bathhouse for a good soak, and afterward I ate a solitary dinner. Apparently, Barker was too caught up puzzling over his new treasure to even inform his butler he was not coming down. I ate my terrine des lapins while our butler, Jacob Maccabee, hovered about, venting sighs like a bellows. By the time I had reached coffee and cheese, he could stand no more and marched upstairs to speak with his master. A few minutes later, Mac was coming down again, shaking his head and muttering to himself in Yiddish.
Later that night I was stretching out in bed when my feet came in contact with Barker’s Pekingese, Harm, who nipped my toe to inform me he was there. He had a habit of curling up right where I wanted to put my feet or getting tangled up in my limbs, and once or twice he’d even tried to sleep on top of me. I set him right this time and moved him to the side, despite his growling protests. Then I stretched out, all five foot four inches of me, and lay there, listening to the night sounds from the window Barker had permanently screwed open a crack. Another sound came to my ears, enough to make me open my eyes and listen closer.
It was a thrumming sound and it made the house vibrate slightly. It was like the sound a heavy branch makes when a child swings on it from a rope. I knew instantly it must be the heavy bag hanging in the basement. Perhaps my employer was trying out some moves from his little manual. I turned up the gas lamp over my head and consulted my bedside clock, noting that it was almost three-thirty. I admired the man, but sometimes he can be a trifle eccentric. I considered joining him for a moment but instead rolled over and went back to sleep.
Barker was not his usual self at breakfast. I do not believe he had slept at all. He came down with his silk dressing gown tied loosely over his nightshirt and a pair of carpet slippers on his feet. His hair hung down in spikes over his smoky spectacles as if he had worked himself into a lather on the heavy bag.
“I’m not going to the office just now, lad,” he muttered. “I’ll be along in an hour or so.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. For once, I was the more nattily dressed of the two of us. I wore one of my best suits, a dark cutaway coat and trousers, a gray waistcoat, and a striped tie. I’d polished my boots and beaten back my hair and was now ready to present myself to the world. I bade my adieus, put on my coat and hat, and hailed a cab outside.
It was a novel experience being alone in the cab. Both working and living with my employer, I was at his beck and call through the week, with a half day off on Saturday. I attended worship services with him at the Baptist Metropolitan Tabernacle on Sundays, and at any time, Barker might wish to discuss some part of the case we were working on or to give me instructions for the next day, and there went another hour. I was supposed to go to the office, but just then the thought occurred to me that I might use the time to investigate the building Barker owned. I tapped the trap of the cab overhead with my stick.
“Take me to the docks. Limehouse.”
“Dunno ’bout that, sir,” the driver said through the heavy scarf he wore over his mouth. Cabmen were reluctant to go to that part of London. They often couldn’t get a return fare, their wheels got dirty in the ill-swept streets, and the children of the East End were experts at shying rocks.
“I’ll double your fare, driver. I’m looking for a place called Three Colt Street.”
In ten minutes we were crossing London Bridge, and I was revisiting the scene of our first case in Aldgate. I couldn’t resist a shudder when we passed the Minories and I saw the stable where I had very nearly ended my life. But all things must pass, as my father often said, and here I was, hail of limb, investigating another case. The building had been let to a blacksmith who had assembled a forge in the old trackside building.
I passed through districts and slivers of districts: Spital-fields, Whitechapel, Wapping, Bethnel Green. It was not until we were almost there that the cabman hazarded another remark.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I said, ‘Looks like we ain’t the only ones a’goin’ dockside.’ ”
I leaned forward, looking over the leather doors and the head of the cab horse. A dark brougham was ahead of us, wending its way down Commercial Road. The vehicle looked vaguely familiar. Then I realized why. It was the one owned by Harm’s keeper, a heavily veiled woman who came twice a week to bathe and brush him. The dog had been injured during our first case and she had picked him up in that very brougham. She was another of Barker’s interminable secrets. Who was she? Why the veil? I thought it possible that she might be the widow that my employer occasionally kept company with. The appearance here of our two vehicles together was too much for coincidence.
“I say, follow that brougham!”
Barker’s late assistant had lived at 127 Three Colt Street, and now the veiled woman was going there as well. I could add two and two, and another two, come to think of it. I was in charge of the accounts in our office, and there was a regular amount paid monthly to a Miss Winter at the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street. Were I a betting man, I would say the veiled woman and Miss Winter were one and the same.
When the brougham stopped in front of a two-story building near the waterfront, I had the cabby stop at the end of the street. I peered through the small cab window in time to see the woman’s familiar black-clad figure, with the even more familiar black Pekingese in her arms. I was puzzling over a dozen questions in my mind. Was Barker actually keeping a woman here, and if so, to what end? I paid the cabby and slowly sauntered past.
The house was well kept for the area, without being ostentatious. It was clapboard, but none of the boards was in disrepair and the building had been recently painted. As I watched, a Chinese maid opened a window on the first floor. It didn’t require an enquiry agent to discern that the woman’s room must be there. My vigilance was rewarded when I heard Harm bark in the upper room. But was the home a private residence or let rooms? The question was important, since I couldn’t go into one but might pass freely into the other. Idly crossing the street, I dared press an eye against the window beside the door. I saw a corridor full of doors, no sitting room or hall. Excellent. I opened the door and stepped inside.
I stood a moment on the threshold and closed the door slowly, acclimating myself to the sounds around me. I tensed when a door opened and an elderly Chinese man came out, but he shuffled by without comment or interest and left the building.
I could leave, I told myself, or I could go upstairs and introduce myself. Perhaps I could say that I was in the area and thought I would check on the dog, or that we were investigating Quong’s death and I wished to see the residence whose address he had written in the pawnshop register. No, none of those would wash. I should leave.
I should have, but I didn’t. In his novels, the writer Thomas Hardy often speaks of the Fates as if we are all figures in some universal Greek tragedy, always getting into trouble because of inner weaknesses we cannot control. I though it rather an un-Christian viewpoint, but I went up the stairs just the same.
The upper floor was much like the lower, save that it had a few feminine touches. The maid had just come from serving her mistress and had taken a moment to idly look out of a window in the back of the house that butted against the docks. She turned when she heard me reach the top of the stairs.
“I wonder if I might have a word with your mistress,” I said.
She did nothing save regard me coolly. It occurred to me that she did not speak English.
“Your mistress,” I repeated, a trifle louder, as if it would help. “Miss Winter. I wish to speak with her. I believe she has my employer’s dog.”
I’m convinced that Harm, for all the five years or so he had lived upon this earth, knows only about three words, but one of them is “dog.” From the flat to the right, he began his clarion cry, a sound that conjures up images of his being roasted on a spit alive. The maid still did not move. I took three steps before her arm went out, braced against the wall, barring me from the door. Apparently, she thought herself a bodyguard as well as a maid, which was laughable. She was a pretty little thing, in her pigtail and silk pajama suit, and her China doll face was difficult to take seriously.
“Look here, if you’ll just move,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder.
The next thing I knew I was sliding across the floor on my back. My shoulder hit the railing so hard I careened off it and slid down a short flight of steps to the first landing. Where had this slip of a girl learned to kick like a mule? Had I been alone, I would have nursed my wounds, but the girl who had been so unladylike as to kick me was still watching, so I shook it off. I’d had worse, or at least as bad. I stood up and tried again. I was not going to be stopped from speaking with Barker’s dog keeper by a chit like her.
The girl actually dared raise her arms up in a fighting stance, left hand out, weight on the back foot, front foot up on its toes-what Barker called a cat stance. I was not going to get by her, if she could help it. Very well, I thought, I shall go through you then, if it must be.
I moved forward again and when I was within her reach, she tried another kick, but I was too smart for her. I
