The Hangman's Child (20 page)

The glass framed a reflection of a flat steel door with a double keyhole and a wheel for retracting the bolts of the lock. The door was set in iron-plate running the length of the room. The main walls were also lined by iron-plate whose studs were plainly seen, regular as embroidery. Sheet-iron formed the floor.

The pavement was empty now. Rann directed his comments quietly to Samuel.

'Iron lining on the wall and steel door on the vault. Double Treasury lock. Other walls lined with plate-iron after Acutt's warehouse was burgled by breaking in from the next store. Iron plate on the floor. Can't say about the ceiling.
P'raps they can't iron it
because of the weight. So they put in the mirror. Anyone that dropped down is caught in the glass. You might run fast if you could get back through the walls or the floor, but you couldn't run off up through the ceiling. That's what Milner's must have told them.'

'You never mean to spider down through the ceiling?'

'No, Sammy. Even if it ain't iron-plated - and I'd swear it ain't -there'd be such damage. When I've done this job, it must look as if it never happened. At least for as long as it takes to cash the bills. Couple of weeks, any rate.'

'You can't bust through iron plate.'

'I never said I could, Sammy. I know I can't.'

'Nor you can't bust up through an iron floor.'

'I know that likewise, Sam.'

'And you can't come down through the ceiling because, even if it ain't iron-plated, they'd see the damage.' 'I know that too, Sam.' 'Drains? Chimneys?'

'They'd have stops on the drains, Sammy. And flues in these places have iron plates that only open from inside. I been a sweep's boy, ain't I? I should know.'

'Suffering God, Jack Rann,' said Samuel mournfully, 'even if you hadn't got to carry that little wriggler Jolly, this isn't a runner. Not even much of a starter!'

'Oh, don't you worry about that, old Samuel Wilberforce. I'll do it all right. I got no option now. And them thinking it can't be done is no end useful. Look there! See how they put that steel vault-door and its locks on display. Look at the lock plate. A fool can read it from here. Milner's Double Treasury.'

'How's that help you?'

'Because, Samuel, if there's an article in this world Pandy knew a thing or two about, it's a Milner Double Treasury. Thanks to Pandy, I know what its inside looks like. Five levers must be lifted. But the key don't move a bolt, as you'd expect. Instead, it connects with a set of cog-wheels, which lift a steel arm and take pressure off the main bolt. You have to do it twice. Two keyholes. Different keys. Even then, the bolt don't move until you turn that wheel on the door beside the keyholes. It's connected to five other bolts that all draw back together, top to bottom of the door. No one can't jemmy a door with six bolts. See? It's a clever lock, is a Double Treasury.'

‘I
s it?' asked Sammy hopefully.

'Too clever,' Rann said quietly. 'So as to stop a man making a key to fit, they use keys that can be altered every day by changing the metal steps on the key's shank.'

'But how's that help you?'

'Sammy! Using a key-shank! Fitting steps to it until they'll lift the levers and open a lock! Ain't that my trade, Sam? Ain't it the very thing I was brought into the world to do?'

For the first time, Samuel's sleek aquiline face began to reflect optimism.

'Sammy! It's as if they tried to think of a lock to please Pandy Quinn and Jack Rann. And they went and made it - just for us. Now do you see, Sam? That's why Pandy chose the Cornhill Vaults. That's why it got to be here and nowhere else!'

Samuel looked at his shoes and began to laugh downwards, so that the world should not see him chuckling in his black mourning suit. He shook his head and crowed a little with happy admiration.

'Handsome Rann!' he murmured happily. 'Oh, Pandy Quinn and Handsome Rann!'

Several days later, Canon Wilberforce spent an agreeable half-hour in conversation with Colonel Maidment, manager of Drummonds Bank in Pall Mall East. Accustomed only to the quietude of the cathedral close at St Asaph, the elderly clergyman's London visit concerned the financing of a joint stock company, which the canon's brother was promoting.

By the end of the discussion,
it had been arranged that Canon
Wilberforce's secretary would bring a number of bills to be discounted, as soon as the canon had time to return to the close and bring the paper back to London. Bank of England bonds would be issued in their place, in the canon's name.

Colonel Maidment hinted only the least doubt at the wisdom of the investment and the unique legal obligations assumed by investors in joint stock enterprises. That, however, was a matter for Canon Wilberforce. The manager contented himself with suggesting that advice might be sought from the family solicitor. The bank would, of course, charge its usual commission for the proposed transaction. Indeed, Canon Wilberforce, with the unworldly honesty of his cloth, mentioned this consideration himself before the manager could raise the matter.

On the following day, the London and Westminster Bank in The Strand welcomed the auxiliary Bishop of Wellington during his furlough. He was shortly to return to New Zealand for the marriage of his daughter to the son of the provincial governor. The matter of exchanging individual bills for more generally negotiable bonds, to facilitate the marriage settlement, was almost lost in the manager's frank admiration of the animal attractions of the fair-haired young woman who accompanied her father. The manager might, indeed, have overlooked the question of the bank's fee, had not the moral rigour of the bishop raised it first.

On the following day, a scattering of banks in the city and the suburbs arranged facilities by which a frail old guardian would encash bills to be replaced by Bank of England bonds. It was a matter of wardship. Those who saw the almond-eyed and golden-skinned young ward, could not help wishing that they might have had such a loving duty to discharge. They accepted the old man's instructions in a daydream of being part loving guardian and part guardian lover to such a provoking little creature.

FOUR

THE CLIMBING-BOY

20

Samuel watched from the bow-fronted little shops of the station arcade as Arthur Trent walked the length of the platform at London Bridge with the young woman on his arm. Trent's grey suiting was clean cut, his dark Mephistophelean whiskers freshly trimmed. The lines of carriages making up the evening departures were overarched by a vault of sooty glass. Italianate pillars of yellow brick at either side of the tracks enclosed the station offices like the side chapels of a vast cathedral. Maggie walked beside her admirer, blonde chignon stirring sensuously in a black silk bow. With quiet pride, Mr Trent led his prize to a dragon-green first-class carriage at the front of the train. The railway guard tolled a handbell, his five-minute warning of the train's departure.

To an onlooker, it might seem that Samuel was relishing the self-confident swagger of Maggie Fashion's sturdy hips. But at a little distance from the carriage both her pale-grey gloves fell to the platform, a few feet apart, apparently unnoticed. A porter picked them up and hurried after Mr Trent, to be rewarded by a coin and a dark smile. Samuel turned away.

He looked round once at the train. The doors of its green carriage were shut. A whistle split the air and the double-humped engine emitted a snort of steam and a tolling bell-note. Beyond the station canopy, low sunlight picked out the rusty sails of East India merchantmen on the river below and thr
ew long shadows over the
engine-sheds of the Greenwich Railway Company, across the dust heaps and market gardens of Bermondsey.

Twenty minutes later, Samuel's cab was in the slow-moving traffic behind Nicholson's Wharf. Miss Jolly sat in the far corner, in a costume suited to breaking and entering. The dark hair was piled under a fur shako. She wore a short blue tunic and cherry-coloured riding-pants, tight enough to suggest the uniform of a stage drummer-boy at a Cremorne Gardens masquerade.

At the Marquis of Granby, Jack Rann was there before them, in a high-walled booth of the saloon-bar. The Granby stood where the streets of banking houses and the coster markets converged. Porters sat at tables in a sawdust tap-room, their beer in pewter tankards, waiting for a night-call from sailing barques that came up to Tower Quay.

Samuel pushed open the mullion-windowed door, staring through tobacco-fogged air. His clerical dress was covered by the old coat and long muffler of an ancient dock-office clerk. One or two drinkers glanced at Miss Jolly, in her ambiguous costume of cherry pants and drummer-jacket, the profile of a golden Nefertiti, a stray tendril of dark hair uncovered by the shako at her nape. But the old men returned to their conversation. Whether she was dressed for a caper or a fancy lech was nothing to them.

Rann spoke softly as they slid into the booth on the far side of its narrow table.

'Foreman from the tailor's last to leave. Twenty minutes ago. Building's empty.'

'Trent's gone till Monday.' A smile tweaked Samuel's smooth face. 'Mag dropped both gloves. So she managed to leave the attic window unfastened as well.'

'Good. Then we got all we need.'

Samuel looked at him without expression.

'We agreed, Jack: what I didn't know, I couldn't tell. No matter how bad they hurt us. That's over. I want to know the rest.' Rann shrugged and looked at the other drinkers.

‘I’ll
get to the roof and through his attic, Sam. Trent got two keys on his fob. One opens his rooms and one opens the cutting-room on the floor below. Both open the street door. Mag pleasured him so hard but never could get her hands on those keys to press 'em in wax. Then, he leaves the cutting-room key by accident in the mourning warehouse opposite. She sees him go to a safe in his rooms and take a spare set. See?'

'You mean to bust his safe as well,' Samuel said uneasily.

‘I
mean to have his keys, not waste time on a skeleton. I'll come down the stairs and open his door in Sun Court. It's dark and no one to see. You'll have missy here and the bag of tricks. When you hear me, walk smart under the arch and in.'

A waiter in white apron over a black waistcoat took their orders. Rann paused and resumed.

'Trent's private stairs go up past his cutting-room to his door at the top of the building. Walker's Vaults got a separate door on Sun Court. Brigade of Guards wouldn't break through that. Down through Trent's cutting-room it's to be.'

He paused again as the waiter set down glasses and jug.

'On Monday, Sam, there mustn't be a whisker out of place in the vaults. Supervisors look the place over first thing. If this blows up while we're still changing the bills, we're done for.'

'You still taking young missy in with you, Jack?'

'Only way, Sam. You wait in Trent's rooms. Watch the street. Policeman on his beat every twenty minutes. You'll have a bell, like a school bell. If you see anyone, ring it hard in the fireplace. It'll sound through the building that way but not outside. When it's clear again, ring single notes.'

'And if there's trouble? Like someone coming for Trent?'

Rann's heart sank at the worry in the smoothly barbered face. He smiled.

'Any of that, Sam - take what you got and hook it. Down the stairs. Out the street door. It's a Yale lock, lets you out but not in. If you can, ring the doorbell on the vaults hard as you go by. But it won't come to that. Not now.'

Samuel tried to speak but his throat was too tight. He cleared it. 'Right, Jacko.'

'Me and missy go through the tailor's cutting-room below Trent's door. Runs the length of the building above the vaults. At the far end, it comes down to street-level next to the vaults. Just a room for shop trade that's shuttered after dark. Pandy went there, pretending to be measured for an Aldershot coat. That's where Jolly stays and I bring the bills out to her to be copied on our blanks. She'll have the blank bill-forms, the inks and dips from the carpet-bag. I'll have the tools. Shutters are closed now so she can work there till Monday, if she has to.'

'And you?' Samuel's smile was of doubt rather than triumph.

'Floorboards under the tailor's fitting-room carpet should come up easy. Pandy saw them. There's a partition wall in the foundations between the tailor and the vaults. Under the floor is too shallow for a cellar, that's why they keeps the coal out the back. Any case, Walker don't want coal under the floor, seeing he'd need a coal chute and someone might get in that way.'

'Yes,' said Samuel scornfully, 'but when you break through that foundation wall, you can't never make it good. Even if you put it back, they'll see the stones were moved.'

'They don't go down there, Sammy. It's not used. They don't go down more than they go down the drains or up the chimney. They couldn't tell you if the stones in that wall has been loose or tight, damaged or not, for ten years past.'