Verity, on tip-toe, tried to see if the grating gave any view of Charley Wag's steam-bath, but the iron slats were angled carefully upwards. It was the Wag who did the spying on the unwary and indiscreet couples who used the bath which Verity had hired. At that moment, both Charley and his visitor moved. There was the sound of a scuffle and their voices became indistinct. Verity decided that they must have gone into the finishing bath, from which the sound would not carry clearly to the grating. He could eavesdrop only by going out into the corridor and standing at the Wag's door. With the towel still wrapped round his loins, he walked softly into the passageway. It was only as he looked more closely at the door dividing the row of baths from the private apartments that he noticed that it was entirely smooth. There was no handle and no keyhole on the public side, no means by which it could be opened except by those inside. No search detail was going to burst in on Charley Wag unannounced. And despite the thickness of the door, the voices were louder here. The Wag was exultant and his victim, the fight terrified out of him, was pleading.
'I tell you,' said the Wag, 'you try to hit me twice. I hit you once for sure. And now I hit you again for sure, but this time with my bellissima. Where you want Charley should mark you, milor? You want it where it not show? You say where and Charley give it you, otherwise on the face.'
There was a quick movement, a scampering, and a scream of fear from the other man. Verity had been entirely unprepared for this development. He wondered whether duty required him to turn a deaf ear while some well-heeled weakling screamed and retched under Charley's blows and knife-wounds. Or should he break off the surveillance, reveal his identity, and prevent the fearful injury about to be inflicted upon the unknown lordling? Before he could give the matter any further thought, there was a bare footfall behind him. He turned and saw Simona and Stefania at his heels. Simona screwed her face into a mask of frenzy and screamed, 'Carlo! Carlo!' The old duenna had emerged from the velvet entry curtains once more, followed by a pair of muscle-bound draymen. There was no doubt that they recognized Verity for what he was.
It was all timing now, he thought. He too shouted, 'Carlo! 'Carlo!' to the entire dismay of the others. He shouted as though his life depended on it, which in a sense it might do. To his relief, the trick worked. Charley Wag, hearing the uproar, cautiously opened the door a little on his side. Verity, the only one close to it, flung his weight forward at the most vulnerable point, his bare shoulder and upper arm numbed and bruised by the impact. But the door gave, as Charley Wag failed to hold it, and Verity was through the space in an instant. He threw himself back upon the panelling and the door slammed shut. Whatever the odds against him, the muscle-bound bruisers and their companions were now securely locked outside.
The room into which he had forced his way was the finishing bath, an oval pool some fifteen feet long set into the pink and white veining of the marble floor. Charley Wag, with the square and solid good looks which suggested a middle-aged Roman emperor, was wrapped in a towel so large that it might have served him as a toga. He stood six feet tall, his jaw set, his lips parted in a smile of derision, and his nostrils distended in expectation of a brawl. Crouched against the wall, wiping his mouth on the back of a blood-smeared hand, was a hatless, broken-down man in a shabby green coat. Verity was distracted by the incongruous appearance of the victim, thinking that Charley must have fallen on exceptionally hard times if he was obliged to fasten on such genteel paupers as this. He turned his attention, reluctantly, to the Wag.
The blade was eight inches long, thin and elegant, the dulled steel of its edges showing that it had been whetted to a razor's fineness. The handle was nothing but scarlet cord woven round a steel core. Verity felt a tingling vulnerability as he saw the knife-point angled precisely at his belly-button. At least there were none of the Wag's bullies in the room, but their arrival through some inner door of the apartments could only be a matter of a few minutes.
Circling carefully round Charley Wag, Verity consoled himself by thinking that he had fought bigger odds than this. Indeed, the sight of the stiletto gave him a moral advantage. He had been brought up to believe that an Englishman's weapons were his fists and that only women and cowards resorted to knives and such things. Beneath all the bravado, Charley would prove to be the craven degenerate of his type.
But that hardly solved the immediate problem. The Wag was hunched about ten feet in front of Verity, the blade tilted forward and upward, daring him to come on. Verity decided to accept the invitation. It was no good playing a waiting game. In a few minutes at the most the Wag's ruffians would reach whatever secret way led from the flash-house to the private baths. He must settle Charley by then and hold the door against them.
Charley Wag studied the portly, half-naked man, the belly folds and the faint quiver of surplus flesh. The face was the colour of port-wine from heat and exertion, the dark eyes narrowed and the black waxed moustaches bristling up with the scent of battle.
'Avanti!' said the Wag softly, thinking that a slit from the pubic bone up the soft belly to the solar plexus would open the affair admirably. The man was going to die, of course, but Charley had to know who he was and why he came. A careful cut below the belt would take the fight out of the plump red-faced intruder and, if deep enough, would put him in such misery that he would tell his questioners whatever they wished to know in order to earn his quietus. Charley judged the distance and then stopped in amazement. The fat man had drawn the wet towel from his loins and was standing entirely naked.
Verity drew the towel through his fingers and flicked it with a snap at the Wag's knife-hand. It missed by several inches but the Wag stared in astonishment. What was this man that he played such games with an opponent who faced him with a steel blade? The towel flicked again, catching the Wag on the side of the face. It stung him sufficiently to make him step back with an oath. The oval bath set into the floor was just behind him and he moved warily. At the third snap, the towel wound itself round Charley's right arm, enabling him to snatch it but causing him to drop his knife in the process. He began to reach for the fallen blade but Verity's huge clenched knuckles slammed into his face between nostrils and jaw, drawing blood from the nose and the torn lips. The Wag lurched sideways to avoid the bath at his back and in doing this he gave Verity an opening. From long experience of Cornish wrestling in his childhood, as well as criminal encounters later on, Verity knew that to get an opponent's head 'in Chancery' under his own arm, forearm tightening on the windpipe, was the readiest answer to any weapon. With a movement like an abortive standing-jump he got the Wag's neck in the crook of his arm and bent him with short, abrupt impacts, supported by the weight of his entire body. Charley bowed and cursed, gargling in his throat as the lever of Verity's forearm tightened.
'You just act very quiet and reasonable, my man,' said Verity breathlessly, 'if you know what's good for you!' And he brought a little more pressure to bear. Charley Wag gave a desperate gurgle and a rasping scream. His body seemed to slacken and crumple. Verity tried to hold him, half sensing what was coming, but Charley was on his knees and then, in a mere second, a red-hot pain streaked across Verity's right shoulder. All strength and leverage in the arm had gone, and the Wag was dancing free, fencing with the knife which he had retrieved from the floor.
Even the towel had gone, and it was now Verity who was held at bay. With every lunge of the blade, every withdrawal or evasion on his own part, the minutes were passing until the rear door would be broken in and the bullies of the Wag's flash-house must overpower their master's assailant. Twice Verity tried to close on the toga'd and muscular Wag. The first time Charley attempted the belly-cut but Verity swerved away with such improbable speed that he felt only the brush of the slicing blade, like the sting of a nettle. The second time he made the mistake of turning away too slowly, exposing his flank for an instant and allowing the dancing blade to flash diagonally across his rib-cage, laying open the flesh as though it had been soft butter and bringing a flow of blood over
his hip. And then he began to despair. There was no way that he could fight the Wag without being cut to pieces, but unless he fought and won in the next few minutes he would be cut to pieces anyway, more leisurely but just as certainly. He was not fool enough to suppose that Charley would allow a spy to escape him.
With despair rising in his throat, Verity dodged the knife and managed to close on Charley in a last attack. The two heavily-built men gasped and sobbed for breath as they clutched at one another and the marble wall resounded to the slap of wet, blubbered flesh falling against it. Verity was almost driven back by the weaving blade. There was so much blood smeared on his body now that he could hardly tell how many times he had been cut under all the slipperiness. He held tight to the Wag's toga and smashed a blow to the jaw, with such effect that the man went spinning backwards, the toga unwinding as he tottered away and fetched up with a naked thump against the opposite wall.
But the knife was still there and the brawny body, now stripped of all covering, looked like the frame of a gladiator with its tensed muscles and olive colouring. Charley saw that the fat, pale sergeant was almost done for, his wind gone and his breath drawn in deep snorts. It was time to finish the matter. The Wag caressed the handle of the stiletto and took a step forward.
Just at that moment, behind Charley Wag, there was a scamper, a whimper and a splash. The shabbily-dressed man who had sat against the wall, covering his face with the back of his hand, had drawn a small package from the breast pocket of the battered green coat. As though coming to a sudden decision in the matter, he pulled himself to the edge of the oval finishing bath, ripped open the package and allowed a score of loose papers to flutter into the water. The ink upon them began to spread in pale blue drifts.
Verity bit back the exclamation that was on his tongue, catching the uncertainty in Charley's eyes. The Wag could not see what was happening behind him and had to know the origin of the sounds.
'Mario?' he called questioningly, but there was no reply. 'Mario? Alfredo?' Still receiving no answer and fearing an attack from behind him, he kept his knife blade angled to hold Verity and for an instant his face turned slightly towards the sounds and his eyes flicked to and fro. In that second Verity was upon him again, fighting with the desperation of a man who has been given an unexpected last chance. A savage blow to the Wag's wrist sent the knife clattering from the open hand even before the curse of pain was uttered. With unexpected agility, Verity shot out his foot and the knife spun, slithered across the marble and dropped into the oval bath with a plop. Now, he thought, it was all Cornish style.
'Mario!' Charley Wag drew back, confusion clouding his dark eyes. 'Alfredo! Simona!' He was no longer asking but calling the assistance of anyone within hearing. Whatever the Wag's bullies might do to him later, Verity knew that he could win now. He slammed into his tall, burly antagonist. A massive blow with the right Fist directly above the Wag's heart stopped him and bowed him forward. A short upward jab took him on the jaw and lifted him as though he had risen in the saddle. But his footing had gone, his feet skated on the wet floor, his heels rose and he went down with a crack which Verity found deeply satisfying. At last, Charley Wag lay face down at the edge of the oval bath, quite senseless, his right arm trailing in the water.
'He ain't too bad,' said Verity for his own information. 'Why, he ain't bleeding half what I am. You over there! What was them papers you threw in the water?'
The florid-faced man, despite his shabby appearance, assumed a well-bred indignation.
'I don't know who the devil you may be, sir,' he said breathlessly, his composure returning, 'but it's none of your affair.'
'I'm a police officer," said Verity, closing on the man, 'and there ain't a caper you could name that ain't my affair!'
He looked at the pulpy drifts of paper in the pool. The leaves had been thin and had disintegrated quickly, the writing washed away almost as soon as the water swirled over the ink. A thin gruel of pulp and water was all that remained of the evidence in the great blackmail investigation. With that evidence intact, the case against Charley Wag and his accomplices would have been irrefutable. With the evidence in its present, ruined state, the Wag could not even be brought into court and the chances of a Private-Clothes man getting near him again were nil. For this, the men of the detail had worked since the previous year. Two of them had been beaten unconscious in a rear court of Beak Street by several of Charley's swells, whose delight in muzzling a peeler had led them also to garrot a young sergeant so severely that he never walked a beat again. The shabby military man, who now cowered before Verity, had brought it all to nothing. There was no mistaking the intention in Verity's eyes.
'Keep off me!' said the red-faced man. 'Keep off, damn you!'
Verity had him by the collar, shaking him frenziedly.
'Help me! Help me!' gabbled the man. 'Police! Police!'
'I'm the police,' said Verity quietly, and he hit the shabby military man with his big, bunched fist, so that the red face jerked back like a puppet's head on a wire. The breath was driven from the body as the man hit the wall, and then slid to the floor with a front tooth protruding at an absurd angle from his gaping mouth.
'And what I want you to remember,' said Verity, as though continuing an amicable conversation, 'is that you ain't got half what you deserve. You destroyed evidence what three good men nearly died to get, all to save your foul rotten carcase. Decayed you may be, but you got the manner of a gentleman, the look of having been a soldier, and you ain't no business to be a coward. And if you left some poor little wife to sit at home and weep for your debaucheries, and if there was some lady mother whose grey hairs you brought in sorrow to the grave, you done worse than turn your back to the enemy. All things considered, my man, I let you down light.'
At the door which led to the more public baths, there was a sudden hammering, though the lock could only be opened from Verity's side. It sounded from the hum of voices as though there must be a crowd of considerable size in the corridor beyond. A loud and familiar bellow drowned the rest.
'Open this door at once, in the name of 'er Majesty! Open it up!'
For good measure a heavy boot crashed unavailingly against the stout panelling. Verity picked up the towel, wet and blood-smeared, and wrapped it round his middle. The blood on his bare flesh had thinned to a pale red with the water and perspiration as he walked majestically to the door. He opened it and stood before a score of men and women who had forced their way this far into the sanctum of Charley Wag. The whiskered face of Sergeant Albert Samson, red mutton-chopped, peered forward from the crowd.
'Dear Gawd, Mr Verity. You had it a bit 'eavy, aincher?'
'Have the kindness to come in and keep them out, Mr Samson,' said Verity faintly, nodding at the crowd of onlookers. 'And I ain't particular to 'ave to listen to your profanities neither, on top of other trials.'
Samson, whose beat covered the area of the Oriental and Turkish Baths, shouldered his way past the door and looked about him.
"ere, Mr Verity! You ain't 'alf set the cocks a-going! I never saw so much blood since that slap-bang thro at-slitting down in Lambeth! Cor, you must a-fought like a brick!' Samson's blue eyes widened and his sandy features expanded in a broad grin at the thought of it. 'And 'oo might these two coves be?'
"That's a gentleman as was in a spot of bother,' said Verity indicating the red-faced man who was picking himself up unsteadily and fingering his mouth.
'Ransome,' muttered the man. 'Captain John Ransome, late Her Majesty's 73rd Foot.' In identifying himself he found it hard to conceal the self-justifying tone of the professional beggar.
"e'll want to be on his way, I expect,' said Samson pointedly. 'And this?' He joggled the Wag's ribs with the toe of his boot.
"That's 'im 'imself,' said Verity proudly. 'That's Charley Wag, alias Ramiro, alias Carlo Aldino. That's who that is.'
Samson squatted down beside the motionless figure and turned him over on his back. The Wag's head flopped backwards as
Samson struggled with the inert muscular body. And then Samson listened very carefully and got to his feet.
'That's who he was,' he said, correcting his colleague gently. 'That's who he was, before he went to his last long home.'
Verity's eyes bulged with indignation.
'Whatcher mean? I 'ardly touched him! There's not the blood on himl I've seen a Michaelmas goose bleed more 'n that!'
'Coves don't bleed a lot when they've snuffed it,’ said Samson patiently, 'Being dead, the flow stops. I'm surprised you was never given to understand that, Mr Verity.' He tested the Wag's pulse and heart again, then shook his head.
'But I never did half to him what he did to me!' Verity seemed distraught with the unfairness of it all.
'It ain't what you did, my son,' said Samson, 'it's what the marble coping of that pool did when he fell. You ought to come and see this side of his 'ead! Skull and all broke open like split fruit! Might a-been no stronger than a pumpkin the way it's bust. You get that sometimes with these heavy-looking coves," Samson concluded conversationally.
Verity stood, fat and dejected, in the bloodstained towel.
'I never thought he'd go that heavy,' he said gloomily.
Samson stood up again.
'Chance medley,' he said with a flourish, 'that's all it was. A slice o' chance medley with no blame attaching to you whatsoever. I'd say you ain't got a thing to answer for. Except to Mr Croaker, in the line of duty.'
'It was Mr Croaker's ideal'
Samson looked about him at the blotches of watery blood on marble walls and floor, the body of Charley Wag, its eyes rolled back to show little more than the whites, the soggy pulp of evidence floating in the bath, where the recently departed Ransome had thrown it.
'Not this,' said Samson quietly, 'not this wasn't Mr Croaker's idea. And I can't say it was mine. When you was covering yourself with glory in Injer, me and Ziegler and Meiklejohn was walking our feet off to catch Charley at his game. Months of it. And then you was asked in to listen to a simple conversation relating to blackmail. Half an hour later the evidence is destroyed, the only witness is sent packing, and Mr Croaker's pet and only suspect is gone to a 'appier place! There ain't one bloody thing that leads anywhere any more!'
Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments Page 5