The door opened and there he was, the Honorable Palmister Clay, as sneering and officious as ever. I hated his smug good looks and air of superiority. Let Barker handle this, I thought. I put my head down, adjusting my bowler.
“Who in hell are you?” he demanded. That was Clay. He hadn’t changed a hair since our days at university.
Barker snapped one of his cards out in that way he has and passed it over, still saying nothing.
“I don’t need a private enquiry agent.” He tried to close the door in our faces, but the Guv moved his boot forward, insinuating it against the frame.
“I am not soliciting custom, Mr. Clay.”
“Who is it, Palmsy?” a feminine voice said behind my old enemy. Palmsy?
A girl’s head peered around his shoulder. Not a woman’s, a girl’s. No more than thirteen, I should say, but in a frothy dressing gown, her hair up, and very adult-looking pearls in her ears. She was a child trying to act like a woman. This was the paramour his wife did not know about? My eye flicked down her arm. There was no ring on her finger. I wondered what Mrs. Clay looked like. She must be close to twice this young chit’s age.
“Nobody,” Clay told her flatly. “Get some decent clothes on, Zena.”
The girl disappeared again. Clay usually got what he wanted but not this time, I hoped. Please, please not this time.
“Get out of the hall,” he said irritably, ushering us in. So far he had not recognized me. “So, I presume you are in the employ of my wife. I’ve got plenty of money, you know. I think perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement.”
“I don’t care about your money or your marital indiscretions, Mr. Clay. I am investigating the disappearances of several young girls in the area, girls not much younger than your lady friend.”
“How would I know anything about that?” he demanded.
“You are keeping a young woman here, not two streets from where at least one girl has disappeared. Scotland Yard would be very interested in this piece of information.”
“Oh, so that’s your game, is it? Blackmail? I might have known. How much do you intend to rook me for?”
“I have no interest in blackmail,” my employer said, unperturbed, “but I would like to know how you set up your personal arrangements here. Who introduced the two of you?”
“That’s none of your damned business, Barker.”
“How does one get set up in one of these little places, I wonder?” the Guv mused aloud. “Is it discussed at the gentlemen’s clubs or are the sons of lords approached by the disreputable lot who run these establishments? This really bears investigation.”
Clay blanched. “Look,” he said, licking his lips, “perhaps I was a bit hasty. I met Zena in Whitechapel. I fancied her and offered to put her up here.”
“I see. And her surname is…?”
“Harris, and that’s all the information you’ll get out of me. She is of legal age. I shall speak to my solicitor. I will not be harassed in this manner by a common detective.”
“I have not been harassing you, Mr. Clay. You would definitely know if I were harassing you. You know nothing of the missing girls? They were violated and strangled.”
“Look, I don’t know anything about any bloody girls. You’re wasting my valuable time. Now take your man and go!” He opened the door and waved us to leave.
“Hello, Palmsy,” I said, raising my head so that we were face-to-face.
Clay let out a curse. “Tommy Llewelyn. I might have known. I wondered what rock you’d crawled under. So, you’ve got your revenge, have you? Hired a private ’tec to catch me with a girl, and me a married man.”
“As a matter of fact, I work for Mr. Barker.”
“I assumed you’d be dead by now. Thought you might have drunk yourself into an early grave.”
“I was wondering the same about you,” I said tartly.
“Actually, I’m glad you’re alive,” he countered. He slapped me smartly across the face. “I challenge you to a fight. We never properly finished our little match.”
I was ready to begin the match right there and then, but Barker thrust a wall-like shoulder between us.
“I accept,” I snapped. “Name the time and place, and I’ll be there. This time, you won’t have two friends holding my arms.”
“Let us say nine o’clock, next Thursday evening. The German Gymnasium. Queensberry rules.”
“I’ll be looking forward to it!”
“We shall see. Well, gentlemen, unless you intend to march me down to the closest constabulary-which I assure you my father, Lord Hesketh, will have something to say about-I suggest you get off my property.”
We left the building and began to walk north to Green Street.
“I believe you promised me not to enter into a fight,” Barker finally growled.
“No, sir. I promised not to challenge him. He challenged me. I merely accepted.”
“Tell me, lad, how many times have you had a pair of boxing gloves on your hands in your life?”
I thought about that a moment. “Well, just once, actually.”
“And how old were you?”
“Eleven.”
“And what happened?”
“I was thrashed, as I recall.”
“Whereas, Mr. Clay attends the German Gymnasium regularly, from the sound of it.”
“But-” I began, but my employer interrupted.
“He is six inches taller than you, has a longer arm length, and outweighs you by almost two stone.”
“But my training, sir. I’ve been training with you for months.”
“Your training will be useless in the ring. You’ll be fighting under Queensberry rules, with your hands encased in gloves. Yours will feel like pillows, whereas his shall feel more like lead weights when they strike you.”
It finally began to sink in then. It was I who was going to be publicly humiliated. Palmister Clay really was going to get what he wanted. “Blast,” I said.
“And you’ll get no sympathy from me, lad. I warned you. You got yourself into this mess, and you’ll just have to fight your way out. Or take your drubbing like a man.”
11
“Where are we going, sir?” I asked. We were now heading south on his instructions. North, I could see, or west, but not south, unless we were going back to the docks.
“Reverend McClain’s.”
I was under no misapprehension that the Guv was in need of spiritual advice. It was true that the Reverend Andrew McClain was a firebrand in the pulpit of his Mile End Mission, but more people knew him as Handy Andy, former heavyweight bare-knuckle champion of London in the days before Queensberry rules. He could still deliver a walloping right cross and was Barker’s sparring partner. I wondered if he intended for Andy to give me lessons, but the Guv was down to single-word sentences, which was not a good sign. I had used up all his goodwill for the day with my rash actions.
The Mile End Mission is entered by a latched gate covered in peeling brown paint. Inside, there is a pump in the center of a courtyard adjacent to the old church, which caused me to assume this had once been a stable yard. We stopped and washed our hands at the pump, which was as close to a ritual for my employer as I’d ever seen.
The place seemed deserted when we entered. We searched all through the building, until a clanking sound finally drew us down to the cellar. There the reverend sat on the floor in his shirtsleeves, covered in rust, removing a length of pipe. He rubbed a drop of sweat from his nose with the back of his hand, transferring the rust to his face, and glanced at us without interest.
“Plumbing?” Barker asked.
“Boiler,” came the reply. “Pipes are full of scale. Come to lend a hand?”
“I don’t know the first thing about cleaning boiler pipes,” Barker said.
“Nor I, but it hasn’t stopped me.”
“You’ll only break it further. Call someone in. I shall pay for it. I have something else for you to do, something more in your line.”