by Will Thomas
Forbes wore a coat with a fur collar, his throat swathed in a plaid scarf, the Forbes tartan, no doubt. His top hat was glossy and he did his best to appear as if nothing were amiss. He did not cough, his flesh was not slick with sweat, and though his face was pale, the feverish red blooms on his cheeks were gone. Only the few of us who had visited him over the past week were aware of his true condition.
“It’s nice of you gentlemen to see me off,” he said. “I know you are fully occupied.”
“What sort of friends would we be if we let you leave London without saying farewell?” Barker asked.
“I would understand if you couldn’t be here. Has the package been delivered?”
“I have every confidence it shall be there directly.”
“I’ll hold you to that. How do the new reins feel?”
“Few are aware the leadership has changed hands,” the Guv said. “They shall learn soon enough.”
A man appeared at my elbow then, placing a pair of tickets in his pocket. It was the young man we’d met at Pollock’s flat.
“Mr. Charles,” I said.
“Just Charles,” he replied. “Charles Putnam, actually. I’m Pollock’s secretary. You’re Llewelyn, aren’t you?”
“Thomas, yes.”
Barker and Forbes were discussing some point of business, so I plucked Putnam’s elbow and we both moved back a step or two.
“How is he?” I asked.
“He couldn’t stand this morning. I must admit, I don’t know what’s holding him up. Form, perhaps. He hates being pitied.”
“Most of us do. Can he travel?”
“I’ll find out soon enough. We’ll be stopping at Edinburgh tonight, where I have a room ready at the Waverly, with a doctor waiting. Pollock wanted to travel through to Aberdeen, but I insisted. London has been sucking the life from him. The damp, the soot, the sewage, the food. Now I wonder if six months in the country will do him well. The Sandwich Islands may be his only hope for survival.”
“I shall miss him,” I said. “Barker and I both will, not to mention a thousand diners at the Café Royal. Tell him if he does not improve I shall come to Aberdeen and trounce him at dominoes.”
Putnam whistled. “Brave words. I’ll warn him.”
“Will you have discharged your duties once you reach Aberdeen?”
“I shall be there to the end, no matter how long it takes.”
“Excuse me. This must be a blow.”
“I’ve been expecting it for years. Still, it is harder than I anticipated. I’ve seen the man every day for a decade. I cannot imagine what life will be like if he does not recover.”
“Is there hope, then?”
“One doctor is optimistic, another pessimistic. One thinks the cool air in the Highlands will do him good, another suggested that someplace called ‘Arizona’ would roast the moisture right out of him. Where is that? Do you have any idea?”
“In America, I believe, near Mexico. It’s full of cowboys.”
“Oh, jolly,” Putnam said. “We shall fit right in.”
I pulled my watch from my waistcoat pocket and inspected it. We still had a quarter hour before the train arrived. Barker took Forbes inside, while we stood on the platform awaiting the engine that would take the two of them to Edinburgh.
“Does he confide in you?” I asked.
“Sometimes. Why do you ask?”
“I was wondering if it took him long to decide that Mr. Barker should be his successor. He seems an unusual choice, if I may say that about my own employer.”
“He’s had a long time to consider. I’ve seen at least one list in his room.”
“I’d have thought he would have chosen an aristocrat. Is it because Barker is Scottish?”
“No, there is at least one other he considered who was a Scot. You look concerned.”
“I am, rather. It could cause all sorts of changes at the agency.”
“I’m sorry, old man. I don’t believe he took your feelings into consideration, any more than he did mine.”
I decided I liked the fellow, or at least I sympathized with him. Being dragged along behind an important man and having to constantly cope with changing circumstances was something I found familiar.
Eventually the express engine to Edinburgh steamed forward, changed tracks, and eased back until the couplings locked. She was a beauty, the Scotch Express, sleek and black, picked out in red. She had raced the Western Line a few years before, a race in which I’d have given my back molars to participate.
“Here comes Pollock,” Putnam said, and I turned and watched as he and Barker returned. I began to get a lump in my throat. He came up to me and shook my hand without speaking. There was nothing I could think of to say. He patted the Guv on the sleeve and turned. The two of them had already said their adieus.
Forbes and Putnam boarded the train, the latter raising his hat to me. I caught a glimpse of them as they took a seat in one of the carriages. Then the steam whistle blew and Cyrus Barker and I watched the train pass out from under the canopy into a gently falling snow.
We left without speaking, both of us in our own sad thoughts. I vowed I would never play dominoes again if it couldn’t be with Pollock, and though I didn’t stop visiting the Café Royal now and then, it was never the same again. It never could be.
We took a hansom from the station, still without speaking. There were blankets inside the cab and we covered ourselves in them.
“You couldn’t say no, could you?” I asked.
“No, I couldn’t. Could you?”
I shook my head. “What shall we do? Do we now work exclusively for the Templars? Shall it be government work from now on?”
Then he spoke the words I thought I’d never hear from his lips.
“Thomas, I have no idea.”
Jenkins had banked the fire in the grate well enough that one felt the heat as one entered. We doffed our coats and sat, thinking. The Guv’s last remark had shaken me. I could not leave it alone.
“Why don’t you have an idea?” I finally said.
He inhaled and then blew his cheeks out. “There are too many variables, and I’m still considering my options. We’re playing with the hounds now and we cannot afford to be timid.”
“Or wrong,” I added.
The telephone set on Barker’s desk jangled, making me jump. At that moment I couldn’t think of a single good thing that might occur if I answered, merely catastrophes. Still, one mustn’t let down the side.
“Barker and Llewelyn Agency.”
“Inspector Garrick, please,” a voice said.
“There’s no one here by that name.”
“Garrick, hello. It’s Poole. The Old Man’s on his way, just as you predicted. Batten down the hatches and all that. Meet us there if you want to hear fireworks.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Cheerio.”
I placed the receiver back in its cradle. “Munro is coming again and no doubt tearing up Whitehall as he comes. We must prepare.”
“Mac,” Barker said, looking up. “Take a stroll.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied from the other room.
I scooted my caster chair into the waiting room, where our butler now occupied a desk behind Jenkins.
“Hello, Jacob, old fellow!” I said. “Didn’t see you there.”
He hates when I call him “Jacob,” at least to his face.
“Thomas.”
He was busy stuffing a large folder full of the correspondence that had recently arrived. I noticed he was out of his uniform. His silver waistcoat had been replaced by one in a subtle check. Going to the stand, he took down a bowler much like mine, in place of his customary homburg hat. He donned the bowler and stepped out the door, then disappeared in that way he has that made him a prince among butlers.
Munro arrived no more than a minute afterward.
“Barker!” he bawled as he entered the door the second time since the case began.
“I am right here,
Commissioner. There is no need to shout.”
“Don’t tell me when to shout and when not to shout. Clap him in darbies, gentlemen. And the little cheeky one, too.”
“How nice,” I said. “Did you miss me?”
He smacked me for my trouble.
Barker stood and held out his wrists. The metal bracelets barely fit around them. I, on the other hand, could practically pull my hands through.
“What do I do with him?” one of the constables asked about our clerk.
Jenkins sat impassively. Even a room full of constables didn’t fully concern him.
Munro waved him away, then leaned across the Guv’s desk to stare him in the eyes. He was getting fingermarks all over the polished glass.
“Where is it, Barker?” he demanded.
“Where is what?”
“You know what. The leather bag.”
“It’s next door in Cox and Co. in a vault.”
“Don’t try that with me! It won’t wash.”
Between the cold air and his hot temperament, Munro’s face was red as a tomato.
“I’m sorry you don’t believe me, sir,” Barker said. “I shall say no more.”
“Good. Take the place apart, men. We’re hunting for a leather valise, old and scuffed. It will be heavy. Treat it very carefully.”
They were none too gentle. A fall from over six feet does not agree with the spine of a book or its brethren. They tossed our waste bins about, and rifled in the drawers of Barker’s desk. I’d have made a caustic remark, but I had already been slapped once and I did not require another.
“Here, sir!” one of the constables cried. He wasn’t much older than the blue coats that had tackled me.
Below the Barker crest and cutlasses was a table containing a tray of glasses and a bottle of brandy for those clients of ours who needed fortification. Beneath that was a small bookcase, which actually wasn’t a bookcase at all. It was a safe made for the agency by Chubb and Sons. It had a combination lock, a series of tumblers that needed to be turned in order to open the safe.
“Open it,” Munro told Barker.
My employer lifted his shackled wrists and shrugged his shoulders.
“You, then,” he said, turning to me.
“I forget the combination,” I said. “A room full of peelers makes me nervous.”
He stormed into the waiting room and lifted Jeremy from his chair. No one was as surprised as our clerk.
The commissioner escorted him to the safe and pointed. “Open it!”
Our clerk looked over his shoulder at the Guv. He nodded. I’m a partner and I expect to be pushed around now and again, but there’s an unwritten rule: you don’t harm a clerk. Apparently if it isn’t written, Munro feels he need not abide by it.
Jenkins put a hand over the lock to stop the officers from seeing the combination, then he turned the long handle and it opened soundlessly. There in the safe was the satchel, disreputable as always.
“In the bank at Cox and Co., my blessed mother!” the commissioner hooted. “We have what we came for. Take them!”
We were led to the front door, where our coats were thrown over our shoulders and hats pushed down low on our heads. Then we were rudely pushed outside into the cold. The constables wore their sturdy coats which came up to their throats and down to their knees. I hopped over an icy puddle and then was jerked into the traffic of Whitehall Street. People looked at us on the street or in cabs as we were trotted down the road in irons. Nothing in my eight months in prison was more embarrassing than that very moment, being prodded with truncheons and pulled by the wrists, the better to display to everyone in London that we were criminals.
I assumed our destination was Scotland Yard; it seemed to be the obvious choice. However, we were dragged past the Met and farther south down Whitehall Street, accompanied by a squad of ten officers. Aside from the commissioner, that made eight men to protect London from Cyrus Barker, and if I may flatter myself, two to take on Thomas Llewelyn, Esq. We formed our own parade, a parade of shame, if you will, arranged by Scotland Yard for our benefit.
I tried not to look anyone in the eye, but sure enough one caught mine, a young man in a long coat leaning against a building, scowling. He didn’t wear a blue coat. It was Soho Vic, and he was angry. Perhaps he had always admired Cyrus Barker before, but would not admit it. Perhaps he understood where he would be and what he would have been if not for the Guv. Seeing Barker shackled and humiliated was the first time I’d ever seen Vic display any emotion. Certainly, I was part of the humiliation, but later it seemed to me that he felt it deeper than I. The unimaginable had happened: Barker captured. Disgraced.
I looked over to see how my employer was enduring Munro’s torture and as I should have expected, he was calm, his back ramrod straight, walking as if he were taking an afternoon constitutional. My employer nodded at Vic and passed on. He did not appear to be angry. That was for his satellites such as Vic and myself. We had more than enough anger between us.
Why weren’t we going to Scotland Yard? I asked myself as we passed the old Banqueting House, one of the few parts of the Palace of Westminster that was finished. The Houses of Parliament were just ahead on my left, Westminster Abbey at the foot of the street, and to the right, the combined Home, Foreign, and Colonial Offices. Before that, however, was Downing Street. Ah, yes, Number 10 Downing Street, the home and offices of a certain public servant who was certain to be unhappy at that moment. We were a pair of flies with wings that needed to be plucked.
Munro turned and paced to number 10 where a young constable stood at such exaggerated attention I expected him to fall over. Munro marched us in the front door and down a hall: the commissioner, Barker and me, ten constables, and our old friend Swithin, who didn’t like people moving about without being escorted.
Eventually, I recognized the door to the Prime Minister’s office. Munro threw it open and led us up to the Prime Minister’s desk. We were pushed down into the same chairs we had occupied during our first visit. Salisbury sat at his large desk, still flanked by all those books. One would think that owning such books would make a man happy, but the Prime Minister was not a happy man. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Gentlemen, you are sacked!” Salisbury thundered. “Truly sacked! You shall never be more well and truly sacked! I’ve never met a pair of more incompetent asses in my entire life. I don’t know why I took counsel about finding a suitable courier for the satchel, can you, Munro?”
The commissioner was caught flat-footed.
“I? Uh, no, sir.”
“I should have made the decision myself. A random nanny and her three charges could have successfully delivered a satchel to the Dover ferry in half a day, including time for rock candy. You bumblers could not accomplish it in four days. In that much time, you could have wagged the satchel under the Kaiser’s nose and still made the trip to Calais before now.”
I wanted to slide into my collar as a turtle does its shell. We’d never been sacked before, and I hadn’t received such a tongue-lashing since I was in grammar school and had spilled an inkwell on the headmaster’s desk. Even the judge who sentenced me to nine months in Oxford Prison for theft had not subjected me to such abuse, and it was only starting.
“Let me explain your duties to you again, Mr. Barker. They are not onerous. You take the package to Charing Cross Station. You board the express to Dover. In Dover, you transfer to a ferry bound for Calais. Arriving in Calais, you deliver the satchel to Monsignor Bello. He should not be difficult to find. He is the one surrounded by priests, who has been waiting several days for the satchel. The monsignor is a busy and important man. He does not have time to sit about on his hands. Likewise, the staff at the Vatican Library has been awaiting the delivery of the manuscript.”
He fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief and wiped the sheen from his forehead.
“There, you see? You have tricked me into revealing what was inside the
satchel. It was my intention not to reveal the contents. Very well! It was a book. Well, parts of a scroll, actually. An ancient scroll. You were supposed to safeguard it! The Vatican has promised to hold it safely in their vaults for Great Britain. It is a national treasure. What have you dunces been doing with a national treasure? Practicing curling?”
I glanced at Munro, who was now sitting in a chair enjoying the show. From his expression, he seemed to find the entertainment first-rate. Looking back, I found the Prime Minister’s eyes boring into me.
“Mr. Barker! Mr. Llewelyn,” he said, sitting down in his chair and trying to calm himself. “You are not trying to disgrace England, are you? Tell me that you are not working for a foreign power. Tell me you have not been employed by the Labour Party in order to sabotage my government!”
“Certainly not, Your Lordship,” Barker said. “I am a loyal Conservative.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled. It had not been a question. Barker was only making matters worse, if such a thing were possible. Was there some kind of punishment for what we had done, or rather, hadn’t done? Was the Prime Minister able to throw us in a cell for however long he thought sufficient, even it were years? Would I still be free at the end of the day, or would Rebecca find herself married to a prisoner? Would Barker’s solicitor, Bram Cusp, be able to free us from such a situation? Would he even try, and damage his own reputation? Worst of all, was there some way we could just disappear from the earth having thwarted a plan of the most powerful man on earth? My word, how did we get ourselves into such a mess?
Salisbury leaned forward and folded his hands together on the blotter in front of him.
“Mr. Barker. Would you be so kind as to tell me why you have not delivered the manuscript?”
“Your Excellency did not inform me there was a particular day or time by which you wanted the satchel delivered,” the Guv said.
I turned and regarded him. There was no sheen on his forehead. He seemed calm and self-contained. He was not flustered by having a man shout at him for five solid minutes.
“Do you not understand the word ‘immediately’?”
“I do, sir,” my employer replied, “but you did not use it. What you said was ‘as soon as possible.’ There is a good deal of difference between the two terms. It was not possible for me to deliver the satchel.”