The Meaning of Night (50 page)

his lip, and his knuckles turn white with gripping the arms of the chair so hard. I begin to

get a little impatient, and tell him so.

‘I cannot,’ he says at last, with a kind of faltering moan. ‘They – they will – ’

As he is speaking, I see him give a sudden darting glance towards the door, and in

a flash he is on his feet. But I am ready for him. I throw him back into his chair and stand

over him. I ask again for him to begin his recitation, but still he will not sing. For the

third and last time, I say to him, taking out one of my pocket-pistols and laying it on the

table. He blanches, but shakes his head. I try another tack, and voila!

The prospect of having your fingers broken one by one appears to be a mighty

incentive to do as you are told; and in no time at all he capitulates. Here, then, though a

little more persuading was required as we went along, is what Mr Lewis Pettingale, of

Gray’s-Inn, told me on that fine September afternoon.

He had been introduced to Phoebus Daunt at the Varsity by a mutual friend, a

Kingsman? by the name of Bennett. They hit it off straight away, and quickly cemented

their friendship by discovering a shared, though largely untested, enthusiasm for the turf.

Off they would go to Newmarket, whenever occasion offered, where they got in with a

rather dangerous set of men up from London. These flash coves knew what they were

about, and welcomed Daunt and Pettingale with open arms. Bets were placed by the pair

and, in short order, money was lost. No matter: their new friends were more than willing

to advance them a little credit; and then a little more. At last, with the touching optimism

of youth, our heroes determined on a rather risky course: they would hazard all they had

– or, rather, all they had been advanced – on a single race. If their choice came in, all

would be well.

But it did not come in, and all was not well. However, their benefactors took a

statesmanlike view of the situation. If the gents would co-operate in a scheme this

company of obliging family men? had in view, then they would be pleased to consider

the debt paid. There might even be a little something in it for them. If not . . . The offer

was quickly taken up, and one of the gang, an impressive party with a prominent set of

Newgate knockers,? was deputed to assist the noviciates in the prosecution of a little

well-planned fraud.

The two young scholars took to the business briskly, and with a certain aptitude

for what was required, particularly on the part of the Rector’s son. I need not repeat what

was told to me by Dr Maunder, about how the fraud was accomplished; I will only say

that Pettingale revealed that the shadowy person who had employed the dupe, Hensby,

had been Daunt, and that it was Daunt also who, after demonstrating to the gang a

remarkable facility to replicate signatures, had actually carried out the forgeries.

‘And what was the name of the firm?’ I’d asked.

‘Tredgold, Tredgold and Orr,’ came the reply. ‘Of Paternoster-row.’

The information astounded me, and I turned away momentarily as I collected my

thoughts. Then I asked him how the fraudsters had obtained the necessary blank cheques.

‘Burglary,’ said Pettingale. ‘Simple enough.’

I immediately objected that my informant had stated, quite categorically, that no

cheques had been found to be missing.

‘Ah,’ Pettingale came back, ‘that’s where they were clever, you see. They had a

paid man in the firm who was beyond suspicion. The person who verified that no cheques

had been taken was one of theirs!’ And the name of this person? He could not recall – he

assured me, on pain of a little finger-cracking, that he would tell me if he could, but he

could not. He did, however, disclose that the break-in had been carried out by the

accomplice appointed by the gang: a certain Josiah Leonard Pluckrose, alias Mr Verdant.

I said nothing on hearing Pluckrose’s name, but inwardly exulted that the

suspicions I had been harbouring as to the identity of Mr Verdant had been proved

correct. The origin of his pseudonym was nothing more than this. At Doncaster, in the

year ’38, he had put twenty stolen guineas on a rank outsider called Princess Verdant,

who rewarded his faith in her by coming in at extremely favourable odds, though her

victory may have been assisted by the fact – barely worth mentioning – that she was a

four-year-old entered in a race for three-year-olds.? No matter. Thereafter, he was known

as ‘Mr Verdant’ to his friends and associates amongst the capital’s criminal fraternities.

After the dodge on Tredgolds had been successfully brought off, Pluckrose fell

out with his former colleagues over the division of the spoils; he quit the gang in high

dudgeon, vowing to be revenged on them all. And revenged he was. Not one of his

confederates – five in number – lived to see the year out: one was found in the river at

Wapping with his throat cut; another was bludgeoned to death as he left the Albion

Tavern one evening;? the three that remained simply disappeared from the face of the

earth and were never seen again. Pettingale could not conclusively say that Pluckrose had

done for them all himself; but that he had signed their death warrants, as it were, seemed

certain. ‘The last to go was Isaac Gabb, the youngest member of the gang – elder brother

kept the public-house down in Rotherhithe where the gang first met up. Rather a decent

fellow, young Gabb, despite his roguery. The brother took it hard, and takes it hard still,

as I hear; but no one could pin anything on Pluckrose.’

Then Pettingale’s story turned to the subject in which I was most interested. After

making a little money from the Tredgold fraud, Phoebus Daunt developed a taste for

criminality, and began to look upon himself as quite a captain of the swell mob. Having

no clear idea of what he would do in the world when he had taken his degree, though he

might babble to Lord Tansor about the prospect of a Fellowship, and feeling that a man

of his genius needed a certain minimum amount of capital with which to establish a

position in society, which he could not at that moment lay claim to possessing, he

conceived the practical, though by no means original, notion of taking what he needed

from other people. And to assist him in the enterprise he enlisted his friend and fellow

fraudster Pettingale, for his legal brain, and their erstwhile companion-in-arms Josiah

Pluckrose, alias Verdant, for his brawn and his demonstrable skills with the jemmy and

the other tools of the ken-cracker’s art.?

I own that I could not have been more astonished if Pettingale had told me that

Phoebus Daunt was none other than Spring-Heeled Jack himself.? But he had even more

to tell.

The extraordinary head for business, which Lord Tansor believed he had

discovered in his favourite, was in reality nothing else but a low talent for devising

schemes to relieve the gullible of their money. I might have regarded this as harmless

enough, for a man must live, and there are a million deserving fools in the world ready

and willing to be fleeced; but when he practised his deceits on my father, who was not in

the least gullible, only properly trusting of someone to whom he had shown an

uncommon degree of preference, and from whom he had a right to expect loyalty and

deference – then the case was very much altered. And all to ingratiate himself still further

with his Lordship, with the object – duly attained – of insinuating himself closely into the

latter’s affairs.

The ‘speculations’, to which he had freely confessed to Lord Tansor, were

nothing but gimcrackery; the ‘profits’ he returned to his protector were only the proceeds

of various swindles and chicaneries. Some were epic in conception: imaginary

gold-mines in Peru, a projected tunnel under the Swiss Alps, proposed railway lines that

were never built. Others were more modest, or were merely confidence tricks performed

on the unwary.

False documents of all kinds, concocted with superlative skill and aplomb by

Daunt, were their principal weapons – inventively convincing references and

recommendations ascribed to men of known character and reputation, fictitious

statements of assets from distinguished banking-houses and accomptants, counterfeit

certificates of ownership, dexterously produced maps of non-existent tracts of land,

grandiose plans for buildings that would never be built: Daunt, with help from the young

lawyer Pettingale, began to attain a certain mastery of the spurious, whilst Pluckrose was

retained to encourage the faint-hearted amongst those they preyed upon, and to

discourage those inclined to squeal about their losses to the authorities. They chose their

victims with infinite care, adopted clever disguises and aliases, hired premises, employed

dupes like the unfortunate Hensby, and conducted themselves always with gravity and

sobriety; and then, when all was done, they evaporated into thin air, leaving not a wrack

behind.

Now I had the measure of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt indeed, and what a joy it was

to have the truth revealed at last. The insolent and preening scribbler was also a

deep-dyed rogue: a practised chiseller, a speeler, no better than the buzzers and macers on

the Highway.? Mr Pettingale continued to sing out nicely. His colour had returned to its

customary pastiness, and perspiration no longer stood out on his forehead. Indeed he

seemed, to my eye, to be warming to his task, and I began to sense that all was not as it

once had been between the lawyer and his literary friend.

‘We don’t see each other as much as we did,’ he said at last, looking meditatively

into the fire. ‘All very well, you know, when we were younger. Difficult to explain –

excites the mind greatly, this sort of work. And brings home the bacon. But it started to

go against the grain a bit – some of the chaps we took were quite decent sorts of fellows,

wives and families etcetera, and we left them with nothing. Anyway, told Daunt we

couldn’t go on forever. Sooner or later we’d slip up. Didn’t fancy following Hensby on

the boat? – or worse. Came to a head when that unutterable blackguard Pluckrose did for

his wife. Never understood why Daunt brought him in – and told him so. Capable of

anything, Pluckrose. We knew that, of course. Bit of a flare-up, I’m afraid. Words said,

and all that. Gulling a flat? one thing. Topping your wife quite another. Very bad

business. Worst of it was that Pluckrose got off by some piece of trickery. Had the gall to

retain the very firm of solicitors he’d helped defraud. But they got him off. Clever work,

that. Never seen better. Anyway, truth is, I thought it was time we ditched Pluckrose once

and for all and went steady. Thought Daunt would agree – in the public eye, toast of the

literary world, and all that. He said I might do as I pleased, but he had only just got

started, and that a new tack he was on would set him up for life.’

‘New tack?’

‘Apropos his uncle, as he called him. Lord Tansor. Powerful gent. Know the

name, do you? Lost his own son, I believe, and thought he’d have Daunt instead. Very

rum, but there it is. Old boy bit of a tartar, but rich as Croesus, and Daunt was sitting

pretty, for he stood in a fair way to step into the old man’s shoes in the course of time.

But he couldn’t wait. Thought he’d take a little bit here and there in advance. Ready cash

first, slyly done, for he had Uncle Tansor’s trust, you see? Then a little judicious forging

of the old boy’s signature – second nature to Daunt. Rather a genius in that way.

Amazing to observe. Give him a minute and he’d produce you the signature of the Queen

herself, and good enough to fool the Prince-Consort. Old boy as sharp as they come, but

Daunt knew how to play him. Reeled him in nice as you like. Didn’t suspect a thing. But

a dangerous game – I told him so, but nothing would move him. Old boy’s secretary got

on the scent, keen old cove called Carteret – daughter with great staring eyes. When Miss

C’s father started to become suspicious of Daunt snooping round, he started on his new

tack. We’d been working a sweet little turn, our first for some months, but Daunt turned

his back on it. Everything put in jeopardy. More words, I fear. Much said in anger. Not

pleasant. He said he had something better.’

‘And what was it?’

‘Only this: the old boy has a very grand house in the country – been there myself .

Said house in the country packed to the rafters with portable booty.’

‘Booty?’

‘Prints, porcelain, glassware, books – Daunt knew a bit about books. All cleverly

and quietly done, of course, and everything now laid up safely in a repository – in case

the old boy didn’t come across, he said, or against some unseen occurrence. Worth a

king’s ransom.’

‘And where is this repository?’

‘Ah, if only I could tell you. He cut me out. Dissolved the partnership. Haven’t

seen him these twelve months.’

I had him now, had him tight in the palm of my hand. His box at the opera, his

house in Mecklenburgh-square, his horses and his dinners – all paid for by the proceeds

of crime. I could bring him down at a moment’s notice; and in the ensuing scandal, would

Lord Tansor rush to his heir’s defence? I think not.