And fast. Three or four! Lord, it was like being beaten over the head with a truncheon. Or a shillelagh. The innocence of the man!
When the descriptions were done, and they stood outside in the street looking for a cab for Cribb, Thackeray seemed at last to sense his concern. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think me unco-operative, Sarge,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never really had the opportunity of doing much detective-work on my own. You know how it is when you overhear something that just
‘That’s the dangerous bit,’ said Cribb.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The easiest way to gain a confidence is to give one.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re saying, Sergeant.’
Confound the man. He could not put it more plainly. ‘Think about it, Thackeray. Think about it. There’s no more difficult duty in police work than handling an informant correct. That’s another dictum to remember. Do you understand me?’
Thackeray looked at Cribb for several seconds. Then he nodded his head once. His face was expressionless. It was as if an empty frame signalled the end of a lantern-show.
CHAPTER 3
Cribb’s course at the Arsenal ended in an unexpected way early on May 31st, 1884.
The sound of the morning mug of tea arriving on his locker was followed by a deferential cough. ‘Your beverage, Sergeant,’ a voice announced, ‘and if you would be so decent as to down it at your earliest convenience-’
What the devil! He turned his head on the pillow.
‘-you’ll be ready for the van which is already on its way from Scotland Yard for you,’ continued the duty constable, a mealy-mouthed member of the Woolwich establishment he had scarcely noticed before. ‘I was most particularly instructed to rouse you and advise you in a civil manner to be packed and ready to leave by six. Begging your pardon, Sergeant.’
Scotland Yard? The fellow might have said Timbuctoo for all the significance it had at 5.30 a.m., three weeks into the explosives course. He groped for the programme on his locker. ‘It’s Saturday. Blast effects and craters. I have it written here.’
‘Yes, Sergeant. The platoon has already passed through the gates on its way to dynamite the demonstration area.’
Cribb gripped the sides of the bed. ‘Then what the blazes are you going on about police vans for?’
‘Orders from the Yard, Sergeant. A telegraph from Inspector Jowett arrived during the night. They want you urgently.’
If Jowett had got up in the night to send a telegraph, the urgency was extreme.
‘Then you’d better stop the platoon before it starts the dynamiting.’
‘I couldn’t do that, Sergeant, with respect. That’s an army matter. We have no authority to interfere in army matters.’
‘Confound it, man, they’ll be doing their dynamiting for nothing. I shan’t be here.’
‘Ah, but they’ll still need the craters.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Filling in, Sergeant. There’s a fatigue-party laid on for this afternoon. They parade at half past twelve, draw spades from the store at one o’clock and commence filling in at a quarter past. I stand to be corrected, but I don’t think the army would appreciate having to change all that on the Saturday before the Whitsun holiday.’
Cribb took a mouthful of tea. ‘Why should I agitate myself about the army anyway? Get me some toast and dripping, lad. I’m damned sure Jowett hasn’t invited me to the Yard for breakfast.’
The journey there confirmed that impression. It was not the kind of jaunt that kindled the stomach-juices. The van-driver took the streets of Greenwich and Deptford at the gallop, as if all the cat’s meat men and milk-boys were Red Indians in ambush. Cribb, inside, braced himself grimly against the seat-back and tried to imagine what exigency justified such driving.
There was a marked slowing of the pace after Westminster Bridge, not unconnected, Cribb decided, with the fact that they were now in ‘A’ Division, the home of the Yard itself. But the driver disabused him of that notion by saying through the communication-window: ‘Sorry about the holdup, Sergeant. The traffic’s jammed all the way along Whitehall. It’ll be the crowds ahead, I reckon.’
Crowds? Before eight in the morning on Saturday in Whitehall? Who could they be-Socialists? Suffragists? Extraordinary time for a public demonstration.
‘You’d be just as quick on foot, if I might suggest it,’ the driver went on. ‘It’ll take us twenty minutes this way.’
He was right. It would be quicker to foot it, so long as he didn’t find himself in the thick of a demonstration. ‘What’s going on this morning?’ he asked.
‘Sight-seers, I reckon, Sergeant. There was a crowd already gathering in the Yard when I left soon after six this morning.’
Cribb had never regarded Great Scotland Yard as one of the sights of London. Visitors from the provinces occasionally called at the Convict Office and in return for a small contribution to police funds were taken up to the garret to see a collection of grisly relics that had come to be known as the Criminal Museum, but the Yard itself was otherwise one of the dullest spots in the capital-until this morning, apparently. Well, he was damned if he would ask the van-driver a second time what was going on. ‘I shall make my way on foot, then, Constable.’
‘Very well, Sergeant. Inspector Jowett said you was to report to him in his usual office.’
Confounded cheek, telling him where to report, as if Jowett had ever said such a thing. Some of these drivers seemed to think that managing a pair of horses successfully gave them a privileged position in the Force. Why, a man like Thackeray had never breathed an insubordinate word in all the time he had known him, yet here was this jumped-up stable-lad coolly giving orders to a sergeant after driving him across London at a rate that could only be described as hair-raising.
He was glad of the walk to cool his temper a little. The way he felt on leaving the van, he was liable to say something to Jowett he might regret. Besides, he was actually making quicker progress than the line of vehicles. Some of the cabmen had resignedly attached nosebags to their horses’ heads. But his fellow-pedestrians interested him more than the traffic. There were more travelling in his direction than one usually encountered, and by no means all were Civil Servants on their way to work. By their appearance, many were members of the poor class who had trooped across Westminster Bridge from the backstreets of Lambeth, some in considerable groups, children, parents and grandparents marching purposefully up Whitehall, bright-eyed with the expectation of some family treat in store.
At a loss to account for it, Cribb strode briskly on until the press of people beyond the Horse Guards slowed him to a shuffle. The Yard itself, when he reached it, was as thick with humanity as a painting by Frith. The concourse had come to an enforced stop. They stood shoulder to shoulder, bowler to bowler. Infants sat astride their fathers’ backs and snatched at the tassels of passing parasols. Newspaper-boys and fruit-sellers had materialised from nowhere and bawled their wares into the captive ears around them.
Being tall, Cribb could glimpse the helmets of a police cordon controlling the crowd. He pressed forward with difficulty. It was some minutes before he reached the front ranks. There, the reason for the crowd’s presence came dramatically in sight.
A hole about fifteen feet by twenty had been blasted in the Criminal Investigation Department. Debris was scattered widely across the quadrangle, amongst it broken cupboards, a battered safe and the remains of two carnages, a landau and a brougham. The front of the
