Tom leaned both arms on the mantelpiece. In the two years since the American tour, he had grown a full beard and his arms and chest had become more prominent. Any Renaissance sculptor would have been grateful for him as a model.
“The cane you described with the strange gold head that the man called Herman possessed-did you see it up close?” Tom asked.
Osgood nodded. “It was a sort of dragon.”
“Do you remember if it had teeth?”
“Yes,” said Osgood, “sharp as razor blades. How did you know?”
“Herman,” Tom repeated the name to himself. “We must move in secret from now on.”
“You know who that monster is then who attacked Mr. Osgood on the ship?” Rebecca asked.
“The marks on the necks and chests of the bodies of the dead opium fiends-they were almost like fang marks. The police did not know what to think of them.”
“Made by his cane!” Osgood cried. “The beast's head!”
“If you encountered the same man on your steamship, then this was no random attack,” said Tom.
“Then I did not imagine him at the opium room,” Osgood said with a gasp. Even as he said this, Herman's stony visage entered his mind. “He really was there, Miss Sand; you were right, he was never a mere pickpocket! If he was the one who injected me with opium, it must have been him who did the same to poor Daniel. It was Herman that intervened in the attack, killing the Lascar and the Bengalee. He is the devil we must confront to unravel all this! Can the police find him, Branagan?”
“Scotland Yard will not treat the death of two wretched opium eaters seriously. But I don't know if we will have to find him,” Tom said mysteriously.
“What do you mean, Mr. Branagan?” Rebecca asked.
“If I am correct, Miss Sand, the challenge will not be to find him. It will be to avoid him long enough to learn which way this fatal wind blows.”
YAHEE WAS AN opium dealer but not only that. He was said to be the first one of his craft in London, the one to show all the others how to mix and smoke the black ooze. Known by many East Londoners as Jack Chinaman, Yahee occasionally irritated the wrong member of the London police, and when he did, he would usually be put in the cage for begging or some other trifle, since opium itself was not illegal. He was pleasantly surprised when, after the latest incarceration, he was released from prison two weeks early; at first, he thought his internal sense of the calendar had been altered while he was locked away, but he was told the prison was too crowded to feed every ill-mannered Chinaman.
The newly liberated opium mixer walked on the night of his release through the long, narrow tar-stained streets toward the dismal slum region of the docks. The air smelled of rubbish mixed with the odors of coffee and tobacco from the big brick warehouses lining the streets. As he came closer to where he kept his rooms, Yahee was stopped by an unfamiliar man in a police cape and hat.
“Keep distance, bobbie,” Yahee mumbled, pushing him aside. “Free man here!”
“You're free because of me, Yahee,” the constable said, the words slowing Yahee's steps. The wind was dispersing the fog and revealed a clearer view of the policeman. “I was the one to arrange it and I can undo it. I suspect you heard about what happened at Opium Sal's rooms to two of her hirelings, a Lascar and Bengalee.”
“No,” Yahee said dumbly. “What?”
Tom took a step closer. “I think you probably know.”
“Yahee hear of it,” the man said, breaking quickly under Tom's knowing glare. “They murdered, yes, I hear of it in quod.”
“Correct. And I wonder if you could have been behind it,” said Tom.
“No chance, stupid bobbie! Yahee in prison when happened!” the Chinese man said angrily, spitting on Tom's boot. “They try to rob wrong man, I hear. You try to make Yahee guilty! Go chase pickpocket!”
“Sally is your competition. How can we be certain you didn't arrange for her men to be attacked while you were in prison?” Tom asked.
“Unfair! Unfair, you Charlie!”
Tom didn't argue the point. He knew what he was doing was unfair-he knew Yahee had nothing to do with what had happened in Palmer's Folly. But he also knew that the small number of Chinese in London were looked upon with ready suspicion, especially an opium pusher like Yahee. Tom's threat to him was credible, and that made Yahee the perfect candidate.
Yahee, understanding something more was at hand, said, “Why you want Yahee?”
Tom leaned in. “I want to know about Herman.” This last word he whispered.
Yahee opened and closed his mouth as though ridding himself of a sour taste, waved this idea into the air and spouted out an impressive line of curses in Chinese as he began to hurry away. “No, no! No Iron-head! I talk of Ironhead Herman, I die! You die!”
Tom drew his baton and blocked Yahee from moving. Yahee's fear of Herman was painted across his face and in that moment Tom knew he had him trapped. “You
“Nah, you just plain bobbie! No one believe you!”
Yahee turned and scurried the other away but his path was blocked by another man. Osgood, who had been waiting in the shadows, stepped forward.
“They might not believe a constable,” Osgood said, “but they will be ready to believe the American businessman who was attacked.”
Yahee looked around in fright. “Why do this to Yahee?”
“We won't talk in the open, Yahee,” Tom said. “We will go inside the jail. I am a constable, not a detective- nobody will notice anything but a beggar being taken in, and then taken out when we're done. Is it a bargain or not, Jack Chinaman?”
Yahee spit this time at Tom's shoulder. “Bargain no! No jail! Yahee not go back in there! Herman eyes everywhere inside the cage!”
“Very well,” Tom conceded. “We'll go to your rooms, then.”
“To the devil with you! Yahee sooner die than be seen there with you!”
“Then we'll go to a place where nobody can see.”
THE THAMES TUNNEL had been built with great ambition and fanfare and no thoughts of failure. The massive passage would, for a twopence fee, allow pedestrians and carriages a convenient and pleasant crossing under the city's main waterway. But this would be the third attempt to tunnel underneath the Thames, and though more ambitious, it had been no more successful than the first two.
The gigantic construction undertaking was fraught with problems. Accidents and escalating expenses plagued the eighteen years of work on the tunnel; ten lives, mostly miners, had been taken through mishaps and mismanagement, falls, floods, gas explosions; surviving miners had gone on strike; after a brief period of excitement upon its finally being opened to the public, the massive tunnel was soon abandoned by Londoners. Investors lost their shares. Even the prostitutes and cadgers who frequented it grew tired of the leaks, the dangerous disrepair, the long and treacherous walk down the dizzying staircase to the tunnel eighty feet below the ground. It waited in limbo as one of the railroad companies negotiated its purchase for a line to Brighton. Its entrance by now surrounded by dilapidated warehouses, the Thames Tunnel became a mercifully for gotten embarrassment.
It was here, underneath the metropolis, in these desolate trails to nowhere, that Yahee stood with Tom Branagan and Osgood. They had descended the winding stairs to the lowest level of the abandoned subterranean underworld.
“This is only what people say,” Yahee qualified himself before beginning, leaning against the cold, sweaty stone as the three listened to the harsh churning of water pumps. “No more than that.”
“Tell us,” ordered Tom, trying to refrain from breathing in too much of the putrid air.
Yahee looked around, his eyes following up on the slightest noise. He put up his nose and winced. “Do not like
