The Great Train Robbery (17 page)

“It is a present,” Pierce said, “for a lady.”

“Ah, a lady.”

“On the Continent.”

“Ah, on the Continent.”

“In Paris.”

“Ah.”

Taggert looked him up and down. Pierce was well dressed. “You could buy one right enough,” he said. “Cost you just as dear as buying from me.”

“I made you a business proposition.”

“So you did, and a proper one, too, but you didn’t mention the joeys for me. You just mention you want a knapped leopard.”

“I’ll pay you twenty guineas.”

“Cor, you’ll pay me forty and count yourself lucky.”

“I’ll pay you twenty-five and
you’ll
count yourself lucky,” Pierce said.

Taggert looked unhappy. He twisted his gin glass in his hands. “All right, then,” he said. “When’s it to be?”

“Never you mind,” Pierce said. “You find the animal and set the lay, and you’ll hear from me soon enough.” And he dropped a gold guinea on the counter.

Taggert picked it up, bit it, nodded, and touched his cap. “Good day to you, sir,” he said.

The twentieth-century urban dweller’s attitude of fear or indifference to a crime in progress would have astounded the Victorians. In those days, any person being robbed or mugged immediately raised a hue and cry, and the victim both expected and got an immediate response from law-abiding citizens around him, who joined in the fray with alacrity in an attempt to catch the bolting villain. Even ladies of breeding were known, upon occasion, to participate in a fracas with enthusiasm.

There were several reasons for the willingness of the populace to get involved in a crime. In the first place, an organized police force was still relatively new; London’s Metropolitan Police was the best in England, but it was only twenty-five years old, and people did not yet believe that crime was “something for the police to take care of.” Second, firearms were rare, and remain so to the present day in England; there was little likelihood of a bystander stopping a charge by pursuing a thief. And finally, the majority of criminals were children, often extremely young children, and adults were not hesitant to go after them.

In any case, an adept thief took great care to conduct his business undetected, for if any alarm was raised, the chances were that he would be caught. For this very reason thieves often worked in gangs, with several members acting as “stalls” to create confusion in any
alarm. Criminals of the day also utilized the fracas—as a staged event—to cover illegal activities, and this maneuver was known as a “jolly gaff.”

A good jolly gaff required careful planning and timing, for it was, as the name implied, a form of theatre. On the morning of January 9, 1855, Pierce looked around the cavernous, echoing interior of the London Bridge Station and saw that all his players were in position.

Pierce himself would perform the most crucial role, that of the “beefer.” He was dressed as a traveler, as was Miss Miriam alongside him. She would be the “plant.”

A few yards distant was the “culprit,” a chavy nine years old, scruffy and noticeably (should anyone care to observe it,
too
noticeably) out of place among the crowd of first-class passengers. Pierce had himself selected the chavy from among a dozen children in the Holy Land; the criterion was speed, pure and simple.

Farther away still was the “crusher,” Barlow, wearing a constable’s uniform with the hat pulled down to conceal the white scar across his forehead. Barlow would permit the child to elude him as the gaff progressed.

Finally, not far from the steps to the railway dispatcher’s office was the whole point of the ploy: Agar, dressed out of twig—disguised—in his finest gentleman’s clothing.

As it came time for the London & Greenwich eleven-o’clock train to depart, Pierce scratched his neck with his left hand. Immediately, the child came up and brushed rather abruptly against Miss Miriam’s right side, rustling her purple velvet dress. Miss Miriam cried, “I’ve been robbed, John!”

Pierce raised his beef: “Stop, thief!” he shouted, and raced after the bolting chavy. “Stop, thief!”

Startled bystanders immediately grabbed at the youngster,
but he was quick and slippery, and soon tore free of the crowd and ran toward the back of the station.

There Barlow in his policeman’s uniform came forward menacingly. Agar, as a civic-spirited gentleman, also joined in the pursuit. The child was trapped; his only escape lay in a desperate scramble up the stairs leading to the railway office, and he ran hard, with Barlow, Agar, and Pierce fast on his heels.

The little boy’s instructions had been explicit: he was to get up the stairs, into the office, past the desks of the clerks, and back to a high rear window opening out onto the roof of the station. He was to break this window in an apparent attempt to escape. Then Barlow would apprehend him. But he was to struggle valiantly until Barlow cuffed him; this was his signal that the gaff had ended.

The child burst into the South Eastern Railway office, startling the clerks. Pierce dashed in immediately afterward: “Stop him, he’s a thief!” Pierce shouted and, in his own pursuit, knocked over one of the clerks. The child was scrambling for the window. Then Barlow, the constable, came in.

“I’ll handle this,” Barlow said, in an authoritative and tough voice, but he clumsily knocked one of the desks over and sent papers flying.

“Catch him! Catch him!” Agar called, entering the offices.

By now the child was scrambling up onto the station dispatcher’s desk, going toward a narrow high window; he cracked the glass with his small fist, cutting himself. The station dispatcher kept saying “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” over and over.

“I am an officer of the law, make way!” Barlow shouted.

“Stop him!” Pierce screamed, allowing himself to become quite hysterical. “Stop him, he’s getting away!”

Glass fragments from the window fell on the floor,
and Barlow and the child rolled on the ground in an uneven struggle that took rather longer to resolve itself than one might expect. The clerks and the dispatchers watched in considerable confusion.

No one noticed that Agar had turned his back on the commotion and picked the lock on the door to the office, trying several of his jangling ring of bettys until he found one that worked the mechanism. Nor did anyone notice when Agar then moved to the side wall cabinet, also fitted with a lock, which he also picked with one key after another until he found one that worked.

Three or four minutes passed before the young ruffian—who kept slipping from the hands of the red-faced constable—was finally caught by Pierce, who held him firmly. At last the constable gave the little villain a good boxing on the ears, and the lad ceased to struggle and handed up the purse he had stolen. He was carted away by the constable. Pierce dusted himself off, looked around the wreckage of the office, and apologized to the clerks and the dispatcher.

Then the other gentleman who had joined in the pursuit said, “I fear, sir, that you have missed your train.”

“By God, I have,” Pierce said. “Damn the little rascal.”

And the two gentlemen departed—the one thanking the other for helping corner the thief, and the other saying it was nothing—leaving the clerks to clean up the mess.

It was, Pierce later reflected, a nearly perfect jolly gaff.

When Clean Willy Williams, the snakesman, arrived at Pierce’s house late in the afternoon of January 9, 1855, he found himself confronted by a very strange spectacle in the drawing room.

Pierce, wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, lounged in an easy chair, smoking a cigar, utterly relaxed, a stopwatch in his hands.

In contrast, Agar, in shirtsleeves, stood in the center of the room. Agar was bent into a kind of half-crouch; he was watching Pierce and panting slightly.

“Are you ready?” Pierce said.

Agar nodded.

“Go!” Pierce said, and flicked the stopwatch.

To Clean Willy’s amazement, Agar dashed across the room to the fireplace, where he began to jog in place, counting to himself, his lips moving, in a low whisper, “… seven … eight … nine …”

“That’s it,” Pierce said. “Door!”

“Door!” Agar said and, in pantomime, turned the handle on an unseen door. He then took three steps to the right, and reached up to shoulder height, touching something in the air.

“Cabinet,” Pierce said.

“Cabinet …”

Now Agar fished two wax flats out of his pocket, and pretended to make an impression of a key. “Time?” he asked.

“Thirty-one,” Pierce said.

Agar proceeded to make a second impression, on a second set of flats, all the while counting to himself. “Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five …”

Again, he reached into the air, with both hands, as if closing something.

“Cabinet shut,” he said, and took three paces back across the room. “Door!”

“Fifty-four,” Pierce said.

“Steps!” Agar said, and ran in place once more, and then sprinted across the room to halt beside Pierce’s chair. “Done!” he cried.

Pierce looked at the watch and shook his head. “Sixty-nine.” He puffed on his cigar.

“Well,” Agar said, in a wounded tone, “it’s better than it was. What was the last time?”

“Your last time was seventy-three.”

“Well, it’s better—”

“—But not good enough. Maybe if you don’t close the cabinet. And don’t hang up the keys, either. Willy can do that.”

“Do what?” Willy said, watching.

“Open and close the cabinet,” Pierce said.

Agar went back to his starting position.

“Ready?” Pierce said.

“Ready,” Agar said.

Once again, this odd charade was repeated, with Agar sprinting across the room, jogging in place, pretending to open a door, taking three steps, making two wax impressions, taking three steps, closing a door, jogging in place, and then running across the room.

“Time?”

Pierce smiled. “Sixty-three,” he said.

Agar grinned, gasping for breath.

“Once more,” Pierce said, “just to be certain.”

*  *  *

Later in the afternoon, Clean Willy was given the lay.

“It’ll be tonight,” Pierce said. “Once it’s dark, you’ll go up to London Bridge, and get onto the roof of the station. That a problem?”

Clean Willy shook his head. “What then?”

“When you’re on the roof, cross to a window that is broken. You’ll see it; it’s the window to the dispatcher’s office. Little window, barely a foot square.”

“What then?”

“Get into the office.”

“Through the window?”

“Yes.”

“What then?”

“Then you will see a cabinet, painted green, mounted on the wall.” Pierce looked at the little snakesman. “You’ll have to stand on a chair to reach it. Be very quiet; there’s a jack posted outside the office, on the steps.”

Clean Willy frowned.

“Unlock the cabinet,” Pierce said, “with this key.” He nodded to Agar, who gave Willy the first of the picklocks. “Unlock the cabinet, and open it up, and wait.”

“What for?”

“Around ten-thirty, there’ll be a bit of a shindy. A soak will be coming into the station to chat up the jack.”

“What then?”

“Then you unlock the main door to the office, using this key here”—Agar gave him the second key—“and then you wait.”

“What for?”

“For eleven-thirty, or thereabouts, when the jack goes to the W.C. Then Agar comes up the steps, through the door you’ve unlocked, and he makes his waxes. He leaves, and you lock the first door right away. By now, the jack is back. You lock the cabinets, put the chair back, and go out the window, quiet-like.”

“That’s the lay?” Clean Willy said doubtfully.

“That’s the lay.”

“You popped me out of Newgate for this?” Clean Willy said. “This is no shakes, to knock over a deadlurk.”

“It’s a deadlurk with a jack posted at the door, and it’s quiet, you’ll have to be quiet-like, all the time.”

Clean Willy grinned. “Those keys mean a sharp vamp. You’ve planned.”

“Just do the lay,” Pierce said, “and quiet.”

“Simple,” Clean Willy said.

“Keep those dubs handy,” Agar said, pointing to the keys, “and have the doors ready and open when I come in, or it’s nommus for all of us, and we’re likely nibbed by the crusher.”