The Limehouse Text (5 page)

Fortunate was not the word I would have used.

I
SAY, IS THIS REALLY NECESSARY? I’M SURE I’LL
be all right in a day or so,” I assured Barker. I had no idea exactly what a bonesetter was, but the word conjured up a vision of bloody saws, ropes, and tackle.

“Nonsense. Ignoring an injury may result in permanent disability. You have injured your shoulder twice this last year. It must be looked after.”

Barker led me down a few streets and turned in to a shop in Canton Street remarkable only for having a sign with actual Oriental letters on it, almost the only one in the quarter. With misgivings, I followed him. Inside there was a counter, behind which was a wall full of small drawers. Bottles stood on the counter with various unguents and roots steeping in liquids. Overhead, drying herbs in racks on the ceiling gave the room an earthy smell. An elderly man came from a back room through a beaded curtain and raised a hand in greeting to Barker. He looked a typical Limehouse dweller, an old Chinaman with a round face and long queue wearing a shapeless tan jacket with cloth-covered buttons and matching trousers. He and the Guv conversed in Chinese for a few moments, during which the man eyed me professionally and then waved us into an inner room.

“Take off your coat and shirt, lad, and lie down on that table on your stomach,” Barker ordered.

“Really, sir, there’s no need to go to all this trouble. I shall be fine. Right as rain by tomorrow, I am sure.”

“Thomas.”

I sighed and began tugging off my tie. The table was a hard wooden affair. I set my clothes in the corner and gingerly crawled up onto it, hoping it would bear my weight. As soon as I did, the fellow seized my arm and pulled it. I let out a yell of surprise and pain. Ignoring me, he said something to my employer, and they both nodded sagely. The bonesetter pulled a stool up to where I lay and sat on it.

“How does one treat an arm out of socket?” I asked Barker.

“Rather the same way you injured it, I would expect,” he said, putting down the dog and taking my good arm in a viselike grip.

Suddenly, one of the bonesetter’s rope-soled shoes was on my neck and the other against my side under the arm, and the blighter began tugging and twisting for all he was worth. My vision got all spotty and I came close to passing out. The next I knew I was raising my head off the table and my body had gone clammy and pale.

The bonesetter began kneading my arm around like it was a batch of dough while Barker took a jar from a shelf, opened and sniffed it, and then presented it to me.

“What is it?” I asked suspiciously. Inside, there were small, red, wrinkled-looking pellets, like beads.

“Wolfberries. They are mildly medicinal and taste like sultanas. Try one.”

I was still a bit dubious, but I tried one, anyway. It was chewy and mildly sweet. I ate a few more just to please the Guv while the Chinaman continued kneading my arm. It occurred to me that my employer was not the type to offer raisins for one’s pleasure, and I barked my chin on the table as I turned my head and looked down at my arm. There were more than a dozen pins sticking out of my flesh.

“Good Lord!” I cried.

“Easy, lad. Easy. Don’t tense up your arm. This is merely an old Chinese remedy. The needles will not hurt you. In fact, at the moment, they are dulling the pain.”

“Why am I not bleeding?”

“The needles have been inserted carefully along the nerve points, away from the veins and arteries. It is an ancient science but an exact one. You are perfectly safe, I assure you. It has been done for millennia in the East. You must lie there for ten minutes or so.”

I had to admit the discomfort was beginning to ebb. Barker was having a conversation with the old man, and it did not appear to be about me. The old man’s manner was polite and businesslike, but soon he ran a hand across his shaven forehead in mute concern. Ten minutes later, he pulled the pins from my arm one by one and left the room. I watched and waited for blood to start pumping from the dozens of pinpricks. There was nothing, not a single drop.

“Your arm was worse than I realized, lad,” Barker said. “Quong says you shall need a cast on the joint for a couple of weeks until the tissue and ligaments heal properly.”

“Quong?”

“Yes, Dr. Quong is the father of your late predecessor. He is also our client.”

He made a sudden shake with his arm and a knife was in his hand. I sometimes forget that my employer generally keeps a dagger strapped to his forearm and pistols in his pockets. He bent down and before I could stop him, insinuated the blade into the arm of my shirt and began to cut.

“Sir!”

“Easy, lad. Don’t move. This knife is razor sharp. You shall need room for the cast. We can always have more shirts made.”

The old man returned with a bowl of water and rolls of gauze. With Barker’s help, he wrapped my shoulder and elbow in sheeting and then mixed plaster into the water. Then the messy part began. Twenty minutes later, Barker was easing the ripped shirt over my new cast and if I felt foolish, it was nothing compared to how I looked. My employer knotted my tie and wrapped my elbow in a grosgrain sling. As a final touch, he settled my coat over my shoulders.

“There. Good as new and still in plenty of time for our appointment at the Oriental Club and the inquest this afternoon.”

“Inquest?”

“The coroner sent word to our chambers this morning. How are you feeling? I could have Dr. Quong prepare a tisane for you.”

I declined the drink, wanting as much distance between myself and the premises as possible.

Old Quong turned to Barker and dared raise an admonishing finger. He spoke English for the first time, or at least a pidgin form of it.

“You still hire,” he said. “Find my son killer. Come chop chop tell me.”

“I shall summon you the moment he is caught,” Barker assured him.

“And you,” he said, turning to me with the same extended finger. “No water on arm. Rest. Savee?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “I savee.”

I followed my employer back out into Canton Street, feeling glum. The cast was a nuisance and I looked ridiculous in it. In the back it covered one shoulder blade and extended down to my elbow. I was completely trussed. I wouldn’t be able to bathe properly in the bathhouse for a while, which I counted one of the chief pleasures of life; sleeping would be extremely difficult; and I’d be about as useless as an East-bourne octogenarian were we to get into a scrape.

We made our way back to the tram and successfully boarded it. The draft horse in front began pulling the vehicle along the rails. From Barker’s coat, Harm sniffed the cast inquisitively, but I could see my employer’s mind was back on the case.

“Quong disappeared New Year’s Day, and his body was found in the Reach the next morning. I had to collect his father and take him to Bow Street Mortuary to identify the body. You should have seen the fire in the old fellow’s eyes. He wanted me to find his son’s murderer and to kill him myself. I refused, of course, though nothing would give me greater satisfaction. I promised I would find the man and turn him over to justice. British justice, that is, not Chinese. Now there are three deaths, if it is the same man.”

“You are really convinced, then, that Jan Hurtz’s death was not an accident? I mean, he was a clumsy man. Even his brother said so.”

“It would be a coincidence if a man coming into possession of this particular manuscript should chance to die, and an even greater one that the shop should be burgled afterward. We owe it to the late Jan Hurtz and his untidy habits that the manuscript came into our possession.”

Coming to the end of the line, we transferred to a hansom for the rest of the journey. Climbing in was a distinct challenge with my cast, but I struggled along gamely. Harm’s eyes were sparkling and he was panting. He dearly loved cab rides. We wended our way through the City, the Strand, and finally into Whitehall, stopping at our chambers just long enough for the Guv to drop off the dog and read a message he had received. I stayed in the cab, my new cast thumping me in the side. Barker sprang back into the cab, and we were off again. We bowled sedately down Pall Mall and then turned along Regent Street.

“Where is the Oriental, sir?” I asked.

“It is in Hanover Square.”

“Shall we have any trouble getting in, do you think?”

“Hardly. I am a member.”

I don’t think the Guv could have said anything that would have surprised me more. My rough-and-tumble employer a member of a gentlemen’s club? I could hardly believe it.

“I am considered an Orientalist, after all,” he explained, reading my expression. “I have done some translating for various members, who submitted my name for membership. I do not have much occasion for attendance, but it can be of use.”

We pulled up in Hanover Square in front of a vaguely ministerial looking building and alighted. We had not taken two steps into the club when Barker’s name was called.

“Mr. Barker, sir,” the porter spoke from his small office by the door. “What a pleasure it is to see you again.”

“Thank you, Chivers. This is my guest, Thomas Llewelyn. Mr. Campbell-Ffinch is expecting us, I believe.”

“Indeed, sir. He is in the library. Shall I show you the way?”

“I know it, thank you.”

The inside of the edifice was better than the outside. It had the same grubby collection of chairs as any other club, but the walls were done by the famous architect Adams, and I do not mean merely his school. When we reached the library, I took a glance at the pleasing carvings of oak leaves and moldings before focusing on our host.

I didn’t care for Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch on the spot. He seemed to be looking down his patrician nose at me, the way Palmister Clay always had, the blackguard who had sent me to prison. Though he was still in his twenties, the fellow already had the look of an established Old Boy. I thought him the kind that would rise from position to position through dropping the right names and mentioning the right schools until his future was assured. Some people float through life while the rest of us pull the barge.

“Barker, have a seat,” he said, not bothering to rise. My employer ignored the slight, or at least seemed to. He stepped back into the hall and summoned a waiter into the room.

“Bring us a bottle of port, Sandeman if you have it, and a large bowl of walnuts. Put it on my account.”

Campbell-Ffinch raised an eyebrow. Obviously, he had not thought the Guv would be a member here. Having put the fellow in his place, Barker settled into a chair, where he dug into his tobacco pouch like a horse going to his oats.

“You wanted to see me, then?” he asked, stuffing his pipe. “You have a most colorful associate.”

“Oh, that Woo fellow,” he answered, lighting a Cuban cigar from the lamp. “He’s hardly an associate. He works for the Asiatic Aid Society as an interpreter. The office has used him on several occasions, but he’s a bit barmy. Been here too long. Fancies himself an English gentleman. He’s more like a trained ape, if you ask me.”

I’ll admit Woo was a bit eccentric, but Campbell-Ffinch was just the sort of fellow to see anyone beneath him socially as being on a lower evolutionary scale, myself included. Aristocratic privilege is one thing, if one appreciates it, but accepting it as one’s due and the rest of the world as mere vermin is quite another.

“So, what can I do for you, sir?” Barker asked.

“There is a book that has made its way to London,” the man said. “The Chinese government is keen to have it back.”

“You wish to hire me to locate it?”

Campbell-Ffinch puffed on his cigar and blew the smoke out slowly. “Not if you’ve got it already.”

I swallowed. The manuscript was probably still in Barker’s pocket, since he wouldn’t let it out of his sight.

“I have thousands of books. What makes you think I would be interested in this one?”

“You know the one I mean. We traced it to a pawnshop in Limehouse this afternoon, a pawnshop you just happened to stop into yesterday morning with Inspector Bainbridge. The same Inspector Bainbridge who had his brains blown out a half hour later.”

“They were not blown out,” Barker corrected. “He was shot between the eyes with a small caliber bullet. Also, he was an associate, if you do not mind.”

“So, Mr. Barker,” he said, ignoring the remark, “do you have the book or are we to believe the fellow managed to get it off you in the dark in that blasted tunnel?”

“I am most sorry to disappoint you,” my employer said, “but I am not currently in possession of it.” He sucked on his pipe as serenely as if he were in his garden. I wondered what was wrong with giving the book over to the Foreign Office and having done with it, other than the obvious one of not giving anything to Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch, Esquire, and helping him further up the social ladder.

“Pity,” the Foreign Office man said, stabbing his cigar out in an ashtray as the port and walnuts arrived. “I have been following that book all the way from China. The Dowager Empress very much wants the book safely back in China again.”

For a moment we were pouring glasses and cracking nuts. They were, anyway. Cracking nuts was a bit beyond me with only one usable hand.