Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (21 page)

The two footmen stepped inside the box, pulling the doors to after them, and preparing to stand in attendance there. As Verity moved across to take up his position in front of the doors on the outside, he caught just a glimpse of the interior of the opera house. Above the ornate horseshoe of the auditorium the arches of boxes rose in cream and gold upon their Corinthian pillars. The shallow dome of the ceiling was covered with fresco-work, its centre filled by the flashing prisms of a seven-tier crystal chandelier.

Drawing his eyes reluctantly from the scene of splendour offered by the Philadelphia Academy of Music, Verity stood himself at ease with stamping precision. Then, staring immediately ahead of him, he resumed a conversation from the corner of his mouth.

'Stoopid ain't the word for it, Mr Crowe! You could a-said something, one of you! 'oo was it that was dead in Albemarle Street, then?'

'A servant named Oughtram,' said Crowe softly. 'He thought he was changing clothes to help Dacre escape. He must have sat in that chair, not thinking why his master needed the pistol, until Dacre fired it in his face. After that, you'd no more identify Oughtram than you could tell a hog that's been cut up small for the butcher.' 'And Mr Croaker don't know this?'

'Your Mr Croaker,' said Crowe with some feeling, 'is a mutton-headed fool who swears on his reputation that Lieutenant Dacre was seen dead!'

'Mr Crowe, if you please! Mr Croaker is my superior officer.'

'Your superior officer is a mutton-headed bastard then.'

Verity, in his dismay, turned his face to Crowe.

'Mr Crowe, I 'appen not to like Mr Croaker. But liking and respect is two different things. A man that don't respect those who are put in authority over him, is going to lose respect for himself in the end.'

Crowe peered at Verity with incredulity, then he looked away.

'My God!' he said quietly. 'You really believe that, don't you ?'

"Yes. Mr Crowe, I do. And I ain't a man that has an ear for profanities.'

Crowe mouthed several obscenities for his own benefit, and there was a silence during several minutes of mutual reproach.

"I ain't no wish to offend,' said Verity at length, 'but if I'd been told that you'd heard he was alive, I could have helped. But no! I wasn't so much as told that the young person Jolly had been fetched here as bait for your people to catch Lieutenant Dacre. When I followed her into that police 'ouse in New York and they said I was the wrong one, I s'pose they were expecting 'im!'

'No one can prove it was Dacre that robbed the Mint,' said Crowe defensively.

Verity snorted.

'If 'e's alive, 'e did it! It got all the marks of his capers! Getting through locks that no mortal man could open, emptying vaults as if 'e'd waved a magic wand. There's no way that dodge could a-been pulled, and all the same it was. He could do it again tomorrow for all we know how to stop him! And if he was to walk in here now, you couldn't arrest him for the robbery, only for pretending to be 'is 'ighness's equerry. That's how I know it's Lieutenant Dacre that did it!'

'And how shall he be caught?' asked Crowe gently. 'He might be anywhere in America with his gold by tomorrow. By this time next week even the Treasury won't be able to keep the robbery a secret. If the tale is told, Mr Verity, there's to be bad blood between your country and mine.'

Verity chortled, almost as if in disapproval.

'But between you and me, Mr Crowe, there ain't to be bad blood. And it's you and me that must settle with Lieutenant Dacre now. So, first off, I don't care twopence where he and the gold are now, nor where they may be tomorrow. I got 'im, Mr Crowe! I got him!'

'How?'

'By knowing that he must be on the
Fidele
at St Louis on Saturday! Mr Dacre may be a master cracksman but 'e's got a chink in his armour that you could drive a coach-and-four through! A cruel mania and a delight in tormenting unfortunate creatures. That's what shall be his undoing. When Miss Jolly goes up for sale, 'e'll be there.'

'I guess he might, Mr Verity.'

No, Mr Crowe. Not
might.
He
must
be. Without her, he'd a-got clean away with the railway bullion and been a swell the rest of his life. He can hate like no man you ever saw! It don't even matter that he knows she can't be a real slave-girl for sale. It don't matter that he knows she's the bait in a trap. He must have her if the trap kills him for it.'

'That simple, eh?' Crowe relaxed his stance still further and rubbed his long chin in thought. And the gold? When you have Dacre, do you have the gold?'

'No, Mr Crowe, I don't. Not actually have it, that is. But it don't follow that I mightn't find a way to it in the end.'

Crowe shook his head and drew himself up once more.

'Captain Oliphant and the people in Washington ain't likely to settle for that,' he said firmly. 'The United States gold reserves for three months have gone, and if they aren't found again in the next few days, our paper money won't even be worth a man wiping his nose on.'

Verity stood silent and thoughtful. Beyond the baize doors, the first act of
Traviata
was being performed as a prelude to
Martha,
the principal entertainment being put on for the Prince's benefit. A woman's voice, of the most thrilling beauty, was gently audible in haunting minor cadences of limpid purity. Verity listened, spellbound. Presently the song burst into an exultant
Di quell' amor, quell' amor, ch'e palpito,
in the full brilliance of the voice of the seventeen-year-old ingenue, Adelina Patti.

' 'ark at that!' said Verity wonderingly. 'Now that's something that is! I only wish Mrs Verity could 'ear it!'

He listened, entranced, to the remainder of the act, the soaring melody returning again at the end, a male voice taking it up distantly while the thrilling vivacity of Patti's cadenzas charged the finale with an electric excitement. The melody died away and there was a storm of applause from the auditorium.

'Well!' said Verity proudly. 'Well, now! I never thought to hear the like of such singing, not in this world anyhow.'

The two men waited out the period of their guard, until the main opera was over. Verity was about to open the doors of the box in preparation for the Prince's departure, when he paused, rigid at attention. From the crowded pit, from the galleries and boxes, came a familiar sound.

God save our gracious Queen

Long live our noble Queen . . .

To hear the anthem sung spontaneously in this manner, by those who did so out of affection rather than by duty of birth, moved him more than the brilliance of Patti's aria. The final notes were followed by a rising patter of applause, directed toward the box, where the young Prince of Wales acknowledged it with slight, self-conscious bowings of his head. Then the royal party moved sedately down the broad stairway to the fine lobby and the waiting carriages. The Prince walked with his hosts, followed by the Colonial Secretary and the Ambassador, Verity and Crowe walking watchful and inconspicuous at the rear.

As the carriages moved off, Verity turned to his American colleague.

'Well, Mr Crowe,' he said, his pink face radiating satisfaction, 'it's to be hoped, of course, that we shall have both the villain and the gold in a little while. But even if we don't get neither, you and I shan't hate one another. Your people and old England ain't on different sides! Not if this is anything to go by!'

The peace was short-lived. The railroad which bore them to St Louis ran through a tangled, marshy wilderness of thick undergrowth and trees that almost hid the day. Wooden viaducts raised the track above waterlogged soil where trees with scant foliage and tresses of foul weed leaned in disarray.

Verity shook his head.

'Some things I shall never understand, Mr Crowe.' 'Where the gold might be?'

'No, Mr Crowe, how you can have a free country and then, when we travels through that Richmond place, there's poor black souls being took to be sold as slaves. Abomination, Mr Crowe. City of the plain it might be. A man must be free, Mr Crowe.'

'Like you, Mr Verity?'

'Britons never shall be slaves, Mr Crowe. They taught us to sing that at Hebron Chapel School.'

'Well,' said Crowe, 'then I guess you must have to vote when election time comes round.'

'No, Mr Crowe, not meself, that is. Not actually vote, that is. Why, Mr Crowe, what should I be doing voting about things that only parliamentary gentlemen understand ?'

'Ah!' said Crowe, as though satisfied by the explanation.

'But I guess you must have a fine house in England, and land, and a few servants.'

'No, Mr Crowe. A police officer don't indulge in such things. You oughta know that.'

'Yes,' said Crowe, 'but you must be pretty free, I guess, in your police activities. Your own master. No one to answer to.'

'Superior officer, Mr Croaker, Mr Crowe. Superintendent Gowry his superior officer. There 'as to be a method.'

'Ah,' said Crowe, understanding again. 'Well, Mr Verity, I will tell you what. You go right on home to England after this little matter is settled. And the next time you get a cross word from Mr Croaker, you tell Mr Croaker to patrol London Bridge with his nightstick up his ass. And when you've done that, you tell me. And I'll believe you're free.'

The next half hour passed in an injured silence.

Verity gazed on the slow and muddied waters of the Mississippi. Behind him a dome of smoke, like a huge mushroom, hung over St Louis and marked the city out to approaching passengers from many miles downstream. Before him, along the levee, a line of graceful steamboats was tethered, their quiescent power giving them the air of white, patient animals. The
Louisiana,
heavily-laden from Cairo, churned the river to a hissing froth as she turned her bow towards a gap in the line. 'I never thought
you
wanted men to be slaves, Mr Crowe, you know that.'

'Course you didn't, Mr Verity. Now, keep a bright lookout. Either he's on the
Fidele
already, in which case we shall have him, or else he must pass this way to get to her. Whichever it is, if you're right, Lieutenant Dacre's number is up at last!'

The two men walked slowly along the warm pebbles of the levee and the long stone quay with its high brick warehouses. Clerks in their shirt-sleeves bustled between the open doorways and the line of tall steamboats. Drays with their teams of mules and dark-skinned teamsters stood piled high with cotton bales and logs for the ships' furnaces.

Among the cobbles of the streets, the dark mud steamed in the sun after overnight rain.

'I'd take a dollar,' said Crowe thoughtfully. 'I'd take a dollar for every time I rode west from here with another party of settlers for Laramie or Santa Fe, and I'd almost be a rich man!'

'That what you was doing in the Marines. Mr Crowe?'

Crowe's lean, brown face creased in a grin.

'It's what I did when I was sixteen, my friend, and I sure never thought of the Marines then! Guide and hunter for the parties on the Oregan trail. You won't find many grocery stores west of St Louis, Mr Verity, until you come down to the Pacific."

'That a fact, Mr Crowe? And that's what you was doing when you was sixteen? When I was sixteen I was first footman to the Dowager Lady Linacre at the Crescent in Bath.' A servant?" asked Crowe suspiciously.

'Superior servant, we call it, Mr Crowe. The next year I went for a sojer, 23rd regiment of foot.'

Crowe shook his head, as though such a choice was beyond his comprehension. Presently he paused. A few feet in front of them a dispute had broken out between a humble looking man and a stout gentleman in tight-waisted coat and buff trousers. The stout man, to whom the humble youth had been trying to sell a copy of a tract was responding indignantly.

'Now you go to hell, sir! I've told you three times I don't want your confounded book! I own slaves, and I trade in fancy-girls. And I calculate to own a sight more of 'em if I can get 'em. I don't want any damn'd preachin' from you or any other gospel-driver. And if you bring that goddam tract near me again, it goes pitch into the river and you after it! See?'

Crowe turned away from the squabble and waved an arm as if performing an introduction. 'The
Fidele,'
he said courteously.

Verity stared up at the steamer with its five decks rising the height of a house and the tall ovals of its paddle-boxes at either side. The lowest deck was open at the sides, showing the machinery, the wood for the furnaces, baggage space, and even makeshift stalls for cattle. At the next level he could just glimpse the windows of huge saloons, barrooms, staterooms, and barber's shops, sheltered by the galleries which ran the length of the vessel. In the centre of the ship, just forward of the paddles, rose the two lofty smoke-stacks and the tower from which the steamboat was steered.

He followed Crowe aboard and gained the upper deck, where the covered way with its arched windows seemed more like an arcade or bazaar than anything which he had seen before on a ship. As they strode towards the cabin where Miss Jolly waited under guard to perform the role of decoy, Verity glimpsed fine promenades, domed saloons, balconies overlooking sunlit water, mysterious passageways, shops and state-rooms which seemed fit only to act as bridal suites.

Near the stern of the ship, Crowe stopped and knocked at the door of one of the humbler cabins. It opened to reveal two strangers, with the bulky look of Treasury agents of Crowe's stamp, Captain Oliphant, and a muscular woman. Apart from the woman's nationality, she recalled at once to Verity's mind his acquaintance Mrs Rouncewell, ex-police matron of the Elephant and Castle.