Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

by William Sutton

  “In he goes in. I hear a gunshot and the hut is all flames and smoke. I duly scarper. When I finally creep back, there ain’t no sign of anyone, living or dead. The rest you know.

  “We planned it to look like an accident, see. Everyone would blame the Exhibition for killing their future king. Commerce. Industry. Progress! We’re not Luddites, though, nor Puritans. Here’s Britain, where a million philanthropists spout nonsense about our sceptred isle and our illustrious history while they send us down mines and into battles to keep themselves in clover. Your lot are being used. Think you’re defending law and order? All you’re protecting is the status quo. You may have doused the flames this time, but it’ll burn soon enough. The nation’s like a tinderbox. Don’t tell me you don’t know it. All it takes is one spark and it’ll go up. I tell you, 1666 wasn’t nothing, and this time it won’t just be London.”

  THE PLOT

  Wardle stared at him, face twitching, betraying no more anger. I sat silent, but my mind was racing.

  “Disappointed in me, are you, Watchman?” said Worm.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to look over at Wardle.

  “Well, string me up or send me to the madhouse. I’m ready to go.”

  Wardle suddenly leaned forward. “You think you’re so smart, boy, full of big schemes and high ideals. Let me tell you, if you and your lot tried to run the show, the Empire would collapse in a week.”

  “All the better for it,” Worm grinned. “I trust all the colonials will revolt the instant we take over.”

  “Deranged fantasies,” Wardle snarled.

  “It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.”

  “Don’t give me history,” spat Wardle. “I won’t be lectured to by an upstart street-sweep that’s never been to school.”

  Worm bridled at that.

  “Should we not,” I declared, “all have some tea? I think we stand in need of a cup of tea.”

  Worm shot me a reproachful look. “Do you think it wise to leave me here with the inspector? We might get up to mischief.”

  Wardle glared at him. He stood up. “I’m sick of his nonsense. I’ll be in the office, Watchman. Throw this charlatan in the jug for the night.”

  “What are you holding me for?”

  “For cheek. Give him a book, if you like, Watchman. We’ll test him on it in the morning. I’ll call for your bloody tea.” He stomped out.

  I sat down and heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Don’t worry yourself, old cove. It’ll all turn out for the best.”

  “You think so?”

  “No. Just trying to cheer you up.”

  I laughed.

  He raised a nonchalant eyebrow. “I have been to school, you know. St Blane’s Poor School, Somers Town. Did rather well, prior to joining Mr Skelton’s operation.”

  “You left school to join him?”

  “Well, I’d been working for Shuffler since before I can remember. His best tosher, I was. We were on the sly for years. A precarious profession, I tell you, toshering on the hush-hush. When Bazalgette offered to turn us legitimate, we didn’t need no second invitation.”

  “And that was the start of this Nation Underground?”

  “My, my,” he said, “you have done some ferreting. It works, you know. We eat more, we can read and write, and there’s just enough space for dreaming.” He frowned suddenly. “Say, the old cove doesn’t know about that, does he?”

  “If half what you said is true, he couldn’t lift a finger against you.” I shook my head. “What kind of policeman am I, ready to blackmail my own inspector?”

  “Don’t be daft.” He leaned forwards. “We need the likes of you in high places.”

  “So you can thieve with impunity?”

  He spread his hands with a conciliatory grin.

  I was not grinning. “You lied about the clocks.”

  He looked hurt for a moment, then he shrugged. “Seemed silly, I s’pose. Presents for Mr Skelton. Loves his old watches, he does. We always filched bits, here and there. Gave him the whole collection. Pleased as punch, he was.”

  I chuckled at the picture of our adversary, rejoicing in his underground workshop, surrounded by the whirring hum of springs and cogs. Then I recalled what he had wrought with those mechanisms, and I stopped chuckling: the spouts that had so long terrorised Bertie, that had frightened even Wardle, that had set all London on edge.

  “What is it, old cove?”

  “I just wondered, what was he like, this Berwick Skelton?”

  His eyes opened wide. “I’m always forgetting, you ain’t met him, have you? Get on famously, you would. Holds you in high esteem.”

  “He didn’t know me.”

  “Mr Skelton knows a lot of surprising things,” he chuckled. “I’m glad it’s you that’s been after us. Gives the whole thing a sense of… What can I say? Of dignity.”

  “Enough of your toadying,” I said. “Did you not find something undignified in Mr Skelton’s concealing his own personal revenge under the guise of revolution?”

  Worm sniffed. “He says to me once, he says, ‘Worm, old cove, do you think I’ve led you and your friends astray? Have I got caught up in petty vengeance instead of working towards the future?’ ‘Buck up, old cove, I told him. What higher motives than a broken heart? Besides, without you there wouldn’t be no Worms, nor no future neither. If the show is about doing the rights on the grand scale, I’ve no complaint with you settling your own score along the way.’”

  I shook my head and walked over to the little barred window. He was in earnest, there was no doubt of it. Yet there was something that didn’t ring true. Some kind of clash, between Worm’s story and Coxhill’s boastings. That party for the Prince’s coming of age, that should have been today.

  There was a rap at the door. I opened it to find a tray laid outside the door, heavy with teapot and sturdy mugs. I bent to pick it up.

  Worm hit me at full tilt, hurtling into my back and bundling me to the ground.

  I flew forwards, tea things crashing everywhere. My head cracked against the wall. Tea soaked my shirt and scalded my shoulder. I lay there a few moments, just trying to comprehend what was happening.

  You may have doused the flames this time, Worm had said. May have. Berwick holds you in high esteem.

  I should have added it up. Hunt could barely write to save his life, while all Skelton’s lads could. Worm especially did a nice line in forged notes. Nor would Hunt have left his Crimean rifle in the display cabinet. It was too elegant by half, too ostentatious a crime for a furtive thug like him.

  The burnt face. It wasn’t Skelton at all. Worm kept referring to him in the present tense. Worm was free, Berwick was alive and the plot was on.

  RETURN TO EUSTON SQUARE

  The tea-boy, who had long stood in awe of Worm’s privileged position at the Yard, had heard the commotion. He was standing uselessly in the hallway, gazing out the entrance through which Worm had just fled.

  “Which way did he go?” I called, rising weakly and hobbling towards him.

  The boy shrunk back, moon-faced, as if he thought me mad. “Was he not on an errand?” he said. “I thought he was on an errand.”

  I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Which way did he go, damn you?”

  Pale with alarm, the boy pointed up the road to the right. And there was Worm, leaping aboard an omnibus headed back along Whitehall towards us. The place I would least expect him to run, past my very nose: a typical Worm ruse.

  I would call for help and step out to halt the omnibus. Worm would leap from the contraption into our waiting arms.

  It was then that my mind went into a state I have experienced all too rarely. I was acutely aware of everything around me, yet I felt myself calm, detached, supremely rational, as if the universe had slowed to a standstill. I could see my actions and their effects with a devastating clarity. Capturing Worm would be useless. He had run, it was true, but, when I caught him in Wyld’s Globe, h
e came quietly, inured to his possible detention. Ergo, Skelton’s plan would go ahead with or without him. Worm would never tell us where, not in a million years. The only way to find out would be to follow him, without his knowledge. He must lead us right to the crime, or we were lost.

  I stood at the entrance, acting flummoxed. If Worm were watching, he would see me looking defeated.

  His omnibus swept past, horses straining, and mingled with the Whitehall traffic.

  I nabbed the tea-boy’s flat cap. “Tell Wardle, Worm’s escaped,” I said. “It’s on. Their plot’s on.” Worm had been unnerved at my mention of the Nation Underground. I would follow him, but I could give Wardle no better directions than to head for their base. “Tell him to go to King’s Cross.”

  I ran down the pavement. By good fortune, an altercation between a hansom and a milk cart hindered the omnibus’ progress, and with a few bounds I attained the back board. I clung to the corner pole as it pulled away. It was the new style, with gents riding up top, back to back against a sandwich board. I was ready to swing myself up the ladder to the roof. But I spotted one of Worm’s patched elbows jutting out above me. He was perched on the end, beneath the top seat, his legs dangling off the back, as he scanned the road behind for pursuing cabs. If he had chanced to look down at that moment, he would have seen me. I pressed my face against the vehicle, praying that I would be rendered invisible by the cap, an article I had never worn before in my life.

  Dusk was descending. There was nothing I could do but keep an eye on Worm’s boots as they swung there above me. I passed that journey elated, but with a strange calm. I was suddenly sure of everything. Skelton was still alive and Worm was going to him. The second body at the Exhibition, shot, stuffed and mutilated, was not Skelton, killed by Hunt in a moment of madness, but Hunt killed by Skelton in retribution for the violence he had done, not only to Shuffler and Smiler, but to Hester too. He burnt the face off to lead us astray, with perhaps a sly reference to Hunt’s arsonous practices from Balaclava to Belgravia. It was a trick I had too easily believed. The tidy ending we had so long sought, but a false ending.

  Worm rode all the way to the terminus at Euston Square. He descended carelessly, rather pleased with himself. A slow fog was creeping up the streets as the darkness deepened, and I was able to follow him at a discreet distance into the station. He took a chair at a pie-seller’s, and bided his time, seemingly cocksure now. I found myself an observation post on the other side of the great concourse, skulking in the shadows of a flower stall.

  I couldn’t help reflecting how it had all started right there, three years before. ‘We chose you,’ Worm had said. A strange notion. I had been selected to bear witness. And those coded messages in Worm’s pockets. ‘I want people to understand,’ he said. Did he write the threats himself? Had he deliberately led me through the labyrinth to witness the slaying of the monstrous one? That first night at the spout, it was he who had summoned me; and again, months later, for the thefts. Could it be that he had suggested my name to Wardle? Reminded him of my good offices? I preferred to believe that than Glossop’s accusation, that I had earned my place through my malleability.

  He glanced up with increasing regularity at the clock above the platform gateway. His earlier composure had deserted him and he was in a state of high agitation. What could I do but wait? Apprehend him now and our chance would be gone. Send word to Wardle? There was nothing clearer I could say. He would be fuming and cursing me; but with him at King’s Cross and me at Euston, there was still a chance we might be in the right place to intervene at the dreadful finale.

  At nine on the dot, Worm stirred himself. He tossed a coin to the pie man and sauntered off. I pulled the cap low on my brow and followed. He headed for the outside, whistling a gay air, as if he owned the grand hotels flanking the square. What the devil was he doing? I had a sudden fear that he was leading me a merry dance, that he had known all along I was following him and would any moment quicken his pace and vanish into the crowds. Or, worse, that he would turn round and laugh at his success in diverting me from my duty, while diabolical vengeance was being executed elsewhere.

  He passed the grand colonnade, traversed the square, and continued over the Euston Road. At the next crossroads, he darted into a peculiar tiled entrance on the corner, marked GOWER STREET STATION in maroon and white tiles. One of Worm’s chums was guarding the wide lattice gate of articulated iron. By the time I came up to the little tyke, Worm was nowhere to be seen. I approached with a friendly gesture and an indeterminate grunt.

  “Who’s yourself, then?” muttered the child. He held the grating closed, peering out wide-eyed through the gaps.

  “I’m with Worm,” I mumbled, glancing past him. Behind him stood two pairs of turnstiles. Beyond them, a flight of steps descended into the earth. There was no sign of Worm.

  “Beggin’ your pardon.” He scratched his head. “I’m not ’specting nobody else.”

  “I’ve a message,” I hazarded, “for Mr Skelton.”

  Momentarily convinced, the boy drew back the grating latch, then hesitated.

  I seized the moment. I threw the lattice aside, pushed the boy to the ground. He cried out, his hand caught in the metal, but I leapt the barrier and went on. The footsteps ahead of me stopped a moment, then redoubled. Worm knew at last that he was followed. He increased his pace to a run and I mine, flying down the steps and on, down a dimly-lit passageway.

  There was a fearful noise up ahead, a great echoing roar in the distance. Rounding the corner I found myself in a vast underground cavern. I blinked in consternation as my eyes adjusted to the light. What godless place was this? Part of their Nation Underground? A vast hall for assembling revolutionaries beneath our unsuspecting feet?

  The tiled wall to my left gleamed in the gaslight as far as the eye could see. The great brick roof arched overhead and down to the opposite platform, beyond the tracks. Worm was already far off down the platform. He looked back at me, seemed to smile for an instant.

  The noise grew deafening. To my astonishment, from out of the very earth a train hove into sight, belching steam and sulphurous fumes. It sounds banal now, but I cannot describe the horror of those moments, when a thing such as trains under the ground was an astonishment.

  Two great lanterns speared towards me. I stood stupefied at the foot of the stairway, seemingly caught in their path. With the shrieking of the rails and those lights bearing down on me, I feared that my last moment had come.

  Worm leapt from the platform and on to the thundering train, greeted with cheers.

  As the thing swept closer, the wheels a-rattling devilishly, I came to my senses. It was not heading straight for me. The tracks ran parallel to the platform, of course. The squat engine drew near, and I saw that its speed was not so terrifying. Worm had leapt onto it; so could I. There was a running board round the engine. One great leap and I would be on.

  I steeled myself to run at it, but my knee, swelled from the chase, buckled beneath me. I fell to the platform.

  I twisted around, and my heart leapt into my mouth. It took only an instant for the whole train to flash past and roar on into the darkness, but the image remained, imprinted on my mind.

  The driver of the train was the weasel, Fairfoul, aided at the furnace by a team of little helpers. At the far end was a closed carriage, humming with activity, little hands arranging trays and decanters, passing bottles and plates.

  In between, the central car was a glorious open compartment, complete with dining table and white linen. Bustling silently around, urchins in starched uniforms served from glittering salvers, carted off crockery and kept the feast in order, unnoticed by the guests.

  The guests. At the far end of the table sat Coxhill. He was in his element, in his vainglorious pomp. He was attended by two personal urchins. No sooner did they fill his glass than he raised it, shouting out grandiloquent toasts, only for them to be swallowed by the din of the echoing tunnel.

  In pride of place at t
he centre of the table, a rotund young man was tucking into a mountain of seafood. Oil dripped from his whiskers. He wiped it off with his shirtsleeve and took a slug of wine. This was Bertie, and no mistake.

  At the head of the table stood a third man, smiling broadly. He nodded genially, as if to acknowledge my presence; perhaps he was welcoming Worm aboard, though my quarry vanished smartly from view. The man had swapped the whiskers he had worn at the Garden Party for a full false beard, a waistcoat, a bow tie, and a red and black magician’s cape. Of course, his mother had told me how he loved disguises. His thin, saintly face was eclipsed by the beard, but finally I knew him. The same height as Hunt, it was true, though a deal broader in the shoulder. The disguise must have fooled Bertie and Coxhill, or they would have steered clear. And yet they had met him often in times gone by. How did I know him for sure, when we had met just that once face-to-face, and that in darkness? He had allowed himself one tell-tale divergence from a magician’s costume. He was wearing a bowler hat.

  CODED NOTE FOUND IN BOX OF CHOCOLATES

  by BS (Deciphered by RVL)

  For the attention of her good self, the Prof

  My Dearest Dolly,

  Your presence is cordially required at the Moveable Feast, where BS’s vermicular troupe shall present larksome sprees, glees and merriments for the Monstrous Crumbo and his Blabbing Spooney.

  The itinerant extravaganza departs Notgniddap at nobber o’the clock this very notchy.

  Tug on your cover-me-properlies, your stampers and fumbles and bonarest fakements, and toddle along.

  Shift your crabshells, you doxy old fishbag!

  Your ever affectionate

  Worm

  RUTH VILLIERS’ FINAL NARRATIVE

  What could I do when I realised that I, a grown woman, had been locked into my own apartments by an eight-year-old girl? I laughed. I seethed. I tried and retried the handle in disbelief until my wrist hurt. I returned to the bedroom to see if Molly wasn’t hiding underneath the bedspread. I raged and cursed in language unsuitable for a lady, for I had learnt a good deal in my weeks with her. And I marvelled at how, in the blink of an eye, the convalescent I had so long fed and nurtured had returned to her people, leaving me in the soup. Could I blame her? Of course not. She had got the call, poor thing, and moved pretty sharply.