I didn’t care for Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch on the spot. He seemed to be looking down his patrician nose at me, the way Palmister Clay always had, the blackguard who had sent me to prison. Though he was still in his twenties, the fellow already had the look of an established Old Boy. I thought him the kind that would rise from position to position through dropping the right names and mentioning the right schools until his future was assured. Some people float through life while the rest of us pull the barge.
“Barker, have a seat,” he said, not bothering to rise. My employer ignored the slight, or at least seemed to. He stepped back into the hall and summoned a waiter into the room.
“Bring us a bottle of port, Sandeman if you have it, and a large bowl of walnuts. Put it on my account.”
Campbell-Ffinch raised an eyebrow. Obviously, he had not thought the Guv would be a member here. Having put the fellow in his place, Barker settled into a chair, where he dug into his tobacco pouch like a horse going to his oats.
“You wanted to see me, then?” he asked, stuffing his pipe. “You have a most colorful associate.”
“Oh, that Woo fellow,” he answered, lighting a Cuban cigar from the lamp. “He’s hardly an associate. He works for the Asiatic Aid Society as an interpreter. The office has used him on several occasions, but he’s a bit barmy. Been here too long. Fancies himself an English gentleman. He’s more like a trained ape, if you ask me.”
I’ll admit Woo was a bit eccentric, but Campbell-Ffinch was just the sort of fellow to see anyone beneath him socially as being on a lower evolutionary scale, myself included. Aristocratic privilege is one thing, if one appreciates it, but accepting it as one’s due and the rest of the world as mere vermin is quite another.
“So, what can I do for you, sir?” Barker asked.
“There is a book that has made its way to London,” the man said. “The Chinese government is keen to have it back.”
“You wish to hire me to locate it?”
Campbell-Ffinch puffed on his cigar and blew the smoke out slowly. “Not if you’ve got it already.”
I swallowed. The manuscript was probably still in Barker’s pocket, since he wouldn’t let it out of his sight.
“I have thousands of books. What makes you think I would be interested in this one?”
“You know the one I mean. We traced it to a pawnshop in Limehouse this afternoon, a pawnshop you just happened to stop into yesterday morning with Inspector Bainbridge. The same Inspector Bainbridge who had his brains blown out a half hour later.”
“They were not blown out,” Barker corrected. “He was shot between the eyes with a small caliber bullet. Also, he was an associate, if you do not mind.”
“So, Mr. Barker,” he said, ignoring the remark, “do you have the book or are we to believe the fellow managed to get it off you in the dark in that blasted tunnel?”
“I am most sorry to disappoint you,” my employer said, “but I am not currently in possession of it.” He sucked on his pipe as serenely as if he were in his garden. I wondered what was wrong with giving the book over to the Foreign Office and having done with it, other than the obvious one of not giving anything to Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch, Esquire, and helping him further up the social ladder.
“Pity,” the Foreign Office man said, stabbing his cigar out in an ashtray as the port and walnuts arrived. “I have been following that book all the way from China. The Dowager Empress very much wants the book safely back in China again.”
For a moment we were pouring glasses and cracking nuts. They were, anyway. Cracking nuts was a bit beyond me with only one usable hand.
“How is Hsu Tzi these days?” Barker asked. “I have not spoken to her in five years or more.”
“She is well,” Campbell-Ffinch answered tightly. “Or so I’ve heard. You have some interesting friends. In fact, one of them has sent you a message all the way from China.” He reached in his pocket and removed a small packet of paper with a seal on it. Barker took the papers into his hands.
“The seal has been broken,” he noted.
“We are the Foreign Office, old man. We don’t give information from one party to another without inspecting it.”
My employer frowned and opened the packet. One sheet, in white, had been wrapped in an outer layer of thick paper the color of saffron. The writing was in Chinese script so perfect it might have been hung on the wall. Barker translated it and read it out loud for my benefit.
To Shi Shi Ji,
Greetings to you, my brother, from the Plum Blossom Clinic. Information has reached me here of a most alarming nature. A rare and secret forbidden text has been stolen from the Xi Jiang Temple and two monks murdered to obtain it. The apparent thief, a monk named Chow Li Po, has been traced to a vessel bound for your country. It is imperative that the text be restored. We understand each other.
Huang Feihong
“What is that last bit?” Campbell-Ffinch demanded. “How do you understand each other?”
“He reminds me that I am in his debt. His father was my teacher, which makes him my elder brother. I can deny him nothing. Very well. I shall look into the matter, though the text shall not be as easy to acquire as the first time. Anything may have happened to it now. I shall do what I can to aid the Foreign Office, but my first priority is still finding the killer of my late assistant, Quong.”
“Damn it, man, this has international repercussions. The whole of Her Majesty’s government’s relations with the Imperial Court is at risk. What difference does the death of one Chinaman make-or a dozen, or a hundred, for that matter?”
“It makes a difference to me.”
“I heard you were a rough player, Barker. I must say, I am not impressed.”
In answer, Barker picked up a handful of walnuts and crushed them between his thumb and forefinger. The fragments rained down on the table between us.
“Come, Llewelyn.”
6
Barker hailed a cab and consulted his watch. “We are cutting it fine. We must get to the inquest in time, as we are to be witnesses.”
“Are the law courts in the City?” I asked.
“They are. Normally, inquests are held there, but it is up to the discretion of the coroner where he holds court. In rural areas it is often in a public house. In this case, it will be at Ho’s.”
“Ho’s?” I asked. “You mean he has not opened his tearoom again?”
“He never had the chance. After we left yesterday, the coroner arrived and ordered Poole to seal the room. I assume that was in order for the jurymen to see the tunnel and how everything is situated there. The coroner is Dr. Vandeleur.”
Vandeleur had been in our first case together. I could never forget how he had wanted to cut up a corpse because the victim had been crucified and he desired to write a piece about it for The Lancet. Now it would be we who were vivisected, if only in the dock as witnesses.
At two o’clock, Dr. Vandeleur was sitting behind a table facing the jury, in a spotless black frock coat, while a chair was reserved on the side of his table for witnesses. We and other interested persons sat in chairs along the sides of the room. I was rather nervous, knowing I must eventually give evidence in front of a crowd, but at the same time it was rather thrilling. Then I remembered why I was there-poor Bainbridge-and I was ashamed of my feelings. His widow, it was reported, had suffered nervous collapse and been sedated with laudanum. She would not be in attendance.
Vandeleur called the inquest to order and gave preliminary instructions to the thirteen men of the jury. Being a medical man rather than a legal one like most coroners, Vandeleur gave them all a brief lecture of what he had discovered during the postmortem. As expected, the cause of death had been due to the one bullet through the brain and Bainbridge had been in perfect health for a man of his age.
Next, the jury was taken back to the tunnel and the pertinent facts were presented. I am certain that the gentlemen were mystified as to how Ho’s was run and what its exact purpose was. Vandeleur and Poole were interested in that themselves.