Dance with Death

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  To my dear sisters, Sherry and Denise

  CHAPTER ONE

  I heard him before I saw him: a thick, rich, two-toned baritone voice. Just the two notes, sliding up and down like a trombone: up, down, down, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, down, down, down.

  “’Scuse me, sir, I’d like to speak to Mr. Barker, please.”

  He was American, our visitor; no one irons a sentence like an American. Yet there was something musical about the cadence that I didn’t quite recognize.

  “Or Mr. Llewelyn, if he is available,” he added.

  My desk is to the right as one enters our chamber from the waiting room. Our clerk, Jenkins, has his to the left just before one enters. One must get past or through both of us to get to Cyrus Barker. Being an enquiry agent is dangerous work. There was a pistol in each of our desks, an old Adams revolver in Jenkins’s right drawer, and a Webley No. 2 in the cubby of my roll top. There’s also a British-made Colt suspended on a hook under Barker’s desk, within his immediate reach.

  “Have you got a card, sir?” Jenkins asked the man. From where I sat, our clerk looked dubious.

  “’Fraid not, but I can wait if it’s not too long.”

  “Show him in, Jeremy,” Barker called in that basso rumble of his.

  Our visitor entered, removing his top hat and running a hand over his short hair. He nodded his head and did not offer to shake in greeting. He wore a tight suit coat and even tighter trousers. Gas pipes, they are called. He was well groomed, fashionably dressed, and polite. He was an American Negro. The only time I had ever laid eyes upon one was at an outdoor concert in Hyde Park. The band had come from a town named Dixie, if I recall correctly, and were anxious to return.

  “Are you Cyrus Barker?” he asked.

  The Guv stood, bowed his head, and then waved him to one of the visitor’s chairs. “I am, sir. And you are?”

  “Jim Hercules,” he said.

  “That is an interesting name, Mr. Hercules,” my employer replied. “This is my partner, Mr. Llewelyn.”

  Hercules nodded as I quietly observed him. The first thing I noticed was that when he sat, his feet spread apart until his heels hooked around the edges of his chair in a defensive position. He could spring to his feet immediately, if necessary. That led me to look at his hands, clutching the brim of his hat. The knuckles were marble-sized, and the skin well battered. I hazarded a guess that his ears were also a little thicker than average. He was a boxer.

  Looking up, I saw that Barker was making observations, as well. I couldn’t help but wonder if we were getting the same impressions of the man. The Guv sat back in his oversize chair and tented his fingers.

  “How may I help you?”

  “My boss is in trouble,” our visitor said. “All sorts of trouble, I suspect.”

  “You require a bodyguard?”

  For the most part, the Guv is stone-faced behind his thick mustache and black-lensed spectacles, but I could read his face easily enough. He hates bodyguard work. He refers such work to the hungrier agencies in our court whenever it arises.

  “Oh, no, sir. I am his bodyguard—of a sort, anyway—but when a man is putting out one fire, he cannot put out all the other fires around him.”

  “What duty would you like us to perform, specifically?” the Guv asked. I could see the interest behind his stony expression. He was as curious about the true nature of this visit as I was.

  The man shrugged his shoulders. I was still taking impressions. He was approaching forty. There were two or three gray curls among the black.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” he replied. “I suppose I would like my boss to not be murdered, for a start.”

  “That is an admirable sentiment,” my employer continued. “Has he been threatened?”

  “He has, and there was an attempt on his life a year or so ago, a very close call,” Mr. Hercules said. “My employer still has a scar on his forehead from the incident. I was across the room when it happened. I’m afraid I cannot protect him every moment. For one thing, it isn’t my job.”

  “What is your job?” Barker asked.

  “I am a guard,” he replied, “but it is only a ceremonial position.”

  “There are professional bodyguards watching him, then, I assume?”

  “There are, but I find it difficult to trust them. There are some within his own family that covet his position. They already have money and power, yet they always need more. They are ruthless. My boss is just learning the family business, and he is young and callow.”

  “If you are a mere ceremonial guard,” the Guv asked, “why do you care so much what happens to him?”

  Hercules resettled his top hat in his lap nervously. “I consider him a friend. He certainly needs one. He’s out of his depth and the vultures are circling. I wish he hadn’t come to London at all.”

  Barker nodded as if he understood. “What other problems is he facing?”

  “His father’s been sick and my boss might become head of the family before he is properly trained. If I were one of his uncles, I believe I’d feel justified in thinking him a poor choice, but his father insists, and the old man generally gets his way, things being as they are.”

  “Is that all?” the Guv asked.

  “What? Ain’t that enough?” the man replied, smiling. “All right, then. He tends to go on benders from time to time, and risks his own life.”

  Barker and I looked at each other. We didn’t understand the word, so Hercules mimed lifting a bottle to his lips.

  “The boy’s not happy,” he continued. “He’s under a good deal of pressure and he’s young. I’m worried about his nerves. He’s high-strung. Could snap at any minute.”

  “Who is this man, and where does he work?” I finally asked. I couldn’t stand it anymore. Barker and Hercules glanced at each other.

  “We are expected to deduce that, Mr. Llewelyn,” Barker said. “That is how Mr. Hercules will know that we are worthy to take the case.”

  Hercules smiled. He had good teeth for a boxer.

  “Obviously he is an American,” I said. “A young heir to a large business, perhaps, a name even I would recognize.”

  “Nope,” our guest said, shaking his head.

  “The son of a senator, then?” I persisted. “The president’s son? No, then he could not be an heir.”

  “Strike two,” Jim Hercules said, enjoying the upper hand. “Mr. Barker, would you care to try your luck?”

  Barker looked down at his blotter, as if it would tell him the answer. I watched him closely. It must have happened, for when he looked up again, there was a smile playing at the corners of his mustache.

  “I believe your employer is the tsarevich of Russia.”

  Hercules slapped his knee and laughed. “I knew I came to the right fella!”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “How does an American boxer find himself guarding the son of the tsar of Russia?”r />
  “Here now. I never said I was a boxer,” Hercules replied, shaking his head at me. “Good for you, Mr. Llewelyn.”

  I was slightly mollified, having given two wrong answers already. Curbing my tongue has always been difficult for me. The flippant remark comes easily to my lips. Not so to my senior partner’s. Some days he does not speak above a hundred words.

  Barker couldn’t think without a pipe in his mouth. He crossed to his smoking cabinet, a rather nice one, with stylized carvings that always remind me of owls. He opened one of the doors and took down a pipe from an inset atop it, since most of his meerschaums are outsize. His smoking had mellowed the white pipe to a deep honey color. It was dimpled like a golf ball in a swirling, teardrop pattern, like paisley. He stuffed it with his personal blend, lit it, and returned to his chair.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hercules, but under such conditions we cannot take your case. You have presented no actual proof that the tsarevich’s life is in danger, merely an assumption that it is. If I may borrow your analogy, we would be expending our energy running about with buckets of water waiting for a fire that might never come. Unless you have more information forthcoming, we must decline.”

  Our guest nodded. “I know he’s in danger, but I can’t prove it.”

  “How came you to choose our chambers over others’?” Barker asked. “This court is lined with detective agencies.”

  “I heard you own a boxing school and that you were the sparring partner of the late Handy Andy McClain, heavyweight bare-knuckle champion of Britain,” Hercules said. “I always admired him.”

  “Andrew,” the Guv murmured.

  Andrew McClain had been one of Barker’s closest friends. He’d given up the sporting life, having reached the pinnacle, and opened a mission in Mile End Road, redeeming the worst dregs of humanity: beggars, streetwalkers, the maimed or disfigured. It was his habit on many nights to choose a public house and vocalize the dangers of drink until inevitably a fight ensued. I admit it was a novel method. I had become his friend, as well, and he had given me the occasional boxing lesson before his death. He’d been gone awhile now but he wasn’t the kind of man one forgets. Once I’d called him Saint Andrew, and it actually made the Guv smile.

  “That is an odd nugget of information to be found floating around Saint Petersburg,” I remarked.

  “I didn’t get the information there,” he answered. “I found a club in Stepney and they recommended you.”

  Stepney, I thought. Dirty and down-at-heel. That sounded right. Jim Hercules would not be allowed in any “respectable” sparring club or gymnasium in the West End. It must have been an odd predicament for the friend and employee of a tsarevich to find himself in.

  “You must be pretty good to keep up with old Andy himself,” he continued.

  Barker made no comment, but then, he wouldn’t.

  I answered for him. “He is.”

  Jim Hercules leaned forward. “I’d like to spar sometime with a man who McClain thought good enough to train with.”

  “Perhaps you shall,” Barker replied. “Are you a Russian citizen, Mr. Hercules?”

  “No, sir. I was born in British-owned Tortola and rose in Alabama, U.S.A.” Our visitor scratched his forehead and gave a small sigh. “Sir, I have a secret. I hope you both will keep my confidence. I speak Russian. That is, I’ve learned it while working for the tsar. Everyone speaks English to me because the royal family has been taught it. All of them assume an uneducated Negro from Tuscaloosa is unable to master the intricacies of the Russian language. Now, I admit I can’t speak it well, and I can’t write Cyrillic, but I understand what is said well enough.”

  “Tuscaloosa,” I repeated, savoring the strange word.

  “That’s in Alabama, what we call the Deep South.”

  “You speak Russian,” Barker cut in, trying to shorten the conversation. “And?”

  “And I overheard two members of the secret police, the Okhrana, talking about an assassination warning they had received.”

  Barker took his pipe out of his mouth. “Tell me the exact words that were said, as well as you can remember.”

  “Well, sir, they passed in the middle of a conversation. The first one asked, ‘Why the tsarevich and not the tsar?’ And the second said, ‘There won’t be as many people to protect him in England.’ And it’s true. There are about thirty of us in the delegation, but that includes maids and cooks and valets. There are a dozen mounted soldiers for show, but for the most part, Nicholas will be protected by the Queen’s Guard while he is here.”

  “Anything more?” Barker asked, still not ready to commit us to the task.

  “Would the name of the assassin help?”

  Barker chuckled in that grim way he has. “It might.”

  “He’s a Russian, I assume, but with a French name. Russians do like to kick up their heels in Par-ee.”

  “The name?” Barker asked, with a trace of impatience.

  “La Sylphide.”

  “You speak French as well?” I asked.

  “I’ve boxed there before. A lot of Negro musicians from the U.S. work in Paris. Better work, better pay, and far better treatment. We’re considered exotic down there.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Got to watch those French boxers, though. Ankle-kickers.”

  “Savateurs,” the Guv said. I wasn’t the only one sampling words that morning.

  “Have you heard of this assassin, Mr. Barker? La Sylphide?”

  “I have not, but then I’m sure his name would only reach those few wealthy enough to afford his services. You were fortunate to have overheard it.”

  “I’ve become as much a fixture in front of the imperial family’s private quarters as the ornamental gong I stand beside. The secret police talk as if I didn’t even exist, as if I were a statue, or a painting on the wall. I could reach out and tweak their noses. Or punch them.”

  I heard in his voice the rancor that he must have felt.

  “I say, you didn’t answer my question,” I said. “How did you come to work for the tsar?”

  Jim Hercules shrugged his muscular shoulders.

  “I was in Paris, just walking about the Rue de la Paix one morning looking for a café, when I was stopped by some rich-looking youths in sailor suits. The oldest was Nicky, that is, the tsarevich, who was no more than fourteen years old at the time. I shook hands with him. His little brother thought me some kind of black giant. Anyway, a fellow—a tutor or advisor, I supposed—told me to move along, but the woman I assumed was their mother shook my hand and offered me a job. She was the tsarina. Apparently they’d had trouble hiring Ethiopians as guards at the Winter Palace, and there had only been one guard to fill several shifts. That’s like one salt shaker all by itself. Two doors require two guards. Anyway, I’d grown tired of the itinerant boxing life and standing about in eight-hour shifts sounded safe and easy. I’ve been there ever since. Ten years.”

  “What are your duties, Mr. Hercules?”

  “I guard the tsar’s private family quarters. I am what is officially known as an Abyssinian Guard. Two such guards were given to Peter the Great by the king of Abyssinia, and there have been three pairs guarding the imperial family in three shifts every twenty-four hours since. We wear outfits out of an Arabian fantasy: tasseled hats, embroidered jackets, and turned-up Persian slippers. In an age of howitzers and Enfield rifles, my colleagues and I guard the household with a spear, a scimitar, and a scowl, although I carry a derringer in my pocket. I’ve learned to lock my knees like a horse to stay upright. I’d call it dull, but I’ve developed a close relationship with the tsar’s family. One is part of the household and hears a good deal of private family business. When I first began work in Saint Petersburg, I found it absurd to think that my duty would be to give my life before allowing anyone access to the family quarters. Now I would not hesitate, even for a second.”

  “It sounds to me as if your work is analogous to the Swiss Guards who safeguard the pope,” I said.<
br />
  “I’ll have to take your word on that, Mr. Llewelyn. I don’t reckon the tsar and the pope will ever break bread.”

  “How did you come to be the tsarevich’s favorite?” Barker asked.

  “I believe it’s because of guava jelly, sir.”

  There was a pause in the conversation as we considered this information. Both the Guv and our guest regarded the other.

  “Sir, I believe you are enjoying the upper hand too often,” my employer remarked. “Very well. Explain, please.”

  “Once a year I get a holiday and go back to America to see my family. While I’m there, I visit my grandmother, who is famous for her guava jelly. It’s won several ribbons at county fairs. I generally come back with several jars. One is always to be found in the icebox of the palace kitchen. Well, sir, I began to notice somebody was dipping into my jelly. I assumed it was one of the other guards, so I set a trap. It had to be one of the late guards who would sneak in after his shift when the kitchen was closed. I hid behind a table, and when someone sneaked in around one o’clock in the morning, I pounced. It was the tsarevich himself, about seventeen then, a growing boy who’d developed a taste for it. He didn’t know it was my own private reserve. Since then, the whole palace has developed a hankering for Grandma’s jelly. She makes two boxes for me to take back every year and it still ain’t enough. We run through it by Christmas. Foreign foodstuffs are contraband in Russia, gentlemen, but the tsarina pays the penalties. She indulges her son.”

  Barker turned his face toward me as if he wondered if it were a tale the man had spun for our benefit. I shrugged. I had no idea, either.

  “To how much information are you privy, Mr. Hercules?” he continued. “Do ministers come to the chamber and discuss important matters?”

  “Not often, sir, no. However, things are discussed in the quarters among the family and are circulated through the servants to me. There is quite a lot of gossip there, as I’m sure you might guess.”

  “You must overhear a good deal,” I said.

  “I do, but it’s none of my business unless it concerns the family’s safety.”