by Will Thomas
“Gentlemen,” Barker warned.
Just then Campbell-Ffinch’s eye caught that of his old university classmate. “Forbes, what in blazes are you doing here?”
“Keeping an eye on you, Lonnie,” Forbes drawled. “Seeing that you stay out of trouble.”
Hestia Petulengro and her swain arrived next. She looked carefully at the men in the room before coming inside. She was the only woman I had ever seen at Ho’s. She towed Charlie Han along and then sat down beside me.
“I need to explain,” she said to me in a low voice.
“You don’t, actually,” I responded. “It was just dinner, after all, not a proposal of marriage. I’m not exactly overjoyed by your personal arrangements, but of course you are free to make your choice.”
“No chance for another dinner sometime, then?”
“Well, not while he is living in your house, no. I do prefer no audience when I kiss you.”
She smiled, but what it meant exactly I could not tell. I was distracted by the arrival of Mr. K’ing himself. He had not sent an emissary but had actually come in person. The triad leader swept through the door and set his wide-brimmed hat upon the table.
“I cannot be in this room!” Woo announced. “This fellow is a known criminal, and as an official of the Asian Aid Society, I must not be seen to have dealings with such a person!”
I was about to ask why he should be so particular now, when I had seen him get out of Mr. K’ing’s cab the other night, but I stopped myself. Barker might not care to have that information revealed.
“Mr. Woo, I warn you that the text must not be translated for the Foreign Office,” K’ing stated. “It is the personal property of the Chinese imperial government and must not be read by the English.”
“It is not your part to say what the property of the imperial government is or is not,” Woo answered. “You are a common criminal.”
“Nonsense,” K’ing countered. “I am a businessman.”
As they bickered, I heard the last invited guest behind me before I saw him. One could not mistake the sound of hobnails on a wooden floor.
“’Zis a private party?” Patrick Hooligan spoke in his raspy voice. “’Ello, K’ingy, old boy.”
Now it was K’ing’s turn to be uncomfortable. “You are in triad territory,” he snapped.
“Yes, well, I got-what’s the word?-I got dispensation. An invite from old Push hisself here. Command performance, you might say.”
Hooligan took a seat at the table and immediately started cleaning his nails with a knife, as if the proceedings did not interest him at all.
We were all assembled. At the head of the T-shaped table, Barker and Poole sat. I flanked Barker while Ho stood at his elbow. Down the right side sat Hettie Petulengro, Charlie Han, and Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch. Pollock Forbes sat at the foot, and on the left were Patrick Hooligan, Jimmy Woo, and Mr. K’ing.
Barker stood to address the group. “I have called you here today because you are all involved in the investigation of the death of Inspector Bainbridge or my late assistant Quong or one of several other murders that have occurred. I am not implying that anyone in this room is the killer, merely that each of you is involved in some fashion.”
The room erupted. Everyone began speaking at once, denying the accusations and blaming each other.
“Silence!” Poole boomed. “You can take your medicine here or you can take it down in A Division. Which’ll it be?”
That silenced the group. Barker surveyed them and continued.
“Thank you. Let me begin by saying that one of you is not as he seems. Forbes?”
Pollock Forbes knit his fingers in front of him. “Ah, yes,” he began. “At Mr. Barker’s request, I did some investigating at Cambridge. It appeared they do have a record of a James Woo, a student from China, but no one there seems to recall him, and if anything, I think Mr. Woo here is rather memorable. I took a closer look at the registry entry. I am afraid it was a forgery.”
Barker turned to Woo and said, “Would you care to comment, Mr. Woo, if that is your name?”
Woo looked a little deflated. He removed his monocle and put it in his pocket.
“Very well, Mr. Barker,” he said, adopting a more serious tone. “You leave me no choice. I am an agent of the imperial government,” he explained. “I was sent to recover the text by the Empress herself. When I arrived here, it became necessary to adopt an identity and search for it street by street. I chose to work as an interpreter at the Asian Aid Society, so I could get to know the Chinese in England. I inserted the record in the files at Cambridge.”
“You also worked for the Foreign Office and for Mr. K’ing,” Barker pointed out. “That’s quite a conflict of interest.”
Woo looked uncomfortably at the triad leader. “It became necessary to get to know Mr. K’ing’s operations and what the Foreign Office was doing to recover the text. I thought it likely K’ing had the text in his possession.”
“If you had acquired the text, what would you have done with it?” Barker asked.
“I would have taken it back to the Forbidden City, old sp-sorry. I would give it to the Dowager Empress.”
“And what would she do with it?”
“Whatever she wishes, of course. It would become her property. I assume it would be watched by armed guards with the other treasures in the palace. Not that it is a treasure, mind you.”
“It would not be returned to the Xi Jiang Temple?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Woo said. “It is best to keep it in the Forbidden City. The area near the Xi Jiang monastery has been unstable since the Heavenly War. The south is still full of revolutionaries, anxious to overthrow the Manchus.”
“I can’t believe this,” Campbell-Ffinch finally spoke up. “This little popinjay, an agent for the Chinese government?”
“Do shut up, Campbell-Ffinch,” Woo said. “The hardest part of my assignment has been working with you. If all Foreign Office men are as incompetent as you, I fear for this country of yours.”
“Well, I never!” the English agent blustered.
Looking across, I saw a slight smile on Pollock Forbes’s face.
Barker turned to Patrick Hooligan. “And you, Mr. Hooligan. If you had the text, what would you do with it?”
“I told yer, Push, I’d sell it. Sell it to the highest bidder. All this talk about it not having worth is codswallop. Start threatening to sell it to someone else and you’d be surprised at how high the biddin’ can go.”
“What would you do with the money?”
Hooligan looked over at his rival, Mr. K’ing, who was eyeing him as if he were vermin. Barker and I knew he’d use it to gain more power and influence in the East End, but he wasn’t about to say it in front of K’ing. “Dunno. P’raps buy a good racehorse. You can make a powerful lot o’ money with a good racehorse.”
“I see,” Barker said. He turned and faced the other side of the table. “Miss Petulengro, let us say for the sake of argument that you owned the manuscript. What would you do with it?”
“I did have the manuscript,” she pointed out. “It means naught to me. It’s just a book with stick figures in it. I can’t read it. It’s nothing but trouble as far as I’m concerned. I’d give it to you. You might be a copper, but you seem straight as an arrow to me.”
She couldn’t help looking at me and I at her. If Barker noticed the fraternization between his assistant and one of the witnesses, he didn’t let on. Instead, he turned to Charlie Han.
“And you, Mr. Han. Let us say I were able to put the text into your hands right now. What would you do with it?”
Han shrugged. “I dunno. I cannot read. I sell it, buy more betel nut, if Hettie don’t want it.”
Barker turned to Mr. K’ing. “Sir,” he said. “Shall I repeat the question I have asked everyone else?”
K’ing ran a finger over his thin mustache. “I have no personal interest in the text, Mr. Barker. I realize it is dangerous. I suppose I would see
it delivered to China on the Blue Funnel line and into the hands of a responsible person, who would take it back to the Xi Jiang Temple.”
Barker nodded. “And you, Mr. Campbell-Ffinch, I suppose you would-”
“I’d give it to the Foreign Office, of course,” the man said. “The book would be analyzed, perhaps with the intention of producing a training manual for us, if these techniques are all that they are purported to be. After that, who knows? It might be passed on to Her Majesty’s army.”
“Mr. Forbes,” Barker said, turning to the last person seated at the table, “you’ve shown some interest in this case. If you had the text, what would you do with it?”
Forbes leaned back in his chair and raised a hand to his lips. I noticed for the first time an insignia on his ring, a cross inside a crown. It was a symbol, I realized, of some secret society.
“I’d take it to a place of safekeeping, where the knowledge would not see the light of day,” he replied.
“I see,” Barker said. “Thank you, Pollock. This has been very enlightening. Seven individuals have given me as many answers.” He paced a circuit around the room and we all watched him. I knew he was about to spring something upon us, I just wished I knew what. Barker looked slowly about the room, from face to face.
“I am now willing to entertain offers for the book,” he stated at last.
Everyone began talking at once, apart from Poole and Forbes, who I noted remained silent. Hestia Petulengro began calling Barker names. K’ing conferred with Woo, and Campbell-Ffinch was crowing that my employer had really had the text in his possession the entire time. Hooligan’s raspy voice was heard over all.
“That leaves me out, I reckon. I can get yer a good price for it, but I can’t bring enough ready to the table to make it worth your while.”
“Mr. Woo, if we may still call you that, are you prepared on behalf of your government to make an offer?”
“Provided the authenticity of the text can be verified, I am authorized to go up to a specified amount. We have always thought that at some point we might have to purchase the text in order to get it back.”
“And you, Campbell-Ffinch, are you prepared on the part of Her Majesty’s government to put forward an offer?”
“I shall have to speak with my superiors, but I believe we may be able to do so. But what’s he doing here?” the Foreign Office man said, pointing toward Poole, who had been sitting and watching everything.
“Inspector Poole is here to see that order is maintained. That is all.”
I knew it had to be a lie, as was Barker’s entire offer. Poole had his eyes glued on Barker, not sure whether to agree or not.
“What about you, Mr. K’ing? Are you prepared to enter into the bidding?”
“I am, but only with the intention of doing with it as I told you.”
“Of course. The winning bidder may do with the text whatever he wishes. Excellent. We have three bidders, then. Who shall vouch for its authenticity? I could translate it easily, but it is not for me to judge, being the one who shall produce it.”
All three bidders offered their services, including Campbell-Ffinch, whose knowledge of Chinese must have been rudimentary at best. Barker looked about, trying to choose.
Finally, he said, “Mr. Woo, I think your interpreter’s skills make you the most informed person to look over the text.”
“Thank you, old fellow. Quite decent of you.”
“Llewelyn, will you give Mr. Woo your seat?” I stood and moved to the side, offering my chair to Woo, who slid into it ready to see the much-sought-after text. Poole looked at Barker for instructions.
“Show him, Terence,” the Guv said.
Reluctantly, Poole reached into his pocket and removed the packet we had picked up from the pawnbroker two weeks before. He set it down on the table, and Woo grabbed it eagerly, sliding the book out of the protective envelope and opening the cover. It wasn’t the text. I recognized it immediately as a book from Barker’s own library, one of a handful of Chinese texts my employer kept on his shelf.
“No, wait,” Woo cried. “This isn’t-”
Before he could move, there was a click as Poole’s police regulation bracelets locked onto Woo’s right wrist. A second click almost simultaneous with the first came as Barker clapped a second about the fellow’s left one. The two detectives had carried them tucked in their coat sleeves, locked about their own wrists. With a sudden shove, all three of their chairs were tipped back and hit the floor as Barker and Poole held the struggling Woo. From the far side of the table, Ho pulled a set of manacles from the tureen and stepped forward to lock them on Woo’s ankles. In a trice, they had him as immobilized as any man could be while the rest of us leapt to our feet in astonishment.
30
I wasn’t going to risk another blow to my kidneys, thank you,” Barker said as he and Woo lay nose to nose on the floor of Ho’s back room with Inspector Poole shackled to his other arm. Barker, Ho, and Poole helped Woo right his chair, where he sat as trussed up as a Christmas goose.
“You must forgive the subterfuge, gentlemen and Miss Petulengro, of course,” Barker said to the rest of us. “This was the only way I could lay hands upon this man without getting someone killed. This is the fellow responsible for the deaths of Inspector Bainbridge, Quong, Mr. Petulengro, Jan Hurtz, Luke Chow, and the sailor Chambers, as well as the attack upon my manservant, Jacob Maccabee, and myself. He was also responsible for the break-in at the Xi Jiang Monastery and the deaths of the two monks there.”
“You’ve made some kind of mistake,” Woo insisted. “I’m no killer.”
“I’ve always heard you were eccentric, Barker, but this really is beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” Campbell-Ffinch said. “If this prancing little Chinaman is our man, even if he is an agent for his government, I’ll swallow my mother’s blessed bonnet.”
“You call yourself a keen fighter, do you not, Mr. Campbell-Ffinch? Then presumably you’d recognize another of your kind. What is the term? To ‘smell the blood’? Take a look at these, then.”
With a tug, the Guv pulled off one of Woo’s silk gloves. Woo’s knuckles were enormous, like a child’s set of marbles, and there were hard yellow calluses upon the palm and edge of the hand. It was the hardened hand of a killer.
Woo struggled again and almost reached his hand into his coat pocket, but Poole was three stone heavier and trained in antagonistics by Barker himself. He turned Woo’s wrist and dipped into his pocket, tossing a pistol onto the table far enough away that no one could reach it.
“I reckon that’s the weapon used to murder my friend Inspector Nevil Bainbridge and young Mr. Quong.”
“So, is that the real text or not?” Campbell-Ffinch said, looking at the book on the table.
“I’m afraid not. It is an obscure book called The Art of War. I borrowed it from my library because it is roughly the size and color of the text.”
“A decoy!” Campbell-Ffinch cried. “Damn and blast! Where is the text?”
“I got rid of it almost the same day I got it,” Barker explained. “I gave it to a Chinaman. By now, it should be halfway to Canton, where it will be returned to the Xi Jiang Temple. All of your efforts,” Barker said, looking at Woo beside him, “were for naught. The manuscript is where you shall never get to it.”
Jimmy Woo sat very stiffly in his chair, still shackled to Poole and Barker. I thought he might not admit to anything, but finally he unwound and sat back in his chair.
“Oh, very well. I suppose it is gone and there is nothing I can do about that now, but I shall not confess to murder in front of witnesses. I have diplomatic immunity. I am an official of the Forbidden City. You can take me to jail, but it is only a matter of time before I am sent back to Peking. I shall have that manuscript yet, Mr. Barker. I have dedicated over two years of my life to it and I consider it mine.”
“How did you first hear about the text, sir?” my employer asked.
“I am a steward of the imperial Princ
e. When I heard word about the text from Luke Chow, I told the Prince and he agreed it was necessary that he obtain it.”
“And should you have obtained it, what sort of reward did you expect to receive?”
“Reward?” Woo said. “Not so much as a tael. I hoped to be given permission to study the book.”
Barker looked at Campbell-Ffinch, who himself might have killed in order to lay hands on a new fighting method. “You hoped to be a better fighter?”
“No,” Woo answered. “I mean, yes, I hoped to learn the secrets and to become a better fighter, but not for my own gain. I wanted to create an elite corps of boxers chosen from among the imperial troops.”
“I see,” Barker said. “An elite corps. And just what, Mr. Woo, would the elite corps do with that knowledge?”
Woo put his head down and mumbled something under his breath.
“I did not hear you, Mr. Woo.”
He looked up again and his easy manner was gone. I saw fire in his eyes. “I said, we would kill all foreigners within China’s borders, every American and Englishman and French and German and Austrian and Japanese that has been infecting our country. We would wipe out foreign business along the Bund in Shanghai and in the European settlements in Peking and Canton. We would execute your missionaries with their poisonous religion as an example to their weak-willed converts, and we would shut our borders again. China for the Chinese. It is the only way, you see.”
“You’re mad,” Campbell-Ffinch insisted. “Her Majesty the Dowager Empress would never countenance the wholesale slaughter of honored guests in China. We have been assured of that fact.”
“Campbell-Ffinch, if you believe that, you are naive,” Mr. K’ing spoke up. “I’ve heard she was responsible for the death of her eldest son for being a spineless weakling. She would no more fear the slaughter of non-Chinese than she would the fleas on one of her prized dogs. If the Prince agreed to such an agreement, even in unofficial terms, one can assume he knew he could convince Her Majesty of the necessity of his actions. I have heard her referred to as the Dragon Lady. She has quite a villainous reputation.”