by Will Thomas
“You saw me take it to Cox and Co. from the first floor of the Silver Cross. It is secured in the vault as we speak. No German spies or young men in blue coats could penetrate those walls under any conditions.”
“You were in there awhile, Mr. Barker.”
The Guv shrugged his burly shoulders. “Mr. Humphrey is an old friend of ours and a naturally gregarious fellow. The exchange between us was brief for one who knows him.”
Stuff and nonsense, I thought. Humphrey is as dry as a British Museum mummy and as friendly as a wounded badger. Also, we hadn’t known the fellow for more than a year.
“Will you keep it there?” the Home Office man asked. “For tonight, I mean? I’d like to know it is safe.”
“Pray tell me your exact duties, Mr. Pierce. I was told you would provide a diversion so that Mr. Llewelyn and I might deliver the satchel. Now you seem to want to safeguard it.”
“It should be everyone’s duty to safeguard it.”
“Perhaps.” A smoke ring rose to the ceiling, growing larger until it came apart. “Meanwhile, who is investigating the murder of Hillary Drummond? Scotland Yard?”
Pierce gave a discreet chuckle at the thought. He pulled a cigarette from a silver case and lit a wax vesta with his thumbnail.
“Hardly. Don’t get me wrong. The Yard is the best in the world at what they do. Spying is something else entirely.”
“Is it you?” my employer asked. “Are you the investigating officer?”
“No, I’m merely the diversion.”
The Guv lifted a knee and sat on the corner of his desk. “You a diversion and I a courier. This is not proper work for gentlemen. Do you know who is in charge of the investigation?”
“Of course, but I am not at liberty to give his name.”
“A pity. I’d have liked to bring the murderer of one of our best agents to account. He was a competent spy, was he not?”
“Drummond?” Pierce asked. “Top-drawer. A good man. He was Foreign Office, of course, but we muck in together when we can.”
“Tell me more about him. I’m trying to work out what I can secondhand, you see. Would you say he was the best agent in Eastern Europe?”
The Home Office man sucked the smoke of his cigarette up into his nostrils before blowing it out again, and lifted his chin in thought.
“I’m not close enough to know where Foreign Office spies are based, but the fact that he was itinerant is a sign that they trusted him fully. You know, they don’t like you over there at the Foreign Office. Apparently, you discredited one of their best.”
“Are you speaking of Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch?” I interjected. “Is that actually one of their best? The mind reels!”
A year before we were instrumental in exiling Ffinch to the far reaches of India.
“Anyway, I was surprised to discover on the plaque on the door that your given name is Cyrus. All I’ve ever heard is ‘Bloody Barker.’”
“I don’t take cases some agencies would, and I do take some that others would not. I don’t have enough associates to protect the rest of the country, but I care what happens in my own back pocket. Foreign agents stabbing an operative at my front door unsettles me.”
“I don’t think they took you into account,” Pierce said.
“They will by the end of this, I assure you,” my employer responded.
“What are you going to do? Sit here on your heels? Hunt about all over London for young men in blue coats?”
“Who can say?” my employer replied. “I might poke a stick into some hornets’ nests and see what comes out.”
“Since you have nothing else to do,” Pierce said. “Just a satchel to deliver to the South Coast.”
“Exactly.”
“Child’s play.”
“Amateur work.”
“You could do it anytime.”
“Aye.”
“But you’re not,” the Home Office man said.
“Not today, no.”
“Because?”
“The stars are not aligned,” I guessed.
Barker nodded.
“Tell me,” Pierce said. “Is it because you want to find the beggars who killed Drummond? You want to investigate?”
Barker dug around in the bowl of his pipe with a small tool he kept in the ashtray on his desk. “If I have time. It would be helpful to have a list of possible suspects, as an exercise, you understand.”
The laugh came out of Pierce’s throat so fast he was not prepared for it.
“You’ve got brass, Cyrus Barker, I’ll give you that,” he said. “So I’m supposed to help you with a list out of the goodness of my heart and without the sanction of my superiors?”
“Aye, that would do.”
“In exchange for what? You’re an interesting fellow, I’ll agree, but I’m not in a position to offer you anything, even if I had it.”
Barker nodded sympathetically.
“What do you need?” the Guv asked.
“The satchel would be nice. This scheme to act as a decoy is rather beneath our skills.”
Barker almost smiled. His brows rose above the rim of his spectacles and settled down again like a brief eclipse.
“A tall order. I could be left with nothing. However, I will consider it.”
“We could protect it better and leave you free to investigate the murder of Drummond, which is your forte.”
“Am I speaking to the Home Office now, or Hesketh Pierce? Will you report everything I say to your superiors?”
“I will,” he admitted. “I’ll repeat every word. That does not mean I will do so tonight.”
Barker turned over his pipe and tapped it on top of the cork plug in the center of the ashtray. Fine ash poured out. He considers dottles an affront to his smoking abilities.
“I couldn’t do what you do,” he told Pierce.
“Work as a spy?”
“No, work for a superior who has a superior, who has one of his own.”
“It is not necessarily a choice,” Pierce remarked. “Some of us are not independently wealthy.”
“Ha!” I laughed. “Strike me for a fool if you’re not an earl’s son. I know a tab when I see one.”
“Very well, Mr. Llewelyn, my father is a baronet, but I’m the third son. No one will be offering me the family seat anytime soon, and even if they did it’s probably in debt.” Pierce rose effortlessly to his feet. “Anyway, you are now working for a superior who has a superior. In fact, Salisbury has thousands of them.”
Barker looked amused. “So I am, Mr. Pierce. At least for the present. If you could get me that list, I would be in your debt. Good day.”
The Home Office man nodded to us and left.
“So much for anonymity,” I said. “We should not trust him.”
“Agreed. What, pray tell, is a ‘tab’?”
“A Cambridge man, sir. I am an Oxonian and he is a Cantabrigian. The enemy, so to speak, at least during the annual boat race. ‘Tab’ is a shortened version of the name.”
“The things you know, Thomas!”
“Yes, well, the more I know, the more I know how little I know.”
“‘Happy is the man that findeth wisdom.’ Proverbs 3:13.”
“He was an interesting fellow, Pierce. Very urbane. Professional.”
“Indeed.”
“What was that about the Vatican?” I asked. “The Prime Minister didn’t mention it. I’d have remembered if he had.”
“I inferred it. If the satchel contains sheets of glass, it can only mean one of two things, as far as I can deduce. It could be some sort of bacillus, and if so we shall both be dead by morning, or it is something of significance to the Church, perhaps a manuscript. I thought it more likely to be the latter. If so, the most obvious destination for it would be the Vatican Library.”
“Why not Paris?” I asked.
“If it were a matter of erudition, the manuscript could have stayed in England, but if it required preservation, I don’t believe the Vatic
an can be bested. My opinion is based on reputation, of course.”
“But why would the Church of England give a manuscript to the Roman Catholic Church?”
“That’s a good question, lad. Another is whether the purpose is to get it to Rome or simply to get it out of England. Drummond was chased here. There is bound to be political intrigue.”
“I hate politics,” I said.
“Courier work is not why I became an enquiry agent, either, but it is the only duty we have been offered today, and we must go where the work is available.”
“The Jesuits! How did you know about the Jesuits?”
Barker put a booted foot on the corner of his desk and rested his hands on his stomach.
“For the most part,” he answered, “the Jesuits are no longer the steel gauntlet of the Roman Catholic Church, but with work such as this on an international scale, the Vatican would choose a Jesuit.”
Having no convenient response to that, I attempted to look wise.
“The Vatican, then,” I repeated.
“Aye, lad. The Vatican.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I hailed a cab and Barker told the cabman to take us to Soho and the Café Royal. From past experience, I knew that meant two things, both of which I approved: we were going to see an old friend, Pollock Forbes, who haunted the place, and we would have an excellent lunch. There was no better restaurant in all London save for Etienne’s Le Toison d’Or.
The café was bustling when we entered and the eighteen waiters in their tuxedo jackets and floor-length white aprons were doing battle with a roomful of hungry souls, many of them celebrities. Oscar Wilde was no longer there, but the decadent artist Aubrey Beardsley sat at a table with his knees up, sketching the general chaos. I heard rather than saw the Irishman Bernard Shaw being disputative somewhere in the back of the room, and I waved at the bon vivant Max Beerbohm as we entered, his black hair as glossy as a billiard ball. If Cyrus Barker were not there to keep me in line, I was in danger of becoming one of the overly intellectual and underpaid writers who frequented the place. Thank heaven he came along when he did.
Barker looked about the room, such a dour fellow he could suck the very bonhomie from the place, but we dined here a few times a year. It was a storehouse of information and there was a Masonic temple in the back.
“Langer!” the Guv rumbled in that way he has that makes the floor shake. A man detached himself from a corner and came our way. He wore a double-breasted suit and had a mustache so thin it was like another eyebrow.
“Hello, Barker,” the man said, looking about as if the restaurant were about to erupt in a brawl, which it might. Langer was the private detective, bailiff, and chucker-out for Nicholson, the owner of the Royal.
“Where is Forbes?” Barker asked.
“Hasn’t been here in a fortnight.”
“Why not?”
“Under the weather, I’ve heard.”
“Is he still at the Albany?”
“Yes, he is, sir.”
“What room?”
“Fourteen, I think.”
“Thank you. Come, lad. Lunch will have to wait.”
My stomach tried to disagree. A fellow near me was tucking into a dozen seasoned oysters and a woman across from him was spooning some sort of chocolate cake between her pouty lips. Barker’s ham-sized hand had to pull me out the door by the arm.
The Guv had paid the driver to remain and we clambered aboard once more. My stomach groaned as we pulled away from the curb. There would be other lunches, I told myself. Someday.
“You’re worried,” I said, reading his face.
“I am,” he replied. “It’s not like Pollock to be absent for a day, let alone an entire fortnight. Where is the flow of information going? We need to speak to him if we are to stay ahead of what is happening.”
Pollock Forbes was a Scottish laird’s son who was expected to inherit the title. Unfortunately, he was tubercular. While giving the appearance of being another wastrel of the Royal, he collected information in droves from dozens of informants: political news, Continental news, town gossip, and even scandal. Everything was fodder for his ample brain. Forbes was the leader of the Knights Templar, an organization so secret that its members almost never met. All information was channeled through him.
We soon arrived at the Albany, a series of flats in Piccadilly for gentlemen of a certain class; that is, unmarried and wealthy. Forbes himself would have called it “toney.” It was full of its own importance. The Albany was known for the names of certain bachelors who lived there, such as Forbes. Everyone there had their reputations lifted merely by belonging.
Barker crossed to a solid-looking concierge and they exchanged handshakes. It was the second one I’d seen him do that day. As I said, Barker does not care to shake hands. He expects to be attacked at any moment as a matter of course, and his hands must be free. However, this was not a mere handshake. It was a secret one, establishing identity. Without another word, we made our way up a stairwell and eventually to a door with the number 14 in gold upon it. Barker tapped, which is to say he practically knocked it down in one blow.
The door was opened by a harried-looking young man in a black waistcoat and shirtsleeves. The sleeves had been rolled to the elbow and he held a wicker dustbin in his hands. He scrutinized us as he ran the back of his hand across his damp forehead.
“May I help you, gentlemen?” he asked.
“I’m here to see Pollock,” my employer said, proffering the business card he pulled from his waistcoat.
The young man glanced at it, then nodded.
“Come in. He should be awake. But pray, sirs, do not tax him. He is very ill.”
We were led into the bedchamber. Pollock Forbes lay in the center of a large bed, bolstered with several pillows. He wore a white nightshirt and the scale of everything made it seem as if he were a mere child with a case of catarrh. Only it wasn’t catarrh at all, it was consumption, and it was consuming Pollock inch by inch.
“Hello, Cyrus,” he croaked. “Thomas. Thank you for coming to see me.”
“Pollock,” I said. “You didn’t tell us.”
Forbes shifted in his pillows. “Mustn’t grumble.”
The servant, or whatever he was, gave me a stern look and went to empty the bin. I saw it was full of pocket handkerchiefs, most of them spattered with blood. He’s dying, I told myself.
“I’ve been offered a certain important case,” Barker said. “By chance, did you make the suggestion?”
“I may have told a fellow, who told a fellow. You accepted the assignment, I take it?”
Barker did not answer. He appeared to be annoyed. “Whose idea was it to set up the Home Office as a ruse so that we could deliver the satchel ourselves?”
“Mine, I’m afraid,” Forbes said. “I had intended to take it myself, but alas, I am undone. I suggested you go in my stead.”
The young man returned with the emptied bin and Forbes immediately tossed another soiled handkerchief into it. The servant frowned at us. We were disturbing the patient.
“What can I do for you?” Forbes continued. “I assume you came for something.”
“I need a list of people likely to go after the satchel, but you’re in no fit state to give it, Pollock. We’ll look elsewhere. There’s no need to trouble yourself. Get well, and we’ll see you at the Royal in a fortnight.”
Pollock coughed and spat a gob of blood into a new handkerchief.
“I’m not going back, Cyrus. My doctor has ordered me to Aberdeen. If I’m not any better, soon it’s the Sandwich Islands for me. Or Fiji. You know what that means, don’t you?”
The Guv and I looked at each other, thinking the same thing. Was he referring to his death?
“You’re being uncommonly thick, both of you. I thought you were private enquiry agents.”
For once, I actually worked it out first.
“You’re leaving,” I said. “Who’s going to take over the Knights Templar?”
“That is precisely the problem. Cyrus, I need you to take over the running of the society.”
“You have said that to me on several occasions,” Barker answered. “Why would you think me a proper candidate? Surely there are others more qualified.”
“Qualifications do not necessarily make a good leader.” Forbes coughed again, bringing the young man running, but he recovered. His voice grew weaker and weaker. “Cyrus, you must belong to a dozen secret societies, from the Heaven and Earth society in China to the Freemasons.”
“Yes, but I don’t attend meetings,” he replied. “I belong neither to be a student of esoterica nor to do good for society. I do both of those already on my own. The last thing I want is to spend my precious evening hours raising a herd of solicitors and bankers from one degree to the next through an elaborate initiation rite, merely to impress their employers. I want to do things that matter with my life. You know I don’t believe in rituals. If I did, I’d become Church of England.”
“But think, Cyrus,” Forbes went on. “Imagine a flood of secret information arriving from all London into your office; pertinent facts coming every hour!”
“But at what cost?” Barker asked. “I barely have enough time to teach my own antagonistics class as it is. How am I to run an agency and handle all of this information?”
Forbes settled back in his pillows. His wavy hair was damp, his face shiny. His lungs must have been saturated. It hurt to watch him struggle for breath. I didn’t have a great number of friends on this earth, but I considered Forbes one of them. I didn’t want to lose him.
“You can’t.”
Barker gave him a withering stare. “You expect me to shut down the agency?”
“No. I expect you to give it to Thomas. You put his name on the door. Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
“You expect Thomas to look after the agency’s cases while I do what, exactly? Sit at a desk every day reading memoranda? London already has a spymaster general.”
“Not forever. I could put in a good word for you. My opinion is still respected in this town.”
“Don’t do so on my account. It isn’t a situation I seek.”
