To Kingdom Come (8 page)

“Very well, I’ll pay. In fact, I’ll pay for everything.”

“You’ve ended a case?”

“No. Begun one. I’ll explain when we’re there.”

We quickly liberated Ira from his studies at the yeshiva, and spirited him away to our little club. Ira was mystified at his abduction, and more so when we turned in to St. Michael’s Alley, off Cornhill Street, unchanged for two hundred and fifty years. We opened the door of the Barbados, not a private club at all, really, but the most ancient coffeehouse on the street, and bowled him into the dark interior.

The proprietor came forward and bowed. “Good afternoon, Mr. Zangwill, Mr. Llewelyn. Have you brought a guest?”

“We’d like to sponsor this fellow for membership,” I said.

The owner looked Ira over doubtfully from head to toe. He does not have a prepossessing exterior. He is stout and pale with wiry hair that flies in every direction, and he wears spectacles. The proprietor bowed again and went to get the membership book, but he shot me a look, which said I was no longer in his good graces.

We sat down in a booth in the common room and caught up on recent history. When the proprietor returned, I plunked down the membership dues, fourpence, the cost of two cups of coffee when the street was built. St. Michael’s Alley was the heart of the West Indies trade, bringing coffee, tobacco, cane sugar, cotton, and cocoa back to Europe, hence the club’s name, Barbados. Ira was presented with a clay pipe, which he signed with a quill pen, and added his name at the tail of the subscription book. The owner brought Israel and me our own pipes, and we all lit up.

“Three black apollos,” I ordered. “Some beef chops from the grill at your convenience and a barrister’s torte for our friend.”

“Hear, hear,” Zangwill agreed.

“This is marvelous,” Ira said. “And you say they’ll keep this pipe forever?”

“Yes. Upon your death, which we all know shall be a hundred years from now, they shall break it in twain and hang it in a place of honor.”

Our coffee arrived, and soon the proprietor set down our freshly grilled chops. Ira’s eyes lit up at the sight of food. The poor scholar rarely got enough to eat, and his landlady’s inedible cooking was legendary in Whitechapel. A chop and a nice dessert would suit Ira to the ground.

“Gentlemen,” I said, looking at my friends, “there’s a reason I convened this meeting today, beyond initiating Ira in the mysteries of the Barbados. I’ll be gone for a while, close to a month, I think. It’s a case, of course. It is dangerous, but Barker sounds confident that we’ll succeed. That’s about all I’m allowed to say.”

“We understand, Thomas. We’ll say a prayer for you,” Zangwill said.

“Thank you,” I said.

After our meal and a final pipe, we surrendered our clay churchwardens to the proprietor and watched him settle them in racks overhead. We hesitated to leave, or at least I did. I didn’t know when I’d be back here again, enjoying a pipe and cup and the company of my best friends. In fact, the odds were in favor of my not returning at all. Out in Cornhill Street, I hailed a cab, and solemnly shook hands with each of them.

“We’ll see you in a month, then,” Zangwill said.

Ira reached for my hand, then stopped. “Wait! Thomas, lend me a shilling!”

I shrugged my shoulders, and pulled the coin from my trouser pocket. “Here you are. What’s this all about?”

“Now you’re sure to come back alive,” he said. “People don’t die when someone owes them money. I would never be so lucky
as to have someone to whom I owed money pass away!”

“Listen to him, Thomas,” Israel said. “There is wisdom there.”

Twenty minutes later, when I was reaching the step of Barker’s domicile, there was a clatter behind me, and his cab pulled up to the curb. He nodded and we went in together. Mac appeared from his little sanctum sanctorum off the lobby and took our hats and sticks.

“Mac,” our employer said, “Thomas and I shall be away for about a month, and I want the house to remain open while we’re gone.”

“Very good, sir,” Jacob Maccabee responded. He took our leaving in stride, though I knew it would alter his schedule even more than our own. There was packing to be done and arrangements to be made. Mac is a very capable fellow and an excellent servant. I have nothing against him beyond the fact that he despises me. I think he is jealous that I get to go out and have desperate adventures with Barker, while he stays home and polishes the silver.

“The garden must still be tended, and there is no need to shut the house up for just a few weeks. Besides, it would upset Harm’s schedule.”

I saw Mac’s lip curl slightly. The dog was the bane of his existence. Harm shed a pound of hair daily, chewed up the cushions, and spent half the afternoon by the back door, deciding whether he wanted in or out. The thought that he would be forced to stay alone in the house merely to look after this little oriental demon must have made Mac’s blood boil.

“Couldn’t he stay with
her,
sir?”

Had I been a dog myself, my ears would have perked up. I knew whom Mac was speaking of. Harm had received a savage kick during a little contretemps in our garden during our first case together, and had been taken away and nursed by a heavily veiled
woman all in black. I had handed the dog into her lap in a mysterious black brougham. It turned out that she came and tended Harm regularly once a week, at six in the morning, before I got up. I was very curious about her. What did she look like behind the veil? Was she young or old? What was her position? I had tried to question Mac about her, and got nothing out of him.

“No,” Barker said with finality. “Were it November, I might have considered it, but it is June. I cannot deprive Harm of his afternoons sunning in the garden. It would put him quite out of sorts.”

I had to cough to smother a laugh. Barker doted on Harm, or Bodhidharma, to use his full name. He fancied the dog something between an English gentleman and a Chinese prince. Mac, on the other hand, generally used the term “mangy cur” when describing the dog, though not in our employer’s presence, of course. I looked over at Harm, who wagged his plumed tail. I could swear the little rascal knew we were talking about him.

“You sound as if you’ve got this all planned out,” I said to my employer, after Mac had slithered away in abject misery. “Would you mind telling me a bit more about our itinerary?”

“First thing tomorrow, you’re going to Aldershot to study bomb making under Johannes van Rhyn for a week,” Barker informed me. “And then, in the evening—”

There was a sudden sharp rat-a-tat of someone beating his stick on the front door. Despite the fact that we have a perfectly good knocker—a brass affair in the shape of a thistle—the fellow smote the wood. It set the dog off immediately, shrieking until Mac tossed him into the library and closed the door before answering the summons. Not knowing what to expect, I removed a stout cane from the stand, just in case.

“Yes, sir?” Mac asked our visitor upon opening the door.

“I wish to speak to Mr. Barker,” an angry voice answered.

“Who shall I say is calling, sir?”

“Chief Inspector James Munro of the Special Irish Branch, my man.”

Barker came up beside his butler.

“Thank you, Mac, that will be all. Good evening, Chief Inspector. Won’t you and your colleagues step in?”

Three sturdy men entered our hallway. The inspector was the smallest but also the most commanding. He was a bullet-headed little fellow, with a thick mustache and a beetling brow. His assistants could not be taken individually. They were oversize bookends to the inspector’s single compact volume.

“Barker, I need to know what was discussed at the Home Office yesterday morning.”

“Mr. Anderson is in charge,” my employer stated. “You must take it up with him.”

“Don’t cut up clever with me, Barker, or we can discuss this at Scotland Yard.”

“Certainly not in your office,” the Guv retorted, “unless it is to be an outside meeting.”

Munro turned red, trying to control his temper. “This is a Special Irish Branch case. We don’t need an outsider coming in and gumming up the works.”

“The Home Office seems to think otherwise. Robert Anderson hired me to work for them and I intend to do so. I suppose you could say Llewelyn and I have joined the secret police.”

“You can’t expect to investigate a case from inside Newgate Prison,” Munro blustered.

“On what charge, may I ask?”

“On suspicion. You’d be surprised at how long I can hold someone on suspicion.”

My stomach seemed to drop away from me. One cannot understand how a former prisoner feels when confronted by incarceration again.

“Should you attempt to detain me, Munro,” Barker said as easily
as if they were discussing a game of whist, “I will see that my solicitor calls on Mr. Anderson. He in turn shall call upon Prime Minister Gladstone and the Prime Minister shall summon Commissioner Henderson and Superintendent Williamson. The superintendent shall then summon you and ask you what you are about, locking up hired agents of the Home Office. Have you been apprised that Scotland Yard will get the credit should we succeed?”

“I am highly suspicious of your little arrangements, Barker.”

“I certainly don’t want credit for capturing and imprisoning Irish terrorists,” Barker said. “It would be like putting a price upon my own head. I have nothing like your resources, and still your offices were blown up.”

Munro stepped forward, toe to toe with Barker, though my employer was a good head taller. “Why are you getting involved?” he demanded. “You’ve lost a little glass. You can afford it.”

Barker shrugged his beefy shoulders. “I don’t need to give my reasons to you, Chief Inspector. Anderson offered a price and I accepted it. That is hardly your concern.”

“We shall take the blame if you foul things up.”

“Foul things up?” Barker rumbled. I could see his own temper rising. “Foul things up! You haven’t successfully protected your own offices, let alone London. Didn’t the danger of having public lavatories so close to Scotland Yard occur to you? A child could see it!”

Munro stepped back and glowered as menacingly as he could. “When the corner of Scotland Yard is rebuilt, I shall see to it that the former gymnasium is turned into offices. Your precious physical training classes shall be a thing of the past.”

“Very well, but you can’t blame me the next time one of your constables snaps the neck of a fellow while trying to subdue him, when his only crime was a few too many pints of a Saturday evening.”

“You’d best watch your step,” the chief inspector threatened.

“That will be impossible, since my assistant and I shall be out of town for a month or so. Would you like an itinerary, or shall I just send you a
carte postale
along the way? I promise to send word when we return, in plenty of time for you to claim all the credit and glory.”

Munro opened his mouth to reply, could think of nothing more to say, and stormed out, leaving his satellites standing like maids at the gas-fitters’ ball awaiting a dance. They nodded to each other and left. Barker closed the door with his foot, then slammed the bolt home with an angry fist.

“‘But whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.’ Matthew five: twenty-two,” he growled, still trying to control his temper. “Some verses are harder to keep than others.”

7

BARKER SAW ME OFF AT WATERLOO STATION THE
next morning. I had to admit I was going with some trepidation, though I tried not to show it. I’d never been at a military barracks before, and van Rhyn was a complete cipher to me. The thought occurred to me as well that if I mixed two parts A with one part B, instead of the other way ’round, I might not be coming back at all.

“You’ll get on, lad,” my employer assured me, as if reading my thoughts.

“Yes, thank you, sir,” I said, but my mind couldn’t help but go back to something he’d said to me during our first adventure:
You’ll get on. Or you won’t.

I boarded the Great Western express, and by the time I found my seat, Barker had slipped off. I sat, let out a sigh, and suddenly wished I’d brought one of my books to study. I spied a bookstall among the other shops in the station and jumped out, knowing I had but a moment or two. The stall specialized in mystery thrillers and women’s publications. I’d been hoping for something more classical. Just when I was about to give up and jump back on
the train empty-handed, I spied a book on old Irish legends. I handed over a few shillings and hopped on the footboard just as the final command to board was shouted out. I settled in my seat and began to read.

Since childhood, my brain had been steeped in the old Welsh legends, of Prince Pwyll and the underworld of Annwn, not to mention Arthur and his Round Table. The book in my hand was full of tales new to me, featuring the Irish heroes, Cú Chulainn and Finn MacCool, as they faced giants and Grendel-like monsters in the misty land of old Hibernia, and all this just a short boat journey from Pwyll’s kingdom. Times were certainly exciting in those ancient days, though they were not exactly a stroll through Hyde Park now, considering where I was headed at the moment.