Chapter Five
“Thank you, Prince Florizel,” Madame Phoebe said as I seated myself. She gave me a nod and a smile as if she approved. Approved of what? Was she going to explain this mystery at last?
“My tale comes next. When I saw the address on that paper, I recognized it and investigated what possible connection there could be between a low-ranking manager in an important engineering firm and a notorious gossip columnist.”
Madame Phoebe took a breath.
“Well, well, well.” Judy Punch swept me into her sitting room as one sweeps a fleeing mouse toward the trap it must not be permitted to avoid. Her blue hair rose to alarming heights on its wire bouffant rolls and I could hear the frantic winding of the springs and gears in her patented self-adjusting corset straining to contain the gossip-columnist’s ample figure. Her plum day gown was heavily-bustled with wire as well. Amethyst pompons sparkled all over her dress and anemone-like amethyst beaded flowers had been stuck crazily into her hair.
“Do sit down and let me have my maid bring some tea, Miss Moore. Imagine! Miss Phoebe Moore in my very house! Miss Moore, who never gives interviews and has a whole clan of handsome blond giants to shield her from the press in America. I knew I would wear you down once I got you alone for a minute at the Baroness Orczy’s tea party last week!”
The gossip columnist’s home was a train wreck of patterns, colors and styles, rich and tasteless, crammed with mementos of the celebrities she had interviewed, and in many cases, testimony to the innocent lives she had ruined with her libelous reports.
“The home of London’s most avidly read celebrity news reporter can hardly be called humble.” I had chosen my own costume to impress without stooping to the tasteless shout for attention of my hostess. I wore a rich russet day gown with shimmering matched lace cascading over my upper arms and down from my waist. Black jet fringe also edged my gown and russet hat. Pheasant feathers completed my hat’s ornamentation. I set my russet and black, fringed parasol down in the stand by the door and followed my hostess to a seat. “Anyone can see you have had great success at what you do. I have come to give an interview, but I want some information in exchange.”
The interview was very difficult, as I had known it would be. The woman had no shame, no reserve whatsoever. She did not, however, seem to know about my previous career. That was extremely heartening. The Campbells really had managed to bury it, and I breathed another silent prayer of gratitude to my beloved husband’s family.
I could not fathom what the woman meant by her “previous career”. Could she have been a cheap stage performer whom Campbell had elevated by marriage? I could not even think how such a person would come to be noticed by American aristocracy such as the Campbells. Madame Phoebe continued before I could solve yet another puzzle in this most puzzle-filled association.
“Really, my dear, you must give me a little more. My readers are not looking for so much sweetness and light. These little struggles are charming. Telling us of your first public concert, your leaving for New York and becoming a professional church choir singer will enchant my readers. What tears they will shed over your tending your guardian in his illness. But my readers also crave a peek at the darker side of a celebrity’s life, the temptations, the missteps ... “ She trailed off invitingly.
“I’m afraid I’ve told you all I can. Now for my information. I thought you once said there was news in every famous person’s life, and that the public had a right to know about it. Yet I haven’t seen any stories about important people like…” I casually mentioned the name of the president of the firm where the drunken young man Florizel had met was employed.
The change in the woman was dramatic and almost pitiable. “Ho, ho, Miss Moore, why would we be interested in dull old bridges and roads and brownstone buildings? We moths hover about the bright lights of celebrity, not the green lampshades of dusty board meetings. I have no information about such a place, nor have I any desire to know.”
“But she lied. She was afraid, and it was obvious. So I left. Later I came back in my little white cap and neat black dress. I gave the pretty little idle housemaid ten pounds and told her she had won the Maid of the Month Sweepstakes. She was to take the afternoon off while I took her place. I knew her mistress had gone to a celebrity luncheon and that she would never tell her of this arrangement.
“I noticed that the girl was idle when I was giving the interview, of course, seeing everything covered with dust and the tea slow and sloppy. I got a good look, and still had time to give that place a better cleaning than it’s had in months. Disgraceful what people pay for a housemaid who spoons over the back fence with the butcher boy while company is present.”
This talk of posing as a servant did not surprise me. I had done it myself. But the odd way she talked, knowing intimately the ways of servants and actually spending time cleaning the woman’s house -- It was almost as if she actually had been in service. Looking at this regal lady, I laughed at myself for thinking she had ever known hard work or want.
“At any rate, what I found was a drawer in the lady’s writing desk that had a sheet glued in the bottom under a felt pad. Here is a copy of the sheet.”
Madame Phoebe passed around a paper with columns containing lists of words. “Clearly this is a cipher. It’s a simple one -- just allows one word to be substituted for another. Since this incident I have become a religious reader of the lady’s columns. Such men as the drunk whom the prince met are gathering information at their places of work – apparently about important papers to be delivered by a courier or meetings to be held – and they report to the gossip-monger, whose columns alert thieves to the time, place, and circumstances where they can commit a robbery.
“I searched back into past columns of Judy Punch’s and found this reference,” Madame Phoebe explained, taking up a newspaper clipping.
“ ‘My close friend Dodge has whispered in my ear that a midnight rendezvous may bridge the gap between certain stellar persons we all wish were not so far apart. Cupid’s arrow shall fly down Portney Street and perhaps land in Tufts Square.’
“Not all of the words are part of the coded message, of course. Judy Punch has an unpleasant habit of frequent capitalization which appears to be gossipy emphasis but separates the real message from the unimportant words. When I applied the coded sheet I had copied, this is the message that it revealed: Courier Dover Ferry to Lyon Ten a.m. arrival.
“We have confirmed that a courier was killed in Lyon at noon on April 10th. He was carrying architectural plans for a new bridge for the firm in which the prince’s drunken friend was employed.”
Madame Phoebe paused. She had given her report very steadily, with little trace of emotion, but she was very white and her hands shook. For me it was a stunning revelation and a humbling experience. I had cudgeled my brains to know what the fellow meant by his words, who had been killed, to whom the address on the paper might have belonged.
I had felt so helpless, knowing a great evil had been done, and more might be contemplated, while this astounding woman had made sense of it all and fitted it into her quest. How had she known what transpired between myself and the drunken manager? She claimed she had not found me until yesterday. I could not give the matter any more thought, though, for Madame Phoebe spoke again.
“Doctor Twist, please give us your report next.”
“Hold on just a tick, Lady Phoebe.” Oliver Twist hunched his shoulders in a way that had already become familiar to me. “There. Got my imagework from Chancery up.” He nodded toward a blank wall, this one fitted with a large sheet of pure white fabric unlike the flocked brocades in the rest of the room. Everyone looked at him quizzically. He grumbled something inaudible and fiddled with the device again. I saw a ghostly image appear in his now opalescent hatband stone; the faint figure of a dirty, bent, elderly woman.
Then the whole assembled company gasped. I turned my head sharply back to the wall. A light shimmered and
an image snapped into focus. It was no grainy, flickering celluloid film. It was as clear as if we all stood in the London Chancery’s squalid environs. A grimy, frizzle-haired old woman wearing a coarse, formerly red and gray-striped skirt, a black shawl and a grimy white shirtwaist, clutching a basket of washing turned abruptly and looked up toward the ceiling of the room. Long, finely-boned hands took possession of the basket and the woman favored the possessor of the hands with a smile.
“‘Allo, lovey. Lookey you, tricked out loik Saint George!” cackled the old woman as dawn broke over the black, huddled buildings behind her. She shuffled a little ways down the street. “Goin’ t’ save this loidy fair from a dragon?”
“Fair though you be, Lady Gertie, today my quest is to find someone else,” the voice of Oliver Twist replied. The conversation, clear and real as if the people were in the room, appeared to originate from the device in Twist’s hands just as Madame Phoebe’s voice had come from it last night. He twisted a knob to reduce the volume for a moment and spoke over his recorded patter of soothing words reassuring the woman.
“Gertie served the court by cleaning the offices and doing laundry for some of the jurists.” Twist fell silent and allowed his recorded voice to continue. “Name’s Jake Larch. He was arrested about an hour ago and brought here for breaking into a house in Chelsea.”
“Not ‘ere.”
“You mean you haven’t heard of him being brought in?”
“Now, wot ‘appens ‘ere wot Gertie don’t know on?” She postured and preened and Twist took the opportunity to sigh, “I wish she’d spared a bit of the soap she used on the laundry to wash herself.”
“I meanter tell yer ‘e was ‘ere but ‘e ain’t ere. There were ‘at advocate feller come t’ see ‘im. Wot’s ‘is name?”
“A new advocate? Maybe he wasn’t a local.”
“Don’t matter. I knows ‘em all. I’m chancery’s cleanin’ lady, remember? ‘At Larch come in at the front roight enough, an’ slid right through an’ out the back. ‘At’s wot ‘e did. Slick, ‘at ‘er feller is.”
“Who’s the advocate, Gertie? Striver? Vholes? Tulkinghorn?”
Gertie shuffled and hedged. She muttered something the recording device failed to pick up. Everyone in the room strained to hear but the device whirred and though Doctor Twist hastily touched controls her words did not carry to those assembled.
“You mean you’ve seen him around here before. You’ve seen him as somebody else, haven’t you?”
Gertie appeared to consider this. Suddenly her eyes went wide. “No. No, I don’t know nothin’ about ‘im.” She grabbed her laundry basket from the slender hands and scuttled off. The image winked off and Oliver cleared his throat in embarrassment as the company murmured in astonishment and stared in disbelief at the young man with the armored jacket and bronze tablet.
“What is this wizardry?” I demanded. “Where is your projector, your film? How can you capture images, human voices with such clarity?”
“Dr. Twist is a man of many talents,” Madame Phoebe interrupted before half a dozen others could form their spluttered questions. “But I beg you, save your curiosity for later. Continue your report, please, Oliver.”
“I went back to question Gertie again about this incident.” Twist was now shy and ill at ease when facing the company without his image-maker, just his own fragile-looking, angelic but troubled face. “She has disappeared, and no one knows what has become of her. Nor can anyone tell me anything about the housebreaker, Jake Larch. Both of them are well-known in their respective haunts. While there is really no one to lament the disappearance of Larch, Gertie was a widow with a severely-handicapped adult daughter who has been taken to the poorhouse because there is no one to care for her.”
Rose Campbell and Doctor Mac exchanged glances. “Dr. Twist, give me the daughter’s name after the meeting, and I will see that she’s provided for.” Twist nodded stiffly and sat down.
“So far we have given you a recital of affairs that are local only, “Madame Phoebe said. “Now we have a report from our good friend in the merchant and shipping trades, Mr. Fun See Tokiyo.”
Fun rose and bowed studiously to all in the room. His round face beamed upon all and his almond eyes seemed a little sleepy. He was dressed in a shimmering red brocaded tunic and black trousers. A round, flat-topped red silk cap sat atop his sleek black hair which descended in a queue nearly to his knees. Black brocaded slippers decked his feet.
“I have the honor to present my tale of a ship that formerly belonged to my uncle, called the Green Jade Sea. A former employee of our company, Huang Lo, purchased her and he made a very auspicious beginning, seeming to prosper at an unusually rapid rate. We frankly wondered how it was that he had amassed the capital to purchase the ship and his trade stock so quickly, but we wished him well and did not question it. Recently I had occasion to serve British customs by going aboard the Green Jade Sea for a surprise inspection when the ship was about to leave port to go to Hong Kong. I was not told the reason for the inspection, and I thought nothing of it. Such things are common.”
“What is the meaning of this, my honored friend?” Huang Lo demanded of me, stepping into my path as I mounted the ramp and started down to the ship’s hold. Huang-Lo wore the finest black silk tunic and trousers embroidered with nightingales in rich colors.
“It is an inspection requested by the British government. It need not take long, Huang.”
Huang did not step aside. “We have passed all the customs requirements. Since when do they inspect an outgoing ship a second time?”
“The government has the power to inspect at any time, for any reason, without notice. You know this, Huang.”
“I cannot permit it! You will rip open packing crates and undo hours of preparation. My cargo is fragile and perishable. Speak to the port authority for me, Master Fun. Tell them I am well known to you and you can vouch for me. We shall miss the tide, and I must make my scheduled stops.”
“You are known to me, Huang, but your cargo is not, and I cannot vouch for that which I have not seen. Your manifests say you carry cloth goods, tools and metal ware. How can these be perishable?”
“I tell you I cannot allow an inspection! Master Fun, please! It is only paperwork. I will be ruined if I do not make these deliveries.”
“I will be ruined if I falsify an inspection report. I begin to think there is a need to inspect your hold, Huang. Step aside, or I will bring assistance and have you removed from the ship. The Green Jade Sea cannot leave anchor without my approval. It is you who are wasting precious time, not I.”
I pushed past Huang Lo and moved down into the hold of the ship. I blinked in the dim light and then caught my breath. There was not one packing case or barrel in the entire hold. It was filled with human beings, mostly young people, some only children. There were at least two hundred people in the hold of the ship.
“What is the meaning of this?” I demanded as Huang came up behind me, panting and white-eyed.
“My investors,” Huang bleated, falling on his knees. “They forced me to carry these people.”
“Who are your investors? Who are all these people? Where are they going?”
“Huang Lee has been carrying people in his hold for at least three months. They have been smuggled into every port where the ship calls on the way to Hong Kong. He does not know their purpose. The company he claims invested in him is listed in legal filings as a private foundation, and such entities are not required to give many details about their makeup. Huang can say only that a rather short, bow-legged man came to his ship on a rainy, foggy night wrapped up to the eyes, and gave him money enough to make his trade flourish. Just when Huang began to prosper the man came back, demanding that Huang transport people on very short notice, usually after all probable inspections would be over. None of the people we discovered will say what their purpose was or who sent them on this journey. We cannot even learn who they are.
“There are no real char
ges upon which to hold them, either. It is not a crime to be in the hold of a ship sitting in a London port. Poor Huang is jailed, of course, for falsifying his manifests. His business is ruined, his ship confiscated. But it is clear that someone had a purpose in transporting these people. It is our belief that these are the thieves the organization is putting in place throughout the empire and Europe.”
Fun See made his formal bow again and sat down. Madame Phoebe turned her attention to a gigantic black man, dressed in shirtsleeves and a gold and white brocaded vest, with black trousers tucked into leather boots. His heavy belt supported something that looked like a whip with a long shaft and many relatively short knotted tails with small leather pieces tied to their ends. His complexion was a little ruddy as well as very dark, and his head was shaved and shining.
“Zambo, we must hear your tale next, for you have the key to the mystery of Huang Lee’s cargo of souls.”
“My history begins with slavery, ladies and gentlemen,” Zambo said with a thick Caribbean accent. “The Flail of God, Lord Roxton, set me free and worked tirelessly to free others.”
I had been staring at Zambo’s belt, cudgeling my brains to know what that strange leather implement was, and suddenly realized that it was, indeed, a flail, a tool used to beat the shells off of grain. I was finally able to return my attention to what the man was saying.
“... He impressed me with the need to make his work my own. I have spent time in many countries and usually find people such as myself, blacks, sometimes Indians, sometimes those of mixed race, and many times whites, kidnapped from their homes and families, sold because of crushing need, or deceived and lured into slavery by promises of paid work, a respectable marriage, admission to a party thrown by a celebrity, any number of tricks to secure their trust or their servitude. They are never paid, married, entertained, or, most importantly, never are they set free. It was through this quest that I found my wife.
“These conditions I have given are bad enough, but I came to London a few months ago on the trail of a new kind of slavery. I heard of people gathered in the usual way, but not for field work or mere prostitution. They are groomed to mingle in society, to operate in cities and towns. They are trained in vicious methods of theft and of preventing their capture and identification.
“If they fail, they disappear. In a few cases, we have found the bodies of these wretches. Their deaths are made to excite no unusual suspicion because they are carefully staged to fit into a local pattern of domestic violence, drunken brawls, or even reported killings with similar features. I regret to say that after serving token sentences for withholding information, every one of the people on the Jade Green Sea have disappeared. More than half a dozen bodies agreeing with some their descriptions have been found. Perhaps these tried to gain their freedom and were made an example of. The others apparently were gathered up and forced to once again be smuggled to other places as slaves of this organization.”
Mowgli was not asked to give a report. Neither was the woman I gathered was Sluefoot Sue.
She managed to fill the room with her presence, however. As tall as Mr. Campbell, nearly as tall as Doctor Mac, she wore an outlandish western costume. Sleek doeskin cowboy boots peeked out beneath a fringed, divided riding skirt and vest, a turquoise blouse and a scarlet bandana. Ornate silver and turquoise chasings and tooling ornamented the leather garments. Her gloves and hat were also leather, elaborately tooled and silver and turquoise-decked. She wore her glossy chestnut hair in thick braids and her eyes were an extraordinary golden shade. Wind and sun had given her a flushed and very freckled complexion but she was a handsome woman indeed.
“All of our researches indicate that the leader of this organization is in London,” Madame Phoebe said. “You understand that these stories are only examples. Many such incidents have been documented, and we will show you anything in our files that you desire to see.”
“Sounds clear enough that these things are happening as you say,” Doctor Mac said when his wife remained silent and thoughtful. “But not so clear that there’s one organization and one head. How did you arrive at that?”
Sluefoot Sue rose to her feet with a peculiar whirring, hissing and clanking sound. The noises were repeated as she moved in her roving way about the room. Her step was heavy and uneven. “Ah’d like t’ explain that, Miz Phoebe,” she said with a nod to Doctor Mac. “Mah husband and Ah was trackers by profession, taught by th’ First Nations people as well as th’ U.S. Cavalry an’ th’ Pinkerton Detective Agency. We done stretches with ‘em all. Ah learnt t’ read all kind’a’ sign, bootprints in th’ mud, a thumb mark on a window, to th’ stamp a’ one evil personality on a lotta little things. Ah understand Mr. Mowgli here is also pretty good at cryin’ a trail, an’ Ah’ll let him correct me if’n Ah go astray.” Mowgli’s eyes glowed and he fixed his full attention on Sue.
“We didn’t git these clues in order, y’ understand, but Ah’ll put ‘em in order fer y’ so’s y’ kin foller. We got us a lotta cases a’ th’ pickpocket with th’ pig-sticker, so many thet we reckoned th’ whole way a’ life was changin’ fer ‘em.
“The little ones jest nab the hankies and timepieces like they always done, but at some point they git orders t’ look out fer bigger game, an’ by appointment. It got t’ be too much of a coincidence, pickpockets just happ’nin’ t’ nab important documents an’ property.
“We learned it’s happ’nin’ with church officials as well as secular types,” Sue continued. “Then come th’ connections wi’ th’ threadbare business boys Prince Florizel talked about an’ th’ soiled doves like th’ one what compromised that-there Collins feller. It’s what we call a common denominator. They’re findin’ out thangs an’ funnelin’ their information through th’ gossip columnists, as Miz Campbell discovered. Item appears in the paper, pickpocket or housebreaker goes after the booty. The ship Mr. Fun discovered was transportin’ enslaved thieves t’ other locales. Connection there’s th’ name a’ th’ ‘investor,’ Dodge, Ltd., and that’s what really hog-ties it all t’gether.”
“What was the name of the constable who took our pickpocket into custody last night, Mac?” Mr. Campbell asked.
“I – uh – I have to say I didn’t notice,” Doctor Mac admitted, reddening.
“Constable Dodge,” Madame Phoebe supplied. “Archie told me. And the alert that was to be attached to any of the gossip columns that contained directions for a theft was some variation of, According to my favorite informant, Dodge.”
“And if poor Gertie had spoken a little clearer when I recorded her,” Oliver Twist said grimly, “you would have heard her say, ‘It were a dodge, ‘at’s wot it were.’ Inquiries have turned up an advocate by the name of Dodge listed as defending suspects we have studied, who have never been found for further proceedings, and Mr. Dodge is, it goes without saying, not known by sight to anyone in chancery. At least, not by anyone who can be found anymore to ask.”
“You will recall my informant mentioned the name Dodge in connection with someone having been killed,” I added, as if I had known the connection all along. In truth, it had just clicked in my dull brain. Madame Phoebe positively beamed at me.
“It is good hunting, Sue,” Mowgli said with a broad smile. “You have followed the sign well.”
“Why would the fellow be so foolish as to give out his name, over and over?” Doctor Mac asked, astonished.
“It is not his real name,” I said quietly, building on Twist’s conversation with Gertie. “A dodge is a deception, a quick change of direction to escape a threat, so of course he has chosen that name to laugh at anyone who tries to seek him out. He will dodge us at every turn unless we somehow corner him.”
“More fool him t’ keep usin’ th’ same monicker,” Sue said. “Showin’ off’s th’ one thing a wicked man cain’t resist nohow. He’ll brag on hisself an’ make sure we know it’s him. Maybe Dodge ain’t his real name, but it’s real enough t’ him, an’ he’s proud to throw it around
. And thet’s how we’ll bring him down. He’ll throw it out once too often and we’ll be there t’ catch it.”
“And the Alexander Campbell Foundation shall be pleased to assist the Alexander Legacy in making the catch,” Rose Campbell said firmly.
A Dodge, a Twist and a Tobacconist Page 8