Half a dozen roughs are drinking and smoking in the tap-room. To them enters the man I have called the spy. He asks two of them to come outside with him, and he offers them the job. He satisfies them that the money is right, and guarantees it, for in these cases the principal is never seen. The men engaged know they can accept the guarantee, because if they were bested, the life of the guarantor wouldn't be worth an hour's purchase.
A week later a gentleman returning from town by the last train alights at a Thames-side station. He sets out to walk to his residence. His way lies along a quiet, deserted road.
Someone passing along that road in the small hours finds a man lying insensible on the footpath. He has evidently been brutally knocked about, robbed, and left for dead.
Help is secured, and a doctor endeavours to restore consciousness, but the victim dies without uttering a word.
The deed is put down to footpads, who probably met the gentleman and assaulted him in order to rob him. Every effort is made to trace the guilty men, but without success. The few people who have noticed a trap being driven along the road to London would not connect it with the hired ruffians who committed this midnight crime.
But this assault, which resulted in murder, was commissioned and paid for by a man of means who had a grudge against the victim. This man reads the account of the murder, and is perhaps a little alarmed. He didn't wish it to go as far as that. But he is quite safe. None of the men who assisted in the crime, either passively or actively, are likely to come forward and make any revelations. They have their own necks to think of.
The crime of "bashing"—that is the professional name for it—is far commoner than the peaceful citizens of London imagine. To commit a brutal assault for hire is a means of livelihood practised by certain gangs of ruffians who have their regular haunts and houses of call, where they "attend" to get the "office" of any job that may be going.
A large number of the crimes attributed to hooligans are deliberate plots of this kind. Money is not always the consideration. Sometimes it is good comradeship. A respectable elderly shopkeeper was waylaid and stabbed to death in the Borough a year or two ago. The police could find no motive for the crime, but the mystery was solved eventually by the confession of a young man undergoing five years penal servitude.
The victim had made complaints to the police of a woman, a neighbour, which caused her to be summoned and fined.
The son of the woman was the leader of a gang of young roughs who infested the Borough. He called his band together, and sentence of death was passed upon the "informer." It was many weeks before the old man was out late enough to give the band a chance of executing their captain's orders. But directly the chance came they committed the murder entrusted to them.