They turned into Whitehall Place, where stood the old house which had been a gentleman's residence with views of the Thames over Westminster Bridge, until it had been acquired by the police commissioners for their own purposes. Verity entered the door which led from the police office yard. He heard the drunken voices from the cells, smelt the familiar carbolic which overlaid more offensive odours, and felt a deep sense of foreboding.
'Sergeant Verity! I trust I still have your attention!' 'Yessir! Course, sir!'
From the swivel chair behind his oak desk, Inspector Croaker looked up at the plump, hatless sergeant who stood at attention with chin up, facing his superior. The gleam in Croaker's dark little porcine eyes might equally well have been anger, or triumph, or a combination of both. With his frock-coat buttoned up to his leather stock, his face the sickly yellow of a fallen leaf, and his dark whiskers finely trimmed, his appearance was an enduring image in Verity's mind. 'Sour as vinegar and mean as a stoat', Verity had described him to Bella. The dry, withered tones of Croaker's voice were expertly adapted to the flights of official irony with which he lashed his subordinates. Verity held himself rigidly at attention, his gaze directed over Croaker's head to the dark river beyond the uncurtained window.
'You would make a fool of me would you, sergeant?' said Croaker, his words hardly more than a whisper. 'You would make me a laughing-stock in America, would you?'
'Sir? Ain't sure what you mean, sir. With respect, sir.'
'Are you not, sergeant?' Croaker was swallowing greedily in anticipation of his vengeance. 'You are seconded from this detail to guard His Royal Highness. On your first day you break into a New York police office, commit aggravated assault upon two officers, and have to be extricated from a prison cell to the embarrassment of the Prince and his staff. You then persuade the United States Treasury that Lieutenant Dacre, who died three years ago in London, has robbed the Federal Mint! Were you not aware, sergeant, that I and the other responsible authorities had already given our word to the Treasury that the man was seen dead?'
'No, sir. No one told me what you said.'
'Do you choose to lie to me, sir?' squealed Croaker, gripping his desk as if in a desperate attempt to restrain himself from violence. 'I tell you, this is some plan of yours! Would you play the lawyer with me, sir?'
Verity eased his neck gently free of the sharp edge of his collar.
'Stand still!' shouted Croaker. 'I will have you at attention till tomorrow morning, if I choose. I will keep you here till you take root, unless I am afforded satisfaction over your conduct!'
' 'ave the honour to state, sir,' said Verity firmly, 'that I seen Lieutenant Dacre three times in America. Once on the steamboat Fidele at St Louis. Second time on the little boat, the Anna, near Sulphur Springs Landing. Third time, by the river at West Point. That's facts, sir. With respect, sir.'
'Ah,' said Croaker sardonically, ‘I thought we should
come to this. It rests on your own word, does it?' 'And Miss Jolly's, sir.'
Croaker's dark eyes glittered with animal delight.
'Yes, sergeant. The United States Treasury had already made arrangements to employ that young person before I was able to assure them of Dacre's death three years ago. That brave young woman saw more of the villain on this occasion than you ever did. She is prepared to swear on her oath that it was not Verney Dacre.'
'Bleedin' little liar, sir. With respect, sir.'
'Really, sergeant? Are we to believe instead the word of a man who was nearly killed on the after-deck of the Fidele because he could not tell the difference between Lieutenant Dacre and a wire clothes-frame?'
'Wasn't like that, sir.'
'The word of a man who was so stupid that at Niagara Falls he arrested his own colleague instead of the supposed criminal ?'
There was a pause. Verity's face glowed a deeper port-wine shade.
'I been put up, sir!' he said furiously. 'But I ain't going to be seen off!'
'On the contrary,' said Croaker, 'the Metropolitan Police is very probably going to see you off, as you put it.'
Verity's face tightened in alarm.
'Sir?'
'I did not bring you here this afternoon, sergeant, for the pleasure of hearing your American reminiscences. My duty in another matter requires me to decide whether to suspend you from duty pending investigations, or to have you arrested forthwith to face criminal charges.'
'Sir?'
Croaker sniffed and glanced at a paper lying before him.
'In July, sergeant, while investigating the death of Lord Henry Jervis, you and Sergeant Samson had occasion to escort a young person, Cox, from Brighton to London by railway. That young person now alleges that you and Sergeant Samson removed her clothes during the course of the journey and - ah - performed certain acts.' Verity's checks puffed out with indignation. 'Lies, sir!'
'Really, sergeant ? Young women seem to tell lies rather a lot about you, to judge from your protests this afternoon.'
'Sir,' said Verity firmly, 'she can be proved a liar. She and Mr Samson nearly missed that train, sir. They scrambled into the last carriage by the luggage-van while I was further up. There's two gentlemen in my carriage I could find again if I 'ad to, who'd swear to the truth of it. I never was with that young Cox person. And if she lied about me, then she'd lie about Mr Samson too.'
The inspector pursed his lips.
'Very well, sergeant, then we need only proceed against vou for a serious breach of discipline.' 'Sir?'
Croaker held up a worn volume, bound in dark brown cloth.
'Where detective officers are obliged to escort a female suspect, they are to ensure that the suspect is never privately alone with less than two officers. You have, therefore, just pleaded guilty to a flagrant breach of that regulation. The penalty would lie somewhere between six months' loss of seniority and dismissal.'
'What I saw in America, sir, I saw. The Mint robbed by Dacre, sir.'
'What robbery, sergeant? The United States is no longer complaining of one. Gold may be erroneously delivered to banks without anyone being robbed. It was held safely enough by the banks themselves.'
Verity stared incredulously at his antagonist as he sensed Croaker's trap closing upon him. Croaker wagged the brown book again.
'The penalty, in the other matter, is to apply with equal severity to your colleague, Sergeant Samson.'
Verity fell silent. The gas light hissed steadily in the stillness. At last Croaker spoke again, his voice hardly a murmur.
'Box clever with me, sergeant, and I will have you! Yes, damn you, sir! Cross me, and I will see you broke for it!'
The glitter in the dark little eyes was now one of unambiguous triumph. At a gesture from the inspector, Verity stamped about and marched smartly from the room.
'Off 'ome now, are yer?' asked Samson cheerfully. 'Conquering 'ero? Haifa minute. This come for you, day or two back.'
He gave Verity an envelope. Too full for speech, Verity thrust it into his pocket.
The cab turned into the shabby little street beyond the Edgware Road. Half-way down the row of houses was a wide archway in the facade, filled by a wooden door. It marked the stable where Stringfellow kept his own cab and the ancient horse Lightning. Above and around the stable were the rooms of the little dwelling where the old cabman lived with his daughter, Bella, and Verity, once his lodger but now his son-in-law. Weary of everything but the prospect of seeing Bella and the two infant Veritys again, the sergeant got down from the cab and approached the little door at the side of the stable entrance. He knocked and waited, guessing that the bolts might be across it on the far side by now. He heard them drawn back. Prepared to gather Bella in his arms, he stepped back in dismay.
The door had been opened by a stranger, a girl of about sixteen, small and pretty with large brown eyes, a halo of cropped fair curls and an attractively solemn little face. Verity's heart beat faster at the certainty that some disaster had overtaken his little family while he was away. He t
hought at first that, in his weariness, he had gone to the wrong door, but the little passageway beyond it showed the familiar green wash upon its walls and the cracked wood of the stairs. Fearful of the answer to his question, he gasped,
' 'ere! Where's Mrs Verity?'
The girl gave him a wide-eyed look and bobbed a half-curtsey.
'I'll see if madam is at home.'
The absurdity of the pretentiousness and the relief from his worst apprehensions struck him equally.
'I'm Verity,' he said sternly, 'and I'm home!'
The girl stood back uncertainly as he shouldered past. There was a movement at the far end of the passage, against a flush of oil light, and the sound of the wooden leg which had served Stringfellow since the loss of his own at the siege of Bhurtpore, thirty-seven years before. The old cabman lurched forward, grasping for his son-in-law's hand.
' 'ello, Verity, me old sojer!'
'What's all this, then, Stringfcllow ?' Verity nodded at the door.
'Only Lilruwfie,'said Stringfellow. 'Don't pay no notice.' 'Who?'
'Little Ruthie!' said Stringfellow with toothless deliberation. 'Name's Ruth, in other words.' 'What's she doing here?'
'Earning her keep, o' course. What else should she be doing?'
And then there was a cry from the stairs as Bella, with her plump little figure and blonde curls, scuttled toward Verity's open arms.
'Servants!' said Verity indignantly. ' 'ow I shall be able to look the rest of the street in the face, I don't know! We are servants, Mrs Verity. Least, I was before I went for a sojer. Superior servant, of course, but in service all the same.'
He and Bella lay side by side in the ancient bed, to which Julius Stringfellow had brought his young bride quarter of a century before. The Veritys lay on their backs like two figures on a tomb. There was an air of resentment and ill-temper.
'Speak for yourself, Mr Verity,' said Bella crossly, ‘I ain't a servant, and shan't be. Any case, it's Pa's house and he shall do as he likes. With you away and poor Pa crippled, it ain't easy to manage them two either, with no help.'
She jerked her head at the two cradles at the foot of the bed, where Billy and Vicky slumbered with the round red faces and the black hair of Verity himself.
'It ain't right for Mr Stringfellow to have that young person sleeping like a cat in front of the kitchen fire all night,' said Verity in his most magisterial manner.
'She ain't in front of the fire,' said Bella sharply. 'She got a proper attic servants' room.'
'But Mr Stringfellow got that!'
'Pa got one of them. He done the next one out special for little Ruth. She got nowhere to go, once she came to London from the country.'
Verity sat upright with a start. ' 'Your Pa up there with that young person?' It was perhaps from the next house in the terrace, beyond the lath and plaster of the flimsy partition wall, that he heard the creak of boards, low voices and the familiar slap of a hand on smooth bare flesh.
Bella sat upright as well.
'William Clarence Verity!' she wailed. 'I never took you for such a unnatural, ungrateful creetur! Pa give you a 'ome! 'e give your offspring a roof over their 'cads! And all you do to thank him is to think nastiness about him behind his back. I - hoo-hoo-hoo!'
There was an angry wail from one of the cradles.
'Now, now, Mrs Verity!' said Verity hastily. 'I never said that!'
This time there was no doubt that the sound came from above them. It was Stringfellow's fruity chortle and a growl of appreciation.
'Sec what you done!' howled Bella. 'You started little Vicky off and you woke poor Pa! He gotta be up five o'clock to see to the 'orse and get to Langham Place cab-stand!'
Verity temporarily abandoned the moral warning he had prepared for Bella about her father's behaviour and the awful danger of finding herself with new brothers and sisters younger than her own children.
'I got a great respect for your old father,' he said sternly, trying to close his mind to the muttering overhead.
Bella subsided into uncertain silence. Verity swung himself out of bed and walked over to the little window of the room. After the mist and smoke of the day, the November night was clear and cold, promising one of the first frosts of the winter. From Paddington Green to the horizon south of the river, from the gardens of Bayswater to the steeples of Aldgate and Bow, the city was lit by the faint, luminous beauty of a thousand stars. He thought of the letter which Samson had given him, forgotten in the disagreeable discoveries awaiting him on his return to Stringfellow's little house. It was still in his coat pocket, as he fumbled his way toward the garment and drew it out. He slit open the envelope and felt for the paper inside. There was none. He touched a round hard shape, like a large coin, with something soft attached to it. Even before he drew it out, he knew what it must be. It was the button torn from his coat in the struggle beside the rope. He had last seen it in the hand of Vcrney Dacre, the only man, surely, who could have known to whom it belonged.
Verity's heart leapt with exultation, despite the momentous implications of the message.
'I'll show 'em!' he said fiercely. 'I'll have Mr Croaker flayed and salted for this when the time do come! And all them that's in it with him! Dead, was 'e? Huh! I'd wager he ain't dead now!'
'Mr Verity?' the voice came softly from the bed. 'What you on about?'
He was bursting with the news, but he realized in time that the full truth would lead her to worry and fret for his safety.
'Nothing, Mrs Verity, dear,' he said, easing himself into bed once more, 'only some meanness of Mr Croaker's again.'
The reconciliation soon began.
'It was for you, Mr Verity,' said Bella softly. 'You being part of His Highness's household. And it was only to be little Ruthie, no more 'n that.'
'There, there, Mrs Verity! Bella!'
'And you wouldn't want her sent to Mrs Rouncewell's, along with them other unfortunates, would you?'
Verity thought of the burly ex-police matron and her leering appreciation of Ruth's naked charms.
'No,' he said hastily, 'course not.'
'And Pa says she won't be no inconvenience to you. 'e says
'Yes, Mrs Verity?'
'Pa says he won't have her in your way or anywhere that you might get a chance to give her a bit of a touch-up.'
There was a pained silence. Presently Bella said,
'Mr Verity?'
'Yes, Bella?'
'What's a touch-up?'
'What did your Pa say it was, then?'
'Dunno. All he said was that when you arrested unfortunate young persons, 'e bets you give 'em a good touch-up.'
'Oh, that,' said Verity, improvising rapidly. 'That ain't nothing but a slum phrase what's used for officers arresting people. An officer that nibs someone, arrests 'em. If he snaps the darbies on, he arrests 'em. If he feels their collars, he arrests 'em. And if he gives a good touch-up, he does the same.
'So you gave Miss Jolly a good touch-up?'
'Likewise,' said Verity, 'that ain't a real name. A jolly is slum talk for a girl what causes bother. She soon got called Miss Jolly for that. What she was called before, if she ever had a name, no one knows.'
'If you arrested me, then, ' said Bella innocently, ‘I s'pose I'd get a good touch-up?'
'In a manner o' speaking, Mrs Verity.'
He felt the bed begin to shake with her suppressed laughter.
'William Clarence Verity!' she gasped happily. 'You ain't 'alf a bloomin' liar.'
'That's what a jolly is,' he said with a giggling snort.
'Ask anyone down Paddington Green.'
Wearying of the joke, she turned toward him and nudged him with her plump little elbow.
'Welcome 'ome, Mr Verity,' she whispered knowingly. 'Welcome 'ome!'
hive.
Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal Page 26