Van Rhyn wasn’t the only one who was prickly, I thought to myself, following my employer down the path toward the old lighthouse.
The door was nailed shut, but the bottom had rotted away. When we had removed the boards and stepped inside, something skittered across the room into a hole, and I could hear doves overhead.
“Stoats,” Barker said, kicking the dirt.
“I’ll have to clear them out before we blow it up.”
“You’re a soft-hearted anarchist, Llewelyn. London’s fate hangs in the balance, and you’re worried about a few rodents.”
“Doesn’t the Bible say something about caring for little creatures?” I countered.
Barker gave one of his rare smiles. “Proverbs twelve ten says, ‘The righteous man regardeth the life of his beast,’ but I don’t think that applies here. For the time being, I’ll help you clear out this place.”
I climbed the steps to the second floor. My mind was calculating probable wall thickness to height, how much charge to use, and where.
“What do you think, lad?” The Guv’s voice echoed up the stairwell. “Fuse, timer, or detonator?”
“Detonator, I would think,” I said. “Do you have enough materials to blow it?”
“More than enough, depending on what effect we wish to produce. We can wire along the base and topple the entire structure into the water. We could run small charges through the building, which will cause it to shiver into rubble, or blow the whole structure to smithereens, but that might be a danger to spectators. It would also be very loud. We do not want to alert the neighbors, even in such an isolated spot as this.”
I returned to the ground floor, and we stepped outside again.
I paused. “Hmmm.”
“What is it?”
We were facing the rocky coast, and the waves crashing against it. “I haven’t been in Wales in two years.”
“How long has it been since you communicated with your family?” he asked, as we began moving down the path again.
“Not since prison days,” I admitted.
“It’s not my business to pry into your private life, lad, but isn’t it time you put your mother’s heart at ease?”
I looked down and kicked a small rock in front of me. “I’m not ready yet,” I said. “I’ll know when the time is right.”
We began moving our supplies into the barn, and for a moment I thought our plans had gone awry. There was no tool with which to open the crates. It would be embarrassing if they came on Saturday and found us still sitting on sealed boxes. Then Barker reached into his sleeve, pulled out a ten-inch dagger, and began prying up the lid of one of the crates.
“I’d forgotten how well armed you are, sir. Do you still carry your calling cards?”
Barker reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a penny. With a flick of his wrist, he embedded it into one of the beams overhead. He usually kept a handful in his pocket, their edges filed to a razorlike sharpness. They were not deadly, unless they struck a vital area just so, but they certainly took the fight out of most adversaries.
Barker finished opening the crates, and we removed the straw. We had primers and fuses, carboys of acid, and cakes of dynamite.
“Everything but Christmas crackers,” I remarked.
“Yes, well, you can play with your infernal engines later, lad. For now, we must inspect the old dynamite.”
In the corner of the barn we found a large packing case, showing evidence that it had been opened, then nailed shut again; straw hung down on all sides under the lid. I noted immediately that the raw wood of the case was stained near the bottom. Barker and I glanced at each other and crossed over to it. Both of us knew that it could only be the much-discussed crate of dynamite. The remark of van Rhyn’s, that nitroglycerin sometimes went off out of sheer bad temper, came back to me.
My employer took his knife, carefully slipped the blade under the lid’s edge, and pried open the case. It had been half emptied, but at the bottom were dozens of identical cakes of explosives. Most of them had a waxy residue on the outside. Reaching in, I found that it had glued most of the cakes together.
“Do you think it is inert?” I asked.
“Most of it appears viable. I think we must separate the cakes, and scrape some of the wax from the fuses. We must be careful, of course, or this Welsh coastline will look like another Krakatoa. I daresay inserting one of the new sticks into the mass would have the effect of livening up the others, much as adding a new bull to a herd of cattle.”
Barker took his pipe, and glanced at the beach. “I believe I will take a walk and clear my head. I have much to think over. You may begin to prepare dinner.”
There was no getting around it. As far as explosives are concerned, I have a certain talent, but when it comes to cooking I’m completely inept. Five minutes into the preparation, and I was considering giving up rabbit forever. I don’t know how butchers do not become vegetarians. It was all I could do to make a stew without getting clumps of fur in it. About forty-five minutes later, I swung the big pot out from the fire on the iron bracket, and spooned the bubbling mixture into a wooden bowl. Everything appeared to be cooked through, and it at least somewhat resembled stew.
Barker dipped in a spoon and brought it to his mouth. I was in a very unenviable position. He was close friends with two London chefs, Etienne Dummolard and Ho, and was part owner of at least one of their restaurants. My only hope was that Dummolard was correct in his assertion that Barker had almost no sense of taste. My employer chewed slowly and swallowed. After a few seconds, he nodded and took another bite. I let out my breath. As long as I hadn’t poisoned him, everything was fine. I dared a nibble of the stew myself, then regretted it. My taste buds were perfectly intact. I put a carrot in my pocket and left Barker alone, chewing on the stew and staring abstractedly into space.
After dinner, we went back to the barn and began to remove the old dynamite from the crate. Barker took out his knife and began scraping the waxy buildup from the cakes.
“Careful,” I warned.
“Don’t worry, lad,” he said. “I rather exaggerated the dangers of the decayed dynamite for Dunleavy’s benefit.”
We began getting out the equipment to set up our makeshift laboratory, and fell into conversation about what to blow up and how. Nothing of any import occurred during the next several days. Barker wished to put on a demonstration using several types of explosives: dynamite, picric bombs, timed and fuse bombs, anything that we could put together. Barker and I debated whether to test our explosives on a nearby dolmen. It was someone’s tomb, after all, and had remained untouched for a thousand years. It seemed a pity to destroy it.
Barker continued taking walks along the shore, and eventually, I joined him. A family of otters amused us, and I was glad they were there, for their antics diverted us. It was not easy living in such close quarters with Barker. When I am with Israel Zangwill, we can talk for hours over nearly any subject, but Barker prefers contemplation to conversation. The week passed slowly and quietly.
They arrived Saturday morning, the whole lot of them: Dunleavy, Yeats, O’Casey, McKeller, and the Bannon boys. Even Maire O’Casey had come, which I considered entirely improper. I thought it wrong of her brother to include her in these illegal proceedings.
“Hello, Penrith,” Willie Yeats said, pumping my hand. Though he still wore a flowing tie over his celery-stalk collar, he’d traded his city suit for country tweeds.
Fergus McKeller looked a bit moody, though I saw they’d brought a large picnic hamper, and a barrel of stout in the cart. All that was left was the entertainment, and our demonstration would be it.
The moment she arrived, Maire O’Casey took over the kitchen, where she deputized Yeats and one of the Bannons, I believe it was Padraig, to peel potatoes. I showed her where everything was and hoped she didn’t ask about my puny attempts at cooking.