"Unless I open the door for you," Pierce said. He gave Agar a snifter of brandy.
Agar swallowed it in a single gulp. "Aye, and there's a likely turn. You come back over all those coaches, tripping light over the rooftops, and swing down like Mr. Coolidge over the side of the van to pick the lock and break the drum. I'll see God in heaven first, no mistake."
Pierce said, "I know Mr. Coolidge."
Agar blinked. "No gull?"
"I met him on the Continent last year. I climbed with him in Switzerland--- three peaks in all--- and I learned what he knows."
Agar was speechless. He stared at Pierce for any sign of deception, scanning the cracksman's face. Mountaineering was a new sport, only three or four years old, but it had captured the popular attention, and the most notable of the English practitioners, such as A. E. Coolidge, had become famous.
"No gull?" Agar said again.
"I have the ropes and tackle up in the closet," Pierce said. "No gull."
"I'll have another daffy," Agar said, holding out his empty glass. Pierce immediately filled it, and Agar immediately gulped it down.
"Well then," he said. "Let's say you can betty the lock, hanging on a rope, and break the drum, and then lock up again, with nobody the wiser. How do I get on in the first place, past the Scots jack, with his sharp cool?"
"There is a way," Pierce said. "It's not pleasant, but there is a way."
Agar appeared unconvinced. "Say you put me on in some trunk. He's bound he'll open it and have a see, and there I am. What then?"
"I intend for him to open it and see you," Pierce said.
"You intend?"
"I think so, and it will go smoothly enough, if you can take a bit of odor."
"What manner of odor?"
"The smell of a dead dog, or cat," Pierce said. "Dead some days. Do you think you can manage that?"
Agar said, "I swear, I don't get the lay. Let's settle the down with another daffy or two," and he extended his glass.
"That's enough," Pierce said. "There are things for you to do. Go to your lodgings, and come back with your best dunnage, the finest you have, and quickly."
Agar sighed.
"Go now," Pierce said. "And trust me."
When Agar had departed, he sent for Barlow, his cabby.
"Do we have any rope?" Pierce said.
"Rope, sir? You mean hempen rope?"
"Precisely. Do we have any in the house?"
"No, sir. Could you make do with bridle leather?
"No," Pierce said He considered a moment. "Hitch up the horse to the flat carriage and get ready for a night's work. We have a few items to obtain."
Barlow nodded and left. Pierce returned to the dining room, where Miriam was still sitting, patient and calm.
"There's trouble?" she said.
"Nothing beyond repair," Pierce said. "Do you have a black dress? I am thinking of a frock of cheap quality, such as a maid might wear."
"I think so, yes."
"Good," he said. "Set it out, you will wear it tomorrow morning."
"Whatever for?" she asked.
Pierce smiled. "To show your respect for the dead," he said.
Chapter 40 A False Alarm
On the morning of May 22nd, when the Scottish guard McPherson arrived at the platform of the London Bridge Station to begin the day's work, he was greeted by a most unexpected sight. There alongside the luggage van of the Folkestone train stood a woman in black--- a servant, by the look of her, but handsome enough, and sobbing most piteously.
The object of her grief was not hard to discover, for near the poor girl, set onto a flat baggage cart, was a plain wooden casket. Although cheap and unadorned, the casket had several ventholes drilled in the sides. And mounted on the lid of the casket was a kind of miniature belfry, containing a small bell, with a cord running from the clapper down through a hole to the innards of the coffin.
Although the sight was unexpected, it was not in the least mysterious to McPherson--- or, indeed, to any Victorian of the day. Nor was he surprised, as he approached the coffin, to detect the reeking odor of advanced corporeal decay emanating from the ventholes, and suggesting that the present occupant had been dead for some time. This, too, was wholly understandable.
During the nineteenth century, both in England and in the United States, there arose a peculiar preoccupation with the idea of premature burial. All that remains of this bizarre concern is the macabre literature of Edgar Allan Poe and others, in which premature burial in some form or another appears as a frequent motif. To modern thinking, it is all exaggerated and fanciful; it is difficult now to recognize that for the Victorians, premature burial was a genuine, palpable fear shared by nearly all members of society the most superstitious worker to the best-educated professional man.
Nor was this widespread fear a simply neurotic obsession. Quite the contrary: there was plenty of evidence to lead a sensible man to believe that premature burials did occur, and that such ghastly happenings were only prevented by some fortuitous event. A case in 1853 in Wales, involving an apparently drowned ten-year-old boy, received wide publicity: "While the coffin lay in the open grave, and the first earth was shovelled upon it, a most frightful noise and kicking ensued from within. The sextons ceased their labors, and caused the coffin to be opened, whereupon the lad stepped out, and called for his parents. Yet the same lad had been pronounced dead many hours past, and the doctor said that he had no respirations nor any detectable pulse, and the skin was cold and gray. Upon sighting the lad, his mother fell into a swoon, and did not revive for some length of time."