The Limehouse Text (24 page)

There was a snapping sound in the silence, but it was Jack who snarled in his throat. Barker’s hand had found his fingers and snapped two of them. There was a third snap before the man reluctantly let go. Barker seized the fellow’s wrists and braced his feet against the Chinaman’s hips, leaning out at a forty-five-degree angle. Then he suddenly pulled himself back into Jack’s embrace with a thud. Barker jumped down and turned to face his opponent, his arms raised defiantly, his fingers claws. He’d been silent during the fight, but now he gave a defiant roar.

The huge man frowned and tried to raise his right arm, but he grimaced in pain. He raised his left, but that was too painful also. It took me a minute to figure out what had happened. Barker had broken the man’s collarbone with the back of his head. The Chinaman bellowed in anger, trying to throw a kick at Barker, but he ended up falling on his side. My employer went over and put his boot on his opponent’s chest, many of the crowd calling for the coup de grâce. Instead, he turned and walked toward Mr. K’ing, raising his fists in triumph. All the men in the room began crying out, myself included, as K’ing stood and acknowledged the end of the match. Barker had won, if just barely. The Guv bowed to Mr. K’ing and limped out of the ring. A litter was brought out and the huge Chinaman moved onto it. It took six men to lift it.

The hall was abuzz with men discussing the fight. Ho had a triumphant look on his face, and I soon found out why when a man came up and handed him his winnings. Had I asked him, I’m sure he would have said he had known Barker would win all along. I was merely glad the Guv had survived.

Straddling the handrail and landing in the ring, I went looking for Barker. It was dark in the short tunnel under the seats, until I came to a fork, going right and left. I tried the right, bursting into a room. A Chinese doctor was treating Manchu Jack’s injuries, but Barker was nowhere to be found. I ran out of the room and down the hall to the left, running into a room on the opposite side. There I found my employer, seated at a table, looking rather the worse for wear, while Dr. Quong attended to his wounds. Across from him sat Mr. K’ing himself. They were drinking tea as if the two were old acquaintances instead of adversaries.

Something told me I was being rude, blundering in like this, so I bowed without thinking. Mr. K’ing nodded his head and Barker gave me a wan smile with the corner of his mouth. His jaw was swollen and he had abrasions all over his neck and face.

“Come, sir,” Mr. K’ing said to me, “and try some tea. Miss Winter has been released and sent home in a cab. I was just telling your employer that I have never seen a better fight. It was a treat to see the great
Shi Shi Ji
in the ring, and every man here tonight shall have a story to tell his grandchildren. This fight shall be discussed in ports and river towns around the world.”

I took one of the dishes of tea and tossed it off in one gulp. Like all Chinese tea, it tasted like dishwater.

B
ARKER GOT UP THE NEXT MORNING, DETERMINED
to go to work. Despite Mac’s and my protests at the breakfast table that he needed more rest, he refused on the pretext that he had already dressed and going back to his bed and nightshirt would show a lack of progress. He had his way, of course, but I noticed he was slow getting into the cab. His face bore several sticking plasters and his jaw was swollen, but he paid them scant concern.

At our chambers, Jenkins raised his eyebrows, as if it were my fault the Guv was there. Barker sat down in his big chair with a contented sigh and tented his fingers. He wished Jenkins a good morning and received one in return. Then he picked up
The Times
and began to read the morning news. It reminded me of an anecdote I’d heard once about a Scottish lord who finished his breakfast each morning by going out in front of his castle and announcing that he had broken his fast; the rest of the world was now free to eat. Cyrus Barker wasn’t going to let simple matters such as kidney failure or a fight with a Chinese giant stop him from solving a case.

Barker seemed inclined to think that morning, which was a relief. No one was beating down the door searching for the book. No prospective clients arrived on the step to beg the Guv’s custom. After reading
The Times
and the
Pall Mall Gazette
front to back, he drew designs on the corner of his desk with his finger, then got up and went to his smoking cabinet. He took down a meerschaum pipe and, stuffing tobacco into the lion-head bowl, sat to smoke. Nothing was heard for the next half hour but the scratch of my nib on the ledger: cab rides, meals, maids and nurses, doctor bills and more doctor bills. I was wondering again where Barker got the money for this office and his house and garden, and, oh, yes, the wages of his employees, as well.

Barker got up, knocked out his pipe, ran a pipe cleaner through it, and put it away. Then he reached for another. The Guv rarely smoked two pipefuls in a row. It was a little Chinese Mandarin’s head this time, with a hole in the crown of his pillbox hat. He filled it, lit it, and settled into his chair again. Nothing was happening of any import. Or so I thought.

“Ah,” he suddenly said five minutes later. “You little beggar.”

I looked up, but he wasn’t speaking to me. He got up and began pacing, which is always a good sign. He went to his pitcher and glass behind him. They were empty.

“Thomas, get me some water, would you?”

I would, of course; anything to help with the case. I went out the back door and when I did, I saw something there. I’m not the sort to believe in signs. I like to think of myself as a practical person, but there was a robin on the handle of the pump. It was a little thing, a mere morsel of life, barely worth the Lord’s time and effort, but its appearance cheered me immensely. The sun picked up the vibrant red in its breast. I dared not move from the doorway. It cocked its head this way and that, and finally it flew away, up and over the wall. It was a harbinger, I thought, a harbinger that the blasted winter was going away and that spring would eventually come. Death was dead and life would spring anew, and, yes, this case would soon be over and the Guv would finally get to the bottom of it all.

I pumped the water into the jug so quickly it overran and I had to pour some out. I brought it in and hurried back to my desk. Barker was seated again, but he was humming to himself off-key, another good sign. I poured him a glass and he drank it. Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. Then he spoke.

“Lad, run along and fetch Terry Poole. If he balks, tell him I’ll solve the case without him.”

I was out the door in the time it took the robin to fly over the wall. I sprinted into Whitehall Street and ’round the corner into Great Scotland Yard. Poole was not in his office, but I found him talking to a sergeant in the hall, looking harried and irritable as usual. I gave him the message and watched as he frowned at the ultimatum and heaved a sigh. What else could he do but comply with the Guv’s request?

“Tell him I shall be along directly.”

I nipped back to the office and dropped into my chair again. Barker was humming “How Can I Sink with Such a Prop as My Eternal Lord” from Spurgeon’s
Our Own Hymn Book.
As usual, he was mangling it, but I wouldn’t have stopped him had my life depended on it. I don’t know if miracles happen in our day and age, but sometimes it seems as if the Guv occasionally gets a divine message or two.

Poole appeared shortly thereafter, looking like a fellow who’d just come in second in a race.

“What is it, Cyrus?” he asked, pulling up one of the chairs in front of the desk.

“I need to arrange something quickly,” Barker said.

“I don’t like the sound of that. What exactly do you want to do?”

“I want to set up a meeting and bring all of the suspects together into one room.”

“A meeting? You’ve gone mad,” he barked. “What makes you think any of them will come?”

“That’s what I need you for, Terry. You could make them come. It is the Yard’s case, after all.”

“Oh, now you want my help, after being obstinate and impeding our case for days.”

“Someone official must take the killer into custody. I thought you should get the credit.”

“I would have to get approval,” the inspector said doubtfully, but I could see he was imagining the look on Henderson’s face when he brought in the murderer.

“Hang approval,” Barker said. “You are in charge of the investigation, are you not? What happens if, at the end of it, you have the confessed killer of Inspector Bainbridge shackled to your wrist?”

“I’d be a bloody hero,” Poole admitted. “But ordering some people to come won’t mean they’ll come. That Foreign Office blighter will stay away just to spite me. How could I possibly get him there?”

“Tell him he cannot come. Or, better yet, you could let out that I am ready to surrender the text.”

Poole leaned forward. “Now you’re talking. So you have had it all along, then.”

“I didn’t say that. But I might be able to lay hands on it.”

“All right. We’ll do it your way. Where shall this meeting be held?”

“At Ho’s.”

“Ho’s! No, no, never,” he protested hotly. “I’ve seen enough of that place to suit me for the rest of my life. I can’t have an official meeting there.”

“Why not?” Barker countered. “The inquest took place there.”

“Because holding it there would indicate that we had been wrong to arrest him in the first place.”

“But you were wrong to arrest him. He was innocent of any wrongdoing.”

“If that man is innocent of anything, then I’m one of Her Majesty’s ladies-in-waiting. He’s the closest thing to a pirate in the East End, and I suspect half the crimes in London are plotted in his tearoom.”

“I concede that point, but many of the people I want at that meeting reside in Limehouse and it is the only meeting place in the area.”

“Let me think about it. Will you invite Mr. K’ing to this little party of yours?” the inspector asked.

“I would say he is too canny to step into any such snare, but he will be certain to send along a representative, if he does not come himself.”

“Do you have a theory as to who Bainbridge’s killer might be?”

“I do,” Barker said.

“Then tell me who it is!”

Barker shook his head. “I shall let you know at the proper time, in order to arrest him.”

“I’ve been working for the Yard almost fifteen years now, and I’ve never come up against a case like this,” Poole complained. “I cannot make heads or tails of it. Everything is incomprehensible.”

“If it is any consolation, Terry, I believe no one could have solved it who hadn’t spent decades in China.”

“It feels like I am turning a pot ’round and ’round, looking for the handle, but there isn’t one,” Poole said, looking desolate.

Barker gave a cool smile in sympathy. “I’ll give you a handle, though I’m not certain it shall help you. The primary question, obviously, is who committed the murder, but it helps to ask a second one, which is, what did the killer plan to do with the text once he had it?”

“Do with it?” Poole repeated, a trifle lost, but then, I was, too.

“Yes. As has been pointed out many times, the book has almost no monetary value.”

Terence Poole ran a hand through his long side-whiskers, in danger of plucking them out in frustration. “I wasn’t ordered to find the book. My duty is to find Bainbridge’s killer. I shan’t rest day or night until I find him.”

“All shall be revealed in the fullness of time. You look agitated, Terry. I shall have Jenkins brew some green tea.”

Poole snatched his bowler from the edge of Barker’s desk. “You can keep your sophisms and your blasted tea. I’ve got work to do. Have your little meeting if you like, but you’d better be ready to reveal who murdered Bainbridge, and you’d better bloody have proof.”

After Poole had gone, Barker turned his swiveling chair my way. “Get out your pad and pencil, lad. We’ve an invitation to write.”

I got out my pad and waited until Barker began to dictate.

“That will do,” he said. “Type it up and make several copies. Let us see now. Send them to Mr. K’ing, Pollock Forbes, Charlie Han, Miss Petulengro, Mr. Woo, Campbell-Ffinch, and Mr. Hooligan. Am I leaving anyone out?”

“Not that I can see, sir.” I got out the Hammond typewriting machine and set to work.

London has several postal deliveries per day, but I feared that one of the important messages might miscarry. So, instead, I chose one of the excellent messenger services that ply their trade in Whitehall. I gave the fellow an extra half sovereign to see that all were delivered reliably, because I knew that was what Barker wanted. For a Scotsman, he could be surprisingly liberal with his money, but then, he left the ledgers to me.

“Let us go to Limehouse and prepare,” he said.

When Barker says the least, one knows that he is planning something. I tried twice to get him to tell me what was happening, but he was as unwilling to show his hand as a whist player. He spent most of the journey to Ho’s with his face tilted down toward his feet while I tried to reason through everything, without getting any further than Poole.

At Ho’s, he rattled down the steps through the tunnel as nonchalantly as ever, leaving me to hurry along behind him. Once in the tearoom, he conferred with Ho in low tones. The latter was back to ignoring me, I noticed. It wasn’t fair. If I took the blame for causing the fight Barker had been in, then I should also get the credit when Ho came away with his winnings.

The two men got up and moved to the back of the room. Ho took a key from his pocket and opened the doors to the private banquet room, where a few days earlier the jurymen at the inquest had gone to deliberate. I thought it fitting that the case might end where it had begun, in Ho’s tearoom.

There was nothing remarkable about the room. One wall was stone, the other three made up of vertical planks of wood gray with age. Scattered tables and chairs looked as if they had been left as they were when the jurors returned to the court with their verdict. A thin layer of dust had settled. Ho called to one of the waiters, who came in with a bowl of water and a rag and began to clean.

Ho began moving tables about while he and Barker strategized in Chinese. I couldn’t help much with my injured shoulder, but I shuffled chairs around with one good arm and my knee. The tables were set up in a in a T pattern and chairs arranged around the outside to seat ten. This was quite a party Barker was preparing. I hoped at the end of it, he would unmask Quong’s killer and we could bid adieu to this godforsaken end of town for a good, long while.