by Will Thomas
Barker said nothing but gave a nod at the compliment.
“And you, Thomas,” Anderson said, turning to me. “This will be harder for you. Most men will not dare confront Cyrus openly, but they will have no problem confronting you. You’ll be in for some ribbing.”
“I’m paid handsomely, sir,” I said. “And I don’t really give a damn what they say or think about me.”
“That’s the spirit,” Anderson said, regarding me with his blue-green eyes like aquamarine stones. He ran a hand over the top of his head. Out of vanity, his own or his wife’s, he had begun combing hair from the side of his head over the top to cover a pinkish scalp. He’s nervous, I told myself. He doesn’t want to go, and he needs this Whitechapel fellow trapped quickly.
“How long do I have to consider?” Barker asked.
“Oh, buckets of time. Bushels full. Five minutes, perhaps?”
Barker gave a grim smile. I wondered what was going on in his head. There were several elements to this offer that Barker might find unpalatable. He would have to work with others, many of whom he did not trust. We would have to shut our agency’s doors, which Barker had never done before, and we had no idea how long it would take to track down the killer once we began. The more I thought about it, the more absurd the offer began to sound.
“I’ll do it,” Barker growled from the confines of his chair.
“Perhaps you should—” I began, but Barker reached across and shook Anderson’s hand. The die was cast. It was on his head now.
I felt I was the only one who realized our world was about to be turned upside down. The worst part was that most of the work would fall on me. The Guv was like a forward in a football match. He could be relied upon to kick the ball into the net, but he expected others to get the ball to him, and woe to us if we disappointed him.
“I really must get home to pack,” Anderson said, rising. “If I leave it to my wife, she’ll make sure all my favorite articles are left behind and take only the suits she prefers me to wear.”
Barker’s old friend reached into his coat pocket and handed him an envelope with a wax seal. Buckingham Palace. Had we been finessed? I hated for our services to be a foregone conclusion.
Anderson shook our hands again and took his leave. He was on the stair when Barker suddenly waved me after him.
“See him to a hansom cab,” he murmured. “In fact, bring one here to him.”
I was up in a flash and running down the staircase. Anderson was descending with an unsteady hand on the wall. He is normally a gaunt but vigorous fellow, but with this stress and overwork, he looked frail. I did not try to help him, but hovered nearby in case he needed help. He reached the bottom of the stair without incident, and a minute or two later the ground floor. We proceeded out the front door, but there he stopped and put his hands on his knees and stooped.
I found a cab for him in Newington Causeway and brought it back to our door. Helping him in, I thumped on the side of the cab and it jingled away. Then I went back upstairs to Barker’s rooftop nest.
“Did you see him off safely?” Barker asked.
“Safe enough. His face was rather pale. The man needs a rest.”
“Thank you, Thomas. I’m sure you spared him his dignity.”
I nodded and sniffed. It is a funny little country in which we live. Criticisms are taken to heart, but any compliment is quickly brushed away.
The Guv had moved to his rack of meerschaums by the window. He selected his largest pipe, tiny white hounds cornering a ghostly stag at bay, and began shoveling tobacco into the bowl.
“You wanted in on this case from the start,” I said.
He acted as if I’d said nothing and snapped a vesta alive on a French porcelain striker. One puff, two puffs. Three. He blew out the match and tossed it into an ashtray by his chair.
“You will not vouchsafe an opinion,” I said.
“There is no possible opinion to give,” he answered, blowing a gust of smoke toward the fireplace. “I have not seen a shred of evidence or read a single report, or even spoken to a constable.”
“Yet you jumped at the chance to take the case. Why?”
“Because Anderson asked me to, and he is a friend. Because he needs me, too, so he can recover from overwork. And because it might return us to Scotland Yard’s good graces. Are those good enough reasons for you, or shall I continue?”
He just wanted in on an interesting case, I thought, the first to come along in a while. Frankly, I felt the same way.
“It is your agency, sir. You may run it as you see fit.”
“See if I don’t!” he said.
“I hope he isn’t correct about the Yard holding us responsible for Anderson being hired.”
“Either way, Thomas, you may rest assured of one thing.”
“And what is that, sir?”
“As you so eloquently told Robert, you will be paid handsomely.”
I nodded. “There is that.”
“You should go to bed. You were up late last night, and we have a busy day in the morning.”
“Doing what, exactly?” I asked. “What’s going to happen when we walk through the doors of Scotland Yard?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “But I’ve pledged to Robert that we will do our best for him, and so we shall.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Barker was up at his usual time the next morning, shortly after five. By the time I was shaven and dressed it was six-thirty and I barely had time to eat and to drink a cup of pressed coffee before the Guv came in from the garden. He had been issuing instructions to the gardeners: more mulch for this plant, and less nitrate for that. The garden was to look austere, as all Asian gardens do, so the trick was to keep the plants alive without actually letting them flourish. I suspected he felt the same way about his assistants.
“Come along, lad. We mustn’t be late for our first day,” he said, waving me out the door. I was certain no one would miss us, or even notice if we failed to show up at all. No sooner did we find a cab in Newington Causeway than it began to rain, a thin, silvery drizzle which would keep on for hours. It pattered lightly on the top of the cab, but inside we were snug and dry. I wouldn’t have been a cabman, perched on the back of a moving hansom cab, exposed to all weathers, for all the tea in Canton.
We reached our offices and there had our first conflict of the day, mild as it was.
“Jeremy,” Barker said. “We are shutting the offices.”
I watched the information sink in. It always takes our clerk a few moments to process information. Slowly, his eyes grew to the size of a penny.
“Sir?”
“We have taken a case with Scotland Yard. It requires us to shut our doors. You shall continue to keep the offices, but you must turn away anyone who wishes to hire our services. I imagine one could put a sign in the window, saying we are no longer taking clients. You may lock the door, if you wish. Thomas and I both have keys. Unless, of course, you prefer to stay home until I call again.”
“For how long, sir?” the clerk asked, looking slightly distraught.
“A month or so, I should think.”
“But sir, there will be telephone calls and messages and telegrams. There are all manner of people coming and going.”
“You must tell them our services are fully engaged at the moment, and we are not taking clients. It will be good for the agency’s reputation.”
“What shall I do in the meantime, Mr. B? I’m staying, if that’s all right with you. Regular hours for me. But how will I fill them?”
“You might have the floors polished and the furniture redone. Inspect the ceiling for cracks and have the doors repainted. Keep all the receipts, as per usual.”
“You’re to pay me for doing nothing?”
“Well, not nothing,” the Guv said.
“Full wages?” Jenkins asked.
“Of course.”
“Hallelujah!”
“Indeed.”
Cyrus Barker rooted through h
is mahogany desk until he found a screwdriver. Then he stepped out into the steady downpour and unscrewed the brass plaque advertising his name and occupation which was attached to the railing. His suit grew wet as he worked and Jenkins jumped up and seized an umbrella, leaning out to hold it over him. I couldn’t think of anything to do beyond moving to the door, ready to take the wet plaque from his hands when it was finally free. The last screw always gives the most trouble. He tugged it free and handed it into my care.
“There ye are,” he said. “Jenkins, have a man in and take down the hoarding above the door.”
“Yes, Mr. B,” Jenkins said. I had not been with the agency long enough to take such liberties with his name, only four years to date. But then, Jenkins was a character, while I was expected to toe the line.
“Do you need anything from your desk, Thomas?”
“Just my notebook and my revolver,” I said, turning a key in the lock and sliding up the rolltop desk.
“No pistol, lad,” Barker said, shaking his head. “Too many questions. Are you ready?”
I retrieved my notebook, feeling momentarily naked without my Webley, and locked the desk again.
“Yes, sir.”
“Jeremy, if we are not back here by five-thirty, lock up and be on your way.”
“That I will, sir, to the letter.”
It was but a few dozen steps between Craig’s Court and Great Scotland Yard Street. Cox’s and Co., Ltd, stood beside us and Barker kept an account therein. Between our offices and Scotland Yard, there was a row of public houses, which fed the clerks and officials of Whitehall, and then there stood a wrought-iron gate, guarded by a constable.
“State your name and business,” demanded an older-looking officer with a ginger beard shot with gray.
“Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn,” the Guv said. “We start work here today.”
“You’d best come in, then. Tell the desk sergeant in the second building on the right.”
He stepped back and let us through. We passed the first building, which housed the Criminal Investigation Department where Barker had taught a class in antagonistics until a bomb went off nearby in a public lavatory. When it was rebuilt, there was no room for the kind of classes we taught, and since then we had opened a school to the public in Soho. The thinking was that if Scotland Yard did not appreciate us, the public would. So far, this theory had proven to be correct.
Behind it was the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, or “A” Division, as it was known to much of the Yard. It was a jumble of mismatched four-storied buildings connected by interior halls; no two alike in color, shape, or type of brickwork. As many as there were, the place was packed to the rafters. There were too many officers because there was too much crime in the Empire’s capital city. To house them all, a new building was being built on the Embankment just behind.
We passed under the familiar blue globe and stepped inside. The hall was full of citizens seeking redress. One man held a bloody cloth to his forehead. It was half past eight and he had already had a memorable morning. Barker did not step to the front of the line, so instead, we waited in a queue for a quarter hour, watching people come and go. The men I recognized as officials all looked tense. Two women had been slaughtered, who would ordinarily be considered as inconsequential, and yet the Metropolitan Police were already feeling the pressure of their deaths.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” the sergeant asked. His dark hair was greased into a swirl on top of his head and his mustache was waxed to points. A typical desk sergeant, to be found at every station in the City.
“Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn, signing in,” my employer said. “I am the new assistant to Robert Anderson.”
“Ah!” the sergeant said, as if Barker was a peg for which he had just found the proper hole. “The commissioner has been awaiting your arrival.”
“We had no appointment. Are we late?” Barker asked.
“Right on time, more like. He has his hands full with this new killing. He’s up on the third floor. Closer to heaven, you might say.”
The desk sergeant pointed toward a stairwell with the nib of his pen. We climbed three flights of stairs to a row of offices culminating in a secretary and a desk blocking a door painted with Sir Charles Warren’s name in gold letters. We gave our name to the secretary and he directed us to sit before stepping inside. He came back a few seconds later.
“The commissioner will get to you as soon as he possibly can.”
With those comforting words, we sat, and were still sitting an hour and a half later. Now Barker had achieved his objective for the morning: he had arrived within the walls of “A” Division. He had nowhere he needed to be, and he is a patient man. Exceedingly patient. He did not fidget, or scratch his nose, or move a muscle. He merely sat in the chair like a wooden figure facing the commissioner’s door. Rather, it was I who grew indignant at our being kept waiting and became stiff and sore in the hard wooden chair, and sighed and coughed and changed positions every few minutes, and paced and asked the secretary how much longer it would take, and was assured the commissioner would see us very soon indeed. This is a punishment, I told myself, for being Anderson’s men, and not rank and file, and Cyrus Barker not getting along with Warren in the past. This sort of pettiness just gets right up my nose.
So, as I said, an hour and a half ticked by very slowly. Ninety minutes, five thousand and four hundred seconds subtracted from my life. Shakespeare could have perfected a sonnet in that time, and Mozart a short libretto, if not a full score. Not that Thomas Llewelyn could have written a sonnet or libretto, but I might have at least enjoyed the chance. Finally, a voice within made a short cough, causing the secretary to finally sit up.
“You may go in now,” he said.
We stood and went inside. Warren sat behind a large desk, looking much as I had seen him a year or two before. He is a good-looking man, military straight, with a face dominated by a mustache shaped like an inverted V.
I could not help but compare Warren’s office to Barker’s. The latter was airy, spacious, and lined with bookshelves. He did not collect art in a great way, but there was a Ming vase and a Constable in the waiting room. Behind his desk was a faded coat of arms on a wood panel, and under the desk a Persian rug. Warren’s walls were lined in framed articles from the Times that praised the Met, and photographs of squads of constables seated in rows like footballers. His desk was impressive for its size and fineness of carving, but it had not been refinished in the last eighty years. Where Barker had books, Warren had files. He did not strike me as the kind who spent his evenings reading, unless it was military history. Papers lay loose in a tray, something the Guv would never allow on his glass-topped desk, and there were rings in the red oak. All the same, it was the best Scotland Yard had to offer, with a green baize carpet and matching captain’s chairs for us to sit in. I assumed either that the commissioner was unmarried or that his wife never visited his offices.
“Barker,” he growled, like a cat who had finally latched a claw onto a tail.
“Commissioner.”
“Come begging for a job, have you? Is the enquiry business not lucrative enough for a gentleman’s tastes?”
“You know why I am here, sir,” Barker said.
“I do, or so I’ve heard. Anderson requested you. You must be chomping at the bit to get at the Whitechapel murderer.”
“It is certainly an interesting case.”
“Anderson claims you are one half bloodhound and the other half saint. What stories have you been running on him?”
“None at all. I have been busy with cases and haven’t seen him in six months.”
Warren leaned forward and placed his hands on the desk in front of him. “Perhaps the two of you could explain to me why I should ignore my natural inclinations and accept you into the fold, so to speak?”
I dared speak up, for the Guv is not one to trumpet his own successes. “It appears,” I said, “that you require the services of an exp
erienced tracker and investigator.”
“When I want your opinion, Mr. Whatever-the-hell-your-name-is, I’ll ask for it. But don’t hold your breath.”
I tend to work by instinct as an enquiry agent, and it seemed to me that he was testing me to see if I would break and run to hide behind my employer. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. “I work half a dozen buildings away from this one, and am a convicted felon. If you don’t know my name by now, Commissioner, then perhaps you need all the help you can get.”
Warren inhaled and for a moment I thought he was going to pounce on me. Instead, he merely blew the air out again. “Very well, Mr. Llewelyn, since you wish to offer yourself as an advocate for Mr. Barker, tell me why I should hire him.”
“Because he is relentless. Once he starts a case, he won’t give it up until it is finished. Once begun, he will go at it with all he has, tooth and nail, never backing down, never compromising his principles, barely eating and sleeping, giving all that he can until the client is satisfied. No one can threaten him away, cajole him, trick him, or beat him. And he doesn’t do it for the money, I can attest to that. I’ve tried to convince him to raise his enquiry rates for years, but no. For some reason, he cares about this city he has come to adopt far more than it deserves and even cares that women of a low reputation cannot walk the streets without being cut up like cadavers.”
Warren sat back for a moment and then leaned forward and jotted something in a memorandum book on his desk. He was giving us only half his attention. “Is that the best you can do?” he asked.
“If you’re looking for superlatives, Commissioner, I suggest you read our advertisements in the Times. I’m merely telling the unvarnished truth.”
“Mr. Barker,” he said, turning to regard him directly. “You have a reputation for appearing in the newspapers, frequently, and at our expense. The Met’s reputation is such that I will not allow it to suffer any more than it already has.”
