One hot summer day at the end of July, he had been told to take a very nice rolltop writing bureau to a house a couple of miles away. Because the sun was shining so brightly, it did not occur to Corky to pick up a dust sheet to cover the well-polished satinwood, but, fortunately, Mrs Wilf was in the shop and ran after him to throw a large dust sheet over the writing desk and say, a trifle breathlessly, that she could smell thunder in the air and was never mistaken over such things. Corky, looking up at the bright blue sky and the brassy gold of the sun, thought that she was wrong this time, but said nothing. He had delivered the desk and was turning for home, sweat streaming down the sides of his face, when it occurred to him that the sun had disappeared, although it was still very hot. What was more, the light was odd. Scarcely had the thought crossed his mind when there was a crack of thunder directly overhead and he saw forked lightning, lilac-coloured against the yellowy sky, plunge to earth. Seconds later, the heavens opened; rain poured down like a river, the drops enormous. Corky grabbed the dust sheet and wrapped himself in it, but it impeded his progress, tangling between his legs, and anyway it was soon completely drenched, so he slung it back on to the handcart and continued on his way. People in light summer clothing – for no one, except Mrs Perkin, had anticipated the dramatic change in the weather – scattered, searching for doorways, shops, anywhere where they might gain shelter, but Corky, of course, could do no such thing. A handcart was a valuable item and not one to be carelessly abandoned, so he grimly pushed on, relieved not to have the added weight of the bureau and anxious to get back to the shop without unnecessary delay. Ahead of him, a carter was trying to persuade an enormous dray horse that the thunder and lightning would not hurt him. But the horse was not convinced; it kept rearing up, rolling its eyes and crashing its hooves on to the cobbles once more. Corky was tempted to help but still dared not let go of the handcart. To be sure, there were scarcely any adults about, but street urchins were everywhere, bright-eyed and sharp-witted, always on the lookout for something to pinch. If he let go of his handcart for one moment, they’d have it, sure as check.
Fortunately, the rain was warm, but even so, Corky had never been happier to turn the corner and see Wilfred Perkin’s shop front. He wheeled the handcart down the covered passage and into the yard, shoved it into the shed, and made for the back door at a gallop. He entered the storeroom, water pouring from him, and saw that there was a strange man – a customer, he presumed – in the room. Wilf was sitting at the table with a long list before him, looking up at the man and shaking his head whilst saying earnestly that his shop did not contain any of the items for which the stranger was searching, and certainly not a man’s gold hunter watch, set with gems instead of numerals, and inscribed
Charles, from your Caroline
.
Corky gave an exclamation. What was Wilf thinking of? This man wanted such a watch and he, Corky, knew jolly well that they had the item in stock, though he could not recall an inscription. ‘Have you forgot, Wilf?’ he said, brushing wet hair from his face. ‘There’s one just like that in the corner cabinet, inside the cigarette box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I see’d it only last week.’
Wilf looked up at him, his eyes hard. ‘What the devil are you talking about, boy?’ he said angrily. ‘You don’t know nothing about my stock. You’re just my delivery boy.’
There was something in his glance which warned Corky to back down and he began to do so, but the stranger seized him by the ear and began to push him towards the shop, saying as he did so: ‘Out o’ the mouths of babes and sucklings, eh, Mr Perkin? C’mon, young feller, show me this ’ere cabinet or I’ll give you the ’iding of your life an’ chuck you in prison for hobstructin’ the law.’
Poor Corky was horrified; this man must be a plain clothes police officer, searching for stolen goods, and he, fool that he was, had thought him merely a customer searching for a very fancy gold hunter watch, either for himself or as a presentation gift for someone in his employ, perhaps.
But it was too late for conjecture. The man dragged him to the corner cabinet and peered inside, then tried to open it, but it was locked. ‘This is the wrong one, sir,’ Corky squealed, for the man’s grip on his ear was painful. ‘Lemme go. I made a mistake, honest I did. There ain’t no gold hunter watch . . . well, I dare say there is, I seen it somewhere, but now I come to think, I reckon it were in Mr Parish’s shop, not this one.’
It was a brave effort – Mr Parish was another antique dealer from whom Wilf sometimes bought goods – but it availed Corky nothing. ‘Where’s the bleedin’ key, youngster?’ the policeman growled. ‘I’ve been visitin’ this shop for years, knowin’ full well that Wilf is a fence, but never able to prove a thing. My inspector is gettin’ that fed up with me, actually said I were a pal of half the villains in this manor, so an arrest for receiving stolen goods would go down right nicely.’
‘He isn’t . . . a villain, I mean . . . and he don’t receive no stolen goods,’ Corky shouted wildly. When the strong arm of the law had hold of your ear, truth did not seem particularly important. ‘An’ I dunno where the key is, mister, honest I don’t.’
Still holding him firmly by the ear, the policeman produced a truncheon and smashed a couple of small square panes of glass, then tucked the truncheon back into his belt and reached for the cigarette case. One-handedly, he flicked it open, then beamed. The gold hunter watch nestling within was, unmistakably, the gold hunter watch on the policeman’s list.
Wilf had come through from the storeroom and now he peered at the watch and then up into the policeman’s face. ‘I dunno how it got there, sergeant, but I ain’t never set eyes on the bleedin’ thing before,’ he said in a wondering tone. ‘I reckon this lad must ’ave dipped someone in the street and hid the thing away, meaning to sell it to me when it weren’t so hot. Aye, that’s what must ha’ happened; it’s plain as the nose on your face.’
The policeman was still holding Corky’s ear, though not quite so firmly as before, but he grinned at Wilf’s words, then gave a derisive snort. ‘Pinched it hisself, did he? Then answer me this, Mr Clever Bloody Perkin. Why did he tell me where it were hid, eh? And how did a little lad like him manage to break into Albemarle Castle, which is pretty well guarded, I might tell you, and get away with a score of valuable oil paintings and half the marquis’s collection of snuff boxes, to say nothing of his lady wife’s jewels?’
‘I’m not sayin’ he did a proper robbery,’ Wilf said, with all the indignation of a man sadly misunderstood. ‘I dare say he prigged it off o’ the thief . . . yes, that’ll be it. As for paintings, and jewels and snuff boxes . . . well, can you see any about here?’
‘No, but I’ve suspicioned for a long time that you stow stuff away somewhere in your flat upstairs, or in your old mam’s place,’ the policeman said shrewdly. He put a hand on Wilf’s shoulder. ‘Wilfred Perkin, I arrest you for receiving stolen property. You’d best come along o’ me and make a statement while I put in for a search warrant and whistle up reinforcements.’
Wilf tried to wriggle free, and in order to snap the handcuffs on him the policeman was forced to let go of Corky’s ear. The boy did not think twice but made for the shop door, shooting through it on to the road and pelting as hard as he could go in the direction of Herbee Place. The whole thing had been his fault, but how could he know that the man was a policeman and not a customer? He simply had to warn old Mrs Perkin, for she had been kind to him and he could not bear to think of her being cast into prison. If this happened, he did not think she would last very long and he knew that, in the circumstances, her death would be on his conscience for the rest of his life.
It was still raining heavily and though, behind him, he could hear the policeman’s whistle and his stentorian shout of ‘Stop that kid! He’s a thief’ Corky did not think that anyone so much as noticed him, for the rain was like a curtain of water and all the kids he could see were running and keeping their heads down, as he was. No one would saunter in such weather, but nor would they pay attention to a police whistle when all they wanted was to get out of the rain and into shelter.
By the time he reached Herbee Place he was breathless and panting and probably looking extremely wild, for when he burst into the kitchen, beginning to gabble that there was trouble at the shop, Mrs Perkin surged to her feet, looking horrified. ‘Did you fall in the river down by the docks, Corky?’ she asked, bustling over to the back door and taking the roller towel down from its place. ‘Why, if you ain’t a drownded rat! You must ha’ run a couple o’ miles to get in a two an’ eight like this. Sit yerself down, an’ I’ll make a cuppa char whiles you tell me what’s up.’
‘The coppers is up,’ Corky said breathlessly. Tears were beginning to mingle with the water which ran down his face. ‘Oh, Mrs Perkin, it were all my fault but I didn’t mean no ’arm, honest to God I didn’t. I thought the feller were a customer an’ I telled ’im we did have a gold watch like the one he wanted, only Mr Wilf said he didn’t have no such thing, so I smelled a rat then, only the rozzer had me by the ear . . .’
Mrs Perkin sighed deeply, a puzzled frown creasing her brow. ‘Drink yer tea an’ slow down,’ she said heavily. ‘I guess you give the game away without meaning to – I wanted to tell you what were goin’ on so’s you’d keep mum but Wilf, he wouldn’t. Said the fewer folk knew, the safer we’d be. But you never grassed on us? Not deliberate like?’
‘No, course I didn’t,’ Corky said stoutly, but with a wild and beating heart. ‘It were like this, Mrs Perkin. I come back from deliverin’ the bureau, through all the rain and thunder and lightning, and I sort o’ burst into the stockroom with water running from me like a river . . .’
Now that he had calmed down, he told his story well, emphasising that he had tried to put the blame on Mr Parrish, a man he knew Mrs Perkin thoroughly disliked. He ended by telling her that the plain clothes copper had arrested Wilf and gone back to the station to get a search warrant, probably for the shop, the flat above it, and Mrs Perkin’s own home.
The last remark caused the colour to drain from the old woman’s cheeks and she sat for a moment, gazing sightlessly ahead of her. To Corky’s distress, he saw that her lips were trembling and her eyes tear-filled, but then, suddenly, she seemed to come to a decision. She brushed the tears from her eyes and tightened her mouth. ‘It weren’t just your fault that we’re in trouble,’ she said briskly. ‘Wilf said he had a customer for that watch which is why it weren’t stored safely away where no one could set eyes on it. But – but the truth is, a spell in prison would just about kill me . . . so we’re goin’ to have to shift all the stuff in the back bedroom, ’cept for the bed you sleeps in an’ the little washstand what I paid for honest, years ago. Are you game to help me, Corky?’
‘Course I am,’ Corky said stoutly. ‘But it’ll take days to shift this lot. And where’s we goin’ to put it, Mrs Perkin?’
Mrs Perkin winked at him. ‘There’s more’n one safe house in Bethnal Green,’ she told him. ‘And I’ve more’n one friend, young feller-me-lad. Afore you come along, Jim Craddock and his sons, Egbert and Vincent, used to move stuff what were too heavy for meself, and they delivered for Wilf as well. They’ve a proper motor van, so they was a good deal quicker, but of course, with the three of them at it, they charged a pretty penny. Sometimes, Wilf said it weren’t scarcely worth his while to sell some pieces ’cos his profit were all ate up in delivery charges. Howsomever, it’ll be all hands to the pump in a crisis like this ’cos all our pals would like to do the rozzers in the eye.’ As she spoke, she had been rummaging in the dresser drawer and presently withdrew a pad of lined paper and a stub of pencil. She wrote a brief message which Corky read over her shoulder – it simply said:
Police getting search warrant for my back room. Get the whole gang round here as soon as poss. Aggie.
Then she tore off the page, folded it and wrote a name and address on it. ‘If you give this to Jim Craddock, he’ll see it does the rounds. Hurry, lad; deliver it then come straight back here. Awright?’
Corky wasted no time. He snatched the note from her hand and sped up the road. By now, he was conversant with most of the small streets surrounding Herbee Place and knew the Craddocks’ house particularly well as the van was usually parked in front of it in the evenings. It was a big van, painted blue, with the words
Craddock & Sons, Carriers
written on both sides and on the back, with the legend beneath:
Any time, anywhere, Craddock & Sons will get you there
.
As he ran, Corky began to worry that Mr Craddock might be out and then what would he do? If he left the message with anyone else, say Mrs Craddock, she would be unable to do anything until her husband and sons returned home, and by that time the search warrant might have been obtained and fat rozzer paws might be sifting through the multitude of goods in his hostess’s back bedroom.
But he need not have worried; the van stood outside the Craddock house and it was Mr Craddock himself who answered the door to Corky’s knocks. Corky handed over the note, beginning a breathless and garbled explanation, but this, too, proved unnecessary. Ignoring him, Mr Craddock turned in the doorway and shouted, and almost immediately his two large sons were at his side. Mr Craddock read the note aloud, then hesitated and read it again. ‘Egbert, go and alert the Millers. Tell them the van will be leaving in five minutes so if they wants a lift, they’d best get a move on.’ He turned to his other son. ‘Vinny, fetch the O’Haras and get your bleedin’ skates on ’cos Terry’s too fond of the ale and once the pubs is open . . . besides, he’s no use to us if he’s had a tankful.’ He turned back to Corky, hovering uncertainly on the doorstep. ‘Got any other notes?’ he demanded. ‘If not, an’ you’re comin’ back to Herbee Place, you’d best jump in the back of the van.’