Ikey's low regard for himself meant it was impossible to contemplate that Mary might care for him in the least. His nature and the world he lived in allowed for neither sentiment nor pity. Survival was the only rule to which there was no exception. And so he felt some sadness at the possibility of losing Mary, an entirely new and alien experience, but in no sense did he feel remorse. In the most unlikely event of the brothel being included in the raid Mary must be sacrificed if he was to survive.
Besides, Ikey told his recently discovered conscience, it was far better for him to be on the outside so that he could secretly pay Mary's counsel and other legal fees and, if she was convicted, to fee the turnkeys and officials at Newgate prison in order to make her incarceration tolerable. Should she be sentenced to transportation and accommodated first, as was the custom, for several months in a prison at Chatham, Bristol or Plymouth or with luck on the Thames, the many bribes, remunerations and emoluments she would require to survive this experience would need to come from his unfortunate purse. Although the thought of parting with money, even in so noble a cause, filled him with an unhappy sense of himself being the victim, he decided he would accept this sacrifice as some sort of repayment for the time he had spent with Mary.
Ikey arrived at the Pig 'n Spit where the boys waited for him, jumping up and down in one spot and hugging themselves against the bitter cold. He lifted the canvas cover and removed the parcel wrapped in oilcloth, then sent the boys on their way, agreeing to meet them at his Whitechapel home in less than half an hour.
Struggling with the heavy parcel, Ikey walked down a small alley to the side of the building and into the skittle yard at the rear of the public house. He placed the parcel at the back door and walked over to the cellar chute, where he bent down and lifted the heavy wooden cover with some difficulty to reveal a further barrier, a set of iron bars which were locked down from within the cellar. Removing his boot, he rapped loudly on a single steel bar with its heel, at the same time calling out to the cellar boy to wake up and open the back door of the public house. In a few moments a lantern appeared at the base of the chute, though it was too dark in the cellar below to see the face behind it.
'Let me in, lad, it be Ikey Solomon,' he called, keeping his voice as low as possible. 'I 'ave most urgent business with your mistress. 'Urry now, I've no time to waste!'
Ikey left the public house less than ten minutes later. The streets and alleys were white with snow though a few early-morning market carts, and a small herd of scraggy-looking sheep being driven to a slaughter house were already beginning to turn it into slush. It was six o'clock in the morning and not yet light when he reached his house in Whitechapel and waited for several minutes in the freezing cold for the boys to arrive with the cart.
Ikey and the boys, their breath frosting from the effort, unloaded the contents of the cart and placed the load in the front parlour. Then Ikey paid the young lads a second shilling and sent them, well pleased, on their way.
Mary's ledger he took straightaways to his study and added it to those already concealed in the cavity below the floorboards. Then removing the counterfeit notes and copper etching plates from his bag he put each of the plates carefully aside. He then took up the notes, several thousand pounds of counterfeit longtails, which he placed in the grate and set alight, setting fire to the pile three times in all to make certain that there was nothing left but a handful of ashes. Whereupon he carefully swept the ash onto a piece of butcher's paper and put them into a small pewter tankard which he half filled with water, stirred well and swallowed.
Destroying the counterfeit banknotes was the most difficult thing Ikey could remember ever having to do -the notes were almost perfect and he might quite easily have allowed them into the London markets without fear of immediate discovery. But he was a consummate professional and in Ikey's mind releasing the notes in London was the equivalent of shitting on your own doorstep, in effect asking to be caught. Laundering the false notes through foreign banks was an example of the finesse which had earned him his title as the Prince of Fences. Though, having finally swallowed the contents of the mug, he allowed two silent tears to run down his cheeks and permitted himself the luxury of a single-knuckled sniff.
Ikey then took a needle and thread from the drawer of his desk and sewed the copper engraving plates into the hem of his great coat, first wrapping them carefully in four sheets of strong white paper. Each sheet was taken from separate books in a collection of several dozen handsome leather-bound volumes contained within a breakfront bookcase. Had any person been observing him they would have been curious at the manner of obtaining these squares of paper. Ikey removed the four volumes seemingly at random and opened them to the back cover where he carefully peeled back the endpaper. This revealed a second sheet of paper which Ikey now used as wrapping for the plates, first binding them with twine before sewing them into the hem of his coat.
All this activity took longer than he had intended and Ikey was anxious to make good his escape. He climbed the stairs and shook Hannah awake so that she might help him carry the stuff from the parlour, to be hidden within the false ceiling. Hannah, naturally cantankerous and more so by having been awakened after less than two hours of sleep, cursed Ikey, though she was not unaccustomed to this sort of disturbance. Ikey was known to use several places to store goods at this time of year and sometimes they needed to be hastily moved. Neither was she surprised when after the task was completed Ikey grunted a brusque farewell, explaining only that he had decided to travel to Birmingham. News of a rich haul had come to him and seeking to amuse her so as not to arouse the least suspicion he added a sentiment she loved so much to hear: 'Ah, my dear, the gentile scriptures are not correct. Even at Christmas time it is never better to give than to receive!'
Chapter Seven
Ikey arrived at the coaching post at Whitechapel markets just as the coachman's call to climb aboard was heard, and he seated himself beside the far window so that he could look outwards with his back turned to the other passengers. He pulled his head deeply into the lapels of his great coat so that his hat appeared to be resting upon its upturned collar. Thus, cut off from the attentions of his fellow passengers, he fell into deep cogitation on the matters which had unfolded in Bell Alley in the earlier hours of that morning.
It was not long before his ruminations allowed him to see the entire affair in an altogether different light, and Ikey suddenly felt himself ennobled by his sacrifice on Mary's behalf.
As he sat hunched in the coach, with its rattle and bump and clippity-clop, the general rush and rumble of wheels on flinted stone, rutted road and hard white gravel, and watched the country racing past, from deep within his great coat Ikey felt the warm glow of goodness enveloping him.
This sense of saintly satisfaction was not one Ikey could previously remember experiencing, for it is an emotion which comes to a man who has sacrificed his own needs for those of another. It contained a strange feeling of light-headedness and was an experience Ikey was not entirely sure he would like to repeat. While he knew himself very fond of Mary, he was quite inexperienced in matters of the heart, and was therefore unable to recognise that strange emotion which sentimental women referred to so knowingly as true love.