Thackeray decided at once. ‘I’m greatly obliged.’
‘Very good. I’ll be aboard. We must be prepared in case the blighters separate, though. Basic strategy. If either of ’em makes a break for it on foot you’d better give chase, and I’ll follow the four-wheeler. Otherwise, you can meet me at the end of the road. Agreed?’
‘Er—yes.’ He was almost constrained to salute.
The Major moved off at a gait unlike any postman’s, but the men with the trunk were occupied raising it on to the cab-roof and could not have noticed. Thackeray leaned heavily against the wall, assimilating the developments of the last few seconds. Perhaps he was staking too much on the Major’s co-operation. Could the man be trusted? But really, when he considered it, he had no choice. The sight of that trunk being slowly manhandled out of the house and on to the waiting cab had made a profound impression on him. There was an awful possibility that he shrank from accepting. All he was certain about was that it was now his duty to follow the cab and its load wherever it was driven.
Then to his amazement and unbounded relief the door of the house opened again and Albert appeared, walking with a stick and supported by a small, grey-haired woman, undoubtedly his landlady. With the cabman’s help he was manoeuvred up the step of the cab, not resisting in the least. Then the horse was deprived of its nosebag, the two trunk-bearers joined Albert inside, the cabman flicked his reins and the carriage moved away. The landlady stood at her door fluttering a handkerchief.
Thackeray felt an overwhelming sense of deliverance at Albert’s appearance in one piece. In spirit he was beside the landlady waving his deerstalker. Only when the cab was turning the corner did sentiment give way to more practical considerations. Heavens! Albert had been abducted in front of him!
‘Just one moment!’ He ran over to the landlady, knickerbockers flapping. ‘I am a police officer. Your lodger—’
‘Not my lodger no more, duck. He just left.’
‘Yes, I know that. Did he tell you where he was going?’
‘Sorry, love. He just paid his rent and went off with his two friends. What’s he done then? Got himself inebriated? It don’t surprise me, you know. They’re all like that in the theatre. Well, did you ever?’
The constable was already pounding up the road towards the waiting hansom. Major Chick leaned forward to help him aboard and they set off at a canter in the direction of the river. ‘Tickle him with the whip, cabby!’ the Major shouted through the aperture in the roof. ‘I’ve never known a hansom that couldn’t catch a growler. Give the beast a tickle and we’ll soon have ’em in sight again.’ He turned to Thackeray. ‘Nothing like a chase, Constable. Gets the old claret coursing through the veins, what? Got your bracelets with you? We’ll need ’em when we’ve run this lot to earth.’
‘My what?’ inquired Thackeray.
‘Bracelets, man. Handcuffs. You can’t take chances with a pair of assassins.’
So the Major had been deceived by the trunk, too. ‘I think I should explain something, sir. Albert is on board that four-wheeler.’
The Major laughed grimly. ‘At the twopenny rate on the roof, eh? And we have to pay a shilling. Of course I know he’s on board, Constable. I didn’t imagine those scoundrels had packed their trunk for a week at Brighton, not the way they carried it. Why, I’ve been a pall-bearer myself, a dozen times—’
Thackeray broke in. ‘Albert’s alive and well, sir. He walked out to the cab himself.’
The Major received the good news in silence, pursing his lips and staring past Thackeray towards the gaunt exterior of St Thomas’s. As the cab started across Westminster Bridge he removed his Post Office cap and buried his right fist in its centre. ‘Alive and well, you say. Would have been my first murder case, you know, and dammit, I had it solved.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Thackeray. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way, sir. Perhaps we’re on to a case of kidnapping, though.’
The Major was dubious. ‘There’s nothing to compare with a murder, Constable. It would have been in The Times. Very good for business, a mention in The Times. You’re quite sure it was Albert? Easy to impersonate a limping man, you know.’
‘I’m quite sure.’
The cab raced under the shadow of Big Ben, weaving a devious passage through a line of almost stationary buses and vans. Occasionally a pedestrian or a bicyclist appeared unexpectedly in front of them. Not for the first time, Thackeray was conscious of the vulnerable position of passengers in hansoms, with traffic hazards almost within touch, while the driver sat secure and aloft in charge of their safety. Any mishap now could result in a most embarrassing situation, Westminster being B Division and Scotland Yard so near.
‘Do you really ask us to believe, sir, that you are a detective constable wearing a borrowed knickerbocker suit, travelling in the company of a private detective at a reckless speed through a Division not your own in pursuit of three innocent men and a trunk?’ A nightmare.
‘I can see them, I think,’ said the Major as they turned past the Guildhall into Broad Sanctuary. ‘If we get a clear run in Victoria Street we’ll catch ’em.’
‘I wasn’t instructed to do that, sir—unless they committed a serious crime, of course. My orders was to keep an eye on Albert. I’d be obliged if we could keep ’em in sight without overtaking ’em.’
The Major seemed satisfied. He gave instructions to the cabman and then turned back to Thackeray. ‘Very proper, too. Give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang ’emselves, eh? I might see my name in The Times yet.’
‘It would be my duty to intervene if I judged the young man’s life to be in danger, sir,’ said Thackeray. ‘You’ll pardon me for asking: how did you come to be in Little Moors Place this morning?’
‘Another surprise, eh?’ said the Major, recovering his spirit. ‘Well, I questioned scores of people at the Grampian last night. Heard some damned disquieting rumours. Performers unaccountably missing after they’d had one of those accidents we’ve been so troubled about. I may tell you that I had my doubts about you and your sergeant when I heard that. Dammit, man, you spirited Albert away pretty sharply last night, didn’t you? Well, as a consequence of all these stories, I decided to keep a watch on our friend Albert. His mother gave me the address.’
‘Did your questioning produce any information I should pass on to Sergeant Cribb, sir?’
The Major shook his head. ‘Deuced disappointing. You know, the class of person you get in music halls doesn’t impress me much, Constable. Very narrow existence. Ask ’em a civil question and they’re liable to become positively abusive. Precious little concern among ’em for their fellow artistes’ misfortunes, I can tell you. Hello! Enemy in sight. Not too close, driver!’
Four-wheelers were less common than hansoms in Victoria Street, but there must have been a dozen in the line of traffic that stretched ahead from the Army and Navy Stores to Victoria Station. Fortunately that trunk on the roof was as sure a sighting-point as a top-hat in church. The Major’s hansom pulled smartly into the main stream behind a phaeton. ‘Nice-actioned horses,’ he commented with a nod. ‘Making for Hyde Park, I dare say. Better class of person on this side of London.’
Past the station the traffic became less dense and moved at more of a canter as they approached Hyde Park Corner along Grosvenor Place. ‘Wouldn’t mind a turn along Rotten Row myself this morning,’ said the Major, but Thackeray was looking towards St George’s Hospital on his left. The journey continued through Knightsbridge and the Kensington Road. Here a certain tension was detectable in the Major. He smoothed the front of his uniform and fastened a button, replaced the cap on his head and arranged the strap of the post-bag symmetrically across his chest. Thackeray straightened his deerstalker, uncertain of the reason. It was made clear seconds later when the Major stiffened in his seat and executed a smart eyes right towards the Albert Memorial.