“Good. Horse is no good on old man’s bones.”
If it was an unusual sight to see a Chinaman on the back of a horse and rider charging through London, it was equally novel to see one in a hansom cab. In a few moments, we were on our way to London Bridge and points south.
Eventually I pulled the cab into the alley behind Barker’s house. I led the doctor up the stairs, stopping in my room to shake off my coat. I found Barker’s stair blocked when I arrived, however. Ho had returned and now straddled the bottom step of his staircase, arms crossed and feet splayed.
“Let me pass,” I said.
Ho shook his head. “He cannot be disturbed.”
I was going to say something but stopped short. There were strange sounds coming from upstairs in Barker’s voice. I wanted to go up to see what was happening. Instead, I asked Ho directly if he could tell me what was going on.
Ho looked up at me as if deciding whether or not explaining was worth the effort. After all, I was a barbarian and would understand imperfectly. On the other hand, like a gadfly, I refused to go away. I would stare at him until I got an answer, some sort of answer, anyway.
Ho’s face screwed up as he tried to concentrate. He is an ugly brute, if one can say that of an associate. His general expression and demeanor are as if he is deciding how best to gut and serve you. It was possible he might give up the explanation before it began.
“There are certain tones and sounds that affect the organs of the body,” he finally replied. “When one repeats these sounds, it is like giving yourself an internal massage. His kidneys have been damaged and Dr. Quong can only do so much externally.”
“Is it like the internal exercises he gives me?”
“Much more advanced.”
“What if-”
“What if you do not ask so many questions.”
I gave it up, realizing he wouldn’t let me upstairs. “I’ll leave you to your guard duty, then.”
Dinner that night was coq au vin. Though it did not diminish my opinion of madame as a cook, I am not in favor of wine in food. Perhaps I was nettled. Barker did not come down, of course. The maid brought a tray up, but Ho merely looked at the food as if it were poisoned and sent it back. It was a good thing Etienne had gone back to his restaurant.
Ho finally summoned me to the room around seven. Barker was sitting up, or rather he was kneeling on the bed and sitting upon his crossed ankles. He was shirtless and his head was down as if he were asleep. I crawled into a chair and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. The marrow cleansing, whatever it was, had ended, but the Guv looked all in. His skin was slick with sweat. Was he sleeping? Meditating? Dr. Quong had his bag at his feet and was watching Barker intently, as was Ho.
Several minutes later, Barker raised his head and looked over at me. “Bring the carriage,” he said weakly.
“Sir, aren’t you too ill to travel?”
“Do not argue or question,” he said brusquely. “What must be done will be done. Bring it ’round to the front door.”
“Yes, sir.”
I went downstairs, but before I went to get my coat, I knocked on Mac’s door. I needed reinforcements.
“He’s going out,” I told him, after he had hopped to the door.
“Out? He cannot possibly go out. He just woke up!”
“That is what I said. He insists. I’ve been ordered to get Juno and bring her ’round the front. Can you have a word with him?”
“I shall try.”
By the time I returned with the cab, Ho and Dr. Quong were helping Barker out the front door, holding him up at the elbows, despite Mac’s protests. They climbed in with him and we bowled off into the night.
Branching off Commercial Street a half hour later, I dropped Quong and Ho at the tearoom and at Barker’s orders took him on a long and leisurely circuit of Limehouse. He had both hands on the head of his stick and the tip was between his shoes, but he looked as if he had just enough strength to sit upright. I had the trap up and could see him nodding to passersby. What was he getting at, traveling so far from his sickbed? Didn’t he know how close he had come to dying?
I paraded my employer through the district. At Pekin Street, just across from the Inn of Double Happiness, he rapped on the trapdoor. I pulled over to the curb, or what would pass for one; Limehouse did not have such genteel modernities. He ran a lit vesta over the bowl of his pipe and took a puff. Like a flue, the smoke shot up in front of me. Barker got down from the cab and walked slowly to the wall, turned, and leaned against it.
“May I help you?” I asked.
“Stay there,” he said in a low voice.
He stood and smoked for a quarter hour, eyeing the opium den across the street and no doubt being eyed in return. After another five minutes, the door to the den down the steps opened, but no one came out. It was black as pitch under the dancing gas lamp. What a perfect spot for an execution, I thought. One bullet and all K’ing’s troubles would be over. Nothing happened, however. No one came out and Barker did nothing more remarkable than to take another match to his pipe in the shelter of a doorway as hyperborean winds whipped through Pekin Street. I would have expected a flying knife, at least. Barker knocked out his pipe and attempted to get back in the cab. It took him three tries.
“Home?” I asked pointedly.
For once I knew exactly what he was thinking. He wanted to go to Ho’s but knew he didn’t have the strength to travel up and down those stairs or through the long passage under the Thames. Reluctantly, he grunted his assent.
“Come on, girl,” I told Juno.
Soon, we were home, where Madame Dummolard and the nurse took charge of our employer, while I saw Juno bedded down for the night. On the way back, I got up my courage to ask Barker what he was doing, traipsing about the East End straight from his sickbed. That was the plan, but like most best-laid schemes, it went agley. The Guv was asleep when I got back. No doubt he had fallen asleep the moment his head hit his pillow.
What would cause a man who had just had his kidneys fail him to get out of bed and travel somewhere, and when he got there to merely smoke a pipeful of tobacco and leave? It was a message for someone, I knew, either for Mr. K’ing, since he had stopped across from the man’s place of business, or for the killer, if they were not one and the same. The message was that Cyrus Barker had not been put out of commission. Barker needed to show his strength by going to the Inn of Double Happiness. It was spitting in the eye of all those who thought him down for the count.
Well, we showed them, I thought, as I got ready for bed. He gave more than a few people food for thought tonight. They had counted him out, but they were wrong. Cyrus Barker was back.
20
The next morning, I found Barker in his big Georgian bed with the heavy damask curtains drawn back. He was leaning against a nest of cushions with newspapers from the last few days spread about and a pot of tea on a tray in front of him. I was glad to see he was not getting ready for work.
“Did Dr. Quong order you to bed, sir?” I asked.
“He did,” Barker said. “I might ignore one doctor, but when they collude, I am forced to obey. Look at this!” He pointed with scorn at a small vase containing a rose on his tray. Barker kept no roses in the greenhouse and it was February, so it must have been brought in from a hothouse somewhere.
“Very nice.”
“Nice,” he repeated, as if the word were poison in his mouth. “I presume you and Mac have reached an understanding with Madame Dummolard’s staff while I was-” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
