The Great Train Robbery - Crichton Michael - Страница 22

The next day, the manager went to lunch but two of the clerks remained behind, skipping lunch.

By the third day, they knew the pattern: one or more of the men in the office went to lunch for an hour at one o'clock, but the office was never left unattended. The conclusion was clear.

"No daylight gammon," Agar said.

"Perhaps Sunday," Pierce said, thinking aloud.

In those days-- and indeed to the present day-- the British railway system strongly resisted operations on the Sabbath. It was considered unnecessary and unseemly for any company to do business on Sunday, and the railways in particular had always shown an oddly moralistic bent. For example, smoking on railway carriages was forbidden long after smoking became a widespread custom in society; a gentleman who wished to enjoy a cigar was obliged to tip the railroad porter-- another forbidden act-- and this state of affairs continued, despite the intense pressure of public opinion, until 1868, when Parliament finally passed a law forcing the railroads to allow passengers to smoke.

Similarly, although everyone agreed that the most God-fearing men sometimes needed to travel on the Sabbath, and although the popular custom of weekend excursions provided ever more pressure for Sunday schedules, the railroads fought stubbornly against this trend. In 1854, the South Eastern Railway ran only four trains on Sunday, and the other line that used London Bridge, the London amp; Greenwich Railway, ran only six trains, less than half the usual number.

Pierce and Agar checked the station the following Sunday, and found a double guard posted outside the traffic manager's office; one jack stationed himself near the door, and the second was positioned near the foot of the stairs.

"Why?" Pierce asked when he saw the two guards. "Why, in God's name, why?"

In later courtroom testimony, it emerged that the South Eastern Railway management changed hands in the fall of 1854. Its new owner, Mr. Willard Perkins, was a gentleman of philanthropic bent whose concern for the lower classes was such that he introduced a policy of employing more people at all positions on the line, "in order to provide honest work for those who might otherwise be tempted into lawlessness and improvident promiscuity." The extra personnel were hired for this reason alone; the railway never suspected a robbery, and indeed Mr. Perkins was greatly shocked when his line was eventually robbed.

It is also true that at this time the South Eastern Railway was trying to build new access lines into downtown London, and this caused the displacement of many families and the destruction of their houses. Thus this philanthropic endeavor had a certain public relations aspect in the minds of the railway owners.

"No gammon on Sunday," Agar said, looking at the two guards. "Perhaps Christmas?"

Pierce shook his head. It was possible that security might be relaxed on Christmas Day, but they could not depend on that. "We need something routine," he said.

"There's nothing to be done by day"

"Yes," Pierce said. "But we don't know the full night routine. We never had an all-night watch." At night the station was deserted, and loiterers and tramps were briskly ordered off by the policemen making their rounds.

"They'll shoo away a canary," Agar said. "And perhaps collar him as well."

"I was thinking of a canary in a lurk," Pierce said. A concealed man could remain all night in the station.

"Clean Willy? "

"No," Pierce said. "Clean Willy is a mouth and a flat, without a downy bone in his body. He's glocky."

"It's true he's glocky," Agar said.

Clean Willy, dead at the time of the trial, was noted in courtroom testimony to be of "diminished faculties of reasoning"; this was reported by several witnesses. Pierce himself said, "We felt we could not trust him to do the surveillance. If he were apprehended, he would put down on us-- reveal our plans-- and never know the difference."

"Who shall we have instead?" Agar said, looking around the station.

"I was thinking of a skipper," Pierce said.

"A skipper?" Agar said, in surprise.

"Yes," Pierce said. "I think a skipper would do nicely. Do you happen to know of a bone skipper?"

"I can find one. But what's the lurk, then?"

"We'll pack him in a crate," Pierce said.

Pierce then arranged for a packing crate to be built and delivered to his residence. Agar obtained, by his own accounting, "a very reliable skipper," and arrangements were made to send the crate to the railway station.

The skipper, named Henson, was never found, nor was there much attempt to track him down; he was a very minor figure in the entire scheme, and by his very nature was somebody not worth bothering with. For the term "skipper" did not imply an occupation, but rather a way of life, and more specifically away of spending the night.

During the mid-century, London's population was growing at the rate of 20 percent per decade. The number of people in the city was increasing by more than a thousand per day, and even with massive building programs and densely crowded slums, a sizable fraction of the population lacked both shelter and the means to pay for it. Such people spent their nights outdoors, wherever the police with the dreaded bull's-eye lanterns would leave them alone. The favorite places were the so-called "Dry-Arch Hotels," meaning the arches of railway bridges, but there were other haunts: ruined buildings, shop doorways, boiler rooms, omnibus depots, empty market stalls, under hedges, any place that provided a kip. "Skippers" were people who routinely sought another kind of shelter: barns and outhouses. At this time even rather elegant households frequently lacked indoor plumbing; the outhouse was a fixture among all classes, and it was increasingly found in public places as well. The skipper would wedge himself into these narrow confines and sleep away the night.

At his trial, Agar spoke proudly of the way he had procured a reliable skipper. Most of the night people were muck-snipes or tramps, wholly down and out; skippers were a little more enterprising than most, but they were still at the bottom of the social order. And they were often soaks; no doubt their intoxication helped them tolerate their fragrant resting places.

The reason Pierce wanted a skipper, of course, was obtain someone who could tolerate cramped quarters for many hours. The man Henson was reported to have found his shipping crate "ever so wide" as he was nailed into it.

This crate was placed strategically within London Bridge Station. Through the slats, Henson was able to watch the behavior of the night guard. After the first night, the crate was hauled away; painted another color, and returned to the station again. This routine was followed three nights in succession. Then Henson reported his findings. None of the thieves was encouraged.

"The jack's solid," he told Pierce. "Regular as this very clock." He held up the stopwatch Pierce had given him to time the activities. "Comes on at seven prompt, with his little paper bag of supper. Sits on the steps, always alert, never a snooze, greeting the crusher on his rounds."

"What are the rounds?"

"First crusher works to midnight, goes every eleven minutes round the station. Sometimes he goes twelve, and once or twice thirteen minutes, but regular, it's eleven for him. Second crusher works midnight to the dawn. He's a flummut crusher, keeps to no beat but goes this way and that, popping up here and there like a jack-in-a-box, with a wary eye in all directions. And he's got himself two barkers at his belt."

"What about the jack who sits by the offce door?" Pierce said.

"Solid, like I say, ream solid. Comes at seven, chats with the first crusher-- he don't care for the second crusher, he cools him with a steady eye, he does. But the first crusher he likes, chats now and again with him, but never a stop in the crusher's rounds, just a little chat."

"Does he ever leave his place?" Pierce said.

"No," the skipper said. "He sits right there, and then he hears the bells of Saint Falsworth ringing the hour, and each time they ring he cocks his head and listens. Now at eleven o'clock, he opens his bag, and eats his tightener, always at the ringing of the clock. Now he eats for maybe ten, fifteen minutes, and he has a bottle of reeb"-- Beer-- "and then the crusher comes around again. Now the jack sits back, taking his ease, and he waits until the crusher comes once more. Now it's half past eleven or thereabouts. And then the crusher passes him by, and the jack goes to the loo."

"Then he does leave his place," Pierce said.

"Only for the pisser."

"And how long is he gone?"

"I was thinking you might want to know," Henson said, "so I clocked it proper. He's gone sixty-four seconds one night, and sixty-eight the next night, and sixty-four the third night. Always at the same time of the night, near about eleven-thirty. And he's back to his post when the guard makes the last round, quarter to midnight, and then the other crusher comes on to the beat."

"He did this every night?"

"Every night. It's the reeb does it. Reeb makes a man have a powerful urge."

"Yes," Pierce said, "beer does have that effect. Now does he leave his post at any other time?"

"Not to my eye."

"And you never slept?"

"What? When I'm sleeping here all the day through on your nice bed, here in your lodgings, and you ask if I kip the night away?"

"You must tell me the truth," Pierce said, but without any great sense of urgency.

(Agar later testified: "Pierce asks him the questions, see, but he shows no interest in the matter, he plays like a flimp or a dub buzzer, or a mutcher, no interest or importance, and this because he don't want the skipper to granny that a bone lay is afoot. Now the skipper should have done, we went to a lot of trouble on his account, and he could have put down on us to the miltonians, and for a pretty penny, too, but he hasn't the sense, otherwise why'd he be a skipper, eh?"

(This statement put the court into an uproar. When His Lordship requested an explanation, Agar said with an expression of surprise that he had just explained it as best he could. It required several minutes of interrogation to make it clear that Agar meant that Pierce had pretended to be a "flimp or dub buzzer"-- that is, a snatch-pickpocket or a low-grade thief, or a "mutcher," a man who rolled drunks-- in order to deceive the skipper, so that the skipper would not comprehend that a good criminal plan was being worked out. Agar also said that the skipper should have figured it out for himself and "put down" on them-- that is, squealed to the police-- but he lacked the sense to do so. This was only one of several instances in which incomprehensible criminal slang halted courtroom proceedings.)