The Red Ribbon

by H. B. Lyle

  Kell had made the mistake of telling Wiggins about the time he had faked an epileptic fit at Eton. That was to be the distraction. “The old dear used to be a nurse, I reckon,” Wiggins said. “Medical emergency will do dandy.”

  Delphy pulled the ledger out of the safe and opened it. “My man outside there is a little concerned about your state of inebriation, gentlemen. Can you assure me that you’ll not do anything brutish?”

  “I’ll say.” Wiggins grinned.

  “Apologies, Madame Delphy,” Kell said. “Jonny here is celebrating a promotion. He’s just been made an undersecretary at the Admiralty.”

  “Ahoy there!” Wiggins said.

  Delphy looked up carefully, nodded, and went on. “I have your details. But Mister . . . Jonny must give up his own.”

  “Of course,” Kell said, helping Wiggins into a chair. “In the meantime, madam, I was wondering about . . .”

  “You would like to see Martha again? Are you up to it tonight?”

  Wiggins laughed. “Bit of trouble with the hydraulics, Bloater?”

  “I will be fine,” Kell said to Delphy, ignoring Wiggins’s cackle.

  “Boy!” Delphy cried. The young boy appeared instantly at the door. “Run up and knock for Martha. She has a gentleman caller.”

  The boy dashed off, and Kell turned slowly to follow him. He waited at the door for a moment, and heard as Wiggins—still in perfect character—began slurring his way through his details. What an actor he’d have been, thought Kell, as he prepared for his own performance.

  He stepped out into the hallway, heels clicking. A black-haired man with a heavy mustache now stood by the front door, checking the locks. Kell glanced up. He could hear the little boy’s feet on the stairs above, probably bringing Martha back down with him. No sign of Tommy.

  Curtain up.

  CRASH!

  The boy screamed out. Wiggins flinched in his chair. Kell had gone down like a thunderclap. He looked around.

  “Delphy! Delphy!” the boy cried.

  She swiped the ledger into the safe behind her. “I knew he was drunk.” She got up just as Boy reached the door.

  “He’s gone loopy,” the boy cried. Wiggins could hear Martha crying out now from the hallway, and doors opening and closing.

  Delphy ran out, muttering. “No deaths. If he dies, Thomas, get him to the river.”

  Wiggins leapt to the safe. It was a simple enough combination lock, but it still took time. Someone else was screaming in the hall now. “A wooden spoon,” Delphy shouted.

  “Keep it up,” Wiggins muttered to himself as he put his ear to the drum and twirled. Click went the lock.

  “Where’s the other one?” he heard Tommy say.

  Click.

  “Hold him down!”

  Click.

  “That’s it,” Tommy cried and flung open the door.

  Wiggins sat slumped drunkenly in the chair. “Oi!” Tommy grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “What’s that you say?” Wiggins said. “Is everything all right?”

  Tommy glared around the room, but let Wiggins get up and move past him into the hallway.

  Kell lay stretched out at the foot of the stairs, stock-still, eyes shut. Delphy and Martha knelt next to him, the former holding a wooden spoon in his mouth, the latter cradling his head. Boy sat on the stairs, teary-eyed. At the door, Wiggins clocked one of Tommy’s heavies. He stood with his arms crossed, glowering over his mustache. One of the other girls—a pale slip of a thing—stood halfway up the stairs and whimpered.

  And behind him, Tommy.

  Delphy looked up sharply. “Oh, do shut up, Matilda! Get back to His Excellency at once. He’ll be awake soon.”

  The girl turned and went up the stairs.

  Kell’s eyes fluttered open. “Thomas, get this man a glass of water,” Delphy went on.

  “Boy,” Tommy grunted.

  Kell pushed himself up on one arm. “I’m terribly sorry, madam, miss. I must have had a fit.”

  “And some,” Wiggins joked. “You look an absolute fright, old bean. I say, can that little lad get me a highball?”

  Kell looked up at him questioningly. “I am not myself. Maybe we should leave?”

  “I feel like the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo,” Wiggins twinkled. “Why don’t you toddle off home, while I can enjoy the attentions of this lovely young filly here. What’s your name, dear?”

  Martha stared at him evenly. “Martha,” she said.

  “Jolly good.”

  Kell clambered gingerly to his feet as Boy came back in with a glass of water. The boy dodged past Wiggins. He rested a steadying hand on Wiggins’s leg as he did so.

  “Perhaps, then,” Kell said after draining the glass, “I could, er, watch?”

  The man on the door laughed. Tommy cursed and turned away. “Knew it. It’s always the limp ones.”

  Delphy, standing by this time, looked between her two new customers and then at Martha. “You will have to pay double. And no rough stuff.”

  “I thought you might come back, after last time. Bit of Dutch courage.”

  “Look, I’m perfectly capable of—”

  “Shush!” Wiggins grabbed Kell by the arm and put a finger to his lips.

  Martha gasped in surprise. “You!”

  She’d taken Wiggins and Kell up to her room following Kell’s suggestion. Tommy had glared at them all the way up the stairs but didn’t follow. Now the three of them stood in her room, in front of the erotic Japanese print.

  Martha stared at the two men in alarm. “Wiggins, T’ll kill you.”

  “Where’s the letter?” Kell hissed at Wiggins.

  “It weren’t there.”

  “But you have the ledger? We must go while we still can.”

  Wiggins turned to Martha and whispered urgently, “Why no ribbon? What’s wrong?”

  “Big T’s locked us all up, even me. Something’s up, something big.”

  “He must have the letter somewhere,” Kell said.

  “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  Wiggins shook his head quickly. “No time. Come wiv us. We can save you.” He stared into her eyes, urging.

  She shook her head. “I can’t. It’s not what you think.”

  “What’s he got on you?” Wiggins hissed. Then a scratching sound caught his ear and he bent to the wall beneath the print.

  “Do you know where Tommy and Delphy keep the most important documents?” Kell asked nervously.

  “The safe? But, sir, you really shouldn’t—”

  Wiggins leapt across the room, pulling Martha and Kell to the floor as—

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  The Japanese print shredded in an explosion of gunfire.

  “The peepholes,” Martha cried.

  Still on the floor, Kell drew his revolver and Wiggins pulled open the door. The corridor was in uproar. Whores screaming. Men in shirttails cowering at the doorways opposite, a tumult.

  The print exploded again in another round of gunfire. The barrage ended in a sudden click, and then a foul burst of swearing.

  Wiggins dragged Martha out into the hallway and onto her feet. She screamed out, and Wiggins turned to see the mustachioed thug at the top of the stairs.

  The thug raised a revolver in his hand. Wiggins tensed.

  BLAST!

  The thug toppled backward, blood pumping from his neck. Kell stood beside Wiggins, and withdrew his gun. “I think we’ve outstayed our welcome,” he said.

  “There’s a man on the front door with a Maxim,” Wiggins said. “Take him. I’m going after Tommy.”

  Kell nodded and ran at a crouch, skipping past the body of the thug without a second look. It had all taken a few seconds, but Wiggins was thinking clearly now, at last. “Get the boy. And his schoolbag,” he whispered to Martha, and crept back down the passage.

  It had been less than a minute since the firing had first started from the peep room. The screaming was still going on, but after Kell’s shot al
l the doors along the corridors had closed, and it was once again deserted.

  Wiggins reached across and rattled what he supposed was the door to the peep room. “Tommy, it’s over,” he shouted.

  Bang! Another round of fire splintered the door. Bang! Bang!

  Wiggins screamed and threw himself to the floor with a great crash. Bullet holes pockmarked the wall opposite. He cried out with as much agony as he could, while simultaneously getting up into an attack position and gripping his cosh. He whimpered and wailed again.

  The door pushed open slowly.

  Wiggins brought the cosh hard down on Tommy’s gun hand. The gun clattered wide. Tommy grunted, but dodged left as Wiggins swung again.

  They closed. Tommy heaved Wiggins against the far wall. He snarled and reached for the pistol.

  Wiggins swiveled on the floor and kicked it away down the corridor.

  Tommy drove a fist into his chin. On the inside, son, on the inside . . . Wiggins heard Bulldog’s words in his ears. But this wasn’t a boxing ring now, this was kill or be killed. Wiggins flinched and caught Tommy an uppercut to the bollocks.

  He turned to go for the gun, but suddenly Tommy had him by the throat. A tight cord whipped around his windpipe. This time, he had his hand underneath it, but it was all he could do to stop himself being throttled.

  Tommy dragged him down the hallway, roaring, “Any whore who helps these cants is dead!” He kicked the mustache man’s body out of the way, and pulled Wiggins on. “That facking toff your bumboy, is he? Always puckering up for the quality.”

  Wiggins kicked and squirmed, but he felt empty. The siege, the last-ditch fight with Peter. He could barely hold the cord around his neck much longer.

  Tommy jeered at him. “Since you was a kid, you’ve been bending over for ’em.”

  He suddenly let go of the cord, and flung Wiggins against the banisters on the landing. Wiggins gasped for air. He ripped off the false beard and looked up. Tommy had the gun.

  “Boy don’t touch no one he don’t know,” Tommy said, pointing the gun at Wiggins, breathing hard. “But he knew you. I was slow, cos I couldn’t think what that limp-dick toff had to do with it. Then I remembered. You’s always been a lapdog, taking it from the top.”

  Wiggins sat slumped against the banister, spent. He glared at Tommy but he had nothing left, not even a cheap quip. “Why didn’t you kill me, outside the Ax?”

  Tommy hesitated, as if perplexed by his own actions. “You gave me a chance once,” he said. “I owed you one.” Then he aimed the gun and said, “Not anymore.”

  A door behind Tommy opened, and Martha stepped out. Tommy hesitated, flicked his head—and in that moment, she plunged a metal syringe deep into the side of his neck.

  He clutched at it, stunned. The gun dropped to the floor.

  Martha stepped back, kicking the gun away as she did so. Tommy stared at her, hand pinned to his throat. He opened his mouth, uselessly. Then he stumbled and fell backward against the wall. His face twisted into a horrible rictus.

  Wiggins hauled himself to his feet and scrambled for the gun. He glanced back at Tommy. The huge man went into convulsions, his great body bucking and twisting. A white foam bubbled at his lips.

  “What is it?” Wiggins asked, fascinated and appalled.

  Martha stared down at Tommy, unmoved. She nodded her head slightly. A door opened down the corridor and a man in a nightshirt poked his head out. “Is it safe?” he said.

  Wiggins looked back at him. “Who are you?”

  The head disappeared.

  Tommy stopped writhing and choking. His body heaved one last breath, and then he breathed no more. He lay there, like a tree trunk felled in a storm. The worst of the Irregulars.

  “Is that what happened to Poppy?” Wiggins said.

  Martha stared at the body still. “I think so. Too much of a good thing.” She snorted at her own dark joke. “Sometimes it happens by mistake. Tommy weren’t happy she met you, so he probably killed her that way. Triple dose. They dumped her in the river.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Wiggins!” Kell’s voice echoed up the staircase. “Wiggins!”

  He ran down the stairs, Tommy’s gun tucked in his cummerbund. Kell stood by the front door, revolver in one hand, while the other rested on the Maxim gun, pulled clear from its emplacement. Boy stood by, looking out the window into the street.

  “All clear?” Wiggins asked.

  “I think so. Thanks to the boy.” Kell nodded. “He jammed the gun while we were upstairs. And Tommy?”

  Wiggins nodded slightly.

  Boy ran over to him. “Sorry, mister,” he said. “Big T knews I clocked ya. I didn’t want no one hurt, see.”

  Wiggins put a hand on the boy’s shoulder lightly and crouched down. “Where’re his soldiers?”

  Boy pointed. “One out the front run off when the gun don’t work. Scared of the gent’s shooter. Fat Harry’s normally out the back, but he’s yella—I fink he’s escaped. They’s all scared of Big T.”

  “And Delphy?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Go get your schoolbag, wouldya?” The boy ran off to the door under the stairs.

  Kell looked a quick question at Wiggins, who waved it away. He walked over to Delphy’s room. He kicked open the door, gun drawn. A cold wind blew toward him: the French windows at the far end hung open onto the back garden. “Gone,” he shouted to Kell. The safe too was empty, apart from a medical kit, a red ribbon, and a syringe. He strode back into the hall.

  His boss was on the telephone, revolver hanging carelessly by his side, every inch a gentleman assassin. He put down the horn. “The police are on their way. Inspector Carlton from F Division, if you remember. I trust him.”

  He picked up the receiver again. “Get me Whitehall 100. The Foreign Office.” As he waited, he looked over at Wiggins. “Did you find the letter?”

  Wiggins pulled out the ledger that had been stuffed down the back of his waistband and dropped it on the side table in front of Kell. “It’s coming,” he said.

  From above, they heard the sounds of the Embassy’s customers and hostesses coming back to life. Doors opening and closing, a shriek. Wiggins looked up to see Martha coming down the stairs toward them.

  Kell turned toward the telephone quietly.

  Boy came running back into the hall with his bag, which he held up to Wiggins. He gave the boy a weary smile and pulled open the heavy leather satchel. He took out the schoolbooks carefully, laying them on the side table. Martha, Boy, and Kell watched as he felt the inside lining, then ripped it clean away.

  In his hand, a clutch of close-up photographs. Kell peered in. They quite clearly showed a copy of an incendiary letter, supposedly written by the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, but actually dictated by Kell himself and handed over to Harry Moseby-Brown just before Christmas.

  They had their leak. They had their proof.

  24

  “Who ran the operation?” Kell asked.

  He sat at Delphy’s desk, triumphant. About and above him, on the four floors of the Embassy, police took down names and details, scoured the building, and locked the place down. He heard Inspector Carlton’s barked orders at every turn. In Kell’s hand, he had both Delphy’s ledger—a treasure trove in itself of the Embassy’s clients—and the photographs of his fake letter, proof that Moseby-Brown was the leak in the Foreign Office and the Committee.

  In front of him, Martha stood without saying a word.

  “The only way this works for you is if you talk. There’s a dead man upstairs. A murder charge isn’t too far away.” She looked up at that.

  “I’ll speak to Wiggins,” she said, finally.

  He examined her for a moment, heavy shawl around her shoulders, makeup smudged, not the temptress of an hour ago. “Wiggins!” he shouted.

  His agent limped in, holding an envelope in his hand. He tossed it to Kell, then slumped down on the small settee.

  “I get that yous was u
sing the joint to pick up information,” Wiggins said before Kell could continue. He didn’t look at Martha as he spoke. Instead, he sipped from a flask and stared up at the ceiling. “Nuffin’ makes the tongue looser than the pillow, right? You work for the highest bidder, or just the Germans?”

  “Germany!” Kell exclaimed in excitement. “Do you have proof?”

  “You mean other than the fact that the German Embassy was the only diplo gaff in town that sent no clients here?” Wiggins gestured to the letter he’d found. “There’s that. Sewn into the waistband of Tommy’s trousers,” he said. “Martha?”

  “Big T, Tommy. He dealt with all that. But yes, I think, Germany . . .”

  Kell pulled open the letter and began reading it as Wiggins went on.

  “So, yous was all in on it. Treason. What hold did they have on you? You’s the jammest of the jam. Could go on your back anywhere.”

  Martha looked daggers at him. But then she went into the safe and pulled out the medical kit, complete with syringe, a small bowl, and pot of a powdery white substance. “Heroin, I think it’s called. Delphy said they make it from laudanum or something. She cooks it up, and injects each and every one of us, three times a day.”

  Kell left off from reading the letter and looked up at Martha. “Is it addictive?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe, mister. Those girls upstairs will be screaming mad if they don’t get a dose soon.”

  “How . . . ?” he asked.

  Martha rolled up her sleeve. She took a red ribbon from the safe and wound it around her arm, pulling it into a tourniquet. Then she tapped her wrist. “There’s the vein, see?”

  “This is what you just pumped into Tommy?” Wiggins asked.

  She nodded.

  “And this is what killed the young girl?” Kell interjected.

  “I already told him.”

  “And why didn’t you place the red ribbon yesterday? What happened?” Kell said.

  She glanced over at Wiggins, who now had his eyes closed. “Yesterday, something big came in. Tommy jumped at shadows. He locked us all up, I think he was planning to clear out.”

  “Must have been the letter,” Kell said.