The Limehouse Text

by Will Thomas

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—”

  “Stop that!” he said and began moving forward.

  We clattered down the steps and flung open the door, where we were greeted by a wall of smoke that had size and shape and atmosphere. My companion plunged into it and I followed, my hand in the pocket of my coat where my pistol lay in its built-in holster. Now that I was about to do it, I felt even more the foolishness of it, but Zangwill had gone in and I couldn’t let him go it alone. Cautiously, I slipped into the smoky darkness.

  The reek of opium assailed my nose. Its sweet, cloying odor is so unpleasant I felt I could detect the lightest whiff miles away. It clawed at my throat and I knew I’d need several baths and my clothes several washings before the smell would go away. Zangwill and I passed through two rows of double berths, all of them filled. Most occupants were Chinamen and other Asiatics, but there was the odd European. I stopped to gaze at a man in formal attire, his top hat pulled down over his eyes and his long pipe on his chest. He could be dead and I’d be none the wiser.

  I passed an alcove festooned with old sail material tied up with bits of rope like a curtain. A candle was lit and a woman was sucking in smoke. She stopped and regarded me a moment. She was dark and had a hooked nose and large hoop earrings, but I could tell nothing else—her age, her nationality, why she was smoking opium, how she got here. Her eyes followed me as I moved, and then she reached out a clawlike hand to me, a longing for who knows what? I shook my head and her hand fell. She sucked in more smoke and I continued on my way.

  “Amazing,” I heard Zangwill say through the smoke a few steps ahead of me. “To think we’re in London.”

  The room opened out at the back. There was a small bar made of crude wood; a staircase going upward; and several old, mismatched chairs. The area was lit by a single gas lamp, but the darkness encroached upon it and herded it into a small circle. An Oriental, little more than a boy, came forward.

  “No,” I said, “I’m not smoking.”

  “No smoky one pipey?”

  “Yes,” Israel ordered. “One pipey. Do we pay now?”

  “No, no, no, later. You sit there. I bring pipey.”

  Zangwill sat down on the dirty sheets of one of the berths, and I pulled up a chair beside him.

  “It’s not too late to leave,” I told him. “When he comes back, I’ll say we changed our minds. We can go over to the Barbados for a cup of coffee and—”

  “No, I must go through with it,” Israel insisted. “This is just as it was described to me. Turn your chair ’round and keep an eye on that stairwell. I believe the insidious Mr. K’ing’s lair is up those steps.”

  The boy brought the pipe and lit a match for my friend, who was then forced to suck in enough smoke to keep it lit. I watched the little bead of gummy opium bubbling in the bowl of the pipe.

  He coughed a couple of times. “It’s not exactly a clay pipe at the Barbados,” he squeaked. “This stuff tastes terrible.” He put the pipe aside when the boy left.

  “So, you have quit teaching and become a reporter,” I asked. “What else has happened since we last met?”

  “I’ve met a girl, a corking girl. Her name is Amy Levy. She is a poetess and a member of the Fabian Society.”

  It was quite unlike him to talk about a girl. “A poetess, eh?”

  “Yes. She is very modern, one of these new women.”

  Just then an Oriental man came down the stairwell, looked at some figures in a ledger and returned upstairs. If that was Mr. K’ing, I was not impressed. He was all upper teeth and Adam’s apple and very little chin. He looked nothing like the portrait Bainbridge had left us.

  After a while we fell into a reverie. I hadn’t reckoned that the combined effluvia of so many pipes would be almost like having one of my own. It began with pinwheels at the corners of my vision. Before I knew it, I was having a headache and feeling woozy.

  “Llewelyn!” a voice spoke into my ear. I opened my eyes, though my sight wasn’t very clear. It was the chap in the top hat, who had been lying in the bunk against the wall. He had thrown his hat back and he looked familiar. “Llewelyn,” he repeated, shaking my shoulder.

  “Mr. Forbes?”

  “Pollock, old man,” he corrected. “So what are you and your friend doing here?”

  “Friend?”

  “You need some air, I think. In fact, you both do. Help me get him on his feet.”

  We got on both sides of Zangwill and lifted him up. He was nearly insensible. Forbes reached into his pocket and a rain of coins jingled down onto a rickety table. Then we opened the door and met the bracing cold air.

  Outside, the snow had stopped, but a misty haze had formed in the cold air. It felt good coming out from the infernal stench of the den. Inn of Double Happiness, my eye. Double Misery, more like. I needed a few breaths before I could walk, but I wasn’t sure I could trust Zangwill to stand upright. We led him down the street a bit and propped him against a building. Then I did the same for myself.

  It felt as if someone was squeezing the bridge of my nose with a pair of pliers. I was nauseous, too, and felt I might be sick, but managed to get hold of myself. We were just about to step into the street when a horse and cab nearly ran us down. I fell back against the wall, my heart racing. It had been close. The four-wheeler came to a stop in front of the den and the door opened. Could it possibly be?

  A form was getting out of the cab, a black shape, a shadow until he turned around and his face was illuminated by the meager gaslight from above the door. A broad-brimmed hat, Astrakhan-collared coat, thin face, Chinese eyes, thin mustache. It was Mr. K’ing.

  “There’s your man,” Forbes said in a low voice.

  K’ing settled his coat about him and turned, speaking to someone in the cab. A second fellow stepped out, a figure in dove gray. It was the last person I expected: Jimmy Woo.

  We leaned against the wall in the shadows. K’ing and Woo spoke to each other for a moment in Chinese, and then Woo bowed and walked off in the other direction.

  Forbes kept his head down, covered by his top hat, but I was staring straight at Mr. K’ing when his eyes swept the street and locked onto mine. Surely he couldn’t see us in the shadow, could he? His face hardened and I thought we were caught for certain, but he turned and stepped briskly down the steps into the inn.

  Forbes breathed out and coughed. He breathed in quickly and began coughing again. Finally, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and clamped it over his mouth. Slowly, the spasms passed. I pretended not to notice and let the man retain his dignity. I owed him that and more.

  “That was close,” he finally gulped.

  “Do you think he saw us?”

  “Who can say?” Forbes said and hefted Zangwill again.

  “Thank you for coming to my aid,” I told him. “What were you doing there?”

  “Keeping an eye on things,” he said cryptically. “What about you and this fellow?”

  “He’s a reporter and a friend of mine. He is doing a story on Limehouse.”

  “This is the sharp end of the sword, old boy,” he said. “Couldn’t you just take him to a noodle shop or a fan-tan parlor?”

  “Exposing K’ing was going to make his career.”

  “More likely it would end it. I think Mr. K’ing might have an opinion on whether or not he would care to be exposed.”

  “Woo,” I remembered. “He was with Jimmy Woo. What does that mean?”

  “You will have to ask your employer that question. Cab!”

  We caught a cab and shared it as far as Whitehall and Israel’s lodgings. We didn’t speak much. I still had pinwheels in the corners of my eyes and was half asleep. In fact, I think we all were. When the cab stopped, we got down and I waved to Forbes, who tapped the brim of his hat with his walking stick.

  A few more streets, I told myself. A few more streets and I will be home. I kept seeing K’ing’s eyes boring into mine.

  19

  HO APPEARED
ON OUR DOORSTEP THE NEXT morning. He had never been to the house, at least not since I had been in Barker’s employment. I took him upstairs, not realizing I was making a mistake. He watched Barker silently for a while, then lit three joss sticks with a match and set them in a holder he’d pulled from his pocket. Having done what he came for, Ho nodded and left the room. I followed him down to the ground floor, which is where the trouble started.

  Dummolard came out of the kitchen and caught Ho’s eye. He came hurtling after the Chinaman and the two began shouting in two different languages. I thought for certain they would come to blows as they bellowed at each other like bull elephants.

  “Gentlemen, please!” I cried, but they paid me no attention. Things might have deteriorated further if an even more formidable adversary had not joined the fray. I’m speaking, of course, of Mireille Dummolard.

  She came out of Mac’s room, where no doubt she had been feeding him sweetmeats and reading to him from Mrs. Braddon, and began spitting French phrases in rapid succession like bullets from an American Gatling gun. Both men tried to retain their sangfroid in the face of such a barrage, but it was only a matter of time. In half a minute the men were standing with their heads down, looking like schoolboys caught pulling the tail of the vicar’s cat. Ho slinked out the back door while Madame Dummolard marched her husband into the kitchen.

  I sat down on the first step of the staircase and held my head. I didn’t want to be in charge anymore. I believe life had been less taxing in Oxford Prison.

  “I say,” Mac called from his bed. “Was that Ho?”

  “It was.”

  “You can’t put him and Monsieur Dummolard in the same room, you know. They always fight. It’s a feud of long standing.”

  “Thank you for warning me,” I said.

  There was another rap at the door and the infernal girl reached for the handle again.

  “No!” I cried, arresting her in mid-gesture. “No more visitors. We are declining all visitors today save Mr. Barker’s doctors.”

  “How do you know it is not the doctor?” the maid asked in her accented English.

  “Applegate has a nice brougham with a white mare. The other doctor is a Chinaman. If there is no white mare at the curb and no Chinaman, that door stays closed. Do you understand?”

  “Oui, monsieur,” she said with a short curtsey.

  I walked toward the kitchen for a cup of coffee, realized the Dummolards were still arguing in there, then considered going out somewhere for some peace and quiet. There was nowhere to go. Instead, I climbed the stair and sat down at Barker’s bedside, flipping open the copy of Pilgrim’s Progress.

  “Hello, lad,” said the still form on the bed.

  “Sir!”

  “Was that a fight I heard downstairs just now?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m so glad you are awake. Ho showed up and got into it with Etienne. Then Madame Dummolard came and lit into both of them. I thought I was going to have to send for the police.”

  Barker grunted from the bed. “You were never warned about them,” he said, his voice weak.

  “Not until after the fact.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “More than two days.”

  “Blast,” he murmured.

  “Your kidneys almost failed, sir. Do you remember?”

  “Vaguely. Let me think a moment.”

  I allowed him the silence. It was good to have him awake again, cogitating. I helped him take a sip of water and then sat down with the book in my hand.

  “Death touch,” he finally said. “Was Applegate here?”

  “He was, sir.”

  “Applegate could not save me from a death touch. He wouldn’t know how.”

  “No, sir, but I brought Dr. Quong here, as well.”

  I think I actually surprised him. He spent another moment in silence working it out. “Good, lad,” he finally said. “Very astute.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  “That’s the first sensible thing you have done this entire case.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  “I suppose I should be dead now had it not been for your quick thinking. Confound it,” he said, showing a little of his normal spirit. “So many hours gone out from under us, and me as weak as a kitten. Tell me what has happened while I was…resting.”

  I related everything chronologically from the time I’d found him unconscious in the corridor until he woke up: calling Applegate, fetching Old Quong, Jenkins’s arrival, Poole putting a guard on the house, Bok Fu Ying, Zangwill’s news, our visit to the inn, Forbes helping us—everything.

  “It appears you’ve had a time of it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I should have realized what had happened. I was caught out.”

  “You cannot anticipate everything, sir.”

  “You can if you’re wise enough,” he said. “Old Quong. Bring him here. I need him. Harness Juno and take the cab. Inform him that I need a good marrow cleansing.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said and went downstairs. There is nothing like being the bearer of good news. Mac shouted a hurrah from his bed, Madame and Monsieur Dummolard stopped arguing long enough to hug each other as well as me over the news, and Harm seemed to understand intuitively and flew up the stairs to his master. Stepping out into the morning air, I made my way to the stables, thinking to myself what a good day it had suddenly become.

  Juno seemed to sense it as well. She nickered as soon as she recognized me and the boy was muttering under his breath by the time he had her in the traces, so impatient was she to begin. She broke out through the front door as though it were the gate at Ascot. I was hard-pressed to keep the old girl reined in the entire way there, but I must say she looked beautiful in the sunlight with her bay coloring and glossy sheen. She kept her head high and her steps brisk all the way there.

  I tied her to a pole outside Dr. Quong’s herb shop. Inside, the old man was talking to an elderly female customer but stopped when he saw me.

  “Awake?” he asked.

  “Awake.”

  “Ah! I come, then,” he said, concluding his business with the woman.

  “He said something about marrow cleansing,” I told him when we were alone.

  “Ah, yes. Very good, very good,” he said, and began to throw preparations into his bag. “You bring your horse again?”

  “I brought a carriage, actually.”

  “Good. Horse is no good on old man’s bones.”

  If it was an unusual sight to see a Chinaman on the back of a horse and rider charging through London, it was equally novel to see one in a hansom cab. In a few moments, we were on our way to London Bridge and points south.

  Eventually I pulled the cab into the alley behind Barker’s house. I led the doctor up the stairs, stopping in my room to shake off my coat. I found Barker’s stair blocked when I arrived, however. Ho had returned and now straddled the bottom step of his staircase, arms crossed and feet splayed.

  “Let me pass,” I said.

  Ho shook his head. “He cannot be disturbed.”

  I was going to say something but stopped short. There were strange sounds coming from upstairs in Barker’s voice. I wanted to go up to see what was happening. Instead, I asked Ho directly if he could tell me what was going on.

  Ho looked up at me as if deciding whether or not explaining was worth the effort. After all, I was a barbarian and would understand imperfectly. On the other hand, like a gadfly, I refused to go away. I would stare at him until I got an answer, some sort of answer, anyway.

  Ho’s face screwed up as he tried to concentrate. He is an ugly brute, if one can say that of an associate. His general expression and demeanor are as if he is deciding how best to gut and serve you. It was possible he might give up the explanation before it began.

  “There are certain tones and sounds that affect the organs of the body,” he finally replied. “When one repeats these sounds, it is like giving yourself an interna
l massage. His kidneys have been damaged and Dr. Quong can only do so much externally.”

  “Is it like the internal exercises he gives me?”

  “Much more advanced.”

  “What if—”

  “What if you do not ask so many questions.”

  I gave it up, realizing he wouldn’t let me upstairs. “I’ll leave you to your guard duty, then.”

  Dinner that night was coq au vin. Though it did not diminish my opinion of madame as a cook, I am not in favor of wine in food. Perhaps I was nettled. Barker did not come down, of course. The maid brought a tray up, but Ho merely looked at the food as if it were poisoned and sent it back. It was a good thing Etienne had gone back to his restaurant.

  Ho finally summoned me to the room around seven. Barker was sitting up, or rather he was kneeling on the bed and sitting upon his crossed ankles. He was shirtless and his head was down as if he were asleep. I crawled into a chair and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. The marrow cleansing, whatever it was, had ended, but the Guv looked all in. His skin was slick with sweat. Was he sleeping? Meditating? Dr. Quong had his bag at his feet and was watching Barker intently, as was Ho.

  Several minutes later, Barker raised his head and looked over at me. “Bring the carriage,” he said weakly.

  “Sir, aren’t you too ill to travel?”

  “Do not argue or question,” he said brusquely. “What must be done will be done. Bring it ’round to the front door.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I went downstairs, but before I went to get my coat, I knocked on Mac’s door. I needed reinforcements.

  “He’s going out,” I told him, after he had hopped to the door.

  “Out? He cannot possibly go out. He just woke up!”

  “That is what I said. He insists. I’ve been ordered to get Juno and bring her ’round the front. Can you have a word with him?”

  “I shall try.”

  By the time I returned with the cab, Ho and Dr. Quong were helping Barker out the front door, holding him up at the elbows, despite Mac’s protests. They climbed in with him and we bowled off into the night.

  Branching off Commercial Street a half hour later, I dropped Quong and Ho at the tearoom and at Barker’s orders took him on a long and leisurely circuit of Limehouse. He had both hands on the head of his stick and the tip was between his shoes, but he looked as if he had just enough strength to sit upright. I had the trap up and could see him nodding to passersby. What was he getting at, traveling so far from his sickbed? Didn’t he know how close he had come to dying?