The Gold Masters (10 page)

It was as they emerged from under Southwark Bridge, hugging the embankment wall along Bankside, that they heard a sudden loud report. It was followed by the explosion of a scarlet Very light, which hovered eerily, as though suspended in the air, high above Blackfriars Bridge.

The first person Box saw when he clambered up an iron ladder and on to the stone flags of Carmelite Pier was Sergeant Knollys, a bloodstained bandage round his head, talking to an old
acquaintance
of theirs, the patient and quietly spoken Inspector Saville of Thames Division. A dozen police officers were stationed in the yard, apparently taking written statements from a number of men in overalls. Presumably, they had been summoned to the scene by Mr Mackharness’s Very light. The unthinkable had happened. Inspector Cross waved a nonchalant farewell to Box, and then his galley struck out once more for the Surrey side.

Carmelite Pier, Box saw, was entirely enclosed by the blank walls of the surrounding buildings. The only ways off the pier, then, were the river, and a low tunnel facing it, which he knew led under the Embankment to the Bullion Vaults on Carmelite Pavement. It was through this tunnel that the bullion consignment would have been wheeled – to where?

This, thought Box grimly, is no time for formal niceties.

‘So the bullion’s been stolen, has it, Mr Saville?’ he asked.

‘It has, Mr Box, and your Sergeant Knollys here was battered about in the process. He’ll tell you all about it in due course. For the present, I want you to come with me to ask a few questions of the man in charge here. He’s waiting up above in his office.’

The three men hurried through the tunnel to the main building of the bullion vaults, where a further phalanx of policemen thronged in the big yard, talking to some of the workmen. An audience of gaping civilians lined the railings along Tudor Street above them. They entered a vast empty hall, where they glimpsed stacks of wooden pallets and an orderly line of heavy iron trolleys. The gated entrances to a number of wide lifts filled one entire wall.

Waiting for them in a glass-walled office near the entrance was an anguished, middle-aged man dressed in a black suit, who was clutching the rim of his bowler hat so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

‘Mr Garner,’ said Inspector Saville to the elderly man, ‘this plain-clothes officer is Detective Inspector Box of Scotland Yard. The injured man, as you know, is Detective Sergeant Knollys. I want Mr Box to hear your story from the beginning. Mr Box, this
is Mr Horace Garner, Chief Warden of the Carmelite Bullion Vaults.’

‘I came down here to Carmelite Pavement, gentlemen,’ said Horace Garner, when the four men had sat down at a table in the little office, ‘at seven o’clock sharp. Everything was in order. The consignment had already been brought up from Number 3 vault on the hydraulic lift. Let me be quite precise about this
consignment
. It consisted of seventy-eight mahogany bullion chests, each eighteen and a half inches square, secured with flat iron bands, and fastened with padlocks. Each chest contained twelve thousand eight hundred and twenty pounds in gold sovereigns, all minted in the same year: 1858. What we call “old specie”.’

‘Why were there so many chests, Mr Garner?’ asked Box. ‘Surely larger containers would be preferable to all those little boxes.’

‘Gold is a very dense metal, Inspector, as well as being very heavy. Those “little boxes”, as you call them, each weigh two hundredweight, and need two strong men to lift them. It’s very interesting, working out all these precise details for each major movement—’

The chief warden’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, and his face was contorted with anguish. He was, Box judged, well over sixty, and his neatly trimmed hair was turning white.

‘What will Sir Hamo Strange say, when he comes down here? We’ve already sent messengers up to Medici House. I’ve worked here since I was twenty years old. He’ll dismiss me without a
character
—’

‘Of course he won’t,’ said Inspector Saville. He sounded to Box like a kindly schoolmaster coaxing a frightened boy to tell the truth. ‘Why should he? It’s not your fault, Mr Garner, and the more you tell Mr Box and me now, the easier it’ll be for us to find out what’s happened to all that gold.’

‘So there were seventy-eight mahogany bullion chests already
waiting to be shifted?’ asked Box.’

‘Yes, that’s right. They were laid out here in the main shed on eight pallets, all ready to be lifted on to the trolleys, and taken down to the pier.’

Horace Garner stopped, and the two policemen could sense that he was recollecting the events of the morning.

‘There was a policeman – I stepped out from this office into the yard at half past seven, to see that all was well, and was reassured to see a police constable in uniform standing halfway up the flight of steps to the public road. I mention him, because….’

Garner’s voice died away, and he seemed once again to be plunged deep in thought. Arnold Box looked at the sorely tried chief warden and, with a sinking heart, he suddenly sensed the truth.

‘This policeman whom you saw, Mr Garner: had he replaced another man who’d come earlier?’

Garner’s face lit up with something approaching pleasure.

‘Why, yes, Mr Box. How did you know that? When I came in at seven o’clock, I was greeted in the yard by Police Constable Lane, who is very well known to us. Seeing him there reassured me, I must confess. Well, by seven-thirty the complete assignment of gold was ready to be lifted on to the trolleys and taken through the tunnel on to the pier.

‘I went out into the yard, and saw that PC Lane had been replaced by this other man, a big, lumbering fellow who saluted me, and then ran up the steps to the lodge. I saw that another man, a giant of a fellow, was opening the gate from Tudor Street. Presumably, the new police constable was going up to find out what he wanted.’

‘The “giant of a fellow” was me,’ said Sergeant Knollys. ‘I felt there was something wrong about him at once. He was nervous — shivering, almost. In any case, I wondered what a constable from “N” was doing this far out. Well, he got me to turn away from him for a moment, giving him the chance to flatten me with a baulk of
timber. When I came to, I found myself lying in a corner of that lodge on the road. That was when I staggered out on to the steps and fired the Very pistol.’

‘Dear me, Sergeant,’ said Box, shaking his head, ‘you shouldn’t have fallen for his tricks. Always trust your sixth sense.’

The chief warden seemed to be recovering from the shock of the daring robbery.

‘At ten minutes to eight, gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘the
seventy-eight
bullion chests were put on to the trolleys by my twenty gangers, and wheeled down through the tunnel and on to the pier. The steam launch was waiting – a white-hulled boat with specially strengthened bulkheads – and the loading of the bullion proved to be a smooth and efficient operation, lasting no more than half an hour.’

‘Did you notice the funnel?’ asked Box. ‘Was there a number painted on it?’

‘There was, Inspector. The funnel was white, with a red band, and the inscription “C1” was painted on it.’

‘Then it’s the genuine launch, right enough,’ said Saville, ‘which makes me wonder what happened to its legitimate crew. We’d better find out. What did the strange policeman do, Mr Garner?’

‘He climbed into the launch, and stayed on board. The launch already had steam up, and at eight-thirty it moved away from the pier, and I watched it chugging out across the river. How on earth was I to know that anything was amiss?’

‘A little question, Mr Garner,’ said Box. ‘When the launch was moored at the pier, was it pointing upstream or downstream? By which I mean, was it pointing towards the Tower Bridge end of the river, or towards Waterloo Bridge?’

‘Well, of course, it was pointing towards the Tower Bridge end. What a peculiar question! But when it left the pier, I must admit, it struck across the river towards Stamford Wharf, on the Surrey side. I assumed it was some special manoeuvre.’

All three police officers rose from the table, as though by
common consent. There was nothing further to be learnt from Mr Garner. Once outside in the yard, Inspector Saville glanced anxiously towards the tunnel leading to the pier.

‘If we’re to catch these villains, Mr Box, it’s up to Thames Division to move into action. We’ll get after them straight away, before the trail goes cold. Garner thinks they crossed the river towards Stamford Wharf. There’s a lot of derelict property and disused basins between there and Hungerford Bridge. Our own launch will be in the river by now. Never fear, Mr Box, we’ll get them before the day’s out.’

Saville almost ran down the yard, and was lost to sight in the tunnel. Box turned to his injured sergeant.

‘Are you all right, Sergeant?’ he asked. ‘That bandage is clotted with blood.’

‘I’m fine, sir. It’ll take more than a crack on the head by a hulking brute like that fellow to put me out of action.’

‘You know who that so-called constable was, don’t you?’

‘I can guess, sir, though you must remember I’d never seen him in the flesh before. It was Mahoney, the man who murdered the Reverend Mr Vickers out at Croydon. It looks as though our ugly friend is a maid of all work – robber and killer combined.’

‘Francis Xavier Mahoney’s a high-class burglar – beautiful work he does – but he’s always been a dab hand at murder. Maybe we’ll get him, this time. I think his number’s up.’

‘What are we going to do now, sir?’

‘I’m going out to the West India Import Dock, to find out what happened there. I’d like to know whether those other five launches that passed under Tower Bridge actually arrived at their
destination
safely!’

‘And what do you want me to do, sir?’

‘You? I want you to go back to King James’s Rents. You’d better take a cab. And when you get there, go and find Dr Cropper in Whitehall Place, and get him to fix your head properly. You’re no use to me, bleeding all over the place.’

‘But, sir—’

‘Do as you’re told, Jack. Go and see Dr Cropper. You and I will discuss all this business later. I’m off now to the West India Docks.’

From where he stood on the roof of one of the eleven huge
warehouses
rising up on the north side of the West India Import Dock, Box could see the Swedish merchant steamer
Gustavus
Vasa
lying at anchor in Limehouse Reach. Her masts and spars gleamed in the mid-morning sun, and a plume of black smoke hung over her
dark-red
funnel. It was just after eleven o’clock.

Out beyond Tower Bridge there was a strong breeze, which was a welcome change from the smoke-filled carriage of the little train that had brought Box along the dock railway to the gritty and grimy platform of West India Dock Station. Behind the breeze Box could discern the unmistakable salty tang of the sea.

‘So all went well at this end of things, Captain Mason?’ he asked of the dock supervisor standing beside him on the roof. A gnarled, bearded man in faded Merchant Navy uniform, his eyes were quick and intelligent. He was smoking a short clay pipe.

‘All went as smoothly as butter, Inspector Box. The five launches sailed into my dock – little things they looked, too, beside these great merchant vessels – and their cargoes were offloaded on to the steam tender.’

‘So all went well?’ Box repeated. He sounded as though he remained to be convinced.

‘Yes, that’s what I’ve told you, isn’t it? The tender conveyed the whole consignment of gold out to the
Gustavus
Vasa
yonder. The entire operation took forty minutes. There were riflemen at hand to see fair play, as you might say.’ The elderly captain shook his head sadly. ‘But it’s bad news, Inspector,’ he continued, ‘about Sir Hamo Strange’s gold. Somebody must have got wind of what was going on, though it was hardly a state secret! Still, shifting gold isn’t really our affair. All we did was lend them one of our docks.’

He turned away from the river, and regarded the complex of dock buildings with pride.

‘Do you see these warehouses, Inspector? They’re holding a hundred thousand tons of goods – sugar, coffee, flour, cocoa, all kind of spices. That’s what our business is all about.’

While Captain Mason was speaking, Box had been surveying the busy quays of the great dock. A figure in a flapping Ulster cape and a high-crowned beaver hat had just emerged from the sooty little station, clutching a ticket in one of his gloved hands. The man glanced up at the roof of the warehouse, and Box saw to his surprise that it was Superintendent Mackharness.

‘Box,’ he shouted, in his unexpectedly powerful voice, ‘down here, if you please. I shan’t keep you more than a minute.’ Box bade farewell to Captain Mason, and hurried down the vertiginous spiral staircase of the warehouse. Mackharness’s ‘minutes’ had been known to last an hour.

Mr Mackharness said nothing until he had led Box to a rough alehouse, evidently the exclusive domain of the dock force. It had no name, but the man inside, a hard-bitten Irishman, said his name was Pat, and that the premises were known as Pat Mooney’s.

‘Box,’ said Superintendent Mackharness, ‘I’m minded to buy you a glass of something. What will you have?’

‘Why, thank you, sir,’ Box replied. ‘A glass of India Pale Ale would be very welcome.’

‘One India Pale Ale, Mr Pat Mooney,’ said Mackharness, ‘and a
pint of Irish stout. Is that your little office there, behind the bar? We’ll take it in there, if you don’t mind. We’re Scotland Yard
officers
, here on Government business.’

The landlord, subdued by Mackharness’s designedly
overbearing
manner, did as he was told, and left the two men alone in his office, which was little more than a cupboard with a grimy window looking out on to the dock railway.

‘Now, Box,’ said Box’s master, ‘Sergeant Knollys told me that you were coming out here, so I decided to come out after you. There’s nobody to overhear us here, and I’ve something I want to tell you. Just over half an hour ago I was called upon at the Rents by my friend Lord Maurice Vale Rose – I think you know that his lordship and I are acquainted?’

‘Yes, sir. A great honour on both sides, if I may say so.’

‘Well, the honour’s all on
my
side, Box, though I expect you meant your remark kindly. But what was I saying? Yes, Lord Maurice Vale Rose is one of the Permanent Under-Secretaries at the Treasury. He told me that the Government, on hearing of the robbery at Carmelite Pavement, has immediately made available the sum of one million pounds in gold bars to complete the Swedish Loan.’

‘The Government? Well, sir, that’s very interesting. It makes you think….’

‘Yes, doesn’t it? I thought you’d be intrigued. This consignment of gold bars will be brought down the river on a Royal Naval light cruiser, and will arrive here in the West India docks at three o’clock this afternoon. The bullion will be loaded on to the tender under armed guard, and taken out to the
Gustavus
Vasa
,
which will immediately raise anchor and set out for Göteborg. What do you think of that?’

Mackharness had nearly finished his pint of Irish stout, but he paused for a moment and looked steadily at Box over the rim of his tankard.

‘I’m thinking that it’s very quick work, sir – far too quick for my
liking. It’s as though someone in the Treasury had been expecting this robbery to happen…. Somebody appears to be oiling someone else’s wheels. It makes me nervous.’

‘It makes
me
nervous too, Box. It suggests that someone outside the Treasury knew that the loan would be guaranteed. Incidentally, Lord Maurice Vale Rose told me that the Bank of England had insured the whole consignment of four million pounds against loss by theft or accident. Maybe somebody knew
that
, as well. Think about it, will you, Box?’

‘I will, sir. What do you want me to do now?’

‘You’d better stay out on the river all day, in case that missing launch is found holed up somewhere. This robbery is a shocking affair, Box, and I myself am not going to emerge scot-free from the affair. I planned the whole thing, so that, if the need arises in higher quarters, I can be made a convenient scapegoat.’

‘But it’s not your fault, sir—’

‘Not, it’s not, but one must learn to take the rough with the smooth. So do as I say, and stay on the river, will you? That heavy launch can’t have got very far. I think that’s all, Box. I’ll leave you, now. The Commissioner’s asking for me, and I must get back to Whitehall Place before noon.’

‘Paper,
paper!
Big
bullion
robbery!
Millions
lost!
Read
all
about
it!’

The City rang with the news, and the vendors did excellent
business
as the early afternoon papers were all but snatched from their hands. Men in dark frock coats and silk hats congregated on the pavements, discussing the robbery. Poor old Strange! He stands to lose a million. It’s a vast sum, even for someone like him…. Oh, don’t worry about Strange. Somebody told me that the Bank had insured the whole consignment with the Prudential Assurance Company. Strange will be all right.

‘Paper,
paper!
Desperate
villain
posed
as
policeman!
Latest!
Mahoney
sought!’

The gold robbery at Carmelite Pavement monopolized the
conversation in The Recorder public house near Barbican. Mr Arthur Portman had contrived to ignore the banter of his fellow clerks for the last half-hour, but the arrival of yet more sensational accounts of the robbery made him judge the time right to reply to the question that one of the company had just asked him.

‘A statement? From me? What kind of statement do you want, my friend? The theft of old Strange’s gold has nothing to do with us at Peto’s.’

‘Did Peto’s consignment make it safely to the West India Docks?’

‘It did, all six hundred thousand pounds of it. It’ll be safe on board that Swedish ship by now.’

The verbal give and take between Portman and the others was good-humoured, and the background murmur of conversation in the crowded public bar had continued. But then someone else asked a question, and both its truculent tone and indiscreet content brought the bar chatter to an abrupt stop.

‘Is it true that Peto’s vaults are empty? The word’s going round that Peto’s half-million contribution left the cupboard bare.’

Mr Arthur Portman sprang from his seat, upsetting the remains of his sherry on the bar top in his agitation.

‘Nonsense! What a mischievous lie! There’s … well, there’s sufficient money down there to stock the tills for a month. In any case, any shortage of specie would be only temporary, as you know quite well – Government loans are always repaid on time. There’s no call for panic, I tell you—’

‘But
you’re
getting out, aren’t you? That’s what you told old Joey Beadle in here, the other day. Sounds as though Peto’s is a sinking ship—’

‘It’s not true, I tell you! For God’s sake, shut your mouth – it’s rumours of that kind that can bring a solvent house crashing down to ruin.’

It was the rough-mannered and weather-stained Inspector Cross of
the River Police and his men who discovered the steam launch C1. Nosing their heavy galley in and out of a maze of stagnant
waterways
penetrating the vast derelict commercial site of Corunna Lands below Waterloo Bridge, they had found the launch scuttled in a disused repair basin, its white funnel tilted drunkenly above the black and greasy water. Cross had alerted Inspector Saville of the Thames Division, and then he and his men had rowed away to their base at Lower Station, Blackwall Hulks.

Arnold Box arrived at Parr’s Basin as dusk was falling. Corunna Lands, abandoned by its proprietors in the late ’80s and awaiting development, was a dismal sight. Derelict buildings sagged on the grass-grown quays; sheds and workshops had collapsed in ruin; many structures had been burnt down by gleeful young
incendiaries
.

During the late afternoon, the great steam pontoons of the London Salvage Company had eased their way through the
dereliction
, and the firm’s skilled operators had commenced their preparations to lift the sunken launch from the basin. Sixteen
nine-inch
-thick wire hawsers had already been passed under the hull by divers, and attached to cable drums, which had been positioned by crane on either side of the basin. Box, standing on a platform some six feet above the quays, listened as the company’s chief engineer explained what was going to happen.

‘We’ve positioned those two great steam engines on either side of the basin, Mr Box. Each engine, with its attendant cable winder, is heavier than the launch. They’re massive affairs, those engines, and they can only be moved and put into position by the big steam cranes you can see over there.’

The engineer motioned towards the cranes, towering up over the ruined landscape from an adjacent waterway.

‘When the drums are turned, Inspector, the hawsers under the hull are tightened and raised, and the vessel is brought up to the surface. Of course, it’ll tilt over to one side as soon as it leaves the water. The hawsers attached to the right-hand cable drum are then
raised at an angle – the drum and its housing are lifted bodily on a moving platform – and the vessel slides down towards the
opposite
quay. We’ll use grappling irons to drag it bodily on to the wide paving.’

Flaring torches had been lit all round the basin, and the
flickering
light glanced off the black, impenetrable water. The men went about their tasks with the detachment born of long practice. The steam engines roared and thundered on either side of the basin, as they were brought to their highest pitch of power. Looking at this scene, Box was strongly reminded of the oil flares lighting up the backyard of 14 Back Peter Street, Soho, when he and PC Lane had unearthed the evil graveyard beneath the outside privy.

There came a hiss of steam, and a thunderous clanging roar from the vast hawser drums. Nothing seemed to happen for more than five minutes, and then a shriek of protesting steel rose from the disturbed water. The sound set Box’s teeth on edge. From the depths below they heard a dull boom as the submerged cables hit the keel of the stricken launch. The busy engines roared away, the light from their fires spreading across the paving of the quays.

Slowly but steadily the steam launch C1 rose out of the water. The superstructure was only a little damaged, though the light awning that had covered the deck had been sloughed off and lost below the water. The hawsers shrieked as they were tightened, and as the whole structure cleared the surface, streams of water began to flow down from the launch, cascading like so many waterfalls into the disturbed basin.

When thirty minutes had passed, the engines were shut off for a moment, while a man in oil skins clambered out on the perilous cradle. He seemed to Box to be patting the dented side of the launch with a leather-gloved hand. Apparently satisfied, the man slithered cautiously back to the quay, and shouted something to his mates. The steam engines roared back into life.

With a renewed hissing of steam and a heavy rumbling of
machinery, the cable drum on the quay to Box’s right began to rise on its moving platform. It was a slow process, occupying all of half an hour, during which time the last light of day receded, and the flaring torches seemed to burn more brightly. At last, with an echoing scraping reverberation, the launch began to slide towards the left-hand quay. Skilled hands reached out with long grappling hooks to drag it off the hawsers and on to the wide flagged walkway on the rim of the basin.

Box’s attention turned to the shadowy figures standing near him on the platform above Parr’s Basin. The company’s chief engineer, an elderly be-whiskered man in a bulky overcoat and a black bowler hat, had excused himself and climbed carefully down to the quay. From the darkness emerged the familiar figure of Inspector Saville of the Thames Division. Like Box, he had been working all day without a break, but his tired face broke into a smile. Box recognized in his uniformed companions some of the police
officers
whom he had seen earlier in the day at Carmelite Wharf