Lethal Pursuit

by Will Thomas

  Barker grunted, not breaking his stride.

  “A wise woman, your mother,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, I would agree with her. If we were bankers, say, or barristers. However, we are enquiry agents and information is our stock-in-trade. Also, I am already one of the highest-ranking members, and though I am not inclined toward the work of the leader, preferring to go my own way, the opportunity to gain a treasure trove of information should be seriously considered.”

  “You make a valid point for why you yourself should accept the position,” I said. “However, you have not proven why I should join.”

  “Let us suppose that a note arrived addressed to me. If it concerned a present case it would be vitally important to you, but if it concerns Templar business, you should not read it. How would you know? I cannot expect my correspondents to stamp a red cross on an envelope merely so you will know it is for my eyes alone. Such an obvious message might never reach Craig’s Court.”

  “Even so, sir, I am loath to do it. However, if there is no other way, I shall give it much thought. Would I have to attend a ceremony in which I am blindfolded and made to answer questions, promising never to reveal something under pain of death using methods from the Spanish Inquisition? Come, you are a plain man, the plainest that I know. What have you to do with capes and costumes, secret rituals and such?”

  “As little as possible. We both have much to consider. I shall not press you. We will discuss the matter when necessary. Do you find that acceptable?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Agreed. Excellent.”

  I nodded, thinking that there was another reason why his moniker among the London underworld was “Push.”

  “What precisely is a tent revival?” I asked him.

  “It is an evangelistic service, often held in a large tent. They are very popular in America. One rededicates one’s life to the Lord after hearing a rousing sermon and contemplates the coming of Jesus.”

  “I assume one pays for the privilege,” I said.

  “Cynic!” he cried, then rumbled a laugh. “Traveling is expensive and a preacher cannot be expected to pitch his own tent, especially if it holds over a hundred people.”

  “Surely one cannot hold a revival in a tent in mid-January?”

  “The Times says the service shall be held in a former equestrian stable, now a pedestrian course.”

  “I hope they scrub the place and lay fresh wood shavings.”

  “While we are there, I shall pray for your soul.”

  “Let us not forget who attends service regularly and who does not,” I replied.

  He harrumphed and marched ahead.

  * * *

  The tent of the evangelical camp meeting was in the middle of an arena, erected exactly as it would have been outside. The shelter was large, like a circus tent though plain, the ground covered in fresh wood shavings, with both risers and chairs to pack as many seats as possible into the space. I had no feeling about the meeting one way or the other; that is, I had no prejudice of which I was aware. Now that I saw how it was arranged, it was very like the Methodist meetings I had attended as a child, based upon the example set by John Wesley. I looked at the program, where I gleaned that the One True Church was based out of a town in the state of New York.

  “Schen-ec-tity,” I sounded out.

  “New York, so I have read in newspapers, is rife with various small sects,” Barker said.

  The nomadic church began to fill. I saw both the poor and the wealthy present, looking more as if they were looking for entertainment than spiritual sustenance. There was a clergyman or two in the audience, come to view the competition. The service began with hymns both recognizable and not; somehow they had conjured an organ, though most of the sound was muted by the vastness of the arena. There was a reading from the Book of Revelation and the inevitable collect. Finally, Cochran rose to address the crowd.

  He could not speak without the use of his hands, waving, thrusting, and pointing, in a way that Barker’s hero, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, would find unseemly. I noticed a few aristocrats tittering at the American.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for allowing a Colonial to come to your grand city, the greatest in the world. Even London, however, has become complacent, no longer hoping for the second return of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

  I had sat through enough religious movements to understand the process: the purpose was to draw the audience members back over a few nights. The first was relatively calm, filled with the hope of livelier preaching the following night. During the second, often on a Saturday, with many attendees having enjoyed a half day off, the preacher would swoop down upon the unsuspecting spectators, calling them sinners with a great need for salvation. The final day, the Sabbath, all music and sermonizing, was to draw the sinner to cast off his sinful nature and prepare his soul for what was to come. Often there were conversions by the hundreds, accompanied by crying, healing, gyrations, and other forms of hysteria, while promising that Cochran and his flock would prepare the earth for Jesus Christ and His coming.

  “Bosh,” Barker growled, as if reading my thoughts. “We cannot prepare for His coming. We are sinful, imperfect beings. The Scripture says he must come to us.”

  Cochran veered from his sermon to preach about the dangers of atheism. In particular, he spoke of another suspect in our case, Karl Heinlich. He claimed the man had been following in his wake, attempting to sway the new converts. Heinlich had confronted him after unbelievers had picketed outside their camp meetings. Cochran said he expected persecution, and Heinlich was simply a manifestation of it. All the same, he chose to avoid at all costs this man and his filthy humanist doctrine.

  So far there was little I had not heard before. Why the Foreign Office would list the very Reverend Cochran was a mystery. That is, until his sermon took an unexpected turn.

  “Recently,” the preacher cried, mist rising from his mouth in the cold tent. “Recently, we have come from a triumphant harvest of souls in Berlin and Heidelberg. I am pleased to see this race of hearty Saxons preparing for the work before us. The Teutonic race came from the east of Europe, spreading across the west to England’s shores, intermarrying with the native people to produce strong and intelligent men and women, the apple of God’s eye. We in America are fortunate that so many of your people have migrated to our shores and populated a once wild land, peopled by savages. We must join together, the Germans, the English, and what you so quaintly call ‘the Colonies.’ Why, even your queen and her late husband set the example to produce a perfect race!”

  I shook my head, but noticed many nodding in agreement. It was eugenics. Everyone likes to be told they are in fact superior to their neighbors. They already considered it likely, and now they had proof.

  “I have brought a specimen of the best of our kind, a modern Viking, a student at Westphalian University. May I present to all of you Mr. Gunther Voss!”

  A young man came to the stage, a brawny and handsome fellow, clean shaven, clear eyed, and strong jawed. His hair was flaxen, his scanty side whiskers ginger, and his eyes a blue so deep that I could see them from fifty feet away.

  “Young Mr. Voss, how do you find your hosts here in London?”

  “They are a fine people,” he said, with only a trace of an accent. “I am pleased to be related to all of you. Your women are especially handsome.”

  The men laughed and the women blushed and tittered. Voss looked disconcerted, as if he didn’t understand what he’d said. I ventured to the Guv that the Viking did not appear to possess a sense of humor.

  “It has been said,” Cochran continued, “and I believe it true, that England has been tainted by a wave of refugees, producing a race of smaller and feebler young men. Once we were Vikings, now we are weak versions of our former selves. You, sir! You in the third row. Will you please stand and come to the platform?”

  “Me?” I asked, feeling as if a pail of cold water were poured down my collar.

  “Y
es, you. Come, good people. Encourage this timid fellow to come forward, for if he does not come now, how shall he come and join our band of believers?”

  I was pushed forward against my will and stumbled a bit as I stepped up to the platform. Both the preacher and young Voss came to join me, Voss towering over me.

  “What is your name, sir?” Cochran asked me.

  “Thomas Llewelyn.”

  “Ah, a Welshman, from the race conquered by our Saxon brothers. It was only natural that such an event should happen. And what is it that you do, Mr. Llewelyn?”

  “I am an enquiry agent,” I said.

  “An enquiry agent,” he boomed. “No doubt you work in an office, totaling figures.”

  “Something like that,” I said. He knew my occupation.

  “You are not a large man, sir. Do you have any brothers?”

  “Yes, I have six.”

  “Six! Soon we shall be outnumbered. And are some of them larger than you?”

  “A few. Most are my size.”

  “No doubt. If I may observe, you have what is called a scholar’s stoop. Do you read a great deal?”

  “I read at Oxford.”

  “Do you get much exercise out of doors?”

  “Out of doors? No, sir,” I answered. “A little riding.”

  “Ah,” Cochran said. “Now, Mr. Llewelyn, would you do me a great favor? Will you strip to the waist?”

  I looked at him in consternation. Strip to the waist? It was unheard of. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Voss beginning to remove his tie. Light dawned in the old Llewelyn noggin. I was to be compared physically to the young Goliath. With a sheepish look the Guv’s way, I reluctantly removed my jacket.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I direct your attention to the back of the stage. You notice these drapes here? Bingham, will you pull the rope?”

  The velvet curtains fell to the floor to reveal, well, nothing much, merely a frame consisting of two vertical pipes supporting a horizontal bar. By now Voss had removed his shirt, drawing admiration from the room. He was built like a rugby three quarter: thick chested, muscled, and clean of limb. His singlet was cut like a wrestler’s or a weight lifter’s. As I pulled my braces up over my singlet, I felt my face burn.

  Voss bowed to the audience in a theatrical way that proved he had rehearsed this a hundred times and in many cities. Going to the frame, he leaped up and grasped the horizontal bar. Then he pulled himself up and rested his chin on it. Down and up, down and up, faster and faster, as if it were nothing. I crossed to the bar beside him and stared balefully up at the metal bar.

  “What is wrong, Mr. Llewelyn?” Cochran asked gleefully.

  “I cannot reach the bar, sir.”

  The room erupted into laughter at my expense. I told myself to inhale and exhale and try not to look a fool in front of my business partner. And everyone else, for that matter. A box was brought and I almost needed two. I jumped and caught the bar and slowly pulled myself up to it.

  “Bravo, Mr. Llewelyn. Good show!”

  Two, three, four, five. My arms ached, and I stopped. I hung in there for thirty seconds.

  “There’s no need—” Cochran began.

  I pulled myself up again. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Of course, the German was tossing them off like they were nothing. Eleven, twelve, thirteen?

  When I first came to be hired by Cyrus Barker, he informed me that I had no strength in my chest. Up to that moment there seemed no reason why I should. There is a chinning bar in our basement. I had never gone beyond five sets of ten, but I had never tried. This seemed a fine time to find out.

  Young Mr. Voss was doing one after the other, but there was a sheen on his upper lip. He had never faced a fellow who knew what he was doing. As he chinned himself, I realized something else: I need not do the same number of chins as he. I merely needed the endurance to be the last one on the bar.

  Around thirty-five, we both felt the weight of gravity. I needed something to take my mind off what I was doing. Sucking in a deep breath, I began to sing.

  “God—save—our—gracious—Queen. Long—live—our—noble—Queen. God save the Queen!”

  There was a whistle from the poor seats. In an instant, I had turned the camp meeting into a music hall. It was natural at the first refrain, at the very first notes, to join in. It was every Englishman’s duty. Even a Welshman or two has been known to sing it.

  Gunther Voss was starting to slow. His singlet was soaked with perspiration. Mine was, as well, but that had been expected. I do not enjoy shaming a stranger to our shores. On the other hand, for all I knew, this very lad may have stabbed Hillary Drummond to death, and stood over his body as he expired. He could have killed Wessel or that poor cabman I had seen in the Body Room that very day. I’m not the sort to clothe myself in the Union flag, but just then my arms were burning and my chest felt as if my heart were about to burst and I didn’t want to disappoint a tent full of people singing in praise of Her Majesty. I would not.

  The bar went slack for a moment and then there was the recoil as Gunther Voss of Westphalia fell to the ground. By then I was merely muttering the words between gasps, but more than two hundred voices were singing lustily enough that no one noticed. As Voss fell, there was a cheer from everyone, rich and poor alike. I wondered if a few of the gentlemen had placed wagers inside the holy tent. I had bested the German. So much for Teutonic unity.

  The moment he fell, all the energy drained out of my body. One more, Tommy Boy, I told myself. One more. One more for the Queen. No. One more for the late Hillary Drummond, and his wife and son. Especially for his son. One more for Wessell and Horace Quincy, whose grandchild would never see him again.

  My arms were like rubber and barely usable. I had done over fifty, maybe approaching sixty-five. I strained and pulled and gritted my teeth. Salty sweat was rolling into my eyes. One more! One bloody more!

  I felt the cold bar on my chin and I let go. I felt myself plummet, landing not on my feet, but my side. A blanket of wood shavings broke my fall. My ears heard the roomful of cheers, like sweet music.

  Someone bent over me and lifted me up. It was Cyrus Barker, of course. He began brushing the shavings off my bare limbs and sodden shirt. Someone brought a towel and three or four people brushed me down like a horse. Another shook my hand and it felt like it belonged to somebody else. I was thumped on the back, patted on the shoulder. A woman kissed my cheek, I think. Someone took my hand and raised it in the air, as if I were a boxing champion.

  Barker threw my coat over my shoulders and led me outside to the arena, then out into the street. Many people were walking out of the building with us. Not everyone, of course. There was still a service to complete. I heard a fellow say he was going back in to get his money from the collection plate.

  The feeling of exhaustion and lethargy cannot be described. I was half conscious. I rested my cheek on the chill circular window of the cab when it arrived and the cold air felt marvelous.

  “Nice work, lad,” the Guv said.

  I was a married man now and a partner in the agency, but the words still meant a great deal to me.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  That wasn’t the sweetest thing, however. The sweetest was the thought that back there in Finbury Park, Reverend Cochran must be seething.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The garden behind Barker’s home in Newington was dormant, giving a very good impression of being dead. The twisted Japanese maples were naked and shivering in the chill breeze and the many structures therein, the bathhouse, gazebo, potting shed, and porch that skirted the koi pond, were covered in snow. The pond itself was not frozen, being fed from an underground spring, but a necklace of ice encircled the edges. If the koi fish therein were still alive they did not rise to the surface. Barker did not wander his personal half acre in the mornings as he did the rest of the year. Everything had been prepared for spring by his Chinese gardeners, and there was little to do. He wandered his expansive garret over our heads,
and looked down upon the garden from his dormer windows, planning the new year’s growth. There was a stoic beauty, but I wouldn’t go out in it on a dare. Even Harm, the little Cerberus that considers the garden his private domain, had spent the days since Christmas curled in a ball on a pillow in the front room.

  “Lad!”

  I stepped out of the kitchen into the hall, still clutching my teacup. It was the morning after the tent revival and I was still sore from my efforts.

  “Sir?” I called to the stair.

  “We’re going to the funeral of Major Drummond this morning.” The rough voice carried down two sets of stairs. “Dress appropriately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I finished the tea, crossed to the front hall, and knocked upon Mac’s door. It opened and he wordlessly handed me a black armband and a top hat freshly wrapped in crepe. He prides himself on being one step ahead of everyone. I let him because it means he does most of the work. I carried the articles into the kitchen.

  With some trepidation, Rebecca set a plate in front of me, with a fresh hot pain au chocolat on it. Behind her, our chef Etienne Dummolard glowered, not that this was anything new. He is a growling bear and a tyrant to work for, but she did not protest. She is made of sterner stuff than most people realize.

  I took a bite. The bread was a golden brown, hot and steaming from the oven. The chocolate squares inside were partially melted, the way I like them. It was delicious. However, it was not perfect. When one has been fed for six years by a culinary genius, one grows to expect certain things. The top was perfect, but the bottom was overcooked and chewy.

  “Delicious!” I said.

  Rebecca’s face fell.

  “You see?” Etienne said in triumph. “Overcooked!”

  I shot him a gimlet eye. If he wanted to insult my wife, I would give him his choice of sword or pistol. He glanced at the window, imagining the need to step outside, and became more polite.