Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal by Francis Selwyn

a reprimand and an instruction to mind his own business for the future. But now they were turning cast. Hurrying after them, Verity saw them arm-in-arm again, approaching a shabbier neighbourhood. He saw a street sign which identified it as Second Avenue. Soon they were among large, decaying houses of red brick with faded green shutters and matching first-floor balconies with roofs of painted tin. Jolly and her escort paused at the corner, where the canopy of a grocer's shop extended over the pavement to posts fixed in the kerbstone. A fly-blown card offering 'Table Board' was lodged at an angle in the adjoining window. A strong odour of smoked fish and the thick fragrance of molasses wafted from behind the piled baskets of vegetables under the grocer's wooden canopy.
    Jolly and the tall young man were engaged in some final and earnest conversation. Then the girl moved quickly, flitting across the rutted street, between the leaning lampposts and the ash-barrels to the large shabby house on the far side. She pulled the bell beside the heavy door, which opened in a moment. As she scuttled inside, the man who had escorted her turned and strode away. Verity, unable to watch both of them, chose the girl. He was unlikely to force the truth from the young man, but he had frightened a confession from Jolly twice in the past and had no doubt that he could do it again. He crossed the street with a determined stride and approached the door of the decayed red-brick house with its green verandah. On the wall to one side of it was an engraved metal plate, 'Asylum of the New York Magdalen Female Benevolent Society'.
    'It never is!' said Verity confidently. 'Not after what I've seen this afternoon. Bloody thieves' kitchen, more like.'
    It was not the easiest of buildings to enter unobserved. Standing back, he looked up at the verandah. There was a light in one of the windows looking on to it, but the other was in darkness. A glance at the darkened ground-floor window revealed that it was barred on the outside but to a man intent on climbing, the vertical iron rails were as good as a ladder. He looked up at the overhang of the verandah, and he knew that it could be done. Whistling softly to himself he walked slowly away for a few yards, waiting until the street should be empty. There were two men in the grocer's store, but they were intent on weighing and packing goods. His chance came in a few minutes and for a space of thirty seconds or so he was sure that he would be unnoticed.
    For all his bulk, Verity's agility was as remarkable as his strength. With hardly a sound, he stepped on to the sill of the ground-floor window, pulling himself up so that he could clutch the highest bar. There was an awkward manoeuvre as he stood on the higher bar with nothing to hold him against the wall but his own weight, until he could reach up and seize the first metal strut of the verandah rail, where it joined the wall. Hanging for an instant by one arm, and then by two, Verity kicked his feet up until he could cross them round a further strut. Praying that the mctalwork had not rusted from its fixtures, he put his strength into the gripping of his feet on the bar, and snatched himself up, hand over hand, until he was diagonally against the verandah rail and could pull himself over its ledge. It had not been an elegant display of acrobatics, but it had been quick and almost silent. With a final heave, Verity's capacious trouser seat and plump legs disappeared over the rail and on to the floor of the verandah itself.
    Cautiously and silently he got to his feet. Somewhere in the rooms facing him, the meek and contrite women of the New York streets shed tears of repentance on the shoulders of a sisterhood of mercy. So, at least, the brass plate by the street door proclaimed to the world. He was still standing there, judging the best and quietest means of entry when, from behind the lighted curtain of the left-hand window, a slurred male voice said, 'Ah, shit!