Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob.

by Francis Selwyn

  Stringfellow wiped his whiskers on the back of his hand.

  'All I'm saying, Verity old sojer, is that you ain't made things easier for finding Bella. Even with that mask on, Mr Inspector Croaker might a-known you. Them villains has got you on a short string, my son. You don't know who they are, you can't go to Mr Croaker no more. They lures you to Brunswick Square then tips the nod to the law that there's a burglar in there, and you and Jolly gets out by a whisker. And where's that leave Miss Bella?'

  Tears of self-pity were starting in the old cabman's eyes.

  'All right, Stringfellow,' said Verity consolingly, 'all right.'

  'As for Miss Bella,' moaned Stringfellow, 'we ain't no nearer seeing her now than the day she was took. . .'

  'All right!’

  There was a silence of mutual reproach. Jolly, in the nursing chair, picked unenthusiastically with her needle at a half-mended petticoat. Ruth sat in a wooden chair by the grate. In her hand was a printed tract which she appeared to study with frowning concentration as she held it upside down.

  'They killed 'er, that young Cosima person,' said Verity, trying to make peace. ' 'eaven knows how many others they done for as well. After Miss Bella was took they sent me that message, knowing I'd leave me post to run to the sands. And while I was away they must a-got in easy. They snuffed Cosima later, somehow. P'raps she knew where their heathen clasp was. If they was prepared to take Miss Bella just to have me out of the way like that, they must want something pretty bad. Still, now they got all they want in that way, no reason they shouldn't send her home.'

  'No reason they shouldn't do something else either,' said Stringfellow darkly.

  Verity felt that sudden coldness along his spine which he had been brought up to believe was caused by someone walking on the patch of ground under which he would one day lie in death. Against the worst that the Swell Mob and Mr Croaker could do, his little army numbered old Stringfellow, Ruth and Miss Jolly. To divert himself, as much as the others, he changed the subject of conversation.

  'What a man'll do for a few heathen baubles,' he said philosophically. 'Now I suppose they got it, the beastly thing. Whoever Shah Jehan was, he'd best have kept it and all the bad fortune what it seems to bring.'

  Stringfellow shook his head.

  'If your Mr Croaker and his insurance chums wanted it that bad,' he said, 'couldn't they a-had its picture done to put on all the walls? Same as they do with faces o' friends in 'uman form as coopers young girls and so on?'

  Verity snorted.

  'Old Croaker 'ad its likeness done. Photographic engraving handed out to all of us in the detail. Much bloody use it is if you're never to see the original. Eh?'

  He reached into his capacious frock-coat and drew several frayed scraps of paper from an inner pocket. Sifting through them he found a piece of thin card, about four inches square. Even in the coloured engraving there was an aura of malignancy and brooding evil in the funereal purple of the rubies and the sick green of the emerald leaves. Stringfellow pondered it, holding the card this way and that in his hand. Then he looked up at Verity with a grimace of toothless incomprehension.

  'Is 'er only one of these heathen clasps, then?'

  'Course there is,' said Verity irritably.

  'And all the jacks from London has been looking for it and not finding it?'

  'Yes.' A deep unease began to stir in Verity's mind.

  'And you can't find it?' The old man's face was lined with incredulity.

  Verity's head thrust forward like a fighting-cock.

  'If I’d a-found it, Stringfellow, I wouldn't be sitting here like this now with Mrs Verity gone and me pay stopped! Would I?'

  The old cabman shook his head wonderingly. 'Then you don't none of you know where 'tis?' ' 'ow should we know?' Verity bellowed in his exasperation.

  Stringfellow looked at the coloured engraving. ' 'Cos,' he said,' 'alf of bloody Brighton knows where this is!'

  There was a profound silence. Verity felt as if someone had just punched him very hard in the pit of the stomach.

  'You never said it was this jewel,' gabbled Stringfellow defensively. 'I never so much as seen this card before. You never said. .

  'Where?'

  'Eh?'

  'Where does half of Brighton know it is?' 'Oh!' said Stringfellow, relieved and anxious to be helpful. 'Lots of places, 'ccording to the time o' day.' 'The time of day!'

  'Yes,' said the old man impatiently, 'as it might be the Dog and Duck at noon, the old Union tavern bit later on. Always in the public eye.'

  'How?'

  Stringfellow's voice dropped to a stage whisper as if to keep the words from Ruth and Jolly. Their two heads moved perceptibly in his direction as he spoke.

  'Young tavern dancer, Jane Midge. Street-girl what dances for coins to be thrown. ‘bout fourteen years old with fair skin and dark brown hair.'

  'Yes?'

  'Well,' said Stringfellow, as if fearing his son-in-law's wrath, 'she do wear it pinned to her knickers when she dances. Gives her a certain class.'

  'The Shah Jehan clasp? The clasp of the Mogul emperors?'

  ' 'f that's what you say it is,' said Stringfellow obligingly. ' 'f that's what's in your picture. Same thing whatever the name.'

  Verity thumped the kitchen table.

  'Act sensible, Stringfellow! What's a fourteen-year-old street-girl called Jane Midge doing with a jewel that might buy the whole of Brunswick Square? No one murdered and thieved to get it just so's it could be Worn by a dancing orphan!'

  'See for yourself then,' said Stringfellow sulkily.

  'Yes, Mr Stringfellow, that's exactly what I mean to do!'

  On the eve of race week the Swell Mob ordinary in the tavern room was crowded by men and women on either side of the wooden partition dividing the bar. The half of the room reserved for unaccompanied women was exceptionally full now that a hundred or more London street-walkers had arrived in Brighton for the festivities. It was the room which Stunning Joe had seen in company with Jack Strap. There was the same mahogany gloom, the coloured bottles, an acrid fog of cigar smoke, a perfume of cheap champagne. The space at one end, where street-girls had performed casual dances, was now reserved for a 'select party' of race-week entertainers, with a master of ceremonies in a battered silk hat.

  The programme opened with a London favourite, Janet, the plump Female Hussar. She was about twenty years old, her pale face soft and lightly freckled, her brown eyes coyly timid, the dark hair cut in a helmet-shape round her head and its length built into a little topknot with a tortoiseshell comb. Her dark brown tights and short coatee showed off her stocky thighs and the plumpness of her hips, confirming that she lately 'dropped a cub' on her keeper.

  The pantomime of the girl and a country clown shocked Stunning Joe on Jane Midge's behalf. Janet was presented pushing a scarecrow in an invalid carriage. Behind her sauntered the country clown with his spyglass, crowing with delight over the vision. As she leant harder and harder over her labour the seat of Janet's brown tights became a pair of vulgarly fattened globes which threatened to split the brown cotton under their pressure. The clown's fingers fiddled busily in the air, an inch or so from her. Janet turned her face to the audience, miming simultaneous fear and eagerness. Then the clown performed an unambiguous phallic comedy with his spyglass, opening and closing it rhythmically.

  These performances alternated with turns by comic singers, most of whose offerings were well known 'flash ditties'. Standing just off-stage, holding Jane Midge's hand, Stunning Joe had only to hear the first lines and he could have recited the rest faultlessly. In the tap-room the spectators roared their appreciation loudly enough to match the raucous chanting of the singer.

  Of all the blowens on the town,

  There's none like my flash Sally;

  By prigs and whores she is well known,

  And she lives in Pisspot Alley. . .

  This particular song had been going the rounds of such 'select parties' for many years, even whe
n Joe's father was young. All the same, with a sense of indignation, he placed his hands gently over Jane Midge's ears, as much to protect the frightened young dancing-girl from the roaring of the crowd as to shield her from the lewdness.of the song. He kissed the crown of her head lightly.

  ''s all right,' he said, quiet and reassuring as he could be, ''s all right.'

  Her father he was lagged for life,

  An out-and-out highwayman,

  Her mother she's a lushington

  And stone blind drunk all day man.

  But blow me if I care a damn. . .

  Another roar from the bar-rooms drowned his words. Clamped in his fist Joe held the eight coppers which represented Jane's earnings for the day and night, indeed all that remained of the money they had acquired. Presently the comic singer stormed off in an exchange of good-natured insults with his friends in the crowd. The master of ceremonies was speaking, begging attention for Pretty Jane, the dancing-girl.

  The crowd fell silent, in expectation of seeing the youngster. Jane walked demurely on to the stage in her harem diadem of gilded card, her silk breast-halter and the green silk fleshings from waist to knee. Like a cheap glass gee-gaw, the Shah Jehan clasp was pinned to the front of her pants at the waist, so that it rose against the flat satin texture of her bare belly. With her chin tilted pertly, her upper teeth touching her lower lip in brazen teasing of her admirers, she began her dance.

  In the hot smoky rooms the silence grew deeper. Each member of the audience sat alone in contemplation of the bare young arms and midriff, the agile knees and firm calves. She moved sinuously, and it seemed that the swaying of Jane's hips and bottom was performed for every man, individually, in the room. They stared intently, imprisoning the youngster in the harem of their own fantasies. The irony was never lost on Joe. Before them glowed the dark riches of the famous clasp. Yet not one of them spared it a glance. It was worth nothing to them beside the real treasures on display: the firm young face; the slight swell of breasts in the silk halter; the light-sinewed belly; the taut elasticity of Jane's hind cheeks; the unflawed smoothness of her young thighs and legs. Men would kill one another for the clasp, he thought. An entire heathen kingdom had bowed down before it. But a pretty child like Jane could starve in the streets for all that the world cared. Stunning Joe had never before thought much about beauty and its value. Now it seemed to him that he had the leisure to learn.

  The dance came to its end. Jane had to go down among the tables to collect the coppers from those who held them up. Their patting and stroking was the price which these benefactors demanded. Then she turned and ran back across the floor of the room where she had danced, pressing the coins into Joe's hand, unpinning the clasp and slipping that to him as well.

  Jane Midge had hardly disappeared up the stairs to the dusty little room in which she changed, when two men appeared at the far end of the bar. The old man who hobbled on a wooden leg was a complete stranger to Joe, but Sergeant Verity was not. Joe told himself that there was nothing to fear. The law itself had pronounced him dead. If they seized him now, he had only to give another name. So far as they were concerned, he was dead and buried with a coroner's certificate. They might prove him to be anyone else in the Queen's dominions, but he could never be Joe O'Meara.

  All the same, he stepped back a little into the shadows of a passageway behind him where the overflow of men from the bar lounged against the walls with their pots of ale. Verity and Stringfellow came on, but Joe knew he was safe. Then he saw that they were making for the stairs and he guessed that they must be looking for Jane. Like a cold swelling in his breast he remembered that though he had the clasp, Jane Midge had his affidavit, as he called it. The roughly scrawled testimony of all that had happened to him since the night at Wannock Hundred was set down on that document. He had intended it to be seen in the event of his death or disappearance on the orders of Sealskin Kite. If it were seen now, the result might be his death in real earnest.

  Joe slipped out of the passageway and moved after them, silent as a shadow up the stairs, keeping just out of sight of the two men. He heard their feet on the worn linoleum of the landing, the boards creaking under their tread as they moved towards the door of the shabby little room. There was a pause and then one of the men hammered with his fist.

  'Open this door, if you please, miss. I'm a police officer. There's no harm intended to you, I'm here for your own safety.'

  Joe heard no reply and no movement. He edged another step or two up the stairway.

  'At once, miss!' said the voice. 'Else it'll be broke open!'

  Still there was no sound. Then one of the men muttered to the other, something which Joe was unable to make out. There was the thud of a boot against a flimsy panel of wood. From experience Joe knew that a jack would never break the door down. It was enough to kick out one of its panels, reach through and undo the fastening.

  They were in the room now, and still Jane had not uttered a sound. Then Joe heard the policeman's voice.

  'Got through the window. Down over the outhouse roof.'

  'Still,' said the other man, 'she never had time to put on her outdoor things, they'm still here! She done a bunk in her dancing clothes! Won't get far like that!'

  They were coming back now, Verity in the lead. Joe slipped downstairs into the crowded passageway where the mass of bodies and the shadows of the oil-light concealed him. He pushed his way through until he came out into the clear air of the pavement doorway. His first instinct was to run, one way or another, in search of Jane. But there was no way of deciding where she might have gone. With every step he might be running away from her. Her only skirt and blouse were here. She knew that he was here. Surely her first instinct would be to return as soon as she safely could. Cautiously, Joe drew back into the shadows of the street and watched the noisy, brightly-lit building.

  Jane was running already. The road was dark beyond the tavern, only the glimmering oil-lamps of carriages shining at intervals along it. She crossed to the far side, looking for the first place of concealment, and saw the tombs and tall grass of St Peter's churchyard. Clambering over the railings, the girl dropped down and felt the dew soak her feet. She crouched there and listened as the frantic beating of her heart subsided. In one hand she clutched the sheets of paper with Joe's writing on them. For safety's sake she pushed them into the tight silk of the halter, safe against her bare breasts. Then she waited. Joe would save her, she thought. It was the only truth that she any longer had the courage to maintain.

  Time passed in the darkness as she crouched with her back to the tombs, her eyes watching the road through the railings. Jane had no idea how long she had been there, but the lights in the houses were going out and hardly a carriage wheel rattled on the road which ran into Brighton from Lewes. The wind stirred lightly among the grass. When she heard the voice it was so faint and gentle that it might almost have been the stirring of the long heads upon their stalks.

  'Jane! Jane Midge! 's all right! 's me! Stunning Joe! Jane! Jane Midge! Where yer gone?'

  The man who thundered at the door, the man who said he was a policeman! No, she thought, it could not be him. How would he know enough to call himself Stunning Joe? She rose without speaking, her pale shoulders and belly ghostly in the darkness. There was a sound just behind her and she turned straight into the arms of a giant. It was her sudden fright at his size which made her draw breath to cry out. The towering figure must have heard the intake of air. His hand slashed down, knocking her almost senseless on the ground and cutting short the cry even before she could utter its first gasp.

  Then Jack Strap stooped down, slung the limp body of the young dancing-girl over his shoulder, and moved stealthily towards the dark closed carriage which stood in the shadows of the church tower.

  Wrists and ankles strapped, a gag in her mouth and a blindfold over her eyes, Jane Midge might have been anywhere in the world. There was a moment on the way when an odd-smelling bottle was held to her nostrils and she drif
ted into a strange trance. Once, it seemed, she was in the open air, being led like a cripple with sympathetic voices all about her. Then she came to her senses in an attic room with bare boards and two iron beds. She struggled to sit upright and saw that there was a cold steel cuff round one ankle. A continuous loop of iron chain ran through the cuff and round a waterpipe on the far wall. The effect was that she could reach the bed and the little closet, but the door and the window were beyond the range allowed her.

  The fat pallor of Jack Strap's pouched face loomed above her. He looked at her dispassionately, his eye noticing the paper through the thin green silk of her breast-halter. He extended his fingers and the girl instinctively crossed her arms over her chest. Strap drew his hand back, raising it and turning his body slightly to put more force into the blow. He spoke as if it were a matter of supreme indifference to him.

  'Fancy a hiding already, do you?'

  Forlornly, Jane Midge uncrossed her arms and the bully lowered his hand. Strap thrust his fingers under the silk and drew out the folded sheets of paper. He glanced at them and sneered.

  'So he would, would he? The dirty little squeak!'

  He turned out the oil-lamp, picked up his own lantern and made for the door. A heavy key turned in the lock. Jane Midge, in her fear and stupor, had hardly realised that she was not alone. The springs of the other bed moved. A second chain stirred on the boards.

  'Don't cry!' said a voice in the darkness. 'You gotta be a good brave girl and not cry.'

  ‘I’m not crying,' said Jane dully.

  'What's your name?' said the voice.

  'Jane Midge.'

  'I'm Bella. Bella Verity. Before you and me has finished with them bullies, they're the ones as'll have something to cry about!'