Lost baggage porter

Chapter Thirty-one

When I came to the station at eight the next morning (after my usual hour) I shot the Humber hard into the bicycle rack, for I had seen the Chief heading past the booking halls in his long coat. He looked, all of a sudden, like a music-hall turn: two men under a single giant coat, the one on the shoulders of the other.

We quickly fell in step together without any greeting, although I might have said, 'Sir', and the Chief might have said, 'You'll have had a time of it, then.' I started directly in on my story, having sat awake all night in the Backhouses' parlour (with the baby crying overhead, like a new variation on the sound of the wind), there working out a version that excluded Lund and his confession, because I had decided I would not see him hanged for the killing of the Camerons.

'The job happened directly, sir,' I said, as we went on to Platform Four, the Chief showing his warrant card to the ticket man, '… straightaway on the Sunday night with no further plotting.'

'Don't I bloody know it,' said the Chief, turning left, so that we were approaching the Police Office. The Chief's big, prize-fighting face looked raw. His nose was not the same as when I'd seen him last, although his 'tache was perfect as ever – the one part of his features to have been drawn with a ruler. 'You were sent for, I know. I saw you shooting at us.' 'What about the bastard shooting at me? He has it coming, I bloody tell you. Where is he this bloody minute?' The Chief walked on fast, and we were now passing the Police Office. The bay platform, number Three, was empty in front of it, the Fish Special having long since come and gone. 'The one firing was Valentine Sampson.' 'Joseph Howard Vincent,' said the Chief, striding on, not at all surprised. Evidently the two were one, as far as he was concerned. 'I never knew you were passed to use a gun, sir,' I said. 'Do you have a special certificate?' 'What I have is the key to the bloody armoury cupboard.' 'I saw you lying down in the four-foot, sir – thought you were done for.' No reply to that from the Chief, for of course he'd lost dignity by playing dead in the soot and muck that lay between the rails. I wondered what had become of his moustache during that episode. We walked on. Beyond the south end of the platform stood the roundhouse, where the whole thing had gone off two days before. An engine in steam stood outside, like a peaceful cottage with a fire in the grate, and it was as though nothing that had happened there mattered in the least. 'What became of the goods clerk? Roberts?' 'He's said a little.' 'Rum is that,' I said, 'because he did nothing but talk beforehand… How are his hands?' 'Burnt,' said the Chief. 'What happened there?' We had changed course to the left, and were now going down the stone staircase next to the Left Luggage Office.

'Sampson pitched hot metal at him,' I said as the weak light of the station left us,'… from the cut safe. ''Right' said the Chief. It was just another occurrence to him.

The sound of our boots changed as we came off the stairs and began walking along the rough, dark passage that led to the underneath of Platform Fourteen, the furthest limit of the station. Only three gas lamps lit the way, and they were for some reason numbered 1, 2 and 3.

'Why are we down here, sir?' I asked, as we began walking between lamps number one and two.

'Because no bugger else is,' said the Chief.

He still wanted me kept out of sight.

I asked: 'Who uses this, now the footbridge is built?'

'Gloomy sorts,' said the Chief.

In that tunnel, the station sounds came to us in a strange way – like one mighty, never-ending disturbance. We walked up and down, and I told the Chief all about what had happened in the roundhouse. When I'd about got to the end of that episode, he said, 'Then, I expect you were drawn half over York as they looked for hiding places.'

'Half over France, more like,' I said, and then I gave him that part of the story. He was surprised at none of it, and when I came to speak of the Hotel des Artistes, I half expected him to say, 'I know that place pretty well', and to make some remark on the breakfast.

When I got on to how someone – not named, because the question of Parkinson was too close to the question of Lund – had given me away to Mike, we were under gas lamp number three, and there we stayed as I raced on, trying to get it all done with, but worried by the strange expressions that would fly across the Chief's face, which seemed to suggest that I'd done things wrong, or just described things in not quite the right way, or, worse still, that I was missing things out. Partly out of guilt at holding back Lund's confession, I was anxious to give the Chief all the other information I could. I told him all about the business with the tickets – admitting losing the Charing Cross one (at which he might have given a sort of sigh) – and said he should have men sent immediately to the left-luggage place there, just in case Sampson or Hopkins should try to get the kitbag by persuasion or main force. I gave an account of the sighting of a mysterious stranger in Thorpe-on-Ouse; and went along with the truth so far as to say that I was certain it had been Mike. I ended by asking for a police guard to be put outside the Backhouse place in Thorpe-on-Ouse.

The Chief looked at me carefully for a moment. Then he said:

'As I told you, Roberts, the goods clerk, has not been entirely silent.'

'Right,' I said. 'Good. What does he think of me? Allan Appleby. Worst villain that ever stepped.'

'He couldn't make you out, though he never said much on that score. One thing he was most anxious to get over… Sampson, alias John Howard Vincent, admitted to killing the Camerons in his hearing. Now did you hear the same, because it'll go hard with him if we ever lay hands on the bugger?'

'He gave the impression he'd done for the pair of 'em,' I said, and I coloured up as I said it. I knew I was in queer.

'I had the idea you weren't that bothered about the Cameron murders, sir,' I added. 'Tower Street matter, you said.'

'Aye, it was, but now they've made us a present of it, having seen they've no earthly chance of solving it.'

I cursed myself for being so foolish as to think that I might cut what Lund had said the night before out of my story; and I went a little way towards repeating what he'd told me. 'I have my suspicions of the constable who walks by the station,' I said. 'It's only an inkling, so I left it out of my account just now, but I believe I saw him talking to the bad blokes over in the Grapes just before the roundhouse job.' The Chief was silent. 'What are you going to do, sir?' I said, at which the Chief asked in turn: 'What day is it today?' 'Tuesday,' I said. 'First things first…' he said, and he produced a brandy flask that I'd always somehow known would be lodged in his inside pocket. '… What're you going to call the boy?' "The wife's after calling him Harrison, which is my dad's name.' I took a belt on the brandy. 'Then he'll be Harry' said the Chief. 'Yes,' I said. So we were agreed on that. The Chief took another brandy go, and said, 'I'll have a watch put on the house at Thorpe – that will be done directly. It will be lads from Fulford.' Fulford was just across the river from Thorpe-on-Ouse. I was glad it would not be Tower Street men. 'There'll be a guard posted at the Left Luggage Office in Charing Cross… and bulletins'll be sent to all Channel ports' the Chief added, just as if the drink had given him the idea, which it might well have. 'There'll be new notices put in the Police Gazette, and I'll have a quiet word at Tower Street about the copper you mentioned.' 'I would have Mike run in while you're at it… before he comes looking for me again. He works at the Black Swan, Coney Street… outdoor porter, I think.' 'Right you are,' said the Chief.

'Can I start to book in at the office as normal?'

'Best not' said the Chief,'… not with the bad lads still at large, but I'll see you there at the usual time tomorrow. Meanwhile start your report.'

He leant back against the tunnel wall, breathing heavily through his moustache before taking another couple of brandy goes. He looked ill.

'I'll give you this: you've stuck with it, lad' he said, which made me feel worse about my secrecy over Lund.

There came at that moment a scuffle of boots at the far end of the tunnel. The figure approached in the gloom, with all the strange, station sounds overhead. They might have been underwater. As he came by lamp number one, I saw that it was the Lad, the telegraph boy, grinning all around his head as usual, and carrying telegram forms. When he was passing under lamp number two, the Chief called to him, 'Know all the dodges, don't you?'

The Lad said: 'Have you seen the weather, sir? Tippling down, it is.'

'There's a roof on this station, you might have noticed' said the Chief. 'There is,' said the Lad, 'but it leaks.'