“I’ve been working for the Yard almost fifteen years now, and I’ve never come up against a case like this,” Poole complained. “I cannot make heads or tails of it. Everything is incomprehensible.”
“If it is any consolation, Terry, I believe no one could have solved it who hadn’t spent decades in China.”
“It feels like I am turning a pot ’round and ’round, looking for the handle, but there isn’t one,” Poole said, looking desolate.
Barker gave a cool smile in sympathy. “I’ll give you a handle, though I’m not certain it shall help you. The primary question, obviously, is who committed the murder, but it helps to ask a second one, which is, what did the killer plan to do with the text once he had it?”
“Do with it?” Poole repeated, a trifle lost, but then, I was, too.
“Yes. As has been pointed out many times, the book has almost no monetary value.”
Terence Poole ran a hand through his long side-whiskers, in danger of plucking them out in frustration. “I wasn’t ordered to find the book. My duty is to find Bainbridge’s killer. I shan’t rest day or night until I find him.”
“All shall be revealed in the fullness of time. You look agitated, Terry. I shall have Jenkins brew some green tea.”
Poole snatched his bowler from the edge of Barker’s desk. “You can keep your sophisms and your blasted tea. I’ve got work to do. Have your little meeting if you like, but you’d better be ready to reveal who murdered Bainbridge, and you’d better bloody have proof.”
After Poole had gone, Barker turned his swiveling chair my way. “Get out your pad and pencil, lad. We’ve an invitation to write.”
I got out my pad and waited until Barker began to dictate.
With the compliments of Scotland Yard, Mr. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent, invites your attendance at the tearoom of Mr. Ho, near the Commercial Road, Limehouse, in order to discuss a text which has aroused the interest of many. Anyone with said interest in the text or who wishes to acquire it may hear Mr. Barker’s explanations of events pertaining to the volume and its arrival in this country and its subsequent history. The meeting shall be at seven o’clock on the evening of the seventeenth. Your humble servant, Cyrus Barker.
“That will do,” he said. “Type it up and make several copies. Let us see now. Send them to Mr. K’ing, Pollock Forbes, Charlie Han, Miss Petulengro, Mr. Woo, Campbell-Ffinch, and Mr. Hooligan. Am I leaving anyone out?”
“Not that I can see, sir.” I got out the Hammond typewriting machine and set to work.
London has several postal deliveries per day, but I feared that one of the important messages might miscarry. So, instead, I chose one of the excellent messenger services that ply their trade in Whitehall. I gave the fellow an extra half sovereign to see that all were delivered reliably, because I knew that was what Barker wanted. For a Scotsman, he could be surprisingly liberal with his money, but then, he left the ledgers to me.
“Let us go to Limehouse and prepare,” he said.
When Barker says the least, one knows that he is planning something. I tried twice to get him to tell me what was happening, but he was as unwilling to show his hand as a whist player. He spent most of the journey to Ho’s with his face tilted down toward his feet while I tried to reason through everything, without getting any further than Poole.
At Ho’s, he rattled down the steps through the tunnel as nonchalantly as ever, leaving me to hurry along behind him. Once in the tearoom, he conferred with Ho in low tones. The latter was back to ignoring me, I noticed. It wasn’t fair. If I took the blame for causing the fight Barker had been in, then I should also get the credit when Ho came away with his winnings.
The two men got up and moved to the back of the room. Ho took a key from his pocket and opened the doors to the private banquet room, where a few days earlier the jurymen at the inquest had gone to deliberate. I thought it fitting that the case might end where it had begun, in Ho’s tearoom.
There was nothing remarkable about the room. One wall was stone, the other three made up of vertical planks of wood gray with age. Scattered tables and chairs looked as if they had been left as they were when the jurors returned to the court with their verdict. A thin layer of dust had settled. Ho called to one of the waiters, who came in with a bowl of water and a rag and began to clean.
Ho began moving tables about while he and Barker strategized in Chinese. I couldn’t help much with my injured shoulder, but I shuffled chairs around with one good arm and my knee. The tables were set up in a in a T pattern and chairs arranged around the outside to seat ten. This was quite a party Barker was preparing. I hoped at the end of it, he would unmask Quong’s killer and we could bid adieu to this godforsaken end of town for a good, long while.
29
The next morning Barker and Dr. Applegate arrived at our door simultaneously. In Mac’s room, the doctor checked my employer’s jaw, swabbed iodine onto the scratches on his cheek, and asked him several private questions concerning his kidney function. Apparently, Barker gave satisfactory answers, for the doctor pronounced him on the mend. He also inspected Mac’s leg and said our butler would regain full use of it soon and could return to his duties.
“What about me?” I asked. “Could you cut off my cast?”
“You are not my patient, young man,” Applegate told me. “I would not presume to interfere.”
Quacks they are, and charlatans, I thought, especially when they collude.
Coming out into the hall, Barker did something he’d been wanting to do for days. He sacked Madame Dummolard. It would have taken me a half hour of blustering and reassuring to get it done, but Barker is a blunt man. It took him exactly one sentence.
“Thank you for all you have done,” he said to her in the hall, “but Mac is recovering well and we no longer have need of your services.”
I was preparing for a tidal wave of vitriolic French as Madame took in a lungful of air. Just when I thought she would burst out, however, she slowly exhaled.
“Very well, monsieur,” she replied. “As you wish. Ladies! Allons! We must pack our bags.”
That was that. Had it been left to me I’m certain there would have been hysteria all up and down the hall, but people think twice before facing down Cyrus Barker. Twenty minutes later, Madame came down with her maids and suitcases. She shot me an annoyed look.
“What is it, Madame?”
“Cochons,” she said. “All men are pigs.”
She went into the kitchen, perhaps to take out her frustrations on her husband, but for once, he would not rise to the bait. Eventually, a vehicle came to the door, and she and her entourage decamped.
“Peace,” Barker pronounced with some satisfaction. “Peace and tranquility. I must send for my suitcases from the office. I shall sleep in my own bed tonight.” He went upstairs to his room.
Left alone in the hall, I took a few steps and stood in Mac’s doorway. He was staring down at his bandaged leg and wiggling his toes.
“So, it’s back to work soon, then?” I asked. “No more reading Mrs. Braddon?”
“Very funny,” he said acidly.
“How did the romancing go, by the way? Are you betrothed to any of the nurses?”
“No, drat the luck. She was married.”
“What about the maid? She couldn’t have been more than eighteen and she was a stunner.”
“I’ll give you that, but no thank you. Her name is Clothilde, and she is Madame’s daughter by a previous marriage.”
“Is she, by Jove? I suppose we are well out of it, then.” I tried to imagine having Madame Dummolard for a mother-in-law, patting and kissing you one minute and shying bric-a-brac at your head while screaming gutter French at you the next. “I’m sure it will be good to get back on your feet again. I know I can’t wait to get this cast off.”
Mac sat up on his bed. “Oh, yes. You know the first thing I’m going to do? I’m going to take some soap and hot water to these floors. I won’t rest until I get whatever concoction they put on it scrubbed off. I’m going to mop everything and put a wood preserver on it. I have the recipe in one of my books.”