Some Danger Involved : A Novel

by Will Thomas

  “You entered my employment because you were desperate. I could see it in your eyes.”

  “Yes, sir, I was, but you hired me, and I accepted the position. You can’t change the rules of the game now.”

  “It’s not a game, Thomas. I came within a hairbreadth of losing an assistant this afternoon.”

  “Of course, it’s your decision, but I don’t believe I should be penalized because of the last fellow,” I said bitterly.

  “You know about Quong, then,” he stated.

  “Yes, sir, though you’ve been at some pains to keep it from me.”

  Barker ran his fingers through his hair. Then he began tapping his pockets for his pouch. He filled and lit his pipe. I watched the smoke drift through the permanently open window. “Quong was a good man, and a good assistant,” he said, blowing out his match. “Being Chinese, he couldn’t go everywhere, but he had a knack for being unobtrusive and silent. His death three months ago was a blow. I had to tell his father that he had died. I’d rather not have to do that again.”

  “How did he die?”

  “I sent him out on a routine assignment, following a merchant—a merchant of all things! He never came back. His body washed up on the Isle of Dogs two days later. One bullet between the eyes. The merchant knew nothing; he wasn’t even aware he’d been followed! The case is still unsolved. I’ve followed lead after lead. Quong was like a son to me. Don’t believe my advertisements, that I solve every case that comes my way.”

  “You blame yourself for his death.”

  “Mea culpa.”

  “Sir, London is a dangerous place, but you didn’t send him on a dangerous mission. It was routine work. His getting shot was just…random.”

  “But today was not. You were almost assassinated. I shouldn’t have left you alone. You’re still new.”

  “Mr. Barker, I know I’m new, but I’ll be all right. I survived eight months in Oxford Prison and I’ve lived through today so far. I may be as green as Ireland, but I’m a grown man. Heaven knows I’ve made a grown man’s mistakes already. I realize now how serious this work can be and I shall endeavor to be more careful in the future. But you cannot solve this case and be occupied with my safety at the same time. You can’t ride one ass to two fairs.”

  Barker gave another of his wintry smiles. “Where did you pick up that one?”

  “It was in one of your Jewish books, sir.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Barker said between puffs, but I could see he was wavering.

  “Well, I prefer not to be shot at, but I suppose an assistant to a private enquiry agent would be subject to the same dangers as his employer. I accept that, and so should you.”

  He stood, extended his pipe out the small open space in the window, and knocked the ash from the bowl. Then he carefully wrapped the pipe and tobacco up in the sealskin pouch and returned it to his pocket.

  “Agreed,” he said, and turned to leave. He was almost out the door, in that way of his, when I made a sound in my throat. He stopped and turned, inquiringly.

  “Nothing, sir,” I said. “A minor annoyance. I’ve slept hard these few hours. I shall probably be up all night now.”

  “Try the library,” he suggested.

  “We have a library? Where?”

  “You’re the private enquiry agent’s assistant. Find it yourself.”

  I accepted the challenge. There were only a few doors in the house I hadn’t tried. The two on the first floor turned out to be a guest room and a lumber room respectively. That left two on the ground floor. The first, hard by the front door, I took to be Mr. Maccabee’s personal domain, which only left the one by the back door, across the hall from the kitchen. My deduction was correct.

  The door was ajar, so I stepped in, turned up the gas, and looked about. The room had built-in bookcases on all sides, from floor to ceiling. Two comfortable chairs in studded green leather flanked an Arabian octagonal table, with an oil lamp. There was a fireplace in marble, with a fendered grate, and a faded Persian carpet that dominated the room in an abstract design of red and green. A ladder on rollers navigated most of the shelves, by means of a circular track. It was all a bibliophile could want. I ran a finger along one shelf, and it came away clean. Mac must dust the shelves weekly.

  I haven’t mentioned the books, of course. Hundreds of books, thousands, in fact. Any subject, any language; novels, philosophy, classics, language primers, and instructional books on just about everything. There was a shelf full of manuscripts, another of ragged scrolls, and a third fronted with glass to preserve the ancient volumes therein. I settled on Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, as I thought it might be pertinent to the case, and was just about to sit down when there was a warning growl from behind me. I was about to sit on Harm. I let dozing dogs lie and moved to the other chair.

  I was almost immediately engrossed in the book and was coming to the part when Daniel comes into the casino and inadvertently makes Gwendolen lose her money, when the door burst open. It was Mac, in a pajama sleeping suit and robe. He had his shotgun in hand, but all form of menace was gone for he (oh, how priceless) was wearing a silk hair net.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, simply.

  “Yes. Barker woke me, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I thought I might try reading.”

  “Of course.”

  I was aching to mention the net, but I controlled myself. “Thank you for the brandy and milk. It did the trick.”

  “Not at all, sir.” It came to him suddenly. He ripped the net off his head and stuffed it into a pocket of his gown. “I’ll leave you to your reading then. Deronda, is it? Did the Guv suggest it?”

  “No, I chose it on my own. Is it a good book, from your point of view?”

  “Oh, yes. Not bad, really, for a Gentile author.” He let me alone after that. There are some people one can get along with immediately, and some that one never shall. I began to think Mac might be one of the latter. At first, I had assumed it was because he was Jewish, but I’d gotten along well enough with Zangwill and Moskowitz. No, I decided it was just Mac.

  Around midnight the rest and reading had settled my spirit enough that I was hungry again. Harm and I decided to raid the larder. It proved to be a roomy cupboard in the kitchen with louvered doors and shelves stacked to the ceiling. Dummolard went in for glass-domed servers; there must have been a half dozen. I saw mutton pie, game pie, some sort of quiche covered with rashers of bacon, and a venison stew. The dog and I agreed on the quiche.

  Considering how cold and aloof Harm had been to me over the last week or two, I was amazed at the sudden transformation in him. He now wanted to be my best friend. While I searched for a plate and silverware, the Pekingese began making aerial leaps a Chinese acrobat would envy. When I sat down with my slice, he stood beside my knee on his back limbs, waving his paws and gurgling like a baby. What can one do after such a performance? I split the pie with him, then we mutually agreed we needed a second slice. After that, we each had some water and went back to reading. That is, I went back to reading while he dozed in the other chair.

  I must confess I thought him useless as a watchdog, snoring in the chair as he was. At less than a stone, he didn’t meet my standards in regard to size, though my ankles attested to the sharpness of his teeth. I noticed, however, that at the slightest sound, the settling of the house, perhaps, or a late-night cab passing through the Elephant and Castle Circle outside, he woke from his slumbers and looked about with those goggly eyes of his. The little dog taught me a lesson about Barker, and all the satellites that revolved around him: they may look harmless enough, and perhaps even a trifle ridiculous, but there are hidden abilities behind the outward appearance. Did I dare hope that the same could be said of me?

  15

  IT WAS NOT A GOOD MORNING. DUMMOLARD made me coffee and an omelet in the kitchen, but neither of us was in a garrulous mood. He moved about, the stump of a cigarette in his teeth, ready to bite off my head at the first comment. I’d had a small disagreem
ent with my employer the night before, had not endeared myself to the butler, and now I was in danger of angering the cook.

  Barker came down the stairs, as steady as the eight twenty from Brighton. He greeted me formally and led me outside to the curb. Racket at least had a smile for me, though Juno seemed unimpressed. Perhaps she associated me with the shot last night. The new glass and patch on the woodwork of the cab were as evident as Racket had predicted. Barker and I rode to the office in Craig’s Court in relative silence. He asked but one question.

  “How’s Deronda coming along?”

  “Fine, sir. How did you know I was reading it?”

  “I saw the book on your table just now before I came down,” he responded.

  “Is it all right for me to borrow it?”

  “The library is open to you, lad.”

  In the office, I felt more like an actor than an agent’s assistant. I hadn’t sat at my desk more than once or twice, hadn’t used any of the materials in the top drawers, and hadn’t even opened the bottom ones.

  Barker drafted a letter to a Sûreté inspector in French. Then we attempted a letter to a retired criminologist in Vienna but bogged down completely. I didn’t know a word of German, and when he wrote down a word for me, I couldn’t read his horrid scrawl. We agreed to send it in English and hope that the old duffer could find a translator.

  Finally, Barker finished his office business, or perhaps he merely took pity on me, and we climbed into another cab. Barker yelled “Chelsea” over our heads, and we were off.

  “What is in Chelsea?” I asked.

  “Aesthetes,” he responded. I had read in The Times how that district of the West End was rapidly filling up with artists, poets, authors, and let us not forget the wealthy female patrons who feted them. In drawing rooms there, Mr. Whistler was slinging paint for all he was worth, and the arbiters of taste and fashion walked those gilded streets. I noticed a picturesque fellow in a velveteen suit leaning against a building, looking as if he had barely enough energy to smoke the cigarette that hung limply between his thick lips.

  We disembarked in front of a fashionable-looking residence in Cheyne Row, with a brass doorknocker in the form of a sunflower. Our rap brought to the door a Sikh manservant in a suit and a turban of an unrelieved peach color, which in no way diminished his fierce appearance. He took our card and led us through an overdecorated hall, awash in Liberty wallpaper and heavy furniture. He carried our card into a room and emphatically closed the door behind him. After a moment, he opened it again, bowed, and ushered us in. The room was a book-crammed study, filled mostly with classics, less modern and more academic than the outside of the residence would lead one to expect. A white-haired gentleman sat at his desk, scribbling away at his journal. He set down his pen and turned at our approach. I was unprepared for his appearance. It was Walter Rushford, my old tutor from Oxford.

  I had read in the newspaper that he was settled now here in London, probably in the same article about the aesthetic movement. A wag therein had called him “Old Nebuchadnezzar,” after the Babylonian king from Daniel, for at the pinnacle of his fame and genius, with his books flying out of the bookshops, and with invitations to speak the length and breadth of England, he had suddenly gone quite thoroughly mad. Some called it a brainstorm brought on by overwork, some a natural extension of his genius, and others a punishment for his radical beliefs. No one would say exactly what form this madness took (perhaps he ate grass like his biblical predecessor), but the outcome was swift: he was quietly sent to a sanitarium outside of London. Now that I found myself confronted with him, I was busy worrying that he would recognize me, and wondering what he would say when he did.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, graciously. “May I be of service to you?”

  “You may, sir, you may,” my employer began. “I am Cyrus Barker, and this is my assistant. We’d like a word, if possible.”

  “Certainly. Won’t you be seated?”

  We sat. I took a moment to surreptitiously observe my old professor. Though he was only in his late forties, his hair had gone white during his stay in the asylum. All his faculties seemed to be still with him, however, and he appeared hale and hearty for all his recent misfortunes. He turned a curious eye my way, and I could see that he recognized me but couldn’t exactly place me. One could see him going through filing cabinets in his mind, looking for my picture. I hoped, for my sake, that the filing room had been overturned enough that one file in particular had been lost forever.

  “Mr. Rushford,” Barker said. “A few nights ago a young Jew was murdered in Aldgate—crucified, in fact—by a group calling itself the Anti-Semite League. Have you ever heard of such an organization?”

  “No, sir, I have not.”

  “I have been retained to discover the identities of the men responsible for this crime, and I am leaving no stone unturned. You, sir, are one of the stones.”

  “Me? Surely you’re not implying that I had anything to do with the matter?” he asked.

  “No, sir, I merely came to solicit your aid in my investigation. It is true, is it not, that you are an exponent of the science of eugenics, that you are in fact its most vocal exponent?”

  The scholar got up to pace. “I don’t know about that. Sir Francis Galton invented the science, and he still lives. I wholeheartedly believe in it, and I speak my mind when I believe in a cause. I am a philosophical eugenicist; that is to say, I believe some races are genetically inferior to others and must be governed by those more capable. Our superiority is what has made us a world empire. But I would not call for the destruction of other races, not even one little Jew. Certainly I would not be part of an organization that committed such an atrocity.”

  “Perhaps not, sir,” Barker continued, “but in one of your published essays you claimed that were the Jews to be assimilated into the general population, they would produce a race which was ‘physically stunted, mentally decayed, and morally corrupt.’ What solution do you propose?”

  The professor shrugged his shoulders. “None at all. Not for the Jews that are already here. But I think we should shut our borders. I don’t object to Jews, and I know many, but I do not wish my country inundated with them. Close to a hundred thousand have arrived here in the past few years. They are un-educated and superstitious, little better than animals. Some are criminal, and some are insane. The East End is already rife with other disasters: the Irish, the Italians, even the Cockneys. It’s like some terrible melting pot, producing a noxious brew.”

  “But, sir,” Barker continued, “are you not concerned that your published philosophical musings may encourage your readers to take the crusade into their own hands? We mustn’t forget the hysteria in 1291 that resulted in the Jews’ being driven out of England. Do you wish that to happen again?”

  My old tutor looked at us hard. “I do. I hope it is as bloodless as possible, but I agree with it. We are dealing with issues larger than ourselves: a people, nay, an organism defending itself against contamination. We are seeing one of Darwin’s principles at work, that of natural selection. I cannot help you, gentlemen. I cannot interfere.”

  “Mr. Rushford,” Barker continued, “We have not come here today to debate race or religion with you. Names, sir! I need the names of possible members of the Anti-Semite League. I’ll concede that to your way of thinking, a pogrom is a naturally occurring phenomenon. But we have a mob of citizens taking a man off the street and crucifying him from a telegraph pole in the middle of the City. That is—”

  “Madness?” Rushford drew himself up to his full height and grasped the lapels of his coat, as he once did while pontificating. “I think I am a better judge of madness than you, having so recently escaped it. It is not madness to want the best for one’s people. Even now, in Limehouse, the blooms of English womanhood are walking arm in arm with Chinese men. In Soho, they are fawning over Negro minstrel singers from America. It is not madness to wish to safeguard our women and ourselves!”

  Bark
er responded calmly. “We have gotten off track. What of these killers? Will you help us, or will you side with murderers?”

  Rushford looked down at the floor for a moment, debating in his head between his beliefs and his disinclination to see blood spilt.

  “No, no, no, I cannot help you,” he said finally. “If the blood of one Jew may stem the tide of thousands washing in, it has served a purpose. I am not acquainted with anyone whom I believe capable of doing such a deed, and I do not countenance murder, but I will not stop nature from taking its course. Do you know that the Royal Army is complaining that the average recruit is much smaller than a generation ago? Look at this little fellow here.” He gestured toward me.

  My cheeks burned at the insult. “Sir, I am of a very pure Welsh strain.”

  Barker gently took my arm. “Llewelyn, it is time for us to leave.”

  “Llewelyn?” My old tutor pounced on the name. “Thomas Llewelyn, is that you? Of course it is! Well, well, so this is where you finally washed up. I might have known, since no respectable employer would have you. How does it feel to be one of the hounds instead of the fox? I hope your time in jail proved…educational.”

  “More so than Burberry Asylum, apparently, Professor,” I retorted. “They let you out too early. You’re still as mad as a hatter.”

  “We were just leaving,” Barker rumbled, manhandling me across the room. “Thank you for your time.”

  I looked over at the tall Sikh, who stood by the door glowering at us. He escorted us out and slammed the door behind us.

  “Why the deuce didn’t you tell me you knew the fellow?” my employer demanded at the curb.

  “If you didn’t insist on keeping our every destination as secret as the road to El Dorado, I would have done so. You might have realized the possibility, given that we were both at Oxford. To think I once admired the man! I had signed copies of his essays and poetry. If I had them now, I’d burn them in the dustbin!”

  “Thomas, I must ask you to follow my lead,” Barker insisted. “You are still untrained and can cause setbacks in my investigations. As it is, I was forced to take you out of there before I had the answers to a few more questions.”