The five of us picked over the clothes, looking for markings until Waldo called me over with a whistle.
“I found your clue for you, Miss Detective,” he said.
He had it! Inside a top hat was a tailor’s mark, the first letters of which were identical to the scrap I had found in the mummy. For a moment it seemed as if Waldo would not let go of the hat. I wrested it from him and strode up to the shop girl, with the top hat in my hand.
“Where is your master?” I asked.
She stared at me blankly.
“We have a question for Moses Zwingler.”
Still those hollow brown eyes showed scarcely a flicker of intelligence. It was Ahmed who came to the rescue. Tugging at me he whispered: “She no speak English.”
Of course, she must be foreign. From Russia, maybe, if the strange lettering on many of the garments was a clue.
“What shall we do?” I wondered. Unexpectedly, Rachel took over. Leaning forward she began muttering in some strange language, clearly surprising the shop girl. Rachel went on, leaning forward on the dirty shop counter and talking soft and low. After a few moments of this the girl answered a question. Then she began to chatter, very quickly.
“What are they talking about?” I asked Isaac.
“My sister is very good at Hebrew. Me, I’m useless. I hate synagogue.”
Of course, these shopkeepers must be Jewish.
“What’s going on, Rachel?” I hissed. My friend and the shop girl were deep in conversation and seemed to have forgotten the rest of us altogether.
Rachel turned around. “This is Sara Zwingler,” she explained. “She is Mr. Zwingler’s niece. She remembers all about making the mummy. She asks us to follow her. Quick, her uncle will return soon.”
Sara padded over to the front and swiftly closed the shutters, then she beckoned us and we followed her through a narrow passage that smelled strongly of fish.
“Be quiet, for heaven’s sake,” Rachel said, looking particularly hard at me. “Sara’s uncle will kill her if he finds out about this.”
We emerged into a poky room lit by three gas jets. Some twelve or thirteen men were sitting cross-legged on the floor, stitching “slops”—the kind of clothes you buy ready-made. Around them were piles of cloth in every color and fabric, not to mention pots, pans and personal things as well. The men were like living skeletons, you could see the patterns of their bones making a jigsaw under their skin. The lack of air, the hiss of gas, the bright lights made my nose block and eyes swell.
Sara muttered something to Rachel and my friend translated for us: “These are ‘Greeners’—Jews fresh off the boat from Russia. They speak little or no English and have few skills. Sara says her uncle is kind. Better than many ‘sweaters.’ He makes his men work only sixteen hours a day—from six in the morning till ten in the night.”
Kind, I thought disbelievingly.
Meanwhile Sara was speaking to one of the men whom she called Baruch: his hand froze, needle suspended in mid-air. He looked at me, Rachel, Waldo, Ahmed and Isaac and then back at Sara. It was as if he was taking account of us all. This man was younger than many of the others. He was handsome, with a long thin face, dark, sad eyes and a generous mouth. It was the face of a poet or a musician. “I remember mummy,” Baruch said, finally, speaking slowly in accented English.
“You do?”
“Yes, we make wiz trimmings.” He pointed to a mound of linen in the corner of the room. “It vas somesing different so I remember.”
“Was it difficult?”
Baruch shrugged: “Jabber Jukes bought sticks. And we make mummy. Put cloth round and round like this.” With fluent hands, Baruch sketched the shape of a mummy in the air. “It vas not easy get right shape.”
“What kind of name is Jabber Jukes?” I asked.
As soon as the name was out of my mouth the atmosphere in the tiny room changed. I could feel the tension crackling around me, several of the men paused in their stitching to watch us. Baruch was about to answer my question, then he looked at Sara and stopped.
“Jabber Jukes,” I persisted. “Who is Jabber Jukes?”
I saw Rachel’s gaze, fixing in fright on something behind me. I turned around. A new person was in the room, a spindly little fellow. Hairless as a hard-boiled egg on top, yet with a bushy beard dangling from his chin. He was the sort of being who moves as stealthily as smoke and shadow. I do not know how long he had been in the room, how much of our conversation he had heard. Though the man was as skinny as the other workers, his decent suit marked him out as a man of relative wealth. I knew at once this was Moses Zwingler, Sara’s uncle and the owner of the sweatshop.
He muttered something quickly to Sara, then turned on Waldo.
“Permit me to inquire, good sir, what you are doing in my factory while my shop is shut?” Though his voice was silky, there was no mistaking the anger hidden underneath.
We stood there gawking at him. I’m usually quick at thinking of excuses. Not today. My brain had chosen this moment to shut down.
Luckily Baruch, the greener, rescued us:
“De lady wants blouse, Mr. Zwingler,” he said, holding up a garment, a shirt of the most revolting mauve.
Instantly I took the way out he had offered: “I had a fancy for a blouse in this color, Mr. Zwingler. Your niece was kind enough to say she had one in the workshop. I’m afraid I bullied her into bringing me in here to see for myself.”
“We have plenty of blouses in the shop.”
“Not in exactly this shade of mauve.”
“It was not necessary to have come here, my niece would have fetched it,” Mr. Zwingler said, but he took the blouse from Baruch. “I vill let you ’ave it for four shillings. A bargain, young lady, the cloth is of the finest calico.”
Sheer robbery. However, we had little choice if we didn’t want to get Mr. Zwingler’s niece into further trouble. I produced a sovereign from my purse and held it out to Mr. Zwingler. The coin lay in my palm, glinting gold. Men stopped working, mesmerized, watching the ordinary coin, as if it were one of the wonders of the world.
“A lady of means,” Zwingler chuckled, delighted. “Come through. I will fetch your change.”
I reddened as I followed Zwingler, aware that I had been silly to have produced such a large amount of money.
Once we were outside the shop Waldo and Isaac burst into hoots of laughter, while Ahmed looked puzzled. I took the shirt out of the packet Mr. Zwingler had wrapped it in and held it up, staring at it in disgust. It was horrible, trimmed with dozens of frills and furbelows, sleeves as puffed as hot-air balloons, a row of fussy bows down the front.
“You’d almost pass for a girl in that,” Waldo smirked.
“The color,” Rachel said, with a slight shudder. I had to agree it was an absolutely horrible shade of mauve.
“I don’t know, Rachel,” Waldo smirked at my friend. “Kit would look almost pretty in it. Provided it was at night, of course, and she was at the other end of a dark alley.”
I flashed Waldo a look to let him know how feeble I thought his attempt at wit. “I will never, ever wear this horrid thing,” I said. “I know, I’ll give it to the Minchin. It is just her sort of thing.” A fit of giggles overtook me at the thought of our governess in the awful blouse.
Rachel made an annoyed noise, sobering us up. “What are we going to do now? I’m tired, Kit; I want to go to your aunt’s house.”
“No.” Waldo shook his head. “We have detecting to do.”
For once, I agreed with him. “That’s right. We need to find out about this mystery man, Jabber Jukes. Zwingler’s men made the mummy but it was Jabber who paid for it.”
“Jabber Jukes,” said Waldo. “Sounds like a hoodlum.”
“I think,” Ahmed began and stopped. We all looked at him, surprised he’d ventured an opinion without being asked. There was something taller and more confident about him here, in these slums. It was amazing, too, how quickly his English was improving.
“Yes?” Rachel encouraged.
“They were scared,” Ahmed said. “Very scared.”
“Who was scared?”
“The men—how you say ‘greeners’—they not like Jabber Jukes.”
“Yes.” Rachel nodded. “Scared for their lives, I would say. Everyone went all still—like Baruch had done the wrong thing.”
Chapter Nine
“Why is it wrong to call Frenchmen frogs?” my aunt barked at us, as soon as we entered her drawing room, weary and downcast from our trip to Spitalfields.
“Because it is wrong to make rude remarks about people. Especially people you don’t know personally,” Rachel ventured, timidly.
“Of course not, you ninny. Rebecca, is it?” Aunt Hilda flashed her a withering look.
“Rachel.”
“That’s a particularly wet remark, Rebecca. The answer, of course, is that the comparison is unfair to perfectly decent animals.”
Aunt Hilda was slumped on the sofa, a half-empty glass of whisky in her hand, her face flushed. Something in the newspaper in front of her, the Pall Mall Gazette, had clearly angered her. Edging over to see what was wrong I spotted the headline:
FRENCHMAN GASTON CHAMPLON CALLS FAMOUS LADY EXPLORER, HILDA SALTER, “A LIAR.” RELATIONS WITH FRANCE AT RISK.
There was only one thing for it; I would have to distract her. Once Aunt Hilda was on her favorite subject of French treachery she would never stop.
“London is terribly smoggy—” I began but Waldo seized the newspaper and read out the headline.
“You should sue the blighter!” he declared.
“Splendid idea! What a sensible boy,” Aunt Hilda crowed. “I’ll bet Champlon hasn’t the nerve to try his luck before an honest English jury!”
Quietly I signaled to the others that we should go. We sidled out as Aunt Hilda declared her intention of writing a letter to the Queen, protesting “French Insolence.” She wouldn’t be satisfied, I thought, till blood had been shed over her stolen mummy.
We were tired and felt oddly listless. We trooped upstairs and slumped in the piano room, kicking off our shoes. I, for one, was overwhelmed by our trip to the sweatshops of the East End. Some of those begging in the gutters were children, boys and girls even younger than us. The whole trip left me feeling odd about being Kit Salter. The daughter of a father who can clothe and feed me, have me decently educated. (Yes, even the Minchin counts as a decent education.) How lucky I was to be me. Not one of the unfortunates of the earth doomed to exist among dirt and drudgery.
“We’ll have to go back there tomorrow,” I said.
On the faces around me I saw blank looks, which depressed me.
“It’s a wild goose chase,” said Isaac.
“Hopeless,” Rachel agreed.
“Waste of time,” Waldo added.
“Well, see if you can think of anything cleverer,” I snapped. “All you lot can do is moan. Why don’t you try coming up with a plan?”
A rap on the door interrupted our argument. It was my aunt’s maid Mary, carrying a brown envelope. “Someone knocked at the door, left this for you, miss,” she said.
I turned the envelope over. It was grubby, marked with dirty fingerprints, but was not addressed to anyone.
“How do you know it was for me?”
Mary flushed. “It was a man wot brung it. A foreign man, all ragged and dirty-like but handsome if you take my meaning. He said it was for the bossy lady. I thought it was your aunt, miss, meaning no offense. But the man, he said no. The bossy young lady.”
The others tittered. It was my turn to flush. “Thank you, Mary,” I said and took the envelope from her. Casting a cross glance at my friends I slowly opened it and extracted the slip of paper inside. What was written there was enough to make me forget my hurt feelings:
You are not I think a lady to be scared so I will tell you about Jabber Jukes. I will come to big duke hyde in park. 1 o’clock. Do not be late.
Chapter Ten
“He’s not going to come,” I said, despairingly.
We had been waiting under the statue of the Duke of Wellington in Hyde Park for over half an hour. It was a splendid spot, a place to show Ahmed how glittering London could be. All around us nature was in full bloom, over there the fashionable world trooping their thoroughbred ponies down Rotten Row. You could admire the broughams of countesses with their golden crests, the carriages of earls. If, like Waldo, your tastes ran to ogling young ladies, you could watch the daintiest in the land, riding side-saddle, dresses flowing elegantly over their horses’ flanks.
However, I had not come here for sightseeing. I was bored and cross as I saw my plans unravel once more.
“Patience,” Isaac said, not looking up from the screws he was fiddling with.
None of the others seemed as bothered as I was. Rachel was pointing the sights out to Ahmed, Waldo lounged on the grass, whistling.
“What are you doing, anyway?” I asked Isaac.
“Portable RollerShoes,” he said, holding up two small wheels. “I’ve put the brackets for them on my own boots. I’m just working it so I can snap them on and off.”
My mind wandered off as Isaac talked. I had spotted a hunch-backed figure walking past the fence. Was it, could it be? As the figure moved nearer my heart leapt. Yes! It was Baruch the greener, weighed down by something on his back. We ran toward him and said our hellos over the fence.
He made no apologies for his lateness. “Come with me,” he motioned to us. “I am hurry. We will have to walk.”
Obediently we left the park and followed him. He set quite a pace, even carrying his large bag of clothes. I had to trot to keep up with him. As Baruch walked, he talked.
“I am taking risk because I like you.” He nodded at me. “I think you brave.”
“Thank you,” I muttered. I noticed, with a burst of secret satisfaction, that Waldo looked annoyed.
“Also I have ’nother reason.” He halted abruptly.
“Yes?” I prompted and then wished I hadn’t spoken for Baruch looked at me so furiously, I shrank back.
“I am angry,” he said. “So angry it hurts.” He gestured to his heart. “You will have to be clever with what I tell you. Not just brave. This is important because these are bad men. Many people, good people are trusting you. You unnerstan” me?’
“Yes.” I nodded, though I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
“Good. Jabber Jukes is a bad man. But he is a small bad man. A young man learning all the hard ways. You unnerstan’?”
“He is an apprentice,” Rachel said. “An apprentice in evil.”
“Yes. Jabber is young, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old. He works for criminals and they teach him how to be bad.”
“How do you know him?” I asked.
The pavements along Park Lane were crowded with gentry in their fine clothes, but also with working people going about in the noise and bustle that is everywhere in London. I had to raise my voice to get Baruch to hear me. The greener, with his large bundle, struggled to make a path through the crowds.
“What can I say? My master should tell the police about these villains,” Baruch said, stopping in the middle of the pavement. “But he does not. He is too scared.”
“Moses Zwingler?” I asked, surprised. He didn’t look like a particularly nervous man.
“Yes, we are scared. Zwingler, the other shopkeepers, workers, all of us in Raven Row. Every week Jabber or another man—they come and take money. Sometimes they demand five shillings. Sometimes ten. Once they took a whole guinea. And the masters, they pay. The criminals, they say they need the money to protect us.” Baruch shrugged. “All lies. If the shopkeepers don’t pay, they get beaten. Or their shop will be fired.”
“That’s wicked.”
“It is the way. Jews, we have many peoples bleeding us. Like lemons—even if we have not much juice there is a little more they can squeeze.”
“I thought it was your master, Moses Zwingler, doing the
squeezing,” I said.
Baruch grimaced: “Fleas feed on small fleas. Both are sucked dry by bigger, how you say?”
“Insects?” I suggested. “Businessmen?”
“They call it business,” he agreed. “In Russia it is the same.”
“Who is doing this to you?” Isaac asked. “Who are these criminals?”
“Where do we find them?” I added.
But Baruch frowned; this talk was making him angry. He turned round and began walking much more quickly. We were on the edge of a crowd, waiting on the pavement. As we approached a large red omnibus appeared from the direction of Victoria. It was emblazoned with signs for Fry’s Cocoa and was already packed: gentlemen spilling off the rails at the top, ladies crammed into the downstairs compartment.
People surged around us. We were trapped in a stampede, people pushing and shoving like navvies. An elderly lady in a lace-trimmed bonnet landed me a punch in the ribs as she made her way determinedly past. Baruch was caught in the middle.
“Baruch,” I yelled. “Where do we find these thugs?”
“You’ve got to go to Norfolk. To Punch, its a—” abruptly his words were bitten off. I caught a surprised look on his face and then he was lost from view in the human traffic.
“Baruch, Baruch,” I yelled. The others added their voices to mine. It was no good, a second omnibus had driven up and the crowd frothed around it like an angry sea. We would just have to wait till the crush eased.
I glared at a gentleman in a shiny new top hat who had trodden on my foot. If he could afford a hat like that he could also afford manners, was the way I saw it. Another man, with piggy eyes and no chin, shoved against me and, fed up now, I shoved back. We waited for the crowd to disperse and in a few moments most of them had managed to cram into the two omnibuses.
But Baruch was nowhere to be seen. Had he left us? It made no sense, he was just about to tell us the name of the villain.
The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis Page 5