“How should I know?”
“Are you sure about this, Israel?” I asked as we stared at a flickering gas jet over the door.
“Yes,” Zangwill said steadily, then wavered. “Well, sureish.”
I felt as if we were schoolboys daring each other to go into a deserted house. “There’s no way you could impress the editors at the Jewish Chronicle with some other story?”
“Not unless I can create a hair-raising account of the annual meeting of the Daughters of Judah that would thrill the world in its entirety. How is Mr. Barker doing?”
“He is…recovering.”
Zangwill played with his upper lip, a habit he has when he is debating something. It was accompanied by a tapping of his foot, much in the way Harm jerks his leg when I scratch his stomach.
“Let’s go in, then,” he finally said.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death-”
“Stop that!” he said and began moving forward.
We clattered down the steps and flung open the door, where we were greeted by a wall of smoke that had size and shape and atmosphere. My companion plunged into it and I followed, my hand in the pocket of my coat where my pistol lay in its built-in holster. Now that I was about to do it, I felt even more the foolishness of it, but Zangwill had gone in and I couldn’t let him go it alone. Cautiously, I slipped into the smoky darkness.
The reek of opium assailed my nose. Its sweet, cloying odor is so unpleasant I felt I could detect the lightest whiff miles away. It clawed at my throat and I knew I’d need several baths and my clothes several washings before the smell would go away. Zangwill and I passed through two rows of double berths, all of them filled. Most occupants were Chinamen and other Asiatics, but there was the odd European. I stopped to gaze at a man in formal attire, his top hat pulled down over his eyes and his long pipe on his chest. He could be dead and I’d be none the wiser.
I passed an alcove festooned with old sail material tied up with bits of rope like a curtain. A candle was lit and a woman was sucking in smoke. She stopped and regarded me a moment. She was dark and had a hooked nose and large hoop earrings, but I could tell nothing else-her age, her nationality, why she was smoking opium, how she got here. Her eyes followed me as I moved, and then she reached out a clawlike hand to me, a longing for who knows what? I shook my head and her hand fell. She sucked in more smoke and I continued on my way.
“Amazing,” I heard Zangwill say through the smoke a few steps ahead of me. “To think we’re in London.”
The room opened out at the back. There was a small bar made of crude wood; a staircase going upward; and several old, mismatched chairs. The area was lit by a single gas lamp, but the darkness encroached upon it and herded it into a small circle. An Oriental, little more than a boy, came forward.
“No,” I said, “I’m not smoking.”
“No smoky one pipey?”
“Yes,” Israel ordered. “One pipey. Do we pay now?”
“No, no, no, later. You sit there. I bring pipey.”
Zangwill sat down on the dirty sheets of one of the berths, and I pulled up a chair beside him.
“It’s not too late to leave,” I told him. “When he comes back, I’ll say we changed our minds. We can go over to the Barbados for a cup of coffee and-”
“No, I must go through with it,” Israel insisted. “This is just as it was described to me. Turn your chair ’round and keep an eye on that stairwell. I believe the insidious Mr. K’ing’s lair is up those steps.”
The boy brought the pipe and lit a match for my friend, who was then forced to suck in enough smoke to keep it lit. I watched the little bead of gummy opium bubbling in the bowl of the pipe.
He coughed a couple of times. “It’s not exactly a clay pipe at the Barbados,” he squeaked. “This stuff tastes terrible.” He put the pipe aside when the boy left.
“So, you have quit teaching and become a reporter,” I asked. “What else has happened since we last met?”
“I’ve met a girl, a corking girl. Her name is Amy Levy. She is a poetess and a member of the Fabian Society.”
It was quite unlike him to talk about a girl. “A poetess, eh?”
“Yes. She is very modern, one of these new women.”
Just then an Oriental man came down the stairwell, looked at some figures in a ledger and returned upstairs. If that was Mr. K’ing, I was not impressed. He was all upper teeth and Adam’s apple and very little chin. He looked nothing like the portrait Bainbridge had left us.
After a while we fell into a reverie. I hadn’t reckoned that the combined effluvia of so many pipes would be almost like having one of my own. It began with pinwheels at the corners of my vision. Before I knew it, I was having a headache and feeling woozy.
“Llewelyn!” a voice spoke into my ear. I opened my eyes, though my sight wasn’t very clear. It was the chap in the top hat, who had been lying in the bunk against the wall. He had thrown his hat back and he looked familiar. “Llewelyn,” he repeated, shaking my shoulder.
“Mr. Forbes?”
“Pollock, old man,” he corrected. “So what are you and your friend doing here?”
“Friend?”
“You need some air, I think. In fact, you both do. Help me get him on his feet.”
We got on both sides of Zangwill and lifted him up. He was nearly insensible. Forbes reached into his pocket and a rain of coins jingled down onto a rickety table. Then we opened the door and met the bracing cold air.
Outside, the snow had stopped, but a misty haze had formed in the cold air. It felt good coming out from the infernal stench of the den. Inn of Double Happiness, my eye. Double Misery, more like. I needed a few breaths before I could walk, but I wasn’t sure I could trust Zangwill to stand upright. We led him down the street a bit and propped him against a building. Then I did the same for myself.
It felt as if someone was squeezing the bridge of my nose with a pair of pliers. I was nauseous, too, and felt I might be sick, but managed to get hold of myself. We were just about to step into the street when a horse and cab nearly ran us down. I fell back against the wall, my heart racing. It had been close. The four-wheeler came to a stop in front of the den and the door opened. Could it possibly be?
A form was getting out of the cab, a black shape, a shadow until he turned around and his face was illuminated by the meager gaslight from above the door. A broad-brimmed hat, Astrakhan-collared coat, thin face, Chinese eyes, thin mustache. It was Mr. K’ing.
“There’s your man,” Forbes said in a low voice.
K’ing settled his coat about him and turned, speaking to someone in the cab. A second fellow stepped out, a figure in dove gray. It was the last person I expected: Jimmy Woo.
We leaned against the wall in the shadows. K’ing and Woo spoke to each other for a moment in Chinese, and then Woo bowed and walked off in the other direction.
Forbes kept his head down, covered by his top hat, but I was staring straight at Mr. K’ing when his eyes swept the street and locked onto mine. Surely he couldn’t see us in the shadow, could he? His face hardened and I thought we were caught for certain, but he turned and stepped briskly down the steps into the inn.
Forbes breathed out and coughed. He breathed in quickly and began coughing again. Finally, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and clamped it over his mouth. Slowly, the spasms passed. I pretended not to notice and let the man retain his dignity. I owed him that and more.
“That was close,” he finally gulped.
“Do you think he saw us?”
“Who can say?” Forbes said and hefted Zangwill again.
“Thank you for coming to my aid,” I told him. “What were you doing there?”
“Keeping an eye on things,” he said cryptically. “What about you and this fellow?”
“He’s a reporter and a friend of mine. He is doing a story on Limehouse.”
“This is the sharp end of the sword, old boy,” he said. “Couldn’t you just take him to a noodle shop or a fan- tan parlor?”
“Exposing K’ing was going to make his career.”
“More likely it would end it. I think Mr. K’ing might have an opinion on whether or not he would care to be
