The Black Hand

20

"How shall we start our day?” I asked my employer the following morning in our offices.

Barker drummed his fingers on the desk. “I want a meeting of the leaders on our side: Gigliotti, Hooligan, Robert Dummolard, and Ben Tillett. There may possibly be others.”

“Mr. K’ing?”

“I’d prefer to keep the Chinese out of this, because of Hooligan, unless I have no alternative.”

“Where should we meet? Here?”

“No.” Barker rose and opened his smoking cabinet. He withdrew a meerschaum and began stuffing it. “It would draw unwanted attention to us, and I doubt any of them wish to be seen so close to Scotland Yard.”

“Where then?” I pursued.

“Somewhere private. In fact, the most secure spot in all London. Come.”

We took a cab into the City and then crossed over into Houndsditch, where the walled city of London once used to dispose of its dead canines. It was an ugly little place, cheek by jowl with Whitechapel. In fact, the two were like trees that had grown together so it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. All the brick here was black. I hazarded they were in fact red underneath, but there were layers of soot and grime shellacked to them. Even the children playing in the street sported a layer.

“You sure you know what you’re about, Push?” the cabman asked balefully. Our advent had attracted the attention of the local poor, who stared at us with bold, ravenous eyes, and even came to the curb to watch us pass. Cabs did not come this way often.

“Drop us at the next corner,” Barker told him. “We’ll make it worth your effort.”

We walked down Wentworth Street, past a row of shops to let and abandoned gin palaces where flies batted about the windows. Barker came to a door that was little more than a chink between shop fronts, the narrowest door I’d seen in London, and rapped upon it with his stick so stoutly the faded blue paint fell off in flakes.

Nothing happened for a moment, and Barker turned and surveyed the area with some interest, as if he might consider buying property there. The locals had followed us, hoping for a handout, but no sooner had he knocked upon the door than they scurried away. The door was opened by a bellicose-looking fellow in trousers and braces over a singlet, a bowler atop his head.

“What in hell do you want?” he bellowed. “Take yourself off now, or I’ll set my dogs on you!”

“I would speak with Mr. Soft,” Barker said calmly.

“Never heard of him. Off with you now. I mean it.” He slammed the door in our faces.

The Guv was not daunted in the least. He rapped on the door again with his stick, waiting until it opened a small crack.

“I would speak,” Barker demanded, “with Mr. Soft.”

“Didn’t you hear me the first time? I said there ain’t no Mr. Soft here, you ninny. Never was, never will be. Run along afore I wallop you proper.” He slammed the door.

Immediately, Barker knocked on the door a third time. The man, now red faced, opened it again.

“I would speak with Mr. Soft.”

The man changed in an instant. It was like the Arabian Nights when Ali Baba said Open sesame.

“Right this way, sirs. Do follow me. Watch your step.”

With his encouragement, Barker and I squeezed through the narrow door and followed him down a corridor. The fellow led us to a door and even knocked on it for us.

“Mr. Soft, you have a couple of visitors.”

“Thank you, Cinders,” a voice said, and the door opened slowly as the guard departed. A small, mouselike man stood there, blinking at us with nervous, oversized eyes. He had a swath of curling, near colorless hair and a small mustache after the manner of Swinburne, and I noticed one of his arms was withered, the hand folded in his pocket.

“Mr. … ah, Mr. Barker, isn’t it?” the man said in a high, reedy voice.

“You have a good memory, sir.”

“You are difficult to forget, sir. You have need of my property?”

“I do, indeed.”

“When will you require it?”

“Tomorrow evening, if it is free. I apologize for the short notice.”

Mr. Soft walked over to a writing desk and pulled out a memoranda book. He flipped pages for a moment and then spoke again.

“You are in luck, Mr. Barker. It is free. What are your requirements?”

“I should like to have a table and chairs to seat six or so with lamps enough to see.”

“To see or to read?”

“Merely to see, I think. Some food would be in order, as well.”

The man was writing down the information in the book with his good hand. “Very good, very good. Is that all?”

“That and complete deniability, of course.”

“Of course.”

“What is your rate these days?”

“With everything, I’d say twenty pounds would do.”

“Then we have an understanding. Half up front, as always?”

“You remembered,” the little man said. He was little, even to me, barely reaching five feet tall.

“Pay the man half, lad.”

Reluctantly, I pulled out Barker’s wallet and handed over ten pounds. As his assistant, I wanted to know exactly what sort of room he was paying for but was too polite to ask.

“Your young gentleman seems fair burning with curiosity,” he noted.

“I must admit,” Barker said, “that I’d like to see the property again myself.”

Mr. Soft pocketed the currency and opened his door. “I say, Cinders! Could you come in here for a moment? Gentlemen, this is Cinders Hardy.”

The slovenly guard returned. Soft and Hardy, I thought. They had to be joking.

“These gentlemen wish to see the property.”

“Right,” Mr. Hardy said blandly. Whatever it was he did, he must do it every day, for his work had obviously lost its mystery. “Come this way.”

Mr. Hardy led us down the narrow corridor and into another room. It was a dining room, with a table and four chairs around it, all rather the worse for wear. Surely this was not the most secure spot in London. Tatty perhaps, but not secure.

“If you gentlemen would be so good,” Mr. Soft said. With Hardy’s aid, we moved the table and chairs off the carpet, which, with practiced ease, the guard proceeded to roll up. There was a large trapdoor, large enough to accommodate the entire table. As I watched, Hardy seized the inset ring and lifted the trap. Below, all I could see was inky darkness and a ladder going down.

As I watched, the guard pulled a farthing from his pocket and flipped it into the hole. Eventually, I heard it strike stone. We were over some sort of chasm.

“What in the-?” I asked.

Mr. Hardy held a fat and none too clean finger to his lips, as if we were about to enter a holy place, then picked up a lantern, lit it, and gripped the handle with his teeth before beginning to descend.

“Your turn,” Mr. Soft urged me. “I don’t go down, I’m afraid. My affliction.”

Reluctantly I stepped onto the ladder. It seemed sturdy enough. In fact, it was bolted to the side. Slowly, I descended, with Hardy below me and the Guv above. There was a feeling of immense space and a damp, musty smell in the air. The rungs seemed to go on forever and my calves began to cramp before I finally put a foot on ground again. The ladder was bolted to the floor as well. Looking up, the opening was a mere square of light, remote in the heavens.

A table much like the one above was here, along with several chairs. Hardy lit two lamps on the table, which provided pools of illumination in the overall gloom.

“What is this place?” I asked, and heard my voice echo in the expanse.

“An abandoned railway tunnel,” Barker explained, stepping down onto terra firma. “It’s been cut off on both sides. Didn’t I say this is the most private place in London?”

“Why was it abandoned?” I asked.

“One railway company buys up another,” Mr. Hardy explained, “and makes new plans. The present one felt a line going into the East End was unprofitable and so here we are.”

“You own it?”

“Not really. Technically, it is in receivership. However, it was Mr. Soft who thought to burrow down to it and make use of the property and me what done the burrowing.”

“It was quite a feat,” Barker said. “Mr. Hardy is being modest. Each section of ladder had to be carried down and bolted to the one above it, while hanging upside down.”

Hardy attempted to conceal his pride. “The important thing is it got done.”

“And what sort of meetings do you have here?” I asked. Both men gave me a condescending look. I shouldn’t have asked. “Sorry.”

“Will this be suitable for your needs, sir?”

“Admirably, Mr. Hardy. It’s always an impressive sight. I think we’ll have privacy here. But what about you, aboveground?”

“I’ve got three stout bars to put behind the outer door. Her Majesty’s Horse Guards couldn’t bust their way in. There’s a private egress if you require one. You have any persons causing you annoyance, Mr. Barker?”

“Aye. Sicilians.”

“They won’t get in here, that’s a promise.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Barker said, and began climbing again.

I followed him up the ladder. It was better perhaps that I was surrounded by near perfect darkness. If I’d seen how high I was from the floor I might have frozen to the ladder in fear.

Finally, I reached the top rungs and Barker helped me out. I tried to act nonchalant, but my heart was hammering in my chest.

“What did you think of our little den?” Mr. Soft asked me.

It took a few seconds to realize he was serious. He was very proud of his “property,” and I’m sure he and Mr. Hardy lived rather well on the proceeds of their little enterprise. There must be various members of the underworld who required such a secret and impregnable room. I didn’t think Mr. Soft and Mr. Hardy were very particular about to whom they rented or for what purpose, as long as the money was paid, half up front, half afterward.

I’ve been down many a mine shaft in my time, though not as often as my brothers, who became miners, but I was not prepared for the cold, clammy feeling that came over me a minute or two after I’d resurfaced. Perhaps it was the exertion, or the change from open chamber to close, stuffy room, but I broke out in a sweat all over, and couldn’t help but jump when it rolled down my spine.

“It always does that the first time,” Mr. Soft reassured me.

“Tomorrow, then,” Barker said, bowing to the little man.

“We shall have everything at your disposal,” he said. “Mr. Hardy, do show these gentlemen to the door.”

A minute later we were in the dirty lane again, though this time I was aware we were standing over an immense chasm. Were we to experience a cataclysm such as the one that had occurred in mythological Atlantis, or more recently in Krakatoa, we would be dashed to our deaths a hundred feet below. One shiver of the earth’s crust and it would all be over for this little street in the East End, not that it would be much of a loss.

“Do you think the members of our little group shall be impressed?” Barker asked me.

“I don’t know about impressed,” I replied, “but I doubt they shall forget it.”