back in the monastery it came from.”
“Even if we have to take it there ourselves?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
“But first, you’ll have to get it again, because you gave it to a Chinaman.”
“I trust I can lay hands on it when the moment comes.”
“Is it in the East End?”
Barker knocked his pipe on the fender. “This is not a parlor game, lad. Come. We have work to do.”
“Where to next, sir?” I asked, putting down my empty pint glass. My boots had dried out a little, and I had convinced myself that somewhere in the world at that moment a warm sun was shining down and might even come here someday. If anything, the room suddenly seemed too hot, pungent with hops and tobacco smoke. I wanted to be out again in the cold, crisp air.
“K Division, or at least Bainbridge’s constabulary in East India Dock Road. I want to get permission to go through his files. If he had a clue or a possible suspect in the crime, he wouldn’t have told us, not right away. He came to us only because he could not legally get the book himself. I am almost surprised he did not simply thump Mr. Hurtz with his truncheon and take it. Bainbridge was known for the direct approach, and he was a steady officer for many years.”
We took the tram into Limehouse. Sailor town does not improve in inclement weather, save that the pavement is not crowded by street sellers of dried squid and other “treats.” We had the streets to ourselves. Merchants halfheartedly called to us as we passed from the shadows of their shops. They recognized Barker now. It was Shi Shi Ji this and Shi Shi Ji that. They didn’t bother translating for my benefit. Barker stopped to talk once or twice. This was it, I told myself. He’s going to talk to all six hundred Chinamen in London, and when he’s done with them, he’ll start on the Lascars.
East India Dock Road is a continuation of Commercial Road, but the great thoroughfare dwindles considerably when it reaches the dockyards. Bainbridge’s constabulary was a red brick building tucked in among the others in the street like a book on a shelf. Only the blue light suspended out in the street gave warning that this was the sole bastion of law and order in this sailor’s haven. Stepping inside, I was expecting the chaos I’ve seen before in the booking area of A Division at Great Scotland Yard itself. It was not so. There were no more than two or three constables on duty, but they seemed to have everything in hand. A lone fellow in a pair of wrist darbies sat talking with an officer, and two citizens waited patiently to be served. It looked as if Bainbridge had run a tight ship. One could get the impression that this was a sleepy little backwater constabulary where nothing ever happens. One would, however, be wrong. The first thing we discovered when we walked in the door was that the constabulary had just narrowly missed being burned to the ground. Bainbridge’s files, the ones we had come to see, had been reduced to ash.
“Burned, you say?” the Guv rasped to the solid-looking police sergeant in charge of the desk. “All of them?”
“Aye, sir. A little after midnight, it was. P. C. Threadgill, he does the overnight duty, you see, he smelled smoke and saw it coming from under the inspector’s door. The dustbin had been set in the middle of the floor and some files set alight in it. A regular blaze it was, according to Threadgill, and he was afeared it’d burn down the building. He poured water and sand from the fire bucket on it and then opened windows down the hall to kill the smoke. It was burnt to cinders, all them files Bainy-I mean Detective Inspector Bainbridge-had recorded so metic’lously. A crying shame, I says, and the place all reeking of smoke now. The back windows is open and all of us with our teeth chattering.”
“May I see his office?” Barker asked.
The constable hesitated a moment. We were unofficial, after all, but then, anything of interest had already been burned. He finally nodded. “A quick look wouldn’t hurt nothing, I ’spect.”
“You have no suspects?” my employer asked as we were led back to the office.
“Not a one that we can pin down,” the constable admitted. “And before you ask, no, not so much as a scrap of paper could be saved. Between the fire, the sand, and the water, there was nothing but moldering ash.”
“Murder,” the Guv muttered to me as we walked, “of a police officer and now arson in a London constabulary. This killer would appear to have no fear of Scotland Yard at all.”
The constable set his key in the lock and turned it. The smell of smoke was far stronger in here, though nothing had been burned save the files. A gray discoloration marked the center of the ceiling over the spot where the bin stood.
“Was this open last night?” my employer asked, pointing toward the open window.
“Aye, sir, but it’s a sheer wall. It would take a monkey to climb it.”
Barker grunted and moved to the desk on which was a common blotter of green paper, a map of the city, and pencils standing in a cup. A wooden chair on casters was pulled up to the desk, a chair which had been worn down by the seat of Bainbridge’s trousers for years but would be worn down no farther. A few prints of the early days of the station and the Bow Street Runners hung on the wall. There was not much left behind after so many years on duty, I thought.
“Took the top blotter sheet, too,” the constable noted.
“Why?” Barker queried.
“Old Bainy was a sketcher, sir. It was how he worked out his cases. Helped him think, he said. Wasn’t a bad artist, neither. Could have had him a job as an illustrator for the newspapers if he weren’t a copper down to his boots.”
“Interesting,” Barker declared, pouring the pencils from the cup onto the blotter. Taking a pencil in his hand, he started in the upper right-hand corner and began to move the lead back and forth across the blotting paper. What child in Britain had not taken a piece of paper to an old gravestone and rubbed an etching of an old knight or dame?
“We shall look this over, and if it bears fruit, you shall give it to Inspector Poole when he comes in.”
It took close to a half hour of rubbing and several pencils before the two of us finished the blotter. As imperfect as the images were, they gave us a very good look into the mind of the late Inspector Nevil Bainbridge. The constable was correct: the inspector had been quite an artist.
“Lad, get out your notebook,” the Guv ordered.
I retrieved it from my pocket, set it down on a cabinet, and prepared to write in my best Pitman shorthand, despite not being able to hold the pad with one arm in a cast.
“In the upper left-hand corner we have the letters H and P enclosed in a diamond. There is nothing along that same latitude until we get to the middle of the paper, where we discover the head and shoulders of a sinister- looking fellow in a wide-brimmed hat and fur collar who I suspect is Mr. K’ing. Close to the upper right-hand corner, there is another face, larger and very wild: fierce teeth, bristling mustache, rolling eyes, a complete caricature of an Asian face. By the corner of the face is a wooden flail, two sticks connected by a rope. In the middle, there is a form bent over a line, loose, like one of those string puppets. What are they called?”
“Marionettes, sir.”
“Yes. The line stretches for some distance across the picture, then coils into a loop of rope. By the figure’s shoulder is a rough shape, which I believe is a coffin. Near the center of the page is a female form, nicely rendered but without a face. She wears a shawl and straw hat, and her hair is cut straight across her shoulders. I presume it is light colored, for he does not appear to have darkened it. Blond or red. The pose, holding the shawl around her, is demure and yet there is some voluptuousness to the figure. Two men are off to the right, in profile, as if watching the girl. One is taller than the other. They are shaded heavily, but I believe them to be Campbell-Ffinch and his interpreter, Woo.
“On the bottom row, there is a figure slumped on the floor and a group of lines going back and forth away from him, like the teeth of a saw or steps. I adduce it is the image of Jan Hurtz, whom Bainbridge would have seen firsthand. There is a small sketch of a ship, possibly the Blue Funnel ship Ajax. We shall see. Here, where the coil of rope ends are three balls and a ticket, the one we gave to Hurtz’s brother. There is an almost comically menacing face, with a heavy beard, leering and ready to devour the maiden in the center. And here, at the very lower right- hand corner, is the face of my late assistant, whom Bainbridge had the poor taste to show as we found him on that terrible day, eyes half shut, arms thrown wide, and the bullet hole dead center. That is all.”
“That’s one, two, five…nine figures altogether, and we know but half of them,” I pointed out.
“Can you draw, lad?”
