I watched Sampson and Hopkins. If they were thinking of going into the Institute for a drink then we were going to go in for a drink, and who did they think they were kidding by pretending to talk it over? But then came a second thought: it appeared to me, from a twenty-foot distance, that Sampson wanted to go in, while Hopkins did not.
Sampson at last turned around towards us:
'We're going to take a last drink, boys,' he announced.
So we stepped into the Institute, our silent newcomer removing his cap and smoothing his hair with the look of a man trying hard to master himself. I felt a little in the same way. I'd nerved myself to the business that lay ahead, and now this – further delay. It was already gone eleven.
We didn't go into the snooker hall, but – once Sampson had brought the glasses of Smith's on a tray – just stood in the tiled vestibule of the Institution, loitering beneath a bright gas ring. We were only a couple of feet inside the front door, which was propped open, so it wasn't as though we were even warm. But I had my eye on the other door, the one leading to the snooker hall and bar. The barmaid in there knew me for a detective. Sampson was exchanging a few words with the newcomer, but not much was being said by anyone else. Presently, Sampson took out his watch, looked at it, and he didn't leave off looking at it either. He seemed to be simply observing time passing.
Hopkins was shaking his head. He was in fits, I could tell.
'We should be waiting outside,' he said, and so at last here it was: a set-to between the two leaders.
'Why?' said Sampson, still looking at his watch. 'It's fucking pissing down.'
I watched the snooker hall door.
Sampson was saying: 'We've a night's work ahead of us, and I don't want to be sodden while I'm about it, do you?'
The hallway was a carbolic-smelling limbo. The clash of snooker balls came from the snooker hall – the long roll followed by the crash, like the shunting of engines.
'And the four of us are leaving boot prints everywhere,' Hopkins went on, 'that's evidence, you know.'
'Boot prints?' said Sampson. 'Where?'
'On the fucking floor,' said Hopkins. 'Where do you fucking think?' But he was laughing now and Sampson along with him. Just then, a man walked through the door, and slap into the back of Sampson's flying hand. He went down onto the white tiles.
'Always a friendly welcome with you blokes, en't it?' said the man, picking himself up.
Sampson was holding up both of his hands: 'Sorry, mates, lost my grip there just for a moment,' he said, addressing everyone save the man he'd belted, who was the cocky little clerk – the one who'd guided us about the goods yard eleven days before. He'd come back for second helpings. He was back on his feet now, saying, 'Don't you think you might include me in that apology?'
Sampson was looking at the man.
'I'm thinking on,' he said.
There was no great harm done to the man, but the young bloke was sent off into the bar, and came back with a bit of something in a short glass to help get his nerves set.
'I'll not apologise,' said Sampson, watching the clerk drink. 'You were getting on for ten minutes late, and we're operating to a tight schedule.'
I began to edge towards the front door. I was reckoning out the amount of time it would take me to scarper to the Police Office in the station. But no, that would be shut. I thought of Tower Street, and the constable whose patrol took him past the Institute and the station. The handsome, well set-up copper… It came to me then, with a feeling of falling: he was the man who'd been in the Grapes earlier… Five Pounds, as Sampson had called him.
But that shock was immediately overtaken by a second one, for just at that moment, the door to the snooker hall opened, and the barmaid walked out looking determined. It was horrible to see her at large, out from behind her bar. I had made the thing happen by willing it not to, and all I could do was turn away from her as she approached and move towards the main door.
'Evening, gents,' she said, as she approached the door in my wake.
Only Sampson responded.
'Rain's coming in,' he said, and even as he did so, she pushed the door closed, saying,'… Lot of other strange articles besides.'
The door shut on her voice, and on the band of burglars. I was outside and they were in. Here was freedom at last – I could run away and give the alarm. But instead I just stood there and counted to five before the door crashed open and they all came out in Indian file, Sampson at the head, saying:
'Will you walk alongside me, little Allan?'
Why had I remained? Perhaps the answer was something to do with the biblical words quoted by friend Lund: 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' Sampson placed his right arm very gently about my shoulder, but his friendliness was not a safe guide to anything. As we walked, his free arm was rummaging in one of his pockets. He picked out two tenners and handed them over to me, saying, 'More to come later… Now do you have any questions for me, little brother?'
'Yes'1 said. 'Where are we going, and what are we doing?'
We were certainly not going towards the Lost Luggage Office, but had turned left into the tracks and shadows of the Rhubarb Sidings, where half a dozen wagons stood solitary. They'd either been a train or were destined to become one but, it being Sunday evening, any shunting would most likely be put off till morning. So they just stood, like a lot of people in a room who didn't get on, and would not speak to each other.
'Tonight' said Sampson, 'we're going to have away two thousand pounds.'
I immediately thought of the new villas along Thorpe-on- Ouse Road. You could buy the whole row for two grand. Sampson – the explanation completed as far as he was concerned – was now striking out across the tracks towards the buildings that lay behind the Lost Luggage Office. These were workshops where until lately a good many of the Company's engines had been built, but now the work had been moved, perhaps to Carlisle. I'd read of the change somewhere. The door of the first empty engine shop stood open. The inside was dark. I couldn't see a bit, but could guess at the size of the place by the extra coldness, and the ringing sound of a man's boots. It was the newcomer, the youngster, going on ahead. Hopkins was now standing alongside me, Sampson having moved forward with the new bloke.
'What's going off?' I asked Hopkins.
'… Scouting around for the bull's-eye they left lying about on the last visit,' he said.
For a minute nothing occurred except for bell-like sounds from the shed interior.
A light then flickered from twenty yards off, like something looking for balance. The bull's-eye lantern had been found. We moved towards it, as the little flame was replaced by a wide, soft red beam. It roved in a half circle around the shed showing a lake of oil on the stone floor, a row of barrels, a tangle of broken bogeys, and then a sight that stopped the breath on my lips: a long locomotive swinging in the middle of air, like a bear rearing on its hind legs. Nobody spoke, for it looked like a hanged man, too. It was Sampson had hold of the lamp; he played it over the dangling engine. It was only a boiler in fact, swinging at a forty-five-degree angle, suspended at the firebox end from the chains of an overhead crane.
The beam was at rest now, showing nothing but dust and cinders moving in the cold air – a red cloud. We caught up with Sampson, and he moved off again. Presently, he came to a stop, with the light steady again, picking out a tarpaulin. The young bloke pulled it away, to reveal not one but two cylinders half buried in a pile of coal with a sackful of stuff lying between them.