To Kingdom Come

duration. Vienna is doing some marvelous improvements in criminalistics.”

“Still continuing your oriental studies?” the man asked, stifling a yawn. He seemed like the sort who is interested only in his own pet subjects.

“There is always more to learn.”

“And more to acquire.”

“Word on the street says you’ve been buying some paintings lately.”

“Word on the street should mind its own bloody business,” the fellow snapped. He shrugged his shoulders. “A Bouguereau or two came on the market unexpectedly. I like Bouguereau’s little shepherdesses. Innocence interests me.”

“You have expensive tastes, Seamus.”

“Not at all,” he said silkily. “My tastes are simple. I only like the best.”

The waiter arrived and then did something rather amazing. He set the man’s frugal meal of rice in tea in front of him gently. Where was the rudeness for which Ho’s waiters were famous?

“Stay for lunch?”

Barker shook his head. “We have already eaten, and I’ve got a lot to do before our journey. We’ll leave you to your solitary repast. Come, Llewelyn.”

The Irishman and I bowed to each other, and wordlessly I followed my employer through the door, down the steps, and across the echoing corridor. It wasn’t until we were back on the street looking for a hansom or an omnibus that I broke the silence.

“Was that the fellow on Parnell’s list?”

“It was. He often eats lunch at Ho’s at this time. His name is Seamus O’Muircheartaigh. He’s got his fingers in more pies than a baker: land speculation, stock exchange, high-interest loans, blackmail, extortion.”

“My word!”

“Do you remember Nightwine?”

“Sebastian Nightwine?” I did indeed. I’d met him during my first case with Barker. The fellow was a big-game hunter by trade, but it was rumored he was also attempting to organize London’s underworld.

“He has moved on. Africa, I believe. It’s his one saving grace: he doesn’t stay in one place for long. He sold off his holdings in the East End to O’Muircheartaigh recently, or so I’ve heard. He always turns a profit.”

“So he’s little more than a criminal, then.”

“Yes, but of the first water. A criminal’s criminal. He trained himself by reading Machiavelli’s The Prince. Some of the money he brings in is funneled through to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. I can’t be certain whether he is a true patriot to the cause, or if it is just a good business tactic.”

“But you ate with him!” I protested.

“I did not. You saw me leave the moment his food arrived. I refuse to break bread with the man, and he knows it.”

“You acted very civil toward him. You called him over. You called him by his Christian name.”

“Make no mistake, Thomas. If I could toss him in Wormwood Scrubs today, I would. And if he could splatter my brains across the London cobblestones, he would. We respect each other for our talents and professionalism. We shall treat each other with courtesy until one of us eventually does the other in.”

We returned to our office, and for a moment I felt that everything was as it had been. Jenkins was seated at his desk with the Police Gazette in his hand, the glaziers had completed their work and gone, and all vestiges of dust and debris had been removed from the waiting room by our clerk’s broom and duster. Barker stopped for a moment to discuss with Jenkins a potential client who had appeared in our absence, while I continued into the inner office.

All was not the same here. The carpets were gone, and the vase was still a stack of shards on the corner of Barker’s desk. More obvious was the street urchin who sat in my employer’s chair, with his feet on the blotter and a lit cigar from the box the Guv reserved for guests in his hand.

“How’d you get in here?” I demanded. “Get out of Mr. Barker’s chair before I drag you out.”

“You and the Coldstream Guards,” he jeered. “Go soak your head.”

I made for him, but he was up and on his feet in a trice, keeping the desk between us and taunting me all the while. As a Classics scholar, I had to admit he had an imaginative way with words. In half a minute, he made my blood boil. I wanted to see just how far my fingers would reach around his throat.

“Ah, Vic,” my employer said, suddenly behind me. “Good to see you. I’ll take it from here, Llewelyn.”

“’Lo, Push,” the tattered boy said. I’d heard Barker called “Push Comes to Shove” in our previous case. “’Oo’s the shirt?”

“Thomas Llewelyn, my assistant. Thomas, this is Soho Vic.”

Vic wiped his none-too-clean nose with his hand, then offered it to me to shake. When I refused, he stuck his tongue out and returned to sucking on his cigar, which he was puffing in quick drafts like an engine about to leave a station.

“Found the Sponge for you,” he said cryptically.

“Excellent. Where is he?”

“’Round the corner, paying ’is respects to the Sun. Said ’e’d be ’long directly.”

The Guv pulled out a half-sovereign from his waistcoat pocket and proffered it. The boy snatched the shining coin from Barker’s fingertips and thrust it between his dirty teeth. It passed inspection there, so he tossed it in the air a few times, as if admiring its weight, before thrusting it into his waistcoat pocket.

“Pleasure doin’ business wiff yer, Push. Got other errands to run. Cheerio!”

“You may use the front entrance,” Barker said, pointing toward the door.

“No fanks, Guv,” came the reply. “Got to ’ave me exercise. Not gettin’ any younger, am I? Fanks for the smoke and the beneficence.” Then he was gone out the back door, and presumably over the back wall as well.

“Soho Vic,” I said to myself. “What names these street arabs have. I assume he was born in Soho?”

“Krakw, Poland,” Cyrus Barker informed me. “His real name is Stanislieu Sohovic. It’s amazing how foreign names get anglicized, isn’t it? Came here with his father when he was still in nappies, then the old man was killed in a boatyard accident. Vic’s been fending for himself ever since.”

“You trust him to do business, then?”

“As well as any other merchant in London. Any enquiry agent worth his salt uses Vic and his kind to deliver messages and track down people. He’s got a number of mouths to feed, and despite his flippant exterior, takes his work very seriously.”

“And this … this Sponge person will help us find the Irish faction?”

“We can but cast our nets, lad,” Barker said, and with that bit of philosophy, nothing more was mentioned of the matter.

The Sponge, if I may call him that, arrived shortly after four, when Jenkins came into our chambers with a calling card in his hand for Barker. It was none too clean, I noticed, and a corner had been creased and straightened. It bore the legend: HENRY CATHCART, ESQ.

“Show him in, Jenkins,” Barker said, after a glance at the card.

“Very good, sir,” Jenkins replied, but as he passed me he raised his eyebrows as if to say Wait until you see this one.

In a moment, our visitor came in, slowly, gravely, as if he were a headmaster at vespers. I saw what had caused Jenkins’s brows to flutter. First of all, the fellow had the purple ears, veined cheeks, and swollen nose of the inveterate drinker. His pale eyes did not seem to focus on anything in particular but floated about like poached eggs in water. His clothes were patched, the bottoms of his trousers frayed, and his collar had been worn on both sides, and yet there was something in his well-cut, gray-shot beard and the careful knot of his tie that told me he still cared about his appearance. It had been I who had undergone such a scrutiny of dress when I was hired a little over two months earlier, and now I was doing the scrutinizing. Mr. Cathcart did not come out well. I began to think the Sponge soaked up nothing more than liquor.

Barker rose. “How do you do, Mr. Cathcart?”

“As well as to be expected in this hard world of ours, Your Honor, I thank you. And you?”

“I am well. May I present my assistant, Mr. Thomas Llewelyn?”

The old fellow, if indeed he was old, bowed gravely to me.

“Good afternoon, young man,” he said. “I hope you appreciate your position here. There are many who covet