Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal by Francis Selwyn Page A

Don't you whore-pokers never deal nothing but twos and threes? ’
    There was gruff, pleased laughter from two other men, one of whom said, 'Make a call, soldier, and stop talking from ya ass.'
    Verity's spirits rose with delight. The asylum for fallen women was about to prove richly rewarding. Combined with the story about Jolly being adopted by a charitable married couple, there was every chance that it would have Inspector Croaker out of Whitehall Police Office and back in the artillery.
    As a preliminary, he crept to the lighted curtain and peered through a chink where it had not quite closed. His view was restricted but he could see the back of a man sitting in his shirt-sleeves and the dark hair of a second man on the other side of the table. The shirt-sleeved man belched and fluttered a card down on the table.
'Deuce!' he said.
    There was a groan of disgust from someone who remained out of Verity's view. Blue-green cigar smoke rose, funnelling upward, above the man whose back was towards him. Glass clinked against glass and there was a splash of liquid.
    The dark head turned and a yellow squirt of tobacco juice shot into the china resonance of a spitoon. The shirt-sleeved man threw down his hand of cards with a light patter. 'Ah, shit!' he said monotonously.
    Silent as a shadow, Verity drew back and moved gently to the next, darkened window. It was closed, but fastened by nothing more than a rather loose casement-latch. He took out his carefully-oiled clasp-knife and slid the blade between the jamb and the window-frame. It was child's play. The loose catch lifted easily and the window swung open. He slid soundlessly into the darkened room. The glimmer of light from the street lamps showed it to be a poorly-furnished sitting-room with heavy mahogany upholstered in horsehair. Verity sniffed the air. Whatever the truth about the New York Magdalen Asylum, it certainly had the familiar smell of such institutional buildings, a steamy carbolic vapour concealing the grosser scents.
    Cautiously he opened the door and stepped out on to a tiled landing with narrow flights of stairs, their bare wood stained the colour of treacle. Below him, the building seemed to be in darkness, but a brass oil lamp was suspended over the well of the stairs and there was a glow of light from the next floor up. A single step creaked loudly under his weight as he moved quickly in that direction, but the noise of the card players in the other room more than covered the squeal of wood.
    The next landing was identical, except that there was a slit of light under one of the doors. From beyond it, Miss Jolly's voice came softly and melodiously in high-pitched song.
'Oh, the man that has me must have silver and gold,
A chariot to ride in and be 'andsome and bold
    Verity tried the door. It was unyielding. He inspected the vertical chink of light and saw that it was held on the inside by a tiny bolt.
'His hair must be curly as any watch-spring,
And his whiskers as big as a brush for clothing! '
    He crept back across the landing to the point which would give him the longest run.
    'Oh she was beautiful as a butterfly, and proud as a queen . . ,'
    Then he launched himself across the landing at the thin panelling of the door.
    ' Was pretty tittle Polly Perkins of Paddington Gre-e-e-n!'
    The last note of her song rose, shrill and prolonged, as the fastening splintered under Verity's weight. The broken door flew back against the wall and rebounded harmlessly.
    'Right, miss,' he said sternly. 'Now let's have an end of this little caper!'
    Then he paused. The room was as he had expected. Its bare distempered walls were patched by damp, their yellowness blotched by brown and draped with old cobwebs towards the high ceiling, like shot-torn regimental colours hanging in the vault of a garrison chapel. Miss Jolly was in the furthest corner, cowering and immobilized. More precisely, she had just stepped into a tin bowl of steaming water, her pink silk and a flurry of