Freed of the coat, he was able to make more rapid progress down the second-class coaches; he jumped from one to the next with increasing assurance, and eventually reached the luggage van after a period of time he could not estimate. It seemed an eternity, but he later concluded it had not required more than five or ten minutes.
Once atop the van, he gripped an open slapper, and uncoiled his length of hemp. One end was dropped down the slapper, and after a moment he felt a tug as Agar, inside the van, picked it up.
Pierce turned and moved to the second slapper. He waited there, his body curled tight against the constant, unyielding blast of the wind, and then a ghastly green hand— Agar’s— reached out, holding the end of the rope. Pierce took it; Agar’s hand disappeared from view.
Pierce now had his rope slung from one slapper to the next. He tied the loose ends about his belt, and then, hanging on the ropes, eased himself over the side of the van until he was level with the padlock.
In that manner he hung suspended for several minutes while he twirled the padlock with a ring of picks, trying one betty after another and operating, as he later testified with considerable understatement, “with that degree of delicacy which circumstances permitted.” Altogether, he tried more than a dozen keys, and he was beginning to despair that any would turn the trick when he heard the scream of the whistle.
Looking forward, he saw the Cuckseys tunnel, and an instant later he was plunged into blackness and churning sound. The tunnel was half a mile long; there was nothing to do but wait. When the train burst into sunlight again, he continued working with the keys, and was gratified when almost immediately one of the picks clicked smoothly in the mechanism. The padlock snapped open.
Now it was a simple matter to remove the lock, swing the crossbar free, and kick the door with his feet until Burgess slid it open. The morning train passed the sleepy town of Godstone, but no one noticed the man dangling on the rope, who now eased down into the interior of the luggage van and collapsed on the floor in absolute exhaustion.
Chapter 44
A Problem of Dunnage
Agar testified that in the first moment that Pierce landed inside the luggage van, neither he nor Burgess recognized him: “I cool him first, and I swear I granny he’s some muck Indian or nigger, so black he is, and his dunnage torn all about, like he’d gone a proper dewskitch”— as if he’d had a thorough thrashing. “His min’s a rag of tatters, and black as all the rest of him, and I says, the cracksman’s hired a new bloke to do the lay. And then I see it’s him himself, right enough.”
Surely the three men must have presented a bizarre picture: Burgess, the guard, neat and tidy in his blue railway uniform; Agar, dressed splendidly in a formal suit, his face and hands a cadaverous bloated green; and Pierce, sagged to his hands and knees, his clothing shredded and sooty black from head to foot.
But they all recovered quickly, and worked with swift efficiency. Agar had completed the switch; the safes were locked up again, with their new treasure of lead shot; the five leather satchels stood by the van door in a neat row, each laden with gold bullion.
Pierce got to his feet and took his watch from his waistcoat, an incongruously clean gold object at the end of a soot black chain. He snapped it open: it was 8:37.
“Five minutes,” he said.
Agar nodded. In five minutes, they would pass the most deserted stretch of track, where Pierce had arranged for Barlow to wait and pick up the flung satchels. Pierce sat down and stared through the open van door at the countryside rushing past.
“Are you well, then?” Agar asked.
“Well enough,” Pierce said. “But I don’t cherish going back.”
“Aye, it’s frazzled you proper,” Agar said. “You’re a sight and no mistake. Will you change when you’re snug in the compartment again?”
Pierce, breathing heavily, was slow to comprehend the meaning of the words. “Change?”