SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (34 page)

Into
this privately-hired saloon, Sealskin Kite, Old Mole and their luggage had
disappeared. From the shadows of an iron pillar Verity watched Stunning Joe.
O'Meara had shown nothing of his plan yet. Perhaps he guessed, as Verity had
done, the significance of having the hired coach behind the luggage van. It was
to be slipped by its brakeman somewhere between Brighton and London Bridge. At
the precise moment the coupling would be unfastened, the coach would ride loose
and glide into a platform on the way without delaying the Parliamentary
express. The slip might take place anywhere, Verity thought, Reigate or
Haywards Heath, or perhaps some out of the way place where Sealskin Kite was to
be the guest at another man's country house.

Under
the glass canopy of the station roof the steam and soot collected. A porter
with a watering-can went up and down the train cooling the iron wheels of the
carriages. There was a smell of quenched ashes in the warm air and a perfume of
ripe pineapple from the third-class wagons. A warning bell rang and Verity
tightened his grip on Jolly's arm.

He had
expected Stunning Joe to be dismayed by the sight of the slip-coach. There was
no means by which a man could follow Sealskin Kite once the saloon had left the
rest of the train. But either the thin-faced spiderman had not understood that
such a thing could happen or else he had already allowed for it. Waiting to
make sure that neither Kite nor Old Mole would leave the train, he pulled
himself up from the platform into the last of the third-class carriages. Verity
bustled the girl to the far end of the same carriage just as a snort and a
shriek from the little engine announced the train's departure in earnest.

With
Jolly on his arm he stood among the shabby men and women at the end of the
carriage nearest to the engine. Behind them there was only the luggage van and
Sealskin Kite's saloon coach. Through the crowd he had a view of

Joe's
crumpled black hat as the spiderman looked from the open side of the coach
across the tiles and red brick of the Brighton slums below. They were on the
great viaduct where it strode across the dark streets to the north of the town.
Patches of pale green downland, with flocks of Sussex sheep grazing, flashed
like the images of lantern-slides in the openings of the crowd.

Without warning the sides of
the carriage shook as if with the impact of a blow and they were plunged into
the darkness of Patcham tunnel. A few feet away the sides of the cut chalk, flecked
by whiteness, roared and swirled as the express gathered speed again. Verity
felt the girl press more tightly against him. Then the noise ended as abruptly
as it had begun and they were out in the sunlight with trees flashing past them
and the telegraph wires rising and falling endlessly beside the track.

Verity
looked for Stunning Joe. The stunted figure in black had gone.

He had
known that Joe might be tempted by such a feat but he had dismissed it from his
mind as impossible. Pushing through the crowd, warning the girl to stay back,
he found the opening at which Joe O'Meara had been watching the landscape as it
flew from them. In the depths of Patcham tunnel there had been two or three
minutes of complete darkness, even the lamps of the first-class carriages
casting no light towards the end of the train. Now, in the brightness of the
summer morning, it was Verity who looked out from the open side of the
third-class wagon.

Stunning
Joe was just in sight. He had clambered along the foot-board of the coach,
reached the luggage van and then trusted to his fingers and toes. The ledge
above the wheels of the van was too slight to afford a foothold but with his
toes lodged upon it and his fingers hooked over the edge of the curving
carriage roof he had shuffled his way almost to the rear end of the luggage
van. There was no sign of the shabby hat. Even the little man's coat streamed
like a flag from his shoulders, whipping and snapping in the wind.

Verity too had thought that
somehow or other he must be on the saloon coach when it was slipped, perhaps by
a bribe to the brakeman but not by the means which Stunning Joe used now. Only
a madman would follow him that way. And then he thought of the worst thing of
all. Joe O'Meara was set for vengeance now. Sealskin Kite was about to die and
with Kite's death all hope of finding Bella was at an end. Verity took off his
tall hat and his threadbare frock-coat. In White shirt and shiny black trousers
he saddled himself on the low wooden side of the third-class carriage.

The
other passengers looked at him fearfully. He had expected that they might
surge forward and try to prevent what looked like a suicide's last act. Quite
the contrary, they drew back and stared at him as though he had been afflicted
by some virulent contagion. He swung his other leg outward and stood on the
narrow foot-board. The wind tore at his back, billowing the white shirt as if
to drag him down to his death where the polished wheels sped on the rail with
the precision of knife blades.

'Joe!' he shouted. 'Stunning
Joe!' The agile figure ahead either could not hear him or was resolved to go on
at all costs. For a moment longer Verity clung there, the wind blinding him
with his own tears. They were in a cutting now with trees in full leaf rising
above the grass banks. As carefully as he knew how, Verity shifted his grip,
pulling himself along the foot-board to the end of the coach.

There was no platform between
the third-class carriage and the luggage van, only the chain couplings and the
buffers which danced lightly against one another. The gap was no more than two
feet but he knew that he must cross at full stretch while the shingle of the
permanent way slashed beneath him at fifty miles an hour and the speeding wheel
blades honed themselves to a razor edge in preparation for his least
miscalculation. Verity thought of Bella, held the corner of the carriage with
one hand, feet straddling the chasm, and swung his weight towards the coupling
chain on the luggage van.

The
heavy links were oily from use. He felt the weight of metal slip from him and
then he caught it again, hanging by it and sobbing from exertion and fright as
he trusted himself to his new grip. He was less agile than Stunning Joe but he
had a longer reach. By sliding his feet sideways against the planking of the
luggage van he was able to use the ledge running above the wheels as a
foothold. At the same time there was a sufficient ridge at the meeting of side
and roof for his hands to clutch. Inch by inch he moved forward, looking neither
to the side or below. Left foot, left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot
again, left hand. . . There was a blast from the whistle of the engine but his
back was to it and he did not dare to try and look. The end of the luggage van
had seemed far away but he was getting nearer now, past the central sliding
door with its iron bar and padlock, closer and closer to the end of the train.
He could even see the swaying saloon coach which carried Sealskin Kite and Old
Mole.

In a
moment more Verity had reached the corner and saw the brakeman, the man for
either the luggage van or the saloon coach. He was lying motionless and
senseless in the open-sided space at the rear of the luggage van. And then he
saw Joe O'Meara. The ragged spiderman had leapt nimbly enough across from the
luggage van to the narrow buffer-platform of the saloon coach. Neither of its
occupants could see him or had the least idea of what was going on. Stunning
Joe had detached the coupling chains which held the saloon coach to the end of the
train and was in the process of slipping the carriage. The draw-bolt
connecting the saloon coach with the rest of the train was held fast by a catch
in the coupling of the luggage van. Attached to it was a rope which the
brakeman of the saloon coach would use when the moment came to draw open the
catch and release the bolt from the coupling. With the chains already hanging
loose, Stunning Joe had found the rope and was pulling the draw-bolt clear.

Verity
shouted again, but the towers of a gothic fortress reared above him and the
train drove at full speed into what seemed like the dungeon of a great castle.
Tunnel walls roared at either side. The red warning lamps on the rear of the
luggage van threw a shadowy glare upon the scene. Verity saw the bolt coming
clear from the coupling on the luggage van and, as though in a nightmare, he
leapt for the little platform on which Stunning Joe stood. But Joe had sprung
aside and gone before ever the burly figure of the policeman fell sprawling on
the tiny wooden space.

By the time that Verity got
up, the spiderman was out of view, scrambling round the side of the saloon
coach to find an entrance. The carriage was still riding close to the train
until the gap between it and the luggage van grew suddenly wider. For another
mile the coach would continue to lose speed until it came to rest, still
somewhere beyond the far mouth of Clayton tunnel.

So, at least, Verity reasoned.
Stunning Joe would hardly get to Kite in that time. Even if he did, Kite was
protected by Old Mole. Already, he thought, Miss Jolly would have alerted the
brakeman on the last carriage of the train as to what was happening. It was
only a matter of hanging on.

Only
then did he realise that the lights at the rear of the luggage van were
receding far more quickly than he had expected. The saloon coach was travelling
after the train but, perhaps because of a gradiant, it was losing speed. He
guessed that it would never clear the far end of the tunnel. Indeed, they were
half a mile from full daylight. At intervals, high above the line of the rails
a faint pool of light from the ventilation shaft far above marked the distance
of the track. A splash of yellow oil-light from the windows of the saloon coach
showed the rough chalk surface of the narrow tunnel on either side.

From the little platform with
its buffers and coupling chains it was possible to glimpse the interior of the
coach through a small roundel of glass, like a miniature porthole.

Verity
moved cautiously across to it, expecting to see the entrance of Stunning Joe.

There
was no sign of him. Old Mole lounged in a buttoned-leather chair, the back of
his cropped head towards the tiny window. A wreath of greenish-grey cigar smoke
hung in the lamplight above him. Sealskin Kite lay on a wall-sofa with a tartan
rug wrapped about him. He had drawn the rug up so that it encircled his head as
well as his body. Peering out from this improvised shawl the wizened senile
face might have been that of a little old lady. Neither man spoke. In the pale
illumination of the new Warner carriage lights set in the ceiling they looked
like a carefully arranged display at the waxworks.

At that moment Old Mole stood
up. The scrub-haired mobsman seemed puzzled by the slowing down of the coach
and more so by the sudden silence of the engine. He walked to the window and
lowered the glass, but the tunnel wall was so close that he glimpsed little
more than the rough chalky surface with its contours of soot as the coach
rumbled past.

In the
sulphurous air of the tunnel Verity's eyes smarted and he felt his chest
heaving in the foul smoky fog which he had breathed. He clung to the hand-hold
on the little platform as the coach trundled onward and successive spasms of
coughing convulsed him. Then he edged outward, clutching the corner of the
wagon, and looked along its side into the thick, soot-laden air.

'Stunning Joe!' he shouted as
the air swept past him. 'Joe O'Meara! Where are yer?'

The echoes of his voice down
the long dark tunnel were lost in the trundling of iron wheels and the rush of
a warm breeze. He could just make out that a door at the far end of the coach
was swinging open in the space between the carriage and the tunnel wall. He
pulled himself back to the roundel of glass, knowing that a single blow from
the open door would dislodge his precarious hold on the side of the coach. Then
through the roundel of glass, as though he were watching a dumb-show acted far
beyond his reach, he saw Stunning Joe. The spiderman stood, confronting Kite
and Old Mole. In his hand he held a railway key, a right angle of rounded metal
used for securing carriage doors. Using this he locked the door through which
he had just come and which led to the servants' compartment and water-closet.
Mole stepped forward but before he could reach the little man, O'Meara had
opened the nearest window and dropped the key outside.

Verity expected that Mole
would have finished Joe for all that. Instead, the mobsman and his master now
put on a bizarre pantomime of terror, almost ignoring O'Meara in their desperation.
Old Mole ran from door to door, trying each and finding it locked until he came
to the side where the runnel wall swept past a foot or two away. Sealskin Kite
was on his feet, the muscles of his face working with the horror of a promise
made by Stunning Joe. Joe himself had got one of the old man's arms twisted
back and held him firmly enough.

Kite
screamed at Old Mole, the saliva flying from his lips. But the mobsman had the
door undone and was forcing it open against the pressure of streaming air. He
looked back once at Kite who scrabbled and scrambled in Joe's grip. Then he was
gone.