The Black Hand (10 page)

It took me a moment to realize he was referring to me. A mad killer? Me? I didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered.

I’m not sure how long Barker had originally intended us to stay, but obviously he had decided to return to London. I overheard our hostess trying to convince the Guv to linger another day or two, but he insisted we get back. The fact that Venucchi had been here before us was more than he could stand. I could tell it by the set of his square jaw.

At Seaford I carried Harm’s wicker carrier onto the train and left Barker and Mrs. Ashleigh to say their private goodbyes. When he entered the carriage the Guv tried to act nonchalant, as if he was above sentimentalities. I rather envied his having someone, but at the same time I saw all too clearly how much danger his work brought into the lives of those around him.

* * *

As soon as we arrived in Victoria Station, Barker freed Harm, the empty cage being sent along with our luggage later. We took a hansom to Newington, the dog perched with his little back paws on his owner’s knees and the front ones hooked over the doors of the cab, barking at anything he felt required it. The little creature always took great joy in cab rides.

Not being satisfied with only one view, Harm moved to my side; and before I knew it I was in full custody of him. The Guv opened his newspaper like a foldable screen, successfully dividing the cab. The dog and I have a strange relationship: he considers me a servant too addlepated to intuit what he wants, while I consider him to be a burden, though one I’ve grown accustomed to. I let him share my bed and he lets me share his garden.

London looked the same. Apparently the Mafia had not taken over in our brief absence. We had no sooner begun our journey than it began to drizzle. Harm got down from his perch immediately and attempted to burrow behind my elbow. If there is anything he detests, it is getting wet. Having buried himself in a safe place roughly behind my right kidney he sat comfortably and let me receive the occasional lashing of rain in the face.

Finally we reached the house. I left Barker to deal with his dog, passed the fare through the trap, receiving another face full of rain for my efforts, and then we all hurried down the steps and across the pavement through the familiar front door. Home at last, I thought, and not a moment too soon, as the sky ripped open with a peal of thunder that should have been reserved for Judgment Day, and the rain set to in earnest.

“Welcome home, gentlemen,” Mac said, handing each of us a towel. God bless the fellow—he’s a competent butler. He even draped one over the dog and rubbed his long fur. He raised an eyebrow at the sight of my cheek but did not ask me about it.

“Thank you, Mac. How has everything been here?” Barker asked. I wondered if he was glad to be back in his bachelor’s establishment, which gave him so much more control over everything.

Barker continued questioning Mac about the house and whether anything untoward had occurred. Meanwhile, Harm sniffed the front hallway and made his way to the back door, where his tail went down and he looked my way. I followed him down the hall and opened the door. Harm looked out into the yard and back at me. Apparently, this was one of those times when his servant wouldn’t obey. He wanted me to stop the rain.

“Sorry, old fellow,” I told him. “You’re on your own.”

Reluctantly, the dog stepped out into the downpour. I had assumed he would merely accomplish his task and scurry in quickly, but Harm had been away from his domain for a few days, and rain or no rain, was going to inspect it.

“Harm!” I complained, as he waddled over the bridge. I had no wish to get soaked again merely to retrieve a wayward dog. We had played this game too many times before. I crossed over to the hallway stand while Barker and Mac chuntered on about the condition of the garden and what post had arrived, and retrieved an umbrella. This is where human intelligence won out over brute instinct. Gingerly I stepped out into the garden.

Just then something streaked out from behind the potting
shed toward Harm. I thought at first it was an animal, but as it scooped up the little creature, it rose up into the form of a man, wearing a black suit with his collar pulled up and a cap. He headed toward the gate, the poor dog’s tail hanging limp under his arm. Barker’s prized Pekingese was in the arms of a stranger.

I am cursed with a vivid imagination, and here is what I saw in those brief seconds as the man reached the gate. I pictured Harm’s pelt, the dried skin of this rare and beloved creature, tossed carelessly over the wall for my employer’s edification, to prove to him that he was not invulnerable, that in fact, when it came to the Sicilian brotherhood, no one was.

I yelled something; dropped my umbrella; and then ran as fast as I could, ignoring the crooked path and vaulting the narrow stream that bisected the garden. From the other side of the wall I heard Harm’s danger cry, something in between a bark and a howl. For a small dog, he has great volume.
Good boy
, I thought,
tell Uncle Thomas which way he’s taking you
.

Reaching the back gate, I squeezed through, then looked both ways. I’d be no good to Barker’s dog if I walked into an ambush. There was no one there, but a hundred feet away, the dog thief was having a spot of trouble of his own. Harm had decided he’d had enough of such attacks upon his dignity and had sunk his teeth into his assailant’s hand. Now Chinese palace dogs don’t visibly have much in the jaw department, but I knew from experience that when he latched onto one, he could hang there until sunset. The man was actually holding the dog out by the hindquarters, trying to break its hold on his wrist.

“Hey!” I cried, being the former classics scholar at Magdalen College that I am. If I’d been given sufficient time I’d have come up with a better remark, something like “I say! Put down that dog!” I’m not always good at coming up with
le mot juste
at
le temps juste
. It was successful, at least. The thief dropped the dog—or possibly the dog dropped the thief—and they parted company to their mutual satisfaction.

Harm ran back down the lane and through the round gate to the safety of his domain, while I pulled the dagger from my sleeve, ready to do battle again. For once, I was spared. The young man took one look at the knife in my hand and the ugly, fresh scar on my cheek and ran in the other direction. I was not inclined to give chase.

I pushed open the gate, then locked it firmly. On the little stone bridge, Cyrus Barker stood in his black macintosh and hat, holding his sturdy umbrella over the shivering dog under his arm. I trotted forward through sheets of water and followed my employer into the house.

It had been a disorganized ruse, a feint, a light dessert to the previous night’s meal. There wasn’t even a need to speak of it when it was over. Barker and I went our separate ways, and I am happy to report I spent a rather dull evening reading Thomas Hardy. There’s a lot to be said for good, calm, dull evenings.

H
OW SHALL WE START OUR DAY?” I ASKED MY
employer the following morning in our offices.

Barker drummed his fingers on the desk. “I want a meeting of the leaders on our side: Gigliotti, Hooligan, Robert Dummolard, and Ben Tillett. There may possibly be others.”

“Mr. K’ing?”

“I’d prefer to keep the Chinese out of this, because of Hooligan, unless I have no alternative.”

“Where should we meet? Here?”

“No.” Barker rose and opened his smoking cabinet. He withdrew a meerschaum and began stuffing it. “It would draw unwanted attention to us, and I doubt any of them wish to be seen so close to Scotland Yard.”

“Where then?” I pursued.

“Somewhere private. In fact, the most secure spot in all London. Come.”

We took a cab into the City and then crossed over into Houndsditch, where the walled city of London once used to dispose of its dead canines. It was an ugly little place, cheek
by jowl with Whitechapel. In fact, the two were like trees that had grown together so it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. All the brick here was black. I hazarded they were in fact red underneath, but there were layers of soot and grime shellacked to them. Even the children playing in the street sported a layer.

“You sure you know what you’re about, Push?” the cabman asked balefully. Our advent had attracted the attention of the local poor, who stared at us with bold, ravenous eyes, and even came to the curb to watch us pass. Cabs did not come this way often.

“Drop us at the next corner,” Barker told him. “We’ll make it worth your effort.”

We walked down Wentworth Street, past a row of shops to let and abandoned gin palaces where flies batted about the windows. Barker came to a door that was little more than a chink between shop fronts, the narrowest door I’d seen in London, and rapped upon it with his stick so stoutly the faded blue paint fell off in flakes.

Nothing happened for a moment, and Barker turned and surveyed the area with some interest, as if he might consider buying property there. The locals had followed us, hoping for a handout, but no sooner had he knocked upon the door than they scurried away. The door was opened by a bellicose-looking fellow in trousers and braces over a singlet, a bowler atop his head.

“What in hell do you want?” he bellowed. “Take yourself off now, or I’ll set my dogs on you!”

“I would speak with Mr. Soft,” Barker said calmly.

“Never heard of him. Off with you now. I mean it.” He slammed the door in our faces.

The Guv was not daunted in the least. He rapped on the door again with his stick, waiting until it opened a small crack.

“I would speak,” Barker demanded, “with Mr. Soft.”

“Didn’t you hear me the first time? I said there ain’t no Mr. Soft here, you ninny. Never was, never will be. Run along afore I wallop you proper.” He slammed the door.

Immediately, Barker knocked on the door a third time. The man, now red faced, opened it again.

“I would speak with Mr. Soft.”

The man changed in an instant. It was like the Arabian Nights when Ali Baba said
Open sesame
.

“Right this way, sirs. Do follow me. Watch your step.”

With his encouragement, Barker and I squeezed through the narrow door and followed him down a corridor. The fellow led us to a door and even knocked on it for us.

“Mr. Soft, you have a couple of visitors.”

“Thank you, Cinders,” a voice said, and the door opened slowly as the guard departed. A small, mouselike man stood there, blinking at us with nervous, oversized eyes. He had a swath of curling, near colorless hair and a small mustache after the manner of Swinburne, and I noticed one of his arms was withered, the hand folded in his pocket.

“Mr. … ah, Mr. Barker, isn’t it?” the man said in a high, reedy voice.

“You have a good memory, sir.”

“You are difficult to forget, sir. You have need of my property?”

“I do, indeed.”

“When will you require it?”

“Tomorrow evening, if it is free. I apologize for the short notice.”

Mr. Soft walked over to a writing desk and pulled out a memoranda book. He flipped pages for a moment and then spoke again.

“You are in luck, Mr. Barker. It is free. What are your requirements?”

“I should like to have a table and chairs to seat six or so with lamps enough to see.”

“To see or to read?”

“Merely to see, I think. Some food would be in order, as well.”

The man was writing down the information in the book with his good hand. “Very good, very good. Is that all?”

“That and complete deniability, of course.”

“Of course.”

“What is your rate these days?”

“With everything, I’d say twenty pounds would do.”

“Then we have an understanding. Half up front, as always?”

“You remembered,” the little man said. He was little, even to me, barely reaching five feet tall.

“Pay the man half, lad.”

Reluctantly, I pulled out Barker’s wallet and handed over ten pounds. As his assistant, I wanted to know exactly what sort of room he was paying for but was too polite to ask.

“Your young gentleman seems fair burning with curiosity,” he noted.

“I must admit,” Barker said, “that I’d like to see the property again myself.”

Mr. Soft pocketed the currency and opened his door. “I say, Cinders! Could you come in here for a moment? Gentlemen, this is Cinders Hardy.”

The slovenly guard returned. Soft and Hardy, I thought. They had to be joking.

“These gentlemen wish to see the property.”

“Right,” Mr. Hardy said blandly. Whatever it was he did, he must do it every day, for his work had obviously lost its mystery. “Come this way.”

Mr. Hardy led us down the narrow corridor and into another room. It was a dining room, with a table and four chairs around it, all rather the worse for wear. Surely this was not the most secure spot in London. Tatty perhaps, but not secure.

“If you gentlemen would be so good,” Mr. Soft said. With Hardy’s aid, we moved the table and chairs off the carpet, which, with practiced ease, the guard proceeded to roll up. There was a large trapdoor, large enough to accommodate the entire table. As I watched, Hardy seized the inset ring and lifted the trap. Below, all I could see was inky darkness and a ladder going down.