‘Ben Tuffnell said I was to tell you,’ Saxby made it sound apologetic. ‘He said you’d know what to do.’
‘Have to go to the fountainhead,’ muttered Blind Fred. ‘Nothing else for it. Have to go to Bert Jacobs. Can’t get Ember so he’ll have to do. The girl’s sleeping,’ he bobbed his head towards the corner of the damp little cellar where a bundle of rags appeared to have been dumped in an unceremonious pile – Blind Fred’s young daughter who guided him around the streets giving credence to his blind lie. ‘You’ll have to take me over to Notting Hill, lad.’
Saxby sighed, shivered and resigned himself to the chore of carting Blind Fred to wherever he wanted to go. Within five minutes they were out on the street again.
Ember blurted out the tale to Spear whose unease became more apparent by the second.
‘What in tarnation’s happened to the Nob? I’ll rot the shirkster’s bones if this is his making.’
‘I have to get back before they catch my wind,’ Ember was starting to sound plaintive. ‘And I want that copper out of the way.’
‘Never fear about the blue boy, we’ll put him to sleep. I’m worried that you’ll get clean away with the sparkling glass: and we’ll not lay hands or eyes on any of you.’
Terremant was at Spear’s side. ‘We’ll have to catch them in Edmonton, that’s all,’ he growled.
Spear nodded. ‘Betteridge, get yourself in a blue suit, you’ll be going on the beat, and pray that the copper’s sergeant don’t fancy an early morning stroll.’ Then, to Ember, ‘You get back to your job.’
As Ember closed the door behind him, he saw Betteridge climbing into one of the small pile of police uniforms that had been set ready for the following night.
Spear watched the grubby little villain scamper across the road and disappear into Bishopsgate. He felt in his pocket, curling his fingers around the eel-skin – the short canvas sausage stuffed with sand, which he had taken to carrying. He exchanged a few brief words with Terremant, and grinned at Betteridge, who was now complete in his uniform with the broad-brimmed, combed helmet square on his head. Then he gave a come-on nod to Terremant and left the shop.
‘Oh, constable, don’t arrest me, I’ve a lakin and six nippers to support,’ smiled Terremant as he followed Spear through the door.
Betteridge, unhappy in his disguise, waited, watching events from inside the doorway.
Spear and Terremant jog-trotted down to the narrow St Peter’s Alley and waited out of sight, their eyes not leaving the corner of Bishopsgate. Within five minutes the police constable appeared and had hardly got around the corner when Terremant set off running towards him, shouting and waving, his voice shrill.
‘Murder,’ he yelled, ‘Bloody murder, help.’
The constable, deflected from his normal round, began to run towards Terremant, and as the two met, the big punisher let fly a babble of information – ‘Over there … there … in the alley … it’s a woman … Oh my God it’s horrible … murder …’ And with these cries he almost pushed the hapless policeman into St Peter’s Alley and into the arms of the waiting Spear.
Terremant knocked his helmet off and spun him around while Spear delivered the blow with his eel-skin, hard to the base of the skull. The copper folded up like a concertina, only uttering a short grunt as the wind went out of him.
Terremant doubled back to the shop, tipping the wink to Betteridge, who slid out into the street and began to pace the swooning constable’s beat.
Back in St Peter’s Alley, they dragged the copper up to the church railings, pulled his greatcoat down to his elbows, took off his boots and strapped his belt around his knees. Then, lifting him back, they pushed his wrists through the railings. Spear went into the churchyard as Terremant unlaced one of the boots. Using the laces. Spear secured the wrists. They then gagged him with his own socks.
‘First time a copper tasted his own feet,’ laughed Spear.
They returned to the alley entrance to stand guard, well acquainted with the dangers of this deception, particularly as Betteridge would have to pass uncomfortably close to the police station in Bishopsgate. The quicker Ember got on with matters the better. Once they were safe the uniforms would have to be got out of the shop and over to some other secure spot. Like as not to Bermondsey. In any case, they would have to be used smartly, and in daylight – a prospect which concerned Spear, for there was a great difference between carrying out a deception and nabbing a gang under cover of darkness, and doing the same thing in the full light of day. Particularly as it would mean a frontal charge on the house in Edmonton.
In the meantime, Betteridge walked the streets as a constable, Ember worked on the safe, and Spear together with Terremant, awaited results.
As soon as he got back into the cellar, Ember took the two Germans, Peter and Claus, up through the access hole into the shop. Evans returned to the look-out, and Franz stayed by the door.
They worked in strict rote, each of them exerting as much pressure on the jack’s lever as was possible, then handing over to the next man. Within ten minutes the upper hinge was responding, starting to move and come away. Then Franz gave a low call, denoting that the beat man was again about to pace by. A minute later, the huge German’s head appeared in the hole.
‘Evans says he’s working the other side of the road,’ he called.
‘Change is as good as a rest, so they say,’ grinned Ember, thinking that Betteridge was using his loaf.
The upper hinge cracked some five minutes later. Claus was working the key when it happened, quite suddenly and with some noise, for it took the dirty unkempt rogue by surprise, causing him to fall forward, dislodging the lever key which rolled back to the wall and into the cellar with a clanging echo.
Franz retrieved it, and they began work on the lower hinge, setting the jack into the crack just below the hinge itself. For half an hour it did not budge, and in that time they only stopped work once at Franz’s command to Evans’ signal.
In the few minutes which passed while they waited to carry on, Ember died a thousand deaths, his mind swarming with the worst possibilities – Betteridge discovered something going wrong at Spear’s end of the business. He could smell himself as he crouched near the wall – not his usual unwashed aroma, but the stench of fear rising from his pores and bowels, hating himself for this tangible evidence of cowardice. Then the moment was past, and they were back at the safe, working the jack until their muscles ached at full stretch and the breath became short with exertion.
Outside, the day was beginning to sneak its way through the overcast, the first traces of light above the rooftops. In the streets life was starting up, carts and vans beginning to roll and early workers stirring and moving on the pavements. In the houses, lights blinked windows into being.
It was almost twenty minutes to six when the bottom hinge tore away.
Over by St Peter’s Church, the policeman groaned and moved. Spear, at the top of the alley, whispered to Terremant that they could not risk waiting longer. The uniforms would have to be moved from the shop. They had to abandon things now or risk being seen near the copper.
‘We’ll send a lurker back once we’re clear,’ he murmured as they hurried up Cornhill. ‘You’ll have to get over to Bermondsey while I acquaint the Professor with what has become of matters.’
In the meantime, the Professor slept soundly and alone. He had been a mite on edge during the previous evening and decided to dispense with the services of either Sal or Carlotta. After all, if anything went amiss he did not want women cluttering his mind.
After dinner he sat by himself in the drawing-room, played a little Chopin and then took a bottle of brandy, a pack of playing cards, and his copy of Professor Hoffman’s Modern Magic to his bedroom. He wanted to practise the six methods of changing one card for another, so he sat for a long time, before the tall mirror in his room, going through the sleights time and again. It calmed him powerfully, and finally when half of the brandy had gone, Moriarty undressed,
climbed into bed and lapsed into a deep sleep, during which he dreamed of performing incredible tricks with a pack of cards made up of portraits – Schleifstein, Grisombre, Sanzionare, Segorbe, Crow and Holmes being the prominent pictures which sped, riffled, were palmed, made to appear and disappear at will in his dexterous hands. The clamour of the doorbell in the early hours did not penetrate his unconsciousness.
They were all there, the tiaras, earrings, necklaces, throwing glittering fire from their velvet-lined boxes and black velvet bags. Even in the gaslight, and with the early morning taste bitter in their mouths, the three men around the safe could not fail to sense the beauty of their haul.
Ember called to Franz, telling him to get Evans off to pick up the cab in St Helen’s Place and get back. ‘As if he’s carrying the wind.’
Franz threw up the canvas bag they had brought for the loot and disappeared to find Evans. It was all speed now, and the Germans were as excited as boys let out from the schoolroom. Ember, who had been raised on the Professor’s stern discipline as far as crackings were concerned, had to shut them up with threats. In spite of the need for haste, he took grave care in selecting the items from the safe and stowing them away in the bag, making positive that he had all the gems of real value before laying a finger on the trays of rings and watches which were Mr Freeland’s stock. Last he jammed back the heavy door, leaning it against the safe, so that it might just pass muster to any real policeman squinting through the Judas slits in the shutters. Then, with a quick nod, he allowed the other two to clamber down into the cellar, before grabbing up the brief bag of tools and the canvas sack and making his final descent through the floor.
He was half-way down the lane to Bishopsgate when he heard the police whistles from up the street.
Betteridge had no option. He was plodding up Threadneedle Street, from the direction of the Royal Exchange, when he saw the sergeant bearing down on him from the Bishopsgate end. Bill Betteridge had much experience of the police, and not a little of the Houses of Correction. He was not of a mind to tussle with this burly sergeant, so he had no option: he turned on his heel and ran pell mell back from whence he came.
The sergeant, thinking some crime was being committed, or that Betteridge was in full chase of a villain, pulled on his whistle chain, blew three blasts and followed what he thought was his constable.
The shrill blasts from Threadneedle Street carried up Bishopsgate to the ears of a pair of constables arriving at the station for the six o’clock shift. Being men of some character, they replied with answering blasts and started to run. At that very moment, Evans turned the four-wheeler out of St Helen’s Place.
The police whistles sent a crazy streak of panic through Evans’ head. Convinced the police were on top of him, he whipped up the horses and took the cab at speed, careering down the street. It was an action which set the pair of constables running at an even faster pace, both blowing their whistles and reaching for their truncheons.
Evans slewed the cab across the road, reining up the horses to bring it in close to the pavement hard by the alley leading to the back of Freeland & Son. He misjudged badly, going past and pulling up a good ten yards on, so that the four men crouched in the lane were forced to run in the open, down the pavement, scrabbling for the door and safety.
Ember was the last in, throwing the canvas bag in front of him as he leaped aboard, shouting to Evans, yelling at him to whip up the horses. Evans needed no bidding, being thoroughly rattled by this time, and they were away with such a jolt that Ember was almost toppled backwards into the road. As it was, his fingers were banged hard on the door causing him to release the brief bag, sending it flying into the roadway in the path of the two pursuing constables, one of whom hurled his truncheon after the departing vehicle.
Ember was shouting curses in the cramped interior of the cab. He knew that he should have used a canary – some woman to get the tools and the loot away in the opposite direction. Now they were marked in the cab. They would have to abandon it before long and make their separate ways back to Edmonton – with the canvas bag: and he would not be allowed to go alone, not with the loot. Franz would stick to him like they were frozen brothers.
They let the two Germans off near Finsbury Square, then left the cab in a side street off the City Road. Evans went off on his own with instructions to get to Edmonton using every back double he could find. Ember was right. Franz stayed with him as though they were manacled.
Bertram Jacobs personally woke the Professor shortly after six. Polly Pearson had been cleaning the grates – sometime between five and half past – when the, bell had clanged from the tradesman’s entrance down the area steps. Martha was in the kitchen seeing to the early morning chores, getting Bridget Spear’s breakfast and stoking up the oven fire.
She was, not unnaturally, taken aback at the sight of the ragged Blind Fred and the little scrawny boy standing at the foot of the area steps. Taking them to be beggars, she was about to slam the door on them when Fred stuck his white stick into the jamb.
‘Bert Jacobs, and be quick about it, girl, or I can promise you that you’ll not hear the end of it from your master.’
An unpleasant smell emanated from the blind beggar’s body. The reek of unwashed flesh; of grime and rancid fat in the hair and stale spirits on the breath. A smell which brought back stark memories to Martha Pearson, recalling the nights immediately prior to her salvation by Sal Hodges, when, with her sister, she spent nightmare hours in the lowest of common lodging houses.
Blind Fred struck a chord, however, and Bertram Jacobs was brought, dishevelled with sleep, to the kitchen. When the tale had been heard out, in the privacy of what had once been the butler’s pantry, Jacobs ordered the lurker and Saxby to wait while he talked with the Professor.
At a quarter before seven, Moriarty met with both the Jacobs brothers, Lee Chow, Blind Fred and Saxby, in his study – the latter pair ill at ease amidst the somewhat paradoxical austere luxury of that room.
Moriarty spoke little, as though some white-hot burning anger consumed his most private thoughts. He questioned both Saxby and Blind Fred in some detail before dispatching the lad back to Cornhill to scout the lie of the land, and perhaps pick up rumour and fact on the ground.
At twenty-past seven Spear arrived, flushed and grimly disturbed. The robbery had taken place – fully, with his cooperation regarding the local beat policeman. Word was that the team had got clean away, though there had been unpleasant moments and a pursuit of some sort. Betteridge was missing. Apart from that all they could do was await events.
‘I’ll have none of it,’ Moriarty was steady now, a hint of stubborn determination in his manner. ‘If we await events, then we have lost this opportunity of laying Schleifstein and he’ll be away to his midden in Berlin with the loot.’
His head oscillated slowly, that reptilian gesture of old which brought words of holy scripture unbidden into Spear’s head – And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years: a vivid picture recalled from some unwilling Sunday School past.
‘How long to get your punishers to Bermondsey?’ Moriarty glowered at Spear.
‘Terremant was seeking them out after he stowed the uniforms.’
‘As quick as you can then. Get them together, dress them as you would have done for our original plot, then have them driven like Pegasus to Edmonton and beard that Prooshan poacher in his own lurk.’
‘It’s dangerous …’
‘Of course it’s dangerous, Spear. Do you think I pay you to sit at home and knit mittens? I part with chink for you to do my bidding. If there are any who don’t like it they can fester at the Lump Hotel with my compliments.’
‘The helmets are City Police …’
‘So the City Police will be thought to be poaching also. There’s your answer. You’ll have to fight the Metropolitans as well as the German gonophs. Great heavens, Spear, I’ve not seen you as cautious before.’ Moriarty laugh
ed, deep, throaty and uncompromising, turning to the Jacobs brothers. ‘Spear will direct you,’ the laugh was reflected by a smile which bore no hint of humour. ‘Take the fools quick, with the sable maria outside the door and you’ll be able to whip ‘em over to Bermondsey with no questions asked.’
The Jacobs brothers both nodded assent.
‘Go to it then,’ Moriarty’s hand raised imperiously to indicate the interview was finished. ‘Tell Harkness I want my hansom here in one hour. I shall be coming over to see our friends when you’ve nibbed them. That’s a pleasure I have been awaiting.’
Spear knew there was no arguing with him, for Moriarty had put too much into the trap to see it sprung on nothing now. With solemn nods they withdrew, leaving the Professor alone with Lee Chow.
‘You wish I come Bermondsey?’ asked the Chinese.
‘It might be as well.’ A smile creeping slyly across the Professor’s mouth. ‘I will go as my more familiar self. Arm yourself, Lee Chow, and be ready for Harkness and the cab.’
He then went upstairs to his room in order to effect the disguise he had so often worn in the old days: donning the corset which helped make him rake-thin, the harness which held him in a permanent stoop, the boots with raised soles to give him extra height, and the incredibly natural bald pate wig which provided him with the domed forehead.
After dressing in the black clothes of a professional man, James Moriarty seated himself before his mirror, armed with the brushes, colours and other artificial aids in the craft of disguise. Then, with deft strokes, he turned himself into the living likeness of his long dead brother: the Professor of Mathematics whom the world regarded as the true James Moriarty, Professor of Evil, Napoleon of Crime.
By half-past nine, there were six punishers, not counting Terremant, gathered at the Bermondsey store house. Spear saw to it that they were all dressed as smartly as could be managed in the uniforms which were to have been worn for nabbing the raiders in Cornhill. In the first plan, the Jacobs brothers were to have gone, with Terremant, masquerading as plain clothes jacks, to take Schleifstein. Now they would all be involved.