by Will Thomas
“And you know that because the Prince is no fool and was able to ferret out the truth of the matter, which is that Scotland Yard had little to do with it. Were I not a Baptist, I would wager that you have a letter from Buckingham Palace in that folder, also.”
“Not much gets by you, Mr. Barker, does it?” Anderson asked, extracting the letter. I saw it bore the Royal Crest at the top.
“One almost did, but as the Bard said, ‘All’s well that ends well.’”
“So,” I put in, “Scotland Yard is no longer upset?”
“Mr. Llewelyn, I assure you I couldn’t give a tinker’s mended pot how the Yard feels. We’ve trod on each other’s feet far too often for that. Here is your check,” Anderson said, handing the bank draft over to us. Barker naturally avoided it, so I pocketed it quickly.
“Is there any further business?” my employer asked.
“Just one. The opinions of my superiors are rather mixed. Some believe you showed initiative, while others thought you were reckless. The dossier from the Foreign Office said your methods were irregular, and that has certainly proven to be the case. Most important, you have succeeded in stopping the faction, and that was something the Yard could not have done without your aid. My question to you is whether you might wish to make this a permanent arrangement. There is always more work to be done, and I could use another spy of Le Caron’s caliber. Your work was most satisfactory. I would like the opportunity to work with you again.”
Barker raised a finger and ran the nail along the skin under his chin, a gesture I’d seen him make when he was considering something. Then he gave a sudden shake of his head, as if coming out of a reverie.
“No, thank you, sir. The idea is intriguing, and there is no one I would rather work with in Her Majesty’s government, but I’ve been captain of my own ship for too long. I’ve worked hard to make a success of my agency, and I am proud of it. This case was such that I felt it would be churlish of me not to offer my services, but I have people who depend upon me in this city, and I would not wish to disappoint them. I decline your offer, though someday I hope to work for you again.”
“May I at least call upon you should something else of extreme importance occur and Mr. Le Caron is otherwise occupied?”
“Certainly, sir,” Barker said. “I did not mean that I would not entertain a request for aid, merely that I did not wish to become a government agent.”
As if of one accord, the two men stood and shook hands. We left the table, the room, and then the Home Office itself. Barker and I walked down Whitehall to our offices.
In a few moments, we arrived at our refurbished chambers. The change was startling. The outer room had been rather dark when I had first applied for employment here, but now the walls had been wainscoted in white, replastered, and painted, and the yellow doors varnished to a high gloss. There was a kilim rug leading from the door and a new side table for cards and messages.
The clerk’s desk was the same, but where once stood a row of wooden chairs, there was a long leather settee and a potted palm almost as tall as I, holding court. There was also a painting after the French fashion which looked like something seen through a rain-streaked window. It was a riverside landscape.
“A Constable,” I noted.
“O’Muircheartaigh is not the only one who can collect art,” he stated.
“I doubt it will be the last constable we see in these offices,” I said drily.
“Thomas, do restrain yourself.”
The door opened and Jenkins came out, looking rumpled and half sleepy, but glad to see us.
“Sirs! Welcome back! Come in, I beg you.”
We entered our offices. The glazier had obviously returned and replaced the glass a second time. The floors had been sanded and varnished, my desk repaired, the rugs cleaned, and gas lamps had been installed over my desk, as well as a new chandelier. We looked quite the modern professional agency. The only thing that was the worse for wear was the assistant Barker had brought in with him.
“The vase!” I cried, crossing over to the pedestal. Barker and I inspected it together, turning it around in our hands. There was nothing but the faintest gray-white seams where the breaks had been.
“One almost can’t tell,” I said. “A visitor won’t even notice the mend.”
“Yes, thank you for your suggestion, lad. I would have hated to lose this.”
I was hoping to hear about the history of the vase and how he acquired it, but he was as reticent as ever. He’d spied his smoking cabinet, and in a moment he was reacquainting himself with his meerschaums.
“Had them polished and cleaned and the stems reground while you was gone, sir,” Jenkins said proudly. “Tobacconist says they are as good as new.”
“They are, indeed,” Barker said, stuffing tobacco into the bowl of the pipe, which had been carved into his own image. He lit it, and placed the vesta in the empty ashtray on his desk.
“You’ll never guess what they clean them white pipes with, sir,” Jenkins said to me. “Raw spirits. The hard stuff.”
“Take it from me, Jenkins,” I said, remembering all the drinking I had endured over the past month. “It is the only proper use for the stuff. Speaking of spirits, how is the Rising Sun?”
“Never better, Mr. L. I shall stand you a pint at the earliest opportunity.”
“Thank you,” I said, thinking to myself that it might be a good while before I was thirsty for ale again.
Barker was sitting in his green swivel chair, still examining the vase in front of him. I took up the ledger and retrieved the check from my pocket.
“Good lord.”
“Thomas, you know how I feel about swearing.”
“Sorry, sir. It is this check. It does not even begin to cover the expenses we’ve incurred in this case!”
“I expected as much. Normally, Le Caron spends half our time together complaining of how little he gets paid to risk his neck. I did not take this case for remuneration. Sometimes other factors come into consideration, such as duty.”
He was silent for a moment, staring at the round vase in front of him as if it were a crystal ball in which he saw a portent. Perhaps, I thought, there was some flaw in the repairs.
“Is something wrong, sir?”
He shook off the mood. “Nothing, lad. You must forgive a Scotsman’s brooding. I was just thinking that the world is very like this vase. It seems exactly as it was before, but there are hairline cracks all through it, and I know that it shall never completely be as it was before.”
Our thoughts were interrupted by the comforting toll of Big Ben in our ears.
“Peckish?” he asked.
Over the meal, I disappointed the waiter at Ho’s by setting down my near empty bowl of shark’s head soup before he had the opportunity to rip it out of my hand. Ho’s hadn’t changed. The room was still as dark and smoky and the clientele still half mad. Ho deigned to leave the kitchen and come to our table.
“You are fatter than ever,” he complained to my employer by way of greeting.
“I was on a case,” Barker responded, not nettled in the least.
“You ate garbage, I think.”
“Yes, but only because I couldn’t take you with me.”
“What happened to him?” Ho asked, jerking a thumb in my direction. Things were actually improving. Ho rarely acknowledged my existence.
“Stick fight,” my employer stated. Ho grunted, possibly in approval, then waddled off into the gloom beyond the reach of the penny candle on our table.
We tucked into an assortment of battered vegetables and meats, accompanied by a ginger sauce and wheat dumplings. I’d like to think my use of chopsticks had improved since I first came here months before. More probably, I’d progressed to the level of the average Chinese four-year-old.
“Try these mushrooms, lad,” Barker suggested. “They must have come in aboard ship. England had nothing to do with them.”
For once, Barker was caught unaware. We were so en
grossed in Ho’s bowl of wonders that we hadn’t noticed the arrival of a new customer. Seamus O’Muircheartaigh appeared at our table and slid into the seat beside me. He crossed his legs and set his walking stick across them.
“Cyrus,” he greeted.
“Seamus,” my employer replied. Stiffly he set his bowl down on the table in front of him, the mushroom he’d just put into it untasted.
“Welcome back.”
“As you are aware, I’ve been here a few days, actually,” Barker responded.
“Yes, your timing was impeccable, as always.”
“I hope we have not inconvenienced you too much, Seamus.”
“You haven’t. I cannot say the same for your assistant.” The Irishman turned his deep-set eyes in my direction. He looked at me as if I were a black beetle he’d found on his plate.
“What is your name, sir?” he asked coolly.
“Thomas Llewelyn.”
“You are responsible for the death of someone I cared very deeply for.”
“Perhaps not,” Barker stated. “It is likely the bomb had simply reached its proper time to detonate.”
“Possibly,” O’Muircheartaigh acknowledged, “but you will not deny that it was the two of you that chased her onto the bridge.”
Barker snorted. “I will not apologize for saving the life of the Prince of Wales.”
O’Muircheartaigh shook his head sadly. “A Scotsman and a Welshman helping the English government. Do you think they gave the slightest thought about you?”
“That is our concern, not yours.”
The Irishman gave a little tap to his cane, and the small circlet of metal at the tip swung open on a hinge. I was looking into the barrel of a gun, which had been cunningly built into O’Muircheartaigh’s stick.
Barker had his gun out instantly, but a cleaver bit into the wood of the table in front of us. We all looked up.
“Take it outside, gentlemen,” Ho’s voice came from the shadows. “You know the rules.”
“This is not your concern, Ho,” the Irishman warned. The room fell silent.
“Need I remind you that you are in Blue Dragon Triad territory, Mr. O’Muircheartaigh. Mr. K’ing will no like if this boy is killed without his authority.”
What, I wondered, was the Blue Dragon Triad, and who was Mr. K’ing?
O’Muircheartaigh sighed, as if he were a child caught in some petty naughtiness, and he latched the cover on his walking stick again.
“Rice and tea, Mr. Ho,” he said. “Would you gentlemen care to dine with me?”
“I fear we have a prior engagement,” Barker said icily. He stood slowly, and I noticed his hand was still in his pocket.
“Good day, gentlemen,” O’Muircheartaigh said.
The last I saw, the waiter was setting his rice and tea carefully on the table, as one sets down a plate of meat in the tiger cage at the zoo in Regent’s Park.
I was breathing heavily in the musty air of the tunnel, and I stumbled up the stairs twice at the other end. Barker kicked the door open, allowing air and light to flood in, and sat me down roughly on the ledge among the naphtha lamps Ho provides for his visitors.
“You’re in bad shape, Thomas,” he said. “I think it best if you take off the rest of the day.”
30
I was prepared for a number of things, but an afternoon off was not one of them. Barker’s hansom let me off in New Kent Road near our home, and I watched him rattle away to his appointment. My employer had kept me occupied all morning, but now I was alone with thoughts of Maire and what had happened on the bridge. I began to feel low again.
I went upstairs to read, but it was too hot in the house on a June afternoon, and so I took a turn in the garden. Harm came over to sniff my trousers, took a few laps from the miniature pond under my window, and went back to lie in the bed of thyme. I bent down and scratched him between his ears. He seemed to like that.
I stood for a moment with my hands in my pockets, listening to the gurgle of the stream and the swishing of the windmill that pumped it from underground, if a bit sluggishly. Then the strangest thing happened, or perhaps it was the most natural. One of my hands rose to form a beak and the other went out in the opposite direction as if to ward off a blow. What was the next move Barker had taught me? Ah, yes, hands together, one atop the other, with the right foot forward, toe pointed up. I was doing Barker’s internal exercises. I started at the beginning and went through the entire form twice. It calmed my wounded spirit.
“Very impressive,” a familiar voice said.
I looked over my shoulder. Israel Zangwill leaned against the frame of the back door. He had never come to the house before, but I remembered he and Jacob Maccabee were acquainted.
“Israel! Good to see you!” I said, pumping his hand.
“I heard you were back in town. That’s quite a pair of black eyes you’re sporting.”
“Yes, well, it’s better than the spectacles I was wearing,” I said. “I think Barker’s trying to turn me into a lesser version of himself. Come into the kitchen. I will make some coffee.”
“Thank you. This garden is amazing. I’d hardly imagine such a place existed in London.”
His voice suddenly awakened the diminutive dragon that stood guard over our secret garden. I had just enough time to scoop him up before he sank his teeth into Zangwill’s trouser leg.
“My word, that’s the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen,” my friend said over the animal’s frantic barks and howls.
“He’s a Chinese imperial dog, and his name is Harm. He belongs to my employer,” I explained as the dog screeched in his face.
“Yes, well, your employer is welcome to him. I shall wait in the kitchen, if you don’t mind.” He backed away slowly and went into the house.
After I brewed coffee on the stove, we sat at the deal table overlooking the garden, while outside Harm attempted to launch an assault upon the window, making quite impressive aerial leaps to see if we were still there.
I wanted to tell Israel everything that had happened, but I knew Barker would have counseled me not to. The most I could reveal was that in the course of our last case, I had managed to fall off Charing Cross Railway Bridge and successfully get my heart broken.
“Your employer certainly doesn’t do things by halves, does he?” my friend pronounced. “You may be the only man to have fallen off a London bridge and survived.”
“It is not a distinction I covet, thank you. What am I going to do, Israel? I feel as if I may never get over this.”
“I am no rabbi, of course, but if I could offer some advice, it would be that time heals all wounds.”
“I didn’t know that was a Jewish proverb.”
Zangwill threw his shaggy head back and laughed. “Yes, it was Rabbi Geoffrey Chaucer, if you must know. Some scholar you are. Oh, and if you’re still looking for a reason to live, I can give you hundreds. A fellow doesn’t have to travel far to find pretty girls. And allow me to point out that they generally prefer rakish detectives with their exciting tales to humble scholars and teachers, such as me.”
“I thank you for the encouragement, but if you must know the truth, I believe I shall avoid women for a while. I’m not very good for them, nor they for me.”
Zangwill watched as Harm sailed past the window again. “He really is the maddest creature I’ve ever seen.”
He rose and tossed a coin on the table.
“You needn’t pay for your coffee, Israel,” I joked.
“That’s not my shilling. It is the one you lent Ira before you left. I’ve been keeping it for him, since money rather melts through his fingers. He told me to tell you he was never so glad to pay a shilling in his life, and that he hopes you realize it was the prayers in the synagogue that allowed you to survive, if just barely.”
“Thank him for me the next time you see him,” I said.
“Thank him yourself at the Barbados this Sunday, if you can get away. Say, two o’clock?”
“Done,�
� I told him.
Barker came home at dinnertime with a look that said, “Don’t ask me where I was or what I’ve been doing.” The Widow was never to be discussed. I suppose we all have our tender spots.
“How was your afternoon?” he rumbled.
“Fine, sir. I got back to the internal exercises.”
“Good, good.”
“Israel Zangwill came to see me.”
“Zangwill,” he said. “What did he want?”
“He heard I was feeling low.”
“I’ve always found that work is the best antidote for a sad heart,” Barker stated. “What would you say to a new case?”
“Already?” I asked. “We’ve only just finished one.”
“Lad, they can’t wait patiently in a queue. We must take them as they come. It’s nothing as dangerous as the last one, however. Some securities have gone missing. We should start on Monday.”
I thought for a moment. “I’m your man.”
Barker nodded. “Very good.”
That evening, I finally got around to reading Midlothian again. I had hardly begun it when I was interrupted by a jangling of the telephone downstairs. I remarked upon it to myself, but such events are not uncommon in Barker’s household, so I went back to my volume and soon forgot it. About fifteen minutes later, I came upon a reference to food and remembered that Dummolard had baked a new apple pie with cognac and caramelized sugar at my request and it was sitting at that very moment in our larder under a glass dome.
“It is the very thing to fix the broken heart,” the prickly Frenchman stated. As far as he was concerned, all ills were to be remedied with food.
So far, Barker had prescribed work, Dummolard good food, and Zangwill said that time would heal my malady. I believed them all wrong, like Job’s trio of advisors, but certainly a slice of pie would do no harm. I slid off the side of my bed, where I had been lounging, and went downstairs, registering the sound of Barker’s footsteps climbing up to what I call his Red Room.
Down in the hall, I couldn’t help but notice Mac sitting on a bench by the door, with his head down and his hand clutching the top of his yarmulke. Mac seated is not a sight one saw every day. In fact, he is normally so industrious I couldn’t recall seeing him seated at all. The fellow was not thirty, and despite a studied manner and a habit of posing as if for a painting of Byron, he is a bundle of energy. So, one can see why I found the sight novel. I thought perhaps he was praying. Just to test the waters, so to speak, I cleared my throat. I thought he would jump up, but he did not.