Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (16 page)

Dacre followed slowly after the trolley, letting it turn the corner beyond his view. He strolled through the refining-shop, where the gold was ladled from the white heat of the furnace crucibles and tipped like a stream of sparkling fire into the vats of cold water. Beyond this room he came to the long corroding-house. Down one side, under an overhanging metal canopy, were the porcelain vessels, standing high as a man's waist, containing nitric acid heated by the steam which rose from the troughs below. The rows of vessels were set back in a long recess, like an alcove running down one side of the shop. The men who worked in there, their long wooden pokers stirring the brightening lumps of gold in the acid-baths, kept well back from the acid-laden steam as it was drawn into the chimney-draught above them.

Once Dacre passed the end of this recess, where the door stood open between the corroding-house and the right-angle bend of the passage as it led to the melting-shop, he was out of sight. It hardly seemed to matter. There was nothing in that short stretch of passageway but another recess, no more than a couple of feet wide, with the metal chimney-hatch, just big enough for a sweep's boy to enter, where the cleaning of the flue was carried out.

Holding his breath, Dacre took from his pocket a large steel bodkin and applied it to the slot in the hatch. It opened easily, revealing the dark shaft of the flue from which the mingled fumes of sulphur and sharp corrosive of nitric acid drifted in the wind. He put the metal hatch down gently and drew from under his shirt the strips of sacking. He was still wearing his grey morning gloves, which he stripped off for the next part of the operation. The flue was hardly more than eighteen inches across at this point and as he wedged the tight bundle of sacking into it, he could feel that the ventilation was blocked and that the draught of warm fumes had died away. Working speedily, he replaced the hatch-cover, drew on his grey gloves again to conceal the black soot on his fingers, and walked smartly after the porters and the trolley.

He had guessed the dimension of the flue from the size of the hatch, and he was uneasily aware that the next part of his plan must be accomplished in a period of some three to five minutes. He cursed himself for not having timed the porters to see how long it was between leaving the stronghold with the empty trolley and returning with a new load as far as the weighing-room. That was the time he needed.

Their movements seemed infinitely slow, as they wheeled the empty trolley back to the wagon for the last two boxes. Dacre followed them in again, dreading the first cries which would announce the destruction of his hopes. The weighing of the boxes seemed an eternity, the pen of the clerk crawling like the track of a wounded beetle on the page. But the porters had once again gone on ahead of him with their load, and still there had been no cries. Dacre passed through the refining-shop and the corroding-house to the little recess with its chimney-hatch. He dared not stay too long, and he wondered for the first time whether something had been displaced by the force of the draught. Could the mere fumes of nitric acid eat through sacking in so short a time? It was absurd.

He was suddenly conscious of a rising murmur from the corroding-house and then shouts.

'Smoke! Smoke! Make fast the doors! Make fast the doors and leave!'

He could smell it from where he stood, the poisonous acid which the trapped steam was bearing down into the corroding-house. He stepped from the recess and closed the door at the corner of the passageway, where it divided the corroding-house from the melting-shop.

'Doors closed! Doors fast!' he shouted. There was no danger to him from this. Even if they knew who he was, they would merely congratulate him on his presence of mind, but he remained out of sight. Best of all, though the door was metal, it was secured by a mere bolt, which allowed him to shut this part of the Mint off from the rooms which followed.

Dacre remained in the recess until all sounds of movement had ceased in the corroding-house. He had gathered from his investigations into the proceedings of the Federal Mint that the down-draught of nitric acid fumes was one of the most serious problems. Hence the easy access to the flue by means of the hatch. He opened the hatch and drew out the sacking. Replacing the metal cover, he moved quickly to the corroding-house itself. By holding his handkerchief over nose and mouth he was able to avoid some of the fumes, but his narrow chest was soon convulsed by uncontrollable coughing in the steamy atmosphere and his lungs seemed to be on fire. The way to the refining-shop was open but beyond that another iron door had been closed. For a precious moment he was alone. Because there was molten gold in the refining-shop and no time to remove it, they had unknowingly sealed him into the area which was vital to his plan.

Dacre tossed the sacking into the first furnace, where it burst at once into bright fire and drifted upward in the renewed draught. He threw his silk hat after it, and his frock coat after that in a tight bundle. The clothes burnt more slowly but in a minute more they were flimsy lengths of ash, disintegrating further at every shift in the flow of air. Finally, he tore off his shirt and hurled it after the rest.

Absurdly dressed in black trousers, boots, grey gloves and a black doublet, he seemed a cross between a Victorian gentleman and an Elizabethan executioner. But these were the clothes of his true profession. He added a final touch by drawing from his pocket a black Balaclava helmet and pulling this woollen cap over his fair curls. He hesitated for a moment, torn between comfort and necessity. Then he unlaced his boots, throwing them one after the other into the brightest furnace, whose heat made his eyes swim at several yards' distance. He knew what he would suffer without them, but the accidental scrape or thud of them might mean the difference between a hangman's noose and the greatest triumph of the cracksman's art.

In the minute or so which it had taken him to prepare, the steam had begun to clear and his chest was no longer contorted by such fiercely-suppressed convulsions. He ran past the shining heat of four furnaces to the two at the far end, which were black and dead. He chose the furthest and, doubling his body, squeezed himself in backward. When he raised his head, his torso was upright in the shaft and his legs sticking horizontally out of the furnace opening. Cautiously, he worked himself upright and stood in the narrow shaft, feeling at every contact the soft flakes of soot, which seemed to have the crumbling texture of dry snow. Immediately above him, the shaft sloped away, behind his head. The shaft was so narrow that only a man of Verney Dacre's narrow build might have been able to enter it. It had, evidently, been built for child sweeps.

Making the most of the time before the doors were opened again and the furnace workers returned, he worked awkwardly round and reached for the ledge above him where the slope began. By the pull of his thin, gloved hands, and the pressure of his stockinged feet, he hauled himself upward on his belly, into the long and stifling darkness.

Joey Morant-Barham regained the garret, high above Juniper Street and looking out on the blank side-wall of the Federal Mint. His throat was dry, his legs felt weak, and there was a tension in his abdomen which would have made the swallowing of food or drink an impossibility.

For all that, as Verney Dacre had promised, it had gone smooth as oil. Indeed, the clouds of acid steam had cleared so quickly that those in the stronghold had hardly realized that the mishap had occurred and that they had been closed off from the main entrance of the Mint for several minutes, for their own protection. When Willson Moore had led the way back, he was far too preoccupied with the urgency of his own secret plan to question what was told him. Cowhide had readily explained how 'Colonel Dempster' had been caught in the worst of the acid down-draught. His chest, weakened by pneumonia which had seized him during the night-marches on Lucknow, in the Sepoy Mutiny of '57, had suffered enough in the steam to make him return at once to the Continental by private carriage. He left his regrets, and a promise of attending Captain Moore the next day at all events.

Joey Barham and Cowhide had separated as soon as they were out of sight of the Mint portico, Cowhide returning to the stables and Joey slipping quickly down Juniper Street and into the door of the dark tenement.

It was almost half-past ten, when Willson Moore, his honest face still hardened by a faint anxiety, walked down the steps of the Mint into Chestnut Street. He carried no luggage and seemed merely to be on some errand in the street as Snowden's proxy. It would be easy enough to send a message from the railroad depot, feigning a return of summer fever and vomiting, which would excuse his attendance at the Mint for the next day or two.

He had walked no more than fifty yards, when the olive-green cabriolet rattled slowly beside him at a walking pace and the head of a pale, effeminate-looking man peered at him through the open window.

'Cap'n Moore? Cap'n Moore, sir?'

Willson Moore stopped, looking at the round white face, and the hand with its cerulean blue envelope.

'You are Cap'n Moore, as they told me at the Mint? Cap'n Willson Moore?'

'Yes', said the young man suspiciously.

'And I guess you could prove it?' the round pale face creased with concern. ‘I can't trifle with missy's safety by lettin' the wrong party read her letter.'

A sense of alarm welled up in Moore's throat.

'Miss Maggie?'

'First, sir, Miss Jennifer, the beauty of Asia. She brought this for you and is at the depot now. You must go with her, she says, or you shall never accomplish what you promise to do. You may ride with us, sir, if you be Cap'n Moore. If you ain't, I guess Miss Jennifer can tell us when we get to the depot.'

The pale man opened the carriage door.

'And who the devil might you be?'

'We, sir, have no connection with the devil, sir. Quite the other side. We like to think, sir, of being missioners of rescue and salvation to poor lost women. It ain't no odds to us, sir, if it's a black skin that must be brought safe across Ohio to sanctuary here, or a white skin that must be fetched from a house of abomination.'

Willson Moore reached for the envelope, but the pale man withdrew it.

'Oh no, sir! When Miss Jennifer tells us that you really and truly are Cap'n Willson Moore, you may read. Until then, you must excuse our suspicions. What may be nothing to you might be life and death to Missy Mag!'

The closed carriage tilted slightly on its springs as Willson Moore ducked his head and pushed his way in to sit beside the large pale man. The door closed with a heavy click and the vehicle jolted forward.

'I don't figure on an enemy following us here,' said the pale man, 'but we will, if you please take the precaution of crossing the river lower down, beyond South Street, and coming at the depot from the far side. Miss Jennifer gave us to understand that you and she must be on the train in an hour from now.'

They drove in silence, southward through drabber streets and then across the river bridge.

'There's nothing amiss with Miss Maggie?' Willson Moore asked as they passed the outline of the alms houses.

'No-o-o,' said the pale man. 'And when I
know
that you are Cap'n Willson Moore, you shall have all your questions answered. Till then, sir, you must excuse me in the matter.'

They took a circuitous route, turning at last beyond the edge of the town as if to drive back on their own tracks and surprise any vehicle which might have followed them. And then the coachman took them off the road and on to a track between trees, stopping suddenly in a grove beside a stagnant pool.

'What's amiss?' called the pale man to his driver. Grumblingly he opened the door and got down on to the soft turf. Willson Moore ducked his head again and began to follow through the door. It was while he was in this posture that the pale man, Lucifer, brought a nightstick down on the exposed nape of the young man's neck. Willson Moore fell with hardly a sound.

Bull-Peg, jumping down from the driver's box, seized the young man and lifted him while Lucifer spread out a blanket. They worked with cord, turning, looping and knotting, packing the body round with a dozen convenient rocks. Then they carried it between them, trussed into the outline of a mummy, to the edge of the pool. What seemed at a distance to be a green pond was, on closer inspection, a slowly bubbling morass, overhung by stunted and twisted trees which looked half-poisoned by the foul vapours. The two men braced themselves for their last exertion.

'He's stirring again!' said Bull-Peg urgently. 'He shall sleep long enough!'

The weighted shroud tumbled only a few feet through the air, smacking down on the verge of the shimmering depth. But the shape of the rocks tilted it, so that it rose like a vessel in its final plunge, slowly and inexorably carrying the half-conscious Willson Moore to the dark, brief horror of his last awakening.

Verney Dacre, his eyes stinging and his mouth furred by the inhalation of soot, clawed at the upward slope. The inner bricking of the shaft was corroded and broken so that at every yard the uneven ledges tore at his clothes. He paused, seized by half-suppressed convulsive coughing again, and spat the foul black dust from his throat.

The slope was bad enough, but he knew there was worse to come. Below him, the furnace was dead, but ten feet further up, the flues from the row of furnaces merged into the main stack, carrying the heat from half a dozen which were stoked to brilliant and sparkling fire. Upon the number and intensity of these would depend whether he could survive without more than acute discomfort, or whether he would be roasted alive, first his clothes and then his skin being peeled from him like charred paper in the searing draught.

There was not even safety in testing the heat before he began the long ascent of the main stack to the tiny rectangle of sky above. The degree of heat varied with the damping or stoking of fires. It had always been possible, he knew, that he would be caught by a sudden surge of flame as a fresh fire was lit or the dying embers of other furnaces rekindled.