Some Danger Involved

29

I floated on opium clouds for several days. Barker's physician, a dried apple core of a fellow named Allcroft, kept me on a steady diet of morphine and little else. I had endured a severe trauma not only to my body but to my brain as well. Dr. Allcroft feared brain fever, and with good reason. Due to the heavy tissue damage, I ran a high fever. Any weight I may have gained due to Dummolard's cooking and the nice restaurants in which we had dined, melted off my frame quickly. I must have looked quite the apple core myself, I suppose.

Barker decided that the logistics of the situation called for turning the infrequently used sitting room into a convalescing room. He and Mac carried my bed and mattress down the stairs and consigned much of the sitting room furniture to the lumber room upstairs. Nurses were hired round the clock. Apparently, things were rather touch and go one night. I had an irregular heartbeat, and Allcroft feared there might have been damage to the muscle itself. Somehow I pulled through. Later, Barker asked me how it was to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I recalled intensely vivid dreams, constantly changing like a child's kaleidoscope, but the events in these dreams slipped through my fingers when I finally woke.

A woman's face came into view, a careworn but friendly enough face it was, with a healthy dusting of freckles.

"Who are you?" I croaked. My throat was raw.

"So you're awake, are you?" she said. "That's a mercy. How do you feel?"

"Like I've been crucified." My throat was afire.

"You just take it easy-like, young gentleman. I'm your nurse. We'll fetch the doctor in. You've had a lot of people here concerned about your health."

"May I have some water, please?"

She sat me up a little, to pour a tumbler of water down my parched throat. It was the first time I realized I was in the sitting room. I tried to raise my arms but found myself almost incapable of movement. My shoulders and back had received a great strain, and only time and the Great Physician Himself would ever heal them again.

"What o'clock is it?" I asked.

"†'Tis three in the afternoon, if you must know," the nurse said. "Did you have an appointment you must be off to?"

"And the day?"

"It's Thursday."

"Thursday," I repeated to myself. Four days. My mind was on the case. Was it over? What had Barker been doing without me these last hundred hours? I tried sitting up, to get out of bed. I've made many mistakes in my life, and that was definitely one of them.

"Now you've gone and done it, young man," the nurse chided me as I lay, my teeth gritted, and every muscle in my body screamed at once. "You stay there and don't you move, or so help me, I'll have straps brought in and we'll lash you to this bed. I'm calling in Dr. Allcroft directly."

The doctor came within the hour. He looked in my throat and under my eyelids, he took my pulse, he prodded me in a thousand places, then asked me a thousand times if that hurt. Finally, he pronounced me on the mend, though not completely out of danger, and reduced me to only partial doses of morphine. Had I been able to move, I would have tossed him down the front step. As it was, I just lay there, while the tide of dreams washed over me again.

"Lad." I opened my eyes.

"Hello, sir," I answered weakly.

"Back among the living, are we?"

"So it would seem. How's the case?"

"Spoken like a true assistant. It's all but over. I've just been tying up the loose ends. All that remains is the presentation of the bill, and I won't do that until you are up and about."

"Tell me about the case. How did youЧ"

"Another time, Thomas. Allcroft is a capital fellow. He'll soon set you to rights. You just get some rest. Plenty of time to discuss the investigation later."

I relaxed and the spectacles faded away into nothingness.

It was morning, presumably Friday morning, although I couldn't be sure. Mac was opening the curtains.

"Good morning, Mr. Llewelyn," he said. "I trust you've slept well." He came round and fluffed my pillows. "The nurses have all been dismissed, more's the pity."

"Sorry I missed them," I rasped.

"Are you hungry?"

"Starved," I admitted.

"Guv'nor's spread the word to Cook that he's to fatten you up a bit. I saw Dummolard bringing in a goose liver pie a half hour ago. I'll tell them you're awake."

He glided out, and I closed my eyes. I was in a rather enviable position if one forgot for the moment that I couldn't raise my arms. I had nothing to do but lie in bed and wonder what a first class chef was preparing for my breakfast. It turned out to be crepes with heavy cream and strawberries. The strawberries had been preserved in kirsch brandy. The meal came with a tisane, hot honey and lemon with a bit of single malt.

"I suppose you can't raise your arms."

"Not an inch."

Mac grumbled under his breath and cut the first crepe into quarters. I opened my mouth just in time, before he would have plastered cream all over my face. It was very rich. It wouldn't take much of this to put the weight back on me.

"Drink!" I said, almost gagging on the clotted cream in my throat.

"This will wear thin rather quickly, I think," Maccabee complained, bringing the cup to my lips.

"I'll remind you, I was injured trying to save your people," I told him, when I could breathe again.

"We are forever in your debt," he said archly, cramming another bite in my mouth. The combination of preserves and cream was delicious, but I wasn't much up to swallowing yet.

The meal was mercifully short. Mac replaced the empty plate and cup on the silver tray. He turned back at the door.

"Actually, you have a visitor waiting."

Was it Rebecca, perhaps, or Zangwill? Possibly it was Ira Moskowitz. I had made more friends in the last two weeks than during my entire previous time in London.

Mac opened the door, and a streak of black fur shot across the room. Harm leapt onto the bed and walked up onto my chest. The little dog looked back to his old self again. He cocked his head to the side and regarded me quizzically for a minute, then walked past my head and curled up on the edge of the pillow behind me.

"All right, dog," Maccabee said. "None of that. Come on." Harm gave him a low growl. "Mangy cur! After I announced you and everything! Very well, stay if you like, but I'm booting you out the door at the earliest opportunity."

"Were you referring to the dog or me?" I asked.

"Don't tempt me," he responded, and left with the tray.

Harm and I settled back on the pillows and soon drifted off to sleep together.

Shortly after noon, Inspector Poole and a constable arrived to take down my statement. Poole wanted to be sure that Barker and I had not compared notes, and I could honestly say that we hadn't spoken more than a few sentences to each other since that day. The case, according to Scotland Yard, was officially closed, although they wanted the names of the sword-wielding Jews. Strange, but my memory was rather hazy about the specifics. As for the press, the papers spoke of little else for weeks, but the Golem Squad had disappeared without a trace.

After a slice of goose liver pie, which Mac fed me successfully, Dr. Allcroft stopped in for a short visit and pronounced that I was healing rapidly. Before leaving, he traded the morphine injections for a green, laudanum-based syrup that was particularly vile. Licorice is a flavor best left in the nursery. With the doctor out of the way, Barker and Mac brought in a little oriental fellow, who gave me an all-over massage. It was torture during the actual process, but when he was done, I felt a little better than before. He left me his own Chinese tonic in a blue bottle beside the laudanum. I had no intention of taking that, either.

It was shortly after six when Barker and Mac appeared with my dinner tray. Barker settled a napkin on my chest and prepared to feed me. I had never seen him looking so domestic. Mac returned to his duties.

"I think you dismissed the nurses too quickly, sir," I told him.

"It was necessary," he said, cutting up some roast beef on my nightstand. "A few more nights and there would have been an understanding between Mac and one of the nurses. Two, if he was persistent. Open."

I opened. It was beef in some sort of wine sauce. No doubt it had a fancy French name. Dummolard had outdone himself, but there were more pressing matters.

"Can we talk about the case now?"

"Of course," he said. "What did you want to know?"

"Only everything."

He loaded my mouth again. "Everything, is it? That's a tall order. You'll have to be a wee bit more specific."

"Very well," I said, after I swallowed. "When did you first suspect Racket?"

"I noted him at the beginning. I've had him as a cabman once or twice in the past, but only randomly. His sudden attentiveness, coinciding with the start of a new investigation, put me on my guard. However, he was only one of several leads at the time. I gave him more serious attention after the shooting. Later, he gave us information that proved to be suspect. I knew that Serafini didn't fire on you, and to believe that there was another assassin out there matching his description stretched my credulity.

"He was my key suspect after that, but I couldn't be certain he was working alone until we found poor Miriam Smith's body. That scripture he quoted made me certain of his sole guilt. He wanted me to know, I believe. Were the case to remain unsolved, no one would ever know how clever he had been."

"How far behind me were you when I was in the cab alone with Racket?"

"I saw you getting in the cab, but there were two dozen men trying to spill each other's blood between us. I also hazard some of the bigger fellows had been ordered by Racket to attack me personally. It took me a moment or two to get through the crowd. By then, the cab was halfway down the street and going at a fast pace. I had to run like the dickens to keep it in sight, all of five or six blocks. Of course, I had no idea he was choking you as he went along. I'm sorry about that, lad."

I smiled.

"What?" Barker demanded, frowning. I was getting better at reading his expressions behind those huge spectacles of his.

"†'Some danger involved,'†" I quoted. "Is it often this dangerous?"

"Not often, no," my employer said. "Sometimes it is. I won't lie to you. I'm very sorry that you were hurt, that I was unable to stop Racket from almost killing you. I cannot control every situation. I can understand if you wish to leave my employ. I shall pay you handsomely for your services and give a sterling reference."

I actually thought about it for a moment. Perhaps I could find a more normal position, something unthreatening, a quiet job clerking for a solicitor. But could I stand being locked in an office every day, dotting i's and crossing t's, after this? Could I live in a lodging house, wondering what Barker was doing just then or whether Dummolard had taken offense, and never seeing Mac in a hair net? Would I be able to sleep without Harm snoring at the foot of my bed? Most of all, could I live my life knowing that someone else was using my room, sleeping in my bed, and using my desk, because I had disappointed Cyrus Barker by turning him down?

"No, sir," I found myself saying. "I'd like the position permanently, if you'll have me."

Barker patted my shoulder and smiled. "That's grand, lad. Just grand."

"But have I given satisfaction, sir? I feel as if I've failed miserably."

"You did well," Barker answered. "Your survival in such a dangerous case is an achievement in itself. I threw you in, untrained, and you adapted yourself and worked very hard under threat of your life. I have no possible cause for complaint."

I have to admit, the words felt good.

"So, what happened in Racket's stable?" I asked, picking up our earlier conversation. "Was I already tied up when you arrived?"

"Yes," Barker continued. "He must have planned it all beforehand, because he had the cross already prepared for you. He hoisted you up on pulleys and tied the other end of the rope to the bale hook that overlooks the street. Racket must have been desperate, to use his own stable like that. Perhaps he planned to escape to the Continent. Some details we shall never know."

"I remember his taunting me. He said he enjoyed watching us take all those wrong turns in the investigation."

"As I said before, an enquiry agent must cultivate patience. One must be thorough, investigating every lead. There is no way to know which one will lead to the proper conclusion."

"You heard him, then?"

"Of course. I can't tell you what a pathetic sight you were, suspended upside down like Peter. I thought you were lost to me, as Quong was. But you're a plucky fellow, and a tough one, too, to have survived all you've been through."

"So what happened then?" I asked. "I must admit it was all a jumble after you struck Racket with one of those coins of yours. By the way, that was an incredible throw."

Barker shrugged. "As I told you, I've had a lot of training. After he dropped the gun, he shoved the cross, sending it spinning, and ran to the stairs leading to the loft, making sure you were between us the entire time, for I had drawn my gun. I ran to you, and actually had my hand on the crossbeam, when you suddenly shot out of my hands. Racket had seized the hook and swung out, you see, hoping to escape. As he plummeted down, you spiraled upward."

"And then?" I asked, still perplexed.

"I shot the rope in the middle, which brought you down into my outstretched arms, and by the way, lad, I could swear you'd put on a pound or two, despite my instructions. Racket came down in the street a little faster than he'd anticipated. I hadn't expected to kill him, just to slow him down enough to catch up to him, but I don't believe I'll lose any sleep over his death. Like yourself, I'll remember the pathetic figures of Louis Pokrzywa and Miriam Smith."

I shook my head. "Incredible. An inch either way, and the outcome might have been entirely different."

He shrugged, as if his marksmanship were nothing out of the ordinary.

"This is some profession, Mr. Barker," I mused.

"It's the only profession, as far as I am concerned."

"Perhaps I'm dim, sir, but what caused you to suspect Racket instead of Painsley or any of the other suspects? Why didn't you think the league was real?"

"There were different reasons for each suspect. Give me a name."

"Painsley, then."

Barker set aside the tray. We had both forgotten about the food, and I wasn't really hungry. "I do not believe he could have derived any benefit from killing Pokrzywa. Should an attack have been made upon the Jews, it would have aroused sympathy toward them and emptied out his church on Sunday mornings. Painsley very much needed the Jews to continue pouring in from Europe because the public anxiety about them was keeping his coffers full. Also, he would have run a very big risk, were he seen at the head of a mob. But as I said, I'm going to keep a watch on that fellow."

"And Brunhoff, the Anglo-Israelite?"

Barker gave a snort. "Brunhoff couldn't gather a handful of supporters to a free meal in Bethnal Green. He's got all the warmth and charisma of a wounded badger. To think that he could gather a band of followers loyal enough to risk jail or injury is preposterous. By the way, he never sent me his alibi. I suppose we'll have to let him aloneЕ for now."

My employer got that look again, and his hand brushed his pocket.

"Smoke, by all means," I encouraged. "And what about my old tutor, Rushford?"

Barker reached in his pocket.

"Of all the suspects, I would have thought him most likely. He was a eugenicist and a recent inmate of Burberry Asylum. However, I thought him too fastidious to actually go into the pubs of Whitechapel, recruiting men, and the men too unlikely to follow him unless it was for pay. I suspect Rushford is rather hard up at the moment, with his position gone and little revenue from his books coming in. If he recruited anyone, it would be his acolytes in Chelsea, and I can't picture those dandies forming an angry mob, unless the Grosvenor Gallery hangs one of Mr. Whistler's paintings upside down."

"Drat," I said. "So, there's no way we could tar him with it?"

"Sorry, lad." Barker knew I was joking, of course.

"What about your choice, Mr. Nightwine?"

Barker blew out his vesta and set his pipe between his teeth.

"Ah, yes, Nightwine. I toyed with the idea for quite a while. Crucifying a Jew in Petticoat Lane is just the sort of ruthless message he would send the Board of Deputies to cow them, if possible, and he could raise a mob as soon as he opened his pocketbook. I wondered if he might be trying to corner the gold and diamond markets in London, extorting money from them or the pawnbrokers, who, though they may appear more humble, have a lucrative business nonetheless. I thought Nightwine the only man in London dangerous enough to threaten the Jews in such a fashion. Obviously, I was mistaken on that point."

"So what made you discount him?"

"There was nothing to tie Pokrzywa into all of this. Nightwine would have chosen a jeweler or pawnbroker to string up, not a poor little teacher. I think Nightwine bears no personal animosity toward the Jews, beyond their founding of two religions he despises. As he said, he believes them a defeated race."

I was running out of suspects. "Gigliotti? Serafini?"

"Nothing the Jews had done to the Italians warranted crucifixion, even as an example. The Camorra has an established way of doing things. There would have been a private meeting with someone like Sir Moses, airing their grievances. Then they would have busted a few kneecaps to get their point across. But no good Catholic would dare crucify a Jew, and in their own twisted logic, they're all good Catholic boys."

"Not Serafini," I pointed out. "He's an assassin."

"So he is, but Serafini saves the bullets for more 'deserving' targets: politicians, diplomats, and kings. In a way, he has his own principles. He wouldn't shoot a working lad."

I was scraping the bottom of my memory now. "The Irish, then. Why not suspect them? McElroy was an Irishman."

"All their efforts at the moment are directed toward Home Rule. After the bombing of the Tower Bridge last November, their leader, Parnell, has made sure they keep their noses clean."

I made one final, desperate try. "Perhaps I'm obtuse, but how did you know that it wasn't someone we hadn't heard from, someone laying very low?"

Barker puffed on his pipe. He was sitting back in the chair with his hands laced across his stomach and his feet on my bed.

"I trust my contacts," he said, simply. "You see, I try to throw a web over London and sit like a spider in the midst of it all, my fingers on the strands, ready for any subtle vibration. When we're riding in a cab and I'm scanning the street ahead of me, hundreds of impressions are crowding in on me. I recognize criminals and friends and see who is in town. I note changes of class and nationality within an area. I watch new businesses open up and old ones shut their doors. I find the city endlessly fascinating."

I'd run out of arguments, but I still had some questions.

"What about Pokrzywa, sir? Why did he have a relationship with Miriam Smith in the first place? She seemed an unlikely choice with beauties like Miss Mocatta about."

"I can only speculate. They were of an age, and if you recall, she was a Choote, a Dutch Jew. We know he spent some time in Amsterdam before coming to London. I think he knew her there. Years later, he ran into her in Petticoat Lane, married to Racket, or rather, Smith. It can't have been a successful marriage. She needed help. Remember Mr. Moskowitz's remark about Louis being a knight searching for a damsel in distress? In Miriam Smith, he found her. He threw his not inconsiderable energies into trying to love and protect her and got himself killed in the process. Poor fellow. Even the wisest man can be made a fool by love."

I wondered if Barker was making a veiled reference to my own emotional upheavals during the case, but I decided not to mention them.

"One more question, sir. Who was he originally, John Racket or John Smith?"

"Neither, I suspect. Scotland Yard has no record of the first and too many records of the other. All we have is the marriage certificate and his cabman's license, and I suspect he lied on both. What I do know is that John Smith is the most common name taken by former criminals."

"I can't believe we were taken in by a false beard," I complained.

"The most important thing is that we caught the killer and averted the pogrom, which was our objective."

"I must admit, sir," I confessed, "that I doubted you a little. I didn't see how anyone in London could find Pokrzywa's killerЧ one man in the midst of three million people. But you did it. You were a complete success."

Barker put the chair back and turned to leave.

"I don't believe Albert McElroy's parents would say so, Thomas. I should have asked you if the cabman who picked him up was Racket, but I was tired and preoccupied," he said sadly. It gave me something to ponder after he left.