Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

Then Pettingale’s story turned to the subject in which I was most interested. After making a little money from the original fraud, Phoebus Daunt developed a taste for criminality, and began to look upon himself as quite a captain of the swell mob. Having no clear idea of what he would do in the world when he had taken his degree, though he might babble to Lord Tansor about the prospect of a Fellowship, and feeling that a man of his genius needed a certain minimum amount of capital with which to establish a position in society, which he could not at that moment lay his hands on, he conceived the practical, though by no means original, notion of taking what he needed from other people. To assist him in the enterprise, he enlisted his friend and fellow fraudster Pettingale, for his legal brain, and their erstwhile companion-in-arms Josiah Pluckrose, alias Verdant, for his brawn, as well as his demonstrable skills with the jemmy and the other tools of the ken-cracker’s art. *

I own that I could not have been more astonished if Pettingale had told me that Phoebus Daunt was none other than Spring-Heeled Jack himself. †But he had even more to tell.

The extraordinary head for business, which Lord Tansor believed that he had discovered in his favourite, was in reality nothing else but a low talent for devising schemes to relieve the gullible of their money. I might have regarded this as harmless enough, for a man must live, and there are a million deserving fools in the world ready and willing to be fleeced; but when he practised his deceits on my father, who was not in the least gullible, only properly trusting of someone to whom he had shown an uncommon degree of preference, and from whom he had a right to expect loyalty and deference – then the case was very much altered. And it was all to ingratiate himself still further with his Lordship, with the object – duly attained – of insinuating himself ever more closely into the latter’s affairs.

The ‘speculations’, to which he had freely confessed to Lord Tansor, were nothing but gimcrackery; the ‘profits’ that he returned to his protector were only the proceeds of various swindles and chicaneries. Some were epic in conception: imaginary gold-mines in Peru; a projected tunnel under the Swiss Alps; proposed railway lines that were never built. Others were more modest, or were merely confidence tricks performed on the unwary.

False documents of all kinds, concocted with superlative skill and aplomb by Daunt, were their principal weapons: inventively convincing references and recommendations ascribed to men of known character and reputation; fictitious statements of assets from distinguished banking-houses and accomptants; counterfeit certificates of ownership; dexterously produced maps of non-existent tracts of land; grandiose plans for buildings that would never be built. Daunt, with help from the young lawyer Pettingale, began to attain a certain mastery of the spurious, whilst Pluckrose was retained to encourage the faint-hearted amongst those they preyed upon, and to discourage those inclined to squeal about their losses to the authorities. They chose their victims with infinite care, adopted clever disguises and aliases, hired premises, employed dupes like the unfortunate Hensby, and conducted themselves always with gravity and sobriety; and then, when all was done, they evaporated into thin air, leaving not a wrack behind.

Now I had the measure of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt indeed, and what a joy it was to have the truth revealed at last! The insolent and preening scribbler was also a deep-dyed sharp: a practised chizzler, no better than the macers on the Highway. *Mr Pettingale continued to sing out nicely. His colour had returned to its customary pastiness, and perspiration no longer stood out on his forehead. Indeed, he seemed, to my eye, to be warming to his task, and I began to sense that all was not as it once had been between the lawyer and his literary friend.

‘We don’t see each other as much as we did,’ he said at last, looking meditatively into the fire. ‘All very well, you know, when we were younger. Difficult to explain – excites the mind greatly, this sort of work. And brings home the bacon. But it started to go against the grain a bit – some of the chaps we took were quite decent sorts of fellows, wives and families, etcetera, and we left them with nothing. Anyway, I told Daunt we couldn’t go on for ever. Sooner or later we’d slip up. Didn’t fancy following Hensby on the boat *– or worse. Came to a head when that unutterable blackguard Pluckrose did for his wife. Never understood why Daunt brought him in – and told him so. Capable of anything, Pluckrose. We knew that, of course. Bit of a flare-up, I’m afraid. Words said, and all that. Gulling a flat †one thing. Topping your wife quite another. Very bad business. Worst of it was that Pluckrose got off by some piece of trickery and some other cove paid his account in full and swung for what he’d done. Clever work, that, never seen better. Sir Ephraim Gadd, briefed by Tredgolds. Anyway, truth is, I thought it was time we threw over Pluckrose once and for all and went steady. Thought Daunt would agree – in the public eye, toast of the literary world, and all that. He said I might do as I pleased, but he had only just got started, and that a new tack he was on would set him up for life.’

‘New tack?’

‘Apropos his uncle, as he called him. Lord Tansor. Powerful gent. Know the name, do you? Lost his own son, I believe, and thought he’d have Daunt instead. Very rum, but there it is. Old boy bit of a tartar, but rich as Croesus, and Daunt was comfortably situated, for he stood in a fair way to step into the old man’s shoes in the course of time. But he couldn’t wait. Thought he’d take a little bit here and there in advance. Ready cash first, slyly done, for he had Uncle Tansor’s trust, you see. Then a little judicious forging of the old boy’s signature – second nature to Daunt. Rather a genius in that way. Amazing to observe. Give him a minute and he’d produce you the signature of the Queen herself, and good enough to fool the Prince-Consort. Old boy as sharp as they come, but Daunt knew how to play him. Reeled him in nice as you like. Didn’t suspect a thing. A dangerous game though – I told him so, but nothing would move him. Old boy’s secretary got on the scent, keen old cove called Carteret. When Mr Secretary became suspicious of him, Daunt started on his new tack. We’d been working a sweet little turn, our first for some months, but Daunt went cold on it. Everything put in jeopardy. More words, I fear. Much said in anger. Not pleasant. He said he had something better.’

‘And what was it?’

‘Only this: the old boy has a very grand house in the country – been there myself. Said house in the country packed to the rafters with portable booty.’

‘Booty?’

‘Prints, porcelain, glassware, books – Daunt knew a bit about books. All cleverly and quietly done, of course, and everything now laid up safely in a repository – in case the old boy didn’t come across, he said, or against some unseen occurrence. Worth a king’s ransom.’

‘And where is this repository?’

‘Ah, if only I could tell you. He cut me out. Dissolved the partnership. Haven’t seen him these twelve months.’

I had him now, had him tight in the palm of my hand! After all these years, I had been given the means to bring him down. His box at the Opera, his house in Mecklenburgh-square, his horses, and his dinners – all paid for by the proceeds of crime! I was almost delirious with joy at the prospect of my triumph. Why, I could now destroy him at a moment’s notice; and, in the ensuing scandal, would Lord Tansor rush to his heir’s defence? I think not.

‘You’d speak out against him, of course,’ I said to Pettingale.