Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob.

by Francis Selwyn

  With this in mind, he forgot that he had not eaten that day. Just now there was something more important than eating. He walked through the little streets beyond the market and waited until he saw the girl. He had seen her passing there before and knew that sooner or later he would meet her. She scurried, unescorted, in her pink silk dress, almond eyes and profile sharply downcast to avoid the glance of admirers.

  'Miss!' he said softly. ' 's me, Stunning Joseph!'

  Jolly stopped as though struck by terror.

  'I ain't dead, miss,' said Joe softly. 'If you heard that, you heard wrong. That's just a story.'

  Jolly relaxed a little.

  'What is it, then?' she whispered. 'I never had to do with you before!'

  'You're with a jack,' said Joe, still gentle with her. 'Everyone knows. You turned nark. Didn't yer?'

  The fear returned to her eyes.

  'What's it to you? You've no business. . .'

  'Listen!' said Joe impatiently. 'I want to help you, that's all.' He drew out a package from his coat. 'Give him this. Don't open it. Give it him as it is. Tell him that the villain is Mr Sealskin Kite. And tell him there's nothing a jack can do. Mr Kite couldn't even be prosecuted for beating his horse. But tell him not to worry. I mean to have justice, and I shan't need the law to help me.'

  They stood together for a moment in the darkness of the street, Jolly's height several inches more than the little spiderman's.

  'And what shall I have, then?' she asked quickly.

  'A purse of gold.' The solemnity in Joe's voice put the promise beyond doubt. Jolly drew her cheeks in, rounded her mouth, and rolled her eyes in a humorous appreciation of her own good fortune. Then she looked once more at the childlike figure beside her and hurried away.

  'Well?' said Old Mole. 'Is it done then?'

  Jack Strap looked at his master with large animal eyes. His slow mind had had ample time to ponder the consequences of Joe's escape. Mr Mole's displeasure would, at the very least, be followed by the denial to Strap of the reward promised him. But Mole's anger had sometimes taken far more brutal forms than that. Strap promised himself that first thing next morning he would hunt out the little squeak and finish him.

  'Yes, Mr Mole,' he said, his eyes lovingly obedient. 'It's done. Off the end of the pier with no one around. Burnt the face off 'im too so's he’ll never be known if washed up. Made it seem like a lamp caught fire, that's all.'

  Old Mole looked uncertainly at the bully, but it sounded a safe enough way. The burning of the dead man's face was particularly good, far beyond the resources of Strap's intellect on other occasions.

  'Bravo, Jack Strap!' he said gently. 'Then you know what more's to be done. Me and Mr Kite leaves the Bedford Hotel Sunday morning and takes the London train. After that, you snuff them two doxies and follow next day. Take all your time with 'em, Jack. Just as you please. Then dump 'em as arranged like sacks o' coals.'

  Jack Strap could hardly be spoken to after that. Whenever Old Mole looked at him, he saw the bully's face creased and his eyes moist as if he could almost have cried for happiness.

  Four of them stood round the bare kitchen table, Ruth and Stringfellow at one end, Verity and Jolly scowling at each other across its width. On the scrubbed pine the riches of the Shah Jehan clasp glowed and blazed in purple and green. A sheet of writing in Joe's scrawl lay beside it.

  'Right, miss!' said Verity for the third time. 'You got nothing to fear if you tell the truth now. Whatever you done, I shan't be vexed. But it gotta be the truth!'

  'Stunning Joe!' she wailed, and the dark enigmatic eyes flashed with the intensity of her anger. 'I know him, don't I? Used to take his serving of greens off Vicki Hartle, didn't he? Regular as Sunday!'

  'He's dead!' Verity insisted. 'Died on the hulks, buried off Portland!'

  'Well, he says different. So's that paper!' Jolly turned grumpily away as though dismissing the entire affair from her notice. It was Stringfellow who made the peace.

  'Lissen!' he said. 'Lissen, Verity! It don't matter if it's him or his ghost. Someone calling hisself Stunning Joe knows the score of this. He knows the clasp was took from Brunswick Square but what was really needed was the case with slips of paper worth a fortune.'

  'Notes of credit,' said Verity. 'Banker Lansing's. They gotta be.'

  'Right,' said Stringfellow. 'And all the taking of Bella and the rest o' it was to get them bits of paper. Worth a mint o' gold. And if this note's to be believed, it's all down to a broker called Sealskin Kite. Take it all to Mr Croaker. Now.'

  'Stringfellow!' shouted Verity. 'Ain't you got the least sense? Me go to Mr Croaker with a note writ by a man that's been dead a month? First off, he'll say I wrote it meself! As for Mr Kite, he may be fly as a monkey but the law got nothing against him. Nothing!'

  'Kite's a mobsman!' howled Stringfellow. 'You know that!'

  'So far's the law knows, Stringfellow, he's no more a mobsman than is Lord Palmerston or Prince Albert. Can't yer see that?'

  'And Miss Bella?' wailed the old cabman. 'What's the law to do for her? They'll bloody kill her, Verity, now they got what they want!'

  Verity assumed a confidence he did not feel.

  'Not while there's you and me, Stringfellow. Now listen. First we find Sealskin Kite and stop Stunning Joe or whoever it is from murdering him. That's the way to Miss Bella.'

  'You'll never find Kite!' sobbed the old man. 'Never! Never!'

  That night Verity completed his plans. With the two young women and Stringfellow he had four pairs of eyes, though when it came to a fight he must rely upon himself alone. To find Kite, that was the first task.

  It was easier than Stringfellow had suggested. If Kite was in Brighton, he guessed how to track him down. At eleven the next morning, Verity took up his position with a clear view of the corner where Folthorp's Royal Library and Reading Rooms stood near the Pavilion gates. He watched the faces of the men who came and went as the latest prices, telegraphed from the Stock Exchange in London, were posted up. Not one of them resembled Sealskin Kite.

  Fearing that the old mobsman had bolted already, Verity crossed to the library and spoke to the uniformed flunkey who stood by the polished brass handrail.

  'Message for Mr Kite?' he inquired meekly. 'Mr Kite. Broker on the 'change.'

  The flunkey looked disdainfully away and called to someone in the cool temple-like interior of the reading rooms. Then he turned back to Verity.

  'Mr Kite returns to Town. Messages directed to Bedford Hotel.'

  Verity touched his hat with a gratitude that was entirely unfeigned. Moving almost at a run, he disappeared down East Street towards the flash of sun on water, and turned on to the promenade. The square facade of the Bedford with its columns and awnings shone far ahead of him. With the perspiration soaking his dark clothes Verity panted onward. He would get no further than the porter at the door, he knew that. But that would be far enough. The condition of his plump breathless face was sufficiently convincing for the role he had chosen.

  'Message for Mr Kite!' he gasped. 'Ain't gone yet, 'as he? Most important message from gent at Folthorp's Library. Consequential on the posting of the share prices this morning!'

  The porter was impressed by the hint of a fortune made or lost. He went inside, leaving the door temporarily unattended. When he returned he was confiding and hopeful.

  'Stay today, go tomorrow. Morning train. Message requiring reply?'

  Verity shook his head, as if too winded for speech. Into the porter's hand he thrust an envelope addressed to Sealskin Kite. It contained nothing more than a card advertising Glaisyer and Kemp, the chemists in North Street. When Kite read the card, with its puffs for corn solvent or stomachic and digestive candy, he might be irritated but hardly suspicious.

  Then there was nothing for it but to wait while Stringfellow and Miss Jolly found him. It had been decided that Ruth must stay in Tidy Street with the children while the two men and Jolly continued the search. Verity was also aware that his collea
gue Sergeant Albert Samson of the Private-Clothes Detail had been posted to Brighton as his replacement. Samson had appeared as the guard in Brunswick Square several times, another burly figure with red mutton-chop whiskers. Until the right moment, however, Verity had decided not to involve Samson in his plans.

  Stringfellow's coach, yellow and as lopsided in movement as its owner, appeared early in the afternoon.

  'What you got, then, Verity?' the old man inquired eagerly.

  'Sealskin Kite. Put up at the Bedford Hotel till the London train tomorrow morning.' 'And Stunning Joe?'

  'Dunno, Stringfellow,' said Verity reluctantly. 'I ain't seen a living soul here in three hours that could be 'im.'

  From the darkened interior of the coach Jolly flashed a quick slanting glare at this imputation upon her honesty. Stringfellow too now saw the promise of Bella's safety taken from him.

  'She ain't 'ere!' he wailed. 'They couldn't have took her to a hotel like this! Not without someone knowing or her being willing!'

  'Stringfellow!' said Verity sharply. 'Don't you see yet? It don't matter where she is. We could search every house in Brighton and she might be a prisoner in London all the time. But if Sealskin Kite's at the bottom of all this, we shall get to her if we get to him. And if Stunning Joe should be alive, as we been told, we shall know for certain by watching Mr Kite. See?'

  The cabman mumbled to himself, miserable and unconvinced. After that he sat in silence until the reflected fire of sunset had faded from the channel waves.

  'I never seen Stunning Joseph,' he said at last. 'I never seen anyone who could even look like Stunning Joseph. Not all the time we been here.'

  'No,' said Verity shortly.

  'And you mean to sit 'ere all night?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why?’

  ' 'cos I got no bloody reason to do anything better, Stringfellow.'

  There was another long and reproachful silence. This ended when Verity heard a quiet sob from Jolly. It startled him from his thoughts. The beautiful enigmatic eyes had glared with anger or glittered with desire. To his knowledge they had never brimmed with tears except when she was being whipped by her keeper. Now the first sob was followed by several more.

  'It was 'im!' she wept. 'It was Stunning Joseph! I hope to burn in hell if I never told the truth of it!'

  'There, there,' said Verity softly, patting the slim warm arm. 'You been a good girl. No one disbelieves you now.'

  From the box of the coach Stringfellow emitted a grunt of scepticism clearly audible to those within.

  Only Verity saw the night through without closing his eyes. But unlike the others he was used to such duties and knew all the old soldier's devices for holding sleep at bay. The sea mists of the summer dawn lightened slowly and then the morning turned into the palest and most delicate shade of blue. There was a bustle of activity as the windows of the Bedford Hotel began to open and the awnings were rolled out on their metal frames. By seven o'clock Stringfellow and Jolly were awake and watching too. At eight the cabs for the London train began to leave.

  There!' said Verity suddenly. Two men were approaching a cab, the younger one helping the elder. 'That's 'im! That's Kite! And that other! 'ere, Stringfellow, it's Old Mole! Once for thieving and twice for handling stolen goods! This is it, Stringfellow! It gotta be!'

  The old yellow coach pulled out and rattled after the trim cabs. Verity saw the cab carrying Kite and Mole as it turned up West Street away from the sea. Far in the distance rose the cast-iron pillars and glass canopies of the London and Brighton Railway Company's terminus.

  'They ain't got Miss Bella with 'em!' howled Stringfellow as he drove. 'Where's she to?'

  'Never mind, Stringfellow! Keep after 'em!'

  They drew up in the station yard. Verity handed out six shillings to a porter to fetch two tickets for the 8.30 London train. Then he bustled Jolly out on to the pavement.

  'Wait with the cab, Stringfellow. If we have to go on the train, drive back to Tidy Street and wait there. I won't let 'em go, Stringfellow! Not now I got 'em!'

  Without staying for a reply, he snatched the tickets from the porter, gripped Jolly's arm, and plunged into the crowd on the heels of Kite and Old Mole. In the steamy, soot-laden air of the glass canopy the little engine of the London train waited with a dozen individual carriages. Verity stopped suddenly but his eyes were no longer on Kite or Old Mole. He squeezed Jolly's arm affectionately.

  'You are a good, truthful girl,' he whispered. 'I ain't a man that sees ghosts. But if that ain't Stunning Joe stood in a doorway, may I be shot!'

  20

  He was not mistaken, Verity was positive of that. Beyond the platform, in an archway of smoky brick which led to the crowded refreshment room, the little spiderman stood. In his shabby black and crumpled hat, Joe O'Meara looked a cross between an undertaker's mute and a comic drunkard in a stage farce. He saw neither Verity nor Jolly. His eyes turned steadily to follow the progress of Sealskin Kite, Old Mole and the three porters who carried their luggage. Then Stunning Joe pulled himself upright, following the men towards the London train.

  It was the 8.30 'Parliamentary' train, so called from its legal obligation to transport the poor as well as the rich. Behind the dark iron and polished brass of the little engine, with its tall stack and the double domes of its boilers, there were a dozen individual carriages. At their head were yellow and brown first-class coaches, no more than dumb-buffered boxes on wheels for all their quilted seating and new lights. Behind these came the paler brown second-class, and at the end the third-class passengers. The company made slight profit from its third-class passengers. Accordingly, their wagons were low-sided, open to the weather as if they were animal trucks. The seats were no better than planks without backs, set so uncomfortably that many third-class travellers preferred to stand.

  As Verity watched the waiting train he saw that another coach had been attached to it behind the luggage van which normally made up the rear of the assemblage. It was the most luxurious of all the vehicles provided by the London and Brighton company, a private saloon coach painted in royal blue and cream. The saloon was hired exclusively by a single traveller and represented a well-furnished drawing-room on wheels. There were cushioned seats round its sides, fixed armchairs and a polished rosewood table. At one end the carriage was partitioned off to accommodate a pair of servants and a water-closet.

  Into this privately-hired saloon, Sealskin Kite, Old Mole and their luggage had disappeared. From the shadows of an iron pillar Verity watched Stunning Joe. O'Meara had shown nothing of his plan yet. Perhaps he guessed, as Verity had done, the significance of having the hired coach behind the luggage van. It was to be slipped by its brakeman somewhere between Brighton and London Bridge. At the precise moment the coupling would be unfastened, the coach would ride loose and glide into a platform on the way without delaying the Parliamentary express. The slip might take place anywhere, Verity thought, Reigate or Haywards Heath, or perhaps some out of the way place where Sealskin Kite was to be the guest at another man's country house.

  Under the glass canopy of the station roof the steam and soot collected. A porter with a watering-can went up and down the train cooling the iron wheels of the carriages. There was a smell of quenched ashes in the warm air and a perfume of ripe pineapple from the third-class wagons. A warning bell rang and Verity tightened his grip on Jolly's arm.

  He had expected Stunning Joe to be dismayed by the sight of the slip-coach. There was no means by which a man could follow Sealskin Kite once the saloon had left the rest of the train. But either the thin-faced spiderman had not understood that such a thing could happen or else he had already allowed for it. Waiting to make sure that neither Kite nor Old Mole would leave the train, he pulled himself up from the platform into the last of the third-class carriages. Verity bustled the girl to the far end of the same carriage just as a snort and a shriek from the little engine announced the train's departure in earnest.

  With Jolly on his arm he sto
od among the shabby men and women at the end of the carriage nearest to the engine. Behind them there was only the luggage van and Sealskin Kite's saloon coach. Through the crowd he had a view of

  Joe's crumpled black hat as the spiderman looked from the open side of the coach across the tiles and red brick of the Brighton slums below. They were on the great viaduct where it strode across the dark streets to the north of the town. Patches of pale green downland, with flocks of Sussex sheep grazing, flashed like the images of lantern-slides in the openings of the crowd.

  Without warning the sides of the carriage shook as if with the impact of a blow and they were plunged into the darkness of Patcham tunnel. A few feet away the sides of the cut chalk, flecked by whiteness, roared and swirled as the express gathered speed again. Verity felt the girl press more tightly against him. Then the noise ended as abruptly as it had begun and they were out in the sunlight with trees flashing past them and the telegraph wires rising and falling endlessly beside the track.

  Verity looked for Stunning Joe. The stunted figure in black had gone.

  He had known that Joe might be tempted by such a feat but he had dismissed it from his mind as impossible. Pushing through the crowd, warning the girl to stay back, he found the opening at which Joe O'Meara had been watching the landscape as it flew from them. In the depths of Patcham tunnel there had been two or three minutes of complete darkness, even the lamps of the first-class carriages casting no light towards the end of the train. Now, in the brightness of the summer morning, it was Verity who looked out from the open side of the third-class wagon.

  Stunning Joe was just in sight. He had clambered along the foot-board of the coach, reached the luggage van and then trusted to his fingers and toes. The ledge above the wheels of the van was too slight to afford a foothold but with his toes lodged upon it and his fingers hooked over the edge of the curving carriage roof he had shuffled his way almost to the rear end of the luggage van. There was no sign of the shabby hat. Even the little man's coat streamed like a flag from his shoulders, whipping and snapping in the wind.