I closed my notebook and devoted my attention to the idea of lunch. I found a pub in Fleet Street where all the journalists went, and had a nice steak and kidney pie and a cup of coffee. On the way back, I dawdled for a while in the bookshops of Charing Cross Road. Afterward, I went back to the office and found myself crowded on the doorstep by Inspector Poole. I opened the door for him, and he took one of the chairs in front of Barker’s desk, while I sat at my own. Barker seemed not to have moved since I left. Goodness knows what he had done or if he had eaten lunch. If he kept this up, Jenkins would have to dust him.
“Terry.”
“Cyrus,” Poole said. He looked as tight as a coiled spring. “I thought I would tell you that we’re letting Ho go free tomorrow.”
“I see,” Barker said. “There was no reason for having arrested him at all.”
“You know what sort of odd characters go into his place,” Poole said. “Anarchists, socialists, communists, exiles, Lascars, Orientals-”
“Enquiry agents,” I put in.
“Lad,” Barker warned. “Ho is not responsible for who walks in his door, Terence. He does not advertise in radical newspapers or cater to criminals. He runs an honest tearoom.”
“I have information that he has close ties with a criminal named Mr. K’ing. In fact, Commissioner Henderson believes it is possible that Ho is Mr. K’ing.”
Barker grunted. “That will be news to both of them. I never thought I would credit Henderson with too much imagination.”
“We’ve taken good care of him,” Poole insisted. “Better than most foreigners by a long chalk. Of course, anything you can do to help us in our enquiry would be helping him, as well.”
“I see,” the Guv said. “You want me to do your work for you, then you’ll release him.”
Poole frowned. “Look, Cyrus, I don’t think you understand how close you are to being arrested yourself. The old man’s considering it even now. There are many at the Yard who think that you killed Bainbridge yourself, you and the nipper here.”
“Nipper?” I interrupted. “There’s no need to be-”
“Look, Cyrus,” Poole went on, as if I weren’t in the room. “I’m up against it. You have no idea what sort of pressure I’m under to solve the case. I need help. I thought we might share information.”
“‘Share,’ is it?” Barker asked. I noticed his Scot’s accent always got a bit thicker when his blood was up. “You mean, you tell me what I already know, while I give you what has taken me days to uncover?”
For once, Poole smiled. “Something like that.” It broke the tension. We all chuckled over it. Even Barker gave up his stony reserve.
“What thought you of Bainbridge’s blotter?”
Poole tugged at his side-whiskers. “If what Bainbridge thought is correct, all the deaths that occurred just after New Year’s may have been the work of one killer, though he didn’t know who it was. We have your assistant, Quong; the Chinese sailor Chow; and the Gypsy who ran a chandler’s shop, whose name I won’t even try to pronounce. Beyond the fact that they were all foreigners, the only connection they seem to have had was a book. The book, the book, the bloody book! Didn’t you say in court it was a boxing manual? Who kills three people over a boxing manual?”
“It’s a rather special manual, Terence,” Barker explained. “It teaches, for one thing, a way to disrupt the body’s internal functions, killing someone without a sign.”
Poole grunted in disbelief. “You mean like the Chinaman, Chow, dead on the line without a scratch.”
“Precisely.”
“If such a thing existed, it could change my work considerably. How would we know a common heart attack from murder?”
“It gets worse,” Barker said, crossing his arms. “Death need not be instantaneous. With the training from the book, one could disrupt a system-let us say the circulative system-of someone in the morning merely by touch, and that person could die that night after a normal day’s activity. Or the next day or a week later.”
“Fantasy,” Poole scoffed. “It’s all Chinese bugaboo. I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Admittedly, I only read it in the book. I wouldn’t believe it myself without more proof.”
“I might have that proof,” I muttered.
They both looked at me, and it was a moment before the Guv spoke. “Explain.”
“Well, sir, I came across another murder, I think. It happened the second of January. A sailor named Chambers was found in his bed, dead from kidney failure. The inquest the next day ruled natural causes, but Chambers wasn’t just anyone. He was a first mate aboard the Ajax. I think he might have spent his first night ashore at Coffin’s with Chow. Chow might have given the book to Chambers for safekeeping, warning him that if anything happened to him to get rid of the book quickly.
“Chambers got rid of his effects the next day at Petulengro’s after Chow was found dead. I’ve got it all in my notebook and was going to type it up for you.”
“See that I get a copy,” Poole said.
“Certainly.”
There was a pause, and I got that feeling along my spine that things were about to get tense again.
Poole took in a bushelful of air and blew it out. “So, where’s the book, Cyrus?”
“Don’t ask me that, Terry.”
“Where is the book?”
“Are you asking me for Scotland Yard or the Foreign Office?”
“The book is evidence in several murders now. We must have it.”
“As you said, it’s just a book.”
“Then give me the blasted thing!”
Barker tilted his head back, as if looking up at the ceiling. “As I said before, I don’t have it to give. It is not currently in my possession.”
The inspector pulled one of Barker’s cigars from the box on his desk and bit the end off savagely before lighting it. Blowing out a puff of smoke, he leaned back in his seat. “I don’t believe you.”
“You know I deplore lying,” the Guv said. “A man’s word should be his bond.”
“That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t lie if it were important.”
“I am not lying to you, Terry. I do not have it.”
“But you did,” Poole insisted.
“I did.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I gave it to a Chinaman.”
“Quit playing games with me, Cyrus!” Poole snapped. “There are over five hundred Chinamen in Limehouse. Which one did you give it to?”
Barker said nothing.
“You know there’s only so much I can do to protect a friend,” the inspector went on. “If the Foreign Office told me to tear apart your offices, I’d have to do it. If they said, ‘Toss this fellow into Wormwood Scrubs,’ I wouldn’t be slipping you a key.”
Barker’s silence was worse than any words that might have been said.
“Have it your own way, then. If you want things official, then official they shall be.” Poole got up and stubbed out the cigar in the ashtray on the desk. “Your cigars are stale,” he complained.
On his way out, he buttonholed me. “I want a copy of that report. In fact, I want a copy of all the reports you found.”
“They are a matter of public record,” I retorted.
“You’re as bad as he is!” Poole bellowed and went out the front door with a slam that rattled the Constable hanging in our waiting room.
Jenkins gave a low whistle from the outer room. “Hope he’s off duty soon,” he pronounced. “There’s a fella what needs a stiff drink.”
Barker picked a cigar from the box and ran it under his nose. “They cannot possibly be stale. They are from Lewis of St. James’s.” He emptied the ashtray into the bin under his desk. “Now, where were we?”
“Thumbing our noses at Scotland Yard.”
“Don’t be cheeky. Type up those reports, there’s a good lad.”
As I inserted the first sheet of paper into the Hammond, a thought occurred to me. I knew who had the book. The only two Chinamen he’d spoken to that he knew were Ho and Old Quong. I’d been by the Guv’s side whenever he spoke with Ho, but I had been on the table when he had spoken with Old Quong. There was no doubt about it in my mind. The bonesetter had the text.