on the deck of the barge). But it was the other two who were of the most interest. One of them had punched the driver of the dray in the face, and the two men were loading one of the crates onto the cart.
“Stop!” shouted Jenkins.
“Stop!” shouted Barnard almost simultaneously.
These were both excellent pieces of advice, no doubt, but they went unheeded. One of the two men was in the back of the cart, lovingly bracing the crates of white notes against the bumps to come in the road, while the other was furiously whipping the aged, stultified horses, who hadn’t been especially perturbed by the gunshots and were only now drafted into motion by the blows on their flanks.
Soon the fourth Hammer, the one who had been helping Barnard, gave that up as a bad job. The third crate had cracked and split upon hitting the bank, and he ran to it and stuffed great thick chunks of money into his pockets and then ran off westward, too.
“Get them!” said Jenkins to the constables. The skiff was pulling up alongside the barge.
The two constables waded into the shallow water and started to run after the criminals. Barnard, meanwhile, had staggered off the boat and was filling his own pockets with money. He started to run east, but Dallington, spry and youthful, caught him almost instantly, tackling him to the ground, and a moment later Lenox and Jenkins had joined him.
Barnard was bleeding profusely, sweat upon his brow, and the impotent gun was still clutched in his hand.
“You’re under arrest,” said Jenkins.
Suddenly everything seemed very quiet. The dray had turned behind a distant row of barns and gone out of sight. Lenox looked up and around him: the barge floating gently at the bankside; the skiff splintered and slowly sinking; the brilliant gold glimmer of light just coming up over the deep green fields and the gray, glossy water. It was beautiful.
“Lenox, you bastard,” said Barnard and fainted.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Why did he have Smalls killed?” asked Dallington.
He, Jenkins, Graham, and Lenox were sitting in Lenox’s library, gulping cup after cup of hot tea with milk and chewing on sweet rolls. It was much later, just past ten in the morning. For the past several hours the wheels of justice had unhurriedly cranked. The two men who had fled on foot were soon run down by the two constables from the skiff, and George Barnard was receiving medical attention as the entire police force buzzed about his identity and potential crimes. Still missing, on the other hand, were the pair of Hammers who had escaped in the dray cart. They had dropped one box of notes by the side of the road but still bore with them thousands of pounds. All across Britain and the Continent police forces were looking for them.
“Panic and caution,” Lenox answered. “Exeter was releasing all of those cryptic, confident statements to the press, and Barnard must have felt the stakes were too high for much to depend on an untested man with uncertain allegiances, who had probably only killed Simon Pierce to clear his mother’s debt.”
“Perhaps to enter the Hammer Gang as well,” Dallington added.
“Exeter,” murmured Jenkins thoughtfully, his coffee cup paused just before he was going to sip it.
The three men pondered their late colleague together; going through all their minds, no doubt, even Graham’s, was some amalgam of pity, sorrow, and reminiscence. He hadn’t been a perfect man, but he had been at heart a decent one, in over his head.
“Walk us through it all one time,” said Dallington. “Won’t you, Charles?”
So Lenox again told the narrative, beginning with the dead maid in George Barnard’s house, which seemed like decades ago, and then running through Gerald Poole, through Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, through Mr. Moon, through his emergency trip from Stirrington to London, and ending with his confrontation at the Mint, loosening for his friends the delicate threads that tied the whole nasty business together.
“Well,” said Jenkins at length, “it’s all fearfully complicated. We’ll need to speak again, no doubt, but at the moment I must be off.”
“I’m going, too,” said Dallington. “I’m dead tired.”
“Off to sleep?” asked Lenox.
Dallington shifted from one foot to the other. “Newgate, actually.” He picked up his hat. The white carnation, the eternal marker of his compact dapperness, stood in his breast. “Bye, then.”
The two men left, and only Graham and Lenox remained.
“He’s going to see Gerald Poole, poor lad,” said Lenox.
“What will become of him, sir?”
“Of Poole? I don’t know. I hope he doesn’t hang for it, with all my heart.”
“Indeed, sir. If I might ask” — Graham spoke gingerly, his quick intelligence looking for the most delicate words — “what are your plans? At the moment?”
Lenox laughed. It was typical of Graham’s tact to ask an ambiguous question, one that might have been about either whether he wanted another cup of coffee or whether he was pulling up roots to pan for gold in the wilds of California.
“We were going to go to Morocco, weren’t we?”
Indeed, they had intended to, although as it so often did in his life his wild imaginings about the journey he wanted to take had been blocked off by reality.
“Yes, sir, we had discussed it,” said Graham. “Although if —”
“No,” said Lenox firmly. “We must go. Have you bought the tickets? Spring, I think.” Aside from greatly anticipating the fun of the trip, the symbolism of it meant something to Lenox — a final bachelor jaunt, a final trip that the two friends, who had for twenty years seen each other nearly every day, could make together.
“Yes, sir.” Graham smiled. “If you’ll excuse me, I must return to the East End, sir, to see about the skiff.”
“Why don’t you sleep first?”
“With your permission, I would rather go now, sir. I left a note at the pier but fear it may not be sufficient to quiet the owner’s worry.”
“As you please, of course. You have enough to offer him? I jolly well hope there wasn’t anything of his on board,” said Lenox. “Here, take a bit more money.”
So Graham left, and Lenox, though tired, wished as soon as he was alone to see Lady Jane. He straightened his admittedly disarrayed habiliment and walked next door.
Jane was in her drawing room, perched upon her famous rose-colored sofa, having a cup of tea.
“Hello, Charles!” she said, greeting him. “I’m so happy to see you.”
“You, too — happier than you know!”
“Oh? I’ve just woken up from the most wonderful rest, you can’t imagine,” said Lady Jane, yawning in a self- consciously demure fashion, then laughing at herself.
“I’m glad of it. I, on the other hand, was shot at more than once last night.”
“What!”
Lenox hastened to ease her mind, promising her that he had never been in real danger — which was, of course, something of a fib — and then explaining the entire strange circumstance of his encounter with George Barnard.
“Imagine it,” she said wonderingly. The shock was written on her face. “One saw him everywhere. I daresay I’ve known him for a decade!”
“Yes,” said Lenox grimly. “It’s a bad business.”
“Thank goodness I was never close to him. I didn’t accept, of course, but you know he wanted to marry me!”
“I can’t entirely fault him for that, I must say.”
Lady Jane laughed and kissed Lenox on the cheek. “You’re a dear,” she said, though she still looked baffled, even slightly haunted, by the revelation of Barnard’s character. “Although, were you really safe?”
