Shadow of the Hangman Read Free

trembling hands. ‘The Skillen brothers have had the gall to do our job for us. They’ve caught Ned Greet.’ Scrunching up the newspaper, he flung it aside. ‘Why didn’t we get to him first?’
    ‘We were too slow,’ said Alfred Hale.
    ‘I blame you for that.’
    ‘I did my best.’
    ‘Patently, it was woefully inadequate,’ said Yeomans with withering scorn. ‘We keep a whole army of informers. Why could none of them earn their money and tell us where Greet was hiding?’
    ‘They
did
earn their money,’ suggested Hale. ‘Ned paid them more to keep their mouths shut than we paid them to keep their eyes open.’
    ‘Then how did those loathsome twins manage to track him down?’
    ‘That’s a secret I’d love to know, Micah.’
    ‘You failed me again, Alfred. You’ve no right to call yourself a Runner.’
    ‘I strive to please.’
    ‘Ha! There are times when your incompetence
disgusts
me.’
    Hale was about to point out that Yeomans had been equally incompetent when he remembered what happened when he last challenged the senior man. It was safer to accept the rebuke and lower his head to his chest.
    Nature had been unkind to Yeomans, giving him a face of unsurpassable ugliness with a misshapen nose competing for dominance against a pair of huge, angry green eyes, two monstrous bushy eyebrows and a long slit of a mouth from which a row of yellow teeth protruded. Even in repose he looked grotesque. When roused, as he was now, Yeomans was positively fearsome. A former blacksmith, he was a big, hulking man with powerful fists that were well known in the criminal fraternity. Hale was a solid man of medium height but he looked puny beside his companion. Both were in their forties with long, distinguished records as Principal Officers of Bow Street. They hated rivals.
    ‘The Skillen brothers live off blood money,’ said Yeomans, contemptuously.
    ‘We’ve had our share of that in the past,’ Hale reminded him.
    ‘Hold your tongue!’
    ‘It’s true, Micah.’
    ‘We have legal authority. They are floundering amateurs.’
    ‘Then why do they always show us up by harvesting our crop?’
    ‘They’ve trespassed on our land far too long,’ said Yeomans through gritted teeth. ‘It’s time to teach them a lesson, Alfred. Nobody can steal from us with impunity, least of all that pair of popinjays.’ His eyes blazed. ‘I want revenge.’

CHAPTER THREE
    ‘O’Gara is behind this,’ said Shortland, bitterly.
    ‘We don’t even know if he’s still in the prison, sir.’
    ‘He’s here, Lieutenant. I
feel
it.’
    ‘Then why have we never seen him?’
    ‘They’re hiding him somewhere. O’Gara’s been a confounded nuisance since he first arrived. He’s always trying to stir them up to mutiny and it looks as if he’s finally succeeded. We should have locked him in the Black Hole and left him to rot.’
    ‘The men did have a legitimate grievance,’ argued Reed. ‘The food contractor delivered a consignment of damaged hard tack that was almost inedible.’
    ‘That problem was solved yesterday,’ said Shortland, curtly. ‘Fresh bread was brought in. Unfortunately, it didn’t satisfy this rabble. They’re determined to cause trouble and it’s being orchestrated by Tom O’Gara.’
    ‘He’s only one of thousands of prisoners, sir, so it’s wrong to single him out. They all want the same thing. The war against the United States has ended. They’re demanding release.’
    ‘
We
run this prison, Lieutenant – not a mob of American sailors.’
    They were viewing the situation with increasing disquiet. Hundreds of prisoners were milling around the yard. The sense of resentment was tangible. Voices were raised, fists were bunched, and more and more prisoners joined the melee. Captain Thomas Shortland of the Royal Navy had been governor of Dartmoor for less than two years and he hated the bleak, unforgiving, isolated prison. He was determined to exert control but the strict discipline he imposed had