Dr. Quong’s wrists were locked in Woo’s blood-spattered restraints and he was led off. We covered the body with a tablecloth as waiters came and went with rags, mops, and buckets and cleaned the blood from the floor. Poole arranged for the body to be removed in one of Ho’s laundry carts, which Ho would bill the Yard for later. Hooligan went into the tearoom for a meal, and Campbell-Ffinch stalked off to make his report.
When the room was sufficiently clean, Ho locked up and we three went to his office. Ho moved to a cabinet in the back of the room near the shrine. He took out a small white porcelain bottle and three cups and poured each of us a drink.
“To memory of Quong,” he said and we all downed the fiery liquid, possibly plum brandy. It took the breath out of my lungs and when I got it back, the cups had been refilled.
“To Dr. Quong,” Barker stated, and down it went a second time.
Afterward, the Guv smacked his lips and rotated the tiny cup in his hand. “It is convenient that Dr. Quong was here. It is almost as if he were let in.”
Ho picked up his water pipe and began running a wire through the mouthpiece. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“It occurs to me,” Barker replied, “that Woo may have escaped English justice, but he did not escape Chinese justice.”
31
That evening things were almost back to what passes for normal in the Barker household. Mac was on his feet, though still walking with the aid of a cane. My employer was returning to health rapidly and I had hopes of getting my own infernal cast off and sleeping comfortably at last.
We were in Barker’s room, on either side of a coal fire with a pot of tea at his elbow and a pot of coffee at mine, both of which he had carried up himself since Mac couldn’t manage stairs and I couldn’t carry a tray. Barker had a pipe going and the pleasant aroma of his tobacco floated about my head. It was a pleasant scene, even as the firelight glinted on the racks of spears, swords, and other weapons suspended on the low, sloping ceilings. My mind was turning over the case as if it were an object in my hand, holding it this way and that. I had to admit this was the part of private enquiry work I could not do. I could assemble suspects and search for motives and opportunity, but the discounting of persons until one could say without hesitation that this fellow alone was the murderer, well, I couldn’t do it yet. I began to fear I lacked some gland in my brain.
“You look dissatisfied this evening, Thomas. What is wrong?”
“I cannot sort this out, sir. How did you know it was Jimmy Woo and not a half dozen others?”
Barker dismissed my remark with a shake of his head. “You give me too much credit. Had my mind not been clouded with grief and guilt over Quong’s death, I might have tracked down Jimmy Woo a year ago.”
“He was subtle,” I said, “and his disguise excellent. Who would have suspected a funny little interpreter would be a black-hearted killer?”
“I should have,” Barker insisted. “Now that I look back on everything, I should have realized that being a eunuch put him in the perfect place for receiving word of a secret manuscript. Imperial eunuchs fall into several categories. Some, perhaps the best of them, give up the pleasures of the body and become scholars. Others, devastated by the loss, become exaggeratedly effeminate, simpering like court women and collecting scores of outfits. That, in a way, was what he emulated, but he was actually a member of a third category. Worried that his condition would result in a flaccid body, as it often does, Woo trained and honed himself tirelessly, choosing a martial form of life, obsessing about the ways to overcome an adversary. You will note his ability to shoot. Even at this advanced date, the Chinese prefer sword and spear. To find a Chinaman voluntarily learning to use a firearm is remarkable.”
“I’m still lost, I’m afraid. I don’t know anything about the Chinese court.”
“Let us take it chronologically, then,” the Guv said, stirring the fire with a poker. “About a year and a half ago there was a eunuch who lived and worked in the Forbidden City. We do not know his true name, but he was a steward of the Prince, and was interested in Chinese boxing. He was in a position with a great deal of pressure, as all the court constantly jockeys for position around the young Prince or the Dowager Empress, making alliances and ingratiating themselves. Often eunuchs are well connected throughout China in order to bring exotic foods, objets d’art, or information to the city. In order to win favor, a great deal of money is made and frequently changes hands. A monk whom we now know as Luke Chow came across a text that had almost been forgotten in the library of his temple. He sent a fragment to this eunuch who agreed to pay him for the text. Woo knew this was his only opportunity to lay hands on something he’d wanted for years. There are over a dozen such texts in China, but they are closely guarded by the monks to whom they are entrusted. Something happened between them, although we may never know what. Perhaps after letting him into the monastery, Chow realized how dangerous Woo was. In any case, after two of his brother monks were murdered, Chow took the text himself and made his way to Shanghai, signing on aboard the Blue Funnel liner the Ajax. Discovering where Chow had gone, Woo took a faster ship, or perhaps several, and arrived here ahead of him. He waited until the Ajax arrived and followed Chow and the crew to Coffin’s penny hang, where Woo killed him in the middle of the night but was unable to find the text. As a safeguard, Chow had given the text to the only European in the crew, probably with a warning to get rid of it if anything happened to him. Chambers complied with those instructions once Chow was dead, selling the text to the chandler with Chow’s other effects.
“The text came into Petulengro’s chandlery and might be there still if Quong had not happened along and realized what it was. Then he and Woo must have seen each other, and Quong realized he was in danger. Somehow, he managed to elude him but in order to get rid of the text temporarily, he pawned it to Hurtz, hoping a Chinaman would not look there. Woo shot Quong, searched the body, and threw it into the river, but he never found the pawn ticket tucked in the sleeve of the jacket.”
“Lucky for us,” I said, taking the poker from Barker’s hand and banking the coals and ash properly. Scotsmen only understand peat fires.
“You know I don’t believe in luck,” Barker went on. “I bungled it. I got the message that Quong was dead, and all I wanted was to find the killer and avenge his death. Had I been less grief stricken, I would have noted the unusual number of deaths around that New Year’s Eve, as you did, and realized they were all connected.
“Petulengro and Chambers died next, a day apart, one supposedly during a robbery and the other as the result of an accident. I still believe Petulengro was helped into the Great Beyond by Inspector Bainbridge, for reasons we’ve discussed earlier.”
“But at Ho’s you said Woo killed Petulengro, not Bainbridge.”
Barker smiled. “You caught me out, lad. I lied. I’m not proud of it. I’m very certain that Bainbridge killed Petulengro. He was besotted with the man’s niece. I thought it best to put the blame on Woo, rather than the inspector. The man has a widow and men who look up to him. He was at a rough time in his life when age was overtaking him. I thought it best. When one is a private agent, one can make such choices. Where were we? Oh, yes, Chambers. Woo must have asked around the docks about which sailor was Chow’s closest friend, and when Chambers was mentioned, he tracked him down and killed him, using the skills he learned from the fragment of the book. Unfortunately, all these deaths didn’t help Woo find the text. It was lost somewhere in Hurtz’s pawnshop.” He paused. “Good fire.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. I added a scoop of new coals to the fire and sat back in my chair.
“He was stymied,” Barker went on, “but he knew the manuscript must be somewhere in Limehouse. He settled in to wait for it to surface. He created a role, the eccentric Jimmy Woo, and got a position working for the Asiatic Aid Society. His skills were so good he was hired as an interpreter for the Foreign Office as well, whose people, he must have known, would be hunting for the text themselves after a formal request by the Chinese government. He created a false history for himself as a student at Cambridge, much as K’ing has created his own legend. Woo even inserted a false record of his attendance, should he ever be investigated by Scotland Yard.”
“How did he come to follow us once we had the ticket?” I asked.
“He wasn’t following us at all, but Bainbridge. The inspector had been visiting all the old sites, sifting for information. It was easier for Woo to let him do the work and to eventually lay hands upon his notes. Bainbridge came to me, however, which was a factor Woo hadn’t anticipated. It then became necessary to kill him before he
