Israel Zangwill rose from the fireside chair in the library as I entered. His hat was on his knee, mottled with melting snow. It was early afternoon and yet Israel was here, instead of at his position at the Jews’ Free School.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I started a new position, Thomas. I have given up teaching,” he said, a smile on his Pucklike face. “I have become a reporter for the Jewish Chronicle. ”
“That’s marvelous, Israel. Congratulations.” I shook his hand. “No more first period gymnastics for you now, eh?”
“Exactly. Who is the new maid in the hall and what has become of Mac?”
I explained the immediate situation and Israel took it all in.
“So he was attacked in Limehouse, you say. Does this have anything to do with a fellow named Mr. K’ing?”
“How on earth do you know about K’ing?” I asked. “His name is hardly spoken above a whisper.”
“I’ve been investigating him for an article after a few of our crowd lost a painful amount at fan-tan. I suppose telling the Chronicle was a way to get even.”
“You haven’t by chance been given a tour of Limehouse by an individual named Jimmy Woo?”
“‘Individual’ is a good word for him. Yes, that was me. He showed me all over the district until I mentioned Mr. K’ing. Then he shut up so tight I might as well have stuck a cork in his mouth.”
“K’ing has that effect on people. Woo says he doesn’t even exist.”
“He exists, all right. He owns an opium den in Pekin Street.”
“How did you come by that information?”
“I’m a reporter. I bought it. I thought your employer might be interested, though I didn’t know he was working on a similar case.”
“It’s just the sort of information he’s been looking for, but I doubt he’ll be up for several days, if at all. He hasn’t woken up since he was attacked.”
“Drat!” Zangwill said. “I spent my last shilling on the information and now I can’t even afford to get inside. You’re the only fellow I know with both the courage and the ready to go there with me.”
“I’m sorry, Israel, but I can’t leave Barker’s side, and, besides, you shouldn’t be going to an opium den. It’s dangerous and terribly addictive.”
“Oh, I’m going, all right. I have to. My employment depends upon it. I rather sold it to my editor, you know, ‘Sinister Oriental, pipe of poppy, white slave trade’ and all that. I’ve got to go through with it. I’ve rather burned my bridges behind me.”
“I wish I could help you, but Barker’s health, his life is too precarious now.” I studied my friend. “I can’t believe you threw over a good position.”
“It is your fault,” he retorted. “You are the one that got me thinking. You’re always doing important things, risking life and limb daily, and what do I do? I wet-nurse a group of children. It was stultifying. This last week has been the most exciting of my life! If I have to visit an opium den or stalk Limehouse for an underground criminal leader to get a story, I shall do it.”
“Your parents must be livid.”
Zangwill gave me a pained smile. “They are not overjoyed, but it is already done. If I fail, I shall have to find other work, but I refuse to fail. Look, supposing this place is pertinent to the case and you’re spending precious hours here when you could be solving it. How would you like to serve your employer a finished case on a platter when he wakes up?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, Israel. The Guv would caution me just as I am cautioning you. Slow down and think this over.”
He ran a hand through his shock of curly hair. “I have an idea, then. I won’t go tonight if you go with me tomorrow night. Your boss might wake up in the morning. I really need your help. If you don’t go with me, I shall have to take Ira.”
Ira Moskowitz was a close friend of ours. He is built like a sack of potatoes and would be of no help at all in a desperate situation.
“All right, all right,” I relented. “I shall go with you tomorrow night if Barker’s condition does not worsen or if he wakes up and feels it is the right thing for me to do. But I’ve already made one mistake in this case and I do not want to make another if I can help it. You’re not actually going to smoke the stuff, are you?”
“Surely you don’t think I’m the sort that would go to such an establishment for pleasure.”
“No,” I said, “just to beard the most dangerous man in London in his den.”
Zangwill leaned forward. “Do you really think he is the most dangerous man in London? Oh, I like that phrase. I simply must use it.” He pulled a small pad from his pocket and made a notation in pencil.
“You’re treating this like a game, Israel,” I told him. “K’ing is very real and, I suspect, very dangerous. I, for one, would not care to be under his scrutiny.”
“Look, we’ll go in and buy a few pipes. It’s not illegal and we won’t smoke them, though people do it all the time. I’m more interested in what goes on behind the opium den than what occurs inside it.”
“That’s what I am afraid of.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Zangwill said as I saw him to the door.
“Very well. Tomorrow. Where and when?”
“Pekin Street. Let us say seven.”
Dr. Quong arrived about an hour later. He tried a different kind of needle treatment this time, involving small cups with holes in the bottom through which the needle was passed. A bit of cotton on the end of the needle was ignited, which sucked the air out of the small chamber and adhered the cup to the skin. In ten minutes, Barker was covered in little glass cups.
“It doesn’t hurt?” I asked.
“I would no hurt Shi Shi Ji, ” Quong said. “He will find my son killer.”
“When can I get this cast off?”
“You Westerners all the time hurry. Chop, chop. Cannot rush healing body. Chinese medicine work slowly but good.”
After he had pulled every pin from Barker’s body and massaged a bottle of liniment into his back that turned it bright yellow, he left us alone. Harm came in, sniffed at everything, and hopped up on the corner of the bed. He put his almost chinless head on his paws and sighed.
“I know how you feel,” I told him.
At a loss for what to do, I explored the books on Barker’s shelves. The walls slope from the apex until they meet a line of low, long bookcases on both sides. They contained mostly religious texts. I pulled an old copy of Pilgrim’s Progress from the shelf and reacquainted myself with Christian, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and my personal favorite, the Slough of Despond. Barker stirred and sighed in his sleep twice during the evening but did not wake up. I debated sleeping in a chair but allowed the night nurse when she arrived to shoo me off to bed like a mother.
The next morning, Barker was still profoundly asleep, one foot firmly planted in this world and the other in the one to come. I was sure he would have woken by now. Was he getting better or was this bad news? Applegate came midmorning and spoke cryptically. He said the Guv was doing “as well as can be expected,” but would not make any further comment. I asked if I should go out and pursue an inquiry that evening involving the case. He said he thought that the fresh air would do me good.
The way it is described in the guidebooks, one would think Limehouse a kind of Brighton-on-the- Thames instead of a worn-down and bedraggled district with outdated sewer systems and buildings teetering on stilts by the edge of the river, a constant source of worry for the Lord Mayor.
Arriving at my destination, it occurred to me that it takes a certain measure of courage for a man to go to a place that might be dangerous and another measure before going in. I had brought the first but I was not positive about the other.
“Does this place have a name?” I asked Israel, for I saw no hoarding bidding people to enter, nothing save for a small gas lamp over the entrance door.
“Jimmy Woo says this place is called Inn of Double Happiness,” Zangwill said.
“This is an inn?” I asked skeptically. It looked more like a house of assignation to me.
