The Great Train Robbery - Crichton Michael (книги без регистрации .TXT) 📗

"What else?" Harranby said.

"That's the lot," Bill said.

There was a long silence. Finally Harranby said, "What do you make of this, Bill?"

"It's a flash pull and no mistake. He's no muck-snipe, this gent, but a hykey bloke who knows his business."

Harranby tugged at an earlobe, a nervous habit. "What in Greenwich has the makings of a proper flash pull?"

"Damn me if I know," Chokee Bill said.

"What have you heard?" Harranby said.

"I keep my lills to the ground, but I heard nothing of a pull in Greenwich, I swear."

Harranby paused. "There's another guinea. in it for you if you can say."

A fleeting look of agony passed across Chokee Bill's face. "I wish I could be helping you, sir, but I heard nothing. It's God's own truth, sir."

"I'm sure it is," Harranby said. He waited awhile longer, and finally dismissed the pawnbroker, who snatched up the guinea and departed.

When Harranby was alone with Sharp, he said again, "What's in Greenwich?"

"Damn me if I know," Sharp said.

"You want a gold guinea, too?"

Sharp said nothing. He was accustomed to Harranby's sour moods; there was nothing to do except ride them out. He sat in the corner and watched his superior light a cigarette and puff on it reflectively. Sharp regarded cigarettes as silly, insubstantial little things. They had been introduced the year before by a London shopkeeper, and were mostly favored by troops returning from the Crimea. Sharp himself liked a good cigar, and nothing less.

"Now, then," Harranby said. "Let us begin from the beginning. We know this fellow Simms has been working for months on something, and we can assume he's clever."

Sharp nodded.

"The snakesman was killed yesterday. Does that mean they know we're on the stalk?"

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps, perhaps," Harranby said irritably. "Perhaps is not enough. We must decide, and we must do so according to principles of deductive logic. Guesswork has no place in our thinking. Let us stick to the facts of the matter, and follow them wherever they lead. Now, then, what else do we know?"

The question was rhetorical, and Sharp said nothing.

"We know," Harranby said, "that, this fellow Simms, after months of preparation, suddenly finds himself, on the eve of his big pull, in desperate need of five barkers. He has had months to obtain them quietly, one at a time, creating no stir. But he postpones it to the last minute. Why?"

"You think he's playing us for a pigeon?"

"We must entertain the thought, however distasteful," Harranby said. "Is it well known that Bill's a nose?"

"Perhaps."

"Damn your perhapses. Is it known or not?"

"Surely there are suspicions about!'

"Indeed," Harranby said. "And yet our clever Mr. Simms chooses this very person to arrange for his five barkers. I say it smells of a fakement " He stared moodily at the glowing tip of his cigarette. "This Mr. Simms is deliberately leading us astray, and we must not follow."

"I am sure you are right," Sharp said, hoping his boss's disposition would improve.

"Without question," Harranby said. "We are being led a merry chase."

There was a long pause. Harranby drummed his fingers on the desk. "I don't like it. We are being too clever. We're giving this Simms fellow too much credit. We must assume he is really planning on Greenwich. But what in the name of God is there in Greenwich to steal?"

Sharp shook his head. Greenwich was a seaport town, but it had not grown as rapidly as the larger ports of England. It was chiefly known for its naval observatory, which 'maintained the standard of time-- Greenwich Mean Time-- for the nautical world.

Harranby began opening drawers in his desk, rummaging. "Where is the damned thing?"

"What, sir?"

"The schedule, the schedule," Harranby said. "Ah, here it is." He brought out a small printed folder. "London amp; Greenwich Railway… Thursdays… Ah. Thursdays there is a train leaving London Bridge Terminus for Greenwich at eleven-fifteen in the morning. Now, what does that suggest?"

Sharp looked suddenly bright-eyed. "Our man wants his guns by ten, so that he will have time to get to the station and make the train."

"Precisely," Harranby said. "All logic points to the fact that he is, indeed, going to Greenwich on Thursday. And we also know he cannot go later than Thursday."

Sharp said, "What about the guns? Buying five at once."

"Well, now," Harranby said, warming to his subject, "you see, by a process of deduction we can conclude that his need for the guns is genuine, and his postponing the purchase to the last minute-- on the surface, a most suspicious business-- springs from some logical situation. One can surmise several. His plans for obtaining the guns by other means may have been thwarted. Or perhaps he regards the purchase of guns as dangerous-- which is certainly the case; everyone knows we pay well for information about who is buying barkers-- so he postpones it to the last moment. There may be other reasons we cannot guess at. The exact reason does not matter. What matters is that he needs those guns for some criminal activity in Greenwich."

"Bravo," Sharp said, with a show of enthusiasm.

Harranby shot him a nasty look. "Don't be a fool," he said, "we are little better off than when we began. The principal question still stands before us. What is there to steal in Greenwich?"

Sharp said nothing. He stared at his feet. He heard the scratch of a match as Harranby lit another cigarette.

"All is not lost," Harranby said. "The principles of deductive logic can still aid us. For example, the crime is probably a robbery. If it has been planned for many months, it must figure around some stable situation which is predictable months in advance. This is no casual, off-the-cuff snatch."

Sharp continued to stare at his feet.

"No, indeed," Harranby said. "There is nothing casual about it. Furthermore, we may deduce that this lengthy planning is directed toward a goal of some magnitude, a major crime with high stakes. In addition, we know our man is a seafaring person, so we may suspect his crime has something to do with the ocean, or dockyard activities in some way. Thus we may limit our inquiry to whatever exists in the town of Greenwich that fits our--"

Sharp coughed.

Harranby frowned at him. "Do you have something to say?"

"I was only thinking, sir," Sharp said, "that if it is Greenwich, it's out of our jurisdiction. Perhaps we ought to telegraph the local police and warn them."

"Perhaps, perhaps. When will you learn to do without that word? If we were to cable Greenwich, what would we tell them? Eh? What would we say in our cable?"

"I was only thinking--"

"Good God," Harranby said, standing up behind his desk. "Of course! The cable!"

"The cable?"

"Yes, of course, the cable. The cable is in Greenwich, even as we speak."

"Do you mean the Atlantic cable?" Sharp asked.

"Certainly," Harranby said, rubbing his hands together. "Oh, it fits perfectly. Perfectly! "

Sharp remained puzzled. He knew, of course, that the proposed transatlantic telegraph cable was being manufactured in Greenwich; the project had been underway for more than a year, and represented one of most considerable technological efforts of the time. There were already undersea cables in the Channel, linking England to the Continent. But these were nothing compared to the twenty-five hundred miles of cable being constructed to join England to New York.

"But surely," Sharp said, "there is no purpose in stealing a cable--"

"Not the cable," Harranby said. "The payroll for the firm. What is it? Glass, Elliot amp; Company, or some such. An enormous project, and the payroll must be equal to the undertaking. That's our man's objective. And if he is in a hurry to leave on Thursday, he wishes to be there on Friday--"

"Payday!" Sharp cried.

"Exactly," Harranby said. "It is entirely logical. Yon see the process of deduction carried to its most accurate conclusion."

"Congratulations," Sharp said cautiously.

"A trifle," Harranby said. He was still very excited, and clapped his hands together. "Oh, he is a bold one, our friend Simms. To steal the cable payroll-- what an audacious crime! And we shall have him red-handed. Come along, Mr. Sharp. We must journey to Greenwich, and apprise ourselves of the situation at first hand."

"And then?" Pierce said.

Miriam shrugged. "They boarded the train."

"How many of them were there?"

"Four altogether."

"And they took the Greenwich train?"

Miriam nodded. "In great haste. The leader was a squarish man with whiskers, and his lackey was clean-shaven. There were two others, jacks in blue."

Pierce smiled. "Harranby," he said. "He must be very proud of himself. He's such a clever man." He turned to Agar. "And you?"

"Fat Eye Lewis, the magsman, is in the Regency Arms asking about a cracker's lay in Greenwich-- wants to join in, he says."

"So the word is out?" Pierce said.

Agar nodded.

"Feed it," he said.

"Who shall I say is in?"

"Spring Heel Jack, for one."

"What if the miltonians find him?" Agar said.

"I doubt that they will," Pierce said…

"Jack's under, is he?"

"So I have heard."

"Then I'll mention him."

"Make Fat Eye pay," Pierce said. "This is valuable information."

Agar grinned. "It'll come to him dear, I promise you."

Agar departed, and Pierce was alone with Miriam.

"Congratulations," she said, smiling at him. "Nothing can go wrong now."

Pierce sat back in a chair. "Something can always go wrong," he said, but he was smiling.