Ikey drew back alarmed. 'What's you know about that then?'
Marley chuckled. 'It's me business to know fings, ain't it? Just like I knows it's City what's comin' after yer!'
The single word 'City' had struck mortal terror into Ikey's heart. 'City' was simply another word for the Bank of England. For the private police force they ran who were said to be as remorseless as a pack of bloodhounds when they set upon a case.
Ikey's worst nightmare was taking place. He had been tempted into dealing with queer screens, the making of forged Bank of England notes, knowing it to be the most dangerous criminal vocation of them all. It was also as good a business as a villain could think about, providing you had the capital and the skill to set it up and the courage and wit not to be caught.
Forged English notes were laundered in Europe, mostly in Russia, Poland and Bohemia, where frequent enough commercial travel took place from England through the Hanseatic Ports. These countries, unlike France, Holland, Austria and Italy, were not sufficiently traversed for the smaller banks to be totally familiar with the larger denominations of English notes, so that a good forgery would more easily deceive their bank officials.
Ikey was making an enormous profit all round, paying for the European remodelling work on stolen jewellery with forged long-tails, this being a splendid way to launder the counterfeit English banknotes. It was also why he allowed Mary to chastise him for being cheated in his overseas transactions. Ikey was cleaning up at both ends.
Forgery was nevertheless an exceedingly dangerous endeavour. Ikey knew that no feeing or bribing of a Bank of England officer was possible and that once on his tail, the City police would not give up until they had him safely in the dock at the Old Bailey or, better still, posted for a hanging and locked in a condemned man's cell at Newgate.
Ikey had broken the first rule of a good fence, this being that a criminal endeavour in which bribery is not possible is the most dangerous of all possible pursuits and not, under any circumstances, to be undertaken. Ikey was not given to self-recrimination but now he castigated himself for the fool he had been. There were fine pickings elsewhere and he was already a rich man. Forgery carried the death penalty and no crime under English law was considered more heinous, for it attacked the very basis of property, the oak heart of the English upper classes.
Ikey mumbled his thanks to Bob Marley, who had started to move away.
'It's nuffink, me pleasure,' Marley called back laughing. 'I'll visit you in Newgate, me lovely, bring ya summink tasty, wotcha say then, jellied eels?'
'Ave you told Mistress Mary?' Ikey shouted at the retreating Marley.
'Nah!' His dark shape disappeared into Winfield Street.
Ikey waited a few moments before he too traced his steps out of the alley back into the gusting snow storm. In less than fifteen minutes he'd arrived at the netherken where his boys slept. Here he found two likely lads and sent them to Covent Garden to borrow a coster's cart narrow enough to move down the alley. Ikey arranged to meet the two boys at the Bell Alley brothel half an hour hence.
It was fortunate that it was Christmas and much of the goods, usually kept in the attic above the brothel, had been 'doctored'. That is, the monogram and other forms of identification removed and the goods sent back into the marketplace or to the continent, this time of the year being most expedient for the disposal of expensive merchandise. If Ikey could get the two lads back in time and the load of contraband away, at the very least, they would not be able to charge him for receiving.
Ikey was a deeply frightened man as he turned his key in the lock of the rear door of the Bell Alley premises and slipped quietly into the scullery. The house was still. The last customers had long since been sent home by carriage, and the girls put to bed with a hot brandy toddy into which Mary always mixed a sleeping draught.
He decided not to tell Mary of the events to occur but simply to say that he was unwell with a stomach ache and wished to take her ledger home with him so that he might go over it later. This had occurred once or twice before and she would not be overly suspicious at such a request. He would explain the removal of the stolen goods from the attic as goods sold in a bumper Christmas season.
However luck was on Ikey's side in the event that he discovered Mary asleep in her chair as he crept silently into her parlour. She was still seated in an over-stuffed chair wrapped about in a comforter with her chin resting on her chest. On the small table beside her was her ledger and to the side of it stood two pewter tankards and an open bottle of good claret wine. Ikey moved to the wall and turned the gaslight lower, then quietly lifted the ledger and one of the tankards together with its doily from the table and stuffed them into a pocket in his great coat.
Ikey worked quickly, using a bull's eye lamp he'd trimmed in the scullery, to move the stolen goods from the attic down to the small back room leading into the alley. He left a large square parcel carefully wrapped in oilcloth until last. Ikey was forced to rest several times as he struggled with it down to the scullery and, despite the cold, he was perspiring profusely by the time he heard the low pre-arranged whistle of one of the lads. The cart, the noise of its wheels padded by the six inch fall of snow, had arrived silently at the rear of the house. The two boys stood rubbing their hands and blowing into their mittens as Ikey opened the scullery door.
With the help of the boys the goods were quickly loaded, placing the square oilcloth parcel into the cart last before covering the whole load with a blood-stained canvas, the cart having been obtained from a mutton butcher at the Garden. Ikey gave each lad a shilling, with the promise of another to come, and asked them to await him at the Pig 'n Spit.
Ikey then let himself into the basement quarters down a short flight of stairs and through a door within the house to which only he had a key. Upon entering he became aware of a deep and resonant snoring coming from behind a curtained partition at the far end of the large room which his partner kept as his own quarters. He had no need to concern himself with careful movement since Van Esselyn, the deaf and dumb master forger, would not awaken unless shaken.
Ikey knew the room off by heart, having often enough visited it before dawn. The remainder of the room contained the engraver's bench with etching tools, a large lock-up cupboard for storing the special paper and precious inks procured from a source in Birmingham, a general work bench, hand press, guillotine, and finally the splendid Austrian-manufactured printing press.
Ikey quickly crossed over to the beautiful press and, kneeling beside it, he pushed down hard on what appeared to be a knot-hole in the floorboard. The board immediately snapped open an inch. Ikey repeated this with similar knot-holes in adjacent and parallel boards until the ends of four short boards stood raised an inch above those surrounding them. Ikey then removed the loose nails and lifted the boards to reveal a steel safe set into the floor, its door facing uppermost.
Ikey quickly worked the combination and removed five copper plates etched with the markings of Bank of England notes of various denominations. The etching for the Bank of England five pound note he immediately placed back in the safe. Then he removed all the counterfeit notes from the safe, save for a small bundle of five pound notes. He locked the safe again and carefully replaced the floor boards, clicking the knots back into place and pushing all but one of the nails back into their slots, so that it was once again firm underfoot. The nail he placed not quite beside the empty hole into which it belonged so that even the most careless searchers might eventually become suspicious.
Ikey spent several minutes more looking about the room and then quietly left, carrying the etching plates and counterfeit notes under his arm. He collected a hemp bag, into which he placed the copper plates and the larger denomination forged notes taken from the safe. Dipping into the interior of his coat he added Mary's ledger, the pewter tankard and the doily, and killing the wick of the bull's eye lamp, he returned it to the scullery, whereupon he let himself out into Bell Alley and back onto Winfield Street. He had less than an hour left before dawn, when the raid was due to take place.