The Great Train Robbery Read Online Free

where the disease was snatching up one person in a hundred. The dispute over the proposals of Mr. Edwin Chadwick, one of the Sanitary Commissioners, for new sewer systems in the city and for a cleaning-up of the polluted Thames, was profoundly boring to Mr. Fowler. Besides, Mr. Fowler had it on good authority that old “Drain Brain” Chadwick was soon to be discharged, but he was sworn not to divulge this information. He drank his coffee with a growing sense of fatigue. Indeed, he was thinking of taking his leave when the host, Mr. Pierce, asked him about a recent attempt to rob a gold shipment from a train.
    It was only natural that Pierce should ask Fowler, for Henry Fowler was the brother-in-law of Sir Edgar Huddleston, of the banking firm of Huddleston & Bradford, Westminster. Mr. Fowler was the general manager of that prosperous enterprise, which had specialized in dealings in foreign currency since its founding in 1833.
    This was a time of extraordinary English domination of world commerce. England mined more than half the world’s coal, and her output of pig iron was greater than that of the rest of the world combined. She produced three-quarters of the world’s cotton cloth. Her foreign trade was valued at £700,000,000 annually, twice that of her leading competitors, the United States and Germany. Her overseas empire was the greatest in world history and still expanding, until ultimately it accountedfor almost a quarter of the earth’s surface and a third of her population.
    Thus it was only natural that foreign business concerns of all sorts made London their financial center, and the London banks thrived. Henry Fowler and his bank profited from the general economic trends, but their emphasis on foreign-currency transactions brought them additional business as well. Thus, when England and France had declared war on Russia two months previously, in March, 1854, the firm of Huddleston & Bradford was designated to arrange for the payment of British troops fighting the Crimean campaign. It was precisely such a consignment of gold for troop payments that had been the object of a recent attempted theft.
    “A trivial endeavor,” Fowler declared, conscious he was speaking on behalf of the bank. The other men in the room, smoking cigars and drinking brandy, were substantial gentlemen who knew other substantial gentlemen. Mr. Fowler felt obliged to put down any suspicion of the bank’s inadequacy in the strongest possible terms. “Yes, indeed,” he said, “trivial and amateurish. There was not the slightest chance of success.”
    “The villain expired?” asked Mr. Pierce, seated opposite him, puffing his cigar.
    “Quite,” Mr. Fowler said. “The railway guard threw him from the train at a goodly speed. The shock must have killed him instantly.” And he added, “Poor devil.”
    “Has he been identified?”
    “Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” Fowler said. “The manner of his departure was such that his features were considerably—ah, disarrayed. At one time it was said he was named Jack Perkins, but one doesn’t know. The police have taken no great interest in the matter, as is, I think, only wise. The whole manner of the robbery speaks of the rankest amateurism. It could never have succeeded.”
    “I suppose,” Pierce said, “that the bank must take considerable precautions.”
    “My dear fellow,” Fowler said, “considerable precautions indeed! I assure you, one doesn’t transport twelve thousand pounds in bullion to France each month without the most extensive safeguards.”
    “So the blackguard was after the Crimean payments?” asked another gentleman, Mr. Harrison Bendix. Bendix was a well-known opponent of the Crimean campaign, and Fowler had no wish to engage in political disputes at this late hour.
    “Apparently so,” he said shortly, and was relieved when Pierce spoke again.
    “We should all be curious to know the nature of your precautions,” he said. “Or is that a secret of the