To Kingdom Come

It was a villainous-looking square. The worst section of Whitechapel could equal but not surpass it. The court was formed by back entrances to bawdy and public houses. Men leaned against the walls with dazed expressions or slumbered on the dirty ground.

“What’s that smell?” I asked. It was cloying and slightly sweet.

“Opium,” he answered, pointing. “She appears to have gone in that door there.”

Barker plunged into a doorway. I followed. We were in a dark hallway, lit by a single, uncovered gas jet. The Guv’nor hurried down the hall until we came to a fork in the road, that is, a stairwell going up and down.

“Should we-”

“Ssh!” Barker put his hand on my shoulder, and we listened intently. He had a complete knowledge of the nervous system and how to attack various places he called pressure points. I hoped it was merely training that caused his thumb to press against one of the nerves near my collarbone just then. My fingers started to tingle.

“This way!” He was off down the stairs like a hound who’d heard the huntsman’s horn. Under normal circumstances, nothing could have induced me to go down such a rickety-looking stairwell, but I didn’t have the luxury of refusing. I hurtled down in the semidarkness after my employer.

We were in a hallway lined with doorways, with women standing in them. Fallen women they were, of the lowest order. The rooms were little more than cages. One glimpse of the first rouge-cheeked, scrofulous wretch, old beyond her years, was enough to keep my eyes riveted to the floor from then on. I hurried along behind my employer, despite the painted talons that brushed my sleeve or ran through my hair. It was a nightmarish world, the light from a silken shawl thrown over a gas lamp splashing scarlet over everything.

At the far end of the hall, Barker plunged down yet another stairwell. I began to feel as if we were descending through the various circles of Hell. We were now a full two stories underground. The wooden floor had given way to earth, and the walls were beamed like mine shafts. These appeared to be merely tunnels dug to escape the law. We reached the far end of one and found nothing but a dead end and a stone wall.

“We’ve been outfoxed,” Barker said, turning and walking back. “Let us double back up to the next floor and see if the trail is cold.”

I followed him up the last staircase and we stood a moment, debating what to do next. I certainly didn’t want to go down the red-tinged hallway again.

“Cold as an Orkney winter,” the Guv’nor declared. “Oh, well. It may have been nothing, as you say. Let us continue up this stairwell and see where it leads.”

On the next floor, there was what passed for a reception hall of one of the illicit establishments. Luckily, the men and women there were too gin soaked to notice us as we passed among them and out of the building. I was glad to get the odors of patchouli and opium and unwashed humanity out of my nostrils.

“There’s nothing else for us here,” Barker decided. “Let’s go back to our beds.”

“That sounds like a good plan,” I said. “Do you still think it was Maire?”

Barker shrugged. “Who can say? I thought it was Miss O’Casey, but she was a good distance away. It is even possible that we were deliberately lured out of the house, though the reason for such a ruse escapes me, unless they are onto us.”

We were passing by the Strand again, and I was just about to make some remark, when there was a sudden clatter of shoes, and I was suddenly knocked off my feet. My head hit the cobblestones, and I tried to struggle, but there was more than one man on top of me. The familiar cold steel of bracelets closed about my wrists. I was thrown over onto my back, a bull’s-eye shone in my eyes, and my throat felt the unwelcome weight of a truncheon. I couldn’t see my attackers behind the lantern or what had happened to Barker, but if he was in a similar situation, we were in a fine mess.

“Sir!” I cried.

“Do not struggle, lad!” I heard my employer’s low voice from a half dozen yards away.

A face came into the light, looking me over carefully. It was a meaty face with a brushy mustache and a blue helmet, a sergeant of the Liverpool police.

“We been waitin’ for you two blokes to come back down here. Glad you could oblige us.”

As Barker and I were hefted to our feet and prodded along, bruised and shackled, to the station in Wapping Street, I reflected on how that which you most fear will happen so often comes to pass.

Breathe in, I told myself. Breathe out. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Anything but dwell on the fact that there were darbies on my wrists again and a truncheon prodding me in the kidneys. No more, I told myself. No more. I’d learned my lesson. I’d sworn I’d never give anyone reason to throw me back in stir. How did I get in this situation? We were just walking down the street, like normal citizens. We hadn’t been doing anything illegal. We would have been safe if only we’d stayed in our beds, but our fool’s errand had brought us in harm’s way.

We were tricked, I told myself. We’d raced out after her, and now we’d been jugged as easily as a hare. Barker couldn’t reveal our identities and our reason for being in Liverpool. I knew we’d promised Anderson we wouldn’t involve the Home Office, but back then, the chances of discovery had seemed so remote. Surely, I thought, the emergency of the situation warranted disclosing who we were to the authorities.

I looked over at Barker, wondering what he was thinking. He was marching along with his hands behind his back, his head down. He might have been wandering in Hyde Park, deep in thought, for all his appearance. I envied him his ability to retreat at any moment to some remote corner of his mind, as cold and mystical as Lhasa or Kathmandu.

Suddenly, Barker did something I’d never seen him do before. He tripped, sprawling face-first in the street. Barker never tripped. He was as sure-footed as a cat. As the men swarmed over him and yanked him again to his feet, I tried to read his expression. His cheek was bruised, and he looked disoriented. Was it defeat, or was he up to something?

We were herded into the entranceway of the constabulary building. A man waited for us as we neared the front door. He was approximately five and thirty, with a thin mustache like a brow across his upper lip and one of the squarest jaws I’d ever seen. He looked at us out of steel-gray eyes and over an aquiline nose. He was dressed in the military-looking green uniform of a Liverpool inspector.

“You’ve got them, eh? Good work, gentlemen. Take them to the questioning room.”

I didn’t like the sound of “questioning room.” British officials are quick to give bland names to menacing places. The euphemisms complemented the chilling humor of the administrators.

We were taken into a room where, despite the fact that we made absolutely no struggle since it had all began, we were thrust roughly down into two chairs. The fellow in the green jacket came in and we were left alone with him and one constable, who had his notebook out. I noticed the inspector had a short riding crop in his hand.

“I am Chief Inspector Johanson,” he stated. “You two gentlemen have been seen in the company of known Irish rebels. I demand to know your names.”

Barker ignored the question and launched a barrage of his own in a thick German accent. “What is the meaning of this? Where have you brought us? Cannot a man walk in this city without being attacked by the secret police? I demand to be released immediately!”

Barker was oscillating his head slightly, and it took me a moment to realize what he was doing. He was pretending he was blind. It was why he had stumbled in the street.

“You have not answered my question,” the inspector warned. “Tell me your name, you.” He held up his riding crop, threatening Barker, but my employer appeared to take no notice. Seeing that warning him didn’t work, he struck the Guv a cutting blow across the face. Rather melodramatically, Barker fell out of his chair. He would have absorbed such a blow without comment under normal circumstances.

“Schwein!” he called from the floor, shaking in anger. “You strike a blind man, without warning? Coward! Why don’t you simply go out in the street and kick children and old women?”

Realizing for the first time that his suspect was blind, Johanson hefted him back into the chair, though he offered no apology.

“Look, man, you are in no position to be calling names here. You watch your mouth or I’ll give you another one.”

“You strike me one more time, Inspector,” Barker assured him, “and you shall be patrolling the quays as a constable by tomorrow. Do you think I am some common street thief you have caught in your dragnet?