The Black Hand

5

"Is he alive?” I asked. surely Dummolard could not be dead, my mind told me. I’d spoken to him but a few hours before.

“Yes,” Barker said, “but his pulse is weak.”

“He tumbled in not a minute ago, sir, all covered in blood!” Jenkins blurted.

“Turn him over gently,” Barker ordered. “Very, very gently.”

We did so, laying him supine on our entranceway carpet, my mind registering the fact that the bloodstains might never come out. Dummolard’s shirt was slick with crimson from chest to waist, but whether he’d been shot or stabbed we could not tell. He groaned suddenly. He was alive, at least for the present.

“The ewer, lad,” Barker said. “Bring it quickly.”

I ran through our chambers to the table behind his desk where Barker kept a full pitcher of water and brought it back to him. My employer had reached into the sleeve of his coat where he kept his dagger and cut open Etienne’s shirt, revealing our cook’s thick pelt of chest hair matted with blood. The Guv is a believer in expediency. I would have wiped gingerly until the wound was exposed, but he emptied the pitcher onto the man’s chest.

“Blade wound to the stomach,” he pronounced. “Looks deep.”

As we watched, blood seeped from the wound, and Etienne gave another groan. His pale lips were moving, but no sound came out. I bent forward and listened closely.

“Front and back,” I said, after finally making sense of what he had murmured. “He’s been stabbed twice, sir.”

“You had better run over to Charing Cross Hospital for a barrow, lad. I don’t believe he’d survive a cab journey.”

There was no horse ambulance system in London at that time. Everyone, be it His Lordship with an acute case of gout or Old Sal, knocked down the tenement stairs by her fella, had to go to hospital on one of the public hand barrows, the only manner of conveyance. The lack of ambulances was a public disgrace, and there was much discussion of it in the newspapers. The Metropolitan Police had wheeled over fifteen hundred people to hospital the year before, and it was a strain on their resources, not to mention an embarrassment to the patient, who suffered public display and exposure to comment. Paris, Vienna, and even New York were already experimenting with ambulance systems and they had been successful; but something in the English character instinctively cringes at new ideas. It wasn’t likely that we would be getting such a modern convenience any time before the next century.

When I arrived at the hospital in Agar Street, I explained in words and gestures that one would reserve for a simpleton that a man was bleeding to death a few streets away, but they made me feel as if I were imposing on their time, as if I myself had stabbed someone merely in order to upset their schedules. As I waited, pulling my hair, an orderly attempted to convince various doctors to step down the road and see to the dying man, but they could not be bothered. I finally hit upon the realization that if I spoke as loudly and forcibly as possible, I would either attract someone to help or get myself chucked out. I surrendered my dignity in hope of saving Etienne’s life, not that he would appreciate it. Finally, the orderly came out with a hand cart, followed by a physician just putting on his topper. I’d have felt better if the barrow was not in every way the twin of the one I’d seen bearing Giorgio Serafini’s corpse off to the Poplar Morgue.

There was a logistical problem as soon as we arrived. The cart would not fit through the door. I went inside while the orderly stood at the curb watchfully, as if the whole of Whitehall had come there that day with the express purpose of stealing his cart.

Etienne was awake, or nearly. His eyes opened and closed now and then. He gestured, ever so slightly, and the physician bent down to listen, then shook his head dismissively.

“Stabbed twice, and the man wants a cigarette,” the doctor said, disapprovingly. He probed the wound, producing a faint curse from the Frenchman.

“There is no way to know immediately how deep the wounds are or how much damage has been done to the organs. If the smallest scrap of cloth has gone into the wound, it shall quickly fester. We must get him to the hospital immediately. May we use the rug to transport him to the cart?”

“Of course,” Barker said, though I knew he must have spent a good deal for it. Together the five of us lifted Etienne by the ends of the carpet and carried him down to the cart, while our cook cursed in his native tongue.

I walk the streets of London every day, arguably the most civilized spot on earth, especially in Whitehall where all is marble, but just put an injured friend in a hand litter and try wheeling him a few blocks and one shall see that the streets are not as smooth as one might think. They rise and fall like waves, and there are cracks and broken paving stones even in the seat of government. We left Jenkins to mind the office and mop the floor, and led the grim procession all the way to Agar Street.

Private enquiry agents or no, there was a point beyond which we could not pass. Dummolard was wheeled through a set of doors, and when we tried to enter, the orderly at the desk cleared his throat, as if issuing a warning. At loose ends, we found a couple of chairs in the hall and fell into them.

“Do you think this is related to Sir Alan and the Serafinis?” I asked the Guv.

Barker nodded grimly. “Etienne has complained about the Sicilian coffee shops opening up in Soho near his restaurant,” he stated, turning his bowler in his hands. “The Sicilians hate the French, of course.”

“The French? Why?”

“Sicily was ruled by the Bourbons for decades. The Mafia was formed to combat them. The word Mafia is an acronym for ‘Kill the French is Italy’s cry.’ Something was brewing, and I should have realized it before now.”

Barker spends his evenings in his garret aerie, poring over newspapers and pasting articles into oversized notebooks. Then he broods and prays over them, sometimes late into the night. He tracked civilization’s progress, or, rather, its descent, through the chronicling of its events. Many times I’d seen him solve a case based upon a seemingly unrelated event in The Times-an exhibition, perhaps, or the arrival of a foreign dignitary. But no man is omniscient. It is impossible to stuff one’s brain with thousands of facts, adding a hundred or more daily, and expect it to automatically produce all possible connections. My employer’s reliance upon such a method, as far as I’m concerned, is a recipe for an attack of brain fever. A brain is a human organ, not a machine.

Barker pulled the paper with the black hand from his pocket and glanced at it again while I looked over his shoulder. The writing was in English: You are a swine gorging at the trough, it read. Now you must give way so that others may get to the husks. If not, it shall go ill with you. This is your only warning.

“I imagine this came from Clerkenwell,” he noted, tapping the letter.

“The Italian quarter,” I replied. We were suddenly interrupted when Inspector Poole came in the front entrance and spotted us.

“How is he?” the C.I.D. man asked, putting a foot up on one of the empty chairs.

“We don’t know yet.”

“Your clerk said he was stabbed in the street somewhere and must have staggered to your door. I find it hard to believe a man can be stabbed in broad daylight a street away from Scotland Yard.”

“I slipped in the blood going into Craig’s Court,” I said, bristling. “That was real enough.”

“Stabbed twice, your clerk told me,” he went on, ignoring me as Anderson had. “I suppose someone crept up and stabbed him from behind, then when he turned, they got him a second time in the stomach.”

Poole acted out the motions, and being cursed with a vivid imagination, I clothed them with accompanying images.

Barker shook his head. “No, we have a pattern here. Serafini was murdered with two shots, one to the front and one to the back. His wife was probably killed in the same manner. Etienne is a savateur, a seasoned fighter. Being stabbed in the back would not stop him from defending himself. I think it more likely he was stabbed simultaneously in a surprise attack. It was why he said ‘front and back’ to us. He was defending his reputation as well as warning us to expect such an attack ourselves.”

“Hold on. You’re going too fast,” said Poole, who was scribbling in his notebook.

“You need lessons in Pitman’s shorthand,” I recommended, but all I received for my solicitous advice was a rude stare.

“You think Gigliotti is mixed up in this?” Poole went on.

“Not yet, but he knows about the Serafinis.”

“Oh, that’s just what we need,” Poole said. “An Italian gang war. At least they only kill one another.”

“Terence,” my employer pointed out, as if he were a child, “the fact that we are here now proves they’ve gone beyond killing one another. Bledsoe was a member of the gentry.”

“Blast. I suppose you’re right, but they’re all Latins, hot-blooded.”

“Gigliotti called the Sicilians a plague,” Barker said. “I’m afraid I concur with that assessment. Right now, the English gangs content themselves with sticks and coshes, but what if the Sicilian gangs arrive with daggers? All the English lads will want them in order to survive. Daggers will be smuggled across the Channel from the Continent, and soon every criminal in London will have one. Violent crimes and robberies at knifepoint shall rise. But the Sicilians will want to have the upper hand, so they’ll begin smuggling in pistols and carbines. The violence escalates, you see.”

“Meanwhile,” Poole noted, “London’s Finest are still patrolling the streets with truncheons and whistles. I’ll have to convince my superiors such is the case, if what you say is true.”

“Ask them how they’ll feel about the Thames being choked with barrels like the one this morning,” Barker said.

“I don’t know as the Yard can do a lot, however, until the Sicilians visibly break the law,” Poole went on. “We can’t arrest them for simply coming into the country or for congregating.”

“We must discourage them somehow-not the Sicilians as a whole but the criminal element.”

“Men armed with knives and the wherewithal to use them might be difficult to discourage,” I pointed out.

Cyrus Barker reached into his pocket and retrieved his old repeater. “Thomas, I’ve been remiss. Go to Le Toison d’Or and inform Madame Dummolard of her husband’s injury.”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes. I must stay to hear of Etienne’s condition when he gets out of surgery, and it would frighten Madame to death if Inspector Poole arrived in the restaurant. Bring her,” he ordered, “though God help us all.”

It’s easier to stand on the tracks and argue with the approaching express train from Brighton than with Barker once his mind is made up. Not finding a cab, I walked to Soho, a matter of ten minutes. It was still too early for the restaurant to open, so I entered through the back door. Before I even knew what happened, Madame Dummolard had me by the shoulders and was shaking me.

“Thomas, ou est Etienne? What has happened?”

Madame, a blond woman in her mid-thirties, is a true beauty, but she towers over most men. As she shook me, I clutched my hat to keep it out of the potage cooking nearby on one of the stoves and had to extricate myself from her clutches before I could speak.

“Etienne has been attacked. Stabbed. He stumbled into our offices half an hour ago. He is in surgery now.”

“He is not dead. Tell me he is not!”

“He was awake when I last saw him. He spoke to us.”

“Where is he?”

“Charing Cross Hospital.”

“Take me to him at once, Thomas. Vite!” She pushed me out the door again. There was no question of her walking the distance I had just come, but cabs congregate in Soho, even at that early hour. I hailed a hansom and told the driver to take us to Charing Cross Hospital.

“No!” Madame cried. “Clothilde! His stepdaughter must be by his side. It is but three streets south of here. Go!”

Madame can be difficult enough, but the thought of sharing a cab with her sharp-tongued daughter was even more daunting.

“Where was he stabbed?” Madame Dummolard continued, once we were safely ensconced in the cab and on our way.

“In the stomach and the back.”

“Ma pauvre!” she cried. “Did he have the note with him?”

“The Black Hand note? Yes, Mr. Barker has it.”

“It was shoved under our door yesterday morning. It was from the Sicilians, I know it. They are trying to take over Soho,” she cried. “They want to shut down Le Toison d’Or and fill the district with cheap little coffee shops.”

There wasn’t much use arguing with her. The cab pulled to the curb in front of a row of town houses on the south edge of Soho in Old Compton Street. The Dummolards were doing well for themselves, I noted. They lived in a sand-colored three-story building with window boxes full of bougainvilleas. We sprang from the cab and I followed Madame into the hall.

Clothilde Dummolard is a miniature version of her mother. She’s the kind of girl that could swoop down upon one like an eagle, and suddenly one wakes up with three daughters, a position in the city, a house in the country full of furniture one wouldn’t sit on, and a mortgage it would take two lifetimes to pay. Luckily, I didn’t have an earldom to attract her, but I saw through her schemes and she found that vexing.

“Injured, you say?” she demanded. “How badly?”

“He’s been stabbed,” Madame cried. “Stabbed in the street, and is now in the hospital!”

“Don’t stand there like an idiot, Thomas,” Clothilde said, pushing me out the door. “Take us to him at once!”

I ushered the ladies into the waiting cab.

“Now, tell me everything from the beginning,” the girl ordered, once we were in the cab and on our way again. “How did Papa get stabbed?”

I explained in as much detail as I could what had occurred, but it only took up half the brief journey, leaving her plenty of time to sum up for the jury.

“If he wasn’t involved with Mr. Barker, this wouldn’t have happened,” she insisted. “He would not have been hurt if he just came straight to the restaurant in the mornings.”

“Madame, I deeply regret Etienne’s injury. Mr. Barker is anxiously waiting for him to get out of surgery.”

“We’se here, miss,” the cabman announced, pulling up to the curb, putting an end to my misery.

“Pay the man,” Madame replied, and the pair of them alighted from the vehicle. Clothilde stopped to fix me with a look of pure loathing. I sighed and reached into my pockets.

“Is she the missus?” the cabman asked when she was out of earshot.

“No, thank the Lord.”

“She’s a stunner, no mistake, but if I was you, I’d run in the uvver direction.”

“That remark,” I answered coldly, “is uncalled for. However, it has just earned you a tip.”

When I arrived inside, the Dummolards, mere et fille, were speaking in a mixture of voluble French and English to a doctor while Barker made his way around to me as warily as a man walking through a swamp infested with crocodiles.

“We’ve just been informed that Etienne’s out of surgery,” he said, as we watched the women remonstrate with the staff. “The wounds were deeper than I had suspected. I believe his attackers were armed with swords instead of daggers. The doctor says the operation was successful, but Etienne has not yet awakened.”

“Should we leave Madame to look after her husband? I could use a cup of coffee after that cab ride. Perhaps there is a cafe in the area.”

“Good thinking, lad. A cafe is a perfect idea, but not in Charing Cross. Let us find one in Soho instead.”