pointing out how difficult it was to get a cab in Newington at that time of night. I told them that the owner of the house needed to be told and that he was in the same street but one from Scotland Yard. That is why at near midnight, when all sensible people are in bed, I was traveling in a Black Maria. At least I could say I wasn’t the one in leg irons this time.
Promising to return for a statement, I left the constables to handle their prisoner into A Division and popped ’round to our offices on the next street. I gave the door a good, hard knock.
The door opened slowly and I was treated to the sight of my employer in his dressing gown, his hair askew, with a Colt in his hand.
“Are you going to use that thing?” I asked.
“I am debating it. What are you doing here at this hour?”
“The trap is sprung. We’ve caught a rodent, but whether it is a mouse or a large rat, you must decide.”
“It is too late to be cryptic,” he growled. “I’ll get dressed while you explain. Come.”
I went over everything from the whistle I heard in the alley to my knocking on the office door. During it all, Barker was in the back room making himself presentable for Scotland Yard.
“What is your impression, lad?” he asked. “Do you think Han might be the one we are looking for?”
“It’s possible,” I said. “I must say he put up a real struggle. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of that heel to the stomach or fist to the nose, for that matter. And he was reaching for our gate, remember.”
“True,” my employer conceded from the side room. “He was also one of Bainbridge’s suspects. I wonder where he’s been hiding himself. Poole’s been running a dragnet for over a week now.”
He came out, neat as a pin as always, despite the late hour. In a few moments we were walking along Whitehall toward Scotland Yard. It appeared the most peaceful of nights. Everyone was at home asleep in bed, everyone who was not an enquiry agent, that is.
At the station, we made our way through the halls of the Criminal Investigation Department. All had been rebuilt after a bombing had occurred last year, but as Inspector Munro of the Special Irish Branch had threatened, the area where Barker had once taught antagonistics for the benefit of officers had now been turned into offices. One of those offices was for questioning.
In response to Barker’s knock, Poole came out and ran a hand through his thinning hair. Evidently, it wasn’t just private agents who went without sleep. Poole gave a big yawn and shook his head.
“Have you got a confession?” Barker asked.
“I’m not even sure if this blighter speaks English.”
Barker looked in. “His lip is bleeding. Have you beaten him?”
“He hit his mouth on the edge of a chair. He’s a bit roughed up, is all,” Poole said.
“May I see if I can get anything out of him?” Barker asked.
“Why not, since you parlez the jabber.”
“Is his solicitor coming,” I asked, “or an interpreter?”
“What are you talking about?” Poole asked, puzzled. “He’s a Chinaman. We’ll tell the legation in the morning. If they want to send someone over, we can’t stop them. ’Til then, he’s ours.”
That was that. There was no use arguing with such logic, or lack of it. We went in and found the man still in darbies, his European-cut coat ripped and his hair looking worse than it had when I last saw him. He looked at us, then turned and spat a big splotch of bloody saliva on the floor. If I expected him to be glad of our arrival, I was mistaken. He looked at us malevolently.
Barker began to speak in Chinese to him, but Poole put a hand on his shoulder.
“Here, now. We’re in the Yard, remember. If you’re going to go on like that, you’ll have to translate word for word for the record.”
“Very well.” He asked a short question and after a moment’s silence, the fellow muttered, “Hai.”
“I asked him if he was Charlie Han and he admitted it.”
Barker asked a second question, but apparently Han thought he had answered enough questions for the time being. He sat in the chair and stared at the floor. He was large for a Chinaman, a few inches taller than I, and strong limbed. I was starting to think we wouldn’t get anything out of him the rest of the night when suddenly, the Chinaman gave my chair a solid kick, sending me and my notebook flying into the corner.
By the time Barker helped me up, Han was stretched out on the floor with Poole’s knee on his shoulder and was bleeding from the nose as well as the mouth. He was cursing, despite the fact that his cheek was pressed to the floor.
It took me a minute to understand the words he was saying and another to learn that it was me he was saying them to. Just then there was a knock at the door, but we were too occupied to open it.
“What did I do?” I blurted out. “I don’t know this fellow.”
“You stay away!” the Chinaman continued, once Poole’s knee was off him. He was seated now on the floor, blood dripping from his chin, giving me the nastiest look I’d had since prison. “You stay ’way from us. Stay ’way from her!”
The knocking had finally become so insistent Poole was forced to answer it. Something flew into the room like a streak. I thought at first it was some giant bird of prey, but of course, it wasn’t. It was Hettie Petulengro and she was angry. Very angry.
24
'What have you done to Him?” she demanded. “You’ve got him chained up and now you’re using him for a punching bag. Three grown men. You ought to be ashamed, you-”
“Who is this?” Poole roared to the sergeant in the corridor.
“Her name is Petulengro, sir. She has been downstairs at the desk trying to find out what happened. Insistent, she was. I thought you might want to see her.”
“Sergeant, leave the thinking to me,” Poole ordered. “Stay there. We may have to restrain this woman.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” she snapped at Poole.
“Oh, no? Try me, my girl.”
“And you,” she said, rounding on me. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I don’t have anything to say,” I told her. “All I’ve done since I came in here was to take notes and to get kicked out of my chair by this Chinese fellow. What is he to you?”
“If you plan to argue, you cannot take notes,” Poole put in, but we were beyond that at the moment.
“He is my-You wouldn’t understand.”
“What is there to understand?” I demanded.
“He is my…common-law husband, I suppose you’d call him.”
“Husband!” I exclaimed. “But I just took you out to dinner!”
“Yes, you did. Thank you very much. He is not my husband, exactly.”
“Well?” I said hotly. “Is he or is he not?”
Barker cleared his throat and spoke in his low voice. “I believe what Miss Petulengro is trying to say is that she and Mr. Han have an informal relationship. They live together under her roof, where in fact he had been hiding from the police for several days, but there is no legal relationship between them, either temporal or secular. It is common in the East End. She is quite able to accept an offer of dinner. She can even order him to leave if she chooses someone else, though he is not obliged to like it.”
The Chinaman, I was upset to see, was having his hair smoothed by Hestia. All my feelings of benevolent goodwill toward the suspect vanished without a trace. I wanted to get a good kick at him myself.
“Well, I like that!” I said. “You didn’t tell me I was squiring around a married woman.”
“Oh, don’t be thickheaded. Pay attention to your boss. He just explained it to you if you would just unstop your ears.”
“Hettie,” Charlie Han ordered, “do not speak to him.”
“Shut up, you,” she bawled. “This is all your fault.”
“Silence!” Poole bellowed. “If I have to slap bracelets on every one of you I shall do it!”
