Lost baggage porter

Chapter Nineteen

It was getting on for ten o'clock; I was in Coney Street. I touched the eye-glasses resting on my nose, and once again pictured Allan Appleby. He'd taken his dinner-time pint, maybe at the Fox Inn on Holgate. It being a Sunday, he might've been the only solitary drinker in there. He'd have drunk while looking down at his boots, adjusting his specs occasionally; he'd have gone back for a couple more after his tea. Then he'd have walked over Holgate Bridge, staring down at the tracks as they divided towards passenger station or goods station. On a Sunday there wouldn't be much action: the odd engine dawdling along with a rake of empties, its column of steam toppling forwards rather than flowing behind. And if an engine had gone underneath the bridge just at that moment, and Allan had caught a belt of smoke and steam, he wouldn't have flinched, but just walked on, being a man used to small setbacks of that nature.

He would turn left at the end of Blossom Street, entering Station Road, with the Institute and the Lost Luggage Office to his left, and he would walk up the incline that took him over the sidings leading into the Old Station. He would be a little anxious on approaching Tanner Row, but quite resigned to going along with whatever desperate scheme was being got up in there. He had nothing else in prospect, after all.

By the time I brought my thoughts of Allan Appleby to a close I was at the door of the Grapes, where I was confronted with three further doors. The decorated glass in the panel of the first read 'Snug', the second 'Sitting Room', the third 'Smoking Room'. Where would Valentine Sampson and Miles Hopkins be? They'd want to be snug, they'd want to be sitting, and Sampson at least would want to be smoking. I tried first the Snug, and there they were – it was quite a thrill to have guessed right first time, like winning a prize in the tombola.

I joined them at the table, to be greeted with nods. The three of us were the only ones in the Snug. Red leather benches ran around the white walls; brass table legs shone in the half-dark. The place was like a courtroom or a first-class railway compartment of the best sort. There were many empty glasses on the table before Sampson and Hopkins. Sampson still looked like a fashion plate in his kingly way, but was canned, or on the way at least. As for Hopkins, some of his hair seemed to have fallen out since last time – making me feel that I wanted to pull the remainder out, have done with it – but his eyes danced as before. He was a man always in the middle of some game I didn't quite understand. He was fiddling with a pocketbook – I could guess how he'd come by it – for he always had to be using his marvellous hands. But things were different this time somehow. I hadn't been offered a drink, for a start.

'Where's Mike?' I said.

Nothing was said, and I thought: they've done the bugger in.

'Mike has to watch how he goes,' said Miles Hopkins slowly. 'He's not fancy-free like the rest of us, you know.'

'How come?'

Sampson was staring straight ahead, not smiling. 'He's just come off ten years hard. He can't be pulled again.' Didn't stop him assisting in the taking of pocketbooks from Platform Fourteen, I thought. Was he scared? I didn't like the thought of being on for something that he'd jibbed at. Sampson's face was changing. A smile coming from far away. 'Well, Allan old lad,' he said when it had finally arrived, 'it's a go.' Miles Hopkins was watching me very carefully. 'The great doing?' I said. 'The very thing.' 'You said there were more movables to collect first,' I said in a very peevish little voice, because the rough sort of plan I'd made with the Chief was now destroyed. 'So I did,' said Sampson, 'and they've been collected. You see, mate, we were waiting for a particular circumstance before we could set to.' 'Waiting for the circumstance to stop, that is,' said Hopkins, who then took a drink, one laughing eye watching me over the rim of his glass. 'What?' I said. 'The strike,' said Sampson. 'You'll have read of it in the Press or heard of it somehow.' 'You having such a good knowledge of railways,' put in Hopkins. 'I have heard of it,' I said. 'Unofficial-like, it was,' said Sampson. 'Some blokes in the Associated… Amalgamated Society of summat or other. The tough nuts, the diehards. Some bloke was reduced in position for no good reason, and they stuck by him. Good socialists, those fellows are, and I raise my fucking glass to 'em.'

He did not do that, however. Instead, he sat back in his chair, and said:

'But I'm still going to steal all the silly fuckers' money.'

Miles Hopkins was still watching me as Sampson rose to his feet and, striding across the room, collected his overcoat from the door back. We were done with the Grapes, I realised, although not done with drinking, because there was a bottle of whisky rolling in Sampson's pocket.

Hopkins was rising to his feet too, his coat already on.

I thought: I can stop this. Three words will stop it: Joseph Howard Vincent. Or perhaps only two: Edwin Lund. But I don't say them, and was instead swept along behind Hopkins and Sampson. We were striding through the door and now we were out into York, dark, rain and cold. It could not have been any other way.

'It's coming on to rain,' said Sampson, walking on in his jaunty way. I hurried to keep up, even though I'd rather have put a hundred miles between myself and him.

You could forgive Sampson remarking on the state of the weather – it had evidently been some time since he'd been out of a public house. Inside the Old Station, on the other side of Tanner Row, an engine was in steam, like a memory, moving goods into or out of one of the stores built on top of the long- dead passenger platforms. They were secret, shameful exchanges carried on in the Old Station. Just then, it struck me that Hopkins wasn't with us. I looked back, and he was fifty yards behind, talking to a stranger: youngish and well set-up. Only… I'd a suspicion I'd seen that stranger's face before. As I looked back, so did Samspon, and Hopkins broke away from the stranger, walking fast to catch us up.

'Who's he?' I said, looking back at the well set-up man, who was walking in the opposite direction, hard by the new Company offices.

'Him?' said Sampson. 'That's Five Pounds… He's five pounds' worth of man.'

I nodded; it wouldn't do to enquire further. The man would be a worker for the Company; a key-holder of some sort, repository of trust, and now receiver of the wages of sin.

Hopkins came up to us, and Sampson, nodding back down the hill to indicate the stranger, said, 'What's he want?'

'He's in a funk,' said Hopkins.

'Over what?'

'Nowt in particular.'

'All right, are we?'

Hopkins nodded, and we continued walking up Tanner Row, turning left along Bar Lane… and then we were in Micklegate, the 6oo-year-old Bar – the greatest of the gateways in the City Walls – standing before us like a castle front guarded by gas lamps. The town was quiet, but a man was standing underneath one of the arches, and we didn't stop for him, but rather we collected him, for he was following on behind as we walked on, turning right into Station Road. The City Walls, high on their steep embankment, were to our right. In the darkness, rain fell softly on to them at a slant like a thousand tiny missiles trying to broach the city defences. We crossed Station Road, which was quite empty, and then we were in Queen Street (which was likewise), walking down its slope towards the Institute and the Lost Luggage Office. Were they going to rob that place for the second time? Would Lund step out of the shadows, and join us as the other fellow had?

Now Sampson had stopped under the lantern that jutted out from the front of the Institute; Hopkins joined him there and they began talking. The stranger was at my shoulder now. I turned quite slowly, and looked at him, but he couldn't meet my eye. He wasn't one of the burglar brigade, I knew. He was a railwayman, and a very anxious one at that – a railwayman who'd been fixed.

I watched Sampson and Hopkins. If they were thinking of going into the Institute for a drink then we were going to go in for a drink, and who did they think they were kidding by pretending to talk it over? But then came a second thought: it appeared to me, from a twenty-foot distance, that Sampson wanted to go in, while Hopkins did not.

Sampson at last turned around towards us:

'We're going to take a last drink, boys,' he announced.

So we stepped into the Institute, our silent newcomer removing his cap and smoothing his hair with the look of a man trying hard to master himself. I felt a little in the same way. I'd nerved myself to the business that lay ahead, and now this – further delay. It was already gone eleven.

We didn't go into the snooker hall, but – once Sampson had brought the glasses of Smith's on a tray – just stood in the tiled vestibule of the Institution, loitering beneath a bright gas ring. We were only a couple of feet inside the front door, which was propped open, so it wasn't as though we were even warm. But I had my eye on the other door, the one leading to the snooker hall and bar. The barmaid in there knew me for a detective. Sampson was exchanging a few words with the newcomer, but not much was being said by anyone else. Presently, Sampson took out his watch, looked at it, and he didn't leave off looking at it either. He seemed to be simply observing time passing.

Hopkins was shaking his head. He was in fits, I could tell.

'We should be waiting outside,' he said, and so at last here it was: a set-to between the two leaders.

'Why?' said Sampson, still looking at his watch. 'It's fucking pissing down.'

I watched the snooker hall door.

Sampson was saying: 'We've a night's work ahead of us, and I don't want to be sodden while I'm about it, do you?'

The hallway was a carbolic-smelling limbo. The clash of snooker balls came from the snooker hall – the long roll followed by the crash, like the shunting of engines.

'And the four of us are leaving boot prints everywhere,' Hopkins went on, 'that's evidence, you know.'

'Boot prints?' said Sampson. 'Where?'

'On the fucking floor,' said Hopkins. 'Where do you fucking think?' But he was laughing now and Sampson along with him. Just then, a man walked through the door, and slap into the back of Sampson's flying hand. He went down onto the white tiles.

'Always a friendly welcome with you blokes, en't it?' said the man, picking himself up.

Sampson was holding up both of his hands: 'Sorry, mates, lost my grip there just for a moment,' he said, addressing everyone save the man he'd belted, who was the cocky little clerk – the one who'd guided us about the goods yard eleven days before. He'd come back for second helpings. He was back on his feet now, saying, 'Don't you think you might include me in that apology?'

Sampson was looking at the man.

'I'm thinking on,' he said.

There was no great harm done to the man, but the young bloke was sent off into the bar, and came back with a bit of something in a short glass to help get his nerves set.

'I'll not apologise,' said Sampson, watching the clerk drink. 'You were getting on for ten minutes late, and we're operating to a tight schedule.'

I began to edge towards the front door. I was reckoning out the amount of time it would take me to scarper to the Police Office in the station. But no, that would be shut. I thought of Tower Street, and the constable whose patrol took him past the Institute and the station. The handsome, well set-up copper… It came to me then, with a feeling of falling: he was the man who'd been in the Grapes earlier… Five Pounds, as Sampson had called him.

But that shock was immediately overtaken by a second one, for just at that moment, the door to the snooker hall opened, and the barmaid walked out looking determined. It was horrible to see her at large, out from behind her bar. I had made the thing happen by willing it not to, and all I could do was turn away from her as she approached and move towards the main door.

'Evening, gents,' she said, as she approached the door in my wake.

Only Sampson responded.

'Rain's coming in,' he said, and even as he did so, she pushed the door closed, saying,'… Lot of other strange articles besides.'

The door shut on her voice, and on the band of burglars. I was outside and they were in. Here was freedom at last – I could run away and give the alarm. But instead I just stood there and counted to five before the door crashed open and they all came out in Indian file, Sampson at the head, saying:

'Will you walk alongside me, little Allan?'

Why had I remained? Perhaps the answer was something to do with the biblical words quoted by friend Lund: 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' Sampson placed his right arm very gently about my shoulder, but his friendliness was not a safe guide to anything. As we walked, his free arm was rummaging in one of his pockets. He picked out two tenners and handed them over to me, saying, 'More to come later… Now do you have any questions for me, little brother?'

'Yes'1 said. 'Where are we going, and what are we doing?'

We were certainly not going towards the Lost Luggage Office, but had turned left into the tracks and shadows of the Rhubarb Sidings, where half a dozen wagons stood solitary. They'd either been a train or were destined to become one but, it being Sunday evening, any shunting would most likely be put off till morning. So they just stood, like a lot of people in a room who didn't get on, and would not speak to each other.

'Tonight' said Sampson, 'we're going to have away two thousand pounds.'

I immediately thought of the new villas along Thorpe-on- Ouse Road. You could buy the whole row for two grand. Sampson – the explanation completed as far as he was concerned – was now striking out across the tracks towards the buildings that lay behind the Lost Luggage Office. These were workshops where until lately a good many of the Company's engines had been built, but now the work had been moved, perhaps to Carlisle. I'd read of the change somewhere. The door of the first empty engine shop stood open. The inside was dark. I couldn't see a bit, but could guess at the size of the place by the extra coldness, and the ringing sound of a man's boots. It was the newcomer, the youngster, going on ahead. Hopkins was now standing alongside me, Sampson having moved forward with the new bloke.

'What's going off?' I asked Hopkins.

'… Scouting around for the bull's-eye they left lying about on the last visit,' he said.

For a minute nothing occurred except for bell-like sounds from the shed interior.

A light then flickered from twenty yards off, like something looking for balance. The bull's-eye lantern had been found. We moved towards it, as the little flame was replaced by a wide, soft red beam. It roved in a half circle around the shed showing a lake of oil on the stone floor, a row of barrels, a tangle of broken bogeys, and then a sight that stopped the breath on my lips: a long locomotive swinging in the middle of air, like a bear rearing on its hind legs. Nobody spoke, for it looked like a hanged man, too. It was Sampson had hold of the lamp; he played it over the dangling engine. It was only a boiler in fact, swinging at a forty-five-degree angle, suspended at the firebox end from the chains of an overhead crane.

The beam was at rest now, showing nothing but dust and cinders moving in the cold air – a red cloud. We caught up with Sampson, and he moved off again. Presently, he came to a stop, with the light steady again, picking out a tarpaulin. The young bloke pulled it away, to reveal not one but two cylinders half buried in a pile of coal with a sackful of stuff lying between them.

'There's the acetylene,' said the young bloke, 'and there's your oxygen.'

The second cylinder was a little bigger than the first – both were taller than a man. The first was the white one that we'd nicked from the goods yard. The second – the oxygen cylinder – was the colour of rust.

'Now, will it act?' said Sampson, and he fished in the sack for a tool with which he unloosened the top nut on the cylinder. The oxygen came out, with the sound of a man with his finger to his lips saying 'Shhh!' for a long time.

'… Tell you what'd be a bit of a lark,' Sampson said, over the noise of the leaking gas,'… send a bloke in here at night, give him a box of matches… put him to search out the cause of this noise. He'd find it all right… but it'd be the last thing he did.'

He turned towards the young bloke, saying, 'What do you reckon to that, Tim?' Silence for a moment, before the young bloke answered: 'You'd need a fair amount of oxygen to cause a bang. It's the acetylene that's the dangerous stuff.' Sampson thought about this for a minute, before asking: 'Can I smoke when I'm on the job?' 'That's right out,' said the young bloke. Sampson and Tim were now heaving the oxygen cylinder on to their shoulders. Sampson then directed his lamp towards the second cylinder and the sack, before flicking the light towards Miles Hopkins. 'You and Allan take the tank, mate,' he said. 'And you…' he added, flicking the beam at the little clerk,'… you fetch the sack.' He and the young bloke led off, with the red beam of light showing the way between the black objects inside the shed. The two of us had all on to carry the cylinder -1 was beginning to see why I was needed. Behind us, the little clerk was saying: '… Only moved under special certificate, those things are.' We all walked on, as the clerk continued: 'A carbon of every document touching the movement of inflammable gases is forwarded to a special office at the clearing house.' He was at my heels now, saying: 'You seem a little out of your element here, pal.' 'Stow it,' I said. There was just the length of the cylinder between myself and Miles Hopkins, and I didn't want the clerk planting suspicions in his head. 'You're just the quiet sort, I suppose.' 'Aye,' said Hopkins from up ahead, 'and we could do with a few more like him.'