“How did they meet?”
“He doesn’t say. Presumably, there must be some meeting of the I.R.B. factions. As far as I know, that is their only link.”
“I cannot imagine she would encourage his suit,” I said a trifle bitterly.
“I did not see any indication from the letters that she had. Twice he accuses her of being cool, and he only hints at a possible proposal of marriage, as if testing the waters. To be truthful, I hardly thought O’Muircheartaigh had it in him to play the romantic swain. Miss O’Casey has nothing to offer in the way of money or influence, yet he speaks of her as his equal. I can assume she has her beauty to recommend her.”
“Oh, she has that,” I stated.
“You should know, you rascal,” he said. “But what does she possess that O’Muircheartaigh might want?”
“She possesses a presence and a keen mind,” I said. “She has the ability to put an entire group of men in their place and to have them do her bidding. Surely that is enough, even for someone like him. Do you think him involved in this? Is he the faction’s true leader?”
“One should never underestimate him. He is as silent and lethal as a poisonous spider. Think of this, lad: if a man speculates and is able to cause a war between two nearby countries, he could invest heavily in munitions and arms on both sides and make a fortune. Even if it never came to that, the mere rattling of sabers would be enough to drive the stock exchange prices through the roof.”
“Good heavens!” I said.
“Exactly. O’Muircheartaigh would be the next Rothschild. I believe the possibility of hundreds of deaths on both sides because of an Irish insurrection means little to him. We must watch Miss O’Casey a little more closely. She could be the conduit for messages from London.”
That gave me much to think upon, and none of it pleasant. I had been impressed by Maire’s purity, as well as her beauty, and to think that she might be receiving secret messages with plans and monies quite sullied my belief in her. Perhaps Barker was right, and she was not the girl I thought her to be.
Dunleavy came to dinner, annoyance and petulance on his face. The money from the Irish Americans was being delayed, as Barker and I already knew, and he could not be certain it would arrive in time. I thought he was working himself into another drinking bout, and I was correct. He was churlish when none of us seemed disposed to drink with him. Finally, Fergus McKeller arrived, and we spent the evening watching Dunleavy alternate between complaining about his past failures and crowing about his future successes. Between that and the news about Maire, I went to bed feeling very low indeed.
Barker was standing at the window of our room. Something had awakened him, if he had been asleep at all. It was past ten, and we’d been upstairs for about half an hour.
“What is it?” I asked my employer.
“Someone has just left the house. It appears to be your Miss O’Casey. Throw some clothes over your nightshirt, and hurry.”
It is not an easy task to go from sound sleep to fully dressed and out the door in three minutes, but somehow I managed it. I wouldn’t pass inspection in Savile Row, with my collarless nightshirt thrust into my trousers, but at that point, I was glad to have each shoe on the right foot. We stealthily moved down the stairs, but once we were outside, Barker was off like a shot.
“Are you sure it was Maire?” I asked, still skeptical that she wasn’t in bed, enjoying a well-deserved slumber. “Perhaps it was Dunleavy.”
“The figure I saw was in a cloak, but only Miss O’Casey is that small. Hurry along, lad. Don’t dawdle.”
For the hundredth time, I wished I had my employer’s long legs and his stamina. It took all I had to keep up with him, and he was sporting half a stone of extra weight.
We reached the intersection of Water Street and the Strand and headed deeper into the poor section of Liverpool.
“Could it have been another woman delivering a message?” I asked, still convinced it could not be Maire.
“Possibly,” he growled. “This part of town has been a front for more than one faction, or so Dunleavy has informed me.”
“So someone could have sent the O’Caseys a message,” I insisted.
“Or Miss O’Casey herself is delivering one in return.”
I pondered that for a moment as we walked along Strand Street. We were in the Irish slums now. Broken-down tenements stood on either side of the street. My attention was distracted by a beggar child, and when I looked up, the figure ahead of us had disappeared like a will-o’-the-wisp.
“Where did she go?”
Barker pointed to the left. “Into that court there.”
It was a villainous-looking square. The worst section of Whitechapel could equal but not surpass it. The court was formed by back entrances to bawdy and public houses. Men leaned against the walls with dazed expressions or slumbered on the dirty ground.
“What’s that smell?” I asked. It was cloying and slightly sweet.
“Opium,” he answered, pointing. “She appears to have gone in that door there.”
Barker plunged into a doorway. I followed. We were in a dark hallway, lit by a single, uncovered gas jet. The Guv’nor hurried down the hall until we came to a fork in the road, that is, a stairwell going up and down.
“Should we-”
“Ssh!” Barker put his hand on my shoulder, and we listened intently. He had a complete knowledge of the nervous system and how to attack various places he called pressure points. I hoped it was merely training that caused his thumb to press against one of the nerves near my collarbone just then. My fingers started to tingle.
“This way!” He was off down the stairs like a hound who’d heard the huntsman’s horn. Under normal circumstances, nothing could have induced me to go down such a rickety-looking stairwell, but I didn’t have the luxury of refusing. I hurtled down in the semidarkness after my employer.
We were in a hallway lined with doorways, with women standing in them. Fallen women they were, of the lowest order. The rooms were little more than cages. One glimpse of the first rouge-cheeked, scrofulous wretch, old beyond her years, was enough to keep my eyes riveted to the floor from then on. I hurried along behind my employer, despite the painted talons that brushed my sleeve or ran through my hair. It was a nightmarish world, the light from a silken shawl thrown over a gas lamp splashing scarlet over everything.
At the far end of the hall, Barker plunged down yet another stairwell. I began to feel as if we were descending through the various circles of Hell. We were now a full two stories underground. The wooden floor had given way to earth, and the walls were beamed like mine shafts. These appeared to be merely tunnels dug to escape the law. We reached the far end of one and found nothing but a dead end and a stone wall.
“We’ve been outfoxed,” Barker said, turning and walking back. “Let us double back up to the next floor and see if the trail is cold.”
I followed him up the last staircase and we stood a moment, debating what to do next. I certainly didn’t want to go down the red-tinged hallway again.
“Cold as an Orkney winter,” the Guv’nor declared. “Oh, well. It may have been nothing, as you say. Let us continue up this stairwell and see where it leads.”
On the next floor, there was what passed for a reception hall of one of the illicit establishments. Luckily, the men and women there were too gin soaked to notice us as we passed among them and out of the building. I was glad to get the odors of patchouli and opium and unwashed humanity out of my nostrils.
“There’s nothing else for us here,” Barker decided. “Let’s go back to our beds.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” I said. “Do you still think it was Maire?”
Barker shrugged. “Who can say? I thought it was Miss O’Casey, but she was a good distance away. It is even possible that we were deliberately lured out of the house, though the reason for such a ruse escapes me, unless they are onto us.”