End of the Century

by Chris Roberson

  And then it was gone again, as suddenly as it came. Caius at the tiller seemed not to have noticed any change in Galaad's mien or manner, and the rest of the seven were deep in their slumber, and so the vision went unremarked. But Galaad would not find sleep that night, and lay shivering in his thin blanket on the deck throughout the long cold watches of the early morning, trying desperately not to remember and proving unsuccessful.

  THAT NIGHT, RETURNING TO MARYLEBONE, Blank and Miss Bonaventure enjoyed a bottle of syrah in his sitting room and recounted to one another the events of the day. It had been only a scant handful of hours since the police constable had arrived at Blank's front step and summoned them to Tower Bridge. As much as he hated to end a day with a mystery left unsolved, Blank feared it would be some time before a solution was within reach. But he would lay hands on a solution, eventually. That, he most fervently believed.

  A cab was summoned and idled at the curb, waiting to carry Miss Bonaventure back to Bark Place and her own bed. Blank saw her to the door.

  “And tomorrow, Miss Bonaventure?” he said, taking her hand. “Can I expect to see you in the morning, as usual?”

  Miss Bonaventure's eyes fluttered. “Well, it isn't as if you could be expected to work this case all on your lonesome, is it?”

  Blank quirked a smile. “I suppose not, at that.”

  Miss Bonaventure tightened her fingers around his. “Blank, I'll never know just how you survived before meeting me.”

  A haunted expression flitted across Blank's face, only briefly, like a dark cloud slipping in front of a full moon, only to be blown clear by winds. “That is a mystery you may never be able to solve, my dear.”

  “Oh?” Miss Bonaventure's gaze darted to the stairs which led up from the foyer. “Along with the secret of what you keep locked behind the door at the top of the stair, I take it?”

  Blank's eyes narrowed, and while his smile remained on his lips, it became hollow and thin, a mask without humor behind it. “Perhaps,” he said at length, his voice strained. “Perhaps.”

  Miss Bonaventure gave him a queer look but visibly resisted the temptation to look up the stairs, at the door just visible beyond the first-floor landing. Then she gave Blank's hand a shake, wished him a good night, and went out to the hansom cab waiting at the curb. As the driver helped her into the seat, Blank lingered in the open door for a moment, and then as the cab rattled away down York Place, he closed the door on the night, retreating inside, all alone with his secrets and mysteries.

  That night, he received a summons from Omega. He was loath to communicate but unable to refuse. He slept little afterwards, and what little sleep he had was fitful, plagued with strange dreams and ancient memories which could not be forgot.

  In the morning, the only sign of his recent distress the faint circles beneath his eyes, he drew himself a bath. As he soaked in the water, heated suitably within the gas-fired cistern in the basement, he counted the days until Quong Ti returned from China and he could return to the proper indolence of a gentleman.

  After seeing to his toilet and dressing himself in his customary gray, he set out to see to the business Omega had communicated to him and was returned to his lodgings in time to greet Miss Bonaventure on her arrival, the morning's penny papers under her arm.

  “I do hope I'll be able to finish the papers today, Blank. I've felt at loose ends since yesterday morning, having been forced to abandon the news of the day. Who is to say what I might have missed?”

  Blank smiled and ushered her inside.

  “I'm afraid your quest for knowledge in the printed page might be stymied again today, my dear.” Then, at her raised brow, he said, “I thought we might do a bit of exploring today, in the perhaps less fashionable quarters of the city.”

  Miss Bonaventure collapsed into a chair, the papers in her lap.

  “Oh, no,” she said gloomily, “you want to go incognito again. Well, you can count me out. The last time I had to pass a few idle hours dressed as a gin-soaked vagrant for the purposes of surveillance, it took me days to wash the smell from my hair.”

  “All right, all right,” Blank conceded, holding up his hands defensively. “I'll play the part of the vagrant this time round, if need be. But surely you can't object to the guise of a music hall performer?”

  A slow smile crept across Miss Bonaventure's face, and she laid a hand on her neck, her fingers on one side, her thumb the other, as though sizing her throat. “Well, I do have a pleasing singing voice…”

  The days that followed passed quickly. In various guises and disguises, Blank and Miss Bonaventure haunted the streets of London, the music halls and coffeehouses, the gin houses and rookeries, ferreting out any information about missing women. Of course, women went missing with alarming regularity in certain quarters, though only marginally more so than the men of their station and slightly less so than the children, and so it was disappointing but hardly surprising that, while the pair was able to produce a mountain of information, they derived from it very little in the way of intelligence.

  The city, already congested, became even more tightly packed as the days wore on, and more and more people streamed into London in anticipation of Victoria's Jubilee. In the meaner sections of the city through which Blank and Miss Bonaventure moved, there was a noticeable deficit of patriotic fervor, though the police were much more in evidence than was typical.

  Blank had communicated very little with New Scotland Yard since accepting the case, disregarding the urgent telegrams he received on a daily basis from Chalmers requesting updates on the status of his investigation. But while it was clear that news of the series of murders had not yet reached the fourth estate, the penny papers and their more respectable brethren likewise lacking any sensationalist headlines about the case, it was just as clear that the rank and file of the Metropolitan Police had been made well aware of the circumstances. Or, even if they lacked sufficient details, at least the constables had been informed that something was afoot, and that it was on their shoulders to see that it didn't interfere with the Jubilee celebrations. This was evident in the diligence with which the constables carried out their duties, scouring the streets, ever vigilant, arresting people on the mere suspicion of malfeasance, the actual commission of a crime for the moment not necessary to invite the attendant punishment.

  Blank and Miss Bonaventure made their way back to Marylebone shortly before dawn, having passed the day and night in Whitechapel, hunting for news of any disappearances which might correspond with the appearance of the as yet anonymous murder victims. As had become a pattern in their investigations, they had found ample evidence of foul play in any number of disappearances, but sadly none that conformed to the details of the case at hand. They made their way through the still-dark morning, forced to walk since, given the state of their adopted clothing and the early hour, they'd have been hard pressed to convince a driver to accept their custom. As they walked, Miss Bonaventure expressed the desire to solve all of the evident crimes the evidence for which they'd stumbled upon in the days previous, if they had only the time and resources to do so, and Blank allowed that there were times when it seemed too grave an injustice to bear that he had to pass over so many crimes committed against those least able to protect themselves in pursuing the interests of those with power and prestige at their command. Many were the times that, singly or in concert, Blank and Miss Bonaventure had taken up the interests of the city's less fortunate souls, but it always seemed that, like Sisyphus and his rock, no matter how hard or how long they pushed, the rock simply kept coming crashing back down.

  Finally, they rounded the corner of York Place and approached Blank's home. There, in the street before his door, they saw positioned a laundry van, a pair of well-traveled sway-backed nags between the traces. A quartet of Orientals, Chinese by their look, was wrestling a pair of wicker baskets to the door of the type used to transport soiled laundry away and to return cleaned and pressed clothing and linens, two men to each basket.


  Blank and Miss Bonaventure paused at the corner, as yet unseen in the dim predawn twilight.

  “I didn't know that you employed a Chinese launderer, Blank.”

  “I don't,” Blank answered, evenly. “And if I did, I can scarcely imagine generating that amount of work for him.” He allowed himself a sly smile. “Let us see how this plays out, shall we?”

  Blank offered Miss Bonaventure his elbow, and then with her arm linked through his they continued up the street towards his door. As the pair approached, the quartet of laundrymen did not pause in their labors, giving every appearance of struggling under heavy loads, not speaking and not raising their eyes. Despite their best efforts, though, in the time it took Blank and Bonaventure to walk the length of the street to the steps to Number 31 York Place, the laundrymen had succeeded in shifting their burdens only a short distance.

  Finally, Blank and Miss Bonaventure were only a few short steps from his door, and the trap that they had been expecting was finally sprung, to the surprise of neither.

  The laundrymen flung their burdens to either side, the wicker baskets rebounding off the pavement lightly enough to make evident that their supposed weight had been only a sham. Then, in deadly silence, they launched themselves at Blank and Miss Bonaventure, arms and legs lashing out in meticulously precise movements.

  Miss Bonaventure met the attack with relish. With an easy smile on her lips, she dodged the punch thrown by one of the laundrymen and snapped out with a high kick to the side at another, catching him in the jaw. As the kicked man went sprawling to the ground, spitting teeth, another of the laundrymen rushed forward, arms wide, apparently with the intent to encircle Miss Bonaventure and pin her own arms to her side. She allowed him to take her in a crushing bear hug, but just as his arms clamped vicelike around her, she bent backwards, knees bending and back arching, pulling the laundryman from his feet. Then, as the laundryman kicked his legs in the air, Miss Bonaventure strained upwards with her arms, having the dual effect of breaking the laundryman's hold on her and of shifting his weight forward and down so that he slid headfirst into the pavement, landing with a sickening thud.

  The other two laundrymen had not been idle, but had converged on Blank. For his part, though, Blank stood still, his arms relaxed at his sides, an almost bored expression on his face. He let Miss Bonaventure have her fun for a moment, a brief bit of exercise to get the blood flowing, and then just as his two attackers rushed him, he held up a hand.

  “Peace, gentlemen, in the name of the Ghost Fox,” he said in fluent Cantonese. “We will accompany you to see your mistress without need for any further conflict.”

  The two laundrymen stopped in their tracks and exchanged confused glances.

  “Miss Bonaventure,” Blank called out, as she wheeled around to face his attackers, her own pair lying moaning on the ground. “If you would, please desist from your exertions.”

  Miss Bonaventure was brought up short, and cocked her head to one side, giving Blank a quizzical look. “What's that, again?” she said, only slightly out of breath.

  “These gentlemen represent the Ghost Fox Triad,” he explained casually. “I have informed them that we will come along with them without further incident.” He paused, examining the frayed cuff of his vagabond disguise with a moue of distaste, and then in Cantonese addressed the laundrymen. “We would honor your mistress in not appearing before her in these rags. May we go within and change into more appropriate dress?”

  The laundrymen exchanged uneasy glances. Clearly, this abduction was not going according to plan. One of them looked to the empty wicker basket lying nearby in the street.

  “Oh, and we won't be traveling in those, thank you very much,” Miss Bonaventure said, her Cantonese carrying a slight accent, dusting her hands on the rough fabric of her skirt. “I've been forced in a basket a time or two, and I'd much rather take a cab, if it's all the same to you.”

  Blank looked at his companion with an easy smile. “Miss Bonaventure, you never cease to surprise me.”

  To the laundrymen's continued dismay, the abduction persisted in failing to follow the accepted script. The four Chinese gentlemen, one rubbing an aching jaw and another a sore pate, lingered in the foyer of the York Place house while Blank repaired to his octagonal bedroom, bathed, and dressed. Miss Bonaventure, for her part, hired a cab and rode home to do the same.

  Three quarters of an hour later, Miss Bonaventure returned, to find Blank in the library having a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and trying unsuccessfully to engage their would-be abductors in conversation.

  “I suggested that we might all have breakfast before going on,” Blank said, brightly, “but they'd have none of it.”

  Miss Bonaventure shrugged. “I'll confess I grabbed a quick bite of the meal Mrs. Pool had prepared for me, so I'll survive until lunch, I think.”

  “Splendid!” Blank clapped his hands and strode to the foyer, where he retrieved his bowler hat and cane from the table. Then, carefully selecting an orchid from the vase, he affixed it to his buttonhole and turned to smile at the laundrymen. “We're ready when you are, gentlemen.”

  The quartet of laundrymen, exchanging dark glances, shuffled out through the foyer, eyeing Miss Bonaventure warily.

  As Miss Bonaventure had suggested, transportation within the wicker baskets, as the laundrymen originally intended, was simply out of the question. And there seemed little point in going to the expense of a carriage when the laundrymen had their van ready at hand. So it was that Blank and Miss Bonaventure sat up front with the driver, while the other three jostled in the rear of the van, and as the sun was rising over the city, they drove out in the direction of the dawn.

  Turning left off Baker Street onto Oxford Street, entering the increasing flow of morning traffic, Miss Bonaventure leaned over and, with her lips brushing Blank's ears, spoke in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “And how did you recognize the allegiance of these gentlemen, Blank? And what's your connection to the triad of the Ghost Fox?”

  Blank gave her a weary smile, and with an abbreviated nod of his head indicated the black tattoo inked on the back of the driver's left hand. It was a pair of boxy Chinese ideograms.

  “Zì yóu,” Miss Bonaventure whispered.

  Blank nodded. “‘The cause of the self,’” he translated. “Or more simply, ‘Freedom.’ It is the emblem of the Ghost Fox Triad, and one I have not seen for some long time.”

  Miss Bonaventure opened her mouth to speak, but the driver had caught snippets of their brief exchange and fixed them with a hard look. Blank motioned her to silence, and she grudgingly obliged.

  They continued on past Tottenham Court, onto High Holborn, and from there past Skinner and Newgate, along Cheapside and Cornhille, until they passed Aldgate in the east. The City of London proper behind them, they were once more in the East End. Whitechapel seemed scarcely to have gone to bed before it was up and bustling. It was a truism that the East End tended to rise earlier than the rest of the city, being the home of the working poor, and as the rising sun still pinked the eastern sky, the area had already become a great plain of smoking chimneys.

  The driver turned off Whitechapel Road and onto Commercial Road, following it east towards the docks. Already, at this early hour, the first of the public houses were opening and would remain in business until half past midnight. The inhabitants of the East End provided the bulk of the manual labor which kept London running and perforce worked at all hours and spent what little leisure time allotted them, day or night, and the littler still coin left in their pockets, at the sundry lodging houses and brothels, public houses and beer-shops which dotted the narrow winding streets of the docklands.

  Finally, Commercial Road ended where the East End Dock Road began, and they came in view of the Limehouse Basin, where the murky waters of the Regent's Canal met the waters of the Limehouse Cut, made urinous in appearance and smell by a match factory upon the banks of the River Lea, the two streams commingling in swirls of sickly y
ellow and greenish gray.

  Now, they were in the Limehouse and might well have stepped into some other world. While Victoria ruled the rest of London, the rest of the Empire, here the Ghost Fox held dominion.

  The last census had showed only a few hundred Chinese in London, of which fewer than a hundred were resident within the Limehouse. Far fewer than the hundred thousand Jewish immigrants who crowded in Whitechapel and Spitalfields, much nearer the scattered number of Malay sailors who drifted in and out of port. But the recorded numbers of the Chinese population were far from accurate. The queen's census takers had been baffled by the warren of narrow, winding streets which had grown up like kudzu around the Limehouse Dock, and had walked away with little clear understanding of how many Chinese really dwelt within and even less understanding of what sort of society these immigrants from the East had fashioned for themselves.

  Blank knew too well. He had been in the east during the Opium Wars and seen firsthand the dark underbelly of Western imperialism. He had seen up close the toll demanded by empire.

  The driver brought the van to a halt out front of a humble-seeming laundry and ordered Blank and Miss Bonaventure to step down. By the time the pair had climbed down to the cobblestones, the other three laundrymen had come around from the rear of the van and taken up positions behind and to either side of them.

  “Come along, then,” Blank said amiably in Cantonese. “I'm sure your mistress awaits.”

  The three laundrymen, now joined by the fourth, glowered at him but stayed their hands. With a sharp motion of his hand, one impatiently signaled for the rest to follow and strode through the laundry's front door. Blank bowed slightly to Miss Bonaventure and said, “After you.” She inclined her head with a smile, rested her parasol on her shoulder, and sauntered after the laundryman.