At the very moment 1008 went under the shed roof I knew something was amiss: not with the engine, but with the whole business of engines and engine sheds. This beast was meant to be at large outdoors, and now it was confined to a building, and, as we rolled on, past the workbenches on the south wall of the shed, I thought: this is like a lion in a living room; it is not right.
I pulled the brake as 1008 approached its berth. Nothing. I pulled again, only this time I did so as a dead man.
'Want to know what brought me to this?' the little clerk was saying.
'Eh?' I said.
'Miles away, en't you?' said the clerk.
The sparks were still flowing from the cutting flame in the little room before us.
'I said "Do you want to know what brought me to this?'" repeated the clerk.
'I shouldn't think there's any great mystery over that' I said, replacing my glasses.
'I've been with this company since I quit school. I'm fifty- two now. This year I rose to thirty bob a week, and it en't enough – not when you've a wife and kids, and ten bob a week rent to pay. Even so, I'd always operated the rule book to the letter. No surreptitious removal by yours truly of little titbits from the goods yard.'
He turned and looked at me.
'Don't believe me, do you?'
I shrugged. My mind was still at Sowerby Bridge, my eyes were on the flying sparks.
'Six months back, I saw a fellow having his boots cleaned on Coney Street. Dazzled up lovely they were, by that little bootblack in livery outside the Black Swan. Do you know the fellow?'
I nodded; I knew the chap. He had deformed hands – no thumbs – but was a marvel with a shammy leather.
'Well, I was minded to have my own boots done,' the clerk continued, 'seeing the job he'd done for the other fellow, so I walked up and sat down on his chair, and after he'd done the first boot, I said, "By the way, pal, how much is it?" He said, "It's a tanner, guv", and I stood up there and then, gave him thruppence for the one boot he'd done, and walked off. The price was too high, and I en't saying it was unreasonable, but I couldn't run to it.'
The sparks had stopped now. Sampson and the young fellow were crouching over the safe. Sampson was looking chuffed.
'It's pissing through it,' I thought I heard him say. 'Well that was when the light dawned,' the clerk was saying.'I looked down at that one clean boot all the rest of the day, and a fortnight later, I heard of a bloke who would be willing to supplement my wages.'
He nodded towards Sampson, who was back at his metal cutting.
'It was him, your governor, Duncannon. Of course he's not an easy bloke to get along with, but if I hadn't made his acquaintance I'd have run into debt six month since. Practically kept me out of the workhouse, he has.'
'And how will you feel when you come to serve your term?' I said.
'Beg pardon?' he said, in a startled voice. When I made no further remark, he rose to his feet, saying: 'Just going to see how things are getting on.'
He walked towards the office where, I noticed, the sparks had again stopped.
'Taking your flipping time, en't you?' the clerk asked Sampson, who was pushing his goggles up onto his forehead with one gloved hand.
'We're done now,' said Sampson. 'Here, you – catch.' I believe that I tried to reverse that instruction, by shouting 'Don't catch' as the rough oblong of red-hot steel flew towards the little clerk. But he did catch it.
PART FIVE
The Crack Boat
Chapter Twenty-one
Whatever had happened to his hands, the clerk could run, and he could scream, and it was as if this scream was the particular cause of an event that had been inevitable all along: the clerk running out of the shed mouth, and Sampson calmly making towards the shed mouth while shooting the revolver at the clerk.
I ran at Sampson as one, two, three shots were fired. As the fourth bullet was loosed, I crashed into the side of Sampson roaring 'Police!'
Sampson went down with the gun in his hand, and before any expression could come over his features, I heard Miles Hopkins calling, 'He's fucking right n' all!'
From down on the ground, I saw a figure walking along the tracks towards us from the southerly end of the station. As I watched, the man's thin hair blew upright in the breeze that had come with the dawn, and then it fell again. What I had said had miraculously turned out to be the truth, for it was the Chief. He wore his long overcoat, and was carrying a walking stick, except that this stick never touched the ground. It was no stick but a rifle. Somebody had noticed the disturbance in the shed, and he had been sent for. A call boy would have gone out from the station. The clerk was between us and the Chief. He was a dark, low shape crawling along one of the tracks towards the station, and then he was just a dark low shape. The Chief was hard by him now, crouching down. After a moment, he stood up and walked on. Valentine Sampson was frozen into a firing position, gun pointed at the Chief. It seemed impossible that Sampson would ever move. He was like a signpost, and Miles Hopkins was next to him, talking fast, reasonable-like, saying: 'Put the gun down, we can take the readies and be out of here…'
Sampson seemed to think it over for a second.
'I'll fire once more; see us right,' he said, and immediately did so.
The Chief went down.
Sampson and Hopkins were straight into the office, pulling money out of the hole in the safe, and putting it into the sack that the clerk had been made to carry. I looked out again. The clerk was still down; the Chief was still down. Behind them, the station was making its own dawn: a few more gas lamps lit as work started; a few men moving about. Had they heard the shots? One engine was in – standing at one of the bay platforms on the 'down' side, and so looking the wrong way. I looked sidelong to Sampson and Hopkins, still stowing money in the bag. Of the young bloke, I could see no sign. I started to run for the shed mouth, and the Chief rose to his feet from down on the tracks; as he did so, his hair rose too, and he lifted his gun.
'Chief!' I bawled, but the shot came anyway, and it checked me at the shed mouth. Sampson was by my side now. If he'd heard the shout of Chief, and taken it amiss… well, there was no sign of that in his face. He was back in his gun-firing pose, only this time with the money sack over his shoulder. He tilted his head backwards a couple of times, as though aiming with his sharp beard. He looked like Robin Hood. He fired. I looked out again, and couldn't see the Chief.
'Chief'1 said to Sampson, so as to make him think I'd been calling for him in the first place, 'let's away.'
He clean ignored me. He was still in his firing pose, but he relinquished it a moment later, with a look of irritation. Hopkins was by his side once again. They were both going into a kind of crouch.
Sampson gave a roar, and they ran off to the right, out through the shed, skirting the tracks of the 'up' side. I ran a little way with them, keeping low, as they were, but as we came towards the carriage sidings where the joint stock sleeping cars were berthed, I thought: 'What am I about?' and stopped dead.
My body was perfectly still in the freezing darkness, and my mind in a whirl. If the Chief was alive, then…
Sampson was facing me, the joint stock carriage behind him. His gun was facing me, too.
'You come along with us, Allan,' he said.
'I'm just thinking on'1 said, for want of anything else to say.
I fell in behind them as they walked quickly over the tracks through the carriage sidings and towards the disused Queen Street loco erecting shop. No further shots came. The Chief had approached us alone. I thought of him striding south out of the station with his gun in his hand. There was more to him than breakfast, and that was fact… But he was crazy, as I'd suspected all along. He'd put me in this fix, and given me no way out.