The Tick of Death

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘One night when Malone was at the public house in Rotherhithe he got into conversation with a man he suspected was a police agent. This was at the time of the London station explosions- which this group was not responsible for, I might add-and the man was interminably talking about locomotives and timetables. Malone suspected he was trying to feed us false information, but when we checked some of it we could not fault him. Then one night we discovered that he was being watched by the police-a Special Branch man, as we discovered. Malone lured this one into a trap and shot him.’

‘Ah.’ How else could Cribb react, except privately to note that Malone’s own death had been no more than he deserved for killing Constable Bottle? He asked, as casually as he was able: ‘And the other man?’

‘We brought him here. He saw the shooting of the Special Branch man, you understand.’

‘Of course. Did you. .?’

‘Not yet. We think our locomotive enthusiast has some useful information for us. He must be a policeman. He possesses all the characteristics, from the thick skull to the flat feet. He was probably wanting to sell information to Malone. They aren’t paid much at Scotland Yard, you know. The Special Branch man must have suspected what was going on, and consequently followed them into the trap. If the Special Branch were interested, then he has got something to tell us, and he is in no position now to demand a fee. We’ll get it from him soon, and then Father has something else in mind for him. He will be incorporated into the plan.’

Whatever that was, it did not matter for the present. Thackeray was alive-thick-skulled, flat-footed and breathing!

‘You have this man here? I haven’t seen him.’

‘You won’t, Mr Sargent. It is better for us all if he is kept locked away until we are ready to use him.’

‘Quite so. Are you sure you can handle him, though? Without Malone’s assistance, I mean.’

‘Perfectly sure. He is no trouble.’

From her manner, she wanted to drop the subject. It would have been incautious to press her further on the matter of Thackeray, tantalising as it was.

‘Pardon me for asking,’ Cribb said, as they turned in the direction of the house. ‘Is it usual for the Clan to employ members of the fair sex?’

She laughed. ‘Not so unusual as you might think, Mr Sargent. We are not the insipid creatures some of you men take us for. The Ladies’ Land League was a far more militant organisation than the men’s, until Mr Parnell got cold feet and insisted upon its dissolution. Besides, modern fashions give us a distinct advantage over men in conveying dynamite secretly to England. How do you think Atlas Powder travels-in men’s trouser pockets?’

‘I’d never considered it,’ said Cribb candidly.

‘Then take my advice and have nothing to do with strange women on ocean-going steam-ships, unless you are prepared for a devastating experience.’

Cribb laughed. ‘Not the kind you have in mind, Rossanna.’

At the mention of her name, she tightened her grip on his arm. ‘If you were wondering about me, I promise you I have nothing under my skirts to alarm you, Mr Sargent, if you are the man I take you for. I believe you described yourself as an adventurer.’

Heavens! She was at it again, more flagrantly than before. And looking damnably fetching at the same time. He took a long, uplifting breath. ‘That’s correct. But I did say a professional adventurer, and it occurs to me that I might still be on probation, so far as the Clan is concerned. I’m here in my capacity as a dynamiter, nothing else. In other circumstances, Miss. .’ he added gallantly.

They walked the rest of the way across the lawn in silence, Cribb trying to convince himself that it was just another phase of the inquisition. He would have felt eminently pleased at the way he had come through it, if only the inquisitor hadn’t looked so damnably disappointed.

CHAPTER 9

Cribb quietly locked his bedroom door from the inside, withdrew the key and pocketed it. He crossed to the window, pushed it up and looked down at the conservatory roof, ten feet below. After the Alcazar Hotel, this promised to be child’s play. He picked up a length of rope he had earlier scavenged from the coach-house, and firmly secured one end of it to the door-handle. The other he dropped over the window-ledge, leaning after it to see how far down it extended. Far enough for a controlled descent to the frame of the conservatory roof. He tested the strength of the rope, seated himself on the sill, swung his legs over and turned inwards, shifting the weight of his body on to his stomach. Gripping the rope ahead of him, he began to let himself down.

It was after two in the morning, an hour and a half since he and Devlin had retired, and they had been the last to go up. Rossanna had gone first, soon after eleven, leaving the others at a poker game. ‘Our river trip last night has quite upset my routine,’ she had announced. ‘If I don’t retire at once, I shall fall asleep in my chair. Too ridiculous for words! I shall probably wake up in the small hours wanting breakfast when everyone else is deep in slumber. Are you an early riser, Mr Sargent? You look as though you might be. Patrick ought to be, as a sportsman, but he never stirs before nine when he is staying here, do you, Patrick? And Father sometimes sleeps until noon. Well, you need not tell me, because I shall hear for myself. My room is on the first floor landing and I know every loose floorboard in the corridor above. When I hear you, I shall know that I am no longer the only one awake in the house.’ Cribb had not been sure whether she said this to discourage initiatives by night, or the reverse. At any rate, he had decided already that he would have to find a way downstairs that did not bring him into contact with the floorboards, and that was why he was once again performing on a rope.

He lowered himself to the level of the room below his and paused there, trying to see in. It was a first-floor bedroom, unoccupied. He could have forced an entrance through the window if he had wanted, but all it contained, he suspected, was Malone’s luggage. Certainly it had not been inhabited in the last twenty-four hours. Tonight he was looking for Thackeray, not infernal machines.

His feet touched the conservatory roof, lighting safely on one of the wooden crossbeams. The structure was sturdy, well able to support his weight. Leaving the rope dangling, he crossed the roof to a section where it overhung the main entrance, inset between the two gabled wings at the front of the house. On his level, there were the windows of the main first-floor landing. He went confidently to one he had unfastened earlier from the inside, eased it open and climbed into the house again.

During the period after dinner he had occupied himself profitably by making a mental sketch of the lay-out of the bedrooms. The second floor, where his own was, had one other, the manservant’s, built in to the gable opposite. The floor below housed Devlin, McGee and Rossanna, as well as the empty room below his. It was quite impossible, he had decided, for Thackeray to be imprisoned on the first or second floors, for every other room could be accounted for as a bathroom, linen-room or water closet.

There was something else that encouraged him to concentrate on the ground floor. While Rossanna had been cooking those devilled kidneys, he had noticed four trays set out on the dresser, obviously in anticipation of breakfast. Three were matching in design, finely lacquered and laden with expensive porcelain and silver. The other was made of plain, unvarnished wood and there was a tin porridge-bowl on it and a mug, of the sort provided in common lodging-houses. At the time, Cribb had taken them for the manservant’s. Later, he reflected that someone eating in the kitchen had no need of a tray; he would eat from the kitchen table. The probability was that it was for Thackeray. If so, it was not unreasonable to suppose that the place where he was confined was directly accessible from the kitchen. A tray of that description, without even a cloth on it, would have been glaringly conspicuous in any other part of the house.

He pulled the window gently closed and glided towards the stairs. His movements were confident. He had tested the boards on this floor very thoroughly earlier in the day. They were firm under his weight, not straining to betray him like those upstairs. Rossanna, even if she were awake, could not possibly know that he was passing within a yard of her door. Just the same, he drew a long breath when he was safely clear. The danger of McGee’s door opening, or Devlin’s, troubled him less than hers. He moved smoothly past and down the stairs. Without pausing, he crossed the tiled hallway to the dining room and so made his way into the kitchen.

It was darker there than it had been upstairs. The moonlight was all on the other side of the house. He hesitated at the threshold, remembering the myriad objects he might dislodge from shelves and hooks and send