SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman (20 page)

Once the side of the coffin was free it opened upwards on
a
pair of interior hinges. Dacre felt the wood brushing against the black velvet pall which covered it and guessed that he must be lying on some raised surface. Very carefully, he swung his long, thin legs through the gap and tested the drop to the ground. It was no more than two or three feet. The coffin had been laid at the rear of the luggage van on
a
fixed wooden table, which had once served the guard as a desk.

He straightened up and stood in a dappled twilight. The interior of the van was almost dark, but here and there the sunlight of the summer evening projected spears of dust-filled brilliance between the boarding of the sides. Ghostly outlines of boxes, portmanteaus, trunks, and hampers rose all about him in the gloom. At the far end of the van, he could just make out the broad rectangle of the iron safe, half luminous with its white-painted sides. But for all the weight which it carried, the van seemed to lurch and roll with unpredictable violence, swung by the speeding train as a snake might thresh its tail.

Dacre steadied himself, reached into his pocket for a "Glim" and struck it. After such intense darkness, the flare drew water to his eyes until he could see nothing but a blur. Then, holding the flame to one side, he began to search for "Mr Archer's" carpet-bags. They were all together, four of them, near the closed door of the van. He needed to open only one, which contained his tools: a storm lantern, a hammer, several box-wood wedges, and a balance with a pair of large brass pans. Dacre lit the lamp and hung it from the low, curved roof of the van, close to the iron bullion safe.

In the thick yellow light, he moved about the van again, searching for another cluster of luggage, two leather bags and a "governess" travelling box, the property of Miss Martineau, of Westerham, to be called for at Reigate railway office. The calling would not be long delayed, since "Miss Martineau,"
alias
Jolie, had left Langham Place several hours earlier in a hired brougham, driven by Tyler, to be at Reigate before the train.

He found the travelling box and bags, which seemed unusually heavy for the possessions of a pretty young governess, and dragged them over to the safe. Then he set to work, a slender, stooping figure, working intently in the heat of the van, which resembled nothing so much as a chicken shed on wheels. Its interior smelt strongly of sawdust and straw, warmed by the summer air. Dacre's breathing was harsh with the closeness of the day and the exertion of his labours, while even the tallowy light of the lamp still brought the water to his inflamed eyes.

The bright rough keys, which he had filed for the two locks of the safe, were not perfect enough to work in the hands of an amateur. They needed the touch of a virtuoso cracksman to guide them in the locks. Dacre had to stop twice to wipe the sweat from his palms, and to feel more intently the many little pressures of the lock-barrel. Then, the tumblers moved quite suddenly and effortlessly, and the heavy bolts fell back with a ponderous thud. He turned the handle, and raised the weight of the iron lid until it slanted backwards to the full length of the safety chains.

Inside the thick iron walls, the lamplight fell upon a dozen oak bullion boxes, each bound with iron hoops, locked, and sealed by a wafer of red wax across the crevice where the lid of the box closed on the front wall of it. The boxes were almost uniform in shape and approximated in every case to a cube of about twelve to fifteen inches. Dacre judged that the contents of each must weigh about half a hundredweight. The blood pounded in his ears with the strain of lifting the first one clear of the safe and setting it on the floor of the van.

Once the box was firmly placed, with its back against the safe, he set the first wedge in the crevice between the lid and the front. Then, with half a dozen powerful hammer blows, he drove it firmly into place, driving a second one into position on the other side of the lock. He struck the wedges alternately with heavy, rapid blows. The crevice widened, the bolt of the lock jumped and then gave way, wrenched from its socket on the lid. Dacre removed the wedges, inserted them under the iron hoops which still bound the bullion-box, and then drove them in to raise the hoops sufficiently for them to slide clear of the box. Finally, he raised the lid, splintering
the unique seal of Messrs Spiel
mann and Bult beyond any hope of repair.

For all the crudity and force, Dacre thought, it would prove to be a cracksman's masterpiece yet. It was the race to Reigate which had first to be won. The lamplight shone on rich, tawny metal. There must have been a score of small ingots, each weighing two or three pounds, and bearing the stamp of assay.

ROYAL MINT

21
VICTORIA R.

2
4
CARAT

He touched the cool, smooth metal, fondling it with
a
pleasure so entirely physical that he wanted to cry out or laugh aloud in the intensity of his triumph. At twenty-four carat, this bullion was gold in its purest form.

A shriek from the engine and the sudden roaring of
a
tunnel ended his trance of delight. Opening one of "Miss Martineau's" leather portmanteaus, he poured a stream of lead shot from it into one of the brass scale-pans. In the other he set the ingots from the broken bullion-box. When he had brought the two pans into balance, the ingots went into the portmanteau, and the grey mass of shot into the oak box. With his hammer, he beat the iron hoops of the box into place, forcing the lid into position. There was no time to adjust the lock, nor to diink about the broken seal. One gamble had to be taken, that the safe and its boxes would not be checked at Reigate. It seemed a reasonable chance to take. Reigate was too soon, at Folkestone it would be
a
different matter.

As he opened a second box, the train screamed out of Merstham tunnel, crashing and rattling towards Reigate station in the thickening twilight. He judged there was time for a third box, but only at the risk of not being able to replace the iron hoops before the train stopped. With a frenzy that almost paralleled sexual obsession, he raised the stake of his gamble, breaking open the box and exchanging the hastily weighed gold for equivalent shot from the "governess" box. He had just closed "Miss Martineau's" luggage when the train lost speed rapidly and began gliding into Reigate platform. In the final seconds before the door of the luggage van was unlocked by a constable, Dacre swung the broken box into th
e safe, closed the iron lid, th
ough without time to lock it, and crouched on the floor of the van, under the guard's table, which was enveloped by the folds of black velvet from the pall of the coffin lying upon it. He trusted to an obsequious reverence for the middle class dead, or even plain fear of a six-month-old corpse, to prevent
a
traffic clerk or porter from disturbing the pall.

Ned Roper swung his oatmeal-suited legs on to the seat and lay, like a grotesque and whiskery male odalisque, observing the passing scene. Evening sunlight picked out the distant cupolas of Greenwich Hospital, or the rusty sails of tall East India merchantmen, and threw long shadows over the broad engine-sheds of the Greenwich Railway Company. Gathering speed, the ferry train flew past little streets of new yellow brick and red tile, past dust-heaps, market-gardens and waste-grounds. With a crash and a rattle. New Cross Station, and the London and Brighton's railway sheds flashed across Roper's carriage window. Then came the Atmospheric Engine House at Croydon, then the tunnel, and then Reigate, with a grinding and screwing of metal brakes, and the smell of water on hot ash.

Taking a silver flask from his inner pocket, Roper unscrewed the top, put his head back, and jerked the remaining dregs into his mouth. Now, he told himself, he was ready for whatever might come his way, from sherry to rum-shrub, as the saying was. He sniffed and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

"Thirty-five," he said aloud, "still half a lifetime to come, and the sweetest half at that! Carriage company! Heavy swells on the lark! White ties and pink bonnets! "

As for the girls who came to
Langham Place, he'd top and tail
'em once, just for practice as he always had done, but he'd never ditch Nell Jacoby and the "little fellow." Ever since London Bridge, he had wished for her there, to see her stretched out on the ca
rriage seat bucking to the rhyth
m of the train. Legs like a dancer, thought Roper, bubbies like the statue in the Hyde Park Exhibition, lovely blue eyes and long hair, and an arse like a real young lady of fashion. Once or twice he'd leathered her, but she loved him just the same afterwards.

"No, Miss Ellen," said Roper softly, "there ain't any other would do as well."

At Reigate, he put his head out of the window and caught the dark movement of another head hastily drawn in, several carriages further along the train. There was no escape to the platform without Verity seeing him. It was all as Vcrney Dacre had predicted. Roper watched a porter cooling a hot wheel with the contents of a watering can, while passengers scurried to and from the crowded refreshment-room. In the twilight, the lamplighter and his boy were going their rounds "putting up" the gas along the station platforms. Roper withdrew his head, so that Verity might resume his vigil on the platform. The five-minute bell rang.

Ned Roper waited two minutes more. Then he gently opened the door which faced away from the platform, taking care not to hold it wider than was necessary. He slipped through the gap and lowered himself almost soundlessly into the shadowy gloom, crouching level with the thick iron wheels of the carriage. He pushed the door to, not slamming it but allowing it to half engage the lock so that at least it would not fly open. He had hardly done this when the whistle shrieked and the engine, with a rapid thunder of preliminary gasps, edged forward, the iron wheels rumbling past him as he crouched there.

By the time that the luggage van at the end of the train came towards him, the wheels seemed to have picked up a terrifying speed. The door of the van was still closed and there was nothing to jump for but the narrow footboard. Roper began to run alongside the moving train. He spurted as the luggage van began to pass him, the flashing iron of the wheels no more than twelve inches from his feet. Then he leapt at the speeding footboard and in mid-leap saw that he had been no judge of distance and seemed now almost to will himself to miss his mark. The iron rims flailed like knives below him, the earth flying away into darkness, as his right foot hit the board and his body fell against the boarding of the van. For what seemed ten or twenty seconds, but could not have been a tenth so long, his nails scrabbled at the wooden side, seeking some hold, and yet knowing that if he found one, death between the wheels and rails would only be postponed a few minutes unless Verney Dacre could open the sliding door.

He felt his body turn, swaying towards the outer darkness and the horror beneath him. In utter terror he gave one helpless shriek. "Nell!"

It seemed that he had passed the point of equilibrium and was already falling when a pair of hands gripped him at shoulder and collar, hauling him to safety from the clutch of the winds of death that pulled him outwards. He fell forward at last on the floor of the van, sobbing with mingled exhaustion and terror.

"You killed me!"
he said bewilderedly, and then corrected himself. "You almost had me under the wheels, Mr Dacre."

"Oblige me," said Verney Dacre grimly, "by tellin' me in future if you're going to get so drunk that you can't jump two feet on to the running-board of a train."

Nevertheless, he drew out his own cavalry flask, unscrewed it and handed it to his trembling companion. Ned Roper drank long and gratefully.

"It went all right?" he said at length, sniffing and pulling himself together.

"It ain't likely, is it," said Dacre coldly, "that I should be standin' here like this if it had gone all wrong? The box and two bags went off at Reigate, Tyler and the girl had them. They left three more bags for Dover."

" 'ow much?" asked Roper, getting to his feet.

Dacre closed the sliding door of the van on the darkness outside.

"One and a half hundredweight and twelve pounds weight. Say,
£1
0,000,
give or take a few flimsies."

He was already raising the lid of the safe again, when Roper, recovering some of his habitual jauntiness, inquired,

"You pitched the major in the river, I take it?"

"No," said Dacre, attending to the safe, "that's what a fool would do, and then bury our own coffin weighted with pure gold! C
oggin is drivin' the major smartl
y to a night's lyin' in state at Appleford church. They expect him about ten o'clock, only they ain't to know he hasn't come from the railway station. Then Coggin drives to Folkestone, announces he's come for the coffin here, and drives it back to town for tomorrow morning. And once the poor major's back in the earth tomorrow, no one will question that it was his coffin the railway company carried in their luggage van. Oh, they may dig him up again, if they please, and see if he got out of his salt-box and robbed their gold. So much the better." Ned Roper chuckled.