The Ruby in the Smoke

  "You can't," said Mrs Holland.

  "I wouldn't if I could. But there's richer pickings than me. You've got a hold of the edge of something. How'd you like to get your hands on the rest of it?"

  "Me?" she said in mock astonishment. "I ain't the party involved, Mr Selby. I'm just the broker. I should have to put any proposal to my gentleman."

  "Well, o' course," said Mr Selby impatiently, "the gentleman'll have to be consulted, if you insist. I don't see why you don't drop him, and deal direct yourself - but it's your decision."

  "That's right," said the lady. "Well, are you going to tell me all about it?"

  "Not just straight off, of course not. What d'you take me for? I got to have my guarantees, same as you."

  "What d'you want, then?"

  "Protection. And seventy-five per cent."

  "Protection you can have, seventy-five per cent you can't. Forty, yes."

  "Oh, give over. Forty? Sixty at least..."

  They settled on fifty per cent each, as both had known they would; and then Mr Selby began to talk. He spoke for some time, and when he had finished Mrs Holland was silent, staring into the empty grate.

  "Well?" he said.

  "Oh, Mr Selby. You are a one. You sound like you been caught up in something bigger than what you expected."

  "No, no," he said unconvincingly. "Only I'm a bit tired o' that line now. The market's not what it was."

  "And you want to get out while you're still alive, eh?"

  "No, no... I only thought as it might be to our advantage to join forces. Kind of partnership."

  She tapped her teeth with the toasting-fork.

  "Tell you what," she said. "You do one thing for me, and I'll come in with yer."

  "What?"

  "Your partner Lockhart had a daughter. She must be - oh, sixteen, seventeen now?"

  "What do you know about Lockhart? Seems to me you know a bloody sight too much about everything."

  She stood up.

  "Goodbye, then," she said. "I'll send you my gentleman's next bill in the morning."

  "No, no!" he said hastily. "I beg yer pardon. I didn't mean to offend. I'm sorry, Mrs Holland."

  He was sweating, a fact she observed with interest; for it was a cold day. Pretending to be mollified, she sat down again.

  "Well, seeing as it's you," she went on, "I don't mind telling you that me and the Lockharts, father and daughter, is old friends. I've known that girl for years. The only thing is, I've lost touch. You find out where she's living now, and I'll see you won't lose by it."

  "But how am I going to do that?"

  "That's your affair, and it's my price. That - and fifty per cent."

  He frowned, and growled, and twisted his gloves and thumped his hat; but he was caught. Then another thought occurred to him.

  "Here," he said. "I've told you a good deal, I have. Now what about you coming clean as well? Who's this gentleman o' yours, eh? Where did you hear all that stuff in the first place?"

  She peeled back her upper lip in a reptilian snarl. He flinched, and then realized that she was smiling.

  "Too late to ask that now," she said. "We made the bargain already, and I don't recall as that was part of it."

  All he could do was sigh. With the uneasy feeling that he had done the wrong thing, Mr Selby got up to go, leaving Mrs Holland smiling fondly at him like a crocodile with a new baby.

  And ten minutes afterwards, Mr Berry said to her:

  "Who was the gent as left just now, Mrs Holland?"

  "Why?" she said. "D'you know him?"

  "No, ma'am. Only he was being watched. A thickset feller, fair-haired, as was hanging about by the cemetery. He waited till your gent left, then he made a note in a little book, and follered him without being seen."

  Mrs Holland's rheumy eyes opened, and then the lids came down again.

  "D'you know, Mr Berry," she said, "this is an interesting game we're in. I wouldn't miss this for the world."

  It didn't take Trembler long to find Sally a gun. The very next day, while Adelaide was helping Rosa with some sewing, he beckoned Sally into the shop and thrust a brown-paper parcel across the counter.

  "Cost me four pounds," he said. "And there's powder and ball as well in there."

  "Powder and ball?" said Sally, dismayed. "I was hoping for something more up to date..."

  She gave Trembler the money and opened the parcel. The little box-lock pistol inside was no more than six inches long, with a short stumpy barrel and a large curved hammer. The handle was oak, and fitted her hand neatly; and it did not seem badly balanced, and the maker's name - Stocker of Yeovil - was one she recognized, and the government proof marks were stamped under the barrel as they should be; but the top of the barrel around the nipple, where the percussion cap exploded, was deeply pitted and worn. A packet of powder, a little bag of lead bullets and a box of percussion cups completed the armoury.

  "Ain't it any good?" said Trembler. "I gets very nervous around guns."

  "Thank you, Trembler," she said. "I'll have to try it a few times, but it's better than nothing."

  She drew back the hammer, testing the strength of the spring, and looked down the narrow metal tube where the flash of the percussion cap was led to the powder. It needed a good cleaning, and it hadn't been fired for a long time; that barrel, she thought, looks distinctly frail.

  "Sooner you than me," he said. "I'm off to clean the studio; we've got a sitting this morning."

  The studio was a room hung with velvet drapes, against which subjects were posed uncomfortably in a horsehair armchair, or stiffly arm-in-arm beside an aspidistra. This morning it was a young woman who wanted a picture to send to her fiance, who was in the Baltic timber trade, and who came home only twice a year. Rosa had learned all this, and more; she would draw people out for hours at a time.

  The customer arrived (with her mother for chaperone) at eleven. Sally showed them into the studio, where Frederick was setting up the big camera, and then borrowed some of his light oil and went into the kitchen to clean the gun. Adelaide joined Trembler in the shop and left her alone, but she hardly noticed. The smell of the oil, the feel of the metal under her fingers, the sensation of removing little by little all the obstructions which lay between a machine and its function, all gave her a feeling of calm, impersonal happiness. Finally it was done, and she laid it down and wiped her hands.

  She would have to test it. She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She was afraid of that corroded barrel. The mechanism was in order; the trigger moved cleanly; the hammer swept down precisely on the right spot; nothing was bent or twisted, nothing was cracked. But if the barrel could not contain the force of the explosion, she would lose her right arm.

  She tilted a quantity of the black, gritty powder into the barrel and tamped it down firmly. Then she tore off a little square of blue cloth from the hem of the dress Rosa had been altering, and wrapped it round one of the balls of lead to ensure a snug fit; and then the ball joined the powder in the barrel, and a patch of wadding followed it. She rammed them down hard, and then took a percussion cap from the box - a little copper cylinder with a closed end, containing a quantity of fulminate, a chemical compound which exploded when struck by the hammer. She pulled the hammer back until it had clicked twice, fitted the cap over the nipple, and then with extreme care held the hammer while she gently pulled the trigger. This let the hammer down half-way, to a position where it was locked.

  Trembler and Adelaide were in the shop, Frederick was in the studio, Rosa had gone to the theatre; there was no one to watch and distract her. She went out into the yard. There was a wooden shed with a peeling door that would do as a target. Checking that there was nothing in the shed but broken flowerpots and empty sacks, she measured out ten paces from the hut and turned.

  The air in the yard was chilly, and she was lightly clad; images of a shattered arm, of blood spurting from torn flesh and splintered bone insisted on crowding into her mind; but the hand she raised to
aim the pistol was perfectly steady. She was satisfied.

  She pulled back the hammer one extra click to unlock it, and aimed at the centre of the door.

  Then she squeezed the trigger.

  The gun leapt in her hand, but she was expecting that and had allowed for it. The huge bang and the smell of the powder were different from those she was used to, but close enough to delight her senses, and in the same split second she realized that the barrel had held, that she still had an arm and a hand, and that everything in the yard was the same as it had been before the shot.

  Including the door of the shed.

  There was no bullet-hole anywhere to be seen. Puzzled, she examined the pistol, but it was empty. Had she forgotten to put a ball in? No, she remembered the square of cloth from the blue dress. Then what had happened? Where had the ball gone? The door was big enough, in all conscience - she could have put a bullet through a visiting-card, at that distance.

  Then she saw the hole. It was two feet to the left of the door, and a foot from the ground; she had been aiming at roughly the height of her own head. She was glad her father had not seen that shot. But surely she hadn't let the recoil destroy her aim? She rejected the idea at once. She had fired hundreds of rounds; she knew how to fire a pistol.

  It must be the gun itself, she concluded. A short, wide, unrifled barrel just did not make for accuracy. She sighed. Still, at least she now had something which would make a loud noise and a smell of gunpowder, and it might serve to frighten anyone who attacked her; but she would only have one shot...

  The kitchen door opened, and Frederick came running out.

  "What the devil -" he began.

  "It's all right," she said. "Nothing's broken. Did you hear the noise inside?"

  "I should say we did. My fair client leapt out of the chair and almost out of the picture altogether. What are you doing?"

  "Testing a pistol. I'm sorry."

  "In the middle of London? You're a savage, Lockhart. I don't know what effect you'll have on Mrs Holland, but by God you terrify me. That was the Duke of Wellington," he said more kindly, "talking about his soldiers. Are you all right?"

  He moved closer and put a hand on her shoulder. She was trembling all over now, and felt cold and hurt and angry with herself.

  "Look at you," he said. "You're shaking like a leaf. How on earth can you shoot straight if you're trembling like that? Come inside and get warm."

  "I don't shake when I'm going to shoot," she muttered, unable to find her voice; and she let herself be led inside like an invalid. How can he be so stupid? How can he be so blind? she thought, and simultaneously, how can I be so feeble?

  She said nothing, and sat down to clean the pistol.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE TURK'S HEAD

  Mrs Holland, in pursuance of her agreement with Mr Selby, detailed one of her young men to look after him. This youth sat in the office picking his nails and whistling tunelessly, and went to and fro with Mr Selby, annoying everyone they met with his insistence on searching them for hidden weapons. Jim was vastly entertained, and made the young man search him every time he came into the office - which he did as often as possible, until Mr Selby lost his temper and ordered him out.

  But tormenting Mr Selby was only one of Jim's preoccupations. He spent a good deal of time in Wapping over the next few days. He made the acquaintance of a night-watchman on the jetty by Aberdeen Wharf, who fed him information about Mrs Holland in exchange for much-used copies of Stirring Tales for British Lads. The information was not very interesting, but it was something, and so were the snippets of news he gathered from the mudlarks - boys and girls who earned a living by picking up lumps of coal and other bits and pieces from the mud at low tide. They sometimes turned their attention to unguarded boats as well, but they seldom ventured very far ashore. They knew of Mrs Holland, though, and they followed her movements with close attention; for instance, on the day after Sally tried out her new gun, they were able to tell Jim that Mrs Holland and Mr Berry had gone out in the morning, heading west and dressed against the cold; and that they hadn't yet returned.

  The origins of that particular expedition lay in the scraps of paper Mrs Holland had received after their detour through the hands of Ernie Blackett. At first she had thought Sally had made up the message on purpose to mislead her, but the more she looked into the words, the more there seemed to be a kind of sense in them; but she was damned if she could see what.

  Finally, she lost patience.

  "Come on, Mr Berry," she said. "We're off to Swaleness."

  "What for, ma'am?"

  "A fortune."

  "Where is it?"

  "I wish I bleedin' knew."

  "Then what are we going there for?"

  "You know what, Jonathan Berry," she said passionately, "you're a fool. Henry Hopkins was flash and unreliable, but he wasn't a fool. I can't abide a fool."

  "Sorry, ma'am," said Mr Berry, feeling ashamed of himself without knowing why.

  Mrs Holland's plan was to visit Foreland House and interrogate the drunken housekeeper, if she was still there, in the hope that she might know something, but after a muddy walk in the biting wind, they found the place empty and locked. Mrs Holland cursed fluently for a good ten minutes without repeating herself, and then lapsed into a moody silence as they tramped back towards the town.

  Halfway there, she stopped suddenly.

  "Here," she said. "What's the name of that pub by the harbour?"

  "Pub, ma'am? I don't recall seeing one," said Mr Berry courteously.

  "No, you wouldn't, I suppose, you pork-brained water swiller. But if it's the Turk's Head like I think it is -"

  She spoke for the first time that day without venom, and Mr Berry felt his spirits lifting. She was scrutinizing her piece of paper again.

  "Come on," she said. "D'you, know, Mr Berry, I think I got it..."

  Stuffing the paper into her bag, she led off at a faster rate. Mr Berry followed faithfully.

  "If I tells you to drink a mug o' beer, you'll bloody drink it," she said much later. "I ain't having you sitting there like a bloody Temperance meeting swilling lemonade, a great big man like you - why, it'd attract unwholesome attention. You do as you're told."

  They stood outside the inn. It was dark, Mrs Holland having insisted that they wait until sunset; she had spent the rest of the afternoon hanging about the harbour, where the fishing-boats were rising slowly with the tide that flowed in up the creek. Mr Berry had watched, bemused, as she spoke to one old fisherman after another - meaningless questions about lights and tides and suchlike. She was a marvel, and no error.

  But he wasn't going to drink beer without a fight.

  "I got me principles," he said stubbornly. "I took the pledge, and that's good enough for me. I ain't drinking no beer."

  Mrs Holland reminded him in tuppence-coloured language that he was a thief, a thug and a murderer, and she had only to snap her fingers and give him in charge, and what she knew would hang him inside a month; but he would not budge. Finally she had to give in.

  "All right," she said bitterly, "lemonade, then, and I hope that little maggot of a thing you call your conscience is satisfied. Get inside, and don't breathe a word."

  With the calm joy of the righteous, Mr Berry followed her into the Turk's Head.

  "Drop o' gin for me, dear," she said to the landlord, "and a glass o' lemonade for my son, what has a delicate stomach."

  The landlord brought the drinks, and while Mr Berry sipped his lemonade, Mrs Holland engaged the man in conversation. A handsome situation he had here, facing out to sea like he did. An old pub, was it? With an old cellar, no doubt? Yes, she'd seen the little window by the step on the way in, at ground level, and she'd had a little bet with her son that you could see the sea out of it. Was she right? Only at high tide? Well, fancy that. What a shame it was dark now - she couldn't prove it to him. A glass for the landlord? Go on; it was a cold night. Yes, pity it was dark now, and they'd be on their
way in a little while. She'd like to win her bet. She could? How's that? There was a buoy in the creek - you could see it when the tide was in - and there was lights, was there, on the buoy? There, Alfred! (to Mr Berry, who sat befuddled). Will that prove it to yer?

  Kicked, he nodded hard, and surreptitiously rubbed his ankle. "Yes, Mother," he said.

  Exchanging a broad wink with Mrs Holland, the landlord lifted the flap of the counter and let them through.

  "Down the steps," he said. "You have a squint out the winder, and you'll see it."

  The cellar door was in a little passage behind the bar, and the steps were in darkness. Mrs Holland struck a match and looked around.

  "Shut the door," she hissed up to Mr Berry.

  He pushed it to and stumbled down after her.

  "Careful," she said. She blew the match out, and they stood on the steps in the dark.

  "What are we looking for?" he whispered.

  " 'A place of darkness'," she whispered. "That's this cellar. 'Under a knotted rope' - that's the Turk's Head."

  "Eh?"

  "A Turk's Head is a kind of knot. Didn't yer know that? No, o' course you wouldn't. 'Three red lights' - there's a buoy out there in the creek what flashes three times - 'when the moon pulls on the water' - when the tide's in. See? It all fits. Now all we got to do is look for the light -"

  "Is that it, Mrs Holland?"

  He was pointing at a small square of dim radiance in the blackness.

  "Where?" she said. "I can't see nothing. Get out the way."

  He moved up a step, and she took his place, peering out of the tiny window.

  "That's it!" she said. "That's it! Now, quick: 'Three red lights shine clearly on the spot' -"

  She turned around. By some freak, the old bull's-eye glass of one of the panes in the window acted as a lens, focusing the distant flashes on to a spot in the stone wall - a spot where the stone was loose, as she discovered when she dug her urgent claws into the soft mortar it was set in.

  She pulled the stone out. It was only the size of a brick; she gave it to Mr Berry, and reached inside the hole.

  "There's a box," she said, her voice shaking. "Strike a match, quick. Quick."

  He put down the stone and did as she said, to see her drawing a little brass-studded box out of the hole in the wall.

  "Hold it still, blast yer," she said, but it was her own hands she was cursing. She fumbled at the lid, trying to manipulate the catch; and then the match went out.