by Thomas, Will
“Messieurs!” he said to the sour-faced quintet of Frenchmen who sat on a large packing crate, sharpening their knives. “I am glad to see you all here.”
“This had better not be a trick, Barker,” Robert Dummolard spoke for his brothers. “We expect to see Sicilian blood spilt tonight.”
“You will get your chance of that, I’m sure. I want you to know, however, that I will not simply drop a handkerchief and have you all charge at once. This is a game of strategy.”
“Strategy,” the Frenchman repeated, spitting upon the dock.
“I am sending Hooligan’s Irish lads in first. The five of you will lead the second brigade.”
“My brothers demand to go first,” the Frenchman insisted.
“You must trust me, Robert. I have Etienne’s best interests at heart. There will still be plenty of Sicilians for you to fight. But I hope you have no plans to kill anyone. I cannot shield you from a charge of murder. Remember, they cannot regret what they have done to your brother if they are dead.”
Robert turned to his brothers and spoke in French too rapidly for me to follow, telling them no doubt what Barker had said. Immediately there was an uproar among them—angry faces and fingers being pointed. Robert silenced them all with an oath, then spoke in a low voice for a minute or two.
“Very well, monsieur,” he said. “We agree to your terms. But we lead the second attack.”
“We’re glad to have you,” the Guv told him.
“There they are!” A voice sounded behind us; and on the other side of the dock, the Sicilians appeared. Ben Tillett jumped up on a crate nearby, and I saw him anxiously counting heads from this higher vantage point. Barker surveyed our opponents with one hand on his hip and an elbow resting on the Dummolards’ crate. We all leaned forward to watch our opponents.
“No more than ninety,” Tillett cried. “I’d bet my life on it.”
A cheer rose up, a waving of belaying pins in the air.
“I doubt it’ll be that easy,” Patrick Hooligan said behind us. “These Sicilians are crafty devils. Shall I reconnoiter the area to make certain there’s not a second band of them lurking about?”
“No,” my employer replied calmly. “We’ll take them as they come. If they are too strong, or too many, don’t hesitate to pull back.”
“Don’t you worry, Push. But, mind you, when this is over, I expect your help in return. I’ll be making a bid for the Isle of Dogs.”
“You think you can wrest it from Mr. K’ing’s grasp?”
“Why not?” he asked. “The Sicilians were going to do it. I’ll crowd the Chinaman into Limehouse, so all he can do is smoke on his opium pipey and cry over what he once had.”
Barker nodded and deferred answering for the moment, while I wondered if he was going to give the docks over to Hooligan and his grand ambitions. I thought my employer and K’ing had worked out an understanding between them. The Guv turned and pulled out his watch.
“Mr. Tillett,” he rumbled.
“Yes, sir?”
“Yours to command. Come, lad.”
“All right, boys,” the dock foreman shouted. “I want you in lines of ten. Irish first, Frenchmen next, then you dock-workers. Try not to crowd your neighbors!”
“Where are we going, sir?” I asked, as we skirted the armies and walked beside the warehouses.
“To spy out the leader of the opposing force.”
“Is he here, do you think? Marco Faldo?”
“He’s here. He’s bound to be,” the Guv muttered. “Step up, lad.”
I hoisted myself onto a crate that would offer a commanding view of the proceedings. The sun had almost gone down, bathing us all in a bloodred glow. Our opponents were not as physically large as some of our lads, but they were tough and wiry; and I saw more than one dagger in their hands.
“My word, it’s the man in the cape,” I cried, pointing across the dock. He stood, shouting orders; and as he looked across at our forces, I recognized him as the man I’d identified at Scotland Yard. “It’s the man who shot Gigliotti. The Bertillon card must have been false.”
“Or is that the man?” Barker said, pointing a finger of his own. In the rear of the army stood another caped figure, issuing final instructions to the men there.
“Twins!” I cried.
“The Bertillon card was not wrong. Scotland Yard arrested the wrong brother. I suspected there were two of them all along. The measurements were wrong because the twins were born mirror imaged. It’s time,” he stated, looking at his watch. “Six thirty sharp.”
We watched as Ben Tillett crossed the empty dock between the two armies before he came to a stop in the middle. A moment later the first assassin stepped out to meet him. As he approached, he recognized me and gave me a nod.
“Are you ready?” I heard Tillett ask. We had a good vantage point, with both men almost directly in front of us.
“Very ready, signor,” the caped man answered. “The question is, are you ready?”
“We are. May we have your word you have no firearms?”
The Sicilian shook his head. “No firearms. We don’t need them to teach a few Englishmen a lesson.”
The two men turned and walked back to their armies. I could feel the tension in the air. Tillett turned and pointed at the Sicilians with his belaying pin. He bawled a sound, unintelligible to my ear, and Hooligan’s gang bellowed it back. They charged past him, weapons raised. Somewhere in the very middle I saw Patrick Hooligan, looking like he was having the time of his life.
The Sicilians did not charge, but waited upon events, which worried me. What did they have up their sleeves? I found out as soon as the Irish crashed into the enemy lines. Or didn’t crash at all, actually. To a man, they came to a stop and abruptly turned around, with crafty smiles on their faces. Hooligan and his boys had gone with the higher bidder. They were deserters. I should have remembered my history. If memory serves, the Irish played this same trick against Edward Longshanks six hundred years ago.
“We’ve been outfoxed, sir,” I yelled. “Now what do we do? We’re outnumbered by dozens!”
“We accept it and move on,” Barker answered. He called to the caped Sicilians, “You may have them, sirs. We have no need of turncoats.”
Tillett bellowed again, and a second later the assassins gave answering cries. Our army trotted forward, led by the Dummolards, who waved daggers in the air. The two sides crashed together in front of us, with the sound of wood against wood and body against body. There were cries and groans. Weapons fell to the ground and were quickly picked up, and knives slashed at human flesh.
“Come, lad,” Barker said, jumping off the crate into the thick of the battle. The first mafiusu he encountered he spun around and dropped upon the pavement.
I knew better than to think I was going to be merely a spectator. I jumped down, avoided a blade aimed in my direction, and brought the brass ball of my malacca cane down upon the shoulder of my assailant. It wasn’t quite enough to stop him, so I tried it again; and when he raised his arm to protect himself, I smote him in the ribs.
Just then a board broke over my left elbow, rendering it momentarily numb. I kicked out at a knee, however, and knocked the fellow down; but there was another to take his place. And another. I was quickly surrounded by fighting men.
As I fought with a Sicilian dockworker armed with a marlinespike, he suddenly tripped beside a large crate, falling heavily to the dock. I was debating whether to give him a kick when he gave a sharp cry and was pulled backward under a side of the crate. Over the fighting, I thought I heard a sound of pounding beneath us. Stepping around the side of the crate, I found a knothole and peered inside. Then I spoke into it.
“Nice factory you’ve got here, Vic. How many have your boys caught so far?”
“Free,” came the response, “but I ’ope to improve if you’ll quit discouraging customers by ’angin’ ’roun’ me box, fathead. Unless you’d like to step in front and investigate the operation first’a
nd. Otherwise, hop it!”
I had to hand it to Soho Vic. He’s very resourceful. I couldn’t fathom how he knew about the empty crate so quickly after Barker had chosen this dock. Somehow he’d found a way to even the odds for his gang. He didn’t go out into their dangerous world. He dragged people into his. I debated informing Barker, knowing he didn’t want Soho Vic or his boys on the dock. However, the brawl was far from over yet.
Ahead of me, Barker almost seemed to be enjoying himself, disarming Sicilians and bringing them down. I’ve always wondered how a man who spends most of his evenings immersed in prayer so well enjoyed a pitched battle against other human beings. He seemed to achieve some sort of release by it.
I’d brought down four men so far, putting them all out of commission. The Guv had not yet trained me in fighting two men at once, as he could; but as long as I took them on one at a time I was doing all right.
Barker suddenly stuffed two fingers under his mustache and blew a shrill whistle. Abruptly, a barge that was standing alongside the dock spewed sailors—dozens of them—out onto the deck. One man rested a long limb against the rail and surveyed the scene with an air of command. It was Peter Beauchamp, here to lend a hand. Barker must have known that Hooligan was not to be trusted days before, and had planned accordingly. I saw relief on the faces of Barker’s men and renewed vigor against their opponents.
My employer had almost reached the spot where the Sicilian twins were battering our men to the ground with ebony canes. I was busy knocking the legs out from under a new acquaintance, when a hand seized my collar from behind, and I felt cold metal against the back of my neck. I recognized the barrel of a pistol when I felt one.
“No guns!” I protested hotly, looking over my shoulder. Then I gasped. It took a moment for my brain to verify what my eyes were seeing.
28
INSPECTOR PETTIGRILLI?” I ASKED. “YOU’RE ALIVE?”
“No, lad,” Barker called behind me. “This is Marco Faldo.”
The Sicilian nodded, his pistol barrel still pressed against my neck. “Very good, Mr. Barker. I see you did not fall for my little ruse.”
“I did,” the Guv admitted, “for a time, at least.”
By now the twin killers had fought off other opponents and were standing on either side of my employer, ready to do battle. He looked at them appraisingly.
“Lad, your stick,” Barker called.
I tossed him my brass-headed malacca, and he caught it in his left hand, still holding his cane in his right. Barker, I realized, was about to square off against two skilled assassins at once. I wasn’t sure if it was possible to defeat them both, even for one as trained as my employer. I dared take one step in his direction.
“Mr. Llewelyn,” Faldo warned, “I would not hesitate to blow your brains out through a small hole in the front of your skull.”
I stopped. There was nothing I could do—not yet, anyway.
The brothers began to circle Barker, looking for a weak spot to attack. It has been my experience that when it comes to fighting, he doesn’t have one, but he’s not above giving a false impression in order to bring on an attack. Both brothers closed in at once, raising their sticks to strike, and the fight began.
Cyrus Barker blocked both blows and then attacked, but his reach was not long enough. Caught between them, he could fight only within a limited half circle, whereas they had the full length of their bodies, six feet or so, in which to swing an arc. Barker fended off each new blow, but even as I thought this, the silver ball of a stick struck him on the shoulder, making him wince. It didn’t stop him, however, but made him change positions with his back to me.
They attacked again, the exchange coming so swiftly that I couldn’t see it. The assassins’ sticks were silver arcs in the moonlight, spinning dangerously close to my employer. One of the brothers came too close and received an elbow in the face that drew blood. He wiped it with a handkerchief, and then gave a tug on his stick, pulling out a sword that must have been the weapon used on Etienne Dummolard. His brother followed suit and now, Barker faced not two weapons but four.
“That’s not fair!” I cried, but a clap on the head from the butt of Faldo’s pistol was all the response I received.
Barker was hard-pressed on both sides as the brothers moved as if they had one mind between them. I thought it likely that they must have trained together for hours every day to be so good. The Guv was defending himself adequately so far, but it could not go on much longer. He would soon be overwhelmed. One of the brothers pressed forward but was rebuffed again. He dared press a second time. Then Barker raised a foot and brought it around behind the other, almost too quickly for my eye to follow. It caught one brother on the knee as he was retreating, and there was an audible snap as it broke. I wouldn’t have noticed the move if Barker hadn’t once shown it to me and tried to teach me its mechanics. The shadowless kick, it’s called, one of those mystical names the Chinese find so attractive. The injured man fell back with a look of pain and consternation; but Barker moved toward him, pulling him forward as a shield, just as his brother drove home his blade. It went through the man’s upper chest, possibly puncturing a lung. Then my employer seized the sword from nerveless fingers and lunged forward, driving the blade through the side of the remaining brother, tenting the fabric of his cape behind. The Guv stood as both adversaries fell to the ground at his feet, too injured to fight any longer.
Faldo’s pistol came away from my head, and I knew he was about to shoot Barker. I raised my left arm to keep him from aiming, the dagger in my sleeve giving added force to the block. The pistol went off by my ear, but I seized his wrist and we struggled together. I had promised Mrs. Ashleigh that I would look after my employer. I wasn’t about to let go. The Sicilian tried to push his weapon toward me so it would discharge in my face, while I tried the same thing with him. I struggled into a position where I could flip him, when something fluttered by my head. A length of rope wrapped around Faldo’s wrist, jerking his gun away. I recognized that rope, but it took a few seconds to recall just where. It was part of Ho’s rope dart. The Chinaman stood in an alley a few yards away, attempting to control Faldo’s arm with his long length of rope.
Marco Faldo was a powerful man, as I soon found out. He strained against both of us, trying to switch his gun to his other hand and fire again. Ho pulled the rope, and I hung onto Faldo’s arm for dear life, but the Sicilian was still able to raise both arms over my head and transfer the pistol to his left hand. I leapt for the other arm now, but I was too slow. The pistol went off and Barker grabbed his shoulder with a grunt.
We both had our hands on the pistol now, and it wavered back and forth in an arc with Barker at its center. There were crates nearby, but I realized they were too far away for him to dive behind. I pulled Faldo’s hand down hard toward my own stomach, thrusting it into the pocket of my waistcoat. If he wanted to shoot Barker again he was going to have to kill me first. Faldo had untangled himself from Ho’s rope and was now using his free hand to tear at my newly plastered cut. Blood trickled down my cheek and into my eye. Clumsily, I tripped over Faldo’s foot and staggered to the side. I was going to fail in my mission to save Barker.
Suddenly I felt the Mafia leader jump once, twice, thrice. I heard the shots after, and turned to Barker in wonder as the man I was grappling with sagged, but the Guv had only our sticks in his hands and was looking behind me. I let Faldo fall to the dock and turned awkwardly. Ten feet away, pistol still aimed toward me, stood Terence Poole. It took a moment for my mind to register what had happened. First, Ho had come out of nowhere, then the inspector. Where had they come from? It didn’t matter. I was never so glad to see the inspector in my life.
Suddenly police whistles were sounding everywhere, and men on both sides scurried away like rats. Constables were laying about right and left with their truncheons, and I heard the clicks of derbies being applied to wrists.
“It’s a good thing you finally moved,” Poole commented to me, op
ening his regulation pistol and shaking out the cartridges. “I was about to think I’d have to shoot through you.”
Barker handed me my cane, and we both pulled handkerchiefs from our breast pockets, I to stanch my cheek and he his shoulder. “It’s just a scratch,” he said. “That was a close thing, lad. Why ever did you get in the way?”
“Get in the way?” I shouted. “Get in the way? I was just trying to save your life, is all! I didn’t know you and Ho had this set up between you.” I turned to Inspector Poole. “Were you in on this as well? Of course you were. Did everyone know what was going to happen but me?”
“He’s babbling,” Barker commented to Poole. “It’s shock.”
“Is that Chinaman here?” the inspector asked, looking about. He’d have loved to arrest Ho, whose association with Mr. K’ing made him suspect; but the restaurant owner had vanished, as stealthily as he had come, taking his rope dart with him.
“No,” Barker said innocently. “Of course not.”
“Do you plan to explain to me how the late Inspector Pettigrilli was suddenly alive again and how I’ve managed to shoot a guest of this country and a brother officer?”
“You may relax, Terence,” the Guv replied. “This is not Alberto Pettigrilli. This, in fact, was the notorious mafiusu, Marco Faldo. You’ve not only stopped a dispute on the docks but also silenced a dangerous criminal.”
Poole wasn’t quite buying this pat answer. He crossed his arms and looked at my employer skeptically.
“So, you pulled it off, did you? You and the nipper, here?”
“I have a name, you know,” I insisted, “a perfectly good one.”
“I’ll learn it someday when I can spare the time,” Poole said.
Barker reached into his pocket and filled his pipe with tobacco while Poole rolled his eyes. It seemed to me the little meerschaum effigy of its master was smirking at me, but perhaps it was only a shadow. Barker lit a match, not hurrying, and set about properly igniting his pipe before blowing out the match.
