Fatal Enquiry (12 page)

“He said you’d say that as well. He wanted me to assure you that the olive branch only extends until our mutual obstacle has been eliminated. Then the gloves come off once more.”

“‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’” Barker quoted.

“Something like that.”

“That sounds more like Seamus.”

The dandy’s face creased into a smile. “The Irishman is no politician. He would rather be feared than admired. Are you coming? I’ve got a vehicle waiting just down the road.”

“What made you think I would go to the Café Royal?”

“I didn’t, but the boss did. You took your time getting here, too. I’ve waited close to a day. Thought I’d go out of my mind with boredom waiting for you to turn up.”

I looked at Barker, who had crossed his arms and was staring at the man. He came to a decision quickly.

“Very well. We will hear what Seamus has to say.”

The young man led us to a new-looking landau on the other side of the square. It was gleaming black with red wheels and an interior of cream leather. It emphasized in my mind that while we were practically living on the street, O’Muircheartaigh was a success, at least as far as his finances were concerned. We climbed in and Psmith stretched out across from us, his arms strewn across the back of the seat, as if the vehicle belonged to him.

“And how is your master?” Barker asked politely. He was exercising some of that patience he was always telling me to cultivate.

“I call no man master, Mr. Barker. Mr. O’Muircheartaigh is recovering, or so his doctors inform me. You’ll find him gravely changed, however. It is possible he will remain an invalid the rest of his life, but then it was his brain that has gotten him this far.”

We pulled into Commercial Road, headed for the City. The day was warm and the sun beat down unmercifully upon us.

“You’re not what I expected, you know,” Psmith said, after a few minutes. “I mean, being the best detective in London and all. I heard you had a good tailor.”

“This is not a time to be spotted in my sartorial best, Mr. Psmith.” There was a moment of silence before Barker spoke again. “Is Seamus still in hospital?”

“No, at his request he’s been moved to rooms around the corner from the Old Jewry. He keeps his own doctors and nurses on the premises.”

“I suppose you have been given orders to kill them if he dies,” the Guv said.

Psmith chuckled. “You know him rather well.”

“Better than I would wish. You are a shootist, then. Why are shootists always interested in clothing?”

In response, Psmith opened his jacket. He had two small pistols jammed into the waistband of his trousers, with the butts facing forward.

“It’s clean work,” the young man said. “As long as you don’t stand too close.”

“Twenty-two-caliber Remingtons, I see. You must be very accurate.”

“It’s a gift. I hear you’re not bad with a pistol yourself. Is it your weapon of choice?”

“No, it is merely a necessary evil,” my employer said.

“What’s your weapon?” Psmith asked, turning to me.

“Him,” I said.

The young man grinned like a jackal. He smiled too easily for my comfort. “Good answer.”

The cab deposited us at the corner of Old Jewry and Cresham. Psmith unlocked the door of an affluent-looking red brick residence. Inside, two very large gentlemen were seated in the front room and exchanged glances with Psmith as we walked by. We walked down a nondescript corridor until we saw a nurse in her caped uniform and followed her into a sickroom. There were two other nurses there, flanking a bed with a still body resting on an oversized pillow, a counterpane pulled up to his chin.

“All of you, leave us!” O’Muircheartaigh cried peevishly from the bed. “I wish to consult with Messrs. Barker and Llewelyn privately.”

We waited until everyone left the room, and then my employer and I moved closer to O’Muircheartaigh.

I could not believe the change the man had undergone since last I saw him. O’Muircheartaigh’s eyes were sunken in their sockets and he had lost much of his hair, what remained lying lank and colorless against his scalp. The ricin, or whatever it had been, had broken capillaries across his face, leaving it etched in purplish tracks. His skin was jaundiced, the color of cheese rind; even his eyes were an unhealthy yellow. He lay shrunken in his pillows, clutching a small tank in clawlike hands with a valve and a rubber hose from which he breathed periodically.

“Come sit close by the bed,” he said. “There are chairs here. Do not be alarmed at my appearance. The doctors assure me that I shall live, which is well for them. Come, look me over and get it done with. We have much to discuss. You will forgive the tank. It contains pure oxygen. I am reduced to sucking from a bottle like a helpless, mewling babe. I am alive, however, which is more than I can say for my comrades, or for Sebastian Nightwine when I get hold of him.”

“You know, then,” I murmured.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Llewelyn. It has been a while since I bought out his enterprises and he sailed off to points east. I knew he would eventually run out of cash. He always does. I give him credit for stealing into town unnoticed, without his usual fanfare.”

“I had hoped we had seen the last of him,” my employer said.

“Cyrus,” O’Muircheartaigh said from his pillow. “We’ve had our differences in the past, and I know how you feel about me personally, but I want you to consider taking me as a client.”

“Under no circumstances.”

“No, please! Hear me out!”

Barker had waved a dismissive hand in his direction.

“Hear me out,” he continued, weakly. “You must be short of funds with your accounts frozen. I’ve got all you could possibly require. I could fund an army if you need it to bring down Nightwine. I want you to set aside your high-minded principles for once and take me on.”

“Seamus,” Barker said gravely, “you know I’m going after Nightwine for my own reasons. I don’t want your money and I’d never take a client who would exact such revenge upon the people I bring in. They deserve punishment, but only after justice has been meted out.”

“Perhaps I was wrong about you, and it is better on my side of the fence, where an eye still requires an eye in return.”

“I’m going after your man, Seamus,” Barker said mildly, not the least put out by the Irishman’s rhetoric. “But I don’t want your money. You are coming out ahead. You have nothing to complain about.”

“You are as unbending as a bar of pig iron.”

“Thank you. But if you really want to help, there is one favor you can do for me, Seamus. Stay out of my way. Don’t attempt to go after Nightwine with men like Psmith. They’ll confuse the issue and hinder my enquiry. Lie back, for once, and let your money accrue.”

“And if I don’t?” O’Muircheartaigh asked, breathing heavily.

“Let us just say things would get lively for quite a while. And I do not believe either of us would be the last man standing.”

The Irishman took several breaths from his cylinder, and tried to compose himself. The room seemed monastically quiet all of a sudden.

“Very well,” he finally answered. “I’ll keep my money if it’s not good enough for you. Starve if you like. But I expect reports. I must know what’s going on.”

“When there is something to know, you will know it.”

My employer made no move to rise and neither did I.

“What is it?” his old enemy demanded. “You’re shaking your head.”

“I was just thinking what a tough old bird you are, Seamus. How did you survive when all of your younger colleagues did not?”

“We had opened the office at seven-thirty, as usual. I generally wait for the first post before walking to the Exchange Building to see how my stocks are trading. My secretary, Miss Jonah, entered with a package about two feet long. I opened it after noting there was no address of any kind. Inside was a leather case containing a short sword. I’m not a connoisseur of weapons, but I could tell it was expensive and probably old. I lifted it out of its case gingerly, because it seemed fragile rather than because I thought it might be dangerous. When I pulled the sword from the scabbard, Miss Jonah and my bodyguard, Mr. Bing, were standing on the other side of the desk. When I drew the sword in an outward gesture, they both suddenly clutched their throats and Bing began choking. In a few seconds, they both fell to the floor.

“Realizing it was an attempt on my life, I threw down the sword and backed into my office and opened a window, actually sitting on the ledge. I called for aid upstairs where some of my associates were sleeping late, having done some work for me the night before. Two of them used the back stair but one came down through the lobby, and passing through the contaminated room, brought the contagion with him into my office. By the time he reached my desk, he was gasping, his eyes starting from his head. Soon his companions joined him, fighting for breath. Then it felt as if all the air had been sucked from the room. I recall ripping open my collar and trying to get another window open for circulation, but my fingers were like sausages at the ends of my hands. I fell out of the window into the street. That’s the last I recall, until I awoke in St. Bart’s Hospital hours later, as you see me.”

“You had a very close call. Was it ricin, then?”

“Mixed with something else, I think. Some sort of vegetable alkaloid Nightwine picked up in the Orient, I shouldn’t wonder.”

I wondered how both of them would be familiar with substances such as ricinus and vegetable alkaloids and the like. The things one had to know to work in the Underworld.

“You have something to contribute, Mr. Llewelyn?” O’Muircheartaigh asked, studying me closely.

“Nothing, sir. It is a most remarkable story.”

“Yours are the last ears that shall ever hear that story from my lips,” he rasped. “Good day, gentlemen.”

Before we were even out of the room, the staff came in and crowded about him, to his irritation. On our way out the door, we encountered Psmith in the reception room, seated with the two guards. He said not a word, but aimed a finger at me and squeezed off a shot.

Not if I see you first,
I thought.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

To be perfectly honest, I was getting tired. We had narrowly avoided being arrested in Westminster Abbey, broken into a Masonic temple in order to talk to Pollock Forbes, and had an interview with a very much alive Seamus O’Muircheartaigh. Perhaps it was the Irishman who exhausted me most. He had a way of draining the energy from a room, as if he fed upon it. Had going to see the Irishman been worth the danger? I couldn’t say.

It was my wish that we could go back to the barge, and quit risking capture for the rest of the day. I would put up with the tasteless tea and the repetitive menu. I would even make do without a book and go to bed early. Unfortunately, Cyrus Barker didn’t see things my way. Though the sun was obscured by clouds, it was still up in the sky somewhere and his pocket watch told him it was just three o’clock. There was plenty of daylight left.

“While we’re this close to the East End, I should like to see to the safety of Fu Ying,” my employer said, referring to the Chinese girl who was his ward. “Nightwine would never hesitate to use one’s relations against him.”

“But, sir,” I said. “Anyone who knows you well will be watching her rooms in Three Colt Lane, hoping you’ll appear. Inspector Abberline is sure to have plainclothesmen in the area waiting to arrest you. If you try to see her, you’ll be jugged like a hare.”

“Then we’ll bypass Limehouse and try Mile End Road. I want Andrew to keep an eye on her, even if it means bringing her to the mission. I trust his abilities over anyone’s in London.”

“Do you really think no one’s considered Handy Andy, sir?” I argued. “I mean, everyone knows you have been supporting his ministry for years, not to mention the fact that he is your sparring partner.”

“Aye, but his mission is a warren and I know all the exits. Also, McClain’s followers may help divert any pursuers.”

“It’s still a risk.”

“Nothing is a sure thing, but I’ll have one of the most able fighters in London to protect me.”

“I’ve fought Brother Andrew in the ring, sir,” I admitted. “He’s very good.”

“I was talking about you, lad.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. Barker rarely pays a compliment.

We took the tram at Aldgate Station, taking care to separate. It is a wearing thing when you’re looking at everyone as if they would suddenly recognize you and call for the police. I sat several rows behind the Guv, trying not to look at his stubbled head. The more one tries not to look at something the harder it is. I focused my attention instead on the street, but it was a depressing sight. Everyone looked dirty, ill, and poor, from the women selling paper flowers to the tradesmen desperately hawking their wares. The streets were grimier here, too. There were no crossing sweepers where there was no money to be made. The job generally fell to young girls and boys in the better parts of London, but here, no one bothered. The hooves of our tram horses were muffled by the layers of debris and refuse on the ground. I couldn’t help but marvel at the difference twenty minutes’ travel makes in London.

When we arrived, I saw immediately that something was wrong in Mile End Road. There were people milling about the street to no purpose, as if something had occurred, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Barker alighted from the tram and I followed at a short distance, crossing the street to the far side. The Guv had a cautious eye on a policeman talking to a man I recognized as one of McClain’s volunteers. We passed an alleyway when a voice spoke almost in my ear.

“Go down the road and cut back this way in the next.”

I glanced over my shoulder. The voice belonged to a man in a trilby hat with the collar of his macintosh pulled up, obscuring his face. I recognized the voice, but couldn’t place it.

“Who was that?” I asked, after I had caught up with my employer.

“I don’t know,” Barker admitted. “But we are about to find out.”

He steered us into another alleyway, which we traversed until we reached Bridge Street and doubled back. I noticed there were fewer people there, and also no sense of excitement or tension. We came to the far end of the alley and found the man standing there awaiting us. His hand, which had been clutching his collar over the lower half of his face, fell away and I recognized him instantly.