Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (5 page)

There was no one to be seen. Verity strolled forward, as nonchalantly as the conditions would allow. He passed the barrier and moved casually towards the first companion-way which led down to the state-rooms. A burly figure suddenly materialized in what he had thought was the empty doorway.

'You ain't first-class!' it said.

'Stop a bit,' said Verity reasonably.

'No one been out this way this morning,' said the man, 'so anyone trying to go down must have come from elsewhere.'

'I got a special reason, a matter of business.' A second large man appeared behind the shoulder of the first.

'What business?'

With a sense of triumph, Verity produced his warrant-card and held it where they could both see.

'I'm from Scotland Yard,' he said proudly, 'Private-Clothes.'

‘I don't care if you're from Buckingham Palace,' said the first man, 'you're not first-class. You don't
look
first-class.

And you could have stole that card anywhere!'

'I'm a police officer!' said Verity with indignation.

'Not here you aren't,' said the man and closed the companion way doors.

For six more days, Verity lay on his horsehair slab and thought.

'Even Mr Croaker ain't soft enough to fall for the same dodge twice,' he said to himself. 'Then why the mischief is she sent ?'

He lay there thinking of the girl's past. Even her real name was a mystery. She was known professionally as Miss Jolly from the cant term for a 'jolly' as one who brought trouble in her wake. Her apprenticeship had been picking up Pall Mall clubmen in Waterloo Place and taking them to her room in Panton Street. Then her trim gold figure and dark odalisque eyes had given her a second income, doing harem dances before coster audiences at a penny-gaff. Her true proprietor, however, was Lieutenant Dacre, the cracksman of the famous South-Eastern Railway robbery, whom she helped to spirit away almost half a ton of bullion from its sealed van. She scuttled about her business like a frightened little mouse, knowing that she might hang for his murders if he were ever caught.

Then her sneering master imprisoned her in his Langham Place bawdy-house, promising her the living death of a closed brothel in Marseille. She had escaped briefly, disguising herself as a boy in tight trousers and cap. They caught her easily, bringing her to the soundproof room of the Langham Place house. Her master watched, calmly smoking his cigar, as his two bullies stripped her of the trousers and bent her forward over a rocking-horse. Verity had later seen the leather switch. He had heard with a shudder the account of her screams and gyrations. He had even glimpsed the tapestry of fading weals across the smooth coppery cheeks of Miss Jolly's bottom.

But in the agony and shame of the thrashing, the almond-eyed young slave had planned her implacable revenge to destroy her sardonic tormentor. Her brief moment as a pretty angel of destruction had been awe-inspiring. Verity had no illusions as to her dislike of him, though he had done nothing to compare with the cracksman's whipping of Miss Jolly. Yet the malice in the dark eyes suggested that she might find supreme satisfaction in deceiving superior officers for the pure pleasure of destroying him.

After many more days and nights of such conjectures, he stood on the deck on a misty morning and saw a sloping shore on either side, with neat white villas among immaculate turf and trees. Presently this Arcadian view gave way to the grey institutional walls of a prison and an asylum. Then, under a cloud of drifting smoke, there appeared a profusion of buildings with an occasional church spire rising among them. They were approaching a river estuary, crowded with a forest of masts and with ships of every size under way. Several ships of the Cunarder's size were making their way cautiously through the teeming cross-traffic of the noisy steam-ferries, laden with passengers, coaches, horses, wagons, baskets and boxes. The clinking of capstans and the ringing of bells from other ships were now clearly audible. They were so close to the shore itself that Verity caught the hum and buzz of the city, the sound of a steam-whistle and the barking of dogs. Unlike his companions at the ship's rail, he hardly seemed to notice the bustling panorama of New York under the warm September sky.

'She may have made fools out of them,' he said softly to himself, looking towards the first-class promenade-deck, 'but if she 'opes to make one out of me, she ain't half going to be disappointed!'

5

It was to be so easy. Standing among the wooden shanties of the oyster-bars on their tumbledown wharf, just beyond the

Cunard mooring, Verity had an uninterrupted view of the first-class passengers as they disembarked. There was no chance that Jolly could escape from the ship without showing herself. Verity had been surprised to discover that he himself was one of the first off, being met and ushered ashore by a self-conscious official of the shipping line who had handed him his instructions. He was to report to Captain Smiles of the Prince of Wales's staff at the Astor Hotel that evening. He would then accompany the Captain to join the royal party during the closing stages of the Canadian tour, before the Prince crossed into Michigan.

The day which lay ahead of him might seem too short a time in which to prove the girl's villainy. Verity, chuckling to himself, knew that he would find it long enough.

'If she's out for flash cads and draggle-tails,' he said to himself, 'she'll have to show it from the start.'

He was distantly aware that he ought to be paying more attention to the New World in which he had just arrived. But the New York waterfront, though warmer, seemed to him remarkably like Wapping Stairs, the streets lined with dirty, unpainted buildings and choked by heavy drays and baggage wagons. The ramshackle oyster-bars and the little drinking-shops with their grimy, uncurtained windows would have graced London's riverside equally well.

Presently a pink bonnet and dress appeared. He knew without further inspection that it was her. She crossed the quay with quick, taut hip movements and rapid little steps. This brisk little swagger showed, through smooth silk, Miss Jolly's buttocks twitching lasciviously against each other at every step, touching and parting rhythmically. He exhaled a wistful sigh. Even her movements were unmistakable. And now, of course, she was not alone. Her hand rested with ill-practised nonchalance on the arm of a tall, slimly-built young man with a sun-reddened skin, auburn whiskers and ginger hair.

'Charitable old couple!' chortled Verity, and he almost skipped after them, pom-pomming a little tune as he shadowed them effortlessly. He had a fleeting mental image of Inspector Croaker, sullen and downcast at the appalling error at which he had connived, and the white-whiskered noble old face of Superintendent Cowry, tears filling the rheumy eyes as he took Verity's hand in a manly clasp and thanked him again for the revelation of Miss Jolly's scheme.

They were the easiest quarry he had ever known. The tall ginger-haired young man was visible as plainly as a church steeple in the crowds by his tall bottle-green hat. Miss Jolly's pink silks flashed in the openings of the throng. If she had decided to vanish into the obscurity of the great metropolis, she had chosen almost the worst way to do it. But then Verity remembered that she would think he was still on the ship, obliged to wait while the first-class passengers disembarked.

'Very neat, miss!' he said admiringly, brushing a fleck of perspiration from his black moustache. He had no idea that it would be so warm in America. They crossed from Canal Street to West Street, with the single-storey market buildings, open at the front and designed more like Venetian temples than stables or warehouses. Everywhere there were men in straw hats and white overalls, two-horse street-cars and private traps with canvas canopies, jostling along the broad cobbled highway. Behind the warehouse buildings the columns of black smoke from funnels along the waterfront dimmed the hot September sun.

Verity was uneasily aware that he ought to make contact with someone, to get a message to Captain Smiles perhaps, or to locate a responsible officer of the New York police department and seek assistance. He saw a police officer, in belted dark-blue tunic and a hat like a solar topee, directing the confusion of horses and conveyances with his nightstick. But to stop now would be to lose the quarry.

The midday heat grew more oppressive. Verity could feel the coarse suiting clinging wetly under his plump arms and down the length of his spine. They turned a corner and he stood in amazement at the length of the street before him. He knew, beyond question, that this was what had been described to him as Broadway, as rich and gaudy as Regent Street but much longer. The wide thoroughfare was a stream of hackney cabs and street-cars, large-wheeled tilburies, gigs and phaetons, the sun sparkling on their green and yellow paintwork. Verity stared in astonishment at a smart olive-painted Pilentum bowling past with its dark-skinned driver and its footman in nankeen breeches and frogged-coat riding behind.

Resolutely, he took up his pursuit of Jolly and her escort. The pavements on either side were now bustling with young women in silks and satins but he had never before seen so many dainty parasols, such gaudily-lined cloaks and hoods, so many fluttering ribbons and tassels. The men, in their long-tailed coats of blue or russet, looked drab by contrast. Bright red-brick houses and glittering shops stretched away in an infinite perspective, interrupted only by an occasional church spire or the massive fortress-like block of a new hotel, green blinds drawn against the heat of the afternoon sun.

Verity walked in his habitual lumbering manner, one hand lying in the palm of the other behind his back, as conspicuous among the men and women of fashion as if he had been a performing bear. Several of those who passed turned their heads as he walked by, with grins of amusement or frowns of disapproval that such a figure should be allowed to mar the elegance of the passing show.

He stopped suddenly, and then drew aside to take advantage of the cover offered by one of the trees lining the carriageway. Miss Jolly had gone alone into a shop which occupied the ground floor of what might have been a gentleman's town-house with a tall mansard roof. Her companion waited outside at a little distance. Peering cautiously round the trunk of the tree, Verity saw from the windows of the shop, as well as its faded gilt sign, that it was a jeweller's.

'Oh. my!' he sighed happily, 'Oh, my eye! Ain't this prime?'

He knew exactly what was going to happen next. After ten minutes or so, Miss Jolly emerged in company with the jeweller, or his assistant, who was seeing her courteously on her way. Her neat young features were unusually animated by smiles and widening of her almond eyes as she explained, evidently not for the first time, that the jeweller's admirable stock had not, alas, quite the trinket which she fancied. The man bowed and retired. Miss Jolly bustled towards a milliner's window and began a long contemplation of its display of Paris modes. In the warm afternoon, she presented a still odalisque profile, the features sharply defined, the brows arched high over the expressionless Turkomen eyes.

In London, Verity assured himself, the dodge would never have lasted this long. Perhaps the New York jewellers still had a lesson to learn. Now, as he had expected, the girl's accomplice entered the shop, holding in his hand what looked like a cheap watch for repair. No, thought Verity, the New York merchants had never suffered this dodge before. A London jeweller would have been out on the pavement by now, bawling his misfortune at the top of his voice.

The young man came out of the shop, following the girl along the pavement, though they now walked separately, as though unknown to one another.

Verity watched them as they approached a second jeweller's about two hundred yards further on. Miss Jolly opened its door demurely to the accompanying tinkle of a little bell.

' 'ere!' said Verity aloud. 'They're bloody going to crack every jeweller's in the town! Wait till they get this news back at Whitehall Police Office! Charitable old couple adopting her! Stoopid ain't the word for it!'

His plump cheeks flushed more deeply with his sense of self-righteousness as he strode to the door of the first shop. The elderly, slightly-built jeweller stood behind one of his glass-topped display-cases in the cool, dimly-lit interior. Verity looked round the shadowy premises as the door closed behind him, and made his first American acquaintance.

'You got this place laid out like a villain's paradise, my man!' he said sternly. 'It's no wonder you just been robbed!'

The little man gazed at Verity, mild and uncomprehending, over the rim of his glasses.

'Robbed?' he murmured in that gentle twang which Verity had now begun to identify as the American way of speech. 'Robbed, sir? To be sure, sir, you are most certainly mistaken.'

'Wax,' said Verity, running his fingers quickly under the ledges of the show-cases, where the glimmering stones huddled in their dark velvet nests. 'Oldest dodge in the business. Young person comes in, slaps a dab of it under here, asks to see jools. Slips one under and presses it into the wax, then goes off. Nothing on her, no sign of her being the robber. In comes her magsman with a cheap watch for repair, hands it over, runs his fingers under the ledge and goes off with wax, sparkler, the lot!'

'And who might you be, sir?' asked the old man, coming forward nervously. 'Not the city police department, surely ?'

'Metropolitan Police, Scotland Yard,' said Verity proudly. 'I'm in pursuit of that young person in the pink silk. She's an English girl.'

'Miss Jolly?' queried the little jeweller. 'Indeed, she said as much in conversation.'

Verity paused in his search and stared.

'She gave you her real name?'

'It would seem, sir, that dissimulation is not one of her vices,' said the little man, observing Verity with the first faint signs of scepticism.

'Her vice,' said Verity indignantly, 'is the wax under the counter dodge. Where the mischief is it? Course, you wouldn't be familiar with such things, not having met the London sharpers.'