That was that. There was no use arguing with such logic, or lack of it. We went in and found the man still in darbies, his European-cut coat ripped and his hair looking worse than it had when I last saw him. He looked at us, then turned and spat a big splotch of bloody saliva on the floor. If I expected him to be glad of our arrival, I was mistaken. He looked at us malevolently.
Barker began to speak in Chinese to him, but Poole put a hand on his shoulder.
“Here, now. We’re in the Yard, remember. If you’re going to go on like that, you’ll have to translate word for word for the record.”
“Very well.” He asked a short question and after a moment’s silence, the fellow muttered, “Hai.”
“I asked him if he was Charlie Han and he admitted it.”
Barker asked a second question, but apparently Han thought he had answered enough questions for the time being. He sat in the chair and stared at the floor. He was large for a Chinaman, a few inches taller than I, and strong limbed. I was starting to think we wouldn’t get anything out of him the rest of the night when suddenly, the Chinaman gave my chair a solid kick, sending me and my notebook flying into the corner.
By the time Barker helped me up, Han was stretched out on the floor with Poole’s knee on his shoulder and was bleeding from the nose as well as the mouth. He was cursing, despite the fact that his cheek was pressed to the floor.
It took me a minute to understand the words he was saying and another to learn that it was me he was saying them to. Just then there was a knock at the door, but we were too occupied to open it.
“What did I do?” I blurted out. “I don’t know this fellow.”
“You stay away!” the Chinaman continued, once Poole’s knee was off him. He was seated now on the floor, blood dripping from his chin, giving me the nastiest look I’d had since prison. “You stay ’way from us. Stay ’way from her!”
The knocking had finally become so insistent Poole was forced to answer it. Something flew into the room like a streak. I thought at first it was some giant bird of prey, but of course, it wasn’t. It was Hettie Petulengro and she was angry. Very angry.
24
"What have you done to Him?” she demanded. “You’ve got him chained up and now you’re using him for a punching bag. Three grown men. You ought to be ashamed, you-”
“Who is this?” Poole roared to the sergeant in the corridor.
“Her name is Petulengro, sir. She has been downstairs at the desk trying to find out what happened. Insistent, she was. I thought you might want to see her.”
“Sergeant, leave the thinking to me,” Poole ordered. “Stay there. We may have to restrain this woman.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” she snapped at Poole.
“Oh, no? Try me, my girl.”
“And you,” she said, rounding on me. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I don’t have anything to say,” I told her. “All I’ve done since I came in here was to take notes and to get kicked out of my chair by this Chinese fellow. What is he to you?”
“If you plan to argue, you cannot take notes,” Poole put in, but we were beyond that at the moment.
“He is my-You wouldn’t understand.”
“What is there to understand?” I demanded.
“He is my…common-law husband, I suppose you’d call him.”
“Husband!” I exclaimed. “But I just took you out to dinner!”
“Yes, you did. Thank you very much. He is not my husband, exactly.”
“Well?” I said hotly. “Is he or is he not?”
Barker cleared his throat and spoke in his low voice. “I believe what Miss Petulengro is trying to say is that she and Mr. Han have an informal relationship. They live together under her roof, where in fact he had been hiding from the police for several days, but there is no legal relationship between them, either temporal or secular. It is common in the East End. She is quite able to accept an offer of dinner. She can even order him to leave if she chooses someone else, though he is not obliged to like it.”
The Chinaman, I was upset to see, was having his hair smoothed by Hestia. All my feelings of benevolent goodwill toward the suspect vanished without a trace. I wanted to get a good kick at him myself.
“Well, I like that!” I said. “You didn’t tell me I was squiring around a married woman.”
“Oh, don’t be thickheaded. Pay attention to your boss. He just explained it to you if you would just unstop your ears.”
“Hettie,” Charlie Han ordered, “do not speak to him.”
“Shut up, you,” she bawled. “This is all your fault.”
“Silence!” Poole bellowed. “If I have to slap bracelets on every one of you I shall do it!”
All of us went silent.
“Barker, can you make head or tail of this?” the inspector asked.
“Plain as a pikestaff. Mr. Han has a personal relationship with Miss Petulengro, and he lives above her shop, but she feels she is still able to…to…What phrase would you use, miss?”
She thought about it a moment. “Entertain better offers.”
“Exactly. She went out this evening with Thomas, in what I assume both agreed was business, but which may have had some private moments as well. After dinner, he took her home-”
“Actually, I took her to a coffeehouse first,” I put in.
“Thank you, Thomas,” Barker said with what might have been a withering stare behind the lenses of black glass. “So, you took her back to her rooms over the shop. Did you go in?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you kiss her?”
“I say, that is rather personal, is it not?”
“It is pertinent to the case. Did you kiss her?”
“Yes, I did.”
Hettie smiled slyly at me but said nothing.
“And you, Mr. Han. Were you not in the rooms upstairs?”
“Hai.”
“And did you see him kiss her?”
The Chinaman looked downcast. “He no kiss her. She hurry up kiss him.”
“I see. What did you then, sir?”
“Run out back door, chop chop. Follow his cab.”
“Afoot? It is several miles.”
“Nobody give ride to Chinaman, mister.”
“You came to a house in Newington.”
“I watch him go in big house. I no know what to do. I walk in front of house for ten minutes, then I go ’round back.”
“You wished to confront Mr. Llewelyn?”
“No, no. Have chalk. Leave message on gate, ‘Stay ’way from girl.’ That will show him. I think maybe he stay ’way then, but coppers catched me.”
“He didn’t do any harm,” Hettie insisted. “He was just going to write a message.”
“Destruction of property,” Poole spoke up.
“Destruction, my bonnet,” Hettie replied. “Soap and water would have taken it off in a tick. And anyway, he didn’t even get started.”
Barker turned to the Chinaman. “Do you have the chalk?”
Han reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced a piece of chalk. Either he was telling the truth or was a very ingenious liar.
“When did you arrive in London, Mr. Han?”
“Two year ago, November.”
“I see. When did you meet Miss Petulengro?”
“Two days later,” Hettie answered for him. “He and the boys from the Agamemnon had gone through their money already, as sailors will. He wanted to sell a jade ring. He was about to go to the Strangers’ Home, which is fine if you’re ninety. I thought him rather attractive.”
Her remark made me angry, I admit, but I noticed that Poole was taking it even worse than I. His lips were in a grimace of disgust.
“You offered him a bed,” the Guv continued.
“No, I’m not that kind of girl. My uncle did, in the cellar. He did odd work for him, and attracted other sailors to the shop.”
“Did your relationship…develop?”
“That’s none of yer business, Mr. ’Tec. Oh, sorry, Mr. Private Enquiry Agent.”
I almost laughed out loud but stopped myself. She did a very serviceable imitation of Barker.
“Stow the lip, girl,” Poole warned. “I have a little cell waiting for you if I need it.”