Fatal Enquiry

CHAPTER TWELVE

We were walking through Leicester Square a few minutes later when Barker suddenly pointed to an alleyway so narrow it would be unnoticeable a dozen paces away. I dipped in and Barker followed, flattening himself against the wall. I did the same, realizing we were being followed. I had not noticed him turn around and look once since we left the café, so he must have used every window we passed to scan the crowd behind us. The arrival of plate glass in London had no doubt been a boon to enquiry agencies.

We waited nearly half a minute and I was beginning to think that for once Cyrus Barker was wrong, when suddenly he gave a mighty heave and a man shot past and struck the wall in front of us like a salmon pulled from a Speyside stream. He was about five and twenty and wore a gray serge suit and a silk topper over long curling hair the color of honey, which reached nearly to his shoulders. I can honestly say that if I had any professional instincts to jangle, they jangled then. I recognized a professional criminal when I saw one and stepped forward, pinning him to the wall with my forearm.

“Careful,” he said. “You’ll rend the fabric.”

“I’ll rend more than that. How long have you been following us?”

He shrugged. “Ten minutes or so. I’ve been sent to fetch you.”

“By whom?” I pressed, still pushing him against the brick.

“The Irishman.”

Barker put a hand on my shoulder and I let the dandy stand at ease. He immediately began to pick imagined specks of dust from his jacket and rearranged his clothes to his satisfaction.

“He’s still alive?” Barker rumbled.

“It would take more than a mere plague to kill him.”

“I don’t think we should place ourselves in criminal hands at this particular time, sir,” I told my employer.

“Mr. O’Muircheartaigh said you’d say something like that,” the young man stated. “He told me to say he wishes to extend the olive branch. He understands that your professional relationship has been breached, but the present situation warrants a meeting.”

“I don’t trust him,” I argued.

“Probably best,” the young man agreed.

“I’m not talking to you!” I said, pushing him against the wall again. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Psmith, with a P. The P is silent.”

“Then why bring it up?” I asked.

“I didn’t want you to think I’d made it up.”

“I do think you made it up,” I answered. I didn’t much like this mannequin and his suave manner.

“I don’t believe you,” Barker said. “Or rather, I don’t believe him.”

“He said you’d say that as well. He wanted me to assure you that the olive branch only extends until our mutual obstacle has been eliminated. Then the gloves come off once more.”

“‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’” Barker quoted.

“Something like that.”

“That sounds more like Seamus.”

The dandy’s face creased into a smile. “The Irishman is no politician. He would rather be feared than admired. Are you coming? I’ve got a vehicle waiting just down the road.”

“What made you think I would go to the Café Royal?”

“I didn’t, but the boss did. You took your time getting here, too. I’ve waited close to a day. Thought I’d go out of my mind with boredom waiting for you to turn up.”

I looked at Barker, who had crossed his arms and was staring at the man. He came to a decision quickly.

“Very well. We will hear what Seamus has to say.”

The young man led us to a new-looking landau on the other side of the square. It was gleaming black with red wheels and an interior of cream leather. It emphasized in my mind that while we were practically living on the street, O’Muircheartaigh was a success, at least as far as his finances were concerned. We climbed in and Psmith stretched out across from us, his arms strewn across the back of the seat, as if the vehicle belonged to him.

“And how is your master?” Barker asked politely. He was exercising some of that patience he was always telling me to cultivate.

“I call no man master, Mr. Barker. Mr. O’Muircheartaigh is recovering, or so his doctors inform me. You’ll find him gravely changed, however. It is possible he will remain an invalid the rest of his life, but then it was his brain that has gotten him this far.”

We pulled into Commercial Road, headed for the City. The day was warm and the sun beat down unmercifully upon us.

“You’re not what I expected, you know,” Psmith said, after a few minutes. “I mean, being the best detective in London and all. I heard you had a good tailor.”

“This is not a time to be spotted in my sartorial best, Mr. Psmith.” There was a moment of silence before Barker spoke again. “Is Seamus still in hospital?”

“No, at his request he’s been moved to rooms around the corner from the Old Jewry. He keeps his own doctors and nurses on the premises.”

“I suppose you have been given orders to kill them if he dies,” the Guv said.

Psmith chuckled. “You know him rather well.”

“Better than I would wish. You are a shootist, then. Why are shootists always interested in clothing?”

In response, Psmith opened his jacket. He had two small pistols jammed into the waistband of his trousers, with the butts facing forward.

“It’s clean work,” the young man said. “As long as you don’t stand too close.”

“Twenty-two-caliber Remingtons, I see. You must be very accurate.”

“It’s a gift. I hear you’re not bad with a pistol yourself. Is it your weapon of choice?”

“No, it is merely a necessary evil,” my employer said.

“What’s your weapon?” Psmith asked, turning to me.

“Him,” I said.

The young man grinned like a jackal. He smiled too easily for my comfort. “Good answer.”

The cab deposited us at the corner of Old Jewry and Cresham. Psmith unlocked the door of an affluent-looking red brick residence. Inside, two very large gentlemen were seated in the front room and exchanged glances with Psmith as we walked by. We walked down a nondescript corridor until we saw a nurse in her caped uniform and followed her into a sickroom. There were two other nurses there, flanking a bed with a still body resting on an oversized pillow, a counterpane pulled up to his chin.

“All of you, leave us!” O’Muircheartaigh cried peevishly from the bed. “I wish to consult with Messrs. Barker and Llewelyn privately.”

We waited until everyone left the room, and then my employer and I moved closer to O’Muircheartaigh.

I could not believe the change the man had undergone since last I saw him. O’Muircheartaigh’s eyes were sunken in their sockets and he had lost much of his hair, what remained lying lank and colorless against his scalp. The ricin, or whatever it had been, had broken capillaries across his face, leaving it etched in purplish tracks. His skin was jaundiced, the color of cheese rind; even his eyes were an unhealthy yellow. He lay shrunken in his pillows, clutching a small tank in clawlike hands with a valve and a rubber hose from which he breathed periodically.

“Come sit close by the bed,” he said. “There are chairs here. Do not be alarmed at my appearance. The doctors assure me that I shall live, which is well for them. Come, look me over and get it done with. We have much to discuss. You will forgive the tank. It contains pure oxygen. I am reduced to sucking from a bottle like a helpless, mewling babe. I am alive, however, which is more than I can say for my comrades, or for Sebastian Nightwine when I get hold of him.”

“You know, then,” I murmured.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Llewelyn. It has been a while since I bought out his enterprises and he sailed off to points east. I knew he would eventually run out of cash. He always does. I give him credit for stealing into town unnoticed, without his usual fanfare.”

“I had hoped we had seen the last of him,” my employer said.

“Cyrus,” O’Muircheartaigh said from his pillow. “We’ve had our differences in the past, and I know how you feel about me personally, but I want you to consider taking me as a client.”

“Under no circumstances.”

“No, please! Hear me out!”

Barker had waved a dismissive hand in his direction.

“Hear me out,” he continued, weakly. “You must be short of funds with your accounts frozen. I’ve got all you could possibly require. I could fund an army if you need it to bring down Nightwine. I want you to set aside your high-minded principles for once and take me on.”

“Seamus,” Barker said gravely, “you know I’m going after Nightwine for my own reasons. I don’t want your money and I’d never take a client who would exact such revenge upon the people I bring in. They deserve punishment, but only after justice has been meted out.”

“Perhaps I was wrong about you, and it is better on my side of the fence, where an eye still requires an eye in return.”

“I’m going after your man, Seamus,” Barker said mildly, not the least put out by the Irishman’s rhetoric. “But I don’t want your money. You are coming out ahead. You have nothing to complain about.”

“You are as unbending as a bar of pig iron.”

“Thank you. But if you really want to help, there is one favor you can do for me, Seamus. Stay out of my way. Don’t attempt to go after Nightwine with men like Psmith. They’ll confuse the issue and hinder my enquiry. Lie back, for once, and let your money accrue.”

“And if I don’t?” O’Muircheartaigh asked, breathing heavily.

“Let us just say things would get lively for quite a while. And I do not believe either of us would be the last man standing.”

The Irishman took several breaths from his cylinder, and tried to compose himself. The room seemed monastically quiet all of a sudden.

“Very well,” he finally answered. “I’ll keep my money if it’s not good enough for you. Starve if you like. But I expect reports. I must know what’s going on.”

“When there is something to know, you will know it.”

My employer made no move to rise and neither did I.

“What is it?” his old enemy demanded. “You’re shaking your head.”

“I was just thinking what a tough old bird you are, Seamus. How did you survive when all of your younger colleagues did not?”

“We had opened the office at seven-thirty, as usual. I generally wait for the first post before walking to the Exchange Building to see how my stocks are trading. My secretary, Miss Jonah, entered with a package about two feet long. I opened it after noting there was no address of any kind. Inside was a leather case containing a short sword. I’m not a connoisseur of weapons, but I could tell it was expensive and probably old. I lifted it out of its case gingerly, because it seemed fragile rather than because I thought it might be dangerous. When I pulled the sword from the scabbard, Miss Jonah and my bodyguard, Mr. Bing, were standing on the other side of the desk. When I drew the sword in an outward gesture, they both suddenly clutched their throats and Bing began choking. In a few seconds, they both fell to the floor.

“Realizing it was an attempt on my life, I threw down the sword and backed into my office and opened a window, actually sitting on the ledge. I called for aid upstairs where some of my associates were sleeping late, having done some work for me the night before. Two of them used the back stair but one came down through the lobby, and passing through the contaminated room, brought the contagion with him into my office. By the time he reached my desk, he was gasping, his eyes starting from his head. Soon his companions joined him, fighting for breath. Then it felt as if all the air had been sucked from the room. I recall ripping open my collar and trying to get another window open for circulation, but my fingers were like sausages at the ends of my hands. I fell out of the window into the street. That’s the last I recall, until I awoke in St. Bart’s Hospital hours later, as you see me.”

“You had a very close call. Was it ricin, then?”

“Mixed with something else, I think. Some sort of vegetable alkaloid Nightwine picked up in the Orient, I shouldn’t wonder.”

I wondered how both of them would be familiar with substances such as ricinus and vegetable alkaloids and the like. The things one had to know to work in the Underworld.

“You have something to contribute, Mr. Llewelyn?” O’Muircheartaigh asked, studying me closely.

“Nothing, sir. It is a most remarkable story.”

“Yours are the last ears that shall ever hear that story from my lips,” he rasped. “Good day, gentlemen.”

Before we were even out of the room, the staff came in and crowded about him, to his irritation. On our way out the door, we encountered Psmith in the reception room, seated with the two guards. He said not a word, but aimed a finger at me and squeezed off a shot.

Not if I see you first, I thought.