exposed.”
“Woo,” I remembered. “He was with Jimmy Woo. What does that mean?”
“You will have to ask your employer that question. Cab!”
We caught a cab and shared it as far as Whitehall and Israel’s lodgings. We didn’t speak much. I still had pinwheels in the corners of my eyes and was half asleep. In fact, I think we all were. When the cab stopped, we got down and I waved to Forbes, who tapped the brim of his hat with his walking stick.
A few more streets, I told myself. A few more streets and I will be home. I kept seeing K’ing’s eyes boring into mine.
19
Ho appeared on our doorstep the next morning. He had never been to the house, at least not since I had been in Barker’s employment. I took him upstairs, not realizing I was making a mistake. He watched Barker silently for a while, then lit three joss sticks with a match and set them in a holder he’d pulled from his pocket. Having done what he came for, Ho nodded and left the room. I followed him down to the ground floor, which is where the trouble started.
Dummolard came out of the kitchen and caught Ho’s eye. He came hurtling after the Chinaman and the two began shouting in two different languages. I thought for certain they would come to blows as they bellowed at each other like bull elephants.
“Gentlemen, please!” I cried, but they paid me no attention. Things might have deteriorated further if an even more formidable adversary had not joined the fray. I’m speaking, of course, of Mireille Dummolard.
She came out of Mac’s room, where no doubt she had been feeding him sweetmeats and reading to him from Mrs. Braddon, and began spitting French phrases in rapid succession like bullets from an American Gatling gun. Both men tried to retain their sangfroid in the face of such a barrage, but it was only a matter of time. In half a minute the men were standing with their heads down, looking like schoolboys caught pulling the tail of the vicar’s cat. Ho slinked out the back door while Madame Dummolard marched her husband into the kitchen.
I sat down on the first step of the staircase and held my head. I didn’t want to be in charge anymore. I believe life had been less taxing in Oxford Prison.
“I say,” Mac called from his bed. “Was that Ho?”
“It was.”
“You can’t put him and Monsieur Dummolard in the same room, you know. They always fight. It’s a feud of long standing.”
“Thank you for warning me,” I said.
There was another rap at the door and the infernal girl reached for the handle again.
“No!” I cried, arresting her in mid-gesture. “No more visitors. We are declining all visitors today save Mr. Barker’s doctors.”
“How do you know it is not the doctor?” the maid asked in her accented English.
“Applegate has a nice brougham with a white mare. The other doctor is a Chinaman. If there is no white mare at the curb and no Chinaman, that door stays closed. Do you understand?”
“ Oui, monsieur,” she said with a short curtsey.
I walked toward the kitchen for a cup of coffee, realized the Dummolards were still arguing in there, then considered going out somewhere for some peace and quiet. There was nowhere to go. Instead, I climbed the stair and sat down at Barker’s bedside, flipping open the copy of Pilgrim’s Progress.
“Hello, lad,” said the still form on the bed.
“Sir!”
“Was that a fight I heard downstairs just now?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m so glad you are awake. Ho showed up and got into it with Etienne. Then Madame Dummolard came and lit into both of them. I thought I was going to have to send for the police.”
Barker grunted from the bed. “You were never warned about them,” he said, his voice weak.
“Not until after the fact.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“More than two days.”
“Blast,” he murmured.
“Your kidneys almost failed, sir. Do you remember?”
“Vaguely. Let me think a moment.”
I allowed him the silence. It was good to have him awake again, cogitating. I helped him take a sip of water and then sat down with the book in my hand.
“Death touch,” he finally said. “Was Applegate here?”
“He was, sir.”
“Applegate could not save me from a death touch. He wouldn’t know how.”
“No, sir, but I brought Dr. Quong here, as well.”
I think I actually surprised him. He spent another moment in silence working it out. “Good, lad,” he finally said. “Very astute.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“That’s the first sensible thing you have done this entire case.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“I suppose I should be dead now had it not been for your quick thinking. Confound it,” he said, showing a little of his normal spirit. “So many hours gone out from under us, and me as weak as a kitten. Tell me what has happened while I was…resting.”
I related everything chronologically from the time I’d found him unconscious in the corridor until he woke up: calling Applegate, fetching Old Quong, Jenkins’s arrival, Poole putting a guard on the house, Bok Fu Ying, Zangwill’s news, our visit to the inn, Forbes helping us-everything.
“It appears you’ve had a time of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I should have realized what had happened. I was caught out.”
“You cannot anticipate everything, sir.”
“You can if you’re wise enough,” he said. “Old Quong. Bring him here. I need him. Harness Juno and take the cab. Inform him that I need a good marrow cleansing.”
“Yes, sir,” I said and went downstairs. There is nothing like being the bearer of good news. Mac shouted a hurrah from his bed, Madame and Monsieur Dummolard stopped arguing long enough to hug each other as well as me over the news, and Harm seemed to understand intuitively and flew up the stairs to his master. Stepping out into the morning air, I made my way to the stables, thinking to myself what a good day it had suddenly become.
Juno seemed to sense it as well. She nickered as soon as she recognized me and the boy was muttering under his breath by the time he had her in the traces, so impatient was she to begin. She broke out through the front door as though it were the gate at Ascot. I was hard-pressed to keep the old girl reined in the entire way there, but I must say she looked beautiful in the sunlight with her bay coloring and glossy sheen. She kept her head high and her steps brisk all the way there.
I tied her to a pole outside Dr. Quong’s herb shop. Inside, the old man was talking to an elderly female customer but stopped when he saw me.
“Awake?” he asked.
“Awake.”
“Ah! I come, then,” he said, concluding his business with the woman.
“He said something about marrow cleansing,” I told him when we were alone.
“Ah, yes. Very good, very good,” he said, and began to throw preparations into his bag. “You bring your horse again?”
“I brought a carriage, actually.”
