SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (20 page)

Joe
scratched the dark scrub of his head. The canary warbled and trilled its
wordless oratorio.

'Daresay
you
might tell where it's put, if
you only could,' he said. The canary stopped singing, cocked its head on one
side again and looked at him as though it understood. Joe stared at the cage,
the Fine brasswork of its bars and ornaments, the solid base from which Cosima
drew the seed-tray, since she alone must tend the bird.

'
Course
you could!' said Joe suddenly.
He sprang across the room and looked into the cage. The canary shifted about
nervously. But now Joe could see the whole dodge. The round circular bottom of
the ornamental cage was like a drawer, two inches deep if one chose to make it
so by raising the floor upon which the sand and seed were scattered. Joe pulled
and the bottom of the cage came out. In it there lay a fine leather box, highly
polished, red with a gilt design. It opened easily, and even Joe gasped at the
sight within. In the twilit room the Shah Jehan clasp glowed and shimmered in
all its purple and emerald glory. Swallowing excitedly, he thrust the box and
its contents in the breast of his coat, then slid the bottom of the tray into
place. The canary cheeped reproachfully.

'You
ain't a bad little fellow, you ain't,' said Joe consolingly.

He ran down the stairs in his excitement and stepped
out into the darkened basement area. He left the kitchen door unbolted. No harm
in throwing suspicion on to the pretty young nark. Then he waited in the dark
for the return of the cab. When it came, the jack who had been shadowing it
left. Only the fat one watching the house remained. Really, Joe thought, it was
like taking pennies from a blind beggar's cup. Cosima Bremer entered the front
door, followed by the servant girl. Joe counted twenty and then the screams
began as the lights went up on the scene of theft and destruction. The fat
policeman at the corner of Brunswick Place came pounding over, the boots of
his plain-clothes quite as heavy as those of his uniform. Joe heard him thump
up the steps to the front door, heard it opened by the hysterical little nark,
and gave him ten seconds to get inside. Then Joe walked unobtrusive as a shadow
up the basement steps, vaulted the railings to the pavement, and strolled
casually away in the direction of the moonlit waves. Brunswick Square would see
him no more.

Against
the grey wash of the office wall, Inspector Henry Croaker's yellowed face
seemed more sickly than ever. As he swallowed, the leather stock appeared to
cut cruelly just below his adam's apple. His mouth hung open a full inch, as
though the immensity of the disaster was still registering in his brain. Behind
him stood Mr Bunker of the London Indemnity, his features immobile with a
visible embarrassment on behalf of his constabulary colleagues.

Sergeant
Verity stood smartly at attention, perspiring lightly, his tall hat clamped
under one arm as he faced the inspector's desk.

'No sir,' he said, in response
to a previous question. 'No one. No one come and no one went. Had me eye on the
house-front every second, sir. Had a full view from the corner of Brunswick
Place every minute from the time they left till the time they got back.'

Croaker looked
keenly at the fat sergeant. The inspector's customary pleasure in the downfall
of his subordinate was tempered this time by the sense of his own predicament.
Whatever blame might be put on Verity, it was Croaker as the officer in charge
of the operation who would incur the displeasure of the commissioners and the
Home Office.

'Let me have this plain,
sergeant,' he said softly, swallowing rapidly between his words. 'Let me have
this plain as day from you. No person entered or left the front of the house
during your surveillance, while the mistress and her maid were absent?'

'Yessir!' snapped
Verity smartly. ' 'a's it, sir!'

'And you know that both Mr
Bunker and I, as well as two uniformed men, had a constant watch on the rear of
the premises?'

' 'ave been so informed, sir.'

'And that you alone were at the
front of the building, unsupervised and with no other person in sight of you
for considerable periods?'

'Sir?' said
Verity, his eyes shifting uneasily.

'Sir!' echoed Croaker
derisively, the relish beginning to creep back into his voice. 'The matter stands
very plainly, sergeant, does it not? How will the board of inquiry see it?
There are two entrances to the dwelling. The word of four officers is proof
that no attempt was made at the rear. For the rest we have your own
uncorroborated statement.

'My
word
,
sir, same as yours!'

'Silence!' said Croaker
sharply. 'Moreover, the thief made his entry via the basement kitchen. The door
conveniently left unbolted and unlocked. By whom, sergeant? By the very girl
who was put in as servant upon your suggestion!'

'No sir!' said Verity
desperately. 'Any case it don't make odds if she left it open or not.
No one
got in!'

Croaker
appeared to be savouring something on his tongue. Then the little movements in
his mouth grew still.

'No one,' he said gently,
'except you, sergeant. That is it, is it not?'

Verity
shook his head, unable to find words. 'Stand still!' yapped Croaker.

'I never, sir!' he gasped.
'And she never! She got too much to lose, sir! Back to the first day of her
sentence! She'd be mad, sir.'

Croaker dismissed the subject.

'Three years ago, sergeant,
was it not? Suspended from duty for suspected complicity in theft? That was the
board's decision then. Hmmmm?'

'I was exonerated, sir!'

'To be sure.' The inspector
sat back, a compulsive grin twitching at the corners of his mouth. Verity
searched his mind frantically for some explanation which might stave off
disaster.

'Sir, I think I
got it! I think I know who done it! That beggar! That whistling-man! It
must've been 'im!' Before Croaker could reply Mr Bunker stepped forward. 'What
whistling-man?'

'The
one that been whistling outside houses. Disturbing the peace. I seen him off
once.'

'One
moment,' said Bunker. He left the room, while Verity stared over Croaker's
head and heard the inspector's breath quicken with the excitement of conflict.
Bunker returned with a companion.

'Is this your whistling-man,
sergeant?'

'Thank goodness you got 'im,
sir!'

'Got him, sergeant?' said
Bunker quizzically. 'We have had Mr Foxfane for several years. One of our best
men at surveillance.'

Verity blinked. Dressed like
an assistant clerk, the dapper little figure was still unmistakeably the
whistling-man of the previous day.

'And
is this your man, Mr Foxfane?' asked Bunker quietly. Foxfane nodded.

'All afternoon and evening. I
left as the cab came back into the square last night. Never heard the screams.
But all the time until then he'd never left his spot.'

'All evening?' shrilled
Croaker. Foxfane ignored him and directed his explanation to Bunker.

'All
the time that Constable Meiklejohn was away, following the two suspects to the
ball and back, I kept my watch. Only one officer at the front, so the danger of
complicity or assault must be greater there. Mr Verity, though never knowing
it, was in my observation from the minute the cab moved off until it drew up
again at the door.' Foxfane consulted a little notebook. 'He discharged his
duty in normal fashion and never once left his post. As to the young person
Jolly, she may have left the basement door unbolted and may have done so deliberately.
Being now a suspect for this, she must be withdrawn from her duties in the
house. However, no robbery was undertaken by the front of the house that I
could see. With all respect to the officers watching the rear, I conclude the
thief may have entered that way during a temporary lapse on their part. I left
Brunswick Square at a quarter past midnight as the Misses Bremer and Jolly were
walking up the steps from the cab. Mr Verity had never moved, let alone
attempted the building, sir.'

A
silence followed. It was ended by a deep digestive howl which rose, plaintive
and agonised, from Inspector Croaker's martyred entrails.

13

Old Mole and Jack
Strap had cared for him like a brother. On the evening of Stunning Joe's entry
to the house in Brunswick Square, Sealskin Kite had been in London, on public
view at a Mansion House dinner for the distressed weavers of Spitalfields. It
was a customary precaution. Until their master's return on the next day, Mole
and Strap treated Joe like 'a schoolbook 'ero', as he kept telling them. A
lesser man than Kite would have hesitated to entrust the stolen treasure to his
underlings. But they knew what a man might expect who cheated the old Sealskin.
In any case, neither Old Mole nor a mere bully like Jack Strap could have got
the Shah Jehan clasp further than the next pawnbroker.

On the evening of Kite's
return, Stunning Joe was under the protection of Jack Strap at a Swell Mob
ordinary near the Race Hill. The large open saloon was brilliantly lit by
gasoliers, its walls covered by mirrors and gilding. A bar ran the full length
of the saloon, the coloured bottles glowing beyond the sweep of polished
mahogany. The room was divided by a wooden partition, four feet high with a
gate at its centre. On one side were the unaccompanied women, on the other
those who had found male escorts. Waiters with small trays of drinks,
sandwiches and cigars served the tables scattered about the areas. There was a
constant scraping of chairs and popping of corks. Several unaccompanied men
were making assignations with the girls across the partition by the
traditional gesture of raising a glass. Stunning Joe's ears rang with the din
and the infrequent, bellowed conversation of Jack Strap. His eyes smarted from
the acrid fog of cigar smoke.

The attention of the men and
women in this section was drawn to a further room which opened out of the
saloon and where the 'entertainers' appeared from time to time. These were
generally young street-girls who performed dances to earn the coppers thrown to
them by the men. The floor of this further room was bare, the benches round the
walls suggesting that it was used for the communal dancing with which the
race-week evenings ended. A band of four bearded and dark-skinned men, their
clothes shabby and their hair unkempt, sat in one corner of this room. They
provided an accompaniment with fiddle, cornet and a pair of flutes.

Joe O'Meara started as Jack Strap slapped one hand
into the other with an ear-splitting impact.

'Jane
Midge!' bellowed the bully appreciatively. 'Lookee there!'

Stunning
Joe glanced up at the girl who had appeared on the deserted floor. She was
about fourteen years old, a pretty girl dancing in an eastern costume as an
excuse for showing her arms, legs and belly. Jane Midge was not particularly
tall, but she was quite well developed and her skin was clear, suggesting that
she had only recently been orphaned or turned on to the streets for some
reason. Her straight brown hair was worn loose, though cut short above her
shoulders, and a brief appealing fringe slanted on her forehead. There was a
cautious playfulness in her brown eyes, which illuminated a firm young face
with clear, strong lines in her nose and chin. Her finely-set lips opened in a
smile which displayed the most perfect teeth Joe had ever seen in a girl's
mouth.

The eastern costume was simple
enough. A cardboard diadem was the headpiece which fitted over her hair. A
green silk halter sloped from her shoulder, enclosing her breasts. Beneath the
leather waist-belt with its glass 'jewels', she wore tight fleshings from waist
to knee, in the same translucent green.

In her
dancing she was anything but professional, though this made no odds to Jack
Strap who growled and guffawed his approval. As the flutes and fiddle struck
up, the girl made sinuous motions with her bare arms, as if to suggest the
allure of a harem dancer before her master. Standing sideways to the
spectators, she began to sway her trim adolescent thighs and hips in time to
the music. Joe glanced at Jack Strap. The bully's mouth was open, his eyes
glistening, his breath coming harshly like a faint and distant murmur of
delight.

The girl tilted her chin
coquettishly at her admirers, pressing her upper teeth on her lower lip in a
teasing and provocative grimace. Still she sheltered her loins from their view.
Joe could see why. The thin green silk of the fleshings was tight enough and
transparent enough to show the firm pearly texture of the limbs beneath. It was
clear that the girl had not been brought up to this life and, for all the merriment
in her eyes, her natural timidity had not been subdued. A single coin rang
derisively on the floor near her feet, and Joe felt his anger begin to rise.