The Great Train Robbery (18 page)

“Don’t want to be nibbed,” Willy said.

“Then look sharp, and be ready.”

Clean Willy nodded. “What’s for dinner?” he said.

On the evening of January 9th, a characteristic London “pea soup” fog, heavily mixed with soot, blanketed the town. Clean Willy Williams, easing down Tooley Street, one eye to the façade of London Bridge Station, was not sure he liked the fog. It made his movements on the ground less noticeable, but it was so dense that he could not see the second story of the terminus building, and he was worried about access to the roof. It wouldn’t do
to make the climb halfway, only to discover it was a dead end.

But Clean Willy knew a lot about the way buildings were constructed, and after an hour of maneuvering around the station he found his spot. By climbing onto a porter’s luggage cart, he was able to jump to a drainpipe, and from there to the sill of the second-story windows. Here a lip of stone ran the length of the second story; he inched along it until he reached a corner in the façade. Then he climbed up the corner, his back to the wall, in the same way that he had escaped from Newgate Prison. He would leave marks, of course; in those days nearly every central London building was soot-covered, and Clean Willy’s climb left an odd pattern of whitish scrapes going up the corner.

By eight o’clock he was standing on the broad roof of the terminus. The main portion of the station was roofed in slate; over the tracks the roofing was glass, and he avoided that. Clean Willy weighed sixty-eight pounds, but he was heavy enough to break the glass roofing.

Moving cautiously through the fog, he edged around the building until he found the broken window Pierce had mentioned. Looking in, he saw the dispatcher’s office. He was surprised to notice that it was in some disarray, as if there had been a struggle in the office during the day and the damage only partially corrected.

He reached through the jagged hole in the glass, turned the transom lock, and raised the window. It was a window of rectangular shape, perhaps nine by sixteen inches. He wriggled through it easily, stepped down onto a desk top, and paused.

He had not been told the walls of the office were glass.

Through the glass, he could see down the deserted tracks and platforms of the station below. He could also
see the jack on the stairs, near the door, a paper bag containing his dinner at his side.

Carefully, Clean Willy climbed down off the desk. His foot crunched on a shard of broken glass; he froze. But if the guard heard it, he gave no sign. After a moment, Willy crossed the office, lifted a chair, and set it next to the high cabinet. He stepped onto the chair, plucked the twirl Agar had given him from his pocket, and picked the cabinet lock. Then he sat down to wait, hearing distant church bells toll the hour of nine o’clock.

Agar, lurking in the deep shadows of the station, also heard the church bells. He sighed. Another two and a half hours, and he had been wedged into a cramped corner for two hours already. He knew how stiff and painful his legs would be when he finally made his sprint for the stairs.

From his hiding place, he could see Clean Willy make an entrance into the office behind the guard; and he could see Willy’s head when he stood on the chair and worked the cabinet lock. Then Willy disappeared.

Agar sighed again. He wondered, for the thousandth time, what Pierce intended to do with these keys. All he knew was that it must be a devilish flash pull. A few years earlier, Agar had been in on a Brighton warehouse pull. There had been nine keys involved: one for an outer gate, two for an inner gate, three for the main door, two for an office door, and one for a storeroom. The pogue had been ten thousand quid in B. of E. notes, and the putter-up had spent four months arranging the lay.

Yet here was Pierce, flush if ever a cracksman was, spending eight months now to get four keys, two from bankers, and two from a railway office. It had all cost a pretty penny, Agar was certain of that, and it meant the pogue was well worth having.

But what
was
it? Why were they breaking this drum now? The question preoccupied him more than the mechanics of timing a sixty-four-second smash and grab. He was a professional; he was cool; he had prepared well and was fully confident. His heart beat evenly as he stared across the station at the jack on the stairs, as the crusher made his rounds.

The crusher said to the jack, “You know there’s a P.R. on?” A P.R. was a prize-ring event.

“No,” said the jack. “Who’s it to be?”

“Stunning Bill Hampton and Edgar Moxley.”

“Where’s it to be, then?” the jack said.

“I hear Leicester,” the crusher said.

“Where’s your money?”

“Stunning Bill, for my gambit.”

“He’s a good one,” the jack said. “He’s tough, is Bill.”

“Aye,” the crusher said, “I’ve got a half-crown or two on him says he’s tough.”

And the crusher went on, making his rounds.

Agar smirked in the darkness. A copper talking big of a five-shilling bet. Agar bet ten quid on the last P.R., between the Lancaster Dervish, John Boynton, and the gammy Kid Ballew. Agar had come off well on that one: odds were two to one; he’d done a bit of winning there.

He tensed the muscles in his cramped legs, trying to get the circulation going, and then he relaxed. He had a long wait ahead of him. He thought of his dolly-mop. Whenever he was working, he thought of his dolly’s quim; it was a natural thing—tension turned a man randy. Then his thoughts drifted back to Pierce, and the question that Agar had puzzled over for nearly a year now: what
was
the damn pull?

The drunken Irishman with the red beard and slouch hat stumbled through the deserted station singing
“Molly Malone.” With his shuffling, flatfooted gait, he was a true soak, and as he walked along, it appeared he was so lost in his song that he might not notice the guard on the stairs.

But he did, and he eyed the guard’s paper bag suspiciously before making an elaborate and wobbly bow.

“And a good evenin’ to you, sir,” the drunk said.

“Evening,” the guard said.

“And what, may I inquire,” said the drunk, standing stiffer, “is your business up there, eh? Up to no good, are you?”

“I’m guarding these premises here,” the guard said.

The drunk hiccuped. “So you say, my good fellow, but many a rascal has said as much.”

“Here, now—”

“I think,” the drunk said, waving an accusatory finger in the air, trying to point it at the guard but unable to aim accurately, “I think, sir, we shall have the police to look you over, so that we shall know if you are up to no good.”

“Now, look here,” the guard said.

“You look here, and lively, too,” the drunk said, and abruptly began to shout, “Police!
Po-lice!
”

“Here, now,” the guard said, coming down the stairs. “Get a grip on yourself, you scurvy soak.”

“Scurvy soak?” the drunk said, raising an eyebrow and shaking his fist. “I am a Dubliner, sir.”

“I palled that, right enough,” the guard snorted.

At that moment, the constable came running around the corner, drawn by the shouts of the drunk.

“Ah, a criminal, officer,” said the drunk. “Arrest that scoundrel,” he said, pointing to the guard, who had now moved to the bottom of the stairs. “He is up to no good.”

The drunk hiccuped.

The constable and the guard exchanged glances, and then open smiles.

“You find this a laughing matter, sir?” said the drunk, turning to the copper. “I see nothing risible. The man is plainly up to no good.”

“Come along, now,” the constable said, “or I’ll have you in lumber for creatin’ a nuisance.”

“A nuisance?” the drunk said, twisting free of the constable’s arm. “I think you and this blackguard are in cahoots, sir.”

“That’s enough,” the constable said. “Come along smartly.”

The drunk allowed himself to be led away by the copper. He was last heard to say, “You wouldn’t be havin’ a daffy of reeb, would you, now?” and the constable assured him he had no drink on his person.

“Dublin,” the guard said, sighing, and he climbed back up the stairs to eat his dinner. The distant chimes rang eleven o’clock.

Agar had seen it all, and while he was amused by Pierce’s performance, he worried whether Clean Willy had taken the opportunity to open the office door. There was no way to know until he made his own mad dash, in less than half an hour now.

He looked at his watch, he looked at the door to the office, and he waited.

For Pierce, the most delicate part of his performance was the conclusion, when he was led by the constable out into Tooley Street. Pierce did not want to disrupt the policeman’s regular rhythm on the beat, so he had to disengage himself rather rapidly.

As they came into the foggy night air, he breathed deeply. “Ah,” he said, “and it’s a lovely evening, brisk and invigorating.”

The copper looked round at the gloomy fog. “Chill enough for me,” he said.

“Well, my dear fellow,” Pierce said, dusting himself
off and making a show of straightening up, as if the night air had sobered him, “I am most grateful for your ministrations upon this occasion, and I can assure you that I can carry on well from here.”

“You’re not going to be creating another nuisance?”

“My dear sir,” Pierce said, standing still straighter, “what do you take me for?”

The copper looked back at the London Bridge Station. It was his business to stay on the beat; a drunk wandering in was not his responsibility once he was ejected from the premises. And London was full of drunks, especially Irish ones who talked too much.

“Stay clear of trouble, then,” the cop said, and let him go.

“A good evening to you, officer,” Pierce said, and bowed to the departing crusher. Then he wandered out into the fog, singing “Molly Malone.”

Pierce went no farther than the end of Tooley Street, less than a block from the station entrance. There, hidden in the fog, was a cab. He looked up at the driver.

“How’d it carry off?” Barlow asked.

“Smart and tidy,” Pierce said. “I gave Willy two or three minutes; it should have been enough.”

“Willy’s a bit glocky.”

“All he has to do,” Pierce said, “is twirl two locks, and he’s not too glocky to bring that off.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, we’ll know soon enough.”

And he slipped away, in the fog, back toward the station.

At eleven-thirty, Pierce had taken up a position where he could see the dispatch office stairs and the guard. The copper made his round; he waved to the jack, who waved back. The copper went on; the jack yawned, stood, and stretched.

Pierce took a breath and poised his finger on the stopwatch button.

The guard came down the stairs, yawning again, and moved off toward the W.C. He walked several paces, and then was out of sight, around a corner.

Pierce hit the button, and counted softly, “One … two … three …”

He saw Agar appear, running hard, barefooted to make no sound, and dashing up the stairs to the door.

“Four … five … six …”

Agar reached the door, twisted the knob; the door opened and Agar was inside. The door closed.

“Seven … eight … nine …”

“Ten,” Agar said, panting, looking around the office. Clean Willy, grinning in the shadows in the corner, took up the count.

“Eleven … twelve … thirteen …”

Agar crossed to the already opened cabinet. He removed the first of the wax blanks from his pocket, and then looked at the keys in the cabinet.

“Crikey!” he whispered.

“Fourteen … fifteen … sixteen …”

Dozens of keys hung in the cabinet, keys of all sorts, large and small, labeled and unlabeled, all hanging on hooks. He broke into a sweat in an instant.

“Crikey!”

“Seventeen … eighteen … nineteen …”

Agar was going to fall behind. He knew it with sickening suddenness: he was already behind on the count. He stared helplessly at the keys. He could not wax them all; which were the ones to do?

“Twenty … twenty-one … twenty-two …”

Clean Willy’s droning voice infuriated him; Agar wanted to run across the room and strangle the little bastard. He stared at the cabinet in a rising panic. He remembered what the other two keys looked like; perhaps
these two keys were similar. He peered close at the cabinet, squinting, straining: the light in the office was bad.

“Twenty-three … twenty-four … twenty-five …”

“It’s no bloody use,” he whispered to himself. And then he realized something odd: each hook had only one key, except for a single hook, which had two. He quickly lifted them off. They looked like the others he had done.

“Twenty-six … twenty-seven … twenty-eight …”

He set out the first blank, and pressed one side of the first key into the blank, holding it neatly, plucking it out with his fingernail; the nail on the little finger was long, one of the hallmarks of a screwsman.

“Twenty-nine … thirty … thirty-one …”

He took the second blank, flipped the key over, and pressed it into the wax to get the other side. He held it firmly, then scooped it out.

“Thirty-two … thirty-three … thirty-four …”