The Limehouse Text Read online

  We climbed the second set of steps and entered Ho’s establishment. I admit to being a bit peckish. Despite the inspector’s assertions, Ho is a fine chef, though I don’t pretend to be an authority on Chinese cuisine. I was not a little disappointed when Barker skirted the tables and passed into the kitchen without a word.

  I’d always wondered what sort of alchemy went on in Ho’s kitchen. I imagined it to be like a cookery in some medieval castle, rough servants hacking limbs from freshly killed animals, bubbling cauldrons of bloodred soups full of boar or fish heads, and a complete lack of sanitation. What I found instead was a crew of talkative cooks, much like the men who tended Barker’s back garden twice a week. All of them were chattering pleasantly as they cooked over large metal vessels, the antithesis of the waiters outside, whose surliness was legendary.

  Barker’s progress came to a halt in front of an open doorway. Bainbridge and I came up behind and peered over my employer’s thick shoulder into Ho’s private office. I had to look twice before my eyes confirmed what I was seeing. A typical European desk was in the center of the room, but its legs had been sawn off, so that the top of it stood but two feet off the ground. Ho was seated on a cushion with crossed legs and he was smoking a metal contraption that looked a cross between a pipe, a lantern, and a small watering can. The reek of Chinese shag filled the air. The only other furniture in the room was a small red altar of wood with an image of a venerable-looking Chinese sage and a small table holding a single Pen-jing tree in a pot. The proprietor looked up at Barker with a frown, then crossed his massive, tattooed arms over his ample stomach. Ho is eighteen stone of ill humor, with weighted earlobes that hang to his shoulders and a queue draping down the front of his dirty apron like a python. He remonstrated in Mandarin, of course—or perhaps it was Cantonese—and Barker responded in kind.

  “Here we go,” Bainbridge complained in my ear. I could see that he believed speaking to a Chinaman to be a complete waste of time. No doubt he thought Ho the most barbarous of heathens.

  Barker pulled the package from his pocket and lay it before Ho, who opened the paper very carefully and lifted out the book. He opened it but a crack and peered inside as Barker had, then set it down on the table at the far end as if it contained a venomous spider.

  “Quen pui,” he stated. “Dim mak.”

  “What is a quen pui?” I asked, hoping Barker would answer; but for once, Ho spoke directly to me.

  “Hidden text of a boxing school. It is very secret. It contains all techniques, history, and genealogies. It is the most important document a school or monastery owns.”

  “I see,” I said. “And a dim whatever?”

  “Dim mak,” Barker answered. “It means ‘death touch.’ It is the deadliest of techniques, taught only to the most exemplary of advanced students. This book should never have found its way to a London pawnshop or into Europe at all, for that matter. It is the kind of book that is guarded fanatically by the monks who care for it and by the government, as well.”

  “So,” I said, beginning to grasp the import of what they were discussing, “This is a book some people might be willing to kill for. Do you think it has some relation to Quong’s death?”

  “It might. He was found dead but a few streets from here. Also, I would question the coincidence of Jan Hurtz falling down the stairs, though it was almost a year later.”

  “All over a bloody book?” Bainbridge asked.

  Barker shrugged his shoulders. “The Holy Bible is a book. The Koran is a book. Right now, in the Sudan, men are killing each other over both of them.”

  Ho had picked up the book again and was thumbing through it, back to front, since that is how Chinese is read. He’d stopped at the back page and was reading the vertical script.

  “It is from the Xi Jiang Monastery in the Jiangsu Province. Do you know it?”

  Barker nodded. “It’s just outside of Nanking. Nothing has happened there since the Chinese Civil War, twenty years ago. Ho and I both fought in it near Shanghai.”

  “Shanghai?” Bainbridge asked quickly. “With Gordon?”

  “Aye,” Barker said. “With Gordon.”

  I had to hand it to the inspector. In one sentence, he’d uncovered something I’d been wondering about for days. It had been announced in The Times the previous week that General Charles “Chinese” Gordon had died in Khartoum, Prime Minister Gladstone’s liberal government having dithered too long over policy to rescue him. Barker had said it was a shabby way for a hero to die, but I hadn’t made the connection between Gordon’s time in China suppressing the Taiping Rebellion and Barker, who must have been in his late teens at the time.

  “Now hold on there, Barker,” the inspector said. “I’ll admit your Chinese lad’s death might have been due to this book here, but I read the report on Hurtz’s death before I came to see you. He broke his neck on some stairs. It could have been an accident and the boy’s killer gone a year ago.”

  I had followed Ho’s example by seating myself on the floor cross-legged and the inspector did the same. Western trousers and boots were not meant for that position and neither were Western limbs, I suspected. I’d retrieved my notebook and begun scribbling down what we had learned so far.

  “If the killer is Chinese, he shouldn’t be too hard to find,” I said. “How many Chinese are in London now?”

  In response, Bainbridge shrugged his thick shoulders. “Six or seven hundred, perhaps. Maybe a thousand.”

  “As many as that?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have imagined it.”

  “They work hard to be inconspicuous,” Barker said. “They do not trust the government and some are here illegally. Most are sailors from the Blue Funnel Line on furlough, but a few have set up businesses. London is a sailor town and they are the same everywhere. I was unable to get anywhere in my investigation last year. I wonder if I shall glean any more information now.”

  “Perhaps it is forbidden,” Ho responded with a hint of menace in his voice.

  “Forbidden by whom?” I asked.

  “Mr. K’ing,” Ho said, digging into the bowl of his pipe with a metal skewer. I had heard the name once before. Whoever he was, he had been used as a threat in front of a villainous fellow named O’Muircheartaigh. It had stopped me from getting shot.

  Bainbridge snorted. “K’ing! He’s barmy if he thinks he can tell me what to do.”

  “Who exactly is Mr. K’ing?” I made so bold as to ask.

  “He is the leader of the Blue Dragon Triad,” my employer explained, “unofficial leader of the Chinese here. He is a very powerful man, by all accounts. He runs the opium dens and fan-tan parlors, extorts money from the Asian merchants in the East End, and lives the life of a potentate. I have seen him twice at a distance, but some say that is merely an actor in the employ of local merchants taking advantage of the superstition to line their own pockets.”

  Ho lifted the shabby book off the table and held it out. “He is real, and he will want to see this.”

  The Guv took it immediately and thrust it back into his pocket. “That he will definitely not do if I have any say in the matter. That was left to me by Quong. I have promised his father I would find his killer and nothing is going to stop me from doing so.”

  Ho answered him in Chinese. Barker nodded once and then stood. He rose straight from the floor on the outsides of his ankles like a marionette, as easy as you please, whereas Bainbridge and I had to unknot our limbs and struggle to our feet, with that feeling of pins and needles one gets from sitting in such a position too long. Without a word, we left the kitchen.

  “Sir,” I said, as we were crossing the dining room, “what was that last thing Ho said to you before we left?”

  “He said, ‘It is not necessary to dig one’s own grave. There are always others willing to dig it for you.’ It’s an old Cantonese proverb.”

  I lit the lamp again in the alcove above the stairs while Bainbridge shook his head and Barker was lost in his own thoughts. I suspected Ho and the
book had given him much to mull over, and I was playing catch up myself. Apparently, Quong had a father in the area, the “next of kin” to whom Bainbridge was to return his clothes, though Barker himself had claimed the title.

  “I’d take whatever Mr. Ho said about K’ing with a grain o’ salt, young man,” Bainbridge said in my ear.

  “He wouldn’t have any reason to lie,” I said. Perhaps because Ho was my employer’s friend, I felt I had to defend him. It was certainly not due to any personal reason he had given me.

  “Tha’ knows all these Orientals are natural-born liars. They never say what they really mean, and you never ken what they’re thinking. They’d turn a laundry list into a mystery. If there really is a Mr. K’ing—”

  It was the last word he ever said. While I was looking at him as he spoke, a black hole suddenly appeared between his eyes. At first I thought it was a cockroach fallen from the ceiling until the gout of blood poured out and the sound of the shot echoed along the corridor. I watched Bainbridge’s body sag and drop and instinct told me that if the next bullet were meant for me, it would have to pass through the lamp I was holding in front of my face. I ducked just as the glass shattered, the second report rang out, and Barker and I were plunged into darkness in Ho’s tunnel under the Thames.

  2

  BARKER HAD BEEN TRAINING ME THESE PAST twelve months, but I was still green enough to stand there like a total fool, an easy target for the assassin’s bullet. It is not every day one is talking with a fellow and one of you is shot between the eyes. If I was frozen in shock, my employer was not; I felt his hand grab my collar and swing me ’round until I hit the wall behind him, sliding down to the hard stone floor.

  “What the deuce—”

  Barker’s thick fingers clamped over my mouth. Bainbridge’s murderer did not need light to carry on further assassinations. My employer’s hand disappeared and I heard his boots take two steps before there was a sudden slap of impact and then another and then a perfect flurry of them. Barker was engaged in a fight with the killer in total darkness not five feet away from me, and for once he didn’t appear to be winning handily. I got up, ready to run or defend myself, though if the Guv was having trouble I didn’t stand a chance. Barker was suddenly knocked back into me, but I felt him connect with a left and then a right against our invisible foe. A moment later, footsteps echoed quickly down the subterranean tunnel, and Barker pushed himself off the wall. There was a sudden jingle of coins in my employer’s pockets and within seconds they were clanging off the walls and rolling everywhere. Barker was quite accurate with his razor-sharp pennies as a rule, but if he actually struck our assassin, the latter wasn’t generous enough to cry out. We gave chase, but just then it felt as absurd as running into a burning building.

  I heard the creak of rusty hinges and light flooded down momentarily into the tunnel, but all that was illuminated was Barker’s stony face as he reached the stairs. My employer continued on gamely, but we both knew what he would find when he reached the top: an empty alleyway.

  When I reached the final step I began lighting the naphtha lamps Ho provided there, keenly aware that I’d just done this for Bainbridge a short time before. Poor fellow, I thought. He certainly didn’t deserve such an end. I could imagine him conscientiously attempting to close this case, going over every jot and tittle, and suddenly coming across the wedge of pasteboard in Quong’s cotton jacket. Now he was dead, and in the same manner as my late predecessor, a single bullet between the eyes, which only went to prove one thing: this was not merely an unsolved case but an ongoing one in the midst of which one could quite easily be killed. Did the murderer have a grudge against Barker and was attempting to eliminate all his assistants and friends? Had the bullet that knocked out my lamp really been meant for me?

  I jumped when the door was suddenly flung open, but it was merely Barker returning. He grunted, took a lit lamp in either hand, and proceeded down the steps again.

  On the bottom step at the other side, Ho sat looking as sour as I have ever seen him, his eyes on the corpse. I set the other two lamps at the feet of the late Inspector Bainbridge, which, combined with the ones Barker had set at his head, gave a macabre, ritual-like look to the corridor. Bainbridge lay supine, legs slightly apart, palms up, his mouth gaping open, dead. I realized I believe in the human soul, for there was something there five minutes before that was not there now, something beyond mere animation. That had been a living, breathing being, full of questions about the case and all sorts of plans, from how he was going to catch Quong’s killer to what he was going to eat for lunch that day. Now all that was left was inanimate clay, fodder for the grave.

  Ho stood abruptly, turned, and climbed the stairs to his restaurant, muttering to himself. Once inside, it turned to bellows, in intermittent Chinese and English.

  “Chut! Hui! We are closed! Out! Get out now! Watch your step!”

  Suddenly, the stone stairway was full of people—diners, waiters, and even cooks—herded unceremoniously out of the restaurant by its volcanic owner. At the foot of the stair, they split into two groups, scuttling along on either side of the corpse like rats in a ship. English, Chinese, Jews, Russians—all were the same now, eyeing, or trying not to eye, the corpse as they hurried along.

  “I must send a note to Scotland Yard,” Barker stated, reaching into his pocket.

  “I’ll write it,” I said, forestalling him. My employer’s handwriting would have been no more legible to them than Chinese calligraphy. I pulled my notebook and pencil from my pocket. “What shall I say?”

  “Ask for Inspector Poole. He, at least, has some understanding of this culture. Tell him Bainbridge has been shot dead. Terry has not been here before. Have him meet you outside.”

  “I could send a telegram instead,” I suggested. “It might reach him faster. There’s bound to be an office along the docks.”

  “Good thinking, lad. No telling how long a message would take to reach Scotland Yard from here. Off with you, then.”

  I was up the stairs and out the door, keen to serve my employer before I remembered about assassins and flying bullets. The alleyway in front of Ho’s has no means of entrance or egress and nothing to shelter behind. Should the fellow appear at the far end with his pistol or rifle, he could shoot me at his leisure. Luckily for me, the killer had vanished without a trace.

  It took only five minutes to locate a telegraph office, it being a matter of following the wires leading down toward the docks. This was certainly not a picturesque part of London. The salt air of the Thames was doing a fine job of warping the clapboards of the buildings and stripping the paint from the graying wood. There were no gaily painted Chinese signs or dragons or pagodalike structures that proclaimed Limehouse was the Oriental quarter of town. It made a satisfactory attempt at being anonymous.

  I waited while the message was transcribed and sent and then returned to the restaurant. It was a cold afternoon in February, and as I walked I noted that the sun produced a good deal of light but almost no heat. I went in to find that nothing was standing guard over the inspector’s body but the four lanterns. I continued into the restaurant.

  Barker and Ho were seated at one of the tables, drinking tea amid a pile of abandoned dishes. “Help yourself to food, lad. There’s plenty going to waste in the kitchen,” the Guv said.

  “No, thank you, sir,” I said. I’d lost my appetite. Instead, I poured myself a cup of lukewarm tea.

  “Mr. K’ing must be told,” Ho insisted as I set my cup on the last clear foot of table.

  “Oh, come now,” my employer responded. “Why must I inform him? Am I to take all these rumors seriously? They say he has been here for a hundred years and is responsible for half the evil done in London.”

  “I believe the last part,” Ho maintained. “He has extorted money from me for years. Two cooks were employed by me at his written request, and though they only worked for me a day or so, I have been forced to pay their salaries ever since.”

  �
��What?” Barker growled. “You never told me this. I am surprised you didn’t snap their necks and hand them back their heads.”

  I chuckled at this last remark and it even brought a rare smile to Ho’s lips, but it was true. Despite his stout stomach, Ho could handle himself well, of that I was sure. Ho gave a shrug.

  “So, what was K’ing’s group called?” I asked. “This Blue Dragon something or other?”

  “Blue Dragon Triad,” Barker answered. “Most of the members are present or former employees of the Blue Funnel Line that steams between Liverpool and Shanghai. London is their layover, so the line is responsible for the Chinese being here in the first place. But is the Blue Dragon a part of any real triad in China, or does K’ing exert influence here based upon his own ability to hold power?”

  “What exactly is a triad?” I asked.

  “They are criminal fraternities that control the opium trade and other interests in China. They began as benevolent organizations whose purpose was to overthrow the Manchu dynasty. They have been corrupted from their original purpose, and their influence is beginning to grow beyond China. There has been evidence of the group’s expansion into Formosa, Manila, Sydney, and other port towns. Now K’ing claims his own little branch here. Does he do anything else besides extort money?” he asked Ho.

  “I have heard a few people have disappeared without a trace. On the other hand, he has funded some festivals here and given money to the Asiatic Aid Society. I believe he will be sponsor of the New Year’s festival in a few days.”

  “New Year’s?” I asked. “It is February.”

  “Chinese New Year, lad,” Barker said. “February fifteenth.”

  I was at my post in the alley outside Ho’s door fifteen minutes later when a four-wheeler clattered to a stop and disgorged Inspector Poole and three constables so alike in size and appearance they might all have been stamped in a press. I raised a hand and he nodded brusquely in my direction. Terence Poole was one of Barker’s closest friends and a member of his physical culture classes at Scotland Yard until the bombing last year by the Irish Republican Brotherhood had put an end to them.