The Tick of Death Read online

  ‘No, on the upper floor. It is the room next to this, the new headquarters of the Special Irish Branch. They have struck directly at the officers who are investigating them. If that isn’t the Clan snapping its fingers in our faces, I don’t know what is.’

  ‘Was anyone hurt, sir?’

  ‘Several. None fatally, we think. P.C. Clarke, the constable on duty in the Yard, was blown against a wall and suffered a severe scalp wound. Six others, including a coachman and the barmaid from the Rising Sun, are in Charing Cross Hospital. Mercifully, no one was in the office at the time. It is extensively damaged, as you may imagine.’ Jowett paused, and frowned. ‘I have not seen inside, but I doubt whether my telephone-set has survived.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. One other point: I wouldn’t wish to criticise a man in no position to defend himself, but if P.C. Clarke was on duty in the Yard, how was it that he didn’t notice the infernal machine before it exploded?’

  ‘A perfectly proper observation, Cribb. The answer is that it was not in view. The dynamitards had secreted it in what one might describe as a convenient hiding-place adjoining the wall of the building.’

  ‘Oh? What was that, sir?’ said Cribb, blankly.

  Jowett looked embarrassed and ran his hand over the back of his head, producing a small halo of dust. ‘Well, not to beat about the bush . . .’

  ‘Ah! The public urinal, sir! Perfectly sited for their devilish purpose.’

  ‘Exactly so.’

  ‘That would account for the blast effects,’ said Cribb, pleased to air his new expertise. ‘The vertical thrust of the blast quite surprised me. The bricks have been displaced to a height of up to twenty feet. The urinal acted like a cannon, you see. Instead of the force being dispersed in all directions from the point of detonation, it was concentrated upwards. Curious—I was due for a practical demonstration of blast effects this morning. I didn’t know the Clan was going to provide it for me.’

  ‘You have not seen all that they provided,’ said Jowett.

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’

  ‘There were two other explosions last night, in St James’s Square. The Junior Carlton Club was attacked at eighteen minutes past nine. Fifteen seconds after, there was a second explosion across the Square, at Sir Watkin Wynn’s residence.’

  ‘A private residence? What have they got against Sir Watkin Wynn?’

  ‘Nothing at all. It was patently a mistake. The target must have been Winchester House next door, which is government property.’

  ‘And the Junior Carlton Club?’

  ‘Now that is interesting.’ Jowett opened a book on his desk. ‘This is a copy of the London Directory. In the section on St James’s Square there is no mention of the club. You see, its front entrance is in Pall Mall, and the back, in the Square, is used by tradesmen and servants. A foreigner to London might well turn to the Directory as an authority and gain the impression that the back entrance of the club, which is indistinguishable from any other mansion, is, in fact, Adair House, the home of the War Office Intelligence Department.’

  ‘Good Lord! The Special Branch and the Secret Service on one night! These fellows don’t do things by halves. What was the damage in St James’s Square?’

  ‘Mostly superficial, I am glad to report. It is miraculous that nobody was killed. The parts of the Junior Carlton occupied by members were almost untouched, but the kitchen and the servants’ quarters suffered somewhat. The bomb had been left at the foot of an iron staircase leading to the basement. The second bomb, at Sir Watkin Wynn’s, shattered all the windows there and in the Duke of Cleveland’s mansion next door, but the fullest force of the impact was curiously diverted at an angle of ninety degrees to Adair House. It brought down the mortar and dashed out the windows with such a powerful concussion that for a time it was believed there had been three explosions in the Square.’

  ‘That’s a nobby area, sir. Railway stations are one thing, noble residences quite another.’

  ‘Don’t I know it! Our list of witnesses reads like Burke’s Peerage. Unfortunately, they all appeared after the explosions. Now, Cribb, I have something more to show you, but I am interested to know what your observations are thus far, coming fresh from the explosives course, as you do.’

  Fresh was not the word he would have used to describe his condition after three weeks at Woolwich. ‘I would need to see the places where the bombs were placed, sir. Possibly I could tell you then which method of detonation was used. The remnants of a clock-timing device are nearly always detectable at the place where the charge has exploded.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But what have you got to say about the organisation of the crime?’

  What was he coming to? Best tread warily. ‘Well-planned, I should say, sir, allowing that there seem to have been some mistakes in St James’s Square. Possibly the perpetrators were less efficient than the plotters. Friday evening was a good one to choose.’

  ‘To have the maximum effect upon the populace over the Bank Holiday? You’re right, of course. The Local Government Board explosion last year coincided with the Easter Holiday, if I remember. Everyone came out to watch, as they will this weekend.’

  ‘There’s also the question of the Oaks, sir.’

  ‘The Oaks? What has a blasted horse-race got to do with it?’

  ‘The number of constables withdrawn for duty at Epsom, sir. We’re always under-staffed on Oaks Day. It’s a thing an Irishman might think of.’

  ‘An Irish-American?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, sir.’

  Jowett pushed back his chair and stood up, to the sound of splintering glass. ‘Let us not deceive ourselves, Sergeant. I spoke to you before of our concern at the knowledge the dynamite party appears to have of our methods. You remember the matter of the reliefs at the railway stations? We now appear to face an enemy which has got to know the very room in which the campaign against it is being mounted. Which passes freely into Scotland Yard to deposit an infernal machine in a convenience under our very—er—’

  ‘Noses, sir?’

  ‘Noses. And walks away without anyone noticing a thing. Doesn’t that tend to confirm that the Clan-na-Gael is as knowledgeable about police matters as you or I or the Commissioner himself?’

  ‘I’m afraid it does, sir.’

  ‘At least we understand each other. Now, if you will come with me, I shall show you the other discovery of which I spoke.’

  Jowett lifted his bowler hat from the stand, blew off a layer of dust, and led Cribb out of his office and downstairs. In the Yard outside, they negotiated the debris and made their way to a grille situated at the foot of a wall, out of view of the crowd. A black bag was resting on it.

  ‘We put it where it could cause the least damage,’ Jowett explained. ‘No one here knew whether it was liable to explode, you understand. However, Colonel Martin himself came out to see it during the night and he has pronounced it harmless. You may examine it if you wish.’

  Cribb crouched beside the bomb—for the charred end of a fuse protruding from the bag left no doubt of its identity. He felt inside and took out a piece of brass tubing, into which the other end of the fuse was inserted, and secured by a nipper. Fortunately the fuse had gone out before the flame reached the fulminate. He felt the bag’s weight. Six or seven pounds, he estimated—quite enough to reduce a sizeable building to rubble. He tipped the dynamite out on the ground at his feet. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Jowett’s shoes take a long step backwards. Without looking round, he picked up one of the cakes of dynamite and examined it. Atlas Powder: a standard six-ounce disc.

  ‘It looks as though the dynamiters have given up the clockwork method of detonation, sir,’ he told the Inspector, who remained just within earshot. ‘Fuses may be dangerous to use, but they’re clearly more successful. I wonder what stopped this one from working.’

  ‘A small boy, if my information is correct,’ said Jowett. ‘He saw the thing smouldering and stamped it out with the heel of his boot, resourceful lad. The
n he drew it to the attention of a constable on duty in the Square.’

  ‘The Square? Which square was that, sir?’

  ‘Trafalgar, no less. The bomb was quietly fizzing at the foot of Nelson’s Column, beside the Landseer lion that looks towards St Martin’s. These people will stop at nothing, Cribb. Nelson’s Column—imagine!’

  Cribb declined to imagine. It would take more than seven pounds of Atlas Powder to shift Nelson from his perch. The lion might have looked a little the worse for the experience, he was ready to admit.

  ‘The prospect leaves me speechless, too,’ Jowett went on. ‘Would you believe that the constable who found the thing brought it over from Trafalgar Square in a hansom? When he arrived I was engaged in conversation with Inspector Littlechild, of the Special Branch, assessing the damage to the Rising Sun over a glass of porter that the landlord had most civilly provided. The devastation around us weighed heavily on our minds, Cribb, for when the fellow stumbled in carrying the black bag and muttering something about an infernal machine, we moved as one—straight behind the counter on our knees with the barman. It is a long time since I was constrained to do anything so undignified. After a minute’s precautionary interval, we prevailed upon the constable by signals to convey the bag out of the Rising Sun and deposit it on the grille here. We were not in a position to know that the bomb was no longer active, you appreciate.’

  Cribb stood up. Jowett’s self-justifying held no interest for him. It was time the conversation changed. ‘What’s your reason for bringing me here, sir?’

  ‘Eh?’ The directness of the question—coming as it did from a mere detective-sergeant—produced the effect on Jowett that infernal machines did. He took a step backwards.

  Cribb leaned towards him. ‘I appreciate the gravity of the situation, sir, and I can see that what has happened here has a certain bearing on what we talked about three weeks ago, before I was sent to Woolwich. But if you’ve had Colonel Martin, the Inspector of Explosives, here, what’s the purpose of sending for me? Three weeks don’t count for much in experience of bombs, sir.’

  ‘Granted. That is all you are going to get, however,’ said Jowett, recovering his poise. ‘You will not be returning to the Arsenal. Your services are otherwise required. It is manifestly clear, is it not, that the Clan-na-Gael must have been in possession of privileged information to carry out last night’s detestable work?’

  ‘Looks like that, sir.’

  ‘And who do you suppose provided them with such information?’

  ‘I can’t imagine, sir,’ said Cribb. It was not strictly true. A possibility had stirred in his brain the moment he saw the devastation in the Yard.

  ‘Can’t you? I can. I am not so confoundedly sentimental. You know as well as I which member of the C.I.D. has been drinking with Irish-Americans.’

  ‘That was weeks ago, sir.’

  ‘Do you suppose we have not been following his movements ever since? Constable Bottle of the Special Branch was assigned to that duty before you left for Woolwich—a first-rate man, I might add. We set him up in rooms in Paradise Street, so that he was able to maintain a continuous vigil. He gave us a comprehensive written report on your encounter with Thackeray at London Bridge—and afterwards in The Feathers.’

  ‘Waste of paper,’ said Cribb. ‘If you’d asked me, I’d have told you all you wanted to know, sir.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Jowett, without much conviction. ‘That is of small account now, however. I think you should know, Cribb, that when I arrived here in the early hours of this morning and took in this unbelievable scene, my first action was to send a telegraph to Bottle, demanding an immediate account of Thackeray’s movements in the last forty-eight hours. The message was not delivered because Bottle was out of his rooms.’

  ‘At that time, sir?’

  ‘My own reaction exactly. I therefore sent a second message to Paradise Street police station to establish the whereabouts of Constable Thackeray. I was informed by return message that he was absent without permission, having failed to report for the midnight roll-call in the section-house. The news did not surprise me. It matched the information about Bottle. It was reasonable to assume that Thackeray’s disappearance was not unconnected with the outrages here and in St James’s Square, and that Bottle was on his trail.’

  Jowett paused. Cribb waited expressionlessly.

  ‘In that, I was mistaken. A message arrived from Thames Division shortly after four o’clock. A body was taken from the river in the early hours of this morning in Limehouse Reach. Special Branch have already identified it as Bottle. A bullet had penetrated his brain.’

  CHAPTER

  4

  THAT SAME AFTERNOON FOUND Cribb marching purposefully out of West Brompton Station and along Seagrave Road in the direction of Lillie Bridge, the metropolitan venue of athletic sports and bicycle-racing. Some fifty yards along, he took out his watch, checked the time, and turned left into a public house. As he had anticipated, the bar was thick with customers, many dressed as he was, in morning suit and black silk hat. He took his tankard and settled inconspicuously at a table near the skittle-alley. Four men in shirtsleeves and striped trousers were engrossed in a game, one, he noted with satisfaction, similar in build to himself.

  He sipped his beer. The sequence of deductions that had brought him here had required an agonising effort of concentration. Secretly, he envied the easy, irresistible logic of sixpenny-novel detectives, and would have liked to employ it in his own investigations. But now that Thackeray had disappeared, he was hard put to it to summon two consecutive thoughts. Irregular as their association over the past five years had been, slight as the confidences were that they had exchanged, the two of them had achieved an understanding that ran deep. When Jowett had blandly assumed Thackeray had some part in the bombing of Scotland Yard—his second home—Cribb’s anger had risen like the head on the beer. It had sunk at the news of the disappearance; dispersed altogether when he learned of Constable Bottle’s death.

  At length, he had decided to introduce some discipline into his thinking by making a list of the particulars Thackeray had given him about the Irish-American customers at The Feathers. Most notably, the man Malone. It was a curious vignette: a ‘barge-horse of a man’ over six feet in height, with manicured finger-nails and calloused palms smelling of methylated spirit. Generous with his money, too; you had to be, to buy rounds of whisky at ninepence a tot. What was a rich American doing getting his hands blistered like that? A manual occupation could safely be discounted. Regular work with the hands would have hardened the skin beyond the stage of blistering. This was surely the purpose of the methylated spirit: to toughen soft skin in readiness for unaccustomed use, a precaution widely employed by amateur oarsmen. Could the muscular Mr Malone be a sportsman then, the stroke, perhaps, of some all-conquering American university crew bound for Henley? In plain truth it seemed unlikely. The training of American crews was reputed to be so rigorous that any Yankee oarsman must have developed palms like boot-soles before coming to England. No, if Malone practised manly exercises at all—and, confound it, there was something familiar about his name—it had to be a less demanding pastime. Punting? Pulling on a punt-pole certainly produced blisters, but it hardly seemed an adequate occupation for a human barge-horse. He had to think of a sport that employed a generous physique in a manly fashion, yet could be indulged in so occasionally that blistered hands resulted.

  It was, of course, throwing the hammer. Cribb reached this confident conclusion by way of basketball, cricket, hockey and hurling. The last was an engaging possibility, except that to his knowledge not a single hurley had been put to use on the English side of the Irish Channel. It did, however, direct his thoughts to sports with strong Gaelic associations, of which hammer-throwing most emphatically suggested itself. All observant readers of the sporting press knew that Irish-Americans were as dextrous with sixteen-pound hammers as Englishmen with umbrellas.

  A visit to the Referee offices in Fl
eet Street to study the files had provided the confirmation Cribb wanted, a series of references in the column Athletic Intelligence, beginning in February. ‘The four members of the Gaelic American Athletic Club presently visiting this country,’ said the most recent, ‘are expected to attract a large concourse to Lillie Bridge on Saturday next, when they appear in the London Athletic Club sports. If their appearances to date have not been marked by the universal success which has attended American visitors in previous seasons, the public will have noted that they have been rounding into form of late and may be expected to give a good account of themselves on Saturday. Creed, the hundred yards man, we are reliably informed has clocked 10 seconds several times in training recently, and on this form is unlikely to be troubled by Wood and Cowie, the pick of the home runners. In the high jump, P. Shanahan may have to repeat his leap of 5 feet 11 inches at Craydon last week to defeat Colbourne, the Inter Varsity Champion. Of the two American hammer-throwers, Devlin looks the likelier to win again, although T. P. Malone, a veritable Goliath in stature, threatens to project the implement out of the ground and into Lillie Road if he can but master the trick of turning in the circle.’

  A shout from the end of the skittle-alley heralded an interesting throw. Seven of the nine pins had fallen. Cribb watched as the player retrieved the ‘cheese’ and returned to the mark to aim at the remaining skittles. It wanted considerable strength to dislodge so many, for they weighed seven pounds each. He was broadly-built and carried himself well for a man past fifty. An ex-athlete, Cribb decided. The second throw knocked aside the nearer of the standing pins, but altogether missed the other, on the extreme right of the diamond-shaped platform. By chance, however, the upended skittle made contact with another after it had left the platform and bounced back with just sufficient force to topple its mate.

  ‘A single!’ declared the thrower in triumph. ‘Set ’em up for another throw, partner. I’ll floor ’em this time.’