The Tick of Death

CHAPTER 8

‘Nobody ever spoke to me like that except my father,’ said Rossanna as she heaped devilled kidneys on to Cribb’s plate. It was 6 a.m., and he was seated at a bare wooden table in the kitchen of the dynamiters’ house. Much against his expectation, they had passed through Gravesend Reach and got back without further incident. Devlin, with the strain of the night’s doings written on his face, had gone straight to bed. Rossanna had confounded Cribb by meekly offering to cook him breakfast before they retired.

The first shock of Malone’s sudden dispatch had passed. It had been the fact of murder more than any sentiment about the hammer-thrower’s going that had prompted Cribb to react so impulsively. Malone had not been one of the most endearing representatives of his race, and it had been more fatiguing than distressing consigning him to the Thames. There had been time after that, as the launch steamed homeward, to consider how a secret agent might recover from such a lapse.

‘You were absolutely right, of course,’ Rossanna continued. ‘I should never have fired the shot. I didn’t give a thought for the dynamite on board. Ridiculous! I might have killed us all.’

‘You understood my reason for speaking to you so strongly, then?’ said Cribb, with resource.

‘Graphically, Mr Sargent. I am at a loss to understand how you exercised such restraint. I deserved nothing less than the chastisement you were ready to inflict on me.’

An exceptional development. Far from the hostile reaction he had expected, she seemed to have warmed towards him.

‘Aren’t you going to have some kidneys, Miss McGee?’

‘I wasn’t intending to-but if I might be so bold as to take one from your plate, it would give an opportunity of talking to you a little longer.’

‘Please help yourself.’

She gave a tentative smile, and forked a kidney from his plate. Then she sat opposite him, turning the fork speculatively in front of her face. ‘You were magnificent tonight, Mr Sargent. I shall be reporting favourably to my father.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Cribb.

‘Do you know what most impressed me? It was when you remained completely calm when the crate fell. Nine men out of ten in your position would have followed Malone into the river. Panic is extremely contagious.’

‘You’re right,’ said Cribb. ‘We were in more danger from ourselves at that moment than we were from the crate. Dynamite can’t be exploded by ordinary concussion, and that’s been proved. There were tests carried out some years ago in Wales-Glynrhonwy Quarry, Llanberis. Half-hundredweight crates were dropped repeatedly 130 feet on to broken shingle and none of them exploded. Then they dropped a box filled with two hundredweight of slate rubbish on to a crate of dynamite. Same result. It requires a sharp, smart blow on a thin coating of the stuff between two pieces of iron to set it off. The nitro-glycerine which it contains has no means of escape from the effect of the blow.’ His tutors at Woolwich would have been proud. Rossanna looked slightly bemused.

‘So that was why you kept a cool head?’

‘In a nutshell, miss. I’ve got a strong instinct for survival, but I don’t like getting wet unnecessarily.’

‘Do you know why I shot Malone?’

‘Because he panicked?’

‘Yes-and because he was of no further use to us. There was nothing he could do that you could not do equally well. Perhaps better.’

She eyed him with such intensity over the fork that he decided it was time to divert the conversation. ‘I’m not much good at hammer-throwing.’

‘Nor was he. Paddy Devlin is the hammer-thrower. Malone needed an alibi, being Irish-American. You don’t. When we’ve all had some rest, I’ll tell Papa of the part you played tonight. I don’t think he’ll entertain doubts about you much longer.’ She began fingering the fastening at the back of her hair. ‘It’s time I was in bed, Mr Sargent. I’m suddenly quite tired. But not displeased. I hope you are not.’ On cue, her hair cascaded over her shoulders, gleaming red and gold in the early morning sun.

‘On the contrary,’ said Cribb spiritedly.

‘Might I ask one favour of you before I go-to share a secret with me? I told Patrick that Malone turned the gun on himself tonight-from shame, you see-and I shall tell my father the same. I don’t deserve it, but please may I count on you?’

Cribb gave a solemn nod.

Considering his situation, he slept well, disturbed only by occasional unfamiliar sounds from the drive below his window. The latest of these, the rasp of carriage-wheels, drew him from bed. From between the curtains, he watched the manservant struggling to unload a portmanteau from the roof of the four-wheeler. One portmanteau was much like another, but Cribb was privately satisfied it was the one he had seen and left alone in Malone’s room in the Alcazar Hotel. Someone had been remarkably quick to take account of the night’s events.

He turned from the window. There was sufficient light without drawing the curtain to permit a more thorough examination of the room than he had made on being shown into it eight hours before. The shape was determined by one of the twin gables fronting the house; a man of his height had to keep to the middle or duck his head. But it was still furnished more lavishly than any police section-house he had slept in. Discipline in the Force was not to be undermined by brass bedsteads with feather mattresses, marble washstands and Turkish carpets. Cribb did not feel threatened by a few creature comforts. Not even a dressing-table.

It stood in the corner farthest from the door, white in colour, with sprays of forget-me-nots painted on it. The skirt of white muslin that should have been suspended from the edge of the table-top had been removed, perhaps out of regard for the feelings of the new occupant, and the legs underneath looked disturbingly exposed. There was a square mirror above, with adjacent flanking mirrors. Cribb approached to a position where he could see himself in triplicate. The profile on the left, he decided, had a shade more of the dynamiter in it than the full face or the opposite profile, particularly when he pushed his lower lip forward. It was still difficult to think of himself as Malone’s replacement. He decided to look again when he had changed out of his borrowed nightshirt. Some clothes had thoughtfully been left out for him.

There was a cold luncheon waiting when he got downstairs and found the dining room. The factotum served it without a word, and withdrew, leaving him to help himself to cheese and fruit. He enjoyed an unhurried meal, and ventured through the adjoining conservatory into the garden. Noticeably overgrown lawns sloped from the house to an orchard, beyond which gleamed the Thames. Hearing a slight cough, he strolled in that direction.

‘Ah, Mr Sargent,’ said Rossanna. ‘I was wondering whether we should see you. You feel refreshed. I hope?’

‘Famously, thank you, miss.’

‘Please call me Rossanna.’ She spoke from a hammock slung low between two apple-trees. Dappled sunshine played over her gently oscillating form, dressed for the afternoon in ivory-coloured cotton lawn, trimmed with lace. Her father sat nearby in his invalid chair, a wide-brimmed straw hat angled so that it obscured the top of his mask, without interfering with his vision. ‘And have you taken lunch?’

‘I have, thank you.’

She smiled in that way that, rightly or wrongly, seemed charged with ulterior meanings. ‘Then you cannot possibly have anything to do but talk to me. It is time we got to know you better, don’t you agree? If you go back to the conservatory, you will find a cane chair. Bring it out in the sunshine, Mr Sargent, and place it just there under the tree, where we both can see you.’

He was not deceived by the casual charm of the invitation, nor the setting. Every move he had made since coming downstairs had been artfully contrived to get him into the garden in a compliant frame of mind. She had staged it all: the solitary meal, the open door into the garden, the cough to catch his attention, McGee silently present, herself indolently posed in the hammock, waiting for him. It was different only in detail from being dragged struggling into a room and roped to a chair. The interrogation in the next two hours was no less searching or persistent. Her thoroughness in extracting every detail of his story would have provided an object-lesson for any aspirant to detective work. The Clan-na-Gael was not proposing to admit a novice to its ranks without first sifting his personal history over and over for the possibility of deception.

Cribb, for his part, was not unprepared. He had decided to apply a principle that had served him well in his selection interview for the C.I.D. six years before. He would give so much prominence to the things his questioner wanted to hear that anything adverse would be crowded out. Of course, it was difficult crowding out an entire career in the Force, as distinct from a few minor insubordinations, but the principle was there. After a substantially accurate account of his childhood, he waxed eloquent about his army days, making three years sound like the greater part of his life. From there, he moved deftly on to his career as a mercenary, careful not to include any detail that could betray him. His knowledge of dynamite, he explained, was gained in Paris, in service with the anarchist movement. The names of Kropotkin and Malatesta rolled from his tongue as naturally as the words of the official caution to prisoners-thanks to some profitable reading at Woolwich. In 1882, he said, he had severed his links with the Black International, after the arrests of Cyvogt and Kropotkin, and returned to London.

If Cribb thought his recital was over, Rossanna did not. She continued to press him for more information, verifying dates, names and places. The questions followed no logical sequence, but tested his story at every conceivable point. He was forced to take chances, and more than once faltered and desperately hoped she and father would put it down to lapses of memory.

‘Thank you, Mr Sargent,’ she finally said. ‘You must think me the most inquisitive woman alive.’

‘Good Lord, no, miss,’ Cribb gallantly replied. ‘Anyone in your father’s position is entitled to make reasonable inquiries about a person in his employment, and I’m sure you were putting the questions on his behalf. I’m a professional man. I don’t object to such procedures.’

She smiled. ‘Then you will understand that I must now confer with my father. Would you be so kind as to help me to the ground?’

He took her hands and drew her forward. She swung her legs clear of the hammock and stood upright, so that he felt the touch of her dress against his legs. He made to take a discreet step back, but she continued to hold his hands, momentarily detaining him. ‘You are more than kind,’ she said, and then went to McGee.

When the dumb-language was done, Cribb saw with satisfaction that her expression was still friendly. ‘Father has asked me to take him indoors now,’ she told him, ‘but there are things I must say to you, important things. If you will wait here for me, we can take a turn around the garden in a few minutes.’

Leaning there against the apple-tree while Rossanna wheeled the invalid chair towards the house, Cribb tried to account for the peculiar effect he seemed to have on her. A man the wrong side of forty needed to guard against miscalculations where young women were concerned, but he was strongly of the opinion that she was making overtures to him. It was not the sort of thing one was accustomed to, working for the Yard. He supposed adventurers encountered it more often, by the nature of their work. That rope-ascent the previous night had been a stirring demonstration of agility, he was bound to admit. Yet he would have thought the brutal dressing down he gave the girl after she shot Malone would have put a stop to any sentimental stirrings. Not at all: it seemed to have stimulated them. The breakfast she had cooked him, the unpinning of her hair, the invitation to use her Christian name had not indicated much hostility or resentment. Nor had the business beside the hammock.

The odd thing was that Devlin had given the impression that the girl was exclusively devoted to her father. The presence of two strapping young athletes in the house had not moved her in the least. One way of accounting for it was that she was play-acting, coldly and deliberately putting the recruit through some kind of test. The only other explanation Cribb could supply was that she was one of those unusual members of her sex uninterested in young men, preferring to submit to the authority of older, more masterful partners. To such women, a reprimand was an affirmation of affection. He pulled a leaf off the tree and thoughtfully dissected it.

She came across the lawn again in a muslin shawl she had not been wearing before. ‘Being so near the river, we get droves of gnats and flies invading the garden late in the afternoon,’ she explained. ‘It invites disaster to walk about with one’s arms exposed.’ She linked her left hand lightly and naturally under his right forearm and they set off slowly in the direction of the river-bank. ‘Do you know what impressed Father most about your story? You made no claim at all to be a patriot of Ireland. That would have been the most obvious way to curry favour with us.’

‘I told you,’ said Cribb in his most masterful manner, ‘I’m a mercenary. A professional adventurer. I don’t care a tinker’s damn for Ireland unless the money’s right.’

‘It will be. Tell me, Mr Sargent, have you ever heard of the Skirmishing Fund?’

Cribb shook his head. ‘Can’t say I have.’

‘Then I must educate you. It is a sum of money which has been raised in America by public subscription, to finance the skirmishing of England until Ireland gains her freedom. It was started some years ago in the columns of a New York newspaper, the Irish World, by Diarmuid O’Donovan-the Rossa, as he is known.’

‘The Fenian,’ said Cribb.

‘The same. We don’t talk much of Fenians now, Mr Sargent. They were totally discredited when the Rising failed in 1867. Imagine the incompetence of an organisation which postpones its revolution and fails to get the information to County Kerry! The men of Kerry had captured a coastguard station and a police barracks before they discovered their mistake and had to be sent home. And when the Rising did take place three weeks later it was in a blinding snowstorm and never looked like succeeding. You may still hear talk of Fenians, but the organisation is dead. There is only one revolutionary body of any importance, and that was founded in 1869, when most of the Fenians were in prison. Clan-na-Gael is its name.’

‘Clan-na-Gael,’ repeated Cribb ingenuously.

‘It is pledged to deliver Ireland from the English oppressors,’ said Rossanna, squeezing Cribb’s arm at the thought. ‘In 1877 it gained control of Rossa’s Skirmishing Fund, which now amounts to not less than a hundred thousand dollars.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Cribb. ‘That’s a lot of subscriptions.’

‘A lot of Irish-Americans have suffered at the hands of the English, Mr Sargent. What you would refer to as the Irish Famine, people like my father remember as The Great Starvation. Every concession since then, every clause in the Land Act, is written in the blood of Irish patriots. England has given us nothing we have not fought for tooth and nail-nothing that is, except rack-renting, evictions, Coercion and the Crimes Act.’

‘You were telling me about the Clan-na-Gael,’ Cribb reminded her firmly.

She regarded him intently. ‘You’re right. I keep forgetting that you have no affiliations. The Clan? It is a massive organisation, Mr Sargent, with camps in every city of importance in America. It has rituals and proceedings which every member is bound to keep secret, under penalty of death. But if you wish to be one of its agents, you will have to join.’

‘I’m not in any position to refuse.’

‘Then we shall arrange it soon. There are ways in which you can be of important service to us. Four years ago O’Donovan Rossa broke with the Clan. It was not doing enough active work for his taste and there was even talk of a pact with Parnell and the parliamentarians-the New Departure, as it became-mere peddling with reforms. Rossa gathered together what was left of the old Fenian Brotherhood and organised raids on public buildings in Britain, mostly with gunpowder. The explosions at the Glasgow gasworks and the Local Government Board were the work of the Rossa agents. It was all handled with the usual Fenian ineptitude. Ten of them were captured and brought to trial in Edinburgh at the end of 1882. Five got penal servitude for life, the rest seven years. Another four of Rossa’s men were arrested after one of them was found with the infernal machines upon him as he stepped from the Cork steamer on to the quay at Liverpool. They each got a life sentence last July. It was the finish of Rossa’s campaign.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Cribb. ‘Fourteen convictions is not the sort of record that encourages recruitment.’

‘Rossa is a spent force,’ Rossanna went on. ‘There is too much of the Blarney about him. He served his purpose in raising the Skirmishing Fund, but he should have left the active campaigning to men like my father. Fortunately, the Clan is better organised. Our dynamite policy was authorised in November 1881, at our National Convention in Chicago, but it wasn’t until the end of 1882 that the first agent of the Clan travelled to England to inaugurate the campaign. The organisation was in the hands of the Revolutionary Directory and the agents were selected and trained in America. The selection had to be most carefully done, because we had information that forty of the Royal Irish Constabulary had been sent to the States on full pay with the object of insinuating their way into the Clan.’

‘Diabolical!’ said Cribb.

‘It didn’t happen, Mr Sargent. Soon enough, parties of trained men were crossing the Atlantic with the means to cause havoc in London. The first was led by Dr Tom Gallagher, with his brother Bernard and six others in support. Tom, being the swell he is, set up residence in the Charing Cross Hotel in the Strand, while the others frequented small hotels and retired lodgings in the south of London. Before long, as the world knows, they had established a nitro-glycerine manufactory in Birmingham and were conveying the stuff to London in india-rubber fishing boots contained in boxes. It was pure chance, a singular catastrophe, that caused a Birmingham detective to have his suspicions aroused and visit Whitehead, the chemist of the party. Tom and two others as well as Whitehead were convicted and gaoled for life, thanks to the testimony of the wretched Mr Norman.’

‘They say there’s no Irish conspiracy without its informer,’ said Cribb, piously shaking his head.

‘The Clan knows how to deal with traitors,’ said Rossanna. ‘Shall we take this path along the riverside? There are some water-irises further on.’

‘By all means,’ said Cribb, wondering at the nature of a woman whose thoughts shifted so easily from dynamite to flowers. It was a narrow path leading past the boat-house where the launch was kept, and a larger building beyond. From this came the sound of hammering. Four men in labouring clothes were outside, lifting a large sheet of metal from a stack.

‘What’s going on?’ Cribb asked.

‘They’re working with Patrick. It’s a job for my father that required additional help, so Patrick and Tom recruited some loyal Irishmen at a public house in Rotherhithe. We pay them better rates than they would get working on the docks and boatyards, and Patrick brings them down-river on the launch each morning. They don’t come into the house at all. Now who was I speaking of? Ah, yes. Poor Tom Gallagher. He was carrying?1,400 of the Fund when he was arrested. The Clan doesn’t believe in under-providing for its agents.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘The only other Clansmen to have been arrested are John Daly and Francis Egan, who are still awaiting trial at Warwick. John’s plan was to toss a bomb on to the table of the House of Commons from the Strangers’ Gallery while the House was in session. It sounds desperate, but he twice gained admission to the Gallery and would have had a well-made brass bomb with him the third time. He was carrying three when he was stopped at Chester railway station in April. But there’re still two other groups besides our own at liberty.’

‘When did your father arrive in England?’

Her expression softened. ‘Last year-in May. He was to establish himself here well in advance of Devlin and Malone’s arrival. The house was placed at the disposal of the Clan by a patriot who owns another place in Surrey. He was good enough to leave one of his staff behind as well, a man who can be depended upon in every sense. It was his summons which brought me here from America after Father’s accident.’

‘That was in June?’

‘What an excellent memory you have-yes. He was testing a small bomb here in the grounds when it detonated prematurely, with terrible results. He was the Clan’s principal machinist. Despite his injuries, he is carrying on the work.’

‘With your help.’

‘That is so.’

They stopped to watch a hay-boat pass along the Reach, its brown lateen sail catching enough wind to give it the advantage over a toiling lighter laden with bricks. Cribb decided the time was ripe to extend the conversation. ‘Two of the groups in custody, you say. This is dangerous work. Would any of the convicted men inform on us?’

‘They don’t know where we are. It is the policy of the Clan that the groups work independently. We all have our instructions from America, and we are here to carry them out without reference to anyone else. In the last year that I have been working for the Clan, I have not met any of the men who have been taken. Everything I have told you about them you could have read for yourself in the newspapers.’

This was true. ‘So that when a bombing takes place it is just as surprising to you as it is to the public at large?’

‘Exactly-unless we have arranged it ourselves.’

‘Was it yours in Scotland Yard the other night?’

She smiled. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you. It was not. Nor were the others that night. We are here for something altogether more ambitious.’

‘Isn’t Scotland Yard enough?’

‘There are more important targets than that, Mr Sargent.’

He wished Inspector Jowett took the same view. ‘The police are sure to intensify their inquiries. Have they any knowledge of our existence here, do you think?’

‘I think not. Not now.’

‘That sounds significant.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘One night when Malone was at the public house in Rotherhithe he got into conversation with a man he suspected was a police agent. This was at the time of the London station explosions-which this group was not responsible for, I might add-and the man was interminably talking about locomotives and timetables. Malone suspected he was trying to feed us false information, but when we checked some of it we could not fault him. Then one night we discovered that he was being watched by the police-a Special Branch man, as we discovered. Malone lured this one into a trap and shot him.’

‘Ah.’ How else could Cribb react, except privately to note that Malone’s own death had been no more than he deserved for killing Constable Bottle? He asked, as casually as he was able: ‘And the other man?’

‘We brought him here. He saw the shooting of the Special Branch man, you understand.’

‘Of course. Did you. .?’

‘Not yet. We think our locomotive enthusiast has some useful information for us. He must be a policeman. He possesses all the characteristics, from the thick skull to the flat feet. He was probably wanting to sell information to Malone. They aren’t paid much at Scotland Yard, you know. The Special Branch man must have suspected what was going on, and consequently followed them into the trap. If the Special Branch were interested, then he has got something to tell us, and he is in no position now to demand a fee. We’ll get it from him soon, and then Father has something else in mind for him. He will be incorporated into the plan.’

Whatever that was, it did not matter for the present. Thackeray was alive-thick-skulled, flat-footed and breathing!

‘You have this man here? I haven’t seen him.’

‘You won’t, Mr Sargent. It is better for us all if he is kept locked away until we are ready to use him.’

‘Quite so. Are you sure you can handle him, though? Without Malone’s assistance, I mean.’

‘Perfectly sure. He is no trouble.’

From her manner, she wanted to drop the subject. It would have been incautious to press her further on the matter of Thackeray, tantalising as it was.

‘Pardon me for asking,’ Cribb said, as they turned in the direction of the house. ‘Is it usual for the Clan to employ members of the fair sex?’

She laughed. ‘Not so unusual as you might think, Mr Sargent. We are not the insipid creatures some of you men take us for. The Ladies’ Land League was a far more militant organisation than the men’s, until Mr Parnell got cold feet and insisted upon its dissolution. Besides, modern fashions give us a distinct advantage over men in conveying dynamite secretly to England. How do you think Atlas Powder travels-in men’s trouser pockets?’

‘I’d never considered it,’ said Cribb candidly.

‘Then take my advice and have nothing to do with strange women on ocean-going steam-ships, unless you are prepared for a devastating experience.’

Cribb laughed. ‘Not the kind you have in mind, Rossanna.’

At the mention of her name, she tightened her grip on his arm. ‘If you were wondering about me, I promise you I have nothing under my skirts to alarm you, Mr Sargent, if you are the man I take you for. I believe you described yourself as an adventurer.’

Heavens! She was at it again, more flagrantly than before. And looking damnably fetching at the same time. He took a long, uplifting breath. ‘That’s correct. But I did say a professional adventurer, and it occurs to me that I might still be on probation, so far as the Clan is concerned. I’m here in my capacity as a dynamiter, nothing else. In other circumstances, Miss. .’ he added gallantly.

They walked the rest of the way across the lawn in silence, Cribb trying to convince himself that it was just another phase of the inquisition. He would have felt eminently pleased at the way he had come through it, if only the inquisitor hadn’t looked so damnably disappointed.