Blood Is Blood

by Will Thomas

  Have I mentioned how much I despise Mondays?

  CHAPTER TWO

  The floor of our chambers finally collapsed beneath me. I barely had time for a single thought beyond that of simple self-preservation. Pulling myself up into my American rolltop desk, I rolled the top down as far as it would go. Any criticism I had ever made of the Americans I now regretted. They make a fine piece of furniture. A second later it tipped forward and I, too, fell atop the shattered wood and debris in the basement below. The desk tumbled over a few times before settling. Squashed inside, I tugged open the drawer and peered out, coughing. The air was charged with plaster like a fine ash. The desk was prone, so I wormed my way out among the rubble, trying to stand as I bawled my employer’s name. My feet shifted among the loose boards and my ears still were not functioning properly.

  A hand fell on my shoulder and I turned, hoping it was my employer, but it was Jenkins. He must have climbed down after me. I looked up into our offices overhead, the bookcases lining the walls intact for the most part, but books flung in every direction and everything else destroyed.

  “Are you all right, Mr. L.?” he shouted, though I could barely hear him.

  “I think so,” I said. “But the Guv’s buried under there!”

  Frantically, we began digging through the rubble, lifting lengths of shattered planks and tossing them to the side. Jenkins, a slight, lanky man, looked ready to fall over. He is generally the worse for wear in the mornings and reanimates as the day progresses, but he was now wide awake, more wide awake than I had ever seen him. He was as terrified as I that Barker might be dead, though neither of us would say it. We pitched together and began the process of unearthing our employer. As near as I could judge, we had at least six feet of debris to dig through before we reached him. Six feet, the depth at which a corpse is buried. I felt ill at the thought. But he couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t, not Cyrus Barker. Anybody but him. It didn’t bear thinking about. I tugged my handkerchief from my pocket and tied it about my mouth. Then I set to work again.

  “Oi!” a voice called from overhead.

  “Down here!” I yelled. “There’s a man trapped here!”

  A crowd had gathered from the surrounding buildings of Whitehall and a few of the men let themselves down as best they could, and began to help. I recognized some of them as other detectives from Craig’s Court, such as J. M. Hewitt, who often accepted cases which, for one reason or another, we were forced to forgo. I was grateful for the help.

  “Someone go for a fire brigade and an ambulance!” I shouted. “Mr. Barker is buried under this rubble!”

  It wasn’t merely his life at stake but my own as well, I realized. For six years, I had been pulling this one cart, and now it seemed I had become no good for anything else. What I had hated when I first filled the position I now had come to love. No two days were alike. I wasn’t chained to this desk or this building. We were out of the office often. Sometimes we would work around the clock and other times we would go home early. I enjoyed a freedom most scribes and clerks around the City would envy. Most of all, I enjoyed the opportunity to work with such a unique fellow as Cyrus Barker. He was a law unto himself. Often he exasperated me, and just as often I did the same to him. It had not occurred to me before that very moment how easily this house of cards could topple. Barker was in a dangerous profession. He could be gone at any moment. Him, and all my prospects with him.

  “Sir!” I bellowed into the pile of rubble as I struggled to keep my balance. “Mr. Barker, can you hear me? Say something if you can! We’ll get you out, sir. We’ve sent for help and we’re removing this debris as quickly as possible!”

  There was no response, no sound save for the planks being thrown about and the hush of settling plaster.

  Between the nails and the splintered wood, my hands were soon battered and bloody and I was in a panic. Everything I owned was tied up in this one man. Layer by layer, we picked our way through the rubble. I threw lumber about so carelessly that men were forced to duck flying boards. A full dozen of us were now trying to unearth the Guv. I thought surely it could not be long now before we found him, but it was.

  Finally, we uncovered the edge of Barker’s desk, and when we lifted it off its side there was a muffled groan. I found an expanse of dusty waistcoat studded with buttons. I lifted a few more boards and uncovered his face, powdered white, including his mustache.

  “Oh, crikey!” Jenkins muttered.

  Barker’s limbs had been pinned under the desk. There was a puddle of blood beneath him, and I saw the end of a bone protruding through his torn trousers. He would not be walking away from this attack. But he was alive, and that was the main thing.

  There was a ragged cheer from among the men. Barker was respected here. He was not necessarily one of them, perhaps, being a wealthy man, but he leant a posh air to their businesses, owning the first and best one, just past the Cox and Co. Bank facing Whitehall Street. Their respect for him did not automatically extend to me. Most of them wanted my situation, and the salary that went with it.

  There was a commotion overhead, and I looked up to see a brigade of firemen in their shiny hats. We must have looked like a roomful of ghosts, covered in plaster as we were. The captain climbed down and, stepping amongst the rubble, inspected Barker’s wounds.

  “All right, boys! Get down here!” he shouted. “Drop a rope and mind your step!”

  He sent for more firemen. Aside from his injuries, Barker is a large man, over fifteen stone, which would not be easy to lift, and he was unconscious, which meant so much dead weight.

  I explained to the captain who my employer was and what had happened to us. One of the firemen pointed to some black sooty marks on the walls under the joists. I recognized them for what they were: scorch marks left by a dynamite charge. Someone, for whatever reason, had crawled through the tunnels of the telephone exchange at the far end of Craig’s Court with the deliberate intent of blowing us out of our seats. From what I could see, the charges had been just powerful enough to weaken the supports. The weight of our furniture and gravity had forced the floor to collapse upon itself.

  One of the firemen pulled a small bottle from his back pocket and handed it to me. It was laudanum, the real stuff. No alcohol, or syrup, or even sugar, just full extract of poppy. I knew what to do with it. The Guv was my employer, and I would have to administer the dose myself. Carrying him up tied to a litter, with at least one shattered limb, was going to be excruciating. The firemen were not going to chance that he would wake in the middle of being lifted and begin to struggle against the intense pain.

  “Mr. Barker?” I called, no more than a few inches from his face. I lifted his head onto my knee. “Can you hear me? I’m afraid I’m going to need to give you some laudanum. There’s been an accident, but you’re going to be all right.”

  I opened the bottle and poured a few drops into his mouth at a time. At one point he coughed, but I suspected it was involuntary. Somewhere inside that six-foot-two frame was a drawer in which his consciousness was stored, ready to open again at the proper moment. That is, if it ever opened again at all.

  There was a change of light overhead and the room suddenly became darker. The electricity had been cut by the explosion, which was another thing that would have to be repaired before our offices could be opened again. I heard voices overhead, and then there were men in white uniforms swarming down the ropes to where we stood. I noticed the insignia on one of their uniforms: ST. JOHN’S PRIORY. Gone were the days when victims, living or dead, were thrown onto a police hand litter and wheeled off to a nearby hospital. Modern times required modern services. St. John’s Priory was a private hospital that ran the first ambulance service in London. Cyrus Barker had been treated there before, and it was one of the places he endowed with his money, an ancient charity. The change of light must have been the ambulance wagon blocking the court.

  Their presence relieved me a little. A fire brigade is good for a number of things, but
I suspected lifting an injured man from a pit was not one of them. The two men assessed the situation, saw that Barker was unconscious, and then reset the bone, with all of us standing over him. Just the sight of them pushing the broken bone back in place was enough to make even the most hardened veteran look away. There was a loud groan from Barker, but no more response than that.

  By then we had cleared the debris completely from around his body. He had not only been buried in heavy rubble, he had fallen eleven feet onto a cement cellar. It was a wonder he was even alive.

  The hand litter was lowered by another rope, and we set it beside the Guv. Carefully, he was rolled up onto his side and a woolen blanket placed under him, then rolled to the other side while the blanket was straightened out. A few of us seized the blanket like pallbearers, and at the command of the captain of the fire brigade, we lifted Barker’s body, groaning under the weight. There were red faces among us, none more than mine, being the smallest of them all. We set Cyrus Barker on the litter, and then strapped him onto it.

  “Oi, there!” the captain called, looking overhead.

  He gave a thumbs-up gesture and then we heard a metallic clicking sound. Someone had set up a small winch outside. We watched as the rope went taut, protesting under the weight as we had, and then began to lift my employer inch by inch from the debris. There was no cheer this time, but plenty of back slapping.

  After the Guv had been lifted to the ground floor, I seized the rope and swarmed up the side. I followed the handcart out into the street. There, I watched them loading him into the back of the ambulance van. I would have gone with him, but there was no room for another man inside the vehicle. With a crack of the whip, the horses strained, the wheels rolled, and my employer was carried off and away into Whitehall alone.

  I thrust two fingers in my mouth and blew as loudly as a man can with a throat full of plaster. A cab pulled to the curb, took one look at me, and rattled off. When the second arrived, the horses shied and the cabman shrugged his shoulders. I looked down at myself. My best suit was ripped and chalky white. I shook my head and watched a fine powder rise into the air.

  Pulling a shiny guinea from my pocket, I lifted it high, letting the morning sun send the message to passing hansom cabs: despite his disheveled appearance, this man has money. One stopped and I clambered aboard.

  “Take me to the Priory of St. John,” I shouted, and with a click of his tongue, we were on our way.

  The priory is in a section of London which had become gentrified since the days when Charles Dickens set his novel Oliver Twist there. It is a small medieval street spanned by an arched gate and is run by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in Great Britain. Originally, the building was built by the Knights Hospitaller during the Crusades, and it hasn’t changed much since. There is the ambulance brigade, a hospice, and a dispensary, but Barker was occasionally brought here to recover from one wound or another. I suspect it was due to the donations he made to various associated charities, as well as the fact that Barker belonged to a modern organization calling itself the Knights Templar. In history, the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller had merged centuries ago, hoping to survive the whims and machinations of kings and popes.

  That sounds academic, but I wasn’t feeling academic at the time. As we clopped through the City, I became agitated again. What if my employer died? Or what if he didn’t die, but was incapacitated? He could lose that crushed limb. Cyrus Barker would have rather lost his life than lose a limb. To be unable to do what he does, to end this reason for living, searching the city for injustice and uncovering what has been cleverly concealed, would destroy him. He would destroy himself. I was afraid he’d take one of his innumerable revolvers and put a bullet through his own brainpan. He will accept no sympathy and damned little advice.

  I entered the monastic halls of the priory and told the head orderly who I was and why I was there. So far, the doctors were still examining him, as I had expected. The only information the orderly was able to give was that my employer was still alive. I found it cold comfort.

  Two hours later I was sitting on a hard chair in the hall, thinking I should be out doing something. We had been attacked, but it had been unsuccessful if the purpose was to kill us. There was a very real chance the bomber would try again. Should the explosion have been meant to warn us of something, perhaps to stop an investigation, it was useless. The Barker Agency is intractable. We won’t be warned away, frightened away, or driven away. If one of us is injured, heaven help them, we shall repay tenfold. We may be momentarily beaten, but the war was ours, or we would die in the process.

  I was sitting and waiting for word, still coated in dust, when I heard a loud echo in the hall. It was the sound of a woman’s boots clicking in fury. Every man on earth is acquainted with the sound; it is instinctual. I looked up just as Philippa Ashleigh stopped in front of me. She bent forward and pushed a glove-covered finger into my face.

  “You did not call me!” she barked.

  “The telephone lines are down,” I answered. “There was no way to reach you.”

  The truth was, I had been so distraught over what had happened, it hadn’t even occurred to me to call her.

  “Then, pray, how was Mr. Jenkins able to inform Mac that Cyrus was at death’s door?”

  “I have no idea. As you can see, I’m not at the offices.”

  “Surely they have a telephone set here,” she reprimanded.

  “No, it is a priory. They don’t have modern conveniences.”

  She shook that finger in my face again.

  “If he dies,” she said, “he’ll be treated like a pharaoh. And don’t think I won’t have you walled into his tomb!”

  Mrs. Ashleigh in her wrath is a terrible force, yet beautiful in her fury. There is a belief that redheaded women are more volcanic than their sisters, more raging, more vindictive, more clever and ruthless when thwarted. I never considered that old superstition true until then. Perhaps it has something to do with being the brunt of other women’s envy.

  “Hello, Mac,” I said to our butler, who had walked up behind her.

  As far as I was concerned, he had informed against me.

  “Mr. Llewelyn.”

  “Thomas, what have they said?” Mrs. Ashleigh demanded, unwilling to be put off.

  “They haven’t told me anything,” I answered. “One of his legs has been broken, perhaps both. I assume he is in surgery to reset the bones.”

  “You’re filthy,” Mac remarked, as if it were a crime.

  “That happens when one has been blown into cellars. I’m glad the two of you have arrived. You watch him. I’ve got to get back to number seven and make some sense of the place. I must find out who did this.”

  I carried some fury of my own, I’ll admit. Being blown apart before lunch was not how I expected the week to begin. There was a wedding in a fortnight. I didn’t need a crisis on top of it, not now of all times. If this affected the date in any way, that was it. I would seize the Rock of Gibraltar in both hands and shake it until the earth crumbled to nothing but rubble floating through the heavens.

  Eventually I reached Craig’s Court again, and made my way to number 7. I found the door locked, and a sign, obviously created by our clerk, was pasted inside the pane of the door.

  The offices of private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker are currently under reconstruction. Please direct any enquiries to number 5, Craig’s Court.

  There was an arrow pointing west.

  “Number five?” I demanded of the locked door. “What in hell?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I opened the door immediately adjacent to number 7. There was a small vestibule and a set of steep stairs leading upward. I’d glanced in once or twice before, but the glass was thick and distorted, the product of a Georgian glazier. Climbing the stair, I reached the first floor. There was an entry table there and a dusty chair, with one door facing west. It was the office directly above ours. I walked in.

  Jenkins was seated
at a desk not very different from the one below, reading yet another copy of the Police News. He looked up as I entered.

  “You’re back, Mr. L.,” he said.

  “Back, my blessed mother!” I said. “What are you about? And why the dickens are we in number five?”

  “Mr. B. owns it. Always has. The entire building, in fact. There was an office here years ago now, but he didn’t like the sound of footsteps overhead and rousted the residents who were leasing it. As you can see, it’s like the chamber below, only without the bookshelves. How is Mr. B? Has he awakened yet?”

  “No. Not even close, I imagine.”

  “How is his leg?” Jenkins asked, clearly as worried as I.

  “That’s the question. You know how heavy that desk is. I had a close look at the bone and whoever operated better have his wits about him, or the Guv will have a peg leg.”

  “He wouldn’t like that,” the clerk said.

  “True, but he is fortunate to be alive.” I paused. “Why is it number five? Shouldn’t it be seven-B?”

  He shrugged his bony shoulders. “You can dig up the architect and ask him if you like. All I know is three is above us and seven is below. I assume number one is the Cox and Co. Bank next door.”

  I raised a brow and pulled the notebook from my pocket where I always keep it. It was time to organize my thoughts and go on from there.

  “Now, let’s see. First of all, we need an inventory,” I said, sitting on the edge of his desk. “We’ll require a carpenter and a contractor. The panes in the bay windows are cracked, so we shall need a glazier, as well. We must purchase new furniture, ordering duplicates of the originals, if possible. You know how particular the Guv is. Some items, like his desk and chair, he may wish to have repaired. I suppose I can climb down and find the manufacturer somewhere on that giant chair of his.”

  “The electricity is out,” Jenkins said. “That will have to be fixed first.”