Free SV - 01 - Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman by Francis Selwyn Page A

doubted that they would ever graduate in anything but the Racing Calendar or Bell's Life in London. There had also been several clubmen in evening clothes, from White's, Boodle's, or the Guards'. There was even an elderly captain of a hussar regiment in full dress uniform, which he had been wearing at a regimental dinner, complete with medals bearing the Alma and Inkerman clasps.
    Tyler and Coggin stood guard just inside the door to deter unwanted visitors. In their makeshift footmen's livery, they still gave the appearance of muscle-bound coal-heavers. Even when a customer wanted to leave, Tyler or Coggin had to open the stout front door with a key on the inside. The door had no catch, so that it was equally effective for keeping intruders out and keeping unwilling girls in.
    In a little parlour just to one side of the doorway, Ellen Jacoby, in black silk and peacock feathers, kept the desk and the cash-box. Beyond her, beckoning the customers forward, was Jolie, wearing a fancy dress which Ned Roper thought was the most stunning Derby Night idea since Eclipse first won the race. Her black hair was tucked up under a jockey cap, she wore a close-buttoned green jacket to her waist, and a pair of close fitting white breeches down to her black boots. Carrying a light crop, she led each arrival to the dancing, jostling crowd in the smoke-filled drawing-room. Roper watched and grinned. He detecte d from the girl's impatient littl e movements that there was hardly one of the men whose white-gloved hands did not come into sharp contact with her trimly clad body.
    In a bedlam of waltzes and polkas, the other girls of the house, plump, blonde Sarah; Rebecca, the tall graceful brunette; Charlotte, the green-eyed redhead; Ebony, the copper-skinned mulatto, and several more, danced with their partners. The girls' red or blue dresses were carefully arranged to show their breasts to the nipples and their legs well above the knee. At intervals, one of them would come running out to Ellen, followed by her client. A second, much larger sum of money than the entrance fee would change hands, and the girl would lead the way upstairs.
    There had been fourteen that night, at several guineas a time, for they all paid for one or other of the best rooms, which cost a guinea extra. In Ned Roper's opinion, it was worth that guinea just to see the best room. The pink silk hangings of the bed matched the shades of the gas lamps, the gilded brackets of the lamps themselves were in the shape of naked girls holding a phallic torch. Then there were the gilt-framed mirrors and pier glasses, arranged so that the man might admire the scene on the bed from almost any angle. There were pastels on the walls, in the style of Fra gonard and the courtly painters of the eighteenth century, depicting plump, fair-skinned girls sprawling on pink or pale blue cushions as they submitted coquettishly to every variety of the act of love. Oh yes, thought Roper, it was worth a guinea of any gentleman's money. When Lieutenant Verney Dacre set a man up in business, he did it in the proper style.
    The hussar captain, far gone in drink before ever he arrived in Langham Place, had parted with almost twenty sovereigns for wine and girls before the evening was over. Finally, possessed by some fantasy of being the tyrannical owner of a cotton plantation, he had insisted on taking Ebony to the upstairs drawing-room. Ellen had gone too, just to ensure that the charade remained a charade. The room had been carefully sound-proofed, so that nothing which happened there could be heard, even on the landing outside. Ebony, whose skin was closer to the colour of bronze than ebony, undressed and bent over a pair of folding steps, while Ellen secured her wrists and ankles. Both girls were giggling, knowing that the elderly captain of hussars was far too drunk to offer a real threat of violence. He picked up the birch-rod, which lay on the sofa, and paced about the room.
     
    Then, after giving