To Kingdom Come

6

It was Sunday morning, and I had gone up to Barker’s room. With its red sloping ceiling lined with weapons, it is rather bloodthirsty in appearance. On a Sunday, the attention is drawn to the strong, mote-filled light from the two large skylights, and the room’s resemblance to a Mongol leader’s campaign tent rather recedes into the gloom. I was all for talking about the case, but Barker would have none of it. His Sabbath day mornings were sacred, literally. He was reading his Bible and slowly emptying his pot of gunpowder green tea into his handleless cup.

“What are our plans for the day?” I asked.

My employer held up a finger, then used it to turn a page in Deuteronomy, and promptly was engrossed in his reading again. I was getting nowhere. Barker is like a bad water pipe. I could spend half the day trying to get something out of him, then he would gush out in a torrent of words, and promptly clog up again.

Barker poured me a cup of tea, and I emptied it in one swallow, then grimaced. Green tea is a misnomer, I think. It’s more gold than green, and it tastes more like dishwater than anything else. I know many people go through a lot of trouble so that the tea grown in Fukien ends up on our Newington breakfast table, but if it were all for my benefit, they needn’t have bothered.

I sighed and went downstairs. Sunday is the only morning when Dummolard does not dominate our kitchen. He makes up for his absence with a bakery’s worth of sweets. Privileged to be the only other person allowed to touch Etienne’s coffeepot, I made myself coffee and looked over the assortment of pastries. Though I was sad to see the apple and caramel pie was gone, I chose a currant scone instead and put a dollop of clotted cream from the larder on top.

After I’d eaten, Barker came down in what I’ve come to call his Sunday suit, a frock coat less ostentatious than his normal wear, with a black tie. Mac had set out Barker’s Bible on the entry table by the door, a book so well thumbed all the lettering on the cover had worn away. We walked the short block to the Baptist Metropolitan Tabernacle and when we got there and were just about to go inside, he made a telling gesture. He reached out and his hand lightly touched one of the marble columns. I knew what he was thinking, for I was thinking the same: How long would it be before we would be enjoying another quiet Sunday here again?

The Reverend Charles Haddon Spurgeon had one or two words to say about peace in his sermon that morning. While many pastors across London were no doubt calling for peace after the recent bombing, Barker’s pastor warned us of false peacemakers and assured us that there would be no peace in the world until the Lord’s return. It was a pessimistic attitude, perhaps, but I didn’t doubt it was true. There is always some deviltry afoot in the world, and not a little of it here in our corner itself.

Afterward, I was looking forward to a nice lunch before whatever my employer had planned for the day, but apparently he thought otherwise. He raised a cane for a cab, rather than shatter the Sabbath peace with one of his whistles, and we bundled in.

“The City!” he called out. “I suppose you can make do with a roll and coffee in the East End until we can eat properly, lad?”

“Certainly, sir,” I said. After all, who has need of a nice Sunday dinner when one can eat a tooth-breaking bun topped with stale onions and poppy seeds?

“It is time to visit the Lane, Thomas.”

There was no need to ask which lane he was talking about. Our first case had begun when a poor Jewish scholar had been found crucified on a telegraph pole in Petticoat Lane, the City’s Sunday market. It is a farrago in the middle of the Jewish quarter, where one can buy everything from Chinese silk to Scottish tweed. Most of the clothing was used, and the Jews were old hands at repairing and reselling items “good as new.” Now we were in need of clothing for our disguises as van Rhyn and his assistant, and it would be suspicious if we presented ourselves in a completely new wardrobe. What better place could we have come to than the Lane?

On a normal Sunday, Middlesex Street, to give its more prosaic name, resembles a football scrum, with enough people knotted together to fill half of London. It functions, somehow, and everyone eventually reaches his own destination. Barker, at least, knew where he was going; he stepped up to one of the more established tailor shops, with its hoardings overhead in Hebrew and Roman letters, and spoke to the proprietor. The latter pulled his measuring tape from his pocket and invited us into the shop’s interior.

My employer had spent a great deal of money on our wardrobes, most recently equipping me with hats, coats, and shoes, but I was not surprised to see him lift the sleeve of a disreputable-looking garment and ask to try it on. He selected four suits for himself and three for me. We were fitted by the proprietor, who was doing his best to keep his thoughts to himself, if not for his raised eyebrows. I knew what Barker was thinking, however. In our ordinary clothes, we would never be able to fit into a group of Irish misfits and radicals.

“I’ll take them all,” Barker eventually said, producing a card. “Have them sent to this address.”

“Very good, sir,” the tailor replied between tight lips. I would have thought he’d have been glad to rid his shop of these items. He took the card and nodded to us as we left.

Passing into Aldgate Street, we hailed a hansom cab. No sooner had we settled in than Cyrus Barker said, “You need a name to use among the Irish.”

“I’m not certain whether I could do the accent, sir,” I admitted. “Not convincingly, anyway.”

“Very well, we’ll keep you a Welshman. Easiest is best. Do you have any family names other than Llewelyn?”

“I have an uncle whose surname is Penrith.”

“Penrith. That’s a good Welsh name. What is his first name?”

“Odweg.”

My employer scratched his chin for a moment in thought. “Perhaps we’ll just call you Thomas. Thomas Penrith. That’s easy for me to remember. Your name is Thomas Penrith. You are from Cardiff and are van Rhyn’s assistant, a disaffected student with anarchist beliefs and a grudge against England. You have been trained at Nobel’s factory near Glasgow and have worked with your new employer for six months. You have a certain natural ability with explosives, and you show great promise. Have you got that, lad?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent. The reason Le Caron has succeeded, and all the others have failed, is that he did not try to pretend to be Irish.”

“I say, sir, have we anything else to do this afternoon? I thought I might stop and see Ira Moskowitz and Israel Zangwill. If I may, I’d like to tell them I was leaving town.”

“Certainly, lad. See your friends. I’m going out myself. I’ll see you back at home for dinner.”

I didn’t ask where he was going, and I don’t think he would have told me had I asked, but I had my suspicions. My employer kept company with a certain woman whose identity one would almost suppose was a state secret. Mac referred to her only as the Widow and she was never to be spoken of. I didn’t intend to do so now.

I jumped out and was soon walking down Commercial Street, that great aorta of London trade. Three months before, this area on the east side of the City was unknown to me, but now I knew it as well as the Elephant amp; Castle. If I had taken anything away with me from our last case, other than several torn ligaments and injured joints, it was my friendship with Israel and Ira. A quick cut up Bell Lane, and a few odd turnings, and I was in Spitalfields. The two of them lived in a boardinghouse for Jewish teachers and scholars. I’d visited enough times that I had become a nuisance to open the door to, and so had been given leave to enter as if I were a boarder. I slipped in, climbed the stairwell to the first floor, and rapped loudly on a door. A voice bade me enter, and I stepped inside.

Israel looked up from his studies. If someone had told me a year before that my two closest friends would be Jews, I would have laughed, having never even met one before, but so they had become. Israel is all head on a stalk of a body, with more nose and less chin than he knows what to do with. At the moment, his nose was propping up a pair of half-moon spectacles, for he had been preparing lessons for his third-form class.

“Thomas!” he cried. “What brings you to Whitechapel?”

“I was wondering if you were interested in sponsoring Ira Moskowitz in the club.”

Israel gave me a shrewd look. “You deem him worthy?”

“I deem him unlikely to ever be asked to join any other club,” I said.

“You are right there. But I’m just a humble teacher, not a famous detective’s assistant. The fourpence nomination fee might break me. Besides, I sponsored you. It’s your turn now.”

“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.”