Old Scores--A Barker & Llewelyn Novel

by Will Thomas

  “Would the English help them?” I asked.

  “If they could find a reason,” Barker answered.

  “Find!” Ho barked. “They could make a reason. Remember the Arrow incident about fifty years ago? One English ship stuffed with opium went down on the Pearl River and England nearly went to war with China. And England retaliated by supplying plenty of cheap opium to China from poppy fields in India. It ruined a generation of men.”

  “The English, in matter of diplomacy, are not the gentlemen they appear,” I said.

  “Ah,” Ho said. “Light dawns. He can be taught.”

  “Thank you. And the Japanese?”

  “Ghost devils!” Ho cried, lifting his bottle. Perhaps the liquor was finally starting to affect him.

  “Perhaps not as bad as that,” Barker said, trying to pacify his friend. “They are a small, isolated nation which was thrust into the limelight when the Americans arrived with their black ships. To some degree, I suppose they are frightened it shall happen again. But they have weapons and they are not afraid to fight. I believe plans are afoot in Tokyo, but we know not yet what kind of plans. If the ambassador’s death is any indication, the time for peace and flower arranging is over.”

  “So how do we know what plans are afoot?”

  “The best way, I think, is to make certain everyone is at the party. Especially Campbell-Ffinch.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is lazy and has never bothered to learn Japanese, which means everything has to be translated for him.”

  Ho chuckled. “This is going to be an interesting party.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sometimes one must state the obvious in order to receive an answer. People tend to be loquacious, but not all of us, I’m afraid. Some of us consider silence a virtue. I happened to work for one of them. Explain things to me when I could eventually work it out for myself? Perish the thought.

  “We’re heading toward the inn,” I said that evening.

  “Aye.”

  “You intend to speak to K’ing himself?”

  “I do.”

  “About what, exactly?”

  “Whatever occurs to me.”

  Barker was walking in that way he has, his head down, his hands behind his back.

  “He’s not liable to tell you his plans, sir.”

  “I don’t expect him to. But he might say something of use to us.”

  “I just don’t want to see you waste your time.”

  Barker sat back in the cab. We were in Limehouse again.

  “There’s always enough time for a patient man.”

  That’s it. Give me an axiom instead of an answer. The Analects of Barker.

  The room was full. Most of those assembled were Asian. The population was not large, but it seemed as if all of it was here. As we entered a wide, open room with Persian carpets, a Chinese man detached himself from a position near the wall and came forward. He was very large. Not in the way Ohara was. He had big muscles and a trim waist.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Shi Shi Ji,” Barker replied. “I wish to speak to my son-in-law.”

  The guard crossed his arms, blocking our way.

  “He is occupied.”

  “Five minutes,” Barker said.

  I followed the Guv down a hall and then up a set of stairs. K’ing’s lair, if one wishes to call it that, backs onto a disused sewer line where his staff and patrons could escape during a raid. The Guv seemed to know exactly where he was going. At the end of an ornate hall, he opened a door and stepped in.

  K’ing was reclining on a couch, holding a two-foot-long pipe with an outsized bowl. I have that kind of occupation which allows one to be able to identify opium where he smells it. The atmosphere in the room was charged with it.

  K’ing’s attention was focused on some point beyond us, possibly at some point beyond the wall. The smoke he was exhaling curled upward from his mouth.

  “Cyrus Barker,” he said, about a minute later.

  “At your service.”

  “Hmmm. What can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to ask you a question regarding my former ward, Bok Fu Ying.”

  “Too many words. Far too many.”

  “What did you send her to find?”

  “An offer from the government.”

  “An offer to ship items to and from Japan?”

  The casino owner nodded and took another pull on the pipe.

  “The government was working against the Blue Funnel Line?”

  “I don’t know. No time to see, with Toda dead.”

  “But you suspect it did?” Barker asked.

  “Why hand over a moneymaking contract to us? Best to keep it with the English lines.”

  “But that endangered the plan, didn’t it?”

  “Oh, it did,” K’ing murmured, shifting on his leather chaise longue.

  “The plan,” Barker continued. “What was it again?”

  K’ing sat up and cleared his throat. “You won’t catch me out so easily, Cyrus.”

  The Guv shrugged his thick shoulders and gave a cold smile.

  “I believe,” Barker said, “that you have been building a relationship with the general in order to foster trade between here and China. So far as I know, you are the only Chinaman who doesn’t despise the Japanese. I presume it is a business opportunity.”

  “Believe or presume whatever you wish. I’ll neither confirm nor deny your story.”

  “However, I don’t think you would take such matters seriously if it were but one big voyage. There must be a steady flow of goods from the English government. Not merely food or timber or simple goods.”

  K’ing rested his head against the back of the chaise. He took another puff of his pipe, then let it leak back out of his mouth. As it rose, he sucked the smoke back into his lungs at the last minute. “Chasing the dragon” meant opium smoking, but originally it was this method of smoking it.

  “You’re getting boring,” he said, and closed his eyes.

  He slumped a little in his chair, and I wondered if he had succumbed to the fumes and would be of no use to us. He rallied, however, and raised his head.

  “Bless my soul, if it isn’t Thomas Llewelyn. Still following in Barker’s shadow?”

  “As you see.”

  “I’m making money hand over fist. Come join my organization.”

  “Thank you for the offer, but no,” I said.

  “Don’t be … Don’t be … What’s the word? Precious? Don’t be precious. Take the money.”

  He laid his head back again.

  “Don’t fall asleep, K’ing. We have another matter to discuss.”

  “What is it?” he demanded irritably.

  “My ward.”

  He spoke with his eyes closed. “She is your ward no longer. She is my wife. I own her now.”

  “You cannot own her, like she is a milk cow or a piece of furniture,” I said.

  “I can and do. Shi Shi Ji, you relinquished what few rights you had to her when we wed. By English law, she is mine.”

  “You’re ruining her life. And yours, by the way.”

  “That’s touching, but it’s none of your concern.”

  “When was the last time you even saw her?”

  “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “I saw her last week. No, the week before. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I gave her to you with the expectation that you would care for her and see to her comfort.”

  “She’s in a fine house. She lacks for nothing. I’ve given her baubles and fresh flowers. I’m a businessman. I have work to do.”

  “When you’re not sucking on that blasted pipe.”

  “It was Sebastian Nightwine’s fault. He kidnapped me and forced this habit on me. May he rot in hell!”

  He actually leaned forward toward us and spat out the words. It was the only true emotion he showed in our entire conversation.

  “K’ing,
there are ways to conquer your addiction. The Mile End mission has made great strides in the treatment of opium abuse.”

  “You’ll take my pipe over my dead body!” he shouted.

  I thought then that his words seemed prophetic.

  Cyrus Barker looked at his son-in-law with something approaching disgust. Fu Ying was not his actual daughter, of course, but it amounted to the same thing. What a disappointment her suitor had become. My employer believed in self-strengthening. Indulging in the pipe without even an attempt to throw off its tentacles was a sign of weakness in his book. It was indulgence when there were things to attend to, such as Bok Fu Ying being neglected in Three Colt Lane.

  “What are you here for again?” K’ing asked.

  “We were seeing how you were.”

  “I’m in excellent health, as you can see. The casino is doing well. Gambling is even more successful than running an opium den. Half the East End is Chinese and the other half is Jewish. Both have a weakness for the gambling table.”

  “It had to be done,” Barker said, leading him along. “One wouldn’t want to spoil the plan.”

  K’ing shook his head, but it was wobbling as if it were too heavy for his neck.

  “It had to be done,” he repeated.

  “Now you can join with Mononobe and set up a trade alliance. You’ll make a lot of money that way.”

  “I will,” he said. His eyes closed.

  “All those goods going to Japan, and others coming back here. Cloth and timber, silk and art work. And eventually a warship, all delivered by your crews.”

  “Of course,” K’ing said.

  “You’ll need more ships and merchant sailors.”

  “Lots more.”

  “A big plan.”

  “Big plan.”

  His hand tilted forward and dropped the long pipe onto the table in front of him. In a minute we could hear his steady breathing. He would answer no more questions.

  “Come along, Thomas.”

  I followed him out. His bodyguard brushed past us, past Barker, anyway, and walked in to look on his employer. His charge now, I thought. The man had probably become his caretaker.

  “I feel sorry for him in a way,” I stated. “He had such promise. He looked after all the Chinese here, he set up funds for them to secure their money, he did good works. K’ing always had a reputation as a criminal, but in fact, he really cares about this little colony.”

  “Don’t waste your sympathy,” Barker growled. “I was a fool to marry Fu Ying to him. He is a grave disappointment.”

  “That was a fine trick, leading him along when he was half unconscious. It was a confession of sorts.”

  “A confession of what, exactly?” the Guv asked. “His plan is not illegal. His casino and his opium den are not illegal, either, by law. To the Chinese community he is a veritable saint, thanks to his benevolent society.”

  “Except to Ho,” I said.

  Barker chuckled. “Aye. Except to him. Perhaps I did my old friend a disservice. I should have encouraged Fu Ying to marry him. He’s old, but he would not have mistreated her.”

  “Water under the bridge,” I said.

  “We could kidnap her,” he mused. “Help her divorce him.”

  “It wouldn’t work,” I said. “He has solicitors. Actually, he is one, blast him.”

  We stepped out into the street. It was raining in Limehouse. Misting, rather. I watched it fall through the nimbus of a gas lamp. It made the sordidness and misery of the district look temporarily quaint. That’s the thing about England, you see. We can do our best to savage it, and somehow it always grows back or reveals its natural beauty. The landscape will outlast us all. Eventually, when we are gone, it will all become a forest again, after all we’ve done to it.

  “What do we do now?” I asked, tugging my bowler down a bit more and putting my hands in my pockets.

  The Guv pulled up his collar.

  “Home, I suppose.”

  “Don’t you want to see Bok Fu Ying?”

  “She is self-sufficient. I would not intrude upon her.”

  My employer is rough sometimes, but I think he treats me better than he does his ward. For all his Scottishness he is a Chinese father. There is no coddling. Children are trained to be prepared for a difficult world. He was right, I suppose. Fu Ying would not appreciate his help. But she needed it, which was more important. Barker wouldn’t listen to my advice, any more than K’ing would listen to ours. There are a good deal of stubborn men in London.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The next morning, I had plenty of coffee and for once the old Llewelyn noggin was working.

  “Forgive me, sir, but if the general were the actual killer, why hire you to find him? Is he undervaluing your skills?”

  We were back in Whitehall in our chambers. Meanwhile, Ohara was back in Newington with Mac. After seeing the destruction he had wreaked in Barker’s rooms, I didn’t trust him. There were still three floors left to demolish.

  Barker had his boots up on the corner of his desk, scratching absently under his chin, deep in thought. It was his standard method of cogitating. He’ll sit there all day if I let him.

  “I don’t believe so,” my employer said. “It’s the easiest way to see what I am about, and how I’m progressing. For that same reason, I have him come to the garden for Go every morning. We are engaged in a battle of wits over a game of strategy.”

  “You think he committed the murder, then?”

  “I have no evidence, but I consider it likely,” the Guv said.

  “But at the time of the murder, the general was downstairs giving a dinner speech. How could he kill Toda?”

  “He could have moved the bodyguards around like a game of thimblerig. They all wore identical suits and Ohara was at the front door, separated from the ambassador.”

  “Perhaps the murderer is under our own roof,” I said. “You told me the Kempeitai were ruthless, like the Special Branch. He could have had orders.”

  “For what purpose?” Barker asked.

  “I have no idea. I’m not an expert in Japanese politics. One party is against another for whatever reason. Somehow the ambassador became an impediment or merely expendable. He was a peaceful man in a dangerous game. It might not even be Mononobe. The admiral has as much to lose as he.”

  “Two new suspects in as many minutes. You scintillate this morning, lad.”

  “The law of averages said it would happen sooner or later.”

  “Does it not seem that the admiral has been avoiding us?”

  “It does,” I admitted. “You left word for him to contact you.”

  “He did not speak when he came to view the garden. Perhaps he does not speak English, which doesn’t matter, since you speak Japanese.”

  Barker lifted the telephone receiver in his hand and spoke into it. “Good morning. Shall Admiral Edami be in the embassy today? Excellent. Thank you very much.”

  He dropped the receiver into its cradle.

  “The admiral shall be there within the hour. Come, Thomas, let us waylay him when he comes by.”

  We took a hansom to Lord Diosy’s house and a man detached himself from the bushes, a shaggy-looking fellow with a white beard. I recognized him.

  “Henry Cathcart!”

  “Hello, young-fella-me-lad.”

  Cathcart was a reliable watcher. He kept an eye on things. He had such an ability to memorize conversations that his moniker was “The Sponge.”

  “Henry, has the admiral arrived yet?” Barker asked.

  Cathcart tugged on a disreputable top hat. “Not so far, sir, no. Left about an hour and a half ago.”

  “Thank you, Henry. I’ll send you back to your post. Have you been taken care of?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Mr. Llewelyn, give Henry two shillings. I want him reasonably sober for a day or two. He’s got work to do.”

  “Thankee, sir. A true gentleman, as always.”

  We waited nearly half an
hour before a brougham entered the gate. I could not mistake that erect posture or the peaked cap with gold braid. My employer let him enter and waited five minutes before we followed him inside. We were at the door, speaking to one of the guards, when the admiral came out again. I hazarded he was leaving because he heard we had called. He blanched momentarily when he saw us, but recovered well.

  “Mr. Barker, it is good to see you again. How is your investigation into the death of Ambassador Toda?”

  His English was slow and laborious, but we understood him. Now that I saw him again, he was not as tall as I had imagined.

  “We are making progress, sir,” Barker said. “We would like to ask you a few question about the ambassador’s death.”

  “Regretfully, I have an appointment,” he replied.

  “Truly regrettable. I would hate to inform Lord Diosy that you were hindering an enquiry. It would be highly suspicious if a murder occurred in this residence while you were in it, yet you said nothing.”

  “I am an extraterritorial diplomat and am not subject to your laws.”

  The man was trying to sound authoritative, but there was a tinge of panic in his voice.

  “Perhaps, but I am sure the Kempeitai would be interested in your refusal to answer questions about the death of such a well-known and much beloved ambassador.”

  The admiral deflated again. “Very well. Come along to my office.”

  We followed him up the stairs to the first floor. His heels echoed as he ascended. He led us to the left, to his so-called office. It was actually the anteroom to a suite. His desk, if one may consider it one, was a secretary stacked with papers. The general had the only actual office in the building.

  “Have a seat, gentlemen.”

  We sat. The room was built in the French style, with interior wardrobes that rose to the ceilings. It was an ostentatious symbol of wealth. Three quarters of each closet was useless, and there was no ladder to reach them.

  “Ask your questions.”

  “Where were you, sir, when Toda Ichigo was killed?”

  “I was downstairs in the meeting room. The general was speaking to us about how best to plan our schedules so that we knew when we were coming and going.”

  “What was the decision?”

  “He said we should each have a sheet of paper at the entrance, where we write the time and where we are going, and when we anticipate returning.”