possible charges of assault.”
“You shall have to take that up with him,” my employer said. “He is capable of making his own decisions. Arrest him, if you like, but my experience of Dummolard has been that he is generally uncooperative.”
“I wish I had never heard of that blasted book,” Poole grumbled.
“There,” Barker said. “We agree on something.”
Poole went back downstairs.
“Where were we?” Barker asked.
“I don’t recall. How are you feeling, sir?”
“Rather weak, I’m afraid, and my kidneys hurt. I shall be glad when Dr. Quong returns.”
“Sir, does Old Quong have the text?”
“Best not to ask, lad. You wouldn’t want to perjure yourself in the dock under a barrister’s questioning, if it comes to that.”
There was a scream down below and a second torrent of French, female this time. Barker chuckled, then winced at the pain. A few moments later, a beleaguered Poole returned.
“Cyrus.”
“Madame Dummolard is at present my housekeeper, Terry,” the Guv explained. “It is her duty to keep house. Perhaps your constables are not returning the items they are searching to their original positions. You should either instruct your men to be more careful or carry her up here bodily, and I shall instruct her to be more helpful.”
“I think you are enjoying this.”
“My home has been invaded and yet you complain about resistance. If it is too much trouble, go back to Whitehall and leave us in peace.”
Poole shook his head and went downstairs while Barker returned to his newspapers.
“What are you reading, sir?”
“Stead’s article in the Gazette about Khartoum. Parliament simply must consent to send a force to retrieve Gordon’s body.”
Gordon, of course, was General Charles Gordon, who had fallen with his troops in January in the Sudan. News had arrived that he had been slain by the Mahdi’s Muslim warriors. Gordon’s likeness had begun to appear in placards and magazines and in photographs in shop windows. England likes its dead heroes even more than its live ones. I remembered Bainbridge had mentioned his name. His nickname was Chinese Gordon. I wasn’t well schooled in Chinese history, but as I recalled, he had defended Shanghai against the Chinese rebels some twenty years before and Barker had fought with him. “Did you ever meet the general, sir?”
“I served under him,” he said. “We were called the Ever Victorious Army-Chinese troops led by English and American officers at the behest of the Chinese government.”
“How did you get mixed up in all that?” I asked.
“I was working on the docks at Foochow when the entire south was overthrown. My parents had died of cholera a few years before and I made my way to Shanghai to try to locate my elder brother, who was at a private school for Europeans along the Bund. I finally found him, but he was keen to join the fighting and soon I found myself with an English unit as an interpreter while my brother helped the Americans. The armies split up and I never saw him again.”
“My word.”
“Yes, the Americans accused England of aiding the secessionist side in the War Between the States. There were two civil wars going on at once. In the chaos after the English and Americans split, Gordon was assigned to my regiment. He was unaccustomed to leadership and something of a Christian mystic, but he had a way of inspiring the troops. He was fearless, walking into battle as if God Himself was protecting him.
“After three years fighting, we finally broke the back of the rebel forces and routed them. The rebel leader died, killed himself some say, and that was it. Gordon was decorated and sent home to England a hero. I understand his straightforward talk earned him enemies in the War Office and he lay fallow for many years until he was finally offered a chance against the Mahdi’s troops. It was suicide, lad, a shabby way to treat one of England’s greatest leaders of men.”
My mind was taking it all in, a young, impressionable Barker and a valiant leader in war-torn China. I had to say something or he would close up on me again.
“So when did you meet the Dowager Empress?”
Barker ran a hand over his brow wearily. “Some other time, lad.”
Some other time, I thought. It’s always some other time.
21
Barker expected me to earn my shilling. There would be no hanging about the house waiting for him to need something. I went to the office by cab, bundled up and under cover from a light snow.
Once inside I watched the snow stop and start, paced, and waited to see if someone needed an enquiry agent. No one did, or perhaps they merely put off their need for our services to a more clement day. If so, I thanked them, much preferring to sit inside looking out at the swirling flakes in Craig’s Court than to be out in them.
The morning dragged on until lunch. I skipped around the corner to the Sun, which was full of Yard men, and had some beef from the joint and a half pint of bitter. All too soon I was nipping my way back again.
The post was barren of interest that day and though I tried to ponder the case, my brain was preoccupied. I was never so glad for six o’clock to come ’round. I had successfully whiled a day of my life away doing absolutely nothing. I rather envied Jenkins as he ran out the door at five thirty. At least he had somewhere to go.
Back in Newington, Barker had had a day as exciting as mine, though he’d been able to rest through most of it. He resisted Madame Dummolard’s offer to bring up his meal and insisted on dressing for dinner. The nurse attempted to help him, but the Guv ordered both women out of the room, with less than the usual politeness he granted the fairer sex. Once downstairs, he looked almost like his normal self, though a trifle gaunt.
“We shall be going out again tonight, lad,” he informed me as we helped ourselves from the sideboard. “I’ve received a message from Forbes. Campbell-Ffinch shall be boxing, and I want to see him fight. It shall be bare knuckle and therefore illegal.”
Late that evening Barker and I took a hansom cab to Victoria Station where we boarded a train bound for Wimbledon to attend the match. Secretly, I was hoping to see Campbell-Ffinch grassed or at least to see his supercilious expression wiped from his face.
This was one of those instances where being a private enquiry agent was better than being an officer of the law. Were a constable to stumble upon the scene he could only arrest a fellow or two and let the rest of us go. None would cooperate, some would lie, and the few detained would be released in the morning. We, on the other hand, could walk among the participants and learn what there was to learn.
We arrived at a public house with the promising name of the Ring. There are many types of public houses, according to the interests and dispositions of the proprietors, and this one was a sporting pub. Prints of famous boxers of the past lined the walls, going back to Mendoza, along with reliquaries the Roman Catholic Church could not have preserved better: Jack Randall’s shoes from the 1820s, a bust of Bob Gregson from the Royal Academy, and a loving portrait painted on a Staffordshire jug of the great Dan Mendoza himself, heavyweight champion in the days before gloves and rules, a glorious time which shall never see its like again, at least according to the publican. A great boxer, he assured us after Barker had struck up a conversation with him, even if the famed man had the misfortune of being a Jew. Our host was the sort of fellow who believed every English youth should be six feet in height, a good twelve stone at least, and muscled like a plow horse, and any deficiencies were due to Norman blood or other generational mistakes.
Barker had made a radical change in his attire: he was wearing a diamond-set horseshoe stickpin. It is funny how the least thing will allow one to fit in. He went from sober private enquiry agent to sporting enthusiast in a moment, and his entire personality changed.
“I heard a rumor,” he said, leaning over the bar, a bundle of energy, “that there might be sport to be had in this neighborhood this evening, if one played one’s cards right. My friend and I have come an awfully long way at a chance for a flutter.”
