“Fifty-one… fifty-two… fifty-three…”
He drew out a fresh blank and did the second side again.
“Fifty-four… fifty-five…”
He plucked the key out, hung it up, and dashed for the door, still holding the final blank in his fingers. He left the office without another look at Willy.
“Fifty-six,” Willy said, immediately moving to the door to lock it up.
Pierce saw Agar exit, behind schedule by five full seconds. His face was flushed with exertion.
“Fifty-seven… fifty-eight…”
Agar sprinted down the stairs, three at a time.
“Fifty-nine… sixty… sixty-one…”
Agar streaked across the station to his hiding place.
“Sixty-two… sixty-three…”
Agar was hidden.
The guard, yawning, came around the corner, still buttoning up his trousers. He walked toward the steps.
“Sixty-four,” Pierce said, and flicked his watch.
The guard took up his post at the stairs. After a moment, he began humming to himself, very softly, and it was awhile until Pierce realized it was “Molly Malone.”
Chapter 26
Crossing the Mary Blaine Scrob
“The distinction between base avarice and honest ambition may be exceeding fine,” warned the Reverend Noel Blackwell in his 1853 treatise, On the Moral Improvement of the Human Race. No one knew the truth of his words better than Pierce, who arranged his next meeting at the Casino de Venise, on Windmill Street. This was a large and lively dance hall, brightly lit by myriad gas lamps. Young men spun and wheeled girls colorfully dressed and gay in their manner. Indeed, the total impression was one of fashionable splendor, which belied a reputation as a wicked and notorious place of assignation for whores and their clientele.
Pierce went directly to the bar, where a burly man in a blue uniform with silver lapel markings sat hunched over a drink. The man appeared distinctly uncomfortable in the casino. “Have you been here before?” Pierce asked.
The man turned. “You Mr. Simms?”
“That’s right.”
The burly man looked around the room, at the women, the finery, the bright lights. “No,” he said, “never been before.”
“Lively, don’t you think?”
The man shrugged. “Bit above me,” he said finally, and turned back to stare at his glass.
“And expensive,” Pierce said.
The man raised his drink. “Two shillings a daffy? Aye, it’s expensive.”
“Let me buy you another,” Pierce said, raising a gray-gloved hand to beckon the bartender. “Where do you live, Mr. Burgess?”
“I got a room on Moresby Road,” the burly man said.
“I hear the air is bad there:”
Burgess shrugged. “It’ll do.”
“You married?”
“Aye.”
The bartender came, and Pierce indicated two more drinks. “What’s your wife do?”
“She sews.” Burgess showed a flash of impatience. “What’s this all about, then?”
“Just a little conversation,” Pierce said, “to see if you want to make more money.”
“Only a fool doesn’t,” Burgess said shortly.
“You work the Mary Blaine,” Pierce said.
Burgess, with still more impatience, nodded and flicked the silver SER letters on his collar: the insignia of the South Eastern Railway.
Pierce was not asking these questions to obtain information; he already knew a good deal about Richard Burgess, a Mary Blaine scrob, or guard on the railway. He knew where Burgess lived; he knew what his wife did; he knew that they had two children, aged two and four, and he knew that the four-year-old was sickly and needed the frequent attentions of a doctor, which Burgess and his wife could not afford. He knew that their room on Moresby Road was a sgualid, peeling, narrow chamber that was ventilated by the sulfurous fumes of an adjacent gasworks.
He knew that Burgess fell into the lowest-paid category of railway employee. An engine driver was paid 35 shillings a week; a conductor 25 shillings; a coachman 20 or 21; but a guard was paid 15 shillings a week and counted himself lucky it was not a good deal less.
Burgess’s wife made ten shillings a week, which meant that the family lived on a total of about sixty-five pounds a year. Out of this came certain expenses— Burgess had to provide his own uniforms— so that the true income was probably closer to fifty-five pounds a year, and for a family of four it was a very rough go.