“Come, sir,” Mr. K’ing said to me, “and try some tea. Miss Winter has been released and sent home in a cab. I was just telling your employer that I have never seen a better fight. It was a treat to see the great Shi Shi Ji in the ring, and every man here tonight shall have a story to tell his grandchildren. This fight shall be discussed in ports and river towns around the world.”
I took one of the dishes of tea and tossed it off in one gulp. Like all Chinese tea, it tasted like dishwater.
28
Barker got up the next morning, determined to go to work. Despite Mac’s and my protests at the breakfast table that he needed more rest, he refused on the pretext that he had already dressed and going back to his bed and nightshirt would show a lack of progress. He had his way, of course, but I noticed he was slow getting into the cab. His face bore several sticking plasters and his jaw was swollen, but he paid them scant concern.
At our chambers, Jenkins raised his eyebrows, as if it were my fault the Guv was there. Barker sat down in his big chair with a contented sigh and tented his fingers. He wished Jenkins a good morning and received one in return. Then he picked up The Times and began to read the morning news. It reminded me of an anecdote I’d heard once about a Scottish lord who finished his breakfast each morning by going out in front of his castle and announcing that he had broken his fast; the rest of the world was now free to eat. Cyrus Barker wasn’t going to let simple matters such as kidney failure or a fight with a Chinese giant stop him from solving a case.
Barker seemed inclined to think that morning, which was a relief. No one was beating down the door searching for the book. No prospective clients arrived on the step to beg the Guv’s custom. After reading The Times and the Pall Mall Gazette front to back, he drew designs on the corner of his desk with his finger, then got up and went to his smoking cabinet. He took down a meerschaum pipe and, stuffing tobacco into the lion-head bowl, sat to smoke. Nothing was heard for the next half hour but the scratch of my nib on the ledger: cab rides, meals, maids and nurses, doctor bills and more doctor bills. I was wondering again where Barker got the money for this office and his house and garden, and, oh, yes, the wages of his employees, as well.
Barker got up, knocked out his pipe, ran a pipe cleaner through it, and put it away. Then he reached for another. The Guv rarely smoked two pipefuls in a row. It was a little Chinese Mandarin’s head this time, with a hole in the crown of his pillbox hat. He filled it, lit it, and settled into his chair again. Nothing was happening of any import. Or so I thought.
“Ah,” he suddenly said five minutes later. “You little beggar.”
I looked up, but he wasn’t speaking to me. He got up and began pacing, which is always a good sign. He went to his pitcher and glass behind him. They were empty.
“Thomas, get me some water, would you?”
I would, of course; anything to help with the case. I went out the back door and when I did, I saw something there. I’m not the sort to believe in signs. I like to think of myself as a practical person, but there was a robin on the handle of the pump. It was a little thing, a mere morsel of life, barely worth the Lord’s time and effort, but its appearance cheered me immensely. The sun picked up the vibrant red in its breast. I dared not move from the doorway. It cocked its head this way and that, and finally it flew away, up and over the wall. It was a harbinger, I thought, a harbinger that the blasted winter was going away and that spring would eventually come. Death was dead and life would spring anew, and, yes, this case would soon be over and the Guv would finally get to the bottom of it all.
I pumped the water into the jug so quickly it overran and I had to pour some out. I brought it in and hurried back to my desk. Barker was seated again, but he was humming to himself off-key, another good sign. I poured him a glass and he drank it. Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. Then he spoke.
“Lad, run along and fetch Terry Poole. If he balks, tell him I’ll solve the case without him.”
I was out the door in the time it took the robin to fly over the wall. I sprinted into Whitehall Street and ’round the corner into Great Scotland Yard. Poole was not in his office, but I found him talking to a sergeant in the hall, looking harried and irritable as usual. I gave him the message and watched as he frowned at the ultimatum and heaved a sigh. What else could he do but comply with the Guv’s request?
“Tell him I shall be along directly.”
I nipped back to the office and dropped into my chair again. Barker was humming “How Can I Sink with Such a Prop as My Eternal Lord” from Spurgeon’s Our Own Hymn Book. As usual, he was mangling it, but I wouldn’t have stopped him had my life depended on it. I don’t know if miracles happen in our day and age, but sometimes it seems as if the Guv occasionally gets a divine message or two.
Poole appeared shortly thereafter, looking like a fellow who’d just come in second in a race.
“What is it, Cyrus?” he asked, pulling up one of the chairs in front of the desk.
“I need to arrange something quickly,” Barker said.
“I don’t like the sound of that. What exactly do you want to do?”
“I want to set up a meeting and bring all of the suspects together into one room.”
“A meeting? You’ve gone mad,” he barked. “What makes you think any of them will come?”
“That’s what I need you for, Terry. You could make them come. It is the Yard’s case, after all.”
“Oh, now you want my help, after being obstinate and impeding our case for days.”
“Someone official must take the killer into custody. I thought you should get the credit.”
“I would have to get approval,” the inspector said doubtfully, but I could see he was imagining the look on Henderson’s face when he brought in the murderer.
“Hang approval,” Barker said. “You are in charge of the investigation, are you not? What happens if, at the end of it, you have the confessed killer of Inspector Bainbridge shackled to your wrist?”
“I’d be a bloody hero,” Poole admitted. “But ordering some people to come won’t mean they’ll come. That Foreign Office blighter will stay away just to spite me. How could I possibly get him there?”
“Tell him he cannot come. Or, better yet, you could let out that I am ready to surrender the text.”
Poole leaned forward. “Now you’re talking. So you have had it all along, then.”
“I didn’t say that. But I might be able to lay hands on it.”
“All right. We’ll do it your way. Where shall this meeting be held?”
“At Ho’s.”
“Ho’s! No, no, never,” he protested hotly. “I’ve seen enough of that place to suit me for the rest of my life. I can’t have an official meeting there.”
“Why not?” Barker countered. “The inquest took place there.”
“Because holding it there would indicate that we had been wrong to arrest him in the first place.”
“But you were wrong to arrest him. He was innocent of any wrongdoing.”
“If that man is innocent of anything, then I’m one of Her Majesty’s ladies-in-waiting. He’s the closest thing to a pirate in the East End, and I suspect half the crimes in London are plotted in his tearoom.”
“I concede that point, but many of the people I want at that meeting reside in Limehouse and it is the only meeting place in the area.”
“Let me think about it. Will you invite Mr. K’ing to this little party of yours?” the inspector asked.
“I would say he is too canny to step into any such snare, but he will be certain to send along a representative, if he does not come himself.”
“Do you have a theory as to who Bainbridge’s killer might be?”
“I do,” Barker said.
“Then tell me who it is!”
Barker shook his head. “I shall let you know at the proper time, in order to arrest him.”