The Great Train Robbery Part 3

Teddy Burke shrugged and fell into step alongside the stranger. After all, he was clean; he had nothing to fear. "Lovely day," he said.

The stranger did not answer. They walked for some minutes in silence. "Do you think you can be less effective?" the man asked after a time.

"How do you mean, sir?"

"I mean," the man said, "can you buzz a customer and come out dry?"

"On purpose?" Teddy Burke laughed. "It happens often enough without trying, I can tell you that."

"There's five quid for you, if you can prove yourself a prize bungler."

Teddy Burke's eyes narrowed. There were plenty of magsmen about, sharp con men who often employed an unwitting accomplice, setting him up to take a fall in some elaborate scheme. Teddy Burke was n.o.body's fool. "Five quid's no great matter."

"Ten," the man said, in a weary voice.

"I have to think of me boys."

"No," the man said, "this is you, alone."

"What's the lay, then?" Teddy Burke said.

"Lots of bustle, a ruck touch, just enough to set the quarry to worry, make him pat his pockets."

"And you want me to come up dry?"

"Dry as dust," the man said.

"Who's the quarry, then?" Teddy Burke said.

"A gent named Trent. You'll touch him with a bungler's dip in front of his offices, just a roughing-up, like."

"Where's the office, then?"

"Huddleston & Bradford Bank."

Teddy Burke whistled. "Westminster. Sticky, that is. There's enough crushers about to make a b.l.o.o.d.y army."

"But you'll be dry. All you've to do is worry him."

Teddy Burke walked a few moments, looking this way and that, taking the air and thinking things over. "When will it be, then?"

"Tomorrow morning. Eight o'clock sharp."

"All right."

The red-bearded gentleman gave him a five-pound bill, and informed him he would get the rest when the job was done.

"What's it all about, then?" Teddy Burke asked.

"Personal matter," the man replied, and slipped away into the crowd.

Chapter 08.

The Holy Land

Between 1801 and 1851, London tripled in size. With a population of two and a half million, it was by far the largest city in the world, and every foreign observer was astonished at its dimensions. Nathaniel Hawthorne was speechless; Henry James was fascinated and appalled at its "horrible numerosity"; Dostoevsky found it "as vast as an ocean... a Biblical sight, some prophecy out of the Apocalypse being fulfilled before your very eyes."

And yet London continued to grow. At the mid-century, four thousand new dwellings were under construction at any one time, and the city was literally exploding outward. Already, the now familiar pattern of expansion was termed "the flight to the suburbs." Outlying areas that at the turn of the century had been villages and hamlets--- Marylebone, Islington, Camden, St. John's Wood, and Bethnal Green--- were thoroughly built up, and the newly affluent middle cla.s.ses were deserting the central city for these areas, where the air was better, the noise less bothersome, and the atmosphere in general more pleasant and "countrified."

Of course, some older sections of London retained a character of great elegance and wealth, but these were often cheek to jowl with the most dismal and shocking slums. The proximity of great riches and profound squalor also impressed foreign observers, particularly since the slums, or rookeries, were refuges and breeding places for "the criminal cla.s.s." There were sections of London where a thief might rob a mansion and literally cross a street to disappear into a tangled maze of alleyways and dilapidated buildings crammed with humanity and so dangerous that even an armed policeman did not dare pursue the culprit.

The genesis of slums was poorly understood at the time; indeed, the very term "slums" did not become widely accepted until 1890. But in a vague way the now familiar pattern was recognized: a region of the city would be cut off from circulation by newly constructed thoroughfares that bypa.s.sed it; businesses would depart; disagreeable industries would move in, creating local noise and air pollution and further reducing the attractiveness of the area; ultimately, no one with the means to live elsewhere would choose to reside in such a place, and the region would become decrepit, badly maintained, and overpopulated by the lowest cla.s.ses.

Then, as now, these slums existed in part because they were profitable for landlords. A lodging house of eight rooms might take on a hundred boarders, each paying a s.h.i.+lling or two a week to live in "hugger-mugger promiscuity," sleeping with as many as twenty members of the same or opposite s.e.x in the same room. (Perhaps the most bizarre example of lodgings of the period was the famous waterfront sailors' "penny hangs." Here a drunken seaman slept the night for a penny, draping himself across chest-high ropes, and hanging like clothes on a line.) While some proprietors of lodging houses, or netherskens, lived in the area--- and often accepted stolen goods in lieu of rent--- many owners were substantial citizens, landlords in absentia who employed a tough deputy to collect the rents and keep some semblance of order.

During this period there were several notorious rookeries, at Seven Dials, Rosemary Lane, Jacob's Island, and Ratcliffe Highway, but none was more famous than the six acres in central London that comprised the rookery of St. Giles, called "the Holy Land." Located near the theatre district of Leicester Square, the prost.i.tute center of the Haymarket, and the fas.h.i.+onable shops of Regent Street, the St. Giles rookery was strategically located for any criminal who wanted to "go to ground."

Contemporary accounts describe the Holy Land as "a dense ma.s.s of houses so old they only seem not to fall, through which narrow and tortuous lanes curve and wind. There is no privacy here, and whoever ventures in this region finds the streets--- by courtesy so called--- thronged with loiterers, and sees, through half-glazed windows, rooms crowded to suffocation." There are references to "the stagnant gutters... the filth choking up dark pa.s.sages... the walls of bleached soot, and doors falling from their hinges... and children swarming everywhere, relieving themselves as they please."

Such a squalid, malodorous and dangerous tenement was no place for a gentleman, particularly after nightfall on a foggy summer evening. Yet in late July, 1854, a red-bearded man in fas.h.i.+onable attire walked fearlessly through the smoke-filled, cramped and narrow lanes. The loiterers and vagrants watching him no doubt observed that his silver-headed cane looked ominously heavy, and might conceal a blade. There was also a bulge about the trousers that implied a barker tucked in the waistband. And the very boldness of such a foolhardy incursion probably intimidated many of those who might be tempted to waylay him.

Pierce himself later said, "It is the demeanor which is respected among these people. They know the look of fear, and likewise its absence, and any man who is not afraid makes them afraid in turn."

Pierce went from street to stinking street, inquiring after a certain woman. Finally he found a lounging soak who knew her.

"It's Maggie you want? Little Maggie?" the man asked, leaning against a yellow gas lamppost, his face deep shadows in the fog.

"She's a judy, Clean w.i.l.l.y's doll."

"I know of her. Pinches laundry, doesn't she? Aye, she does a bit of snow, I'm sure of it." Here the man paused significantly, squinting.

Pierce gave him a coin. "Where shall I find her?"

"First pa.s.sing up, first door to yer right," the man said.

Pierce continued on.

"But it's no use your bothering," the man called after him. "w.i.l.l.y's in the stir now--- in Newgate, no less--- and he has only the c.o.c.kchafer on his mind."

Pierce did not look back. He walked down the street, pa.s.sing vague shadows in the fog, and here and there a woman whose clothing glowed in the night--- matchstick dippers with patches of phosphorous on their garments. Dogs barked; children cried; whispers and groans and laughter were conveyed to him through the fog. Finally he arrived at the nethersken, with its bright rectangle of yellow light at the entrance, s.h.i.+ning on a crudely hand-painted sign which read: LOGINS FOR.

THRAVELERS.

Pierce glanced at the sign, then entered the building, pus.h.i.+ng his way past the throng of dirty, ragged children cl.u.s.tered about the stairs; he cuffed one briskly, to show them there was to be no plucking at his pockets. He climbed the creaking stairs to the second floor, and asked after the woman named Maggie. He was told she was in the kitchen, and so he descended again, to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The kitchen was the center of every lodging house, and at this hour it was a warm and friendly place, a focus of heat and rich smells, while the fog curled gray and cold outside the windows. A half-dozen men stood by the fire, talking and drinking; at a side table, several men and women played cards while others sipped bowls of steaming soup; tucked away in the corners were musical instruments, beggars' crutches, hawkers' baskets, and peddlers' boxes. He found Maggie, a dirty child of twelve, and drew her to one side. He gave her a gold guinea, which she bit. She flashed a half-smile.

"What is it, then, guv?" She looked appraisingly at his fine clothes, a calculating glance far beyond her years. "A bit of a tickle for you?"

Pierce ignored the suggestion. "You dab it up with Clean w.i.l.l.y?"

She shrugged. "I did. w.i.l.l.y's in."

"Newgate?"

"Aye."

"You see him?"

"I do, once and again. I goes as his sister, see."

Pierce pointed to the coin she clutched in her hand. "There's another one of those if you can downy him a message."

For a moment, the girl's eyes glowed with interest. Then they went blank again. "What's the lay?"

"Tell w.i.l.l.y, he should break at the next topping. It's to be Emma Barnes, the murderess. They'll hang her in public for sure. Tell him: break at the topping."

She laughed. It was an odd laugh, harsh and rough. 'w.i.l.l.y's in Newgate," she said, "and there's no breaks from Newgate--- topping or no."

"Tell him he can," Pierce said. "Tell him to go to the house where he first met John Simms, and all will be well enough."

"Are you John Simms?"

"I am a friend," Pierce said. "Tell him the next topping and he's over the side, or he's not Clean w.i.l.l.y."

She shook her head "How can he break from Newgate?"

"Just tell him," Pierce said, and turned to leave.

At the door to the kitchen, he looked back at her, a skinny child, stoop-shouldered in a ragged secondhand dress spattered with mud, her hair matted and filthy.

"I'll tell," she said, and slipped the gold coin into her shoe. He turned away from her and retraced his steps, leaving the Holy Land. He came out of a narrow alley, turned into Leicester Square, and joined the crowd in front of the Mayberry Theatre, blending in, disappearing.

Chapter 09.

The Routine of Mr. Edgar Trent

Respectable London was quiet at night. In the era before the internal combustion engine, the business and financial districts at the center of the town were deserted and silent except for the quiet footsteps of the Metropolitan Police constables making their twenty-minute rounds.

As dawn came, the silence was broken by the crowing of roosters and the mooing of cows, barnyard sounds incongruous in an urban setting. But in those days there plenty of livestock in the central city, and animal husbandry was still a major London industry--- and indeed, during the day, a major source of traffic congestion. It was not uncommon for a fine gentleman to be delayed in his coach by a shepherd with his flock moving through the streets of the city. London was the largest urban concentration in the world at that time, but by modern standards the division between city and country life was blurred.

Blurred, that is, until the Horse Guards clock chimed seven o'clock, and the first of that peculiarly urban phenomenon--- commuters--- appeared on their way to work, conveyed by "the Marrowbone stage"; that is, on foot. These were the armies of women and girls employed as seamstresses in the sweatshops of West End dress factories, where they worked twelve hours a day for a few s.h.i.+llings a week.

At eight o'clock, the shops along the great thoroughfares took down their shutters; apprentices and a.s.sistants dressed the windows in preparation for the day's commerce, setting out what one sarcastic observer called "the innumerable whim-whams and frible-frabble of fas.h.i.+on."

Between eight and nine o'clock was rush hour, and the streets became crowded with men. Everyone from government clerks to bank cas.h.i.+ers, from stockbrokers to sugar-bakers and soap-oilers, made their way to work on foot, in omnibuses, tandems, dogcarts--- altogether a rattling, noisy, thickly jammed traffic of vehicles and drivers who cursed and swore and lashed at their horses.

In the midst of this, the street sweepers began their day's labors. In the ammonia-rich air, they collected the first droppings of horse dung, das.h.i.+ng among the carts and omnibuses. And they were busy: an ordinary London horse, according to Henry Mayhew, deposited six tons of dung on the streets each year, and there were at least a million horses in the city.

Gliding through the midst of this confusion, a few elegant broughams, with gleaming dark polished wood carriages and delicately sprung, lacy-spoked wheels, conveyed their substantial citizens in utter comfort to the day's employment.

Pierce and Agar, crouched on a rooftop overlooking the imposing facade of the Huddleston & Bradford Bank across the way, watched as one such brougham came down the street toward them.

"There he is now," Agar said.

Pierce nodded. "Well, we shall know soon enough." He checked his watch. "Eight-twenty-nine. Punctual, as usual."

Pierce and Agar had been on the rooftop since dawn. They had watched the early arrival of the tellers and clerks; they had seen the traffic in the street and on the sidewalks grow more brisk and hurried with each pa.s.sing minute.

Now the brougham pulled up to the door of the bank, and the driver jumped down to open the door. The president of Huddleston & Bradford stepped down to the pavement. Mr. Edgar Trent was near sixty, his beard was gray, and he had a considerable paunch; whether he was balding or not, Pierce could not discern, for a high top hat covered his head.

"He's a fat one, isn't he," Agar said.

"Watch, now," Pierce said.

At the very moment that Mr. Trent stepped to the ground, a well-dressed young man jostled him roughly, muttered a brief apology over his shoulder, and moved on in the rush-hour crowd. Mr. Trent ignored the incident. He walked the few steps forward to the impressive oak doors of the bank.

Then he stopped, halting in mid-stride.

"He's realized," Pierce said.

On the street below, Trent looked after the well-dressed young man, and immediately patted his side coat pocket, feeling for some article. Apparently, what he sought was still in its place; his shoulders dropped in relief, and he continued on into the bank.

The brougham clattered off; the bank doors swung shut.

Pierce grinned and turned to Agar. "Well," he said, "that's that."

"That's what?" Agar said.

"That's what we need to know."

"What do we need to know, then?" Agar said. , "We need to know," Pierce said slowly, "that Mr. Trent brought his key with him today, for this is the day of-" He broke off abruptly. He had not yet informed Agar of the plan, and he saw no reason to do so until the last minute. A man with a tendency to be a soak, like Agar, could loosen his tongue at an unlikely time. But no drunk could split what he did not know.

"The day of what?" Agar persisted.

"The day of reckoning," Pierce said.