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Pierce stepped to the window and looked down at the crowd, which gathered size with each passing minute. The square was dark, lit only by the glare of torches around the scaffolding; by that hot, baleful light he could see the crossbar and trap taking shape.
“Never make it,” Agar said behind him.
Pierce turned. “He has to make it, laddie.”
“He’s the best snakesman in the business, the best anybody ever heard speak of, but he can’t get out of there,” Agar said, jerking his thumb toward Newgate Prison.
The second man now spoke. The second man was Barlow, a stocky, rugged man with a white knife scar across his forehead, which he usually concealed beneath the brim of his hat. Barlow was a reformed buzzer turned rampsman— a pickpocket who had degenerated to plain mugging— whom Pierce had hired, some years back, as a buck cabby. All rampsmen were thugs at heart, and that was precisely what a cracksman like Pierce wanted for a buck cabby, a man holding the reins to the cab, ready to make the getaway— or ready for a bit of a shindy, if it came to that. And Barlow was loyal; he had worked for Pierce for nearly five years now.
Barlow frowned and said, “If it can be done, he’ll do it. Clean Willy can do it if it can be done.” He spoke slowly, and gave the impression of a man who formed his thoughts with slowness. Pierce knew he could be quick in action, however.
Pierce looked at the women. They were the mistresses of Agar and Barlow, which meant they were also their accomplices. He did not know their names and he did not want to know. He regretted the very idea that they must be present at this occasion— in five years, he had never seen Barlow’s woman— but there was no way to avoid it. Barlow’s woman was an obvious soak; you could smell the gin breath across the room. Agar’s woman was little better, but at least she was sober.
“Did you bring the trimmings?” Pierce asked.
Agar’s woman opened a picnic basket. In it, he saw a sponge, medicinal powders, and bandages. There was also a carefully folded dress. “All I was told, sir.”
“The dress is small?”
“Aye, sir. Barely more’n a child’s frock, sir.”
“Well enough,” Pierce said, and turned back to look at the square once more. He paid no attention to the gallows or the swelling crowd. Instead he stared at the walls of Newgate Prison.
“Here’s the supper, sir,” said Barlow’s woman. Pierce looked back at the supplies of cold fowl, jars of pickled onion, lobster claws, and a packet of dark cigars.
“Very food, very good,” he said.
Agar said, “Are you playing the noble, sir?” This was a reference to a well-known magsman’s con. It was said sarcastically, and Agar later testified that Pierce didn’t care for the comment. He turned back with his long coat open at the waist to reveal a revolver jammed into the waistband of his trousers.
“If any of you steps aside,” he said, “you’ll have a barker up your nose, and I’ll see you in lavender.” He smiled thinly. “There are worse things, you know, than transportation to Australia.”
“No offense,” Agar said, looking at the gun. “No offense at all, no offense— it was only in the manner of a joke.”
Barlow said, “Why’d we need a snakesman?”
Pierce was not sidetracked. “Bear my words carefully,” he said. “Any of you steps aside and you’ll stop a shot before you can say Jack Robin. I mean every word.” He sat down at the table. “Now then,” he said, “I’ll have a leg of that chicken, and we shall disport ourselves as best we can while we wait.”
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Pierce slept part of the night; he was awakened at daybreak by the crowd that jammed the square below. The crowd had now swollen to more than fifteen thousand noisy, rough people, and Pierce knew that the streets would be filled with ten or fifteen thousand more, making their way to see the hanging on their route to work. Employers hardly bothered to keep up a pretense of strictness on any Monday morning when there was a hanging; it was an accepted fact that everybody would be late to work, and especially today, with a woman to be hanged.