T.F. Banks: The Thief-Taker

George Vaughan shook his head. “You be on your guard, Mr. Morton, if you think you have reason,” he said. “I have none.”

Jimmy Presley came up beside Morton as he stood at the little writing-stand in the Public Office antechamber, drafting his note to Lord Arthur Darley.

“So,” the younger man said with an effort at carelessness, “Mr. Vaughan tells me that every fumbler who meets the hangman claims his innocence and blames us.”

“Well, Jimmy, that's not precisely true,” responded Henry Morton sympathetically, setting down his quill and reaching for the blotter. Presley stared in a distracted way out the latticed window onto Bow Street.

“They're always innocent when they're in the dock at the Old Bailey, of course. But by the time they come out the debtors' door, it's often a different matter. I've only heard of accusations like Smeeton's once or twice before.”

“But now the people believe they really were. Innocent.”

The great roar of disapproval and anger came back into Morton's ears, the heated words flung out, the red faces of the men surging against the barricade below the scaffold. He looked thoughtfully at his young colleague for a moment, and then went back to his writing.

“Ah, well, Jimmy,” he remarked evenly. “Maybe George Vaughan's right. A man's not for this calling if he gives a fig what ‘the rabble’ believe.”

But the young man looked distinctly unhappy anyway, so Morton went on.

“You and Vaughan had the Smeetons dead cold to rights. They were seen on the premises the day before the robbery, looking it over. They turned up at the place right on time in the middle of the night, jemmy and skeleton keys to hand, and they used them. As neat and tight a case as you'll get in a year.”

“Then why didn't the people see that… that there was nothing else to be done?” Presley couldn't quite name the thing he had so recently had a part in bringing to pass.

“The people, as you style them, really aren't very fond of us, Jimmy, let's be plain about that. They don't like the police system, and they especially don't like the Bow Street Runners.” Morton smiled a little. “They'd rather live in a green and pleasant England where the constables are all unpaid, and where stout yeomen seize upon malefactors and are only incidentally rewarded for their efforts. Unexpectedly, as it were, and all the while blushing and pulling their forelock and saying they'd have done it anyway, m'lord, reward or no. I can't really blame them. I'd like to live in an England like that, too. Better still, why not an England where there are no thieves like the Smeetons? No murderers. No whores or vagrants. And no need for police, either.”

Presley grimaced, and slapped his newly acquired baton restlessly against his gloved hand, saying nothing.

“I've noticed that people don't mind when the navy men get their bounty for the French ships they capture,” Morton went on. “They're heroes. But when a Bow Street man gets his pittance for gaining the conviction of a proven criminal, that's ‘blood money.’ How often have you heard it said that we'll chase a man into the City and nab him there where the rewards are greater? Some days I think there's more sympathy out there for the flash crowd, Jimmy, than there is for you and me- until a man gets robbed. Then he'll speak to us a little more respectfully-at least for a day or two.” Morton stopped. His resentment on this subject was like to get out of hand, and Presley didn't look as though he were listening.

“But, Morton, there was just something about the way…” It came out in a little rush, and then the young man paused, as if suddenly aware of the implications of what he was saying. “About the way we caught 'em,” he finished, very low.

Morton felt a slight tickle run down his spine, and he turned to look hard at his companion.

“It was just so… neat, how we knew exactly,” Presley murmured. “Exactly where and when to find them, and exactly what they were going to steal.”

“Your peacher told you all that, didn't he? Where would we be without our informants?”

And of course, those informants got paid, too.

“He wasn't my peacher,” confessed Presley unhappily. “I'd never met him before that night, I mean, the night when you and I nabbed the Smeetons. In fact, I've never met him, ever.”

Morton stared. If Jimmy Presley hadn't helped develop the information that led to the arrest, he didn't deserve any more of the credit-or the reward money- than Morton himself did. But Presley and George Vaughan had received seventy pounds each. Morton was given only twenty, for participating in the final arrest.

“Vaughan let them believe I was part of it, so that I would get the appointment to be a Runner. He and I were friendly-like, when I was in the Worship Street Patrole, and he said he wanted to have me as his brother officer. He told me, after, what to testify.”

Morton considered carefully. As his own role in the matter had been limited, he had not attended much of the Smeetons' trial. He had never heard the testimony of the two other Runners on the subject of their informant. But, really, the informant was hardly crucial; the panel, for example, was unlikely to insist that his or her identity be revealed. The Smeetons had already broken into the draper's shop when he and Presley moved in. Someone had betrayed them, sure enough, but that was as common as theft itself in this city. It was their bad luck that they couldn't trust their underworld friends, and that the owners of the shop they'd chosen to burgle belonged to a prosecution society, so that the rewards offered were substantial enough to make it worth extra effort on the part of an officer like Vaughan.

“George Vaughan just told me he had this peacher,” Presley went on in a numb voice, “and he told me where and when I was to show up and arrest them.”

“Well, that's normal enough, Jimmy. But you're mad to testify to something-anything-in a law court that you don't know to be true yourself. They'll give you a rope of your own for that.”

Presley nodded miserably. “Aye, aye. But it was just to be this one time, so that I would get the appointment.”

“Well, in any case,” Morton's voice relaxed, “the information Vaughan gave you was correct. He wanted you to have the chance to perform the arrest, and I happened to be in the Office that evening, so we did it together.”

“Nay, not exactly.” And Presley, looking wretched, seemed to turn a shade paler. “You see, Morton, hearing what that cull said…up there, has made me turn it all over in my mind again.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“I asked George Vaughan to come with me, to make the arrest. Two officers, you need two officers. Isn't that normal?”

Morton nodded, watching him steadily.

“But George Vaughan didn't want to do it. He says, ‘No, you go by Bow Street before and get Sir Galahad there, and take him.’”

“Sir Galahad,” murmured Morton bleakly.

“You, Morton. I suppose you know that's what he calls you. And he knew you were at Bow Street. Then he says, in a voice as if he wasn't talking directly to me, or really, as if he didn't care if I heard, he says, ‘They'll never doubt him .’”

“And what,” said Morton, rather coldly now, leaning back and regarding him, “did you think that meant, Jimmy?”

Presley avoided his gaze, and looked again out the window. “Some sort of a joke between you, I suppose,” he muttered. “That's what I thought then.”

“And what do you think now?”

“I don't know.”

They both stood silent, rapt in very different trains of thought. Henry Morton was remembering the night of the Smeetons' arrest. Why indeed had he been at Bow Street? Was it not some tip, now that he thought on it, that Vaughan had casually given him? The chance of a rich piece of work from some wealthy barrister, who was supposed to be coming to the Office to hire a Runner? The barrister had never appeared, but the Smeeton matter had turned up instead, to the solid benefit of his pocket. Morton saw now that something he had been avoiding, something he had not even really admitted to himself he was trying to avoid, was in a fair way to becoming unavoidable.