by Will Thomas
Barker opened the satchel and motioned me over to look inside. The first thing I saw was a small clock, the kind one keeps on one’s night table. The back plate had been removed and a pistol wired to it, the muzzle almost facing a small detonator. It had missed by a hairsbreadth and there was a scorched hole in the bag. Beneath the clock were several claylike cakes wrapped in paper with warning labels on them. Dynamite. I had heard of it, seen it in political cartoons of anarchists and Fenians, but this was my first time to see it in person. If this bag were like the one that had been left at Scotland Yard, it contained enough explosives to blow us and everything in this room to kingdom come.
“Atlas Powder Company. American made, like the carpetbag. Probably American funded, as well. Very basic,” my employer commented. “But they didn’t get it right. We can be thankful that the Irish are still tyros at bomb making and that, so far, they have been unwilling to take human life.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Sir Watkin spoke up. “My butler and footman were thrown into the hall by the force of the explosion across the street, and are both in hospital. These bombers are serious. London is shaking in her boots this morning.”
“Nevertheless,” Barker stated, “this satchel proves that their knowledge of making explosives is still rudimentary at best. No doubt you are aware of the failed attempt last month to blow up the English police barracks in Dublin. That is three unsuccessful efforts in half a year, hardly a distinguished record.”
“Now, Mr. Barker,” Anderson said, “perhaps you will explain to us why you felt the need to offer your services to us today. Surely, a man of your experience would know we have our own resources.”
“I am aware of the reach of the Home Office and the abilities of the Special Irish Branch, who no doubt are stinging under the effects of last night’s humiliation. I merely thought it would be remiss of me not to make myself available, as I am something of an expert on secret societies. I assume you’ve read my dossier from the Foreign Office.”
“I have, and, I must say, it made for interesting reading. The consensus seems to be that your methods are irregular, but you generally succeed in what you set out to accomplish.” Anderson paused a moment, to let Barker comment, but my employer merely sat there-blinking, if, in fact, he ever blinked behind those spectacles. He may not have realized he had been given a compliment and merely thought it his due. As for me, I would have liked to read that dossier. I had at least a thousand questions about my employer I’d like answered.
“Hmm, yes,” Anderson continued, glossing over the small breach in etiquette. “Patriotism aside, I fail to see what you hope to gain. You are a private detective, not a spy. Did you wish to add a line to your advertisements in The Times as ‘The Man Who Brought Down the Fenians’? What is your motive?”
“It is not to seek advertisement for my agency, Mr. Anderson. I assure you, I do not need the custom. This is my city. I live and work here. Llewelyn and I helped some of the people injured by the explosion last night. Wherever one stands on the Irish Question, all but the most extreme will agree that bombing is not the way to achieve sovereignty. There is a fatal streak of nihilism in this action, like a child losing at chess who upsets the board. I’m thinking not merely of the English citizens in hospital today but also the shocked Irish readers of The Times this morning, who see their chances for independence pushed even farther from their grasp because of a few embittered and overzealous individuals. I am for healthy debate in the House of Commons, at the proper time, not for innocent civilians being bombed. It is a Pandora’s box, and it has been opened. If we don’t nail it down immediately, we may never get the lid secured again.”
Anderson tapped his finger on the table a few times in thought. “Granted, for the moment then, that you are offering your services for altruistic reasons. I’m wondering what you, with your limited resources, can do that the combined services of Her Majesty’s government cannot? Can you really believe you will succeed where we will not?”
Barker gave one of his cold smiles. “An acrobat, for all his skills, employs a net to catch him if he falls. I merely suggest that you hire me to be that net. My sources are not as limited as you might believe. I shall meet with no one but you, and if I fail-or if Inspector Munro and your own agents get in ahead of me-I shall not tender a bill for my services.”
“Munro will not appreciate your interference,” Sir Watkin put in. “How do you propose to catch the rascals?”
“By locating and infiltrating the responsible faction.”
Both gentlemen smiled. It seemed a rather impetuous plan, even to me.
“I’ve done it before,” he continued, “as my dossier no doubt attests.”
“Impossible,” Anderson said. “You are Scottish, and your assistant is Welsh. Even some of our best Irish-born agents have tried it, only to come home in a pine box. The faction cells are very close-knit. Many of the members have known one another since their school days. Sometimes they are even members of one family. What makes you so bold as to think you can succeed when all others have failed?”
“Oh, come, sir. Not all have failed. What of Lieutenant Le Caron?”
Robert Anderson jumped from his chair, as if he’d sat on a hornet. “How the devil do you know about Le Caron?”
“Henri is a friend of mine, aside from being your best spy among the Irish for the last ten years. I trained him in hand combat for a month. He’s a good man. More important, he is an example of a non-Irishman who appears devoted to their cause; in this case, a Frenchman. Or rather, an Englishman impersonating a Frenchman, since we both know that Le Caron is not his real name.”
I pricked up my ears. I hadn’t heard Le Caron’s name before. When had he known the Guv?
“It seems you know an awful lot, sir, about something that is not your affair,” Sir Watkin blustered.
“As far as I am concerned, gentlemen, it became my affair when they injured innocent London citizens and damaged public buildings. Something must be done, and I’d rather be working with the official enquiry than on my own. How long shall it be before the Irish radicals throw off their gloves and go after the Crown itself?”
Anderson gave Sir Watkin a significant glance, which Barker noticed immediately. “They have communicated.”
“They have,” Anderson said, removing a folded slip of paper from his pocket. “This was delivered to the Prime Minister in his office this morning. I must ask that you not mention this to anyone. It shall dampen your enthusiasm, I must warn you.”
Barker took the typewritten note and I read over his shoulder.
“‘Dear Mr. Gladstone, This is just a taste of what we can do. You have thirty days to propose a bill for Home Rule, or your government and the Royal Family shall fall. You have been warned.’”
“Thirty days,” my employer rumbled.
“Do you withdraw your offer, Mr. Barker?” Sir Watkin asked. “Thirty days does not give you much time to become an Irishman, join a faction, and convince them to trust you.”
Barker sat and pondered a moment, absently rubbing his finger under his chin. He did not seem to mind letting two of the most important men in England wait upon his reply. Finally, he let his hand drop to the table.
“My offer still stands, if you’ll accept it. I believe I can deliver whoever set those bombs and sent this note to you. I shall require Scotland Yard to take them into custody at the proper time. During the month, I would like both Llewelyn and me to be working for the standard fee you pay Le Caron, contingent upon whether we succeed.”
“Upon my soul, I wish we were as confident as you seem to be, Mr. Barker,” Anderson continued. “How do you propose to convince the faction cell to trust you?”
“By offering them someone they very much need: Johannes van Rhyn, the reclusive inventor of infernal devices. I understand they have attempted to recruit his aid for some time, but he will not see them. I intend to impersonate him.”
“Van Rhyn has turned down all requests to help the Home Office. We’ve se
questered him at the military base in Aldershot. How will you …” Anderson asked. “Do not tell me. You are acquainted with the German, as well as Le Caron?”
My employer said nothing but gave the spymaster a thin smile.
“You have interesting friends, Mr. Barker,” Anderson continued. “We were not aware of that. One final thing. Her Majesty’s government does not bargain with terrorists. If the two of you are captured, we will be unable to step in and come to your rescue.”
“Understood,” Barker said. “I would not wish to endanger your other agents.”
“What think you, Anderson?” Sir Watkin asked. “Shall we trust Mr. Barker and his mad scheme to hoodwink the Irish?”
“It is a slender thread, I’ll admit,” Anderson said. “But I believe the peril we are in warrants a secondary plan. Very well, gentlemen. I shall take your proposal to the Prime Minister. I cannot speak for him, but for now, it would be to your advantage to set your pawns in play.”
“What about you, young fellow? Are you up for all this?” Sir Watkin asked, as he shook my hand before we left.
“I trust my employer implicitly, sir,” I stated, but to tell the truth, just then I was wondering the same thing myself.
4
After we stepped outside into King Charles Street, Barker stuffed a finger and thumb under his mustache and emitted a shrill whistle, loud enough to make an old pensioner on the pavement flinch in astonishment and mutter about the Empire going to ruin. A cab drew up to the curb, and we clambered aboard.
“Claridge’s,” Barker called over my head, and we bowled off.
“Why Claridge’s?” I asked. What business did we have in one of London’s most prestigious hotels?
“It is the hotel of kings, and Parnell is the uncrowned king of Ireland. I must speak to him.”
Perhaps there was some savage living in the Sudan who had never heard of Charles Parnell, but the rest of the world most certainly had. He was the closest the Irish had to a real leader since St. Patrick. A Protestant, he had courted the Vatican in the hope of gaining support for Irish Home Rule. A onetime Land League radical who had spent time in Kilmainham Gaol, he was now creating a union that included everyone from the most pacifist groups to the most militant in Ireland. Though there were still many in Parliament who saw him as no better than an anarchist, he was the darling of many a soiree in London, and it was rumored that Prime Minister Gladstone himself had offered him a sympathetic ear on more than one occasion. I had heard that his framed image hung on the wall of thousands of homes across the Irish Sea.
“I understand why the bombers would attack Trafalgar Square and Scotland Yard,” I said, “but why the Junior Carlton Club, sir?”
“You must study English politics a little more thoroughly, lad,” Barker replied. “The main opposition to Home Rule will be the old dogs sitting around the fire at the Carlton making decisions, but it will be the young pups at the Junior that will dictate policy over the next twenty years. The Irish are sending them a very clear message.”
There is a right way to do things and a wrong way, and then there is the Barker way, which is a third choice no one had thought of yet, because they were not clever enough. Had we gone in the front entrance of Claridge’s, we would have been stopped at the desk, but the Guv walked in the service entrance as bold as you please. We worked our way through the kitchens and the dining room, facing nothing more challenging than a few questioning stares. In the hallway, he went so far as to buttonhole a steward.
“Tell me, my man, in what room is Mr. Parnell staying? We are from the Home Office.”
I was debating whether we could accurately be described as “from the Home Office,” but it was not precisely a lie. It is one of Barker’s axioms that one must make use of whatever leverage one can muster.
“Room three eleven, sir,” the man responded.
“Have the reporters all gone?”
“They have already left, sir. Mr. Parnell had them in for a statement.”
“Thank you.” I saw him discreetly press some silver into the steward’s hand. The two of us climbed the servants’ staircase and soon found ourselves in sole possession of an elegant corridor. Barker knocked on the door marked 311. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he thumped. With that ham-sized fist of his, it was just short of beating down the door.
A moment later the door opened, and a man looked out at us in minor annoyance. I was more accustomed to seeing his face in engravings in The Illustrated London News. He was a tall, well-built man in a frock coat of light gray, with a long but well-groomed beard.
“Yes?” he demanded. “What do you want?”
“Mr. Parnell, my name is Mr. Cyrus Barker. This is my assistant, Mr. Thomas Llewelyn. I believe I am in possession of information you shall find useful.” He offered his card. Barker has a way of snapping the pasteboard in his thick fingers as he presents it that has so far eluded me, no matter how often I try.
“I doubt that sincerely,” Parnell replied drily, looking at the card. “Barker. I’ve heard of you, but I assure you I don’t need to hire an enquiry agent.”
Barker would not be put off so easily. “I have a matter of great importance to discuss with you, sir, but I would not care to do so in this hall.”
Parnell shrugged and stepped back, opening the door wide. “Very well, come in. Half of London has been in here today already. I don’t recall your name being mentioned by Scotland Yard this morning.”
“You won’t,” Barker said, as we stepped into the room. “We are working sub rosa for one of Her Majesty’s agencies. I am taking you into our confidence, because I am convinced you had nothing to do with the atrocities that occurred last night. I am going to risk revealing what I have learned because I believe you can be trusted, even if Her Majesty’s government does not.”
“It’s nice to know someone trusts me. I spent most of the night being questioned by Scotland Yard. The newspapers today are wild over this new outrage. I won’t be surprised if I’m burned in effigy at a rally tonight. Everyone seems to think I can wave my wand like Merlin and every faction will fall into line like so many ducks. I wish it were that easy.”
“I’m afraid the situation is worse than you’ve been led to believe. According to my sources, if a bill for Home Rule is not rushed through Parliament within the month, there will be a second series of outrages much larger than the first.”
“Good lord,” Parnell said, falling into an overstuffed leather chair and running a hand through his scant hair.
“Precisely. Should that occur, it will not be an effigy they shall hang. All your attempts at forming a legitimate coalition for Home Rule will have been set to naught. It is vital that you help me, you see. I am your only hope of containing the more militant factions of the Brotherhood.”
“If another series of bombings occurs, it could throw back the chances for Irish democracy thirty years or more,” Parnell agreed. “Believe me, gentlemen, I want to help you, but I know nothing about the bombings. I assure you, none of my associates had anything to do with them.”
“Somehow, a group of factionists from the more radical fringe were able to smuggle in dynamite from America. They prepared and delivered their bombs and got away without being detected. Obviously, that requires a high level of organization. Who has such an ability to command men and use strategy among your compatriots? Who is both ruthless and radical enough to threaten the government and the Royal Family?”
“I scarce can say,” Parnell said vaguely.
“You need assurances,” Barker said patiently. “I know there are dozens of factions out there, with a like number of ideologies. Some are militant, others philosophical, and some are merely formed to take in money. I have one mission and one mission alone: to find the faction that blew up Scotland Yard last night. I must find them, shut down their operation, and turn them over to the authorities, and I shall do so privately. This is not for the newspapers. You cannot use this as proof of your sincerity, not pu
blicly, anyway. Give me names, Mr. Parnell, the names of the more militant leaders among the I.R.B., or Clan Na Gael, or whatever they are calling themselves this morning.”
“How do I know,” Parnell asked, “that what you uncover won’t go to the Special Irish Branch who’ve been kicking in doors and harassing innocent Irishmen?”
“I’ve trusted you just now with privileged information that could be passed on to the press or to other factions because I believe your efforts to help the Irish people are sincere.” Barker moved over to the window and looked out into the street, his arms crossed. “Now you shall have to trust me. I cannot put it any plainer than that. The names, sir. In your heart of hearts, who do you think it might have been?”
The Irishman picked up a silver case and lit a cigarette. His hand, I noticed, was not steady. Surreptitiously, I pulled my notebook out of my pocket.
“You do realize what the punishment among the factions is for informing, do you not, Mr. Barker?” Parnell asked.
“If you are referring to Peter Carey, who was assassinated for informing on the Invincibles last year, I do. They tracked him all the way to South Africa. But he had definite information and was one of the conspirators. I merely wish to be pointed in a direction.”
“Very well. I cannot give you a definite name, but I can give you a list of a half dozen capable enough. There is Peter Davitt, O’Donovan Rossa, Michael Cusack, Alfred Dunleavy, Henri Le Caron, and Seamus O’Muircheartaigh. Most have spent time in prison, and Dunleavy and Le Caron have commanded armies. If he isn’t among one of them, he is unknown to me, and I’d like to think that such a fellow would have been brought to my attention before now.”
“Have you got all that down, Llewelyn?” Barker asked.
“Almost, sir. I didn’t get the last fellow’s name.”
“I know him,” Barker said. “I shall spell his name for you later. That is all I need of you, Mr. Parnell. We won’t take up any more of your time. Come along, lad.”
Barker led me down the grand staircase to the lobby, where we evoked the scrutiny of the hotel manager. One cannot be faulted for leaving an establishment, however, and we left unhindered. Two thirds of detective work, I believe, is sheer brass.