Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (35 page)

'I'm Verity,' he said sternly, 'and I'm home!'

The girl stood back uncertainly as he shouldered past. There was a movement at the far end of the passage, against a flush of oil light, and the sound of the wooden leg which had served Stringfellow since the loss of his own at the siege of Bhurtpore, thirty-seven years before. The old cabman lurched forward, grasping for his son-in-law's hand.

' 'ello, Verity, me old sojer!'

'What's all this, then, Stringfcllow ?' Verity nodded at the door.

'Only Lilruwfie,'said Stringfellow. 'Don't pay no notice.' 'Who?'

'Little Ruthie!' said Stringfellow with toothless deliberation. 'Name's Ruth, in other words.' 'What's she doing here?'

'Earning her keep, o' course. What else should she be doing?'

And then there was a cry from the stairs as Bella, with her plump little figure and blonde curls, scuttled toward Verity's open arms.

'Servants!' said Verity indignantly. ' 'ow I shall be able to look the rest of the street in the face, I don't know! We
are
servants, Mrs Verity. Least, I was before I went for a sojer. Superior servant, of course, but in service all the same.'

He and Bella lay side by side in the ancient bed, to which Julius Stringfellow had brought his young bride quarter of a century before. The Veritys lay on their backs like two figures on a tomb. There was an air of resentment and ill-temper.

'Speak for yourself, Mr Verity,' said Bella crossly, ‘I ain't a servant, and shan't be. Any case, it's Pa's house and he shall do as he likes. With you away and poor Pa crippled, it ain't easy to manage them two either, with no help.'

She jerked her head at the two cradles at the foot of the bed, where Billy and Vicky slumbered with the round red faces and the black hair of Verity himself.

'It ain't right for Mr Stringfellow to have that young person sleeping like a cat in front of the kitchen fire all night,' said Verity in his most magisterial manner.

'She ain't in front of the fire,' said Bella sharply. 'She got a proper attic servants' room.'

'But Mr Stringfellow got that!'

'Pa got one of them. He done the next one out special for little Ruth. She got nowhere to go, once she came to London from the country.'

Verity sat upright with a start. ' 'Your Pa up there with that young person?' It was perhaps from the next house in the terrace, beyond the lath and plaster of the flimsy partition wall, that he heard the creak of boards, low voices and the familiar slap of a hand on smooth bare flesh.

Bella sat upright as well.

'William Clarence Verity!' she wailed. 'I never took you for such a unnatural, ungrateful creetur! Pa give you a 'ome! 'e give your offspring a roof over their 'cads! And all you do to thank him is to think nastiness about him behind his back. I - hoo-hoo-hoo!'

There was an angry wail from one of the cradles.

'Now, now, Mrs Verity!' said Verity hastily. 'I never said that!'

This time there was no doubt that the sound came from above them. It was Stringfellow's fruity chortle and a growl of appreciation.

'Sec what you done!' howled Bella. 'You started little Vicky off and you woke poor Pa! He gotta be up five o'clock to see to the 'orse and get to Langham Place cab-stand!'

Verity temporarily abandoned the moral warning he had prepared for Bella about her father's behaviour and the awful danger of finding herself with new brothers and sisters younger than her own children.

'I got a great respect for your old father,' he said sternly, trying to close his mind to the muttering overhead.

Bella subsided into uncertain silence. Verity swung himself out of bed and walked over to the little window of the room. After the mist and smoke of the day, the November night was clear and cold, promising one of the first frosts of the winter. From Paddington Green to the horizon south of the river, from the gardens of Bayswater to the steeples of Aldgate and Bow, the city was lit by the faint, luminous beauty of a thousand stars. He thought of the letter which Samson had given him, forgotten in the disagreeable discoveries awaiting him on his return to Stringfellow's little house. It was still in his coat pocket, as he fumbled his way toward the garment and drew it out. He slit open the envelope and felt for the paper inside. There was none. He touched a round hard shape, like a large coin, with something soft attached to it. Even before he drew it out, he knew what it must be. It was the button torn from his coat in the struggle beside the rope. He had last seen it in the hand of Vcrney Dacre, the only man, surely, who could have known to whom it belonged.

Verity's heart leapt with exultation, despite the momentous implications of the message.

'I'll show 'em!' he said fiercely. 'I'll have Mr Croaker flayed and salted for this when the time do come! And all them that's in it with him! Dead, was 'e? Huh! I'd wager he ain't dead now!'

'Mr Verity?' the voice came softly from the bed. 'What you on about?'

He was bursting with the news, but he realized in time that the full truth would lead her to worry and fret for his safety.

'Nothing, Mrs Verity, dear,' he said, easing himself into bed once more, 'only some meanness of Mr Croaker's again.'

The reconciliation soon began.

'It was for you, Mr Verity,' said Bella softly. 'You being part of His Highness's household. And it was only to be little Ruthie, no more 'n that.'

'There, there, Mrs Verity! Bella!'

'And you wouldn't want her sent to Mrs Rouncewell's, along with them other unfortunates, would you?'

Verity thought of the burly ex-police matron and her leering appreciation of Ruth's naked charms.

'No,' he said hastily, 'course not.'

'And Pa says she won't be no inconvenience to you. 'e says

'Yes, Mrs Verity?'

'Pa says he won't have her in your way or anywhere that you might get a chance to give her a bit of a touch-up.'

There was a pained silence. Presently Bella said,

'Mr Verity?'

'Yes, Bella?'

'What's a touch-up?'

'What did your Pa say it was, then?'

'Dunno. All he said was that when you arrested unfortunate young persons, 'e bets you give 'em a good touch-up.'

'Oh, that,' said Verity, improvising rapidly. 'That ain't nothing but a slum phrase what's used for officers arresting people. An officer that nibs someone, arrests 'em. If he snaps the darbies on, he arrests 'em. If he feels their collars, he arrests 'em. And if he gives a good touch-up, he does the same.

'So you gave Miss Jolly a good touch-up?'

'Likewise,' said Verity, 'that ain't a real name. A jolly is slum talk for a girl what causes bother. She soon got called Miss Jolly for that. What she was called before, if she ever had a name, no one knows.'

'If you arrested me, then, ' said Bella innocently, ‘I s'pose I'd get a good touch-up?'

'In a manner o' speaking, Mrs Verity.'

He felt the bed begin to shake with her suppressed laughter.

'William Clarence Verity!' she gasped happily. 'You ain't 'alf a bloomin' liar.'

'That's what a jolly is,' he said with a giggling snort.

'Ask anyone down Paddington Green.'

Wearying of the joke, she turned toward him and nudged him with her plump little elbow.

'Welcome 'ome, Mr Verity,' she whispered knowingly. 'Welcome 'ome!'