by Will Thomas
Stepping outside, I was relieved to see that Juno’s cab was not encircled by constables. Barker and Mac hung the chains again and attached the padlock. Mac threw out the water in the bucket and began loading the few items we hadn’t left into the cab. Then we absconded, rolling along Abingdon Street as Big Ben just ahead of us chimed midnight.
They were talking inside the cab, I noticed, or at least Barker was. Fresh orders to which I was not privy. I lifted the hatch a bit on the top of the cab in time to hear one word: “clothesline.”
“Yes, sir,” Mac said. He lives for this kind of thing. A task! A job! Something to do in the proper manner! Nothing slipshod. Mac, for all his Jewish soul, would have made a good Japanese.
Eventually, we came to a stop in front of number 3 Lion Street again and they descended. Mac took down his pail and mop while I took Juno on to the stable. Perhaps it was due to what had occurred, but I would not allow the stable boy to deal with her. I curried her mane, brushed her down, checked her hooves, and then fed her a bag of oats myself. Then I went back home.
“Lad,” Barker said after I had entered the house. “Your duties are done for the night. You can go to bed.”
“I would prefer to stay up for a while, if I may,” I said. “I wouldn’t feel right sleeping while Mac is working. What is he doing, if I might ask?”
“He is preparing my clothing for the morning. What little Japanese clothing I still own has been packed away. Mac is seeing to it for me.”
“I’ll find out if he requires an extra hand.”
“Thomas, you have done a good night’s work. Thank you.”
“Not at all, sir.”
I went after Mac. Nothing embarrasses a Briton so much as being sincerely thanked for something.
Our butler had the clothes Barker was going to wear spread out upon the dining room table.
“Cor!” I said when I saw them.
“You have been hanging around the East End too long,” Mac told me.
To begin with, it looked like enough clothing for four people. There were layers of coats and trousers, most of it made of silk.
“Look at these hose!” Mac marveled.
They were white hose made of silk cloth, with small metal clasps to close them at the heel. They fit the foot a way a pair of gloves fit hands. The large toe was separated from the others.
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“The sandal fits in between the first and second here, see?”
“There are a lot of ties and ribbons to hold it together.”
“Presumably, Mr. Barker will show us how to dress him. It would be a tragedy if we made that chamber to standards and then Mr. Barker was ill-dressed.”
“How do you clean silk?”
“You don’t. I’ll string them up on a clothesline in the garden and hang them out until morning. Then I’ll press them if they require it.”
I helped him string the clothesline and hang the clothes. Harm came out into the garden to see what we were doing in his domain without his express permission at one o’clock in the morning. The musty clothes sent him into a sneezing fit.
When we were done I went upstairs. All the way upstairs. Barker was seated in one of his chairs flanking the unlit fireplace, wearing his Oriental dressing gown over his nightshirt. He was smoking one of his meerschaums.
“Shall I sleep in the library, sir, or will you wake me when you get up?”
“That won’t be necessary, lad.”
“I insist. I must see this through.”
“See what through, Thomas?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” I admitted. “But something is going to happen tomorrow morning.”
“Indeed it will,” Barker said, puffing out smoke. “I only hope the agency can survive it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Half past four is not a civilized hour. I had finally fallen asleep perhaps three hours before. Then I recalled what we were waking so early for. General Mononobe was going to perform some sort of ceremony, whether in protest or in confession, I was not sure. One would think something like that could wait for a time that did not inconvenience everyone.
Mac came in with hot water. At one moment, I came awake to discover I was standing with my face lathered and my razor in hand sound asleep. Somehow I shaved and dressed myself. I’m not saying how well I did it, but it was done.
Going downstairs, I found Mac pressing coffee in the kitchen alone. We would be gone before Etienne Dummolard even arrived. Neither of us was inclined to talk. I looked out into the garden and even the gardeners had not yet arrived. I found some day-old croissants in the pantry and spooned some gooseberry jam on them. Mac and I split the press of coffee between us.
Barker came in then. He had bathed cold in the bathhouse. It takes a good hour to heat properly and we did not have the time. I heard him enter the house and climb the stairs. I sat down in a chair, munched the bread, and allowed the coffee to work its magic in my bloodstream. Vaguely, I recall I heard Barker call for Jacob Maccabee. As soon as he left, I closed my eyes again.
The next I knew, the Guv was beside my chair in his long coat. When I jumped up he turned and I could hear the whisper of several layers of silk. He was wearing the Japanese suit under his coat. From the neck down he looked like an old stereoscopic slide I had of a samurai warrior.
“Shall I bring the cab around?” I asked.
“It might prove inconvenient later,” Barker replied. “We’ll find one in the Causeway.”
As it happened, we did find one in Newington Causeway, but the cabman looked at us a bit dubiously when he slowed to the curb. I had to convince him with a half sovereign. Barker had a long, thin bag with him, which he was cradling carefully.
“What is in the bag, sir?” I asked.
“Nothing that should concern you, Mr. Llewelyn.”
“Nevertheless, sir, I am concerned,” I argued. “I suspect there are swords in it. Are you and the general going to have a battle?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Watch and see.”
“Is this,” I said, as the cab reached Westminster Bridge, “the result of what I wrote for the Gazette?”
“Very much so.”
“I was afraid of that.”
I was fully awake now. “If what I suspect is about to happen is correct, you have to stop it. The general must not die if the newspapers were false.”
“They were not false,” Barker rumbled.
“Not the facts, perhaps, but the fact that they were reported. It was a trick and I’m glad it stopped him, but I don’t want him to die because of it.”
“Here,” he said, pulling a yellow slip of paper from his pocket. “I hope I will be forgiven for intercepting this.”
I opened it. It was a telegraph from Stead himself:
Thomas Llewelyn stop Cracking good story stop If Barker ever tosses you into the street come knock on my door stop end
“You read it?” I asked.
“I did. If you intend to wed, here is a safe occupation for you.”
“You’re offering me a way out.”
“Aye.”
“Don’t. I’m able to make my own decisions, thank you. It is flattering that Mr. Stead found my article satisfactory, but I’m an enquiry agent first and foremost.”
“A reporter would be more palatable to the Mocattas,” Barker argued.
“Oh, bother the Mocattas. It’s Rebecca alone I care about. The Mocattas will have to take me as they see me.”
“We’re here.”
We were back in Abingdon Street again behind the Jewel Tower. Another cab was waiting. Two men alighted. One was in all black, the other in white. The second was the general. The first, I was not surprised to see, was Ohara. We all stood as the cabs circled us and bowled away. We were in for it now. Our transportation had left.
“Is everything in order?” Ohara asked. His silk jacket was a deep black, outlined in squares of gold. The general’s ou
tfit was the purest white. He looked like a ghost.
Barker nodded solemnly in response and walked up to the entrance. He transferred the bag to the other arm and removed the key from his coat pocket. In a minute or two we stepped inside. My employer lit a vesta and used it to light the solitary lamp.
“Satisfactory,” the general murmured, looking about.
Ohara nodded in agreement. Mononobe bowed to Barker and the latter bowed in return.
In a series of slow and precise moves, the general removed his sandals at the edge of the mat, walked across to the small table and lowered himself step by step to his knees. He picked up the small brush there and dipped it in the ink. Then he unfolded a piece of paper with the other hand.
I was beside the bulk of Mr. Ohara.
“What’s he doing?” I asked in a low voice.
“He is writing his death poem.”
I watched Mononobe begin to write. Japanese calligraphy had always interested me. The symbols, the words, became almost a painting by themselves. I watched him set down each character stroke by stroke. Had the general written this down beforehand or was he composing extemporaneously?
He’s going to top himself, I told myself, and these two are fine with his decision. Someone should go for a policeman. This is not all right. It must be illegal.
Men in London blew their brains out every day in gentlemen’s clubs. They built up debts they couldn’t repay or were caught embezzling at the bank. Collectively, people looked the other way while the poor beggar took “the gentleman’s way out.” One pulls the trigger. It ignites the gunpowder. There is a buildup of gas, which causes the ball inside to propel down the barrel of the gun and out. It crosses the void until it meets a wall of flesh and hair and thin bone.
The problem was, there was no gun here, only swords. What was going to happen? I hadn’t a clue.
With a sigh, the general put down his pen. The poem was complete. Ohara took it up and he and Barker looked it over. Both nodded in approval. Of course, I couldn’t read it. It was written in kanji. The general seemed content that both men were satisfied with his poem. He opened the small bottle and poured a little of what was inside into one of the cups and drank.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Sake,” Ohara said.
I recalled a bottle in what passed for a wine cellar in our basement. One of the bottles had Chinese characters on it. I always wondered what was in it. Barker had several swords as well as this bottle in the house. Did he imagine such a time when he might need these articles?
Mononobe offered the wine to Barker, who refused. He drank. It was no more than a mouthful. Meanwhile, my employer set out a set of swords in three lengths: the katana, which is the longest, the wakizashi, and the tantō. Mononobe now picked up the last. He slid the sheath from the sword and looked at his own reflection in the polished metal.
The general slipped his hand up into the sleeve of his kimono, until it was at his neck. He peeled back the jacket. His chest was all wiry muscle. Only his neck showed signs of age. Very precisely, he peeled down the jacket to his waist. He tucked the sleeves carefully under his limbs, which were folded under him, the top of one foot resting up on the bottom of the other. It was all incredibly precise.
It was also calm. Knowing what I assumed would happen next, one would expect General Mononobe’s hand to shake. Not a bit of it.
Barker said something to him in Japanese, and the man replied. Both nodded. Ohara watched, almost like a referee in a football match, to see that all was in order.
Mononobe picked up the small strip of beige-colored paper, and wrapped it carefully around the blade of the sword, up close to the guard. Then he lifted the naked blade, so that it pressed against his stomach.
It was going to happen. It was really going to happen. I thought Barker would find some way to stop it. Suddenly I didn’t want to be in this chamber. The dawn was just coming in through the high windows facing east. It was going to be a beautiful day.
I looked back and saw Mononobe close his eyes and inhale. Such peace. Such calm. He might have been ready to peel an apple or cut a melon.
The blade bit into the flesh of his stomach and plunged in inch by inch. Mononobe’s eyes popped open. The exposed part of the blade was close to a foot long, and it continued to go in deeper and deeper. Finally, it reached the paper guard and it stopped. The general’s lids fluttered. He breathed in again. Then he began to pull the blade across his abdomen.
Seppuku, they called it in Japan. Or hara-kiri, which means “belly-cutting.” The latter name is considered vulgar, I understand, and is spoken, while the first is written.
Mononobe made a growling sound in the throat as he brought the short sword across and through his own flesh. Even a short sword is not meant to cut through ten inches of solid flesh easily, let alone living flesh. Blood began to spill out of the huge wound, but less than I would have thought.
He had nearly bisected his entire stomach now. How long would it be until he died from his wounds? The general was a tough old buzzard, but it could not take much longer.
Then I saw Ohara step up behind him. In his hand he had that length of raw driftwood that I saw in Barker’s room. As I watched, the driftwood split in two and a long blade was revealed. He raised the weapon behind him, high over his head.
No, I wanted to call out, but my tongue cleaved to my throat. There would be consequences here. Not to Ohara. To us.
The blade came down and smacked the new ambassador on the back of the neck before coming back into the air again. It was coated in blood now. In fact, I saw an arc of blood spray across the canvas the general sat upon. It was a painting in monochrome.
The general’s hands stopped moving. Slowly, the head fell forward into his lap. The spinal column had been severed, killing him instantly. The body sagged, but it did not fall. It was held in place by the sleeves which the general had so carefully tucked under his limbs. Blood bubbled from the neck wound, staining the white kimono and the bedsheets.
Ohara shook out his blade onto the floor with another arc of blood before putting it back in its sheath. Barker made a sound of appreciation, as if someone had just finished a Bach cantata. Outside, I heard horses galloping nearby.
We all sat still for a minute or two, not moving, as if there were four corpses and not one. I heard voices shouting. Someone was giving orders. The outer door was pulled open. It seemed as if everything were moving incredibly slowly. I watched Barker tuck the sword into the sash tied about the waist of his kimono. Ohara puffed out his chest and pulled back his sleeves in order to fold his thick, bare forearms across his chest.
Men came into the room then. It was the Secret Police squad, led by Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch. Their eyes went wide at the carnage they found here. Campbell-Ffinch looked stricken, his head still wrapped in gauze from his shooting.
“Late, as usual,” I said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Toss ’em in darbies, lads,” Campbell-Ffinch said to his compatriots.
There was no use arguing or struggling. He had us dead to rights. Ohara Kogoro had just killed someone on British soil. The general was near death when he struck the fatal blow, but I’m sure under British law it was murder. This was what the Guv meant when he spoke earlier of the agency itself being in danger.
The Foreign Office man stepped onto the blood-soaked sheets and regarded the victim, bending over for a better view.
“Who did this?” he asked, indicating the sword standing perpendicular from Mononobe’s stomach.
“He did,” I said, pointing at the kneeling corpse.
“Topped himself, eh? Don’t tell me he cut off his own head.”
“I did that,” Ohara admitted. “I was his second.”
“Some sort of ritual?”
“Yes.”
“Her Majesty’s government won’t think so. That’s an ambassador to a foreign power there. One we were hoping to impress. This property belongs to the Crown, Barker. How did
you get in here?”
“With a very small key.”
“Take the key ring from him,” Campbell-Ffinch told the men. “Try those coats by the wall. Breaking and entering in addition to murder. Better and better.”
“You would prefer that he dispatch himself fully?” my employer asked. “I had no wish to prolong his suffering.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “that you can arrest Mr. Ohara here. He is not a British citizen.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Ohara put on his most stoical face. If anything he had a look of bemusement. I would be willing to bet he would be out of his handcuffs not long after we reached Scotland Yard. We were another matter entirely.
“I’m sending for the Big Brass. They’re going to want to see this. Let’s try to leave everything as it is until they arrive.”
“What about our coats?” I argued.
Campbell-Ffinch smacked me across the face. Being a boxer, he was good at it. I was going to feel that for the rest of the day.
“What in hell was that for?” I demanded.
“I warned you about cheek. Gents, take these three away. I’m tired of looking at them.”
Fine thing, striking a fellow when his hands are secured behind him, not to mention that you outweigh him by sixty pounds. We were led out into bright sunshine. So little of it had pierced the gloom of the Jewel Tower that I had assumed it was overcast.
I climbed with some aid into a waiting police van. That meant that they knew ahead of time that they would have someone to arrest. However, they had not known in time to stop what happened. I suspected whatever happened to us, the blame for it would ultimately fall on Campbell-Ffinch’s shoulders. Just the thought of it put me in a cheerier mood.
It was a short drive to the New Scotland Yard. The original premises that I was accustomed to using had been locked up and used for storage or boarded over. Part of the buildings housed records and the so-called Black Museum containing evidence from various high-profile cases. Time ticks away and the things we are accustomed to change beyond recognition.
New Scotland Yard was a multitiered wedding cake in alternating layers of red brick and white marble. It looked faintly Dutch. In my opinion, it didn’t quite go with the rest of Whitehall Street, but then I don’t suppose they took my feelings into account when they built it.