T.F. Banks - The Thief-Taker

With this ominous stench following him, Morton made his way through the city. It must have been close to four A.M. when he reached his destination. The streets of Spitalfields were silent at this hour, and Morton came up to the Otter House entirely alone. There were no lights in its windows.

He drew out the Bramah key that he still had in his pocket, and steeled himself. His hand went almost automatically to his waistband for his baton-and he remembered that he was no longer a Bow Street Runner. His best weapon, his authority, had been taken from him. Taken by George Vaughan.

Was Vaughan inside? Morton felt his anger rise. Well, that was good, because anger was all he had.

The Bramah slipped into the circular hole and moved easily in its wards. Murmuring a word of gratitude to the workmanship of Valentine Rudd, Morton drew the door closed behind him and stood in the pitch dark of the landing, trying to call to mind the exact layout of the place. Then, feeling ahead with one foot, he carefully made his way down the short flight of steps and located the stone arch that led into the main drinking room. From within, he could hear the rasping exhalation of a sleeping man.

A small tin lamp flickered on one of the tables, dully illuminating the familiar confines of the room, and a dark shape lying on the bench along the wall. It was the publican Joshua, his head pillowed on what looked like a rolled-up coat. Morton scraped a chair up to the lamplit table and the man on the bench raised his head and gaped at him.

“Bill… ?”

“Nay,” replied Henry Morton curtly, lighting a che-root from the guttering lamp. “You'll talk to me now, Joshua.”

“I'll be talking to a dead man” was the muttered reply.

Morton gazed at the other's haggard face in the unsteady lamplight. “I think you're not so corrupt a man as the place you're in,” he said, after pulling long on his cigar.

“What sort of man I am is nothing to you.”

“Oh, it is something to me. Something indeed. Is George Vaughan upstairs, Joshua? Is Bill?”

Joshua looked as though he would not answer, but then he shook his head indifferently and laid it back on the bench, staring up at the ceiling. “What do you want of me?”

Morton had half a mind to seize the barkeep and shake the truth from him. But he'd seen men like Joshua before-not large or strong enough to force their way in this world, but inured to physical threats and violence, here, where they were the commonest coin of every transaction.

“I can set you free of this place,” Morton said.

“And make a nightingale of me? I'm not much of a singer, Morton. And besides, I heard what happened to that cull you nabbed in Leadenhall Street. Someone set him free, now, didn't they?”

Morton stopped as he was about to draw on his cigar. “It won't be happening again.”

Joshua shook his head wearily. “George Vaughan played you for a fool once, Morton. I'll not wager he can't do it again. It's a dim cully as bets against our Mr. Vaughan.”

Morton could feel an edge of panic welling up, but he drew on his cheroot, trying to steady himself. He knew what happened to men who lost their nerve in this world. “You taught letters to that little kinchin, Lucy,” he said.

A surprised pause.

“Small need to teach that one anything,” the barman finally replied. “Wot of it?”

“You're her protector in here, aren't you, Joshua? And you've never laid a hand on her, have you? You've never laid a hand on any of the little ones.”

Joshua muttered something under his breath. “… not for me” was all that Morton could make out.

“I could set them all free. All the sad little girls Vaughan is bringing to ruin in this house. Would that bring about a change of heart, Joshua?”

“Heart? He has no heart who labours in such a house as this.” He said it savagely.

“Oh, you have a heart,” Morton said. “It's beating in you yet. You know what goes on here. Vaughan had that young swell, Glendinning, poisoned. He arranged for the Smeetons to thieve that shop and then had them caught in the act. He hid the Elgin booty in my rooms so that I'd be arrested for theft. Theft over fifteen shillings, Joshua. That's a hanging offence.”

“Aye,” grunted Joshua after a moment. “A horney should know, shouldn't he?”

“So you know I'm in earnest. You can ask what you want of me, and I'll give it you.”

“You'll say so, that's sure enough,” muttered Joshua.

But there was concession in his voice. A long pause. Morton waited. He could not tell what Joshua was thinking, whether he would give another contemptuous refusal, or something else. Finally the Otter's barman spoke again.

“What would happen to Lucy and the others if you got them away?”

“To the others? An orphanage, I should think. Better than what they have here. Lucy? I think something better could be arranged for her. A home. What about you, Joshua? Would you like to set up somewhere else-in some other town-and raise a daughter?”

Morton could feel the pull of this on the other man. Feel it in his hesitation. “Nay,” he said finally, “it's not for me to do. Girl needs a mother… and a father who can provide.”

“We'll find you an honest trade, I swear. Will you do it? Will you go before the Magistrates and tell them what you know about George Vaughan and his foul enterprises?”

But then the smallest sound alerted Morton. A key was turning in the lock.

Joshua's eyes met Morton's: a look of pure hopelessness.

“Is there another way out?”

“Not for you,” said Joshua.

Henry Morton threw aside his cheroot and leapt up, snatching the chair by its back as he did. He stepped to the door, raising his improvised weapon. When the first man stepped through the shadows of the archway Morton brought the wood down hard, splitting it in two and sending his foe abruptly to the floor. The man started to scramble up, but Morton kicked him fiercely on the side of the head, making him collapse again.

But the newcomer wasn't alone.

“It is the horney!” a voice shouted, and a second, larger figure bulled in under the arch and struck the Runner hard in the chest, driving him stumbling back. As Morton regained his balance he found himself face to face with the burly man he had seen on his first visit. Bill.

Several other men crowded in behind and Henry Morton saw that Joshua had been right. He was trapped.

Vaughan was not amongst them.

“Hear me,” Morton gasped out. “It's your master we want to see swing. It's George Vaughan, not you. Give evidence, and we'll let you be.”

Bill was pulling a short silver cutlass from a sheath concealed in his canvas trousers. The other men held knives or cudgels. Bill looked over at Joshua, who sat motionless, his head bent, eyes on the floor.

“Did he ask you to do the same, Joshua, me boy? Did he sing you the same sweet song?”

“Aye,” muttered Joshua, “but I told him I don't make deals with dead men.”

Bill eyed him a second more. “Nor do I,” he said. And with that Bill lunged at Morton with his blade.

Morton leapt aside, lashing out with his foot. The other man stumbled and tripped. Morton found himself circling behind the little table, which bore the only lamp in the room. Before he'd even thought it through, he knocked them both over. The lamp bounced off the bench and hit the wall; the flame instantly snuffed out, leaving them in utter darkness.

There was a little volley of startled shouts. Then Bill's voice, low and angry. “Guard the door, don't let him out!”

Morton had dropped to his knees and could hear in the air close above the whistle of Bill's weapon, cutting blindly out for him, but passing over his head. Scrambling crablike backward and to one side, Morton desperately got away from him in the dark.