SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments (6 page)

The corridor was carpeted in a Turkey pattern, the doors on either side being of plain oak. At the far end, facing down the passageway, was a door whose solidity left no doubt that, as Samson insisted, it was the way to Charley Wag's private domain. Verity walked slowly and casually. The baths to either side of him were empty but it was necessary that he should be as close to Charley's presence as possible. It must be the last room opening off the passageway which adjoined the Wag's apartments. Wisps of steam hung in the pink and white marble rooms, the warm air heavy with the aroma of flowery perfume, the sourness of dead cigars and the stale scent of overheated bodies. From each room came the whisper of steam and the faint ripple of water on stone.

At three in the morning the baths seemed deserted. Verity reached Charley Wag's door and then turned into the last of the little rooms adjoining it. He pushed the plain oak and found, first of all, a porch where his clothes might be left. The street-girls were quite right, he would never have got near Charley Wag in his familiar 'private-clothes', but what better disguise than to be entirely naked in a place where nudity was the universal fashion? Verity puffed a little with satisfaction as he undressed, hung up his clothes, bolted the door behind him, and stepped into the marble cubicle with the towel in one hand. But he was not alone.

The girl who lay on her stomach on the couch was the fairer-skinned of the two, though her large dark eyes, her shock of black hair and the soft pallor of her naked body were unmistakably Italian. From the whispers of the two girls, Verity deduced that this was Stefania and that her companion, standing over her, was Simona. Simona, petite but well-rounded, her olive skin and tawny fair hair giving her the look of a Neapolitan street urchin, was the leader in the present game, Down the curve of Stefania's naked back were several blue artificial flowers, with several more tucked between her thighs so that the heads showed. Simona was obliged to take each one in her mouth and remove it, her lips brushing the sensitive flesh. Verity took the scene in at a glance and his eyes grew round. Simona bent her head over the back of Stefania's thighs while the other girl's fingers played over Simona's round bottom and legs.

"ere!' said Verity sharply. His strongest feeling was one of annoyance that a carefully devised plan to eavesdrop on the Wag had been frustrated by the presence of the two girls. They were no doubt two of Charley's private collection. Simona gave him a sly glance and then bent to her task again, opening herself more fully to Stefania's advances. Verity took a step forward.

'Hoo
k it!
' he said.'Sharp!'

They looked at him and sniggered. With the towel wrapped round his loins, he opened the door and stood in the corridor, waving indignantly at the duenna. The old woman waddled towards him and entered the cubicle. There was a stream of vituperation and then a series of loud wet slaps accompanied by cries of indignation. The performance was repeated. Followed by the woman, the two girls, rubbing vigorously at the hand-prints, hurried snivelling from the room. The woman pursued them down the passageway, muttering to herself. Fortunately, Verity thought, in her anxiety over the girls she guarded, she had not bothered to suggest that he might choose one of the dozen empty baths.

The persistent trickle of water and steam made it impossible to hear anything through the wall which separated the bath from Charley Wag's rooms. Verity looked round quickly at the sunken marble trough and the couch where Stefania had stretched out to be 'shampooed' by Simona. The pipes ran along the wall behind the couch and there were two little wheels which must operate stop-cocks of some kind. Verity took the wheels in a large ham-coloured fist and turned them gently. The whisper of steam and the chuckle of water dwindled and died. There was almost perfect silence, except for the faint grumble of voices beyond the wall. Verity's heart beat faster with expectancy. It was all to be as Sergeant Samson had promised. High in the wall was the little grating, but not so high as to be out of reach with the aid of the couch and its serviceable marble top. Once the precise words of the speakers could be heard, the blackmail conspiracy might be unmasked. As he pulled himself up, Verity had a series of mental images in which the Wag confessed all under his stem questioning, and Inspector Croaker grasped his hand in a manly, congratulatory gesture. 'Think of me as your friend, for the future,' said the mythical Croaker. And finally there was the moment when Charley and his accomplices were sentenced and the judge called before him the worthy and methodical officer who had brought the villains to book.

In the reality of the Oriental and Turkish Baths, Verity pressed his ear to the grating, listening hard. Charley Wag's voice was easily identifiable by the intonation. But it was the other voice, bluff and throaty, which spoke first. It reminded Verity of an overweight, frog-eyed colonel who had commanded his regiment in the Russian War.

'I've been on the square with yo
u, Mr Aldino, damned if I ain't!
You've been paid for those papers and I shall be o
bliged to you for giving 'em me!
'

'One moment,' said Charley Wag with a voice like velvet, 'it is not my concern. I act as your agent only because you wish. What is in those papers is very bad business, but it is my sister who has them. I go between.'

'I ain't going to be put off, Aldino
’
said the other man. 'Either I get those papers or a reckoning shall be had.'

'You have the papers, milor,' said the Wag softly.

'All the papers!'

'Some
papers,' said Charley. "The rest another time, eh? My sister is a greedy woman. She say, the more you dissect such things the better they cut up. You understand that, eh?'

The other man cleared his throat with a churning cough.

'See here, Aldino! You try screwing a fellow up too far, and you'll come up with nothing but a handful of shine-rag and the skin taken off your back. Don't think I couldn't hire a crew of ruffians to settle with you cheaper than I could pay all this.'

Charley Wag began to laugh, as though at a child's pleasantry.

'Signor! Why you do that? You got enough tin to buy all those things and the pretty pictures too! Why you want such nastiness? You don't forget what is in the letter, eh? You don't forget what happen to you if the truth is told?'

The other man roared like a wounded animal in his rage.

'You damned brute! You blackguard!'

And Charley Wag laughed and laughed, moving about a little as though he might be holding off a puny assault with one hand.

'You must buy from my sister, milor! My sister a very greedy woman!"

Verity, on tip-toe, tried to see if the grating gave any view of Charley Wag's steam-bath, but the iron slats were angled carefully upwards. It was the Wag who did the spying on the unwary and indiscreet couples who used the bath which Verity had hired. At that moment, both Charley and his visitor moved. There was the sound of a scuffle and their voices became indistinct. Verity decided that they must have gone into the finishing bath, from which the sound would not carry clearly to the grating. He could eavesdrop only by going out into the corridor and standing at the Wag's door. With the towel still wrapped round his loins, he walked softly into the passageway. It was only as he looked more closely at the door dividing the row of baths from the private apartments that he noticed that it was entirely smooth. There was no handle and no keyhole on the public side, no means by which it could be opened except by those inside. No search detail was going to burst in on Charley Wag unannounced. And despite the thickness of the door, the voices were louder here. The Wag was exultant and his victim, the fight terrified out of him, was pleading.

'I tell you,' said the Wag, 'you try to hit me twice. I hit you once for sure. And now I hit you again for sure, but this time with my bellissima. Where you want Charley should mark you, milor? You want it where it not show? You say where and Charley give it you, otherwise on the face.'

There was a quick movement, a scampering, and a scream of fear from the other man. Verity had been entirely unprepared for this development. He wondered whether duty required him to turn a deaf ear while some well-heeled weakling screamed and retched under Charley's blows and knife-wounds. Or should he break off the surveillance, reveal his identity, and prevent the fearful injury about to be inflicted upon the unknown lordling? Before he could give the matter any further thought, there was a bare footfall behind him. He turned and saw Simona and Stefania at his heels. Simona screwed her face into a mask of frenzy and
screamed, 'Carlo! Carlo!
' The old duenna had emerged from the velvet entry curtains once more, followed by a pair of muscle-bound draymen. There was no doubt that they recognized Verity for what he was.

It was all timing now, he thought. He too shouted, 'C
arlo!
'Carlo!' to the entire dismay of the others. He shouted as though his life depended on it, which in a sense it might do. To his relief, the trick worked. Charley Wag, hearing the uproar, cautiously opened the door a little on his side. Verity, the only one close to it, flung his weight forward at the most vulnerable point, his bare shoulder and upper arm numbed and bruised by the impact. But the door gave, as Charley Wag failed to hold it, and Verity was through the space in an instant. He threw himself back upon the panelling and the door slammed shut. Whatever the odds against him, the muscle-bound bruisers and their companions were now securely locked outside.

The room into which he had forced his way was the finishing bath, an oval pool some fifteen feet long set into the pink and white veining of the marble floor. Charley Wag, with the square and solid good looks which suggested a middle-aged Roman emperor, was wrapped in a towel so large that it might have served him as a toga. He stood six feet tall, his jaw set, his lips parted in a smile of derision, and his nostrils distended in expectation of a brawl. Crouched against the wall, wiping his mouth on the back of a blood-smeared hand, was a hatless, broken-down man in a shabby green coat. Verity was distracted by the incongruous appearance of the victim, thinking that Charley must have fallen on exceptionally hard times if he was obliged to fasten on such genteel paupers as this. He turned his attention, reluctantly, to the Wag.

The blade was eight inches long, thin and elegant, the dulled steel of its edges showing that it had been whetted to a razor's fineness. The handle was nothing but scarlet cord woven round a steel core. Verity felt a tingling vulnerability as he saw the knife-point angled precisely at his belly-button. At least there were none of the Wag's bullies in the room, but their arrival through some inner door of the apartments could only be a matter of a few minutes.

Circling carefully round Charley Wag, Verity consoled himself by thinking that he had fought bigger odds than this. Indeed, the sight of the stiletto gave him a moral advantage. He had been brought up to believe that an Englishman's weapons were his fists and that only women and cowards resorted to knives and such things. Beneath all the bravado, Charley would prove to be the craven degenerate of his type.

But that hardly solved the immediate problem. The Wag was hunched about ten feet in front of Verity, the blade tilted forward and upward, daring him to come on. Verity decided to accept the invitation. It was no good playing a waiting game. In a few minutes at the most the Wag's ruffians would reach whatever secret way led from the flash-house to the private baths. He must settle Charley by then and hold the door against them.

Charley Wag studied the portly, half-naked man, the belly folds and the faint quiver of surplus flesh. The face was the colour of port-wine from heat and exertion, the dark eyes narrowed and the black waxed moustaches bristling up with the scent of battle.

'Avanti!
' said the Wag softly, thinking that a slit from the pubic bone up the soft belly to the solar plexus would open the affair admirably. The man was going to die, of course, but Charley had to know who he was and why he came. A careful cut below the belt would take the fight out of the plump red-faced intruder and, if deep enough, would put him in such misery that he would tell his questioners whatever they wished to know in order to earn his quietus. Charley judged the distance and then stopped in amazement. The fat man had drawn the wet towel from his loins and was standing entirely naked.

Verity drew the towel through his fingers and flicked it with a snap at the Wag's knife-hand. It missed by several inches but the Wag stared in astonishment. What was this man that he played such games with an opponent who faced him with a steel blade? The towel flicked again, catching the Wag on the side of the face. It stung him sufficiently to make him step back with an oath. The oval bath set into the floor was just behind him and he moved warily. At the third snap, the towel wound itself round Charley's right arm, enabling him to snatch it but causing him to drop his knife in the process. He began to reach for the fallen blade but Verity's huge clenched knuckles slammed into his face between nostrils and jaw, drawing blood from the nose and the torn lips. The Wag lurched sideways to avoid the bath at his back and in doing this he gave Verity an opening. From long experience of Cornish wrestling in his childhood, as well as criminal encounters later on, Verity knew that to get an opponent's head 'in Chancery' under his own arm, forearm tightening on the windpipe, was the readiest answer to any weapon. With a movement like an abortive standing-jump he got the Wag's neck in the crook of his arm and bent him with short, abrupt impacts, supported by the weight of his entire body. Charley bowed and cursed, gargling in his throat as the lever of Verity's forearm tightened.