by Simon Brett
An emaciated figure in a faded blue robe shuffled towards them. On his head was a grubby skullcap and a greasy black pigtail hung down his back. His thin yellow face was as inscrutable as a carving in an oriental temple.
‘You comee wrong placee,’ he said. ‘This no placee for ladee.’
‘No,’ said Twinks boldly, ‘we’ve come to the right place. Are you Shanghai Billee?’
‘Billee no here,’ the man replied. ‘You goee. You comee wrong placee.’
‘Do you have to talk like that?’ asked Blotto.
‘Whatee you meanee?’
‘Adding “ee” to the end of every word. I don’t think it’s really necessary.’
‘Oh.’ The man looked nonplussed, then went on, ‘Mostee people likee talkee likee this. Essential partee of opium denee experience.’
‘Well, we’d rather you spoke proper English,’ said Blotto.
‘Oh, very well.’ The Chinaman looked rather disgruntled at having his routine taken away, but grudgingly continued in a voice with a cockney twang. ‘Anyway, you two shouldn’t be in here. It’s no place for people of your class.’
‘Don’t come that class card guff with us,’ said Twinks. ‘We’re here because we’re investigating a murder.’
‘Oh yes?’ A new caution came into the man’s thin eyes. ‘There’ve been no murders here at Shanghai Billee’s. Some customers may have succumbed to the effects of the drug and died, but no one has been deliberately murdered. Maybe you’ve come to the wrong opium den. Perhaps you should try Singapore Fred’s – they’ve had lots of murders there.’
‘We aren’t talking about a murder happening in here,’ explained Blotto. ‘We just think you might be harbouring a murderer.’
‘And there he is.’ Twinks, who had been peering into the dark corners of the room, pointed a finger to one of the noisome mattresses on which lay a lanky figure whose features proclaimed him to be of British stock. Though his face was now pale and woozy from opium, she had had no difficulty in comparing him with the stored image from Proops’s staff photograph. It was Will Tyler.
‘I don’t know whether he’s a murderer or not,’ said the Chinaman. ‘Not my business. So long as they pay, we don’t ask anyone no questions in here.’
‘Tickey-tockey for you,’ said Twinks. ‘We on the other hand are going to ask the stencher some questions.’
The thin shoulders shrugged. ‘You can do what you want, but one thing I should tell you. Nobody does anything in Shanghai Billee’s for nothing.’
‘Maybe this will help.’ Blotto removed a crisp white fiver from his blazer and proffered it to the man. In a movement so swift as almost to be imperceptible, the note was tucked away inside the greasy robe.
‘You’ll get a lot of opium for that. Do you both want pipes?’
Twinks was about to refuse with some vigour, but she was silenced by a gesture from her brother. ‘Yes, thank you,’ he said. And while the Chinaman busied himself by the brazier preparing the pipes, Blotto murmured, ‘Thought it’d be a good wheeze, Twinks. If we have pipes we won’t look out of place in here.’
She contemplated telling him that very few of the other people in the den were wearing blazers and cricket flannels – or indeed rose silk travelling costumes and mink coats – but she restrained herself. Blotto was always so boyishly proud of his ideas that she never liked to pancake them.
The Chinaman handed across two scorched and filthy pipes, in whose bowls lumps of burning opium glowed, then seemed to lose interest in his visitors and disappeared into the recesses of the den.
‘Probably be a good ticket not to inhale this murdy stuff,’ whispered Blotto.
‘I had thought of that,’ his sister replied. But the way she held the pipe-stem in her teeth looked very professional. Twinks did quite often smoke cigarettes, and Blotto was very proud of her for that. She was so dashed modern.
No one in the opium den took the slightest notice of them as they moved closer to the stinking mattress on which Will Tyler lay. Some of the clientele were insensible, and those who weren’t were interested only in finding insensibility.
Twinks and Blotto, still holding his trusty cricket bat, sat on the insalubrious floor beside Tyler. Through the cracks between its rotting planks they could see light catch on the greasy water. The building was actually built on piles projecting over the Thames.
The Snitterings footman seemed to be in a state between sleep and waking. When Twinks spoke his name, his eyelids flickered, but the effort of opening them defeated him.
‘Look, you stencher, about you murdering the Dowager Duchess of Melmont . . .’ Blotto began, but a slight shake of the head from his sister stopped him.
‘I think we need to be a bit subtler,’ she whispered.
‘Tickey-tockey,’ he whispered back, knowing that when it came to subtlety, Twinks was the lark’s larynx and he was a dead dormouse.
‘Tyler,’ said Twinks, her voice suddenly taking on the tone that she used when she addressed dogs or horses, and which her mother used when addressing anyone, ‘you have done well. I am sent, on behalf of the League of the Crimson Hand, to congratulate you. The murder at Snitterings was beautifully executed.’
‘I was only doing my duty,’ the drugged footman mumbled.
‘And you discharged that duty admirably. Do you know what your next duty will be?’
‘I am awaiting instructions. Anything the League of the Crimson Hand demands of me, I will perform.’ He spoke these words more like an automaton than a human being. Twinks wondered what devilish methods had been used to subjugate his will to that of the evil organization of which he was a mere puppet. He was now in the vile bondage of opium, but she feared that before that his brain might have been polluted by other hallucinators from the criminal pharmacopoeia.
‘Your next duty,’ the deep-voiced Twinks continued, ‘will take you to the headquarters of the League of the Crimson Hand.’
‘I do not know where the headquarters of the League of the Crimson Hand are. None of we operatives knows its precise location, for reasons of security.’
‘You will be informed of how to get there,’ said Twinks, following up some details of the organization’s workings that had been given her by Professor Erasmus Holofernes. ‘You will receive that information from your contact in the cell above you.’
‘From Davy ap Dafydd?’ asked Will Tyler blearily
‘Yes, from Davy ap Dafydd.’ Twinks salted away the name for future reference. ‘He is still your contact?’
‘Yes. He is the next Letter-Bearer.’
‘Letter-Bearer?’ Twinks echoed, hoping that in his drugged state the footman would not find her ignorance odd.
Fortunately he showed no suspicion as he responded, ‘I am the Letter-Bearer of the Little Finger.’
Blotto looked blankly at his sister. He hoped she was making more sense of Will Tyler’s replies than he was. As usual, that wouldn’t be difficult.
‘Show me the Little Finger,’ Twinks commanded.
Still acting more like a machine than a man, Will Tyler raised his grubby right hand towards her. Firmly she took hold and moved it closer to the guttering candlelight. She licked one of her own fingers and wiped off the grime on the pad of his smallest digit.
Tattooed on the flesh in crimson ink were the four letters: ‘GGEC.’
‘What does it mean?’ asked Twinks urgently. ‘What do the letters mean?’
‘They are my link to Davy ap Dafydd,’ the footman replied, his voice dull and listless.
‘And does he too have letters tattooed on his little finger?’ Twinks demanded, excitement bubbling within her.
Tyler shook his befuddled head. ‘No. I am the only Letter-Bearer of the Little Finger.’
As ever, she caught on quickly. ‘You mean that Davy ap Dafydd is the Letter-Bearer of the Ring Finger?’ Her conjecture was rewarded by a nod. ‘Then there will be Letter-Bearers for the Middle Finger, the Index Finger and the Thumb?’
‘Ther
e is no Letter-Bearer for the Thumb. The Crimson Thumb is our master, the one who controls everyone else.’
‘And do you know who he is?’ asked Twinks, more in hope than in expectation of getting the answer.
Her judgement had been correct. Will Tyler replied, ‘No one knows the identity of the Crimson Thumb.’
‘But when we have found all four Letter-Bearers, we will know the way into League of the Crimson Hand’s headquarters, the place from which the Crimson Thumb operates?’
Blotto watched amazed, as another nod confirmed that his sister was on the right track. How did she do it? How many normal-sized spoffing brains would it take to provide the horsepower that fitted into Twinks’s delicate cranium?
She pressed home her advantage. ‘And, Tyler, do you know any of the other Letter-Bearers? Except for Davy ap Dafydd, the one in the cell above yours?’
His reply sounded like something that had been learned by rote, probably dinned into his memory while he was under the influence of another noxious mind-changing potion. ‘I only know one other name. The name of the person in the cell above mine. It is Davy ap Dafydd. In this way are kept secret all activities of the League of the Crimson Hand. I take orders directly from only one other member of the League. That is Davy ap Dafydd.’
‘Who do you give orders to? What is the name of the person in the cell below you?’ demanded Twinks.
But her hopes for another lead were quickly dashed.
‘There is no cell below mine,’ Will Tyler replied. ‘I am just a foot soldier, right at the bottom of the heap.’
‘And you don’t know the name of anyone in any cell above yours, except for Davy ap Dafydd?’
The weary head shook slowly. His eyelids were near to giving up their unequal struggle against closure.
‘Tell me one more thing,’ Twinks urged. ‘How do you make contact with Davy ap Dafydd when you need to?’
The footman’s eyes swam as he tried to focus on his interrogator. ‘We are sworn not to reveal that information on pain of death.’
Relying on his befuddlement to cloud his judgement, Twinks responded: ‘Not to reveal that information to anyone outside the League of the Crimson Hand, of course. But you know I am a senior officer of the League. I answer only to the Crimson Thumb himself.’
Drugged he may have been, but he wasn’t so disoriented as to take her assertion at face value. ‘How do I know that?’ he asked.
‘Because,’ Twinks thundered, sounding more than ever like her mother, ‘I came here to express the League’s gratitude for the good job you did on our behalf at Snitterings.’
It worked. ‘Oh yes, of course you did. So what is it you want from me now?’
‘How is it that you make contact with Davy ap Dafydd?’
‘It is always done the same way. I place an encoded small advertisement in the Personal Column of the Daily Clarion. Davy ap Dafydd replies with another advertisement, which tells the time and place of our next meeting.’
‘So you always meet in a different place?’
‘Well, we’re meant to, but we don’t,’ the footman admitted with confused sheepishness. ‘Fact is, there’s a pub we both like and it’s convenient, so we always meet there.’ Suddenly he looked alarmed. ‘But I shouldn’t have told you that, should I, what with you being a high-up from the League of the Crimson Hand?’
‘I will not pass on news of your lapse in security precautions . . .’ said Twinks solemnly, ‘so long as you tell me the name and location of the pub where you and Davy ap Dafydd are in the habit of meeting.’
‘But I –’
‘Tell me!’ Twinks used the voice that had claimed the walls of Jerusalem during the Crusades, the voice that had rallied the English bowmen at Agincourt, the voice that had ordered floggings on many ships of the Royal Fleet, the voice that assumed there was nobody else in any restaurant. Someone of Will Tyler’s background could no more have resisted the command of that voice than he could have pronounced an ‘aitch’ properly.
‘The pub is a real hell-hole. Davy ap Dafydd likes it, though, because it’s called The Three –’
But Blotto and Twinks didn’t find out The Three What. A gunshot sounded, disproportionately loud in the cramped space.
And a bloody hole appeared in the centre of Will Tyler’s forehead. With an expression of increased befuddlement, he sank back on to his filthy mattress. Dead.
12
Conflagration!
Blotto turned immediately to where the shot had come from and was rewarded by the sight of a pigtailed figure in a loose smock, black trousers and conical hat zapping out of the den like a cheetah on spikes. With a cry of, ‘Bring down the portcullis, Twinks me old pineapple, and I’ll catch the stencher!’ he rushed off in hot pursuit. An emaciated figure rose from the floor to block his way, but a neat reverse sweep from Blotto’s cricket bat sent the man flying. His flailing arms hit the brazier, which fell sideways, scattering hot coals over the wooden floor.
Blotto was already out in the foggy street before that happened. The Chinese gunman had a good start on him, but constant hunting and fielding practice kept Blotto in tickey-tockey trim. In only a few strides he had overhauled the assassin and downed him with a rugby tackle bang from the jolly old textbook (which is not an easy action to perform for a man carrying a cricket bat).
The man wriggled in his grasp like an oiled eel, and managed to free the hand which still held his gun, an Accrington-Murphy .44 revolver. Just in time Blotto was aware of the barrel being moved round towards his face. Quarters were too close for him to use the cricket bat, so he grabbed at the Chinaman’s wrist to force the gun away. He seemed to be succeeding, but then heard a gunshot and felt the passage of a bullet through his blond thatch. The sound had come from behind him, back at the entrance to Shanghai Billee’s. Out of this now poured seven or eight men who had, only moments before, been apparently comatose on the floor. Through the fog it could be seen that most of them were carrying guns, and those without had knives and axes.
Still clasped to the killer of Will Tyler, Blotto rolled over, so that his opponent’s body was now between him and the new attackers. But he knew that using the assassin as a human shield would only afford him temporary protection. Anyway, it wasn’t the way he liked to fight. Englishmen of his class didn’t hide behind things. They stood up to face any music – or in this case, gunfire – that was coming their way.
So that’s what he did. Pausing only to immobilize his opponent with a good whack on the head from his bat and to tie the man by his pigtail to a convenient lamp-post, Blotto rose to face his aggressors. As he strode forward into the murk, he waited for the men he approached to become aware of that indefinable superiority which is given to the British upper classes, and to shrink backwards from his presence.
Sadly, such displays of deference did not seem to have formed part of the education of this particular bunch of bad tomatoes. Shouting curses in a language unfamiliar to Blotto, the pigtailed posse advanced towards him in a cautious semicircle. Fire spat from one of their guns. A bullet nipped the nap of his blazer. A second gunshot flicked the fuzz off his flannels. Though the Chinamen were clearly rotten shots, the law of averages – if nothing else – dictated that a bullet was going to hit him before too long. Blotto had to take action.
Fixing the firm, two-handed grip on the handle of his bat that he’d been taught at Eton by ‘Pinko’ Fripworth, he moved in sudden zigzags towards his opponents. He heard the whine of bullets like hornets about his head, the scream of those which kicked up from the cobbles beneath his feet, as he thrust into the midst of his enemies and proceeded to give the vile anarchists a lesson in the strokes of cricket.
Dropping almost to one knee, with a Paddle Sweep to the shins, he felled two Chinamen, whose collapse brought down a third. A steady Block countered a descending axe, which was driven into the face of its bearer. A pistol was sent flying from a trigger-squeezing hand by a fine Hook Shot, whose follow-through caught another assailant plum
on the point of his chin.
The fight seemed to have gone out of the two remaining assailants, who turned and fled, the last one receiving a perfectly executed Slog across his buttocks from the doughty bat of Blotto.
As he stood with his back to Shanghai Billee’s, surveying the scene of his triumph, Blotto became aware of unseasonal warmth behind him. Also the crackling sound of ravenous flames.
He turned in horror to see the conflagration which had once been an opium den. Despite the damp from the river, the scattered coals of the overturned brazier must quickly have fired the rotten flooring. Shanghai Billee’s had turned instantly from one kind of hell-hole to another. Twinks’s mental image of Dante’s Inferno was now being made real.
Blotto of course knew nothing of his sister’s literary allusions. All he knew was that he couldn’t see Twinks. Shouting her name, he hurled himself back into the flaming opium den.
But before he was through the doorway, the whole structure exploded as if the flames had reached some hidden stash of gunpowder. Blotto was hurled back by the force of the blast to the other side of the road, where he crashed through the dusty glass frontage of an empty ship-chandlery.
By the time Blotto had picked himself up and removed splinters of wood and glass from his hair and clothing, Shanghai Billee’s was no more. Through the smoky space where it had stood, now like a missing tooth between the adjacent hovels, he could see the filthy, churning waters of the Thames.
Of his beautiful sister there was no sign.
‘Twinks!’ he cried out. ‘Twinks! Where are you?’
13
Salvation!
The Honourable Devereux Lyminster was not given to introspection, and his customary outlook on life made Pollyanna look like one of the world’s worst doom-mongers. He generally greeted each morning with a twinkle in his eye and a bounce in his step. He didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘depression’ (mind you, there were quite a lot of other words he didn’t know the meaning of either).
