‘All went as smoothly as butter, Inspector Box. The five launches sailed into my dock – little things they looked, too, beside these great merchant vessels – and their cargoes were offloaded on to the steam tender.’
‘So all went well?’ Box repeated. He sounded as though he remained to be convinced.
‘Yes, that’s what I’ve told you, isn’t it? The tender conveyed the whole consignment of gold out to the Gustavus Vasa yonder. The entire operation took forty minutes. There were riflemen at hand to see fair play, as you might say.’ The elderly captain shook his head sadly. ‘But it’s bad news, Inspector,’ he continued, ‘about Sir Hamo Strange’s gold. Somebody must have got wind of what was going on, though it was hardly a state secret! Still, shifting gold isn’t really our affair. All we did was lend them one of our docks.’
He turned away from the river, and regarded the complex of dock buildings with pride.
‘Do you see these warehouses, Inspector? They’re holding a hundred thousand tons of goods – sugar, coffee, flour, cocoa, all kind of spices. That’s what our business is all about.’
While Captain Mason was speaking, Box had been surveying the busy quays of the great dock. A figure in a flapping Ulster cape and a high-crowned beaver hat had just emerged from the sooty little station, clutching a ticket in one of his gloved hands. The man glanced up at the roof of the warehouse, and Box saw to his surprise that it was Superintendent Mackharness.
‘Box,’ he shouted, in his unexpectedly powerful voice, ‘down here, if you please. I shan’t keep you more than a minute.’ Box bade farewell to Captain Mason, and hurried down the vertiginous spiral staircase of the warehouse. Mackharness’s ‘minutes’ had been known to last an hour.
Mr Mackharness said nothing until he had led Box to a rough alehouse, evidently the exclusive domain of the dock force. It had no name, but the man inside, a hard-bitten Irishman, said his name was Pat, and that the premises were known as Pat Mooney’s.
‘Box,’ said Superintendent Mackharness, ‘I’m minded to buy you a glass of something. What will you have?’
‘Why, thank you, sir,’ Box replied. ‘A glass of India Pale Ale would be very welcome.’
‘One India Pale Ale, Mr Pat Mooney,’ said Mackharness, ‘and a pint of Irish stout. Is that your little office there, behind the bar? We’ll take it in there, if you don’t mind. We’re Scotland Yard officers, here on Government business.’
The landlord, subdued by Mackharness’s designedly overbearing manner, did as he was told, and left the two men alone in his office, which was little more than a cupboard with a grimy window looking out on to the dock railway.
‘Now, Box,’ said Box’s master, ‘Sergeant Knollys told me that you were coming out here, so I decided to come out after you. There’s nobody to overhear us here, and I’ve something I want to tell you. Just over half an hour ago I was called upon at the Rents by my friend Lord Maurice Vale Rose – I think you know that his lordship and I are acquainted?’
‘Yes, sir. A great honour on both sides, if I may say so.’
‘Well, the honour’s all on my side, Box, though I expect you meant your remark kindly. But what was I saying? Yes, Lord Maurice Vale Rose is one of the Permanent Under-Secretaries at the Treasury. He told me that the Government, on hearing of the robbery at Carmelite Pavement, has immediately made available the sum of one million pounds in gold bars to complete the Swedish Loan.’
‘The Government? Well, sir, that’s very interesting. It makes you think….’
‘Yes, doesn’t it? I thought you’d be intrigued. This consignment of gold bars will be brought down the river on a Royal Naval light cruiser, and will arrive here in the West India docks at three o’clock this afternoon. The bullion will be loaded on to the tender under armed guard, and taken out to the Gustavus Vasa, which will immediately raise anchor and set out for Göteborg. What do you think of that?’
Mackharness had nearly finished his pint of Irish stout, but he paused for a moment and looked steadily at Box over the rim of his tankard.
‘I’m thinking that it’s very quick work, sir – far too quick for my liking. It’s as though someone in the Treasury had been expecting this robbery to happen…. Somebody appears to be oiling someone else’s wheels. It makes me nervous.’
‘It makes me nervous too, Box. It suggests that someone outside the Treasury knew that the loan would be guaranteed. Incidentally, Lord Maurice Vale Rose told me that the Bank of England had insured the whole consignment of four million pounds against loss by theft or accident. Maybe somebody knew that, as well. Think about it, will you, Box?’
‘I will, sir. What do you want me to do now?’
‘You’d better stay out on the river all day, in case that missing launch is found holed up somewhere. This robbery is a shocking affair, Box, and I myself am not going to emerge scot-free from the affair. I planned the whole thing, so that, if the need arises in higher quarters, I can be made a convenient scapegoat.’
‘But it’s not your fault, sir—’
‘Not, it’s not, but one must learn to take the rough with the smooth. So do as I say, and stay on the river, will you? That heavy launch can’t have got very far. I think that’s all, Box. I’ll leave you, now. The Commissioner’s asking for me, and I must get back to Whitehall Place before noon.’
‘Paper, paper! Big bullion robbery! Millions lost! Read all about it!’
The City rang with the news, and the vendors did excellent business as the early afternoon papers were all but snatched from their hands. Men in dark frock coats and silk hats congregated on the pavements, discussing the robbery. Poor old Strange! He stands to lose a million. It’s a vast sum, even for someone like him…. Oh, don’t worry about Strange. Somebody told me that the Bank had insured the whole consignment with the Prudential Assurance Company. Strange will be all right.
‘Paper, paper! Desperate villain posed as policeman! Latest! Mahoney sought!’
The gold robbery at Carmelite Pavement monopolized the conversation in The Recorder public house near Barbican. Mr Arthur Portman had contrived to ignore the banter of his fellow clerks for the last half-hour, but the arrival of yet more sensational accounts of the robbery made him judge the time right to reply to the question that one of the company had just asked him.
‘A statement? From me? What kind of statement do you want, my friend? The theft of old Strange’s gold has nothing to do with us at Peto’s.’
‘Did Peto’s consignment make it safely to the West India Docks?’
‘It did, all six hundred thousand pounds of it. It’ll be safe on board that Swedish ship by now.’
The verbal give and take between Portman and the others was good-humoured, and the background murmur of conversation in the crowded public bar had continued. But then someone else asked a question, and both its truculent tone and indiscreet content brought the bar chatter to an abrupt stop.
‘Is it true that Peto’s vaults are empty? The word’s going round that Peto’s half-million contribution left the cupboard bare.’
Mr Arthur Portman sprang from his seat, upsetting the remains of his sherry on the bar top in his agitation.
‘Nonsense! What a mischievous lie! There’s … well, there’s sufficient money down there to stock the tills for a month. In any case, any shortage of specie would be only temporary, as you know quite well – Government loans are always repaid on time. There’s no call for panic, I tell you—’
‘But you’re getting out, aren’t you? That’s what you told old Joey Beadle in here, the other day. Sounds as though Peto’s is a sinking ship—’
‘It’s not true, I tell you! For God’s sake, shut your mouth – it’s rumours of that kind that can bring a solvent house crashing down to ruin.’
It was the rough-mannered and weather-stained Inspector Cross of the River Police and his men who discovered the steam launch C1. Nosing their heavy galley in and out of a maze of stagnant waterways penetrating the vast derelict commercial s
ite of Corunna Lands below Waterloo Bridge, they had found the launch scuttled in a disused repair basin, its white funnel tilted drunkenly above the black and greasy water. Cross had alerted Inspector Saville of the Thames Division, and then he and his men had rowed away to their base at Lower Station, Blackwall Hulks.
Arnold Box arrived at Parr’s Basin as dusk was falling. Corunna Lands, abandoned by its proprietors in the late ’80s and awaiting development, was a dismal sight. Derelict buildings sagged on the grass-grown quays; sheds and workshops had collapsed in ruin; many structures had been burnt down by gleeful young incendiaries.
During the late afternoon, the great steam pontoons of the London Salvage Company had eased their way through the dereliction, and the firm’s skilled operators had commenced their preparations to lift the sunken launch from the basin. Sixteen nine-inch-thick wire hawsers had already been passed under the hull by divers, and attached to cable drums, which had been positioned by crane on either side of the basin. Box, standing on a platform some six feet above the quays, listened as the company’s chief engineer explained what was going to happen.
‘We’ve positioned those two great steam engines on either side of the basin, Mr Box. Each engine, with its attendant cable winder, is heavier than the launch. They’re massive affairs, those engines, and they can only be moved and put into position by the big steam cranes you can see over there.’
The engineer motioned towards the cranes, towering up over the ruined landscape from an adjacent waterway.
‘When the drums are turned, Inspector, the hawsers under the hull are tightened and raised, and the vessel is brought up to the surface. Of course, it’ll tilt over to one side as soon as it leaves the water. The hawsers attached to the right-hand cable drum are then raised at an angle – the drum and its housing are lifted bodily on a moving platform – and the vessel slides down towards the opposite quay. We’ll use grappling irons to drag it bodily on to the wide paving.’
Flaring torches had been lit all round the basin, and the flickering light glanced off the black, impenetrable water. The men went about their tasks with the detachment born of long practice. The steam engines roared and thundered on either side of the basin, as they were brought to their highest pitch of power. Looking at this scene, Box was strongly reminded of the oil flares lighting up the backyard of 14 Back Peter Street, Soho, when he and PC Lane had unearthed the evil graveyard beneath the outside privy.
There came a hiss of steam, and a thunderous clanging roar from the vast hawser drums. Nothing seemed to happen for more than five minutes, and then a shriek of protesting steel rose from the disturbed water. The sound set Box’s teeth on edge. From the depths below they heard a dull boom as the submerged cables hit the keel of the stricken launch. The busy engines roared away, the light from their fires spreading across the paving of the quays.
Slowly but steadily the steam launch C1 rose out of the water. The superstructure was only a little damaged, though the light awning that had covered the deck had been sloughed off and lost below the water. The hawsers shrieked as they were tightened, and as the whole structure cleared the surface, streams of water began to flow down from the launch, cascading like so many waterfalls into the disturbed basin.
When thirty minutes had passed, the engines were shut off for a moment, while a man in oil skins clambered out on the perilous cradle. He seemed to Box to be patting the dented side of the launch with a leather-gloved hand. Apparently satisfied, the man slithered cautiously back to the quay, and shouted something to his mates. The steam engines roared back into life.
With a renewed hissing of steam and a heavy rumbling of machinery, the cable drum on the quay to Box’s right began to rise on its moving platform. It was a slow process, occupying all of half an hour, during which time the last light of day receded, and the flaring torches seemed to burn more brightly. At last, with an echoing scraping reverberation, the launch began to slide towards the left-hand quay. Skilled hands reached out with long grappling hooks to drag it off the hawsers and on to the wide flagged walkway on the rim of the basin.
Box’s attention turned to the shadowy figures standing near him on the platform above Parr’s Basin. The company’s chief engineer, an elderly be-whiskered man in a bulky overcoat and a black bowler hat, had excused himself and climbed carefully down to the quay. From the darkness emerged the familiar figure of Inspector Saville of the Thames Division. Like Box, he had been working all day without a break, but his tired face broke into a smile. Box recognized in his uniformed companions some of the police officers whom he had seen earlier in the day at Carmelite Wharf
‘Now that she’s out of the water,’ said Saville, when he had greeted Box, ‘you can see that she was bigger in every way than you’d have thought. There was certainly plenty of room to store seventy-eight bullion chests. But I don’t suppose we’ll find anything in her, Mr Box. The thieves must have sailed her into here and out of sight, removed the gold, and then scuttled the launch to hide her. Very clever of them. They’ll have conveyed the gold out of this wilderness and up on to Waterloo Road, as like as not. That’s how I read the situation. From there, they could disappear into Southwark and lie low for a while.’
‘You say they’d have “conveyed” the gold somewhere, Mr Saville. What exactly do you mean by that? How do you “convey” one million pounds of gold in seventy-eight chests, each weighing two hundredweight? They’d need a positive army of men to drag their booty out of all this ruin and decay.’
‘Well, maybe they had such an army! They’d need twenty gangers of their own, not an impossible thing for a first-class criminal to organize. That’s for us to find out, Mr Box. Either way, they’ll have left traces of their activity. So, at first light, I’ll take my officers up on to Waterloo Road, and we’ll move on from there. What do you intend to do?’
‘I’m going to take a look in that launch. Perhaps they took fright, scuttled the boat and fled, leaving its cargo behind. In any case, I’m going to take a look.’
Accompanied by two seasoned men, Arnold Box clambered over the stricken launch’s side. He had been given a hooded lantern, and its light glittered off little pools of water marooned in the well of the boat. He edged his way along the glistening deck, and past the silent engine house. He could glimpse the white funnel with its red band and numeral rising crazily at an angle above him.
As he reached the stem of the launch he stumbled over something bulky lying in the scuppers. He directed the light of his lantern downward, and met the open, incurious eyes of the dead Police Constable Lane.
By seven o’clock the steam machinery had fallen silent, and the body of PC Lane had been carried from the wreck. Fresh torches had been lit, and it was by the light of these that a hastily summoned civilian doctor, a young man attached to one of the hospitals, examined the remains.
Arnold Box remained aloof, sitting on a broken wall. So much, he thought, for the thrill of the chase. Strange and his millions were as nothing in comparison to the life of that young man…. He stirred as the doctor straightened up, and looked in his direction. Lane’s body had been placed on the flags of the quay, as there were no roofed buildings in sight.
‘There’s not much that I can tell you, Inspector,’ said the young doctor. ‘But for what it’s worth, I can assert that this man was not drowned, as you might have thought. He would have been dead before he was placed into that launch.’
‘How did he die, Doctor?’
‘His neck was broken, probably as the result of a massive blow to the throat. The trachea seems to be crushed…. I can’t see anything properly. I’d be able to tell you more if I could examine the body in a decent mortuary.’
Box glanced down at his dead colleague. Someone had closed his eyes, and his boyish round face looked peaceful, but his head lay at a grotesque angle, and even in the flickering light of the torches Box could see the massive bruising at the throat. It was a fortnight to the day since he and Lane had attended the seance in Spitalfields
.
‘Poor fellow!’ said the doctor. ‘He looks so young. I’ve never been called out to a case like this before. How old was he, Inspector?’
‘He was twenty-three, Doctor— I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Miller. Donald Miller. I’m only twenty-five myself. I’m a house surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital.’
Box looked at the young man, with his clean-shaven face and eager eyes. He was only a couple of years older than poor Lane. He was suddenly aware of his surroundings, of the dark expanse of Corunna Lands, where little fires glowed among the vast area of ruins. He could see the bright line of the river, and the brilliantly lighted north side of the Thames glowing beyond the bridges.
‘His name was PC Lane, Dr Miller, and, as I said, he was twenty-three years old. A few weeks ago he and his wife lost their little girl, aged two and a half. Now Mrs Lane’s lost her young husband as well. She’s got three other children, two boys and a girl, to look after. She lives near Bevis Marks, just by the Baltic Exchange.’
‘Terrible…. I suppose you have your own doctors, don’t you? After tonight’s exprience, I’d love to be of some use to the police.’
‘Well, Doctor, there are always vacancies for police surgeons, and I think you’d be more than welcome. In any case, I can ensure that you’re retained for the post-mortem on poor Lane, if that’s what you want. When you have the time, call on me at 4 King James’s Rents, Whitehall Place, and I’ll tell you something about a police surgeon’s work.’
‘Thank you very much, Inspector. What about this body? Shall I—?’
‘Some police officers will be arriving soon, Doctor, with a shell in a police hearse. They’ll convey the remains to the Metropolitan Police Mortuary in Horseferry Road. Perhaps you’d call there tomorrow morning, and make yourself known to them. I’m certain that you’ll be invited to assist. Mention my name: Detective Inspector Box. Thanks for all you’ve done here, Dr Miller. Don’t forget my address: 4 King James’s Rents.’
The Gold Masters Page 13