Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (19 page)

One after another, he attacked the boxes, disguising the holes afterwards by rubbing in soft black wax. The bit squealed against the last metal plate and, as if in response, he heard a shout close by, hardly further than the other side of the wall. Dacre froze and listened. The shout came again, and then a braying laugh. He let out another long breath, knowing that it was probably two or three drunkards in the street, making their way raucously home. How the sounds carried to him he could not tell. There must be ventilators and grills, as well as the system of flues. He was conscious, above all, of the ease with which any sound of his own might be heard.

The boxes, their lids standing back, revealed the canvas bags of coin. Before going further, Dacre went to his own box and took out a pair of clean gloves which fitted tightly over his hands. He drew a double pair of stockings over his feet and wiped any traces of soot from the handles he had touched. Then, from the same box, he chose a pair of brass scales and a pile of large bags in coarse stout canvas, the colour of cooked gruel. It was as he was doing this that he heard, far off, the chimes and strokes of midnight. It was a shock that he had been absorbed for so long with the locks and he knew that he must work desperately against time to complete the task that remained.

Opening the other five 'royal' boxes with his key he shone the lamplight on shifting piles of pale grey lead shot. This could be added, little by little, to make up exact weights. But for the bulk of the weight which must remain in the bank boxes, he looked to the Mint itself. He thought first of the iron fire-bars in the furnace-rooms and then, as a possible addition, the spare five-pound and ten-pound weights which stood to one side of the weighing-room. He took several of the canvas bags and went in search of this ballast. Even if the spare weights and bars were missed in the morning, the first supposition would be that they had been moved for an official reason. What man, after all, would break into a Mint full of gold in order to steal iron bars?

His first stroke of fortune had come in noticing that the bank boxes were marked with their weight, as were the bags of coin inside them. This made it easier and quicker to compute the amount of ballast needed to replace the gold. Dacre worked rapidly with scales and balance. He was surprised, despite himself, to find that some of the boxes had sixty or seventy pounds weight of gold coin and, by his guess, would hold a hundred thousand dollars or more in value. Dark and glowing in the rich oil-light, the coins trickled softly into the lined scale-pan. From there, Dacre poured them into the open 'royal' boxes, into the lined pouches waiting to receive them. By the time that he had exchanged the exact weights and closed the black-lacquered boxes, it had taken him more than an hour to accomplish the labour. In that time, working with the speed of a man who sensed the minutes passing all too vividly, he had packed the contents of almost nine bank boxes into his own.

Twice more, Dacre went back to the furnace, the boiler, the weighing-room, searching for whatever ballast came to hand. At length he had emptied the remaining bank boxes, filled them to their previous weight with ballast and lead shot, and closed them once more. He locked the vault door with his makeshift keys, locked and sealed his own boxes, keeping back the seal to stamp the wax of the last one, having replaced its weight with coin. On the floor around him lay the small cloth and leather bags of the bank, heavy with coin and each seeming about the size of a large grapefruit. First wiping the sweat away where it gathered on the woollen rim of his Balaclava helmet, Dacre began scooping up these smaller bags and thrusting them into his own canvas sacks. Much of the weight of the coinage had gone into his black-lacquered boxes, but there were still more than two hundred of the pouches and bags, swollen with their two-pound weight of Gold Eagles. The latest figures for the Mint showed a production of eight million dollars in gold coinage every year. The rules of the Treasury required that a three-month reserve should be held in the vault. As Dacre dragged the first of the laden sacks toward the furnace shaft, he knew that this computation confirmed his guess. Two million dollars in gold.

One after another, he dragged the loaded sacks across the weighing-room floor, knowing that this would obliterate any exact marks of the steps he had made. The amount of gold was more than he had imagined, its weight far greater. The nine sacks were too heavy to lift, perhaps because Dacre's thin, nervous body was shaking with fatigue as he pulled the last one to the dark, open furnace. He could have sworn that each seemed to hold more than a hundredweight and yet it was absurd that he could have moved half a ton of gold in this manner, let alone the amount now lying in the black-lacquered boxes. Almost dizzy with the labour and the exhilaration, he closed the steel door of the stronghold, turned the spindle of the combination-lock to the left, and heard the heavy bolt slam home.

The long coil of rope was where he had left it, in the empty furnace opening. Dacre took the first of the smaller money bags from the sack and impaled it on one of the wire hooks with which his rope was equipped at twelve-inch intervals. He worked with the fury of demonic possession, racing to finish his labour of darkness before the first light of day should put an end to his hopes. Even with the rope uncoiled and every hook sunk into the canvas or leather of its respective pouch, there was still more gold left in the sacks.

Abandoning the remainder for the time being, Dacre entered the black, sooty shaft, crawling upward on his side toward the vertical drop of the main chimney. He towed the laden rope after him, yard by yard, until he had gathered it at last just where the slope from the rolling-shop furnace joined the main upward shaft. Leaving the rope, he worked his way up the main chimney until he was once again level with its opening, looking out over the roof where the canvas tube of the banner fell away to the window-on the far side of Juniper Street.

It was still dark, darker indeed than when he had first gone down to open the vault, since most of the gas lights had long been extinguished. Gently he pulled the rope upward, feeling the growing resistance as the weight of the moneybags began to rise clear of the side-shaft. At the worst, there would be no more than fifty or sixty pounds weight at any one time in the vertical drop of the main chimney. He saw the first pale shape of a canvas pouch rising towards him and seized it, tearing it from the wire hook. It was the work of a second to rip it open, tilt the seething mound of Gold Eagles into the tightened canvas chute, and listen to the hissing sound of their descent towards the window where Morant-Barham stood.

As a final precaution, Joey was to receive the coins in a sieve lodged in a bucket of sand. Their arrival would make hardly a sound. Dacre paused a moment, long enough for them to be sieved out, then ripped open the second bag and disposed of its contents in the same manner. There was no time to do more than drop the empty bags into the chimney. They would not have moved easily in the canvas chute, and by falling directly to the bottom of the main stack, they would lie directly above the melting-shop furnaces and burn up within a few hours.

One after another, Dacre emptied the bags and shot their coins into the canvas gulley. His limbs ached as he braced himself in the narrow chimney opening. But he knew, from the angle and tautness of the canvas banner, that the coins were rolling and slithering down its incline like water in a channel-pipe. He worked till his nails bled and his hands throbbed with the cold. It must have been two o'clock by the time that he began to pull the rope upward, and a clock had struck three in the chill air before he felt a sudden yielding and knew that he had come to the last twenty feet or so of its length.

There was no way of warning Morant-Barham that things had not gone quite as he intended, that the amount of gold required a second descent. Throwing the slack end of the rope before him, Dacre began to ease himself down once more inside the main stack.

This time, at least, there were fewer money-bags to be hooked to the rope, yet in his exhaustion he seemed unable to match the passing of time. When the last bag was attached, he crawled once more into the sloping furnace shaft, holding the large empty sacks. At the joining of the main vertical shaft he tossed these down so that they might burn up the next morning with the discarded money-bags. Then, once more, he began to draw the rope up after him, coiling it at the joining of the two chimneys. With infinite weariness, he pulled himself up the main shaft for the last time, lodged himself at its top, and hauled on the rope.

It was, ironically, almost the last of the money-bags, which eluded him. His numbed and aching fingers hardly tried to catch it. From far below him, echoing up the shaft, he heard the clatter of spilling gold as the coins burst from their bag. Dismally, he realized that they might have gone in every direction, scattering into all the rooms of the Mint which had fire or furnace openings. Equally, they might have fallen down into the dark chamber where the flues converged and where they would melt slowly and undetected.

In any case, it was out of the question to go back. It was some time after four in the morning and at any moment the first light might streak the sky behind him. Dacre disposed of the last coins. He pulled himself up, thrusting the rope into the canvas chute, and sat on the chimney edge, his feet dangling outside the shaft. He was safe, at least insofar as he could not be seen from the street, a black figure against a black sky. And there was one final task to perform.

When Dacre had filed through the grating bars, he had done it carefully at a slant, so that it was possible to lodge the severed grating back in place upon the stubs which projected from the wall. Once it was in place, he took from his belt a leather pouch which had been part of the equipment waiting for him in the first lacquered box. The grey and gritty paste stuck to his fingers as he smoothed it over the bars, replacing the mortar where he had chipped it away. In a few days more, blackened by furnace smoke, the chimney grill would look, on casual inspection, as though it had never been touched. It was not a necessary precaution, but Dacre shivered with laughter at the neatness of it. When the hue and cry was raised, the authorities would be compelled to admit that there appeared to be no means, short of supernatural agency, by which he could have entered their Mint. And yet, as the missing gold would prove, he had entered it nonetheless.

Dacre detached the canvas banner from the blackened stack and moved on his belly over the roof slates, until he was at the parapet above Juniper Street. The road and its sidewalks were dimly lit and deserted. Four feet away from him rose the telegraph post, to which the banner was also attached, with a drop of some forty feet between him and it. He knew that it was an absurd risk in his present state to jump for the post, hoping that he could cling to it. In any case, there was no need. He wound the loose length of the banner round his waist, and tied it with the rope. Then, gripping it like a rope at the level of his chest, he launched himself outward and downward, feet poised to contact with the post.

He swung so easily that he thought, after all, he might almost have done it in a jump. He released the canvas round his waist and waited for Joey to let go the garret end of the banner. As soon as he saw it begin to slacken, Dacre also detached the end which was tied to the telegraph post on his side. The long, loyal greeting drooped gently to the street.

He moved soundlessly down the post by the alternating grip of hands and knees. It was the work of a moment to roll up the canvas chute and, with it under his arm, to enter the street door of the shabby house. As he stumbled to the top of the stairs, he heard a bolt being drawn back in readiness. Joey Morant-Barham stared at the figure in the doorway, the features blackened beyond recognition, the dark trousers torn, the doubled socks and gloves showing a wetness that could only be blood.

'Well, old fellow’ he said mildly, ‘I rather think we may have done it this time!'

Dacre's shoulders began to move. Then he cackled aloud, and then, tearing off the Balaclava helmet and throwing it on the floor, he shouted with laughter till the tears ran.

'Joey, my dear boy,' he sighed, as though with a final effort, 'let the day break as soon as they like, they ain't going to find a single coined half-dollar of gold in the entire bloody Mint!'

12

'Dammit, old chum,' said Morant-Barham, still in a daze of adulation half an hour later, 'but did you ever see such chinkers as these?'

He held up a twenty-dollar Eagle, raw and shining in its newness, circling it with thumb and forefinger to catch the gaslight on its bright gold for Dacre's benefit.

'The pull ain't finished yet, Joey,' said Dacre hoarsely, "and if our bags aren't packed ready to leave this bug-trap in an hour more, we may both get an up-and-down jacketing from Lucifer on account of it.'

Stripped to the waist, Dacre was stooping over a tin bowl of steaming water, scrubbing at his face and hands to remove the traces of soot. Through the thin curtains of the brightly-lit attic, the first cold faintness of day was just visible.

'Nine sharp, Joey,' Dacre continued. 'That's our appointment to fetch the boxes from the Mint.'

Morant-Barham looked up from the carpet-bags into which he was scooping the loose coins.

'And the gold brick from their governor's office, dear fellow. How the mischief you shall get that back, I don't know.'

Dacre laughed through his wet hands.

'Open that bag of mine, Joey, and rest your eyes on what's inside! Ain't I been carrying that brick around in it since yesterday morning?'

Morant-Barham opened and exclaimed. Dacre dismissed the trick as hardly worth comment.

'Should you not wonder at my sending for the box in Snowden's office, and the nonsense with the key? Could you not see that there was a moment when they must all turn their backs while I held the casket? And did you not know that I should change it for another, easy as taking out a hunter to tell the time by?'