To Kingdom Come

“Yes, I’m done here. If I’m lucky, I’ll get three hours kip.”

“Ta-ta, then. We shall speak in a few days.”

The two friends shook hands, and the inspector shook mine as well before he left. Perhaps it was the dust from the explosion, but there were lines about his eyes I hadn’t noticed before and gray in his hair.

When he was gone, I stood and yawned. It had been a long night already.

“When are we going home, sir?” I asked, trying not to sound as if I were complaining.

“We aren’t,” my employer responded. “We will sleep rough tonight. There is a cot in one of the back rooms, which we will carry to the waiting room. Follow me.”

I did so with as much ill grace as I could get away with. Still, I was curious. The rooms in the back were a mystery to me. Barker kept most of them locked. None of them had windows, so presumably they hadn’t sustained any damage. Barker set his key in a lock and opened one of the doors on the right. If I was hoping for pirate costumes or the lost treasures of the Incas, I’d have been disappointed. There was a simple cot, a small table and chair, and some anonymous cupboards. Did the Guv’nor take an occasional nap while I was running errands? We carried the cot into the waiting room. Barker went back into the room and returned with a pillow and blankets.

“You shall bed down here for the night,” he said.

“Where shall you sleep, sir?” I asked.

“In the office, of course,” he responded. “I have expensive furnishings and books here, not to mention files some would pay large sums to obtain.”

“You’ll sleep in a chair?”

“No, on the floor.”

I followed him back into the office. He went to a shelf and took down a thick book, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, I believe. Pulling the chair away from his desk, he set the book on the floor, then removed his shoes and jacket, collar and cuffs. Then, as I watched, puzzling over his next move, he lay down on the Bakhtiari rug behind his desk where no glass had fallen and pulled one end over him, his head resting on Shakespeare for a pillow.

“Sir!” I said, appalled. “Sir, no. You take the cot! I can’t let you sleep like this.”

“Thomas, there have been nights in my life when I would have given a kingdom for a soft rug and a book to rest my head upon. You get some sleep. I want you fresh in the morning. Be a good lad and turn down the gas on your way out.”

The last thing he did after rolling away was to reach up and put his spectacles on the desk above his head. It was the first time I’d ever seen him remove the black lenses, and they looked strange and empty on the blotter without his face behind them. If only he would turn my way. I idled about a moment, hoping he’d do just that, hoping just once to see how he looked without them.

“Thomas.”

“Yes, sir. Good night.” I turned down the gas and left the room.

3

I was having the most wonderful dream. I was in an outdoor cafe slathering gooseberry preserves on a fresh croissant. I felt the boulevard breezes on my face and smelled the heavenly aroma of fresh coffee. My attentive waiter refilled my porcelain cup with coffee and cream from matching silver pots before I could ask.

I was just beginning a second roll when a beautiful woman began wending her way toward me among the tables. She had lips the color of poppies, and a vibrant cobalt blue dress hugged her every curve. I leaned forward, longing to know what intimate secret she wished to reveal to me.

She came closer and bent toward me as I looked up into her pellucid blue eyes, drinking in her beauty. She took my chin lightly in her gloved hand and brought her impossibly red lips to my ear.

“Eh, Thomas! Wake up, you idiot! Your coffee ees getting cold!”

Someone’s boot was on my hip, shaking me awake, and none too gently, either. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes, my dream in tatters. Etienne Dummolard’s face is difficult to take on any morning, let alone in comparison to the beauty in my dream. He is built along the lines of a bear. His purple nose resembles a turnip freshly pulled from a field, and his hair looks as if a miniature haystack had been set down upon his head.

“What are you doing here?” I mumbled, sitting up.

“Nobody was at home for breakfast, so I brought it here. Coffee and fresh croissants and jam. Monsieur Mac has sent along a fresh suit of clothes for each of you.”

Losing the girl was a disappointment, but I sat at the clerk’s desk and contented myself with the coffee and rolls. It was better fare than I had anticipated under the circumstances. The boulevard breezes of my dream, I reasoned, had been due to the missing glass in our waiting room windows.

“While you are enjoying your meal,” Etienne said, “I shall step around and see this amazing sight, this Scotland Yard all en deshabille.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said, rising.

“If you insult my croissants by standing, I shall kick the legs from under you. Sit and digest,” he ordered.

I nodded and poured a second cup of coffee from the pot he had brought. It’s not a bad thing to be forced to eat fresh pastry prepared by a master chef. After he left, however, I committed the sacrilege of chewing the last of my roll while crossing to the office.

Inside, Barker was seated at his desk, for all the world like any other day were it not that the office was in shambles. He was engrossed in conversation with a workman over the telephone set at his desk. The Times was spread out under his elbows.

I was standing in the doorway, remarking to myself that it was seven o’clock by the extremely loud tolling of Big Ben just down the street, when I was struck a glancing blow on the shoulder. I almost thought it was another explosion, and it was. It was Jenkins.

Our clerk leapt into the room, taking in the windows, the overturned pedestal, the dust-covered books. His eyes were the size of billiard balls. It was the first time I’d ever seen him fully awake. Neither Barker nor I had thought to send word to him that we’d been bombed. He’d known for less than a minute.

“Wha’-what’s happened here?” he demanded. “And what are you two gents doing here at this hour on a Saturday?”

“A small matter of an explosion at Scotland Yard last evening,” Barker explained. “We thought it necessary to spend the night.”

“Cor! It’ll take days to clean this place up. Look at all this winder glass. It’s everywhere!”

“It gets worse,” I told him. “The Sun was also damaged, I’m afraid.”

Our clerk looked stricken. The Rising Sun was Jenkins’s port of call, when not at work. I can only compare it to telling a man from the Exchange that the Market has plunged. He went white.

“Oh, s’truth, not the Sun!” He rushed past me and out the door. I heard his footsteps echoing down the court.

“The news is worse this morning,” Barker said, handing me The Times. “Aside from the dozens hurt in Whitehall, fourteen men were injured at the Junior Carlton Club. Also, two servants were blown off their feet at the private residence of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, across the street in St. James’s.”

“Sir Watkin!”

Barker’s brow sunk between the twin disks of his spectacles.

“You know Sir Watkin?”

“I don’t know him personally, but he has always been revered in Wales. He’s a landowner who has given back much in charity to the Welsh people. Was he injured?”

“I don’t know anything beyond the published account. Have you finished your coffee?”

“Er … yes, sir.”

“Good. We have an appointment at the Home Office at eight o’clock. The ministries are awake early this morning, thanks to the bombing that occurred there last evening. Do try to get cleaned up, Thomas. Your appearance might be suitable for the public houses but not for visiting one of Her Majesty’s government agencies.”