Page 22

An average-sized, solidly built man swayed slightly in the saddle.

Oblivious to the many eyes watching him, he rode into the yard before the warehouse doors.

He halted his mount near the wall on the other side of the doors to the shack and dismounted.

Dropping in rather ungainly fashion to the ground, he looped the reins through a ring set into the wall, then turned toward the shack. “Willis! Where are you, man?”

O’Donnell, garbed in civilian clothes that had seen better days, came out of the shack and stared at the man. “Be you Chesterton, then?”

Chesterton frowned. “Yes. Who the devil are you?”

“I’m Willis’s cousin.” O’Donnell came forward, pulling the padlock key from his pocket. “He’s been taken ill—the whole family, really—and he begged me to stand in for him. Just for tonight, mind. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

Chesterton huffed, but was clearly uninterested in his hireling’s health. He waited with reined impatience as O’Donnell made a performance of freeing the doors, then Chesterton seized one handle and, together with O’Donnell, hauled the doors wide open.

After kicking a stone into place to hold the door in position, Chesterton walked toward the gaping maw of the warehouse. “The drays should be along any minute. Get them to line up out here, wagon parallel to the doorway. That way, we can be quick about loading. The drivers know the drill.”

O’Donnell tugged his forelock. “Aye, sir.”

With all arranged to his liking, Chesterton strode into the warehouse.

With Stokes, Barnaby remained crouched by the front wall, screened from Chesterton’s immediate sight by a stack of crates.

They listened as Chesterton went straight to a shelf on the other side of the front wall. A lamp had been left there, along with a box of matches, and within a minute, Chesterton had the lamp burning. He picked it up, turned, and walked to the nearest crate.

Peering out from their hiding place, Barnaby and Stokes saw Chesterton smile and affectionately pat the crate on top of the first stack, then hoisting the lamp, he started walking slowly down the central aisle, counting the crates in the stacks along one side.

Chesterton was halfway down the central aisle when the sound of rattling wheels reached through the gloom, followed by the unmistakable clop of hooves and the jingle of harness as horses were reined in, then O’Donnell could be heard directing the drivers as to where to halt their wagons.

Seconds later, two hefty men in long coats came striding into the warehouse.

Watching from their hiding spot, Stokes and Barnaby tensed.

“Good. You’re here.” Chesterton raised the lamp and pointed to the line of crates. “All of these are to go. Load them up and take them to the dock. By the time you get there, The Viscount should have come alongside and be waiting to take them on board.”

“Right you are, sir.” One of the men saluted, then the pair moved to pick up the crate on top of the nearest stack.

Shouts and yells erupted outside.

The three in the warehouse froze, then swung to face the door.

For several seconds, disorientating sounds of pandemonium rolled through the open doorway.

Then Chesterton cursed and, with his two helpers, turned to flee or possibly hide, only to come face-to-face with Morgan, Walsh, and several other constables, all with truncheons in their hands and grim expressions on their faces.

The pair of drivers immediately halted and held up their hands in surrender.

With rather more to lose, lamp still in hand, Chesterton whirled to flee through the doorway, possibly thinking to slip away through the melee engulfing the yard outside.

Instead, he found himself facing Stokes with Barnaby at his side. They stood squarely blocking the aisle, and with his crates of illicit guns piled on either side, Chesterton had nowhere to run.

No way to escape.

Barnaby could see that realization dawn on the man, and Chesterton’s shoulders slumped.

“Damn!” he muttered and let the lamp hang.

Stokes stepped forward, took the lamp from him, handed it to Barnaby, and arrested Chesterton for gun running. “And,” Stokes added with grim relish, “who knows what other crimes we’ll find you guilty of?”

Barnaby saw confusion pass across Chesterton’s face, but then Morgan came up and took him in charge, and together with Stokes, Barnaby walked outside to see what had transpired in the yard.

Six drays had turned up. The drivers and their helpers, at least two for every wagon, had all been captured and were being corralled in the center of the yard.

O’Donnell was in charge of taking names and, once the prisoners’ hands had been securely tied, sending them off in the care of a constable, to be loaded into the police wagons that had been summoned from where they’d been waiting in concealment farther up Fort Road.

The next half hour and more went in organizing the prisoners, and they also had to return the horses and drays to Tilbury.

Stokes had decided that the wisest course was to order constables to drive the horses and wagons to the drivers’ families, but that meant sending a police coach along to ferry the constables back to Scotland Yard.

Barnaby stood to one side of the yard and watched, listened, and thought.

Finally, Stokes was free and came to join him, pausing only to beckon to Morgan and Walsh to bring their principal prisoner out of the warehouse.

The yard was largely empty when the constables, each holding one of Chesterton’s arms, marched him out into the light of the waning moon.

Chesterton looked slightly rumpled, but appeared defeated and, if anything, puzzled.

When the trio halted before Stokes and Barnaby, Chesterton shook his head and looked at them. “This was such a sweet operation. What gave us away?”

Barnaby glanced at Stokes and sensed the swift internal debate Stokes waged before he replied, “Killing Thomas Cardwell.”

Chesterton’s bafflement was undeniably genuine. “Who?”

Having shut and locked the warehouse doors and left the key with the four constables who would remain on guard until more wagons were sent from London to remove the crates of illegal guns, O’Donnell came up and saluted. “All locked tight, and the others are all away.”

Stokes looked at Chesterton, then said, “We can discuss Cardwell’s demise tomorrow. For tonight, sleep well in your cell.”

Stokes nodded to his men. “Take him away.”

Standing beside Stokes, Barnaby watched as Chesterton was led to a police wagon reserved solely for him.

The constables loaded him into the closed coach, and Walsh followed, then Morgan took the reins and, with O’Donnell beside him on the box, sent the coach rumbling down the track before turning for London.

Relieved by how well the evening had gone, with their hands sunk in their pockets, Barnaby and Stokes strolled slowly down the track to where the Adair carriage with Phelps up top waited in the street.

Barnaby glanced at Stokes. “Chesterton has absolutely no idea who Thomas Cardwell is.”

Stokes grunted, but didn’t disagree. Several paces on, he offered, “Chesterton has no idea, but someone connected with this not-so-little enterprise might have realized the threat Cardwell posed. And no, I don’t know how, but before we go much farther, we need to find some concrete evidence that Cardwell did, indeed, follow his brother to the Fox on Sunday night and that, after seeing Chesterton with Gibson, Thomas followed Chesterton here, to the warehouse. ”

His gaze on the ground before his feet, Barnaby nodded. “If Cardwell never made it here and never saw the guns, then the gun running wasn’t the reason he turned to Roscoe for help.”

“Exactly.” Stokes grimaced. “As much as I don’t want to think it, there’s a chance that Cardwell’s reason for contacting Roscoe was something else.

However, arguing against that, if ever there was a reason for someone of Cardwell’s limited experience to consult Roscoe over how to alert the authorities to a nefarious activity, then this caper surely fits the bill. ”

Barnaby huffed. “Nefarious activity. Cardwell was right in labeling it that.”