To Kingdom Come bal-2

by Will Thomas

  “This is marvelous,” Ira said. “And you say they’ll keep this pipe forever?”

  “Yes. Upon your death, which we all know shall be a hundred years from now, they shall break it in twain and hang it in a place of honor.”

  Our coffee arrived, and soon the proprietor set down our freshly grilled chops. Ira’s eyes lit up at the sight of food. The poor scholar rarely got enough to eat, and his landlady’s inedible cooking was legendary in Whitechapel. A chop and a nice dessert would suit Ira to the ground.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, looking at my friends, “there’s a reason I convened this meeting today, beyond initiating Ira in the mysteries of the Barbados. I’ll be gone for a while, close to a month, I think. It’s a case, of course. It is dangerous, but Barker sounds confident that we’ll succeed. That’s about all I’m allowed to say.”

  “We understand, Thomas. We’ll say a prayer for you,” Zangwill said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  After our meal and a final pipe, we surrendered our clay churchwardens to the proprietor and watched him settle them in racks overhead. We hesitated to leave, or at least I did. I didn’t know when I’d be back here again, enjoying a pipe and cup and the company of my best friends. In fact, the odds were in favor of my not returning at all. Out in Cornhill Street, I hailed a cab, and solemnly shook hands with each of them.

  “We’ll see you in a month, then,” Zangwill said.

  Ira reached for my hand, then stopped. “Wait! Thomas, lend me a shilling!”

  I shrugged my shoulders, and pulled the coin from my trouser pocket. “Here you are. What’s this all about?”

  “Now you’re sure to come back alive,” he said. “People don’t die when someone owes them money. I would never be so lucky as to have someone to whom I owed money pass away!”

  “Listen to him, Thomas,” Israel said. “There is wisdom there.”

  Twenty minutes later, when I was reaching the step of Barker’s domicile, there was a clatter behind me, and his cab pulled up to the curb. He nodded and we went in together. Mac appeared from his little sanctum sanctorum off the lobby and took our hats and sticks.

  “Mac,” our employer said, “Thomas and I shall be away for about a month, and I want the house to remain open while we’re gone.”

  “Very good, sir,” Jacob Maccabee responded. He took our leaving in stride, though I knew it would alter his schedule even more than our own. There was packing to be done and arrangements to be made. Mac is a very capable fellow and an excellent servant. I have nothing against him beyond the fact that he despises me. I think he is jealous that I get to go out and have desperate adventures with Barker, while he stays home and polishes the silver.

  “The garden must still be tended, and there is no need to shut the house up for just a few weeks. Besides, it would upset Harm’s schedule.”

  I saw Mac’s lip curl slightly. The dog was the bane of his existence. Harm shed a pound of hair daily, chewed up the cushions, and spent half the afternoon by the back door, deciding whether he wanted in or out. The thought that he would be forced to stay alone in the house merely to look after this little oriental demon must have made Mac’s blood boil.

  “Couldn’t he stay with her, sir?”

  Had I been a dog myself, my ears would have perked up. I knew whom Mac was speaking of. Harm had received a savage kick during a little contretemps in our garden during our first case together, and had been taken away and nursed by a heavily veiled woman all in black. I had handed the dog into her lap in a mysterious black brougham. It turned out that she came and tended Harm regularly once a week, at six in the morning, before I got up. I was very curious about her. What did she look like behind the veil? Was she young or old? What was her position? I had tried to question Mac about her, and got nothing out of him.

  “No,” Barker said with finality. “Were it November, I might have considered it, but it is June. I cannot deprive Harm of his afternoons sunning in the garden. It would put him quite out of sorts.”

  I had to cough to smother a laugh. Barker doted on Harm, or Bodhidharma, to use his full name. He fancied the dog something between an English gentleman and a Chinese prince. Mac, on the other hand, generally used the term “mangy cur” when describing the dog, though not in our employer’s presence, of course. I looked over at Harm, who wagged his plumed tail. I could swear the little rascal knew we were talking about him.

  “You sound as if you’ve got this all planned out,” I said to my employer, after Mac had slithered away in abject misery. “Would you mind telling me a bit more about our itinerary?”

  “First thing tomorrow, you’re going to Aldershot to study bomb making under Johannes van Rhyn for a week,” Barker informed me. “And then, in the evening-”

  There was a sudden sharp rat-a-tat of someone beating his stick on the front door. Despite the fact that we have a perfectly good knocker-a brass affair in the shape of a thistle-the fellow smote the wood. It set the dog off immediately, shrieking until Mac tossed him into the library and closed the door before answering the summons. Not knowing what to expect, I removed a stout cane from the stand, just in case.

  “Yes, sir?” Mac asked our visitor upon opening the door.

  “I wish to speak to Mr. Barker,” an angry voice answered.

  “Who shall I say is calling, sir?”

  “Chief Inspector James Munro of the Special Irish Branch, my man.”

  Barker came up beside his butler.

  “Thank you, Mac, that will be all. Good evening, Chief Inspector. Won’t you and your colleagues step in?”

  Three sturdy men entered our hallway. The inspector was the smallest but also the most commanding. He was a bullet-headed little fellow, with a thick mustache and a beetling brow. His assistants could not be taken individually. They were oversize bookends to the inspector’s single compact volume.

  “Barker, I need to know what was discussed at the Home Office yesterday morning.”

  “Mr. Anderson is in charge,” my employer stated. “You must take it up with him.”

  “Don’t cut up clever with me, Barker, or we can discuss this at Scotland Yard.”

  “Certainly not in your office,” the Guv retorted, “unless it is to be an outside meeting.”

  Munro turned red, trying to control his temper. “This is a Special Irish Branch case. We don’t need an outsider coming in and gumming up the works.”

  “The Home Office seems to think otherwise. Robert Anderson hired me to work for them and I intend to do so. I suppose you could say Llewelyn and I have joined the secret police.”

  “You can’t expect to investigate a case from inside Newgate Prison,” Munro blustered.

  “On what charge, may I ask?”

  “On suspicion. You’d be surprised at how long I can hold someone on suspicion.”

  My stomach seemed to drop away from me. One cannot understand how a former prisoner feels when confronted by incarceration again.

  “Should you attempt to detain me, Munro,” Barker said as easily as if they were discussing a game of whist, “I will see that my solicitor calls on Mr. Anderson. He in turn shall call upon Prime Minister Gladstone and the Prime Minister shall summon Commissioner Henderson and Superintendent Williamson. The superintendent shall then summon you and ask you what you are about, locking up hired agents of the Home Office. Have you been apprised that Scotland Yard will get the credit should we succeed?”

  “I am highly suspicious of your little arrangements, Barker.”

  “I certainly don’t want credit for capturing and imprisoning Irish terrorists,” Barker said. “It would be like putting a price upon my own head. I have nothing like your resources, and still your offices were blown up.”

  Munro stepped forward, toe to toe with Barker, though my employer was a good head taller. “Why are you getting involved?” he demanded. “You’ve lost a little glass. You can afford it.”

  Barker shrugged his beefy shoulders. “I don’t need to give my reas
ons to you, Chief Inspector. Anderson offered a price and I accepted it. That is hardly your concern.”

  “We shall take the blame if you foul things up.”

  “Foul things up?” Barker rumbled. I could see his own temper rising. “Foul things up! You haven’t successfully protected your own offices, let alone London. Didn’t the danger of having public lavatories so close to Scotland Yard occur to you? A child could see it!”

  Munro stepped back and glowered as menacingly as he could. “When the corner of Scotland Yard is rebuilt, I shall see to it that the former gymnasium is turned into offices. Your precious physical training classes shall be a thing of the past.”

  “Very well, but you can’t blame me the next time one of your constables snaps the neck of a fellow while trying to subdue him, when his only crime was a few too many pints of a Saturday evening.”

  “You’d best watch your step,” the chief inspector threatened.

  “That will be impossible, since my assistant and I shall be out of town for a month or so. Would you like an itinerary, or shall I just send you a carte postale along the way? I promise to send word when we return, in plenty of time for you to claim all the credit and glory.”

  Munro opened his mouth to reply, could think of nothing more to say, and stormed out, leaving his satellites standing like maids at the gas-fitters’ ball awaiting a dance. They nodded to each other and left. Barker closed the door with his foot, then slammed the bolt home with an angry fist.

  “‘But whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.’ Matthew five: twenty-two,” he growled, still trying to control his temper. “Some verses are harder to keep than others.”

  7

  Barkersaw me off at Waterloo Station the next morning. I had to admit I was going with some trepidation, though I tried not to show it. I’d never been at a military barracks before, and van Rhyn was a complete cipher to me. The thought occurred to me as well that if I mixed two parts A with one part B, instead of the other way ’round, I might not be coming back at all.

  “You’ll get on, lad,” my employer assured me, as if reading my thoughts.

  “Yes, thank you, sir,” I said, but my mind couldn’t help but go back to something he’d said to me during our first adventure: You’ll get on. Or you won’t.

  I boarded the Great Western express, and by the time I found my seat, Barker had slipped off. I sat, let out a sigh, and suddenly wished I’d brought one of my books to study. I spied a bookstall among the other shops in the station and jumped out, knowing I had but a moment or two. The stall specialized in mystery thrillers and women’s publications. I’d been hoping for something more classical. Just when I was about to give up and jump back on the train empty-handed, I spied a book on old Irish legends. I handed over a few shillings and hopped on the footboard just as the final command to board was shouted out. I settled in my seat and began to read.

  Since childhood, my brain had been steeped in the old Welsh legends, of Prince Pwyll and the underworld of Annwn, not to mention Arthur and his Round Table. The book in my hand was full of tales new to me, featuring the Irish heroes, Cu Chulainn and Finn MacCool, as they faced giants and Grendel-like monsters in the misty land of old Hibernia, and all this just a short boat journey from Pwyll’s kingdom. Times were certainly exciting in those ancient days, though they were not exactly a stroll through Hyde Park now, considering where I was headed at the moment.

  I received the first sign that I was nearing my destination half an hour later when we passed a brigade of soldiers in their scarlet tunics and chalky helmets, marching in full kit. I was accustomed to seeing the Horse Guards rattling through Whitehall on their chargers, gold helmets gleaming, but the lads marching on this road in the drowsy June sun would soon be fighting the Mahdi’s fanatical hordes in the blistering heat of North Africa.

  Ought I to join them? The thought of going for a soldier had never really occurred to me before. I’m certain that several of the lads I’d gone to school with were even now in the Sudan, and some had already given their lives while I’d been at university, wrestling with nothing more dangerous than Paradise Lost. Now I was employed by Barker. Were the words on the placards at the station correct? Was it my duty to go and fight for my country? As I sat in the railway carriage, I realized that I was already a soldier, a mercenary one, newly hired by Her Majesty’s government to safeguard the English way of life, and the Irish were a good deal closer than the Mahdi’s Muslims in the Sudan that the papers were thundering about. Suddenly, I missed my Milton.

  The train stopped at Aldershot, and I was able to cadge a ride to the barracks aboard the supply vehicle, once I supplied an abbreviated version of my purpose in coming. We followed the canal and soon found ourselves riding down a wide thoroughfare, a parade ground in which a dozen men could walk abreast. Off in the distance, I saw a long line of buildings, clusters of huts and barracks which collectively were known as North Camp. I began to wonder if we’d actually sent anyone to the Sudan at all. The whole English army appeared to be here. As I stepped out into a beehive of activity, I felt as if I were the only man in civilian dress within one hundred miles.

  Everyone but me appeared to be moving with a purpose. My attempts at stopping someone to ask for directions were rebuffed several times. I thought I might spend the day searching in vain for the address Barker had given me on a slip of paper, when I finally found a chaplain who was willing to show me the way. It was a good thing, too. My next plan would have been to announce in a loud voice that I was a Russian spy, there to steal the plans to the Northern Frontier.

  I was led to an outbuilding set far back from the others, whose doors and windows were open. As I stepped inside, and my eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, a voice spoke up.

  “You are late!” the fellow protested grumpily, but I had passed a clock tower on the parade road, and had noted the time.

  “No, actually, I’m still a quarter hour early.”

  The speaker, a squat, slovenly-looking fellow in a white lab coat, consulted his timepiece, held it to his ear, and shrugged.

  “No matter. I am van Rhyn.”

  So, I thought to myself, this is the fellow Barker is to impersonate. They didn’t look much alike. Johannes van Rhyn was a much shorter, rounder fellow, for one thing. His thick, graying hair was in wiry strands combed back severely behind his ears, and his short beard looked as if it were made of steel wool. His face, like my employer’s, was dominated by a pair of black spectacles, but van Rhyn’s had brownish glass pieces covering the sides. They are commonly worn by the blind, but he appeared to see perfectly. He had a ferocious nose which curled over his mustache, and his tie and linen were stained and in need of pressing.

  “You are Llewelyn?”

  “Yes, sir. Thomas Llewelyn.”

  “As you say. Bombs, sir. You are here to learn bombs.”

  The word came out bompss in van Rhyn’s German accent.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good! Now, a bomb by definition is a device exploded by means of a fuse or by impact or otherwise. By a chemical process, energy is released very quickly, often with devastating results. Bombs are often made of common materials one can pick up anywhere. Look at this here. What is this?”

  “It is a bottle of whiskey, sir.”

  “Ja. Now you see, I take a strip of cotton and insert it in the bottle, and push it in tightly with a bit of cork. Now we have a bomb. It is inert, of course, and could sit on a shelf for years, completely harmless. But, if I light the cotton from this Bunsen burner, like so, we begin the reaction that results in a chemical change.”

  He handed me the bottle with a look of mild interest, as if I were one of his experiments. The cotton hanging out next to the cork was already emitting a large flame. I knew enough from my chemistry classes in school to say what would happen next. If I didn’t get rid of it immediately, the cotton would burn past the cork, ignite the liquid inside, and the entire bottle would explode. A glance about the r
oom told me I was surrounded on all sides by beakers and bottles of various compounds and chemicals. Even if we did survive the initial blast, the explosion might ignite the chemicals around us and kill us for certain. I did the only sane thing: I turned and tossed the bottle out of the door. There was a sudden loud report, and the walls and windows outside were showered with fragments of glass.

  “Lesson one,” van Rhyn said. “After you set a bomb, get rid of it. Very good reflexes, by the way.”

  “My word!” I said. “You nearly got us killed!”

  “There is little chance of that,” van Rhyn assured me. “The urge for self-preservation takes over, you see. It is a powerful force.”

  “I’m glad of that,” I said, my heart still racing.

  “Come. Look here. Each of these materials can be turned into an infernal device. Here is ammonia, isopropyl alcohol, glycerin soap, common manure. A trained bomb maker would find an average home a treasure trove of materials. A few ingredients from a local chemist are also helpful. In these bottles are sulfur, magnesium, and sulfuric acid. Of course, we need not start from scratch every time. Here are primers, timers, fuses, blasting caps, a plunger. This cylinder is an artillery shell.”

  “I must say, it seems strange to see a notorious bomber with his own explosives hut, in the middle of an army base,” I said.

  “Ja, well, there was a time when I would have blown myself to bits before working for a government agency, but since then, I have learned to listen to the demands of the stomach. That, perhaps, and the fact that I have been deported from most of the countries in Europe. I have no desire to leave this one. Luckily for me, Britannia is a sentimental old girl, and she has hugged many a socialist, nihilist, and anarchist to her bosom while her sisters have shown us the door.”

  “Yes,” I countered, “but they seem to have you under lock and key here.”

  “She is sentimental but not stupid. Have no worries for me, young man. I’ve blown my way out of worse situations than this, when it suited me. I am comfortable here. For one thing, I am not being pestered by factions such as the amateurs who tried to blow up Scotland Yard.”