T.F. Banks: The Thief-Taker

The crowd was hushed as well. This was one of the reasons they came-to hear what the condemned would say, though often they were disappointed and the criminals uttered not a word, or were too distraught to speak. But Caleb Smeeton had a kind of guileless loquacity, and even Morton found himself listening without his usual scepticism.

“A fool they took me for!” Smeeton went on. His head dropped a little. “And a fool I was. But not so simple as I can't see now what was done to me. My so-called friends were closer to Bow Street than to me-” One of the warders had come forward and took hold of the man's arm. As he was pulled back, Smeeton raised his voice for the first time. “Well, take pleasure in your forty pounds, George Vaughan!” he shouted. “And you, lily-white Henry Morton! You murder a virtuous woman today! You too, Jimmy Presley, you murdering bastard!”

Morton felt Presley flinch beside him, and heard both their names called out in fury on all sides, mixed in with cries of rage against the hangman and the judges, and, over and over, against the despised Runners from Bow Street. The noose was dropped over Smeeton's head and the crowd boiled in indignation, cursing and shoving the constables who held them back from the gallows. Morton and Presley were pushed and jostled this way and that, as though they stood in a surging surf.

White hoods were drawn over the heads of man and wife; the nooses inspected a final time. The woman collapsed suddenly, her knees giving way, and she was suspended by her neck a moment, before the warders pulled her up. But she was only on her feet an instant before the traps were sprung, and the two figures fell. And hung, silently, side by side.

Presley stood mute, staring raptly at the slowly spinning bodies. It was long over. Morton reached out and tugged his coat sleeve.

“Come along, Jimmy,” he said softly, feeling, himself, both sorrow and guilt.

Half-reluctantly, the young man turned away, and they pushed through the crowd, which was suddenly abuzz with chatter, and even laughter. But neither Morton nor Presley shared in this odd sense of release.

They went quite a distance before a hackney-coach presented itself. Morton quietly gave the driver the address of the Bow Street Magistrate's Court, not wanting anyone in the crowd to hear.

The two Runners settled themselves into the poorly padded seats, not saying a word. Morton wondered if Presley was cursing him silently. The young man had pulled his baton from his belt and now sat with it across his knees staring at it quietly.

The older Runner tried to recall what he'd felt toward Townsend the morning they had made this same journey. He'd not felt anger, that was certain, but then he'd respected Townsend enormously, and still did. He wasn't quite sure that Presley held him in the same regard.

The boy had to see it, Morton told himself. This was how the criminal classes were kept in check. And how the Bow Street Runners made their living-from rewards for convictions. And some of those convictions led to hangings-too many, some thought. Not near enough, others insisted.

Presley leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He remained like that for some time, his big hands rising to cover his face a moment, and then falling away.

“It's an ugly business, Jimmy,” Morton said solicitously.

“Aye. There they were alive one minute, and dead the next. Limp as rags…”

“I was talking about our business: thief-taking.”

Presley reached back and knocked on the small sliding door that separated them from the driver. “I'll step down here!” he called out, and then to Morton, “I'll walk the rest of the way.”

At the Bow Street Magistrate's Court Morton began asking around to discover who had interrupted Glendinning's duel, and was surprised to learn it had been Presley, accompanied by George Vaughan.

Morton found the two Runners with their faces buried in copies of Hue and Cry and The Morning Chronicle . As he dropped his gilt-topped baton into the umbrella rack beside theirs, the two looked up and nodded.

“ 'Tis a leisured life these Runners live,” Morton said.

Vaughan dropped his eyes to his reading again. “Don't go spreading it abroad, Mr. Morton. We'll have the gentry in here wanting our places.”

“Isn't that the truth, Mr. Vaughan. The envy of the world, we are.” Morton sank into a chair and picked up a Hue and Cry .

“I hear you took our Mr. Presley out to see a necktie party,” Vaughan said from behind his paper blind.

Morton did not respond.

“There's a pair won't be stealing away the living of hard-working shopkeepers,” Vaughan went on.

Presley kept his face hidden behind his sheaf of paper.

“No, they won't be doing that,” Morton agreed, and glanced at the first page of his own journal. “I hear I missed a show yester morning out on Wormwood Scrubs…?”

Presley let forth a small, forced laugh, looking over at Vaughan, who continued to flip through his paper. “A bit of target practice, was all. Pair o' cullies, though. Couldn't hit the stable door if their lives depended on it! And it cost them dear, didn't it, that little stroll on the grass!” He laughed again, but it sounded forced and artificial. Morton wondered what Vaughan had been saying to the young man.

“Did it?” asked Morton. He had no opportunity to say more, however, as the side door opened and the Chief Magistrate, Sir Nathaniel Conant, strode in, followed by his clerk and several helpers. The early session of Bow Street Police Court had just gone into recess.

But the “beak” wanted to know about the duel, too.

George Vaughan was smoothly reassuring. “No blood spilt, my lord, and no harm done. Mr. Presley and I were on 'em before they'd taken up the matter in earnest.”

Sir Nathaniel Conant leveled a hard gaze at the veteran Runner, but the latter met his eye steadily. “I am informed, Mr. Vaughan, that shots were fired.”

“Well, sir, if so, it must have happened before we arrived, which I can hardly credit.”

The Magistrate scowled as he lowered himself into his seat behind the polished satinwood writing-table, a massive man hunched over a delicate stick of furniture.

“How did you know of it?” he demanded.

“Mr. Presley received a tidy little warning,” Vaughan said. “An abigail came by-”

“Who?”

“A lady's maid, my lord. And Mr. Presley took charge of the matter, promptly found me, and was good enough to carry me up to the Scrubs with him. Most commendably direct, he was.”

“Who was she?”

Morton caught just a flicker of a glance from Presley to Vaughan before both men shrugged.

“Didn't say,” answered Presley. “Nor named who sent her, neither.”

“And the principals in this affair were…?” Sir Nathaniel looked from one Runner to the next. “Morton? Were you part of this?”

“Nay,” said Henry Morton. “I was in Whitechapel all morning.”

“Mr. Vaughan?”

“A Mr. Halbert Glendinning,” said Vaughan. “Up against our Colonel Rokeby. Seconds: for Glendinning, a Mr. Hamilton. For Rokeby, his toady-man Pierce, as ever.”

While they spoke, Sir Nathaniel's factotums busied themselves about the chamber. Briefs and order papers were stacked in the cabinets lining the wall behind the Magistrate; the wig was lifted discreetly from his head; a goblet of Madeira was decanted and placed comfortably to hand on the table.

He sipped his wine. “This bloody man Rokeby's killed five times; isn't that what's said?”

Morton noticed a look of considerable surprise pass over young Presley's face at this. But then he swiftly composed himself again.

“At least.” Morton himself quietly answered the question.