The Limehouse Text

29

The next morning Barker and Dr. Applegate arrived at our door simultaneously. In Mac’s room, the doctor checked my employer’s jaw, swabbed iodine onto the scratches on his cheek, and asked him several private questions concerning his kidney function. Apparently, Barker gave satisfactory answers, for the doctor pronounced him on the mend. He also inspected Mac’s leg and said our butler would regain full use of it soon and could return to his duties.

“What about me?” I asked. “Could you cut off my cast?”

“You are not my patient, young man,” Applegate told me. “I would not presume to interfere.”

Quacks they are, and charlatans, I thought, especially when they collude.

Coming out into the hall, Barker did something he’d been wanting to do for days. He sacked Madame Dummolard. It would have taken me a half hour of blustering and reassuring to get it done, but Barker is a blunt man. It took him exactly one sentence.

“Thank you for all you have done,” he said to her in the hall, “but Mac is recovering well and we no longer have need of your services.”

I was preparing for a tidal wave of vitriolic French as Madame took in a lungful of air. Just when I thought she would burst out, however, she slowly exhaled.

“Very well, monsieur,” she replied. “As you wish. Ladies! Allons! We must pack our bags.”

That was that. Had it been left to me I’m certain there would have been hysteria all up and down the hall, but people think twice before facing down Cyrus Barker. Twenty minutes later, Madame came down with her maids and suitcases. She shot me an annoyed look.

“What is it, Madame?”

“Cochons,” she said. “All men are pigs.”

She went into the kitchen, perhaps to take out her frustrations on her husband, but for once, he would not rise to the bait. Eventually, a vehicle came to the door, and she and her entourage decamped.

“Peace,” Barker pronounced with some satisfaction. “Peace and tranquility. I must send for my suitcases from the office. I shall sleep in my own bed tonight.” He went upstairs to his room.

Left alone in the hall, I took a few steps and stood in Mac’s doorway. He was staring down at his bandaged leg and wiggling his toes.

“So, it’s back to work soon, then?” I asked. “No more reading Mrs. Braddon?”

“Very funny,” he said acidly.

“How did the romancing go, by the way? Are you betrothed to any of the nurses?”

“No, drat the luck. She was married.”

“What about the maid? She couldn’t have been more than eighteen and she was a stunner.”

“I’ll give you that, but no thank you. Her name is Clothilde, and she is Madame’s daughter by a previous marriage.”

“Is she, by Jove? I suppose we are well out of it, then.” I tried to imagine having Madame Dummolard for a mother-in-law, patting and kissing you one minute and shying bric-a-brac at your head while screaming gutter French at you the next. “I’m sure it will be good to get back on your feet again. I know I can’t wait to get this cast off.”

Mac sat up on his bed. “Oh, yes. You know the first thing I’m going to do? I’m going to take some soap and hot water to these floors. I won’t rest until I get whatever concoction they put on it scrubbed off. I’m going to mop everything and put a wood preserver on it. I have the recipe in one of my books.”

I was suddenly in danger of being bored to death. Maccabee’s idea of a good time differed dramatically from my own. I nodded absently as he prattled on until Barker came down the stairs. I offered to step out and find a cab.

All that day in our offices in Whitehall, I was aware of the impending confrontation at Ho’s later that evening. Would the killer be unmasked, or was he too canny to fall into Barker’s trap? Would his staying away be taken as a sign of guilt? I could not say. At one point I was convinced there was something wrong with the clock in our office and it couldn’t possibly be only one o’clock in the afternoon, but just then Big Ben chimed once. If there was a conspiracy, it had to be on a much grander scale.

As for Barker, he sat most of the day, smoking or drinking tea, deep in thought. I believe he was formulating questions but I dared not ask.

At five we left the office, bound for Ho’s. When we arrived, everything was almost ready. Inspector Poole came in with all the weight of Scotland Yard behind him. Half the clientele of Ho’s restaurant hurriedly finished their meals or simply left them unfinished and sidled away toward the tunnel and freedom. I noticed Poole and Ho did not look each other in the eye.

The inspector came over to Barker and they conferred in hushed tones.

“Did you get it?” Barker asked.

“Yes. Your man gave it to me. Where shall we sit?”

“There,” the Guv said, pointing to a chair. “Are you prepared?”

Poole nodded and then sat down in the seat Barker indicated. I tried to see if he were nervous about whoever was coming, but he was too deserving of his position to betray any emotion. Whatever this big event, everyone was either keeping their own counsel or looking a trifle bored.

A waiter shuffled in with a tray of tea, followed by Ho, who deposited a large tureen on the table. Perhaps at least we’d have a spot of dinner. Barker nodded to Ho, who tucked his hands into the yoke of his apron and to Poole, who had his arms crossed, sitting in his chair.

“We are ready.”

The first to arrive was Pollock Forbes. He shook hands with Poole when Barker introduced them. I could see Poole tried to ascertain just who he was and what part of the proceedings he would have a hand in, but neither Forbes nor Barker was forthcoming.

I heard Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch before I saw him. His leather boots clicked across the restaurant floor. More silently, Jimmy Woo followed him.

“Have you got it?” Campbell-Ffinch demanded eagerly as he swept into the room.

Barker ignored the question. “Please be seated. The owner shall serve tea shortly.”

“Tea? I don’t have time for tea,” the Foreign Office man snapped. “I want to see the book. I demand to interview this fellow you have in custody.”

“We have no one in custody yet, sir. All in good time,” Barker answered.

“For sheer brass, Barker,” Campbell-Ffinch said, “you have no equal. Very well. It’s your show for now. You’ve got just enough rope to hang yourself.” He dropped into a vacant chair, a look of disgust on his face.

“Mr. Barker,” Woo spoke up. “Surely you could have found a more seemly place for a meeting than this notorious establishment. My reputation suffers frightfully to be seen here. There are far better Chinese restaurants if that is your desire-”

“Thank you, Mr. Woo, for your concern,” Barker said. “This case began here and it shall end here. I assure you, sir, the tea is quite adequate. Ho and I share the same merchant. Please take a seat.”

Campbell-Ffinch gave a hard look in Ho’s direction. “I say, is this chap going to stay here the entire time? This is an important matter for Her Majesty’s empire, and this fat fellow is a known provocateur. The Foreign Office has had its eye on this place for some time. It would require but a command to shut it down permanently.”

Ho’s eyes looked like two slits in his face. “Your agents are as subtle as water buffalo. A child could recognize them.”

“Gentlemen,” Barker warned.

Just then Campbell-Ffinch’s eye caught that of his old university classmate. “Forbes, what in blazes are you doing here?”

“Keeping an eye on you, Lonnie,” Forbes drawled. “Seeing that you stay out of trouble.”

Hestia Petulengro and her swain arrived next. She looked carefully at the men in the room before coming inside. She was the only woman I had ever seen at Ho’s. She towed Charlie Han along and then sat down beside me.

“I need to explain,” she said to me in a low voice.

“You don’t, actually,” I responded. “It was just dinner, after all, not a proposal of marriage. I’m not exactly overjoyed by your personal arrangements, but of course you are free to make your choice.”

“No chance for another dinner sometime, then?”

“Well, not while he is living in your house, no. I do prefer no audience when I kiss you.”

She smiled, but what it meant exactly I could not tell. I was distracted by the arrival of Mr. K’ing himself. He had not sent an emissary but had actually come in person. The triad leader swept through the door and set his wide-brimmed hat upon the table.

“I cannot be in this room!” Woo announced. “This fellow is a known criminal, and as an official of the Asian Aid Society, I must not be seen to have dealings with such a person!”

I was about to ask why he should be so particular now, when I had seen him get out of Mr. K’ing’s cab the other night, but I stopped myself. Barker might not care to have that information revealed.

“Mr. Woo, I warn you that the text must not be translated for the Foreign Office,” K’ing stated. “It is the personal property of the Chinese imperial government and must not be read by the English.”

“It is not your part to say what the property of the imperial government is or is not,” Woo answered. “You are a common criminal.”

“Nonsense,” K’ing countered. “I am a businessman.”

As they bickered, I heard the last invited guest behind me before I saw him. One could not mistake the sound of hobnails on a wooden floor.

“’Zis a private party?” Patrick Hooligan spoke in his raspy voice. “’Ello, K’ingy, old boy.”

Now it was K’ing’s turn to be uncomfortable. “You are in triad territory,” he snapped.

“Yes, well, I got-what’s the word?-I got dispensation. An invite from old Push hisself here. Command performance, you might say.”

Hooligan took a seat at the table and immediately started cleaning his nails with a knife, as if the proceedings did not interest him at all.

We were all assembled. At the head of the T-shaped table, Barker and Poole sat. I flanked Barker while Ho stood at his elbow. Down the right side sat Hettie Petulengro, Charlie Han, and Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch. Pollock Forbes sat at the foot, and on the left were Patrick Hooligan, Jimmy Woo, and Mr. K’ing.

Barker stood to address the group. “I have called you here today because you are all involved in the investigation of the death of Inspector Bainbridge or my late assistant Quong or one of several other murders that have occurred. I am not implying that anyone in this room is the killer, merely that each of you is involved in some fashion.”

The room erupted. Everyone began speaking at once, denying the accusations and blaming each other.

“Silence!” Poole boomed. “You can take your medicine here or you can take it down in A Division. Which’ll it be?”

That silenced the group. Barker surveyed them and continued.

“Thank you. Let me begin by saying that one of you is not as he seems. Forbes?”

Pollock Forbes knit his fingers in front of him. “Ah, yes,” he began. “At Mr. Barker’s request, I did some investigating at Cambridge. It appeared they do have a record of a James Woo, a student from China, but no one there seems to recall him, and if anything, I think Mr. Woo here is rather memorable. I took a closer look at the registry entry. I am afraid it was a forgery.”

Barker turned to Woo and said, “Would you care to comment, Mr. Woo, if that is your name?”

Woo looked a little deflated. He removed his monocle and put it in his pocket.

“Very well, Mr. Barker,” he said, adopting a more serious tone. “You leave me no choice. I am an agent of the imperial government,” he explained. “I was sent to recover the text by the Empress herself. When I arrived here, it became necessary to adopt an identity and search for it street by street. I chose to work as an interpreter at the Asian Aid Society, so I could get to know the Chinese in England. I inserted the record in the files at Cambridge.”

“You also worked for the Foreign Office and for Mr. K’ing,” Barker pointed out. “That’s quite a conflict of interest.”

Woo looked uncomfortably at the triad leader. “It became necessary to get to know Mr. K’ing’s operations and what the Foreign Office was doing to recover the text. I thought it likely K’ing had the text in his possession.”

“If you had acquired the text, what would you have done with it?” Barker asked.

“I would have taken it back to the Forbidden City, old sp-sorry. I would give it to the Dowager Empress.”

“And what would she do with it?”

“Whatever she wishes, of course. It would become her property. I assume it would be watched by armed guards with the other treasures in the palace. Not that it is a treasure, mind you.”

“It would not be returned to the Xi Jiang Temple?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Woo said. “It is best to keep it in the Forbidden City. The area near the Xi Jiang monastery has been unstable since the Heavenly War. The south is still full of revolutionaries, anxious to overthrow the Manchus.”

“I can’t believe this,” Campbell-Ffinch finally spoke up. “This little popinjay, an agent for the Chinese government?”

“Do shut up, Campbell-Ffinch,” Woo said. “The hardest part of my assignment has been working with you. If all Foreign Office men are as incompetent as you, I fear for this country of yours.”

“Well, I never!” the English agent blustered.

Looking across, I saw a slight smile on Pollock Forbes’s face.

Barker turned to Patrick Hooligan. “And you, Mr. Hooligan. If you had the text, what would you do with it?”

“I told yer, Push, I’d sell it. Sell it to the highest bidder. All this talk about it not having worth is codswallop. Start threatening to sell it to someone else and you’d be surprised at how high the biddin’ can go.”

“What would you do with the money?”

Hooligan looked over at his rival, Mr. K’ing, who was eyeing him as if he were vermin. Barker and I knew he’d use it to gain more power and influence in the East End, but he wasn’t about to say it in front of K’ing. “Dunno. P’raps buy a good racehorse. You can make a powerful lot o’ money with a good racehorse.”

“I see,” Barker said. He turned and faced the other side of the table. “Miss Petulengro, let us say for the sake of argument that you owned the manuscript. What would you do with it?”

“I did have the manuscript,” she pointed out. “It means naught to me. It’s just a book with stick figures in it. I can’t read it. It’s nothing but trouble as far as I’m concerned. I’d give it to you. You might be a copper, but you seem straight as an arrow to me.”

She couldn’t help looking at me and I at her. If Barker noticed the fraternization between his assistant and one of the witnesses, he didn’t let on. Instead, he turned to Charlie Han.

“And you, Mr. Han. Let us say I were able to put the text into your hands right now. What would you do with it?”

Han shrugged. “I dunno. I cannot read. I sell it, buy more betel nut, if Hettie don’t want it.”

Barker turned to Mr. K’ing. “Sir,” he said. “Shall I repeat the question I have asked everyone else?”

K’ing ran a finger over his thin mustache. “I have no personal interest in the text, Mr. Barker. I realize it is dangerous. I suppose I would see it delivered to China on the Blue Funnel line and into the hands of a responsible person, who would take it back to the Xi Jiang Temple.”

Barker nodded. “And you, Mr. Campbell-Ffinch, I suppose you would-”

“I’d give it to the Foreign Office, of course,” the man said. “The book would be analyzed, perhaps with the intention of producing a training manual for us, if these techniques are all that they are purported to be. After that, who knows? It might be passed on to Her Majesty’s army.”

“Mr. Forbes,” Barker said, turning to the last person seated at the table, “you’ve shown some interest in this case. If you had the text, what would you do with it?”

Forbes leaned back in his chair and raised a hand to his lips. I noticed for the first time an insignia on his ring, a cross inside a crown. It was a symbol, I realized, of some secret society.

“I’d take it to a place of safekeeping, where the knowledge would not see the light of day,” he replied.

“I see,” Barker said. “Thank you, Pollock. This has been very enlightening. Seven individuals have given me as many answers.” He paced a circuit around the room and we all watched him. I knew he was about to spring something upon us, I just wished I knew what. Barker looked slowly about the room, from face to face.

“I am now willing to entertain offers for the book,” he stated at last.

Everyone began talking at once, apart from Poole and Forbes, who I noted remained silent. Hestia Petulengro began calling Barker names. K’ing conferred with Woo, and Campbell-Ffinch was crowing that my employer had really had the text in his possession the entire time. Hooligan’s raspy voice was heard over all.

“That leaves me out, I reckon. I can get yer a good price for it, but I can’t bring enough ready to the table to make it worth your while.”

“Mr. Woo, if we may still call you that, are you prepared on behalf of your government to make an offer?”

“Provided the authenticity of the text can be verified, I am authorized to go up to a specified amount. We have always thought that at some point we might have to purchase the text in order to get it back.”

“And you, Campbell-Ffinch, are you prepared on the part of Her Majesty’s government to put forward an offer?”

“I shall have to speak with my superiors, but I believe we may be able to do so. But what’s he doing here?” the Foreign Office man said, pointing toward Poole, who had been sitting and watching everything.

“Inspector Poole is here to see that order is maintained. That is all.”

I knew it had to be a lie, as was Barker’s entire offer. Poole had his eyes glued on Barker, not sure whether to agree or not.

“What about you, Mr. K’ing? Are you prepared to enter into the bidding?”

“I am, but only with the intention of doing with it as I told you.”

“Of course. The winning bidder may do with the text whatever he wishes. Excellent. We have three bidders, then. Who shall vouch for its authenticity? I could translate it easily, but it is not for me to judge, being the one who shall produce it.”

All three bidders offered their services, including Campbell-Ffinch, whose knowledge of Chinese must have been rudimentary at best. Barker looked about, trying to choose.

Finally, he said, “Mr. Woo, I think your interpreter’s skills make you the most informed person to look over the text.”

“Thank you, old fellow. Quite decent of you.”

“Llewelyn, will you give Mr. Woo your seat?” I stood and moved to the side, offering my chair to Woo, who slid into it ready to see the much-sought-after text. Poole looked at Barker for instructions.

“Show him, Terence,” the Guv said.

Reluctantly, Poole reached into his pocket and removed the packet we had picked up from the pawnbroker two weeks before. He set it down on the table, and Woo grabbed it eagerly, sliding the book out of the protective envelope and opening the cover. It wasn’t the text. I recognized it immediately as a book from Barker’s own library, one of a handful of Chinese texts my employer kept on his shelf.

“No, wait,” Woo cried. “This isn’t-”

Before he could move, there was a click as Poole’s police regulation bracelets locked onto Woo’s right wrist. A second click almost simultaneous with the first came as Barker clapped a second about the fellow’s left one. The two detectives had carried them tucked in their coat sleeves, locked about their own wrists. With a sudden shove, all three of their chairs were tipped back and hit the floor as Barker and Poole held the struggling Woo. From the far side of the table, Ho pulled a set of manacles from the tureen and stepped forward to lock them on Woo’s ankles. In a trice, they had him as immobilized as any man could be while the rest of us leapt to our feet in astonishment.