Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square

William Sutton

LAWLESS & THE DEVIL OF EUSTON SQUARE

THE FIRST PERIOD

(1859)

THE WATCH MAN – THE WORM – THE SPOUT

THE HYDRAULIC DEVIL – THE NIGHT PORTER

THE BUGLE – THE CADAVER

THE WATCH MAN

I was alarmed to hear the creak of the constabulary gate in the wee small hours of my night shift. After three months in London, I was inured to the vulgar ways of street hawkers summoning their customers: water bearers clapping, costermongers wailing, all manner of whistling, yodelling and rattling. But this was the dead of night, and my heart began pounding as I put down my newspaper.

I shaded the desk lamp and stepped up to the window.

Through the shadowy lamplight I made out a small shape, methodically swinging the gate back and forth to produce that fearful creaking.

I hefted up the window. “Do they not use door knockers where you come from, laddie?”

“Hulloah!” the shape replied. “Coming out to play, Lilly Law? Shift your dish, will you?”

I glared at him.

“Hofficer,” he went on with mock pomposity, “there is a hincident at Euston Square, and your hassistance is required.”

“I don’t care if there’s a bonfire in the British Museum–”

“There’ll be a bonfire up your lally crackers if you don’t shift ’em.”

I was impressed with the bairn’s cheek. “Is it customary in these parts for small boys to be summoning members of the constabulary?”

“Customary is exactly what it is, Captain Clocky.” He sighed, as if to emphasise the depth of my ignorance, his breath forming clouds in the air. “Especially as where Wardle is concerned. You coming?”

“Hold your horses–”

“Or shall I say you were out?”

“Inspector Wardle? Of the Yard?”

“God help us. Don’t they parlyaree inglesey where you come from?”

“We speak a damn sight better English than yous do.” At this, he laughed, which I found even more annoying than his remarks. I was puzzled. “Wee man, you don’t even know who I am.”

“You’re a Scotchman, and you’re the Watch Man. Am I right or am I a Dutchman?”

My father told me not to stare. He said it showed ill breeding. But I was always third-rate at following father’s precepts, and I stared at the boy. His hair was plastered across his forehead and his waistcoat a breeding ground for lichens. Yet, despite the whiff of sewer life about him, he had a jaunty grace. His eyes were a brilliant blue and his grin so charming it was impossible to dislike him.

“The great inspector,” he said, “requests the use of your habilities. We had heard they was considerable, hard though that is to credit on current showing.”

“Look, wee man. How do you know who I am? How does Wardle know?”

“Word travels fast here. You’ll see. Everybody knows everybody else’s business.”

THE WORM

My companion introduced himself as Worm, of the Euston Square Worms, public company as yet unlimited, and off we set. He had an engaging way of steering me through the potholes and horse dung with the merest nod or touch on the elbow, as if I were the child and he the adult; as if he thought that I, a provincial, might not have encountered traffic. True enough, I was not used to such disorder on the streets at this hour of the night, nor the dank smell that assailed my nostrils. Though little did that matter now.

My chance had finally come. Three months I had been in the capital, without a hint of adventure. But Wardle’s name was in the paper every other week. The
Times
called him “the second sharpest mind in the country”. The stage of great events lay before me. Step forward with confidence, and I might find myself amongst the principal characters of London – of the world, no less.

When I applied to join the police, the Superintendent at Brunswick Square scrutinised my references thoroughly. I had been forced to swallow my pride and beg father for a good word from the Clockmakers’ Guild. As I saw it, repairing watches required subtle deductive powers. For their owners invariably lied about how they came to be broken; nobody likes to admit they have dropped their quarter repeater in the bath. I thought it would be clear that I could be trusted with tasks beyond deskwork. The Superintendent rather saw it as proof that I could fix watches. Eager to make a good impression, I stayed up, fixing his mainspring by candlelight, until I could hear the Chapel Street marketeers setting up for the day. How bitterly I came to rue this effort. Within the week, watches were arriving from senior officers from Wapping to Westminster. My Superintendent set me to work on them all, only too pleased to notch up so many debts of gratitude. Even Mrs Jemmerson, the tea lady, brought in her grandmother’s mantel clock, offering the payment of an extra biscuit at elevenses. I realised I had been hot-headed in quitting my apprenticeship; in father’s workshop, all that mending would have earned me double my constable’s wage.

Worm sauntered along, tipping his hat familiarly to the shadowy night people. As we emerged onto the broad thoroughfare of the Euston Road, he wrenched me back without warning, into the gutter. Foul play, I thought, staring about me in alarm. On the instant, a plush chaise careened past my nose, its shutters down, as if fleeing a crime. Water sprayed off the roof, as the well-appointed cabman urged the horses towards town, and the trill of reckless laughter sounded within.

Worm stared after it, eyes narrowed. He helped me to my feet, drew a grubby handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and dabbed at my cape. “Dreaming of them high lands, was you?”

I breathed in deeply, frowning down at his ministrations. “What does a wight like you know of the Highlands?”

“I been about.” He stuck out his chin. “Me and the Professor, we went to Bath once. Beautiful, them green fields. Cows and that.”

“Cows?” I smiled. “I’m surprised you deigned to come back.”

“Had to,” he shrugged. “Professor got the scarpering spooks out of the city.”

“Who’s the Professor when he’s at home?”

“One of the Worms. You’ll see soon enough, if Wardle takes a liking to you. We do a lot of work for him.”

He ran through the services offered by his association. Available at the shortest notice, competitive rates and unrivalled knowledge of the byways and backwaters. Services guaranteed, references from professional gentlemen across the capital.

“Finding things as is missing, somewhat of a speciality. With a sideline in unfinding things as may be better off lost.”

I chuckled and looked at him more closely. The boy had a head for business. He would go far, given the start. “All above board, is it?”

His eyes grew indignantly wide. “I may have been known to sharp at skittles, but do I look like a hoister or a jolly?” Whereupon he fished inside his waistcoat and, with a theatrical flourish, handed me my own wallet.

I clutched at my pocket and took it back with ill grace, checking that my pennies were still there. “Thanking you kindly, I’m sure.”

“You’re a novice, you are. Guarding the public? Don’t make me laugh. They’ll eat you alive here.” With a sigh he stepped out across the thoroughfare. “There is them as has no respect for the traditions we work in. Them as regards us as vermin and would gladly see us put down. But me – I’m in the habit of forgiving them their ignorance. Besides,” he grinned, rubbing his hands, “what is life without a few enemies?”

I could never quite tell whether he was in earnest or not.

“Never mind that now.” He pointed across the square, up towards the grand entrance of the station. “Have a peep at this.”

I followed his gaze and burst out laughing.

THE SPOUT

Far across the broad square, a great fountain of water gushed up high into the air, in front of the grand new entrance to Euston Station.

It took me some moments to make sense of the scene. The square was bustling with people, as if the spout were the centre of a vast street fair. Could that be the case? Had the station owners arranged this impromptu spectacle to celebrate the completion of their great entryway? The masons’ strike had long delayed so many building projects; and railway shareholders rubbed their hands at any publicity, however scurrilously gained.

“Good God,” I said, shaking my head.

Worm was less impressed. “Ain’t the first spout I seen, nor the biggest neither. One down by the river last week, nearly washed Parliament away. They’re a menace, them hydrollah-rolical devils. Shift your mush, now, the old cove’s waiting.”

Worm ushered me on across the great road. The spout had extinguished half the gas lamps, but even in that dim light I could see that I must be mistaken. The grand colonnade was still not finished. The massive central portico was swathed in scaffold, and the central alcove waited to be filled by a great circular clock.

The spout was emanating from a strange contraption that stood square in front of the scaffolded columns; a vast winch, or a crane. The water shot up from the body of the machine, a box the size of a house covered only by a flimsy tarpaulin. The great vertical beams of the crane extended triangularly upwards to a pinnacle that surpassed the colonnade’s monumental height. From the apex of the framework dangled a confusion of pulleys and cranks. Just below, swinging on colossal cables, some great piece of masonry was so buffeted by the water that I feared it would never reach its destined place atop the columns. Up and up the water gushed, into the dark night air – one hundred feet, one hundred and fifty – before it fanned outwards from the upper reaches of the machine, descending in a broad arc, like a rain shower on the station’s mighty entrance.

All around was the hubbub of a ghoulish market. Bookmakers gave odds on the spout’s longevity. Tea-sellers called out prices. Biblers were reading aloud, largely for their own benefit, and proffering leaflets from the Society for the Suppression of Vice about the ways of Satan – as if the assembled company were not well enough informed already. A swarm of night-time people, beggars, sweepers and fallen women, chattered in amusement. An unlikely herd of cattle off the late train was enjoying this last diversion before its final march down to the Farringdon market. This dash of country colour Worm ignored, as we pushed our way through the crowds to the far corner of the square near the station.

A short man in an overcoat stood beside the night porter’s hut, scanning the crowd intently. As we approached him, I felt a tug at my sleeve.

“Lucifers, lucifers!” said a tiny child. With a debonair flick, he lit a match on his coat button, but it went out at once. Biting his tongue, he tried again, and again.

“Numpty,” Worm hissed, “take a stroll.”

The overcoated man turned abruptly. “What do you want, Worm?” he said in the cantankerous tones of the north of England. “I’m busy.”

Worm tilted his head in my direction.

“I’m Lawless, sir.” I held out my hand. “Campbell Lawless.”

Worm sighed. “He’s the Watch Man, like as you asked for, old cove.”

Inspector Wardle of the Yard barely gave me a glance. He tossed a sixpence to the boy, and turned back towards the spout.

Worm checked the coin with his teeth and flipped it into the air, where it vanished. “Come on, Numpty,” he said, pulling the sixpence out of his friend’s ear. “While you stand agog at my dexterity, old chum, opportunities are going a-begging. That brolly man needs a helping hand…”

Wardle was a good deal older than me, a man as short as his overcoat was long. His hair was white, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and perspiration glistened on his brow.

I stood upright and steady, trying to restrain my curiosity. At length I felt so uncomfortable, I made an effort at conversation. “Fairly comical accident, sir.”

“You won’t see me laughing,” he said. He glanced darkly across the crowd. “Accident, you reckon?”

True enough, it seemed a strangely elegant disaster. I looked over the crowd and considered the spectacle. The great station buildings lay quiet to our left, closed to passengers for the night. In the boarding houses fringing the square, a surprising number of lamps were burning. Closer, the fair people of Euston made an ugly mob. They crowed and shouted, buying and selling, eating and drinking, while a shocking number of children amused themselves around the great hulking machinery, splashing in the puddles. On night duty we charged beggars and borough councillors for misdemeanours perpetrated under the influence. Could this be a drunken jape, only on a bigger scale?