by Will Thomas
“Not possible or not convenient?” Munro asked in a low voice.
“Yes, Mr. Barker, Private Enquiry Agent. What have you been doing with your time?” Salisbury demanded.
“Thomas and I have been attacked twice by the same young men who killed Hillary Drummond. They knew of our involvement within an hour of our taking possession of the satchel. I think it likely someone here in Whitehall Street is working against us. That is, against you, sir.”
“Brass!” the Prime Minister shouted. “Have you any witnesses?”
“Dozens, sir. By my calculations, I have been followed about by CID men, Home Office agents, members of a German fencing club, a German agent and at least one suspect. We attended Drummond’s funeral yesterday and it seemed as if half of the mourners had followed us there. Tell me, were you the one who ordered us followed? Were we being spied upon by Her Majesty’s government after we were hired?”
“You obviously didn’t do the work,” Munro said.
“Perhaps, but you did not yet know this when your men began following me about. I assumed the Prime Minister has not told you until this minute what the satchel contained.”
“Of course not,” the commissioner said.
“May I have these darbies removed, please?” I asked. “I promise I will neither attack anyone nor run away.”
The Prime Minister looked at the commissioner. The commissioner looked back at the Prime Minister. Munro began patting his pockets.
“I’ll get that, Thomas,” my employer said, unlocking my restraints with a key from his waistcoat pocket. He did not remove his own.
“Where did you find that key?” Munro nearly shouted.
“This one?” the Guv asked. “I always carry it. You might consider checking a fellow’s pockets before you parade him in front of heads of state. I have a pistol, a nine-inch knife, and a number of sharpened coins. Do you still have your Webley, Thomas?”
“I do, sir.”
“There you are, then. Had we been working against our country’s interests, the commissioner here would have escorted us through this building to your very desk at your mortal peril.”
No one spoke for a moment. The Earl of Salisbury was trying to take it all in. The head of the Met was a little red about the face. Barker seemed to be enjoying himself. The Prime Minister took another tack.
“What is all this about the professor—Wessel, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Barker replied. “A friend and a capital linguist. I hold myself responsible for his death. I don’t know who the University of London will find to take his place.”
“Why did he meet you in that hovel in Limehouse?” Munro demanded.
“What hovel in Limehouse?” Barker asked.
“Don’t play the innocent with me. You were seen entering and leaving a tearoom of special interest to Scotland Yard.”
“So, you admit you were following us, then?” my employer asked.
“It was necessary to protect the manuscript.”
“But you didn’t know there was a manuscript. You didn’t even know there was a satchel.”
“You were a person of interest. Wessel was dead.”
“Your chronology is off. Wessel died later.”
“Because of you, Cyrus Barker. Death follows you like a shadow.”
“I run an enquiry agency, Commissioner, not a sweetshop. The work we do is dangerous.”
“You are dangerous!” Munro insisted. “You sent that poor scholar to his death.”
“I sent him back to the university in a hansom cab. I presumed he was safe since Limehouse was bristling with plainclothesmen, who were no doubt Special Branch detectives. Did none of you think to follow him?”
Munro looked away. Apparently, no one had.
“Mr. Barker,” the Prime Minister asked, once more taking over the conversation. “Can you please tell me what you were doing in the middle of the night in a questionable district of London with the manuscript with which I entrusted you?”
The Guv shifted in his seat. It was hard wood, probably to discourage long meetings, and he was still in his bracelets.
“Prime Minister, the manuscript was locked in the vault of the Cox and Co. Bank at the time. The bank manager will attest to that.”
“Swithin!”
The Prime Minister’s winged servant appeared at the door. “Sir?”
“Bring tea.”
“Sir.”
The door closed. Salibury pounced. “Mr. Barker, one last time, for what purpose were you and Mr. Wessel in Limehouse?”
He was caught there, I thought. He had wriggled and explained and argued as well as anyone could, but eventually one is called to account. My employer reached up with his bound hands and removed his bowler hat. He laid it in his lap and brushed it with a hand. He looked diminished, somehow.
“Prayer meeting, sir. We were having a prayer meeting.”
“Prayer meeting?” Salisbury practically shouted. “In the middle of the night in the blackest, most godforsaken part of London?”
“No place is godforsaken, even in the East End.”
The PM regarded a piece of paper on his desk, looking for a passage in it. “A prayer meeting in a tearoom run by an Asiatic known for his association with eastern criminal organizations known as ‘triads.’”
“Yes, sir,” Barker replied. “And that ‘Asiatic’ is my oldest friend. He was my first mate when I was the captain of a merchant vessel in the China Sea.”
“You appear to have led a colorful life.”
“Not intentionally.”
“You—damn it, man, you’ve got your own key. Remove those restraints!”
My employer reached again into his waistcoat pocket, removed the key he carried there, and unlocked his own manacles. His bowler was still on the edge of the desk, as he stood and crossed to where the commissioner sat. Munro leaned back as if fearing some attack, but all that happened was a pair of darbies were placed in his lap. We all watched as Barker pulled the coat from his shoulders and donned it properly. He brushed it with a hand, straightened his tie, and sat again.
“You were saying, sir?”
“The prayer meeting,” Salisbury prompted. “You expect me to believe you were having a prayer meeting at two o’clock in the morning?”
“I do, sir. I am—was—a deacon at the Baptist Tabernacle. Professor Wessel was a scholar in ancient languages. What else should we be doing? It is not a public house or a low den. It is a tearoom. We drank tea and read Scriptures.”
Sometimes I’m in awe of the man. We did drink tea, and he was reading the Scriptures. It was a simple answer because it was true.
“Why not do that at home?”
“It was not safe, as can be proven by the professor’s murder. There are men out there armed with swords, waiting to kill people for whatever is in that satchel.”
“Are you in the habit of having late prayer meetings, sir?” Salisbury asked.
“I am, although not generally with the professor. Most often it is with Robert Anderson.”
Salisbury had been scratching his long beard, but he stopped and looked at the Guv, and then over at Munro.
“Robert Anderson, the former spymaster general?”
“Aye, sir.”
“The current assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police?”
“The same.”
Munro rubbed his face with his hand and sighed. “I cannot control with whom my subordinates do or do not associate.”
I coughed. Munro frowned at me.
“I’m just a layman,” my employer continued. “I needed an expert to parse several words that have always troubled me. For instance—”
“I don’t need your ‘for instances,’ Mr. Barker. Why didn’t you just deliver the bloody satchel and have done with it? You could go on to your next case and I could concentrate on things of national interest. At least the manuscript is finally on its way, although I’m sure the Home Office has a few choice words to say to you. You were s
upposed to coordinate with them.”
“Sir, Mr. Llewelyn was attacked in the street. Then I was confronted in my office by two youths armed with swords. Then Wessel was killed. When would I have time to coordinate with the Home Office?”
“Confess, Barker,” Munro said. “You were investigating the death of Hillary Drummond, which is Scotland Yard’s duty.”
“How well are you coming along?” I asked.
Very well. Perhaps that was not the most politic thing to say. Munro seemed to think so. He sprang up and had a hand clamped around the back of my neck before I could think. He moved quickly for a man with too many social banquets in his system.
“Pray, don’t hurt my assistant, Munro,” Barker said.
“Partner!” I corrected.
“Insolent pup,” the commissioner replied.
“Woof.”
Barker gave me a murderous look.
“Have you been investigating the death of Drummond?” Salisbury asked. “You admitted attending his funeral.”
“I may have questioned a person or two,” my employer said.
“Such as the German ambassador,” Munro said, like a schoolboy informing on a classmate.
That was one too many, apparently. The Prime Minister shook his head, stood, and began to pace in front of all those wonderful books I coveted the last time I was here.
“The German ambassador,” he repeated. “You’ve brought Hatzfeldt into this?”
“Merely to ask if he could find information about a British national who died upon arrival on English soil.”
“Then the two of them disrupted a public event run by an American,” Munro cried.
He ripped a newspaper clipping from his pocket and placed it on the desk. Salisbury didn’t want to look at it. He waved it away. I leaned forward.
“Is my name in it?” I asked. “Did they spell it right?”
There was no sign what newspaper or journal the article had come from. It was a humorous column written by a waggish fellow whose hand I hoped to shake someday. It told how Cochran and his camp followers had descended upon London like a plague of locusts, how he had become a social climber in order to bring socialites and stevedores alike to his tent revival. I began to read.
Then after a rousing sermon of which London has not seen the like since Charles Wesley, a demonstration was done to prove the superiority of the so-called Aryan races, who, Cochran says, were actually the remnant of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The demonstration involved a youth from the reverend’s camp followers and a volunteer from the audience performing physical culture exercises on the horizontal bar. It went awry, however, when the volunteer, a stripling of a Welshman named Timothy Llewelyn, proved superior on the bar. This broke up the audience, and eventually the camp meeting itself.
“Stripling?” I asked. “Timothy?”
“Quite, Thomas,” Barker muttered.
“Mr. Barker,” the Prime Minister said. “This is a sad ending to a bad business. I should have known better than to accept the offer of a man to work for free. I have received what I paid for. You may bluster and you may explain, you may turn logic on its ear, but the fact remains that you failed to do a very simple task and you are sacked. I never want to see you in this office again. You shall not be hired by any agency of the government again in any matter. You have proven yourself unsatisfactory and your work inferior. You are sacked. I am done with you both. Go.”
We went. The worst part was the look of triumph on Munro’s piggish face. I would have dearly enjoyed poking that snout of his, but we were disgraced.
“At least we aren’t in jail,” I said, as we exited Downing Street.
“That is cold comfort, lad,” Barker growled. “Prodded along in darbies on my own street. I was willing to show mercy, but not now. The gloves are off.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
While our return to Craig’s Court was more sedate than our leave-taking, it was no less embarrassing. I assumed every eye I felt on me had seen us being dragged down Whitehall Street in restraints. The Guv and I had been arrested dozens of times since I had begun working with him, but never had I endured such public humiliation.
Barker’s face was set; he was no longer the logical and humble fellow who had tolerably answered Salisbury’s questions. His blood was up. As he said, the gloves were off. It was a phrase he had uttered only once or twice since I’d met him. I had no sympathy for Salisbury, and even less for Munro, but I wondered what my employer would do.
Sacked.
Sometimes a case was unable to be solved and we returned the retainer fee to the client, but that was far different from being sacked.
I watched as he stoked that pipe of his, retrieved the block of wood that would eventually become a model of the Arrow, and began carving again as if nothing had happened. The fellow has nerves of iron.
“We’ve been sacked!” I said, hoping to get some response from him. Any response was better than none.
“Mmmm?” he said gruffly, then turned to his task again.
“What now?” I asked. Sometimes it was necessary to state the obvious. “What do we do?”
“I am doing something,” he said. “Jeremy!”
Our clerk put his head into the room. “Mr. B.?”
“Be a good fellow and nip over to the Shades for a few sandwiches. See if they have any fried potatoes. And some ale, of course.”
“Righto.”
I opened my wallet and gave Jeremy a sovereign and a stern look. He wiggled his eyebrows and hurried out into the snow. I moved to the fireplace, added coal, and banked the embers.
“Damn and blast that Salisbury!” I said.
“He was well within his rights as a client to dispense with our services,” Barker said. “If that has not occurred before, we can count ourselves fortunate.”
A boy came in with a note, and I gave him a sixpence. We were just tucking into our sandwiches a quarter hour later when another entered, stamped the snow from his feet, and laid a few more notes on our clerk’s desk. Jenkins offered him half a sandwich and he snatched it and ran off like a squirrel with a nut.
I was casting about for something to do to look occupied and then stopped the attempt. If the Guv could not be bothered, then why should I? Still, it rankled me.
“The Prime Minister has a point, I should imagine,” I said. “We promised to take a manuscript to Calais and we failed to do so, as you said. We deserved what we received.”
Barker held up his finger, carved a tiny splinter from the wood block, and blew it away.
“Succinctly put,” he said, not bothering to look up.
“We could have taken it there at any time.”
“No doubt.”
“It’s only two hours by train. Or is it less?” I asked.
“It’s less, I’m sure of it,” Barker replied.
“And the ferry to Calais, that would take half an hour, perhaps?”
“If that.”
“So, it would have taken two and a half hours to get there and an equal time to return.”
He nodded.
I tried. I wanted to, but when the time came I found I could not ask him the reason for not doing as we had been instructed to do.
“At least tell me the satchel you gave him was the right one.”
He puffed his pipe. He carved the block.
“You didn’t give the manuscript to the Prime Minister?” I exclaimed. “Are you mad? Have you lost your reason?”
“Not that I am aware.”
The outer door opened again, bringing another tyke. His arms were full of notes. He pulled off a sock he was using as a mitten with his teeth and laid the stack on the desk beside the others. He received another sixpence. He examined its authenticity with the few teeth in his mouth and headed out into the cold again.
Mac caught the closing door and entered, looking neat as a pin. He hung his hat on a hook.
“Gentlemen,” he said, pouncing on the letters. His timing was impeccable, but th
en it always is, drat the man.
Another boy came; another note; another sixpence. I emptied my pockets of coins and put them on the corner of Barker’s desk and the Guv did the same.
Then an older boy arrived, looked about as if Scotland Yard would lay darbies on him at any moment, then removed at least ten notes from his coat. I gave him a full shilling and he tugged his peaked cap before leaving. I noticed he wore an actual coat and he had new shoes.
“One of Vic’s urchins?”
There was no response but the fall of wood shavings on the floor like snowflakes.
“That’s an awful lot of letters,” I remarked. “Especially for weather such as this.”
For the rest of the afternoon it continued like that. Snow drifted outside our door and notes drifted inside. Some were in envelopes and others merely folded scraps of paper. Mac recorded the information from the notes into his notebook. Barker carved. Jenkins nursed one of the bottles he had brought from the Shades, and I complained. It was one of my better skills.
There was a gap between visits long enough for Mac to set down every note in his notebook. Eventually, he rose from his ersatz desk, and took the notebook to the Guv. If he was expecting a word of encouragement, this was not the day for it. Barker harrumphed and returned to work. Jacob Maccabee did not seem especially offended.
Several other letters arrived, one carried by a professional messenger boy in a serge suit with buttons. He removed his pillbox cap, his manner most professional. He looked about eleven years of age. Jenkins had to sign for the note. I gave him a shilling though he brought but one note.
One can only be outraged for so long. The Prime Minister had sacked us. We were persona non grata at Scotland Yard. The Home, Foreign, and Colonial Offices would have little to do with us, but did it really matter? The agency was still open. We still had the money to pay messengers. Rebecca would still be there when we arrived home, provided we could find a cab in the snow.
An hour went by. Two. I’d have read a book if there were a novel on the shelves, but all we had there were reference materials: atlases and almanacs, dictionaries and directories. I’d have read Bulwer-Lytton at that point. I stepped out into Craig’s Court and felt the air whistle about me. The heat inside had been stultifying, but it was dangerous outside. I looked for blue coats. I didn’t see one, but there was a man watching me from an alley across the street. I couldn’t make him out due to the falling snow. He appeared to be wearing all black, like a stage villain, and wore a hat with a wide brim. I stepped forward with the intent to cross the street, but as I did, I noticed another sentinel down the street near the Admiralty. By the time I looked back the first had disappeared. It could have been my imagination. Anyone standing in that dazzling snow would look dark. The second man evaporated as well. I looked in both directions to see if there were more keeping watch on our chambers. The next I knew, I was nearly bowled over.