Death by Gaslight

by Michael Kurland

  This, Barnett decided, was not his day. Perhaps there was something to astrology after all. “It is the custom,” he said. “What I’m actually doing is asking you, you know that. But your father has to give you away.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Supposing Father says no?”

  “I, ah, hadn’t thought of that,” Barnett said. “Frankly, if you say yes, I don’t give a damn what your father says.”

  “That is courageous of you,” she said.

  Barnett dropped his fork onto his plate with a little silver clatter. “All right!” he said. “I’m not asking your father, I’m asking you. Cecily, will you marry me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What?”

  Cecily leaned forward and took his hand. “I would like to marry you,” she told him. “But I’m not sure you’d really like to be married to the sort of wife I’d be.”

  “Cecily, I love you,” Barnett said. “This table’s too wide for me to hold you properly, but I love you more than anything and I want you to be my wife. I know that’s trite, but there it is. I have loved you for some time. Since the day you first knocked on the door of the American News Service, as a matter of fact.”

  “It took you long enough to get around to declaring it,” she said.

  “I had commitments,” Barnett said. “There were reasons.”

  “No, never mind that,” she said. “That was unfair of me. I’ve been aware for some time of how you feel about me. And I’m honored.”

  “Honored,” Barnett said. “Which means that you don’t love me.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Cecily said. “Benjamin, dearest, I do love you. I even wish to marry you. I just don’t think you really want to marry me.”

  “With all my heart,” Barnett said.

  “You want me to be your wife.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to set up a home for me.”

  “With you.”

  “You want me to quit work.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I want to marry you, Benjamin, but I have no desire to give up my career. I want to be a reporter. I don’t want to just sit home and tend the babies—if we have any babies.”

  “Why not?” Benjamin asked. “What’s wrong with tending babies?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Cecily said. “I’ll keep my job and you stay home and tend the babies.”

  “Cecily!” Benjamin said, sounding positively shocked.

  “Those are my terms,” Cecily said. “Have you a counter offer?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Barnett said.

  “You think it’s ridiculous, do you?” Cecily demanded. “All my life I’ve wanted to be a reporter. And now, when I’ve just begun to make it, when I’m doing a series that’s picked up by our whole list, when I’ve been offered a job in the city room of the Chronicle, you think I should give it up just because you happen to love me and I happen to love you. Well, I tell you, Mr. Barnett, it won’t wash. It just won’t wash!”

  “You love me?” Barnett said.

  “Of course I love you,” Cecily replied. “What do you think I’ve been telling you?”

  “Oh,” he said. “But—now let me see if I understand this correctly—you don’t want to marry me because then you’d have to stay at home and tend the babies, if we had any babies, rather than being free to pursue your career as a journalist.”

  “That’s right,” Cecily said. “Although you make it sound horrible. What is so wrong with a woman’s wanting to do something with her life?”

  “I, ah, don’t know,” Barnett confessed. “I’ve never given it much thought. I mean, basically I see nothing wrong with it at all. I think women should certainly be as free as men to do—most things. But when I think of my wife, I must confess that I picture her at home running the household while I battle the outside world.”

  “I agree it is a lovely image,” Cecily said. “And there are undoubtedly many women who would dearly love to occupy the position you imagine. Which is why I think that although I might love you, we should not marry. It would be stifling to me and dreadfully unfair to you. I must be free, Benjamin, to take advantage of whatever life has to offer!”

  “Well,” Benjamin said, “if you must…” He stared into his coffee. “I will admit that I have not given much actual thought to what I want or need from a wife. What I have is mostly half-formed images involving you and me sitting around a fire and holding each other in various, ah, postures.”

  “I am sorry, Benjamin,” Cecily said.

  Slowly Barnett raised his eyes to meet hers. “The Chronicle?” he asked.

  “I meant to tell you about that,” she said.

  SIXTEEN

  THE GAME

  In a contemplative fashion

  And a tranquil frame of mind,

  Free from every kind of passion

  Some solution let us find.

  W.S. GILBERT

  It is commonly believed that work is anodyne of sorrow. Benjamin Barnett reminded himself of this as he focused his energies on the work at hand. First there was the necessary rearranging of the staff of the American News Service in the absence of Cecily Perrine. Then there was the detail work for Professor Moriarty, as he perfected his plans for the impossible crime. But the sorrow remained. There seemed to be nothing he could do that did not, in some tortuous way, remind him of Cecily. She had left the American News Service office to take a feature reporter’s position with the Morning Chronicle. He did not begrudge her that. It was the sort of experience she could not get at the Service. And she was very sincere in wanting the experience. She had taken a cut in salary on accepting the new position.

  The American News Service had not actually lost Miss Perrine as a writer, since they were free to buy her stories from the Chronicle for the American wire. But the office was certainly empty without her. Through a conversation with the Chronicle’s general manager, who was simultaneously resentful and apologetic about acquiring Cecily Perrine, Barnett found out how and why the job offer was made. The Morning Chronicle suddenly realized that it was in great and immediate need of a female reporter. This discovery was the direct result of Lord Hogbine’s having left the sixty-year-old newspaper to his wife in his will. And Lady Hogbine, who had already used much of the unentailed Hogbine fortune to endow an undergraduate ladies’ college at Oxford, a home for unwed mothers in Stepney, and a trade school for female typewriter operators in Bethnal Green, was shocked to discover that there were no ladies on the reporting staff of the Morning Chronicle. Cecily Perrine was one of the few experienced reporters who also happened to be a lady.

  “She does love me, you understand,” he told Moriarty in a confidential conversation in the privacy of the professor’s study. “It is the prospect of matrimony that she finds unacceptable. She is not willing to give up her freedom to become any man’s wife.”

  “A sensible girl,” Moriarty said. “Wife is the only position of involuntary servitude left in the civilized world since Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.”

  Barnett snorted and left the room. He had felt the need to confide in someone, but this was not what he wanted to hear.

  Moriarty sent Barnett to Plymouth to meet the Hornblower when she docked. “My plans are nearly complete,” he said. “But there is certain information that is sketchy or absent. You are a reporter. You have unquestioned access to the various officials and a historical right to ask stupid questions. Find out everything you can about the transportation of the treasure.”

  “What, exactly, do you want to know?” Barnett asked.

  “Details,” Moriarty told him. “I want all the picayune, unimportant little details. Everything, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is of interest to me.”

  “Supposing they don’t want to tell me anything?” Barnett said. “After all, they will be transporting a priceless treasure. The police and the army may be smart enough to want to keep their exact plans a secret.”

&nbs
p; “Don’t go to the military or police authorities,” Moriarty said. “Interview Lord East. He is the sort of busybody who will insist upon knowing every facet of the plan. Actually, he probably formulated the plan himself. He fancies himself awfully clever.”

  And so Barnett arrived in Plymouth the day before the battleship Hornblower was scheduled to tie up to the military dock. That evening, in his hotel, Lord East allowed himself to be interviewed by the gentlemen of the press. He and his entourage occupied an entire floor, and they seemed to have brought along enough furnishings and paraphernalia to outfit an expedition to Tibet. Lord East was a short, fat man whose once-fair complexion had turned beet-red from years of exposure to the Indian sun. He dressed in the best Savile Row approximation of an oriental potentate, and carried a swagger cane of dark-brown wood, traced with a delicate ivory inlay.

  “Always glad to talk to you newspaper wallahs,” Lord East told the score of fidgeting reporters who had gathered in his receiving room. He climbed up onto a rattan footstool, which one of his Hindu servants placed carefully in front of his feet. “The average Briton doesn’t know nearly enough about the empire we’ve been carving out for him for the past hundred years. The Indian subcontinent is a vast and fascinating region, more than ten times the size of these little islands. And we have made it ours; sent forth the best we breed, our sons and brothers, and made it ours. We have unified some two hundred petty kingdoms under the British raj. I am proud of my small part in this great achievement.”

  A stocky man with a great walrus mustache who stood in the left-hand lobe of the flock of reporters raised his hand. “Tell us, your lordship,” he called out, “would you say it has been as rewarding for the natives as it has been for the British?”

  Lord East looked down at him in annoyance. “What was that?” he asked.

  “This conquest,” the man said with a slight, undefinable mid-European accent. “These unifications—would you say they have been on the whole good for the native peoples in question? Educational, perhaps?”

  “Who are you, sir?” Lord East demanded.

  “Heinrich von Hertzog, your lordship. Berliner Tagenblatt.”

  Lord East struck a pose on his footstool that would have been the envy of many a piece of heroic statuary. “Welcome to England, Mr. Hertzog,” he said, his voice carrying a burden of frigid disapproval that is only achieved at the better public schools. “It is certainly a pleasure to have you among us. To answer your question, what’s good for Britain is good for the empire. That should be self-evident.”

  The Berliner Tagenblatt correspondent noted down the answer, and seemed satisfied with it. Even pleased. Perhaps he was picturing how it would sound to his two million Anglophobic German readers. “Thank you, your lordship,” he called.

  Lord East looked around. “Anything, ah, else?” he asked.

  “The treasure, your lordship,” called a beefy gentleman in a broadly checked jacket that would have looked more at home on a racecourse tout than a reporter.

  Lord East peered down at him. “I didn’t know the ‘pink ’un’ was represented here,” he ventured, and smiled broadly when he got the laugh he had been trying for.

  “Jameson, your lordship. Daily Telegraph,” the beefy reporter said, joining in the general chuckle. “Excuse the inappropriate attire, but I was called here from a rather different assignment.”

  “Indeed?” Lord East remarked. “I trust you backed a winner.” Satisfied that his reputation as a wit was secure, his lordship now struck another pose. “The Lord East Collection,” he said, “how can I describe it to you?”

  There was a rustling from the crowd, as reporters pulled out their notebooks and licked the points on their pencils.

  “India is a land of unbelievable contrasts,” his lordship began. “The grandeur of past ages surrounds one in India hidden under the filth and squalor of the present. When I first arrived in Calcutta twelve years ago, as resident director of the Northeastern and Southern Indian Railway, I determined to make it my job to rescue as much of the rapidly disappearing storehouse of irreplaceable knowledge and archaeological beauty as possible. My concern was for the instruction and pleasure of all the people of the empire, and especially the people of India itself, so that they could know their own past before it was eradicated brick by brick. I also strove for the future, so that those who come after us can have some knowledge of those who came before. I have not stinted of my own time or fortune in making these acquisitions, and the result, twenty tons of unique and irreplaceable archaeological treasure, is arriving tomorrow aboard Her Majesty’s Battleship Hornblower.”

  As Lord East paused for breath, the man standing to Barnett’s right, a gentleman named Higgins who was a correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette, leaned toward Barnett and whispered, “He stole it all, you know.”

  “Stole it?” Barnett whispered.

  “Exactly. Oh, there are other words. One item was ‘sequestered,’ another was ‘confiscated,’ columns and friezes were ‘salvaged’ from where they’d stood for twenty centuries. The Indian treasure was not purchased with Lord East’s personal fortune, the Indian treasure is Lord East’s personal fortune. He’s not giving it to the Crown, you know, only loaning it.”

  Barnett nodded. “I’m not surprised,” he whispered. “They say history is written on the backs of the losers.”

  Higgins stared at him. “I don’t think that’s exactly what they say,” he said, “but I suppose it’s close enough for a wire service.”

  “It must make you nervous, Lord East,” one of the reporters suggested.

  “Very little makes me nervous, young man,” Lord East said. “To what were you referring?”

  “Safeguarding all that treasure,” the reporter said. “Seeing it safely back to England. Taking it overland to London.”

  Lord East leaned back with his arms on his hips, and managed to look exceedingly smug. “One of the guiding principles of my viceroyship, and before that of my tenure as resident director of the Northeastern and Southern Indian Railway, was that a well-armed militia is more than a match for any group of brigands. Another is that rigorous planning and preparation before the battle pay for themselves many times over when the battle begins. No, young man, I am not nervous. I am confident.”

  “Beg your pardon, my lord, but isn’t there some native Indian secret organization that has threatened to recover the Lord East treasure and return it to the Indian people?” Higgins called out.

  “I have received threats from such a group,” Lord East admitted. “But I do not take them seriously. Hàtshikha nà Tivviha, they call themselves. It means ‘the Seven Without Faces.’”

  “Romantic,” one of the reporters commented.

  “Barbaric,” Lord East said.

  “Have they made any attempts on the treasure yet?” Higgins asked.

  Lord East snorted. “They wouldn’t dare do anything,” he said. “Talk is cheap. Letters pinned to my pillow in an attempt to frighten me do not achieve their desired effect. But I doubt whether they have actually gone any further than that.”

  “Then I take it that you are not worried about this Indian group, your lordship,” Barnett said.

  “Not at all. I am more concerned about common thieves. The Lord East Collection would make a tempting target.”

  “But Lord East,” Higgins said, “how far could a thief, or even a group of thieves, get with a ten-foot statue, or a twenty-five-foot column?”

  “Quite true,” Lord East agreed. “But the smaller pieces are vulnerable. The Rod of Pataliputra, twenty-two inches long, crusted with diamonds and rubies, said to be the symbol of authority given by Alexander the Great to Chandra Gupta, known to the Greeks as Sandrocottus, King of the Prasii. The Káthiáwár Buddha, carved out of one single piece of red carnelian, fifteen and one-quarter inches high. The dagger of Allad-ud-din Khalji, a gift to him from Malik Kafúr, who is believed to have had a precious stone set into its hilt or sheath for every Hindu priest he murdered. It co
ntains over six hundred gems. I have over two thousand such items; small, highly portable, of great historical interest, and valuable out of all relation to their size.”

  “Can you describe the safeguards you have taken, your lordship?” Higgins called.

  Barnett nodded agreement. “Yes, please do. That is the sort of detail that will fascinate our American readers.”

  “Unless you are afraid that a published description of your security measures will attract the very brigands you seek to avoid,” von Hertzog suggested, tamping the tobacco down in an oversized pipe he had produced from an inner pocket.

  Lord East glared at the German. “My security measures are designed to discourage any attempt at theft,” he said. “And such criminals as are not discouraged will either be thwarted or apprehended.”

  “Very wise, your lordship,” Higgins said.

  “You will remember that I have some experience with railways and railway equipage,” Lord East said. “Let me describe my plan.

  “When the Hornblower docks tomorrow, I shall go aboard to inventory the collection. This will take three days, as I intend personally to inspect each item and check it against my list. In the meantime a special train is going to be assembled and prepared.”

  “Will you describe the train for us, your lordship?” Barnett asked.

  “A Drummond engine pulling twenty-one cars,” Lord East said. “Ten specially prepared goods wagons for the collections; seven troop-carrying cars for two companies of Her Majesty’s Bengalese Foot; three drop-side wagons for the one platoon of the Twenty-third Light Horse, who will ride with their mounts; and one guards’ van bringing up the rear, which will hold a few selected crack marksmen along with the usual railway guards.”

  Lord East paused for breath, and to wait for the hastily scribbling reporters to catch up with him. “The ten goods wagons will be fitted in as a unit between the Bengalese Foot,” he continued, “and all of the wagons from the coal tender to the guards’ van will be wired together with a special electrical wire designed to set off a loud alarm if it is broken anywhere along its length. This will prevent any attempt to shunt one or more wagons to a side track while going around a curve and then reconnect the remaining cars. A method that was actually attempted some years ago in the Punjab, let me say.