Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square by William Sutton

and I was emboldened to speak further. After all, I had already missed so many opportunities, and if he knew hydraulics as I knew clocks, it might shed light on the spout. “There’s one or two things you might help me with.”
    “He don’t like me talking about company matters.”
    “He said it was all right.”
    “Did he now?” The man looked surprised. He peered out towards the office. My heart sank to see Coxhill gazing down upon his little kingdom, puffing contentedly at his pipe.
    The man seemed reassured. He shook my hand and invited me into his makeshift room. “My name’s Pat, my home’s Cumberland, and all Scotsmen are my enemies,” he grinned. He offered me a swig of beer, and seemed delighted when I asked him to explain the workings of the machine.
    “We pipe it down from the reservoir, mile and a half away. It’s a good three hundred feet up. That’s one hell of a weight of leverage driving the pistons in the cylinders.”
    I barely comprehended his explanations, but I felt ten times more comfortable with Pat than with his master. “Many problems with the equipment?” I said.
    “See this band, the hood on the driving rod here? That’s India rubber, only it’s shrunk too small for the socket, and we’re losing pressure.”
    “Right. There must be lots of teething problems with newfangled equipment.”
    He laughed. “Not so new, nor so fangled. You should see the new designs they’re making down the docks, boy.”
    “Why, the machines you’re building are outdated, are they?”
    He pursed his lips, glancing at Coxhill’s office. “We’re not so much building them, sir, as buying them.”
    “Oh yes.” I frowned. “And that’s profitable, is it?”
    “If you buy them broken, it is. This is an old Edward Elswick accumulator. Him in there buys ’em broke, I make ’em work and Hunty boy paints HECC on the side.”
    “And they work?”
    “More or less.”
    “You’ve had incidents?”
    “If you cut corners, there’s bound to be problems.”
    I suspected Pat was understating the case. “Anyone hurt?”
    He hesitated. “I’d best be getting back to work.”
    “All right, all right.” I took a deep breath. “But speaking theoretically, if someone were hurt, would you have to pay compensation?”
    “Theoretically, I wouldn’t know about all that. I only hear talk of all the money pouring in. Not that I see much of it out here.”
    I smiled. “How long have you been with the company, Pat?”
    “Two years. Glad of it, for all I moan.” He tried to settle himself to examining the piston, but the words kept tumbling out of him. “Not like the old days, you know. My parents worked two fields in Cumberland their whole lives. What was so wrong with them old times? Someone ran short, you all helped out. Me now, I been a weaver in Preston, canal man in Manchester, railwayman in Crewe, miner in Derby and a longshoreman down Greenwich.” He tugged at the perished rubber, and it came off in his hand. “You go where the money is, you learn your trade, work your fingers to the bone. Two minutes later, it goes arse over tit, and you’re out on your ear. Here I am in hydraulics. But I don’t put my heart into it. Not worth the sweat, just to get laid off when the next mania comes along.”
    I was late for work. “Pat. There was a crane damaged at Euston last winter.”
    He shot me a sideways glance. “That what this is all about?”
    “Did you fix it?”
    “It were a puzzle, that one, at first. Hats off to him, he knew his business. Must have been an expert on the old Elswick.”
    “Who, Pat?”
    “The fellow that bollocksed it, of course. He took some pains. Otherwise it wouldn’t have kept spouting so long, would it?”
    “Wouldn’t it?”
    “He had the aperture worked out that finely, see, to maximise the pressure. Drained half our reservoir. See, on top of the outlet pipe, he’d attached this–” He paused, holding in a chuckle. “Lovely idea, really. He’d attached a