'You had no business to meddle!' Samson's face flushed with indignation,
'That ain't meddling, Mr Samson. You may have cause to thank me yet. Two heads is generally better than one in this sort of caper.'
The two sergeants had been lodged in the Plymouth section-house during their three days' visit. To Verity it seemed like being back in the barracks of the Volunteer Rifle Brigade once more. He and Samson shared a room which was intended for four constables, the bunks being in two pairs, one above the other. There was pressed beef, bread and ale for supper, which was finished by seven o'clock. As they sat at the scrubbed deal tables and ate, Verity seemed deep in thought. Afterwards he spoke almost apologetically to his companion.
'I hope you ain't no objection, Mr Samson, but I got a feeling for going on the spree tonight. They leave the door open for the night watch, so it's no hardship to get back.'
Samson looked at him with suspicion.
'You? On the spree? You never been on the spree in your life, my son. You wouldn't know how!'
'I was hoping, Mr Samson, I was rather hoping that you might have the goodness to show me.'
Samson guffawed, shook his head, and then allowed himself to be persuaded. Arms swinging, they marched off to the centre of the town where the grog-shops blazed and reverberated with shouts and brawling which made them seem familiar as Wapping or the Ratcliffe Highway.
'Fetch a mop and a bucket of dirty water!' shrieked a woman from the grog-shop. 'I'll soon have the blade out of his fist!'
A crash and a shout of pain was engulfed in further uproar. In the tawny oil-light, a hag with white-powdered face and dyed hair accosted them with the familiar greeting of dockyard towns.
'Come now, my Fine reefers,' she said, wheedling them, 'how're you off for a bit of nice soap?'
"The minute that arm goes through mine,' said Verity conversationally, 'the darbies is going on your wrists so fast, you'll be down the cells before you hear 'em click.
She drew back from him, the lines of her hag-face etched deeper with rage.
'Fucking jack!'
'Here,' said Samson reproachfully, 'we was supposed to be on the spree.'
'Something more flashy, if you please, Mr Samson. Where might it be that the high-class doxies do go?'
'Funny,' said Samson, 'one of the Plymouth officers was telling me about that this evening.'
He led the way to what seemed like a spacious public house which advertised cigars, billiards, pyramid and pool, in white applique lettering on the windows. Inside there was a well-furnished vestibule, its walls lined with looking-glass, two chandeliers hanging at either end and gas-brackets sprouting from pilasters between the mirrors. Marble-topped tables with wrought-iron bases were ranged along the walls, each table equipped with carafe and glass, cigar-cutter, bowl and toothpicks. A circular desk, with the sporting papers of the day spread upon it, stood at one end of the room.
Samson looked about him and then led the way through a pair of doors into a more dimly-lit room which was both dining-room and auditorium, tables set out in its centre and velvet divans, conveniently concealed by potted foliage, in the recesses of the walls. With tankards set before them on the little table, the two sergeants watched the amateur performers who stepped up, one by one, on to the platform at one end. An elderly man with a bluish nose and his face tied up to relieve the toothache provided such piano accompaniment as he could improvise. Verity seemed too distracted by the figures in the gloom to pay attention to the acts.
'I don't call this much of a spree,' Samson said aggressively.
"There's sprees and sprees, Mr Samson.'
"We ain't so much as spoke to a doxy!'
'Just let me find one that takes my fancy, Mr Samson.'
The evening passed until at length a thin girl, her pale red hair cut short as a boy's, her white skin and slant green eyes a perfect match for it, stepped forward on the platform. She was swathed in a narrow black dress, revealing her slim hips and thighs in a manner appropriate to her real profession. Yet she sang with a voice of limpid innocence.
There once was a merchant in London did dwell,
Who had but one daughter, a most beautiful young gel.
Her name was Miss Dinah, just sixteen years old,
And she had a large fortune in silver and gold.
Samson brought down his pot with a crash and joined the communal roaring of the refrain.
'Singing toora-li-toora-li-toora-li-ay!'
Verity was not singing, but his face was illuminated by a smile of total satisfaction. Mademoiselle Claire, as she was introduced, trilled her way through the banal tragedy of 'Villikins and his Dinah' to the suicide of the lovers by poisoning, and the final moral.
Now all you young ladies, don't fall in love nor,
Like wilful Miss Dinah, don't wax your guv'nor.
And all you proud parents, when your daughters claps
eyes on
Nice young men like Villikins, remember the p'isen!
There was a professionalism about the act which set it apart from its predecessors. The red-haired girl left the platform to tempestuous applause. She sidled along the edge of the room, as though avoiding her male admirers and then paused. Verity reached forward and tugged his companion by the sleeve.
'Carefully does it, Mr Samson!'
Samson began to turn to where the thin girl with her cropped red hair was standing.
"Mr Samson! Have the goodness to keep your face hid in that pot o' beer!'
Verity himself had his face down, dark eyes watching furtively. As 'Mademoiselle Claire' passed one of the curtained recesses, the hangings were pushed aside and another figure, obscure in the shadowy oil-light, embraced her.
'Now, Mr Samson!'
Samson hardly moved his head, but his eyes peered furtively upwards from the pewter pot. He squinted, blinked, and then looked again.
'Jolly!’ he said, and looked once more.
'I was right, Mr Samson! Keep yer face in that pot! She knows the pair o' us once she sees us.'
The slim redhead with her slant green eyes was sitting tight against the other girl, her pale skin contrasting vividly with the gold tan of her partner. There were murmured exchanges between the two. Verity could just make out in the shadows the outline of the two girls. The darker, with her neat features and the almost Oriental ellipse of her eyes, put her hand to Claire's pale, narrow face, and then kissed her, full and long, on the lips. The fair-skinned redhead got up, looked back once, and then strolled away.
'Mr Samson,' said Verity, his words rapid but distinct, 'I ain't got time to explain now. I thought I was on the right road, that they'd come here, if they was in Plymouth at all. And where Miss Simona and that are, Captain Jack must be. This is where the dodge is pulled, Mr Samson, and Captain Jack can't leave Charley Wag's two girls nor Miss Jolly behind once it's done. They know all about him and couldn't be left to tell the tale. If you want to see your precious Lord Renfrew safe again, you'd best do as I say.'
'What's this got to do with 'is 'ighness?'
'He happens to be in the line of fire, Mr Samson. And if you ain't a bit sharper than this, he's number one for being the bull's-eye. Listen! Behind that curtain, on that divan, is them three girls what was at the Temple of Beauty and Ramiro's baths. Jolly I seen. Simona and Stefania is there, for a bet. When they leave here, you follow. Go where they go, but don't let 'em see you. I'll find you somehow. Now, I gotta go, Mr Samson.'
Verity slipped away from the table and followed where the thin pale redhead had gone. It was not hard to find her. She was not one of the street whores, like the painted and whitened hag who had accosted the two sergeants earlier on. Her haunt was the brightly-lit vestibule, where she posed and sauntered between her ingenuous solos on the platform of the inner room. Claire was still young, her light red hair cropped short in her nape to give her a look of boyish innocence, belied by her thin, knowing face and green eyes. Verity approached her.
'If you ain't oth
erwise engaged, miss, p'raps you'd care to spend a while with me.'
She looked at him cautiously. Her customers were generally men of commercial prosperity, young or old. It hardly seemed that Verity fitted their type. She studied him carefully, then swung about, as though inviting him to follow. He guessed that her room would be on the premises. She was no mere bunter who was obliged to find casual lodgings where she could. Claire led him through a door of the vestibule and up a spacious, carpeted staircase. At the top of this, she opened a nondescript door and went in.
Verity had seen the room a score of times before. The Coburg chairs, the Egyptian settee, plum-coloured velvet and gas-lamps in ornate brackets. Looking at her pale narrow face, he thought how set it seemed, as though she were capable of only one expression.
'Now, Miss Claire,' he said, "ave the goodness to sit down and listen to me.'
'And who might you be?' Despite her soft, country voice, her words were as hard as her thin pale face.
'Me?' said Verity. 'I'm one as saw how fondly you kissed a certain other girl in the room below. And I'm one who knows how many crimes she's got to her name. Accessory to murder she's likely to be, which is a noose round her neck as sure as round the party that done it. And if you choose to obstruct my inquiries, then it's likely to be a noose round yours as well.'
Claire, who had begun to unbutton her dress as she sat on the settee, was now without motion or expression.
'Miss,' said Verity softly, 'I ain't concerned what you do with other girls. If you choose them for your lovers, that's your affair. But you stand in the line of accusation for murder.'
The slim red-haired girl lowered her head, as though she might be about to weep. But no tears came. 'Fool!' she said softly. 'Yes, miss?'
She shook her head without raising it. 'To please her,' she mumbled. 'To please her, I let her do what she would with me.' Verity nodded wisely.
'Then she wasn't really a beau of yours, miss?'
'Promised me,' wailed the redhead. 'She promised I might be took to London and made a proper dancing-girl. But I must please her, in return. I'm not a girl's mistress, whatever you may think!'
Her face lifted towards him, and the green eyes seemed to darken with vindictiveness.
'I can believe that,' said Verity, 'a young person as comely as you.'
'She never did a murder.'
'She helped,' he said, 'and you best answer such questions as is put now. Where might she live, when she's in Plymouth?'
'She don't. Never was here more than a few days past, with them two flashy Italian girls. Hired the Flora.'
Verity stood up, crossed to the settee and sat down beside her.
'Now, Miss Claire, you just do them buttons up nice and tell me what the Flora might be.'
She turned to him, the doubt still in her narrow eyes and her teeth pulling at her lip.
'Pleasure steamer,' she said softly, 'the Lady Flora that Captain Joshua keeps at anchor off Great Western Dock.
They've got sweethearts on board, I daresay, but I never saw them ashore. Them three young ladies came on their own, for a bit of fun, and that dark one took some sort of a fancy to me, though I never gave her encouragement.'
'Captain Joshua,' said Verity, as though thinking deeply. 'Now what sort of a captain might he be?'
'Only the sort that hires himself and the boat to the quality. Fishing and that.'
'Might he Fish so far out that he could bring his passengers alongside a French trawler? Just nod if you've heard that tale.'
She ducked her reddish hair quickly in acknowledgment. Verity sighed.
'Sort of captain that takes his folk anywhere, for hire, and then lies low in his bunk while they do what business they please? Snug in there with a bottle of rum?'
She nodded again.
'Or a high-class doxy?"
She bobbed her head.
'Why,' said Verity, 'why, Miss Claire, I half think you been paid once or twice, paid to keep him happy in his bunk, while the brandy and perfume and that was changing hands on deck! But you ain't to worry. Smuggling don't interest me, and you shan't be touched on that account. But if there's anything you've told me that ain't true, my young lady, you'd best beg pardon now. Otherwise, the most you can hope for is to be a transport in a prison settlement where the men put over you are cruel brutes and the women worse than the men. I ain't come to frighten you with what happens to you there, but you'll know the story of a young person with just such pretty hair as yours. The first week, their hands was never from her, and every strand on her head was shock-white at the end of it.'
She whimpered a little, in fright and misery.
'Now,' said Verity, 'it's me and me alone that can stand between you and such "orrors, if I'm told the truth. Just where might this Lady Flora be?'
'Follow the path on Mill Bay,' she whispered, 'out towards Eastern King Point. Half-way between the dock and the point there's a broken jetty with an old landing. The gig comes ashore there and the Lady Flora lies off it. Captain Joshua has a mate that attends to the engines. There's stokers and other seamen that he picks up casual from time to time.'
Verity patted her hand.
'Why, miss, if you've been a truthful girl, I'll do more than stand between you and transportation. I'll see you rewarded from the police funds'
She watched him, silent and suspicious, as he rose, opened the door, looked back at her and then slipped away.
The table where he had sat with Samson, and the alcove behind its velvet curtain, were deserted. Verity made his way quickly through the muddy, high-walled lanes which ran beside the wall of the Great Western Dock. The shoreline of Mill Bay was starlit and he could make out the path without much difficulty, the half-derelict jetty showing black against the opalescence of the rippling anchorage. Close to the spot, he paused and said softly, 'Mr Samson!'
There was a movement under the shadowy piles of the jetty, Verity preparing to ward off an attacker if necessary. But it was Samson's voice which answered him.
'Over here, Mr Verity! Them three doxies came down to the water, showed a lamp and was took out there in a little boat. Out where that steamer is.'
The outline of the Lady Flora was clear enough. The trim pleasure-craft seemed no more than a hundred tons, a tall buff funnel with black top rising amidships. The stern and the paddle boxes were gaily painted and embellished with gilt scrolling.
'Let's hear it then,' whispered Samson. 'Let's have the tale that's to be told.'
'Simple, Mr Samson. All the way from the London terminus, I been thinking more and more that if Captain Jack was to pull this caper, he must do it fast. Once Lord William and the Hero is docked, it may be too late. Ten to one, Lord William ain't going to America without stepping round to Friern House and seeing his brother first. You or I might have doubts as to Mr Richard's looks, but Honest Jack Ransome can't take a chance that. Lord William wouldn't know if it was his own brother or not. I been thinking all the way from Paddington that he'd have to work the dodge now. So he'd have to be in Plymouth, perhaps, but not let himself be seen. Likewise, the girls in them blackmail pictures couldn't be left to sing a song about it. When we was at the railway station, I asked the railway constables if they'd seen a sign of our friends. They hadn't noticed any such passengers as Captain Jack or a poor cripple, who must have come another way. But one of 'em saw a cab hired by two girls that was Eye-talian and another what was a ringer for Jolly.'
'You was quick, Mr Verity.'
'I was, Mr Samson. A-cos then I reckoned that Captain Jack and Mr Richard would lie low. But them three bunters, with a taste for a spree and an itch between their legs, they'd never lie low for five minutes but must be out and about, by fraud or force.'
'If you was to flash a lamp, Mr Verity, a boat would come from that steamer. We might knock the man on the head and get out there after 'em.'
'Not till I know who's there! Can you swim, Mr Samson?'
'No,' said Samson defensively, 'not actually swim.'
As he spoke, Verity discarded his frock-coat, shirt and trousers. Either through modesty, or else as a protection from the cold, he retained his long drawers. Where the piles of the rotting jetty rose from the oily surface of the dark water, the bottom sloped away gradually, deep in mud. He waded through the clinging sludge until the black tide lapped at the crease between his belly and his plump chest. With a brief flurry of water, he kicked up his feet behind him and paddled with his hands. After a while he regained the art he had once known of keeping his hands and feet below water, where they moved almost as silently as fins. This, at least, was something which he could be sure those on the Lady Flora were not expecting.
Five minutes of cautious paddling brought him within ten yards of the dark shape of the Lady Flora's hull. There were lights at some of the portholes, which ran in a single line round the ship, but the curtains were drawn at each. Two men, whose physique suggested brothel bullies rather than sailors, were in conversation on the deck. Parting the water as gently as he could, Verity came close to the stern, where the little gig was moored. In the slack tide, the Lady Flora turned forward and back in a slow semi-circle, whose centre was marked by the anchor-chain which ran down into the black dock-water at her bows.
He could hear the voices of the two men on deck, muted in a discussion of the female passengers.
'Three of 'em!' said the first man with soft incredulity. 'Cost you a duke's inheritance to hire three at once for the night! And that yokel-captain to have them all night and tomorrow! Just to look the other way when the dibs is paid out and the goods brought aboard!'
'What I saw,' said the second man, 'just before the door was closed, was them two Italian pieces. Naked as they were born, kneeling in front, fighting each other to get a kiss at the prize. Jolly, too. I seen that piece stooped naked, patting herself behind to get him to take her at a charge.'
Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments Page 21