Verity too had thought that somehow or other he must be on the saloon coach when it was slipped, perhaps by a bribe to the brakeman but not by the means which Stunning Joe used now. Only a madman would follow him that way. And then he thought of the worst thing of all. Joe O'Meara was set for vengeance now. Sealskin Kite was about to die and with Kite's death all hope of finding Bella was at an end. Verity took off his tall hat and his threadbare frock-coat. In White shirt and shiny black trousers he saddled himself on the low wooden side of the third-class carriage.
The other passengers looked at him fearfully. He had expected that they might surge forward and try to prevent what looked like a suicide's last act. Quite the contrary, they drew back and stared at him as though he had been afflicted by some virulent contagion. He swung his other leg outward and stood on the narrow foot-board. The wind tore at his back, billowing the white shirt as if to drag him down to his death where the polished wheels sped on the rail with the precision of knife blades.
'Joe!' he shouted. 'Stunning Joe!' The agile figure ahead either could not hear him or was resolved to go on at all costs. For a moment longer Verity clung there, the wind blinding him with his own tears. They were in a cutting now with trees in full leaf rising above the grass banks. As carefully as he knew how, Verity shifted his grip, pulling himself along the foot-board to the end of the coach.
There was no platform between the third-class carriage and the luggage van, only the chain couplings and the buffers which danced lightly against one another. The gap was no more than two feet but he knew that he must cross at full stretch while the shingle of the permanent way slashed beneath him at fifty miles an hour and the speeding wheel blades honed themselves to a razor edge in preparation for his least miscalculation. Verity thought of Bella, held the corner of the carriage with one hand, feet straddling the chasm, and swung his weight towards the coupling chain on the luggage van.
The heavy links were oily from use. He felt the weight of metal slip from him and then he caught it again, hanging by it and sobbing from exertion and fright as he trusted himself to his new grip. He was less agile than Stunning Joe but he had a longer reach. By sliding his feet sideways against the planking of the luggage van he was able to use the ledge running above the wheels as a foothold. At the same time there was a sufficient ridge at the meeting of side and roof for his hands to clutch. Inch by inch he moved forward, looking neither to the side or below. Left foot, left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot again, left hand. . . There was a blast from the whistle of the engine but his back was to it and he did not dare to try and look. The end of the luggage van had seemed far away but he was getting nearer now, past the central sliding door with its iron bar and padlock, closer and closer to the end of the train. He could even see the swaying saloon coach which carried Sealskin Kite and Old Mole.
In a moment more Verity had reached the corner and saw the brakeman, the man for either the luggage van or the saloon coach. He was lying motionless and senseless in the open-sided space at the rear of the luggage van. And then he saw Joe O'Meara. The ragged spiderman had leapt nimbly enough across from the luggage van to the narrow buffer-platform of the saloon coach. Neither of its occupants could see him or had the least idea of what was going on. Stunning Joe had detached the coupling chains which held the saloon coach to the end of the train and was in the process of slipping the carriage. The draw-bolt connecting the saloon coach with the rest of the train was held fast by a catch in the coupling of the luggage van. Attached to it was a rope which the brakeman of the saloon coach would use when the moment came to draw open the catch and release the bolt from the coupling. With the chains already hanging loose, Stunning Joe had found the rope and was pulling the draw-bolt clear.
Verity shouted again, but the towers of a gothic fortress reared above him and the train drove at full speed into what seemed like the dungeon of a great castle. Tunnel walls roared at either side. The red warning lamps on the rear of the luggage van threw a shadowy glare upon the scene. Verity saw the bolt coming clear from the coupling on the luggage van and, as though in a nightmare, he leapt for the little platform on which Stunning Joe stood. But Joe had sprung aside and gone before ever the burly figure of the policeman fell sprawling on the tiny wooden space.
By the time that Verity got up, the spiderman was out of view, scrambling round the side of the saloon coach to find an entrance. The carriage was still riding close to the train until the gap between it and the luggage van grew suddenly wider. For another mile the coach would continue to lose speed until it came to rest, still somewhere beyond the far mouth of Clayton tunnel.
So, at least, Verity reasoned. Stunning Joe would hardly get to Kite in that time. Even if he did, Kite was protected by Old Mole. Already, he thought, Miss Jolly would have alerted the brakeman on the last carriage of the train as to what was happening. It was only a matter of hanging on.
Only then did he realise that the lights at the rear of the luggage van were receding far more quickly than he had expected. The saloon coach was travelling after the train but, perhaps because of a gradiant, it was losing speed. He guessed that it would never clear the far end of the tunnel. Indeed, they were half a mile from full daylight. At intervals, high above the line of the rails a faint pool of light from the ventilation shaft far above marked the distance of the track. A splash of yellow oil-light from the windows of the saloon coach showed the rough chalk surface of the narrow tunnel on either side.
From the little platform with its buffers and coupling chains it was possible to glimpse the interior of the coach through a small roundel of glass, like a miniature porthole.
Verity moved cautiously across to it, expecting to see the entrance of Stunning Joe.
There was no sign of him. Old Mole lounged in a buttoned-leather chair, the back of his cropped head towards the tiny window. A wreath of greenish-grey cigar smoke hung in the lamplight above him. Sealskin Kite lay on a wall-sofa with a tartan rug wrapped about him. He had drawn the rug up so that it encircled his head as well as his body. Peering out from this improvised shawl the wizened senile face might have been that of a little old lady. Neither man spoke. In the pale illumination of the new Warner carriage lights set in the ceiling they looked like a carefully arranged display at the waxworks.
At that moment Old Mole stood up. The scrub-haired mobsman seemed puzzled by the slowing down of the coach and more so by the sudden silence of the engine. He walked to the window and lowered the glass, but the tunnel wall was so close that he glimpsed little more than the rough chalky surface with its contours of soot as the coach rumbled past.
In the sulphurous air of the tunnel Verity's eyes smarted and he felt his chest heaving in the foul smoky fog which he had breathed. He clung to the hand-hold on the little platform as the coach trundled onward and successive spasms of coughing convulsed him. Then he edged outward, clutching the corner of the wagon, and looked along its side into the thick, soot-laden air.
'Stunning Joe!' he shouted as the air swept past him. 'Joe O'Meara! Where are yer?'
The echoes of his voice down the long dark tunnel were lost in the trundling of iron wheels and the rush of a warm breeze. He could just make out that a door at the far end of the coach was swinging open in the space between the carriage and the tunnel wall. He pulled himself back to the roundel of glass, knowing that a single blow from the open door would dislodge his precarious hold on the side of the coach. Then through the roundel of glass, as though he were watching a dumb-show acted far beyond his reach, he saw Stunning Joe. The spiderman stood, confronting Kite and Old Mole. In his hand he held a railway key, a right angle of rounded metal used for securing carriage doors. Using this he locked the door through which he had just come and which led to the servants' compartment and water-closet. Mole stepped forward but before he could reach the little man, O'Meara had opened the nearest window and dropped the key outside.
Verity expected that Mole would have finished Joe for all that. Instead, the mobsma
n and his master now put on a bizarre pantomime of terror, almost ignoring O'Meara in their desperation. Old Mole ran from door to door, trying each and finding it locked until he came to the side where the runnel wall swept past a foot or two away. Sealskin Kite was on his feet, the muscles of his face working with the horror of a promise made by Stunning Joe. Joe himself had got one of the old man's arms twisted back and held him firmly enough.
Kite screamed at Old Mole, the saliva flying from his lips. But the mobsman had the door undone and was forcing it open against the pressure of streaming air. He looked back once at Kite who scrabbled and scrambled in Joe's grip. Then he was gone.
Verity heard rather than saw what happened. Old Mole's shout came to him as the mobsman tried to jump between the coach and the wall of chalk flying past. In the darkness there was a wild animal cry as the door swung back, crushing fingers or unbalancing the mobsman on his perch. The sound ended as Old Mole hit the wall of chalk and his body rebounded under the slicing wheels of the coach. The terrible shriek faded down the dark tunnel as Verity clung to the little coupling-platform and prayed.
Now he was certain of the bitter vengeance which Stunning Joe had planned. It was the revenge of a man doomed to destruction, who valued his own life only as a weapon to turn against his destroyers. In the darkness beyond the oillight's glimmer Verity heard a sound deeper than thunder. The walls of chalk speeding past seemed to shudder as at the approach of an avalanche. There was a wild shriek in the distance, and the first red glare of Joe O'Meara's vengeance.
In the dark nightmare of the tunnel events moved with macabre logic. At the Brighton end, the signalman in his sham medieval lodge above the tunnel's mouth had signalled 'Train in' as the 8.30 Parliamentary express roared into the earth. At the Clayton end the second man would have telegraphed back 'Train clear', as he saw the pillar of smoke and heard the engine of the 8.30 thunder into the light again. Now, already within the tunnel, the following train, the 8.40 express to London Bridge, bore down on the slipped saloon coach in the darkness. Even if the driver should see the coach in his path, it would take almost a mile before each brakeman on each carriage of the express combined to bring the train to a halt.
Verity beat desperately on the little circle of glass and shouted at Stunning Joe. Either the spiderman heard nothing of the cries or else chose to ignore them. His thin strong fingers were locked on Kite's right wrist and left shoulder, forcing the old man to his knees. Kite was screaming and babbling, promising and praying by turns, cursing and imploring, drooling in a last terrible self-abasement.
Verity's own fear was steadier and more certain. With Kite dead the only hope of finding Bella would be lost. It mattered little after that whether she was put to death like a criminal at execution or had already been abandoned to starve in her chains. He must get to Stunning Joe or stop the express. Nothing else would do.
There was no way into the coach from the buffer-platform on which he stood, and no way down either side of the carriage with the doors swinging open. He dared not risk jumping down from the platform on to the track. It would be a jump into the path of the moving coach, under wheels which sliced their way down the rails. Even at ten miles an hour they could cut a man in half.
Before he had thought clearly what he was going to do, he balanced on the low guard-rail, gripped the edge of the roof and pulled himself on to the top of the saloon coach. The roughness of crusted soot was like pumice under his hands and grit between his teeth. Above him the curve of the tunnel roof flew away in a stream of warm air. Gauging the sway of the coach and the curve of its roof to either side of him, he pulled himself forward. The wind rushed at his feet, carrying the drifts of engine smoke over his head and swirling it away down the long receding arch. Down this narrow perspective of the track he could see the next London Bridge express clearly enough now. Like a child's toy the flame of the furnace lit the cylindrical outline of the boiler, the windshield beyond with the driver standing at his controls.
There was no time to argue with Stunning Joe, he knew that. But at the rear of the coach was the individual brake which every carriage had. A signal from the driver's whistle and the application of the brake separately on every wagon was the only means of stopping any train. Verity lowered himself gingerly to the rear platform, seized the metal lever where it rose from the planking and pulled it with all his strength. He felt the wheels lock and heard the scything of metal on metal but to his dismay the coach slid onward with its speed little diminished.
Unless the express could be stopped there was no hope for the occupants of the saloon car, whatever their speed. Now that he was at the rear of the carriage, he thought, he could jump down without fear of being killed under its wheels. Taking a breath he floundered on to the shingle between the rails, rolling and knocking the breath from his body. Then, in a mime of despair he picked himself up and ran, arms raised and outspread, towards the thunder of the London Bridge express.
With every second, he thought, with every yard he covered he would increase the time for the driver to avoid a collision. In the distance the engine still looked like a toy but then, as in the illusion of a stage magician, the toy became a machine and the machine became a monster, its pistons galloping towards the catastrophe which lay ahead.
'Stop!' he shouted, standing in its path with his arms still outspread. 'Stop!'
It was almost upon him, the tall stack with its banner of fire rising like a tower of hell in the darkness. He sprang aside and spreadeagled himself against the wall of chalk, feeling for the first time that it was wet as if the hill streams found a natural course here. Then the terrible pistons and the iron wheels were thrusting and flashing by him while he shook in abject fear. Panes of light from little windows flickered past. He had a shadowy vision of the driver turning in the light of the furnace, the first brakemen rooted in astonishment at the sight of him.
Then the London Bridge express had gone by and the echoes in the tunnel began to subside to a long rumbling. A second later the shrilling steam of the whistle sounded and there was a long screaming of metal on metal, the last demonic cry as the locked wheels of the express slid uncontrollably towards their impact.
It came to him as a splintering of matchwood, far away. The demonic cry was still and instead there was a puff of fire and the first wails of human grief.
Verity ran until he saw the faint daylight, yellow in the smoke, which marked the Clayton end of the tunnel. But it was not daylight that glowed ahead of him. The rear of the London Bridge express had come to rest safely enough and heads were peering from carriage windows. Beyond that the smoke was white in the redness of fire. The powerful engine had hit the saloon coach in its path, mounting on the wreckage like a splendid beast of fable rearing vindictively above its prey. The tall stack was crushed against the roof of the tunnel and the scattered coals from the furnace had set light to the varnished matchwood of the coach.
It was several minutes before Verity reached the ruins of the saloon coach, averting his eyes from the remains of Old Mole as he passed. The mobsman was so disfigured that only the fragments of clothing distinguished him from a stray animal caught in the darkness. Under the engine's roar of steam and flame the chassis of the saloon coach, derailed by the impact, had slewed across the width of the tunnel. Several men from the train and the tunnel's mouth had reached the debris. Verity, his clothes torn and blackened, his face smeared by soot and the blood of several grazes, joined them.
The oil from the lamps had started several pieces of varnished coachwork blazing like pine kindlings. In the firelight Verity saw the body of Sealskin Kite, open-eyed in the last moment of despair before the rending and burning. He looked for Stunning Joe. Had the little spiderman jumped clear at the last moment, knowing that Kite would never have the agility to scramble down and throw himself from the path of the express? Perhaps he had.
Then Verity saw two men standing over a shape in the periphery between darkness and flame. If Joe had thrown himself clear, it ha
d been to no advantage. All the same he walked across.
'Almost gone,' said one of the men, as if deprecating the dying spiderman's unpunctuality.
Verity thrust himself through and looked down. The body, twisted and broken, could never be moved during its owner's lifetime. It was a kindness to let Joe O'Meara die as he was. The threshold of life and death was so uncertainly defined that Verity could hardly determine whether Joe was still breathing or not. Then there was movement in the dark little eyes and Verity knelt beside the spiderman in the light of the flames.
'Lissen, Stunning Joe,' he said softly. 'Lissen if you can hear me. It's me, Verity. Whitehall Police Office. Can you hear, Stunning Joe?'
As if there was pain in even so slight a movement, the dark eyes turned in Verity's direction.
'Joe,' said Verity, his lips close to the little man's ear. 'I got the message you sent me. I got the message Miss Jolly brought. And I meant to be even with Sealskin Kite and his friends.'
Now the eyes registered nothing.
'You gotta tell me, Joe. If you know of it you gotta tell me. There's a young person took by the villains to be foully put to death. If Kite said anything before he died, where she might be, you gotta tell me. Please.'
The spiderman's lips moved and there was a faint breath behind their shape.
'Jane Midge. . . took. . . left with Jack Strap to be snuffed.'
'And another young person,' Verity persisted. 'Bella Verity. You and me both got accounts to settle.'
Stunning Joe made a slight movement as though, if he had been able, he would have shaken his head. The breath came again through the slow movements of the lips.
'Left Jack Strap. . . snuff 'em. . . too late.'
'No, Joe, no! Where are they?'
In his desperation Verity could almost have shaken the dying man. 'Snuffed,' said the silent lips. 'Where?’
This time the voice broke into a harsh crackle. 'Brunswick Square.
SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. Page 23