The Vice Society (21 page)

‘As I say, I do not speak of customers. Will you be making a purchase?’

‘There is a book I have heard spoken of, but I am not sure of the complete title.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘Maddeningly little, I am afraid. I have heard it mentioned, but in tones suggesting it is something rather special. It would appear to be a book with a classical theme, or at least I assume so from a word in the title: “Persephone”. Do you know it?’

Outside on the wintry cobbles of Holywell-street, Mr Williamson looked at his watch and at the shopfront of Henry Poppleton. Noah was inside for around twenty minutes. Benjamin – who was clearly of limited use for interrogative purposes – continued to loiter outside the rag-sellers further up the street towards St Clement Danes, ready to come for help if needed.

As Mr Williamson watched the activity on the street, he slowly became aware of a character not following the typical rhythm of the human traffic. The man had walked past two or three times without showing any particular inclination to reach a destination – and he was clearly neither a beggar nor a vendor. His attire gave little away as to his profession, but he seemed curious rather than suspicious to Mr Williamson, who soon disregarded the oddity as a common element of this most unusual street.

That man, inevitably, was Eusebius Bean. He, too, had taken careful note of two unusual characters – a lofty Negro, and a top-hatted man with a pocked face waiting near Popple-ton’s bookshop. The latter had previously been speaking to the waterman Joseph, and Eusebius now perceived, with his vulpine intuition, that both the interrogator and Negro were somehow working in collaboration. Perhaps it was the darting glances between the two, or the positions of their bodies . . . whatever the evidence, he sensed a connection.

Benjamin was the first to understand what was about to happen when he heard a distant chatter of boots upon the road – many boots. A whistle sounded three shrill blows from a remote upper storey and was followed at close intervals by the same signal all along the street so that the message could be unmistakable:

The police were coming. There was going to be a raid.

A phrenzy of activity gripped certain bookshops along the street. Shopkeepers ran outside with assistants and began to affix boards over their windows. Iron grilles were dropped on to hinges and a rattle of chains echoed along that narrow thoroughfare as if it were a transport ship. And those habitants of Holywell-street who had witnessed the spectacle before made themselves secure behind closed doors and curtained windows.

By now, the terrible onrush of feet was audible to all. The Negro made a series of urgent gesticulations that meant nothing to Mr Williamson. Should he rush into the shop – which at this moment was being battened against the impending onslaught by Mr Poppleton’s assistants – or should he flee and leave Noah to make his own escape?

He rushed towards Mr Poppleton’s doorway, the sound of boots coming ever closer.

‘Closed for today!’ said a youth about to drop an iron gate into place across the doorway.

Mr Williamson pushed past him and entered the shop just as the metalwork clashed into position.

Inside was almost dark, the windows now being barricaded. Henry Poppleton himself paced animatedly shouting orders to his boys.

‘John – pile the special books in the yard, but keep them clean and dry. If these brutes break through, you are to set light to all of the volumes. Yes, all of them. Peter – have you checked the window on the upper floor? Those ——— will bring ladders if I know them . . . O! Who are you?’ said the publisher, noticing Mr Williamson for the first time.

‘I am a customer.’

‘We are closed.’

‘So it would seem, but I am locked within the shop.’

‘No matter. It is the fault of the police. We will endeavour to weather this storm and hope they do not get through. Keep away from the windows . . . and, please, take the opportunity to browse.’

With this, Mr Poppleton banged up the stairs to that upper-storey room, where he began to help young John carry armfuls of books down and through a corridor to what must have been an enclosed court at the rear.

Mr Williamson looked quickly around and could not see Noah. There was an uneasy silence in the shop, all sound muffled by the books and by the boards outside. The rattle of boots had now become an ominous shuffling outside the window. Daylight came only dimly through the slats of the boards. Numerous shadows shifted.

Then a truncheon rapped three times on the iron gate outside and a man spoke: the unmistakable voice of Inspector Newsome.

‘Henry Poppleton – I have a warrant signed by the magistrate entitling me to enter on suspicion of finding indecent books and prints sold to the general public from these premises. If you do not admit us, we will be forced to gain entrance. I will give you exactly one minute to open this door.’

The publisher paused halfway down the stairs, his arms full of books. He remained there as if frozen. The silence of that anticipatory tableau was such that a man of fancy might have thought to hear the very ticks of the inspector’s watch outside.

‘You there!’ said Mr Poppleton to Mr Williamson, ‘come and help us get these books to safety. Quickly, while there is a hope.’

Knowing exactly what the books contained, and that destroying them would aid the criminal, he was reluctant to participate – particularly because a senior member of the Detective Force was about to come through the door at any moment. But that room upstairs might be the place where Noah had gone. He nodded his acquiescence.

The room was as last we saw it, albeit somewhat depleted of stock. There was also one other notable difference.

‘Sir, there is an unconscious man on the floor here,’ said Mr Williamson with unfeigned surprise as he saw the prostrate form of Noah.

‘Pay no mind to him,’ said Mr Poppleton. ‘He had an accident. Now – take this pile of books and follow John out to the yard. He will direct you what to do.’

‘But this man has a bloody wound to his head! What manner of accident did he have in a mere reading room?’

‘We have not the time to discuss this matter. Take these books to the yard before the police burst in upon us!’

But it was too late.

A tremendous crash marked the beginning of the assault on that fortress of words. There came the sound of breaking glass as the barricades bowed under the massed onslaught, and the very building seemed to rock with the violence visited upon it by boots and clubs and pry bars.

Mr Poppleton dismissed his customer and the unconscious man with a contemptuous backhanded gesture and set off down the stairs with his incriminating texts.

Mr Williamson knelt to the insensible form beside him, slapping the face. ‘Noah! Noah! Wake up!’

No response.

More windowpanes shattered. Light began to appear in the shop once more as boards were ripped away. The batter and rattle of attack was relentless.

Resorting to an old trick from his days on the beat, Mr Williamson pinched Noah’s nostrils and held his jaw closed so that no breath could enter his inert form. Either he would asphyxiate, or his body would wake itself with urgency to avoid extinction.

Noah snuffled and his eyes darted open. His hand went to the wound on his head and he looked at the blood on his palm.

‘George? Why—?’

‘We have no time. Inspector Newsome is smashing down the shopfront, as you can hear. I would prefer him to catch neither of us here. I believe there is a yard at the rear – can you walk?’

‘We will try.’

‘What happened to you? Who struck you?’

‘Later. We must try to escape.’

With much assistance, and amidst the terrible cacophony of the raid, Noah managed to descend the stairs and out into that enclosed yard, a grimy brick enclosure where most of the indecent stock of the shop had been piled upon a platform of wooden slats.

Mr Poppleton was in a state of extreme agitation, made worse now by coming face to face once more with Noah. Then, as the first policemen began to pour into the shop through door and splintered windows, the publisher closed his eyes in resignation and shook his head. He looked to John.

‘Burn them. Burn them all.’

The boy made to light a lucifer match, but at that exact moment Inspector Newsome entered the yard at a run, his face crimson with effort and his truncheon raised.

He was immediately robbed of the power of speech, however, by the scene before him. For in addition to the expected pile of corrupting filth, he saw there in that piteous quadrangle the wanted publisher Henry Poppleton, the disgraced former-detective George Williamson, and the escaped transportee Noah Dyson, who had not so very long ago threatened the inspector’s life. If the latter looked around suddenly, it was perhaps because he also expected to see Benjamin.

Surprise or no surprise, his words were decisive: ‘Gentlemen – you are all under arrest.’

FOURTEEN

It was difficult for Inspector Newsome to define precisely what it was about Eusebius Bean that he disliked so much. The spy was so quotidian in appearance, so banal in manner, that he barely existed. Yet exist he did, and he had been following the inspector since Sir Richard had ordered it.

They were sitting in Mr Newsome’s office at Scotland Yard the morning following the bookshop raid and Eusebius was giving his report on what he had witnessed prior to the raid (the second time, incidentally, that he had given such a report – though not to the police). The inspector was only half listening. Instead, he was shuffling the disparate pieces of the case in his mind. These latest developments were quite astounding and had left him at a loss to explain the seemingly endless ramifications of that simple fall from a window seven days before. He certainly dare not go to Sir Richard with these latest developments without first attempting to make sense of them.

‘Must you do that with your tongue?’ he interrupted Eusebius.

‘Do what, Inspector?’

‘That constant licking at the corner of your mouth. It is quite distracting and gives you an air of the insane.’

‘A harmless habit.’

‘Well, see if you can stop it. To summarize what you have rather long-windedly said thus far: Mr Williamson questioned the waterman while Noah Dyson went into the bookshop. Benjamin waited up the street.’

‘Benjamin?’

‘The Negro. He is with Dyson.’

‘Yes. I saw the waterman (Joseph is his name) pointing at the window above Colliver’s and I deduced—’

‘Leave the deducing to the detectives, sir. Besides, we have the gentlemen in custody and we can speak to them at our leisure about what was said.’

‘On that subject, Inspector: I do not see how you can hold Mr Williamson, Mr Dyson and the Negro. The former two cannot be convicted of any crime save being in a shop, and the latter was merely waiting on the street.’

‘You are quite the lawyer, Eusebius – but incidental evidence points to Mr Williamson being involved in the investigation of this case. That may not be a crime, but I want to know why and what he has discovered – as well as his reasons for involving Dyson. There is something highly suspicious going on here, and if a period in gaol for these gentlemen is my only means of leverage, I will use it.’

‘Who is this Noah Dyson and why do you speak of him with such dislike?’

‘The man, and his dusky colleague, is a menace – but one I have underestimated before. Gaol is the best place for him.’

‘He is a criminal, then?’

‘He was a transportee and escaped his captivity in Australia. If it were that simple, he would be back there now. But he has also been a cracksman and has worked for the Detective Force in ... in an unofficial capacity. The situation is complex.’

‘From what little I have heard about these men, I fear they are unlikely to be cooperative, whatever you threaten them with. Is it not possible to speak with them frankly and discuss the case? If they have a stake in it, they may be happy to have the assistance of the Detective Force.’

‘Unlikely. And more complicated than you imagine. My relationship with each of the parties has not been without difficulty; there is a certain degree of ... of animosity.’

‘May I suggest a solution, Inspector? The Vice Society has many wealthy benefactors, as you may know. Perhaps I could enquire whether one of them might provide a venue where we and the gaoled men might converse in an atmosphere of neutrality, away from the threat of prison and the force of the law. I know that there is much enthusiasm among my employers for this case to be solved.’

Inspector Newsome looked at Eusebius sceptically. The very reasonableness of the suggestion made the spy seem even more objectionable – but it
was
an intriguing idea. He affected to give it some thought.

‘I could most likely organize somewhere this very day,’ offered Eusebius.

‘All right, all right – see to it. But do not let Sir Richard hear of it. Digressions from procedure disturb him. And let me know as soon as possible where and when we will meet. I will be here waiting.’

Mr Newsome watched the back of the departing spy with distaste, and some distrust. There was something about the man – something indefinable that made one reticent in his presence. It was as if he were mentally recording everything in order to use later, probably against one. It was a concern that perhaps he should have gone to Sir Richard about, but, alas, the inspector thought he had the better of Eusebius Bean.