“Then he does leave his place,” Pierce said.
“Only for the pisser.”
“And how long is he gone?”
“I was thinking you might want to know,” Henson said, “so I clocked it proper. He’s gone sixty-four seconds one night, and sixty-eight the next night, and sixty-four the third night. Always at the same time of the night, near about eleven-thirty. And he’s back to his post when the guard makes the last round, quarter to midnight, and then the other crusher comes on to the beat.”
“He did this every night?”
“Every night. It’s the reeb does it. Reeb makes a man have a powerful urge.”
“Yes,” Pierce said, “beer does have that effect. Now does he leave his post at any other time?”
“Not to my eye.”
“And you never slept?”
“What? When I’m sleeping here all the day through on your nice bed, here in your lodgings, and you ask if I kip the night away?”
“You must tell me the truth,” Pierce said, but without any great sense of urgency.
(Agar later testified: “Pierce asks him the questions, see, but he shows no interest in the matter, he plays like a flimp or a dub buzzer, or a mutcher, no interest or importance, and this because he don’t want the skipper to granny that a bone lay is afoot. Now the skipper should have done, we went to a lot of trouble on his account, and he could have put down on us to the miltonians, and for a pretty penny, too, but he hasn’t the sense, otherwise why’d he be a skipper, eh?”
(This statement put the court into an uproar. When His Lordship requested an explanation, Agar said with an expression of surprise that he had just explained it as best he could. It required several minutes of interrogation to make it clear that Agar meant that Pierce had pretended to be a “flimp or dub buzzer”— that is, a snatch-pickpocket or a low-grade thief, or a “mutcher,” a man who rolled drunks— in order to deceive the skipper, so that the skipper would not comprehend that a good criminal plan was being worked out. Agar also said that the skipper should have figured it out for himself and “put down” on them— that is, squealed to the police— but he lacked the sense to do so. This was only one of several instances in which incomprehensible criminal slang halted courtroom proceedings.)
“I swear, Mr. Pierce,” the skipper said. “I swear I never slept a bit.”
“And the jack never left except that one time each night?”
“Aye, and every night the same. He’s regular as this jerry”— he held up his stopwatch— “that jack is.”
Pierce thanked the skipper, paid him a half-crown for his troubles, allowed himself to be whined and cajoled into paying an additional half-crown, and sent the man on his way. As the door closed on the skipper, Pierce told Barlow to “worry” the man; Barlow, nodded and left the house by another exit
When Pierce returned to Agar, he said, “Well? Is it a coopered ken?”
“Sixty-four seconds,” Agar said, shaking his head. “That’s not your kinchin lay”— not exactly robbing children.
“I never said it was,” Pierce said. “But you keep telling me you’re the best screwsman in the country, and here’s a fitting challenge for your talents: is it a coopered ken?”
“Maybe,” Agar said. “I got to practice the lay. And I need to cool it close up. Can we pay a visit?”
“Certainly,” Pierce said.
Chapter 21
An Audacious Act
“Of recent weeks,” wrote the Illustrated London News on December 21, 1854, “the incidence of bold and brutal street banditry has reached alarming proportions, particularly of an evening. It would appear that the faith Mr. Wilson placed in street gas lighting as a deterrent to blackguard acts has been unjustified, for the villains are ever bolder, preying upon an unsuspecting populace with the utmost audacity. Only yesterday a constable, Peter Farrell, was lured into an alley, whereupon a band of common thugs fell upon him, beating him and taking all of his possessions and even his very uniform. Nor must we forget that just a fortnight past, Mr. Parkington, M.P., was viciously assaulted in an open, well-lighted place while walking from Parliament to his club. This epidemic of garrotting must receive the prompt attention of authorities in the near future.”