more formidable. There was little more on them than skin and bone from wrist to fingertips. Such was the prominence of the skeletal structure that even while the hands rested lightly over the knees, the knuckles were deeply crenellated, as vicious a natural characteristic as the pointing of a shark’s teeth. In more than a dozen meal times at Radstock Hall, when the Ebony had sat opposite him, Jago had not noticed the size or singular formation of those hands. All his anxieties until this moment had been centred on his adversary’s superior weight and height.
The preliminaries had been got over mercifully fast once the field had been located, stakes set up and the crowd settled- with some encouragement from the cudgel bearers.
D’Estin had looked after the ritual of throwing in the hat to make the challenge and tossing for choice of corner, and Vibart had nominated their umpire. Then Beckett, who was acting as the Ebony’s second, had selected the second umpire, and a neutral referee was agreed upon. The right of the second to inspect the opponent’s drawers for improper substances was a rule seldom enforced, but Beckett crossed the ring on that pretext to remind Jago of his obligation to stay conscious for twenty-six rounds. The referee made the announcement-almost anticlimax when Jago failed at first to respond to the name of Quinton-and then sent the two fighters back to their corners. The next call to the centre would be the summons to scratch.
Like a dying man, Jago found his thoughts in the last seconds racing over the incidents from his past. Just a few weeks before, these men, Beckett and Foster, who supported the Ebony against him, had existed only as names on the files he kept at Scotland Yard. Now, like the playing cards in “Alice,” they had sprung offensively alive, and by a strange reversal the people who mattered in his life were distorted in his memory or all but obliterated. Lydia’s face became Isabel’s whenever he tried to think of it; Thackeray, like the Cheshire cat, appeared occasionally, grinning, with parts of him liable to vanish; Cribb communicated only in riddles.
There was no need to pinch himself. Soon enough the attention of those monstrous knuckles would tell him whether he was dreaming.
Where was Cribb?
“Seconds leave the ring, please. Are you ready? Time!”
“What station’s this, porter?”
“Tonbridge, mate. You getting out? I can’t ’old the train for you, you know.”
In answer, Cribb closed the window.
“Tonbridge, Sarge?” echoed Thackeray. “That ain’t Tun-bridge Wells, is it? The stationmaster at Reigate definitely thought the roughs was making for Tunbridge Wells.”
“He’d better be right. That’s Kent. My information was Surrey.”
“In that case they ought to have got out at Reigate Junction, Sarge, and the stationmaster would have seen them. He positively said he hadn’t.”
“When it comes to prize fighting, Constable, there’s a devil of a lot of queer-sightedness among members of the public. I hope your stationmaster was right. Best we can do is stay aboard till Tunbridge Wells. Good thing Jago’s game and can look after himself.”
First blood in the fourth, they had said. Well, they were wrong. The blood did not matter particularly. One expected it, even if it had come a little early and from the wrong source. What bothered Jago was the pressure on his neck, held firmly “in chancery” in the crook of the Ebony’s right arm. He did not, of course, pretend to himself that repeated uppercuts to his nose-which he was helpless at present to defend-were in any way encouraging. But they were at least delivered with some recognition that the fight was scheduled to last another twenty-four rounds. Their tendency was to flatten rather than fracture. No, it was the simultaneous flexing of the bicep against his neck that disconcerted Jago. Each time it happened, his vision was affected, so that instead of seeing one enormous set of knuckles approaching, he saw two. He could not be sure until contact was made which was the real one.
What the devil! A bunch jabbed deep into the tender area below his right eye, stretching the flesh across the rim of bone like a drumskin. Such was the pain that the splitting of skin actually came as relief. He blinked, and his eyelids dipped into the freshly made cut to spread a film of blood across the eye. This was calamitous! Never mind double vision-another blow like that could blind him altogether.
Mercifully the Ebony must have appreciated the gravity of the injury. He most decently relaxed his hold, crashed both fists onto the back of Jago’s neck, dropped him like a log, and so ended the round.
He lay face to the earth for perhaps four thankful seconds before half a bucket of cold water on the back of his head shocked him into full consciousness. A seering pain in the region of his scalp was soon accounted for; someone had grabbed a handful of his hair to jerk his face upwards for inspection. Vibart, talking to D’Estin across his back.
“Nothing too serious. We can move him.”
So he was moved, half dragged by the legs across the turf to the corner. Depressingly undignified, he vaguely registered.
Then, as he slumped on Vibart’s knee, more water, a dripping sponge that came to his face yellow, but moved away alarmingly crimson. D’Estin, clearly visible now, addressed him:
“Keep cool-headed, Jago. Use the length of your arm to hold him off. We agreed no suit in chancery, but if he’s tried it once, he’ll do it again. Let me see the cut. Lint, Vibart. Not so bad, you see. Hardly an inch long. I don’t like this mouse over the other eye, though. That’ll split next time he touches it. We’d better puncture it. Where’s the lancet, Vibart?”
“Have a nip of brandy and water,” suggested Vibart as he handed D’Estin the instrument. “There’s twenty- four bloody rounds to go, you know.”
“Are you seriously proposing that I should raise a party of men at half-past two on a Saturday afternoon? This is Tun-bridge Wells, Sergeant, not Scotland Yard. Three-quarters of my men are off duty, and that leaves four of us. I refuse to close the office to hare off after a bunch of London riffraff that might be over the county boundary by now. I’ve got the town to look after.”
He had to be an inspector. Anyone of lesser rank would have jumped to accommodate Sergeant Cribb.
“You could call them back on emergency duty, sir, if you’ll pardon me suggesting it.”
“Emergency?” From the inspector’s tone it was clear that the term was inappropriate to anything that happened in Tunbridge Wells. He was a huge man wedged behind a ridiculously small desk. Getting in there must have been a considerable feat of human engineering, certainly not to be performed more than once a day. “Listen to me, Sergeant- if you can stand still a moment. I happen to know where three of my best constables are this afternoon, and that is on the cricket field. The annual match against the men of Maidstone is taking place not ten minutes away from here, and it happens that two of my constables open the bowling for the town and the third keeps wicket. It would have to be a very grave emergency indeed for me to interrupt that.
Damn it, man, you’re asking me to destroy an entire career devoted to cultivating local good will.”
This was enough for Cribb. “I suggest to you, sir that you reconsider that point. I’m from Scotland Yard, as I told you, and I wouldn’t come asking you for support if it wasn’t more important than a Saturday cricket match. There are men among this bunch of riffraff, as you call ’em, who are under suspicion of several murders. If we don’t get out there with a group of able constables in the next half-hour, there’s going to be ugly questions asked when I get back to London.”
“I hope you’re not trying to intimidate me, Sergeant.”
“Not at all, sir. Simply stating facts. And this gentleman here,” Cribb jerked his thumb at Thackeray, “will no doubt have a clear record of our conversation, seeing that he’s been specially assigned to accompany me and make a full report to the Director of Criminal Investigation on the conduct of this inquiry.”
Thackeray felt for his pencil.
The inspector moved.
“A better round, that,” said Vibart. “Some of this blood on your arms belongs to him, I think.”
“You leave the talking to me,” snapped D’Estin. “And watch what they’re doing in the other corner. If they’re using resin, we’ll appeal to the referee. Now listen to me, Jago.
You’re just a chopping block at the moment, and the crowd’s getting restless. You’ve got to come back at him. Use your legs.
You should be nippier on your feet than he is. Go for the throat. Good, straight punches with the knuckles
