To Kingdom Come

3

I was having the most wonderful dream. I was in an outdoor cafe slathering gooseberry preserves on a fresh croissant. I felt the boulevard breezes on my face and smelled the heavenly aroma of fresh coffee. My attentive waiter refilled my porcelain cup with coffee and cream from matching silver pots before I could ask.

I was just beginning a second roll when a beautiful woman began wending her way toward me among the tables. She had lips the color of poppies, and a vibrant cobalt blue dress hugged her every curve. I leaned forward, longing to know what intimate secret she wished to reveal to me.

She came closer and bent toward me as I looked up into her pellucid blue eyes, drinking in her beauty. She took my chin lightly in her gloved hand and brought her impossibly red lips to my ear.

“Eh, Thomas! Wake up, you idiot! Your coffee ees getting cold!”

Someone’s boot was on my hip, shaking me awake, and none too gently, either. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes, my dream in tatters. Etienne Dummolard’s face is difficult to take on any morning, let alone in comparison to the beauty in my dream. He is built along the lines of a bear. His purple nose resembles a turnip freshly pulled from a field, and his hair looks as if a miniature haystack had been set down upon his head.

“What are you doing here?” I mumbled, sitting up.

“Nobody was at home for breakfast, so I brought it here. Coffee and fresh croissants and jam. Monsieur Mac has sent along a fresh suit of clothes for each of you.”

Losing the girl was a disappointment, but I sat at the clerk’s desk and contented myself with the coffee and rolls. It was better fare than I had anticipated under the circumstances. The boulevard breezes of my dream, I reasoned, had been due to the missing glass in our waiting room windows.

“While you are enjoying your meal,” Etienne said, “I shall step around and see this amazing sight, this Scotland Yard all en deshabille.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said, rising.

“If you insult my croissants by standing, I shall kick the legs from under you. Sit and digest,” he ordered.

I nodded and poured a second cup of coffee from the pot he had brought. It’s not a bad thing to be forced to eat fresh pastry prepared by a master chef. After he left, however, I committed the sacrilege of chewing the last of my roll while crossing to the office.

Inside, Barker was seated at his desk, for all the world like any other day were it not that the office was in shambles. He was engrossed in conversation with a workman over the telephone set at his desk. The Times was spread out under his elbows.

I was standing in the doorway, remarking to myself that it was seven o’clock by the extremely loud tolling of Big Ben just down the street, when I was struck a glancing blow on the shoulder. I almost thought it was another explosion, and it was. It was Jenkins.

Our clerk leapt into the room, taking in the windows, the overturned pedestal, the dust-covered books. His eyes were the size of billiard balls. It was the first time I’d ever seen him fully awake. Neither Barker nor I had thought to send word to him that we’d been bombed. He’d known for less than a minute.

“Wha’-what’s happened here?” he demanded. “And what are you two gents doing here at this hour on a Saturday?”

“A small matter of an explosion at Scotland Yard last evening,” Barker explained. “We thought it necessary to spend the night.”

“Cor! It’ll take days to clean this place up. Look at all this winder glass. It’s everywhere!”

“It gets worse,” I told him. “The Sun was also damaged, I’m afraid.”

Our clerk looked stricken. The Rising Sun was Jenkins’s port of call, when not at work. I can only compare it to telling a man from the Exchange that the Market has plunged. He went white.

“Oh, s’truth, not the Sun!” He rushed past me and out the door. I heard his footsteps echoing down the court.

“The news is worse this morning,” Barker said, handing me The Times. “Aside from the dozens hurt in Whitehall, fourteen men were injured at the Junior Carlton Club. Also, two servants were blown off their feet at the private residence of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, across the street in St. James’s.”

“Sir Watkin!”

Barker’s brow sunk between the twin disks of his spectacles.

“You know Sir Watkin?”

“I don’t know him personally, but he has always been revered in Wales. He’s a landowner who has given back much in charity to the Welsh people. Was he injured?”

“I don’t know anything beyond the published account. Have you finished your coffee?”

“Er … yes, sir.”

“Good. We have an appointment at the Home Office at eight o’clock. The ministries are awake early this morning, thanks to the bombing that occurred there last evening. Do try to get cleaned up, Thomas. Your appearance might be suitable for the public houses but not for visiting one of Her Majesty’s government agencies.”

Barker led me to the back room where the cot had been and removed a black leather bag containing toiletries from one of the cupboards. There were brushes for hair and teeth, a mirror, a razor, and a small ceramic bowl. I took it outside to fill from the pump in the yard. In twenty minutes I was changed and clean-shaven again, and my medusa head of curls beaten back into submission.

Jenkins looked unwell when he returned just then, leaning on the arm of Dummolard like an old man. We sat him in his chair while the Frenchman poured him coffee. I thought our clerk might faint.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “This is a nightmare.”

It took some time to calm him and then to get him started cleaning up the glass about the place. Dummolard left for his restaurant, and soon it was a quarter to the hour.

“Are you ready, lad? Capital. Let’s be off, then.”

Skirting the debris from the explosion, we reached the corner of Downing and Parliament Streets and looked up at the tall, non-descript exterior of the Home Office. The building projected an aura of wisdom and competency, but at the same time, I almost felt it willing us to go away. I saw it for what it was: a vault of secrets. From here, the eyes of the British government were watching. If my few months in Oxford Prison caused me to distrust policemen, my natural antipathy toward spies and spying was stronger still.

Understandably, the guard at the Home Office was reluctant to let anyone as formidable looking as my employer into the building. He let us cool our heels in the lobby and sent a clerk along to deliver our cards to Mr. Robert Anderson. After a wait of a quarter hour, the man himself came out to meet us. He was a mild but capable-looking fellow in his mid-forties with a saltand pepper beard, which belied his official title of Spymaster General.

“Mr. Barker,” he said, giving us a brisk bow. Barker stood, and they shook hands.

“Mr. Anderson,” my employer answered in his foggy voice. “Thank you for responding to my note. May I present my assistant, Thomas Llewelyn?”

“How do you do. Will the two of you care to step down the hallway with me? There is someone I wish you to meet and something I very much want you to see.”

Anderson led us down a carpeted hall, lined with offices containing government employees, all intent upon the latest outrage. I wondered how those men felt this morning when they arrived at work. I don’t believe any violent results of their policies had ever occurred so close to their offices before.

We reached a room dominated by a long table. It seated twenty, by the number of chairs that were around it, and was built of dark mahogany, several inches thick, with heavy legs carved like the limbs of a lion. There were two things I noticed as I stepped into the room: the gentleman seated at one end and the large carpetbag at the other.

“Sir Watkin,” Anderson said, “may I introduce you to Mr. Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn.” Anderson turned to us. “Sir Watkin is here at Her Majesty’s request as a liaison between the Crown and the Home Office.”

Sir Watkin Williams Wynn shook Barker’s hand, then turned to me. I wondered what my father would have said if he could have seen me shaking hands with the great man now.

“Pnawn da,” I said, as the old gentleman grasped my hand.

“Good morning to you,” he replied in Welsh. “It’s good to hear the old tongue so far from home, especially on a day such as this.”

Instinctively, Cyrus Barker gravitated toward the bag at the other end of the table. “Is that what I believe it to be?”

“Yes. It was found this morning at the base of Nelson’s Column. So far, we have not notified the gentlemen of the press.” Anderson’s lips curled as he spoke, but whether it was due to the bomb, the press, or the bag’s garish colors, I couldn’t say.

“May I?”

“You may. It failed to go off, and we have had the wires cut by one of our experts.”

Barker opened the satchel and motioned me over to look inside. The first thing I saw was a small clock, the kind one keeps on one’s night table. The back plate had been removed and a pistol wired to it, the muzzle almost facing a small detonator. It had missed by a hairsbreadth and there was a scorched hole in the bag. Beneath the clock were several claylike cakes wrapped in paper with warning labels on them. Dynamite. I had heard of it, seen it in political cartoons of anarchists and Fenians, but this was my first time to see it in person. If this bag were like the one that had been left at Scotland Yard, it contained enough explosives to blow us and everything in this room to kingdom come.

“Atlas Powder Company. American made, like the carpetbag. Probably American funded, as well. Very basic,” my employer commented. “But they didn’t get it right. We can be thankful that the Irish are still tyros at bomb making and that, so far, they have been unwilling to take human life.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Sir Watkin spoke up. “My butler and footman were thrown into the hall by the force of the explosion across the street, and are both in hospital. These bombers are serious. London is shaking in her boots this morning.”

“Nevertheless,” Barker stated, “this satchel proves that their knowledge of making explosives is still rudimentary at best. No doubt you are aware of the failed attempt last month to blow up the English police barracks in Dublin. That is three unsuccessful efforts in half a year, hardly a distinguished record.”

“Now, Mr. Barker,” Anderson said, “perhaps you will explain to us why you felt the need to offer your services to us today. Surely, a man of your experience would know we have our own resources.”

“I am aware of the reach of the Home Office and the abilities of the Special Irish Branch, who no doubt are stinging under the effects of last night’s humiliation. I merely thought it would be remiss of me not to make myself available, as I am something of an expert on secret societies. I assume you’ve read my dossier from the Foreign Office.”

“I have, and, I must say, it made for interesting reading. The consensus seems to be that your methods are irregular, but you generally succeed in what you set out to accomplish.” Anderson paused a moment, to let Barker comment, but my employer merely sat there-blinking, if, in fact, he ever blinked behind those spectacles. He may not have realized he had been given a compliment and merely thought it his due. As for me, I would have liked to read that dossier. I had at least a thousand questions about my employer I’d like answered.

“Hmm, yes,” Anderson continued, glossing over the small breach in etiquette. “Patriotism aside, I fail to see what you hope to gain. You are a private detective, not a spy. Did you wish to add a line to your advertisements in The Times as ‘The Man Who Brought Down the Fenians’? What is your motive?”

“It is not to seek advertisement for my agency, Mr. Anderson. I assure you, I do not need the custom. This is my city. I live and work here. Llewelyn and I helped some of the people injured by the explosion last night. Wherever one stands on the Irish Question, all but the most extreme will agree that bombing is not the way to achieve sovereignty. There is a fatal streak of nihilism in this action, like a child losing at chess who upsets the board. I’m thinking not merely of the English citizens in hospital today but also the shocked Irish readers of The Times this morning, who see their chances for independence pushed even farther from their grasp because of a few embittered and overzealous individuals. I am for healthy debate in the House of Commons, at the proper time, not for innocent civilians being bombed. It is a Pandora’s box, and it has been opened. If we don’t nail it down immediately, we may never get the lid secured again.”

Anderson tapped his finger on the table a few times in thought. “Granted, for the moment then, that you are offering your services for altruistic reasons. I’m wondering what you, with your limited resources, can do that the combined services of Her Majesty’s government cannot? Can you really believe you will succeed where we will not?”

Barker gave one of his cold smiles. “An acrobat, for all his skills, employs a net to catch him if he falls. I merely suggest that you hire me to be that net. My sources are not as limited as you might believe. I shall meet with no one but you, and if I fail-or if Inspector Munro and your own agents get in ahead of me-I shall not tender a bill for my services.”

“Munro will not appreciate your interference,” Sir Watkin put in. “How do you propose to catch the rascals?”

“By locating and infiltrating the responsible faction.”

Both gentlemen smiled. It seemed a rather impetuous plan, even to me.

“I’ve done it before,” he continued, “as my dossier no doubt attests.”

“Impossible,” Anderson said. “You are Scottish, and your assistant is Welsh. Even some of our best Irish-born agents have tried it, only to come home in a pine box. The faction cells are very close-knit. Many of the members have known one another since their school days. Sometimes they are even members of one family. What makes you so bold as to think you can succeed when all others have failed?”

“Oh, come, sir. Not all have failed. What of Lieutenant Le Caron?”

Robert Anderson jumped from his chair, as if he’d sat on a hornet. “How the devil do you know about Le Caron?”

“Henri is a friend of mine, aside from being your best spy among the Irish for the last ten years. I trained him in hand combat for a month. He’s a good man. More important, he is an example of a non-Irishman who appears devoted to their cause; in this case, a Frenchman. Or rather, an Englishman impersonating a Frenchman, since we both know that Le Caron is not his real name.”

I pricked up my ears. I hadn’t heard Le Caron’s name before. When had he known the Guv?

“It seems you know an awful lot, sir, about something that is not your affair,” Sir Watkin blustered.

“As far as I am concerned, gentlemen, it became my affair when they injured innocent London citizens and damaged public buildings. Something must be done, and I’d rather be working with the official enquiry than on my own. How long shall it be before the Irish radicals throw off their gloves and go after the Crown itself?”

Anderson gave Sir Watkin a significant glance, which Barker noticed immediately. “They have communicated.”

“They have,” Anderson said, removing a folded slip of paper from his pocket. “This was delivered to the Prime Minister in his office this morning. I must ask that you not mention this to anyone. It shall dampen your enthusiasm, I must warn you.”

Barker took the typewritten note and I read over his shoulder.

“‘Dear Mr. Gladstone, This is just a taste of what we can do. You have thirty days to propose a bill for Home Rule, or your government and the Royal Family shall fall. You have been warned.’”

“Thirty days,” my employer rumbled.

“Do you withdraw your offer, Mr. Barker?” Sir Watkin asked. “Thirty days does not give you much time to become an Irishman, join a faction, and convince them to trust you.”

Barker sat and pondered a moment, absently rubbing his finger under his chin. He did not seem to mind letting two of the most important men in England wait upon his reply. Finally, he let his hand drop to the table.

“My offer still stands, if you’ll accept it. I believe I can deliver whoever set those bombs and sent this note to you. I shall require Scotland Yard to take them into custody at the proper time. During the month, I would like both Llewelyn and me to be working for the standard fee you pay Le Caron, contingent upon whether we succeed.”

“Upon my soul, I wish we were as confident as you seem to be, Mr. Barker,” Anderson continued. “How do you propose to convince the faction cell to trust you?”

“By offering them someone they very much need: Johannes van Rhyn, the reclusive inventor of infernal devices. I understand they have attempted to recruit his aid for some time, but he will not see them. I intend to impersonate him.”

“Van Rhyn has turned down all requests to help the Home Office. We’ve sequestered him at the military base in Aldershot. How will you …” Anderson asked. “Do not tell me. You are acquainted with the German, as well as Le Caron?”

My employer said nothing but gave the spymaster a thin smile.

“You have interesting friends, Mr. Barker,” Anderson continued. “We were not aware of that. One final thing. Her Majesty’s government does not bargain with terrorists. If the two of you are captured, we will be unable to step in and come to your rescue.”

“Understood,” Barker said. “I would not wish to endanger your other agents.”

“What think you, Anderson?” Sir Watkin asked. “Shall we trust Mr. Barker and his mad scheme to hoodwink the Irish?”

“It is a slender thread, I’ll admit,” Anderson said. “But I believe the peril we are in warrants a secondary plan. Very well, gentlemen. I shall take your proposal to the Prime Minister. I cannot speak for him, but for now, it would be to your advantage to set your pawns in play.”

“What about you, young fellow? Are you up for all this?” Sir Watkin asked, as he shook my hand before we left.

“I trust my employer implicitly, sir,” I stated, but to tell the truth, just then I was wondering the same thing myself.