thumbed all the lettering on the cover had worn away. We walked the short block to the Baptist Metropolitan Tabernacle and when we got there and were just about to go inside, he made a telling gesture. He reached out and his hand lightly touched one of the marble columns. I knew what he was thinking, for I was thinking the same: How long would it be before we would be enjoying another quiet Sunday here again?
The Reverend Charles Haddon Spurgeon had one or two words to say about peace in his sermon that morning. While many pastors across London were no doubt calling for peace after the recent bombing, Barker’s pastor warned us of false peacemakers and assured us that there would be no peace in the world until the Lord’s return. It was a pessimistic attitude, perhaps, but I didn’t doubt it was true. There is always some deviltry afoot in the world, and not a little of it here in our corner itself.
Afterward, I was looking forward to a nice lunch before whatever my employer had planned for the day, but apparently he thought otherwise. He raised a cane for a cab, rather than shatter the Sabbath peace with one of his whistles, and we bundled in.
“The City!” he called out. “I suppose you can make do with a roll and coffee in the East End until we can eat properly, lad?”
“Certainly, sir,” I said. After all, who has need of a nice Sunday dinner when one can eat a tooth-breaking bun topped with stale onions and poppy seeds?
“It is time to visit the Lane, Thomas.”
There was no need to ask which lane he was talking about. Our first case had begun when a poor Jewish scholar had been found crucified on a telegraph pole in Petticoat Lane, the City’s Sunday market. It is a farrago in the middle of the Jewish quarter, where one can buy everything from Chinese silk to Scottish tweed. Most of the clothing was used, and the Jews were old hands at repairing and reselling items “good as new.” Now we were in need of clothing for our disguises as van Rhyn and his assistant, and it would be suspicious if we presented ourselves in a completely new wardrobe. What better place could we have come to than the Lane?
On a normal Sunday, Middlesex Street, to give its more prosaic name, resembles a football scrum, with enough people knotted together to fill half of London. It functions, somehow, and everyone eventually reaches his own destination. Barker, at least, knew where he was going; he stepped up to one of the more established tailor shops, with its hoardings overhead in Hebrew and Roman letters, and spoke to the proprietor. The latter pulled his measuring tape from his pocket and invited us into the shop’s interior.
My employer had spent a great deal of money on our wardrobes, most recently equipping me with hats, coats, and shoes, but I was not surprised to see him lift the sleeve of a disreputable-looking garment and ask to try it on. He selected four suits for himself and three for me. We were fitted by the proprietor, who was doing his best to keep his thoughts to himself, if not for his raised eyebrows. I knew what Barker was thinking, however. In our ordinary clothes, we would never be able to fit into a group of Irish misfits and radicals.
“I’ll take them all,” Barker eventually said, producing a card. “Have them sent to this address.”
“Very good, sir,” the tailor replied between tight lips. I would have thought he’d have been glad to rid his shop of these items. He took the card and nodded to us as we left.
Passing into Aldgate Street, we hailed a hansom cab. No sooner had we settled in than Cyrus Barker said, “You need a name to use among the Irish.”
“I’m not certain whether I could do the accent, sir,” I admitted. “Not convincingly, anyway.”
“Very well, we’ll keep you a Welshman. Easiest is best. Do you have any family names other than Llewelyn?”
“I have an uncle whose surname is Penrith.”
“Penrith. That’s a good Welsh name. What is his first name?”
“Odweg.”
My employer scratched his chin for a moment in thought. “Perhaps we’ll just call you Thomas. Thomas Penrith. That’s easy for me to remember. Your name is Thomas Penrith. You are from Cardiff and are van Rhyn’s assistant, a disaffected student with anarchist beliefs and a grudge against England. You have been trained at Nobel’s factory near Glasgow and have worked with your new employer for six months. You have a certain natural ability with explosives, and you show great promise. Have you got that, lad?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent. The reason Le Caron has succeeded, and all the others have failed, is that he did not try to pretend to be Irish.”
“I say, sir, have we anything else to do this afternoon? I thought I might stop and see Ira Moskowitz and Israel Zangwill. If I may, I’d like to tell them I was leaving town.”
“Certainly, lad. See your friends. I’m going out myself. I’ll see you back at home for dinner.”
I didn’t ask where he was going, and I don’t think he would have told me had I asked, but I had my suspicions. My employer kept company with a certain woman whose identity one would almost suppose was a state secret. Mac referred to her only as the Widow and she was never to be spoken of. I didn’t intend to do so now.
I jumped out and was soon walking down Commercial Street, that great aorta of London trade. Three months before, this area on the east side of the City was unknown to me, but now I knew it as well as the Elephant amp; Castle. If I had taken anything away with me from our last case, other than several torn ligaments and injured joints, it was my friendship with Israel and Ira. A quick cut up Bell Lane, and a few odd turnings, and I was in Spitalfields. The two of them lived in a boardinghouse for Jewish teachers and scholars. I’d visited enough times that I had become a nuisance to open the door to, and so had been given leave to enter as if I were a boarder. I slipped in, climbed the stairwell to the first floor, and rapped loudly on a door. A voice bade me enter, and I stepped inside.
Israel looked up from his studies. If someone had told me a year before that my two closest friends would be Jews, I would have laughed, having never even met one before, but so they had become. Israel is all head on a stalk of a body, with more nose and less chin than he knows what to do with. At the moment, his nose was propping up a pair of half-moon spectacles, for he had been preparing lessons for his third-form class.
“Thomas!” he cried. “What brings you to Whitechapel?”
“I was wondering if you were interested in sponsoring Ira Moskowitz in the club.”
Israel gave me a shrewd look. “You deem him worthy?”
“I deem him unlikely to ever be asked to join any other club,” I said.
“You are right there. But I’m just a humble teacher, not a famous detective’s assistant. The fourpence nomination fee might break me. Besides, I sponsored you. It’s your turn now.”
“Very well, I’ll pay. In fact, I’ll pay for everything.”
“You’ve ended a case?”
“No. Begun one. I’ll explain when we’re there.”
We quickly liberated Ira from his studies at the yeshiva, and spirited him away to our little club. Ira was mystified at his abduction, and more so when we turned in to St. Michael’s Alley, off Cornhill Street, unchanged for two hundred and fifty years. We opened the door of the Barbados, not a private club at all, really, but the most ancient coffeehouse on the street, and bowled him into the dark interior.
The proprietor came forward and bowed. “Good afternoon, Mr. Zangwill, Mr. Llewelyn. Have you brought a guest?”
“We’d like to sponsor this fellow for membership,” I said.
The owner looked Ira over doubtfully from head to toe. He does not have a prepossessing exterior. He is stout and pale with wiry hair that flies in every direction, and he wears spectacles. The proprietor bowed again and went to get the membership book, but he shot me a look, which said I was no longer in his good graces.
We sat down in a booth in the common room and caught up on recent history. When the proprietor returned, I plunked down the membership dues, fourpence, the cost of two cups of coffee when the street was built. St. Michael’s Alley was the heart of the West Indies trade, bringing coffee, tobacco, cane sugar, cotton, and cocoa back to Europe, hence the club’s name, Barbados. Ira was presented with a clay pipe, which he signed with a quill pen, and added his name at the tail of the subscription book. The owner brought Israel and me our own pipes, and we all lit up.
“Three black apollos,” I ordered. “Some beef chops from the grill at your convenience and a barrister’s torte for our friend.”
“Hear, hear,” Zangwill agreed.
“This is marvelous,” Ira said. “And you say they’ll keep this pipe forever?”
