the Bedford Hotel were accustomed to bring at least one of their own servants with them, a maid or valet who slept in a cupboard-sized room off the master's quarters. It was here that Joe had been kept since their arrival in Brighton, cast in the role of Sealskin Kite's attendant. During the night which followed he slept little, puzzling in his mind why Mr Kite should make such a bother over a leather jewel case when he held the splendours of the Shah Jehan clasp safely in his hands.
When they came for him the next morning Joe followed Jack Strap and Old Mole apprehensively into Sealskin Kite's drawing-room. The Shah Jehan clasp lay on a scrap of black velvet on the table. By the light of day, the emerald green and the maroon rubies had an almost funereal pomp about them. Joe looked and thought that every stone seemed either a green eye of evil or a red eye of bloody death.
He turned and, to his astonishment, saw Sealskin Kite on the sofa, the old man's eyes twinkling merrily as he smiled up at Joe once again.
'Well, my dear young sir,' said Kite amiably, 'you have more friends than you ever knew, it seems. Mr Mole is your friend. And is there anything Mr Mole could ask that Sealskin Kite would refuse? Eh?'
Kite looked about him, but no one spoke.
'Mr Mole has convinced me, Joseph,' the old man continued, 'that you did all a man could have done. Why, after all, should you know the actual complexion of a jewel case, never having seen the same? No, Joseph, you was good as your word. True, Mr Mole?'
'Yes, Mr Kite,' said the scrub-haired man impassively.
'Very well,' said Kite, the breath whistling between his teeth, 'and what's Sealskin Kite if he ain't a man o' his word. I ask you, sir? What is he, eh? The jewel case ain't to be had. Well, so it ain't, and there an end on't. But all the world knows that Kite keeps his bargains, and so he shall. Mr Mole! See the young gentleman paid!'
Mole stepped round the settee again. He folded the black velvet over the rich green and purple shimmer of the clasp. Then he handed it to Stunning Joe.
'Understand,' said Kite more sharply, 'that you and the old Sealskin have never met. You was never here, my dear young sir.' He snuffled at his own wit. 'Indeed, you ain't anywhere now, being dead. The party that attended me was quite a different man, who shall be brought to testify if necessary. I never so much as saw that heathen gee-gaw. But I did make you a promise, little Joseph, that you should have the value of that item for your labour. And so you shall. Take it, depart hence, and let us meet no more.'
For a moment Joe could hardly believe what he had heard.
'You never mean to have the clasp, sir? All th
em jewels that you went to such bother to come by?'
Kite's eyes crinkled with elderly benevolence.
'Indeed, Joseph, I never do. Why, a man of business can't bestow the value of an item more exactly than by giving that item in its own proper person, can he?'
'But what am I to do with it, Mr Kite?'
'As you will, Joseph.'
The dismay in the little spiderman's face was now visible to the other three men in the room.
'Mr Kite! How'm I to go on if all I got is this? I can't sell it, not for months at least. And I can't eat it, Mr Kite! I'll take a hundred pounds instead.'
But Kite wagged a finger and gave a wicked little smile.
'A bargain is a bargain, little Joseph. And after saying so often how much you meant to show yourself grateful, you could hardly do otherwise now, could you? Why, my dear young sir, a man in your position had best cut his throat before he turned against his pals and peached to the law. Only think, Joseph, only think what waits for you when they take you to Portland again. You can't harm a living soul but yourself. Take Sealskin's advice, my young friend. Don't he speak to you friendly, like a true man o' business?'
His mind numbed by the sudden reversal of Kite's mood and his own position, Stunning Joe allowed himself to be led to the door of the suite. Jack Strap thrust him out on to the landing and slammed the door again. For a moment Joe hesitated. Then from beyond the closed door he heard a shrill, skinny clamour. It rose piping and vibrant like a childish tantrum. Rising and falling, it continued for a full minute and longer. It was at once vindictive and witty, triumphant and plangent. It was the sound of Sealskin Kite laughing with genuine amusement.
Along King's Road the clouds stretched ash-grey to the eastern horizon. The shifting tide was a dull steel colour except where patches of faint sun turned it pale lavender green. The scarlet and blue of a regimental band was just visible among the shrubs of Brunswick Lawns, where it played for a morning party.
SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. Page 14