The Limehouse Text

27

Barker was gone, and I was left alone with one of the most powerful men in London. He sat in the chair and eyed me appraisingly. I stood and bowed in the English manner, a stiff incline of the head, trying not to show him I was afraid.

“I am your prisoner.”

“No, sir,” he corrected. “You are a guest in my humble home. Allow me to see to your comfort.”

“Ah, but a guest may leave at any time,” I pointed out.

“That is so, but then, who shall see to Miss Winter’s needs? She is my real prisoner.”

“I would like to see her, sir.”

K’ing clapped his hands and a guard appeared to lead me through K’ing’s “humble home.” It was more like an underground mansion. All the rooms were low-ceilinged but so varied that I was certain this could not be the basement of any one building. More probably, these rooms, connected by tunnels, took up much of an entire street of buildings. Most of the rooms were furnished in a manner that was spare but sumptuous. One contained little more than a chair but had an ornate Oriental rug that must have measured twenty by forty feet. Another room contained a series of piers and bridges in carved teak with a subterranean river running through it.

Finally, we came to a door that was locked. The guard unlatched it and ushered me in. In a chair at the far end sat Bok Fu Ying.

She rose quickly when I entered the room, but I could tell she’d been crying. I waited, watching over my shoulder as the guard left the room and locked the door behind us. The room was large and contained a bed, a low table with pillows around it, and a pair of wooden chairs. One would think Bok Fu Ying was a guest save for one thing: guest rooms do not have locks on the outside.

I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and presented it to her. She obviously had no such article in her suit of red silk.

“They took my sword,” she sniffed. “They had pistols. Where is Sir?”

I told her as gently as possible what had occurred and that Barker was back in Newington preparing for the fight at this very moment.

“This is all your fault,” she said when I finished.

It was in my mind to defend myself, if verbally this time. I could have said that if she had only told me who she was, we would not have fought, which was the incident that precipitated this entire ordeal. I could have blamed Barker for teaching me things that were forbidden and then not warning me against doing them in Limehouse. I could have claimed that a clash between K’ing and my employer was inevitable and this lost text merely the catalyst. I could have done all these things and passed the blame to another. But sometimes, one must admit one’s own mistakes.

“Yes,” I told her. “This is all my fault.”

She burst into tears again, and, somehow, I had my good arm around her and she was crying against my shoulder. Her silky hair smelled of what I suspected was jasmine, and every paroxysm reverberated through me. The grave reserve was gone because her guardian’s life was in danger.

“Regardless of the outcome,” I assured her, “you shall be free to go. I assume K’ing will hold to his bargain. If Barker should…well, fail, you will be well looked after by his lawyers.”

“And you? What about you?”

“Oh, my life is forfeit, I’m afraid. K’ing can do with me as he wills. Not that it was much of a life, mind you.”

“Do not talk like that,” she said in a low voice.

“My life has been one long series of mistakes,” I went on. “You have merely arrived in time for the latest.”

“Sir speaks highly of you. He has great faith in you. He says you are ‘coming along.’ That is a compliment for him.”

I directed her to one of the chairs and sat in the other. “I find it amazing that Barker has been informing you of my progress for an entire year, while he has not so much as mentioned your existence to me before last week.”

“It is the Chinese way, Mr. Llewelyn. Tell only what is necessary. Be careful in whom you confide.”

“Fide sed cui vide,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“He has an old wooden shield on the wall of our office with a crest and motto in faded gold. It means ‘Trust, but be careful in whom.’ I can only assume it means that he trusts you, but he doesn’t trust me.”

“You have earned his trust,” Bok Fu Ying said. “You saved his life, remember? Sir says your main problem is impatience. It is the weakness of the Western world. You came to my door because you would not wait for him to reveal who I was.”

“I’m not-” I began, but we heard the sound of the key in the lock.

We both jumped to our feet, but it was only the guard bringing tea and cakes. Miss Winter had a headache and refused the tea. The tension had upset her. I sat and watched over her while she slept on the bed until our evening meal arrived. She talked little while we ate. We were both preoccupied with what would happen at midnight.

Finally, shortly after ten, a guard came and led her away. I demanded to know where he was taking her, but the man spoke no English. At eleven thirty, another came and led me through the tunnel and up into the street again. There was no need now for me to be guarded at gunpoint and the fellow led the way through a crowd of men. Dozens of them, all Chinese, moved toward a warehouse near the river. At some point we all converged, squeezing through a narrow doorway into a building full of benches built around a sunken ring. The seats were quickly filling, but as a guest I was seated ringside. As I came into the circle of risers, I noticed all the wood was new. This ring was what K’ing had hired his carpenters to build, and they must have started close to a week before. It confirmed my suspicion that K’ing must have known all along that Barker would choose trial by combat, despite his show of surprise.

I sat and looked around. Immediately across from me, an arm went up. It was Jimmy Woo, looking beside himself with excitement. I looked away, in any direction but at him. I didn’t trust the fellow. He was playing each side against the other and had proven himself unworthy of our trust.

To the left, I saw Ho glowering at me, arms crossed, and in a particularly foul mood. I avoided his gaze, looking for someone neutral and eventually found him, Dr. Quong, looking down into the ring. Then Barker came out in his trousers and gauntlets, looking calm, waiting for his adversary to arrive. Finally, he came and when he did, I felt my stomach tighten.

The Chinese were chanting his name as he came into the ring. He was called Manchu Jack, and he was immense, close to six and a half feet in height. He looked like Mrs. Shelley’s monster, save that there were no seams where the cadavers had been stitched together. He was imperfectly proportioned, his limbs overlong, giving him an apelike appearance. His face was all planes and hollows; with his enormous cheekbones and thick, hairless brows, I thought him atavistic, one of the missing links that the Darwinists were always claiming they had found. The front of his scalp was shaved in the traditional fashion, but the rest of his hair hung loose down his back to his waist.

He wore the same pants and shoes as my employer, but he wore a short jacket of white cotton that he quickly discarded by the theatrical method of ripping it off. He turned in my direction as he made a slow circle for all to see. From his muscular chest extending down to his wrists was a tattoo, more elaborate than any I’d seen on Barker or Ho. It was a dragon in a dozen colors, writhing and squirming all over his malformed torso. It was the dragon versus the lion, like the dance we had witnessed earlier. I remembered who had been the victor then.

Just then a door opened in the back. I might not have noticed had not everyone in the room, Barker and the massive Chinaman included, turned. Mr. K’ing came down the aisle and took his place on a slightly raised dais. He wore a Chinese suit, long like a frock coat, over trousers and slippers, all of it of the shiniest black silk. He was accompanied by Miss Winter in a gown of sea green. She had mastered her emotions and looked as cold as ice. They sat down in a pair of elegant teak folding chairs, like portable thrones, and he conferred with several men for a moment or two while Barker stood still with his burly arms crossed, regardless of the blunt spikes on his gauntlets. He was upstaged by his opponent, who began warming up, throwing a hundred or more punches in swift succession. I hated to admit it, but Barker looked a mere juvenile in size next to him. Finally, Manchu Jack’s movements came to a close, a flurry of final bets were placed, and Mr. K’ing stood up in front of the crowd.

He spoke in Chinese and no one translated for me, but I am certain it was the customary introduction and explanation of the proceedings. The audience laughed once or twice, making me sure that he added in the politician’s usual stock of jokes and humorous asides. It was over in about a minute, and the competitors in the ring bowed to him, then to each other, and then the fight began.

With a howl, Manchu Jack opened his arms wide as he launched an assault. Barker ducked under his arm and walked away as calmly as if he had passed a cow in a field. The monster turned quickly and lunged onto the Guv’s forearm, spikes and all. Barker’s legs collapsed and he went down, pulling his opponent with him. His foot went up into the center of the dragon tattoo and the hulk was balanced off the ground on Barker’s foot for a second or two, before sailing over my employer’s head and crumping in a heap in a corner of the ring. There was a burst of cheers, none greater than among those of us who called Barker friend. Perhaps, I thought, he will win this handily and we can just go home.

My hopes were dashed in the next moment. Back on his feet, the creature swung a hooking punch that Barker could not get far enough away from. It caught him on the jaw and spun him around. I thought he might have broken it, but apart from settling it back into place, my employer took no notice of it. Manchu Jack began to rain blows down on Barker, ones he had used in his opening warm-up, but Barker countered them one after another as if he knew the same routine. The Guv was as stone-faced as ever, while the other fellow looked more and more angry until the veins in his thick neck stood out like ropes.

He lunged for Barker, but in answer, received a glancing blow across his hairless brow, opening one up. Barker was first to spill claret, and some in the crowd began to regret their wagers. The Chinaman was far from down, however, and he walked to the corner where his white coat lay and used it to wipe the blood from his eyes. Barker had proven to him that for once this wasn’t going to be an easy win, but I’m sure Jack had more than a few tricks to play before this was over.

I looked over at Quong, who still held the railing and stared over it anxiously. Woo was doing serious damage to his silk gloves with his teeth, and Ho acted as if it were he himself in the ring, on the edge of his seat, ready for anything. Only Bok Fu Ying looked on stoically.

Manchu Jack swung out and Barker leaned away, but it was a feint; with his other hand the man seized my employer’s shoulder and pulled him off his feet. In a trice he had Barker on the ground, his knee in Barker’s back, near his damaged kidneys, and began pulling back on his forehead to snap his neck. I saw no way for Barker to stop it, but he insinuated his fingers into the laces of his opponent’s boot and pulled, rolling both of them onto their sides and then their backs.

Jack seized Barker’s head as if it were a melon, but the Guv forced a forearm under his opponent’s knee and began to squeeze it with the other. It was a trick rather like one we had played at school, sticking a pencil between a lad’s fingers and then squeezing them tightly. It must have been excruciating. The Chinaman let go, and in a moment Barker did, too, rolling back onto his feet again. The big man followed, but he wasn’t as sure-footed as before.

Jack tried several jabs like an English boxer, but Barker slapped most of them away. At one point, he grasped one of the wooden buttons of my employer’s tunic, and rather than give purchase, Barker allowed the shirt to be pulled over his head, displaying the battleground of scars, burns, and tattoos he had collected over the course of his adventurous life. A murmur of admiration arose from the crowd.

The next blow brought blood onto Barker’s cheek, three horizontal marks. Manchu Jack screamed and went into a clawing posture like a dragon, while my employer shifted his weight onto his back foot and the toes of his front, hands extended like cat’s paws. Jack uncoiled and attacked, and then they slammed into each other as I’ve heard the sumo wrestlers of Japan do. The monster seized a kick Barker was planting, but my employer came right over his guard and formed his hand into a beak, catching the fellow in the eye. He’d momentarily foresworn the style of the tiger for the more subtle crane. The huge man growled and tried to grapple with Barker, but his eye was too painful. He threw the Guv down and turned, holding his injured orb.

Cyrus Barker was too professional a fighter to let this opening alone, and there seemed to be no referee present to stop the fight. I watched as my employer rose to his feet and took two steps toward his opponent, preparing to kick him. It was another ruse. Manchu Jack spun around, wheeling his leg out like a log, catching Barker with such force across his legs that he cartwheeled through the air. Another groan went through the crowd as the Guv hit the floor like a sack of grain. This is it, I thought, holding my breath.

Reaching down, the Chinaman picked Barker off the ground by cradling his head in his huge hands. My employer hung limp a moment, then his foot came up and gave the fellow a savage kick in the stomach behind him. I expected him to topple, but Manchu Jack absorbed it, grinning menacingly as he encircled the Guv’s neck in a headlock. Barker hung a foot off the ground, his feet dangling, as the Chinese wrestler began to squeeze his skull. Barker had his hands around the man’s arms, but he could get no leverage. The tension was reaching fever pitch, and I was certain now that we were going to lose this battle. My employer’s face had turned beet red and I could see the veins pulsing in his forehead. The Chinaman began shaking him like a dog worrying a rat. All went quiet as I helplessly waited for the sound of Barker’s neck snapping.

There was a snapping sound in the silence, but it was Jack who snarled in his throat. Barker’s hand had found his fingers and snapped two of them. There was a third snap before the man reluctantly let go. Barker seized the fellow’s wrists and braced his feet against the Chinaman’s hips, leaning out at a forty-five-degree angle. Then he suddenly pulled himself back into Jack’s embrace with a thud. Barker jumped down and turned to face his opponent, his arms raised defiantly, his fingers claws. He’d been silent during the fight, but now he gave a defiant roar.

The huge man frowned and tried to raise his right arm, but he grimaced in pain. He raised his left, but that was too painful also. It took me a minute to figure out what had happened. Barker had broken the man’s collarbone with the back of his head. The Chinaman bellowed in anger, trying to throw a kick at Barker, but he ended up falling on his side. My employer went over and put his boot on his opponent’s chest, many of the crowd calling for the coup de grace. Instead, he turned and walked toward Mr. K’ing, raising his fists in triumph. All the men in the room began crying out, myself included, as K’ing stood and acknowledged the end of the match. Barker had won, if just barely. The Guv bowed to Mr. K’ing and limped out of the ring. A litter was brought out and the huge Chinaman moved onto it. It took six men to lift it.

The hall was abuzz with men discussing the fight. Ho had a triumphant look on his face, and I soon found out why when a man came up and handed him his winnings. Had I asked him, I’m sure he would have said he had known Barker would win all along. I was merely glad the Guv had survived.

Straddling the handrail and landing in the ring, I went looking for Barker. It was dark in the short tunnel under the seats, until I came to a fork, going right and left. I tried the right, bursting into a room. A Chinese doctor was treating Manchu Jack’s injuries, but Barker was nowhere to be found. I ran out of the room and down the hall to the left, running into a room on the opposite side. There I found my employer, seated at a table, looking rather the worse for wear, while Dr. Quong attended to his wounds. Across from him sat Mr. K’ing himself. They were drinking tea as if the two were old acquaintances instead of adversaries.

Something told me I was being rude, blundering in like this, so I bowed without thinking. Mr. K’ing nodded his head and Barker gave me a wan smile with the corner of his mouth. His jaw was swollen and he had abrasions all over his neck and face.

“Come, sir,” Mr. K’ing said to me, “and try some tea. Miss Winter has been released and sent home in a cab. I was just telling your employer that I have never seen a better fight. It was a treat to see the great Shi Shi Ji in the ring, and every man here tonight shall have a story to tell his grandchildren. This fight shall be discussed in ports and river towns around the world.”

I took one of the dishes of tea and tossed it off in one gulp. Like all Chinese tea, it tasted like dishwater.