The Fleet Street Murders

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Barnard shouted, “Run!” and, clutching his stomach, turned and bolted before Lenox could reload.

The two men sprinted away, and Lenox got to his feet, reloaded the tiny gun, and started after them. Jenkins’s loud footsteps were pounding toward the noise, and at the door to Barnard’s office the two men met.

“That way!” said Lenox.

It was to no avail. They searched the building’s every hall, and in two or three minutes police constables were swarming the place. They found nothing, other than a vault left half open.

Lenox and Jenkins went out to the courtyard, where Graham was waiting. A trio of constables rushed to Jenkins and reported that they had found nothing.

“Damn it!” said Jenkins, looking hopelessly in every direction. “They’ve simply vanished! We had men on every block, at every exit! Where on earth did they go?”

“They must still be in the building,” said one of the constables.

Suddenly Lenox saw it. “No,” he said. “The river. They’ve gone by boat.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. Carruthers’s article about the Mint — all the hidden passageways. It’s like the Tower of London. There must be a tunnel or a gate leading directly onto the water.”

“Christ,” muttered Jenkins. “We must put in for a boat from the Yard.”

“There’s no time for that,” said Lenox. “Will you lend me two men?”

“Of course,” said Jenkins. “What do you mean to do?”

“For a dozen reasons they can only be headed east, out of town, rather than west and back through the heart of London. We’ll follow them.”

“Why are you so sure they’re going east?”

Impatiently Lenox ticked off the reasons. “The Thames is only a few hundred yards wide in London — they’d be far too conspicuous. They’ll want to unload somewhere quiet — again east. Barnard as much as admitted he’s leaving England — the eastern coast.”

As if by confirmation of all this, a constable came sprinting toward Jenkins and breathlessly told him that Barnard and his men had been spotted on a makeshift barge but that it was already out of sight.

“Two men?” said Lenox.

“I’m coming, too,” said Jenkins. “Althorp, you stay here and manage the men. Send a team down east in a carriage to look for the barge and track their progress. I’m coming, Lenox.”

“As am I,” said a voice behind them in the courtyard.

It was Dallington.

“How did you discover us?” asked Lenox.

Dallington laughed. “I have to confess — I followed Jenkins. My man was watching the Yard. I couldn’t stand being outside of things. Where are we going?”

There was no time to be upset with Dallington, and in a way Lenox admired his pluck. Soon they had organized a small party, and, running the short distance to the river, Lenox found the smallest, quickest skiff he could, cut it loose, and left Graham behind with money to pay its owner. He, Jenkins, Dallington, and two constables boarded the skiff and instantly started to push out into the wide, rippling Thames.

For twenty minutes there was nothing. They took turns poling the lively little bark down the river, sticking close to the side and peering keenly forward.

“Damned cheek,” said Dallington indignantly. “To think of him stealing from the Mint!”

“It’s the brazenest sainted thing I ever heared o’,” said one of the constables, his voice almost tinged with admiration.

“He was the only man in the nation who could have pulled it off,” said Jenkins anxiously. “Before this is all over you have to explain it to me, Charles.”

“Yes,” murmured Lenox. He was less full of chat than the others; he had not thirty minutes before shot a man with whom he had shared port, at whose table he had dined, with whom he had played cards. He hoped passionately that they might catch him, but also that Barnard might still be alive when they did.

Dawn began to glimmer and rise. It came first as a lightening above the horizon, and then the dark pulled back to reveal a pink and purple range of clouds. It was bitterly cold on the water.

Then they came around a bend in the river and saw it, as big as life.

It was a small red barge, which sat low in the water; it had pulled to the left side of the river now, where a sandy embankment threatened to ground it. The barge’s virtue was readily apparent — four small but very heavy-looking crates stood at the edge of the deck, next to a ramp that extended from its side.

There were five men on deck. Barnard was sitting against the cabin’s outer door, directing the others with his left hand, clutching his right to his stomach. The other four men were engaged in stopping the boat and readying the crates to be off-loaded.

It was a good location, lying as it did in the fields between two villages, only two miles east of London’s outer limits; for all Lenox knew, Barnard might have bought these fields. There was a dray cart with two horses before it standing on the bank and a single man in black holding their reins.

“The devil,” said Dallington under his breath.

“I’ll call to him,” said Jenkins.

“No,” Lenox quickly interjected. “He hasn’t seen us yet. Stop poling.”

It was true. Their skiff was floating along the opposite side of the river, and the men on the barge were so absorbed in their work that they hadn’t noticed the only other boat in sight.

“Look,” Dallington offered, “the hammer above that chap’s eyebrow.”

“Indeed,” said Jenkins quietly. “George Barnard and the Hammer Gang. It will make for a tidy arrest.”

Lenox nodded but had a grim feeling it might not be so simple. “Pole along this bank, and then we’ll run over there as quickly as we can, try to catch them by surprise.”

Soon they had done it, and the two constables were rowing as hard as they could where it was too deep to pole the skiff along.

“You have a pistol?” Lenox asked Jenkins.

“Yes, I brought —”

Then a cry went up on the barge. They had seen the skiff, and Barnard, his face both livid and shocked, began to shout at them. Twenty yards off, Lenox heard him yell, “Leave the last crate! Get me off of here!”

This close Lenox saw the hammer tattooed above the eyes of the men on the barge, and very fleetingly he thought of Smalls and his unfortunate mother.

A bullet cracked him back to attention; it came from Barnard, from the gun he had trained on Lenox at the Mint, and it splintered off a great chunk of the skiff’s hull.

“Get down!” cried Jenkins.

Lenox reached over and pulled on Dallington’s arm — the young man had been standing agog, staring at the barge — and shouted, “Leave off the rowing! Fire back!”

Another bullet flew by them, this time whistling over their heads. A third took out part of the skiff’s starboard side, crackling and singeing the wood there. All of these came from Barnard. Jenkins fired back, but the bullet skittered harmlessly over the river.

“We’re taking on water,” said one of the constables.

“Hold on,” said Lenox. “We can make it to the bank. Try to pull us under the barge, where they can’t shoot at us.”

“Look!” said Dallington softly.

A fourth bullet hit the boat, only narrowly missing one of the constables, but then Barnard turned to stare at what the men on the skiff were looking at.

The four Hammers were in utter disarray. One of them was fleeing west, back toward London, sprinting as fast as he could. One was trying to lug Barnard off the boat to where the three crates rested (the fourth still stood on the deck of the barge). But it was the other two who were of the most interest. One of them had punched the driver of the dray in the face, and the two men were loading one of the crates onto the cart.

“Stop!” shouted Jenkins.

“Stop!” shouted Barnard almost simultaneously.

These were both excellent pieces of advice, no doubt, but they went unheeded. One of the two men was in the back of the cart, lovingly bracing the crates of white notes against the bumps to come in the road, while the other was furiously whipping the aged, stultified horses, who hadn’t been especially perturbed by the gunshots and were only now drafted into motion by the blows on their flanks.

Soon the fourth Hammer, the one who had been helping Barnard, gave that up as a bad job. The third crate had cracked and split upon hitting the bank, and he ran to it and stuffed great thick chunks of money into his pockets and then ran off westward, too.

“Get them!” said Jenkins to the constables. The skiff was pulling up alongside the barge.

The two constables waded into the shallow water and started to run after the criminals. Barnard, meanwhile, had staggered off the boat and was filling his own pockets with money. He started to run east, but Dallington, spry and youthful, caught him almost instantly, tackling him to the ground, and a moment later Lenox and Jenkins had joined him.

Barnard was bleeding profusely, sweat upon his brow, and the impotent gun was still clutched in his hand.

“You’re under arrest,” said Jenkins.

Suddenly everything seemed very quiet. The dray had turned behind a distant row of barns and gone out of sight. Lenox looked up and around him: the barge floating gently at the bankside; the skiff splintered and slowly sinking; the brilliant gold glimmer of light just coming up over the deep green fields and the gray, glossy water. It was beautiful.

“Lenox, you bastard,” said Barnard and fainted.