To Kingdom Come bal-2 Read online

  Debris had been blown over the buildings onto the roofs and cobblestones of Craig’s Court. Our offices looked solid as ever, but without benefit of glass, save a few shards. Broken bricks and slates had fallen upon the steps. Barker unlocked the door, though it was obvious that anyone could have vaulted the sill and climbed in.

  In our waiting room, glass was strewn across the floor and furniture, and dust coated everything; but nothing appeared damaged. Barker moved on to his chambers quickly. There was more destruction there. A few bricks had come through the window. Fortuitously, I had closed and locked my desk, a maple roll-top that Barker had acquired for my predecessor. There was a large chip out of the top where a brick had struck it. A pedestal lay on its side farther into the room, with shards of what had been an antique Chinese vase, whose worth I couldn’t begin to calculate. Glass was scattered over the Persian rugs here, and a thick layer of dust coated the rows of bookcases that lined the room. Even Barker’s spartanly neat desk had not been spared. The few papers he’d allowed to remain were scattered and the inkwell had been knocked over, its contents dribbling down the side of the desk. Barker set the inkwell upright, then bent down and picked up some of the shards of porcelain from the floor.

  “Blast,” he muttered. Barker was a gentleman by decision, if not by birth. It was the most he would allow himself to say about the loss. I assumed the vase had some sentimental meaning to him, aside from its obvious intrinsic worth.

  “It is in whole pieces,” I pointed out. “It can be mended. I saw an advertisement in The Times for an agency that promised they could make them look as good as new.”

  Barker gently collected the pieces and set them on his desk, then befouled his handkerchief with the ink, wiping down the corner and sides of the desk. He had better luck here; the desk was kept so highly polished with beeswax that the ink could not penetrate to the wood. It had seeped into the floor, however, and those few spatters of ink would forever remind me of this night’s occurrence. Barker stepped by me and pitched the sodden handkerchief out the window into the dustbin.

  “Unlock your desk and get out your pad, lad,” he ordered. “Let us make a list.”

  I took the key from my waistcoat pocket and unlocked the drawer, removing my stenographic pad and a pencil, while Barker surveyed the room.

  “We’ll need to get the glaziers in, first of all, of course,” he said. “I suggest we try someone from Lambeth. All the local tradesmen shall be besieged in the morning. Next, we must send this rug to be cleaned. Your desk shall have to be repaired and refinished. It was a good suggestion about the vase, though we both know it shall never be the same again. Perhaps you can track down that advertisement for me. Of course, we have hours of work ahead of us. Dusting these books will take days in itself. I wouldn’t want to be continually pulling bits of glass out of my fingertips from now on, whenever I needed a reference.”

  “Certainly not,” I agreed. “Anything else?”

  “I wonder …” he said. I knew the look in his eye, or at least what he was thinking. The next thing he would do was unlock his smoking cabinet and take out one of his meerschaum pipes. It was a smooth finished pipe this time, instead of one of his more elaborately carved ones. The rim of the pipe was blackened, giving way to yellow and finally to purest white on the bowl. Barker pulled out his chair, reached for his handkerchief, and realized he’d thrown it out. He accepted mine, dusted the chair, and was soon seated, smoking his pipe and looking out through the bare window frames at the darkened offices across the street. I knew better than to interrupt him while he was thinking.

  After five minutes or so, we heard the crunch of glass out front. Someone was in the waiting room. Barker pulled the pipe from his mouth and looked over. My hand went into the drawer of my desk, where I kept my Webley revolver. The door opened slowly, and a head peered around it, its face dominated by a huge, sandy mustache and side-whiskers.

  “Poole!” Barker said. It was Terence Poole, an inspector from Scotland Yard, and one of my employer’s closest friends.

  “Hello, Barker. Quite a to-do, isn’t it? I’ve been keeping an eye out. Plenty of thieves and pickpockets about already, looking for spoils. I didn’t want to see your digs picked clean.”

  “Sneak thieves, eh?”

  “Sneak thieves, pickpockets, the lot. Scotland Yard’s blown up, and the criminal element won’t let the grass grow under its feet. There was a second bomb that went off at the same time in Pall Mall at the Junior Carlton Club, but the damage there is not as bad as at the Yard. The gymnasium is gone, I’m afraid. Changing room as well. Of course, we’ll rebuild. Your classes will have to wait, unless we find another place to meet.”

  Barker nodded his head, registering that several parts of his life had been altered by the explosion. We could be back in business in a day or two, but it would be weeks before the Rising Sun was open again, and Scotland Yard would be inconvenienced by masons, plasterers, and painters for months.

  “What have you discovered so far?”

  “An infernal device went off in a public lavatory inside the Criminal Investigation Department. We found part of a clockwork mechanism. Nothing complicated-parts salvaged from a mantel clock or the like-but effective for all that.”

  “Has anyone claimed responsibility?”

  Poole looked grim. “Not yet, but they don’t need to. The explosion was set right under the offices of the newly formed Special Irish Branch. It can’t be coincidence.”

  “What are the higher-ups saying?”

  “Williamson’s livid and Munro has vowed he’ll track them down.” Superintendent Williamson was head of the Criminal Investigation Department and James Munro the chief inspector of the Special Irish Branch. I wouldn’t care to trade positions with either of them at the moment.

  “And the Home Office?”

  “No word yet. A few of their johnnies strolled up the street for a look, cool as you please. There’s no love lost between them and the S.I.B. I suppose it’s a small matter to them if their police force is blown out from under them.”

  Barker dumped the contents of his pipe into an ashtray already half full of dust from the explosion. He heaved one of his sighs.

  “It’s no good starting to clean up now. We shall start in the morning. Are you heading home, Poole?”

  “Yes, I’m done here. If I’m lucky, I’ll get three hours kip.”

  “Ta-ta, then. We shall speak in a few days.”

  The two friends shook hands, and the inspector shook mine as well before he left. Perhaps it was the dust from the explosion, but there were lines about his eyes I hadn’t noticed before and gray in his hair.

  When he was gone, I stood and yawned. It had been a long night already.

  “When are we going home, sir?” I asked, trying not to sound as if I were complaining.

  “We aren’t,” my employer responded. “We will sleep rough tonight. There is a cot in one of the back rooms, which we will carry to the waiting room. Follow me.”

  I did so with as much ill grace as I could get away with. Still, I was curious. The rooms in the back were a mystery to me. Barker kept most of them locked. None of them had windows, so presumably they hadn’t sustained any damage. Barker set his key in a lock and opened one of the doors on the right. If I was hoping for pirate costumes or the lost treasures of the Incas, I’d have been disappointed. There was a simple cot, a small table and chair, and some anonymous cupboards. Did the Guv’nor take an occasional nap while I was running errands? We carried the cot into the waiting room. Barker went back into the room and returned with a pillow and blankets.

  “You shall bed down here for the night,” he said.

  “Where shall you sleep, sir?” I asked.

  “In the office, of course,” he responded. “I have expensive furnishings and books here, not to mention files some would pay large sums to obtain.”

  “You’ll sleep in a chair?”

  “No, on the floor.”

  I followed him ba
ck into the office. He went to a shelf and took down a thick book, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, I believe. Pulling the chair away from his desk, he set the book on the floor, then removed his shoes and jacket, collar and cuffs. Then, as I watched, puzzling over his next move, he lay down on the Bakhtiari rug behind his desk where no glass had fallen and pulled one end over him, his head resting on Shakespeare for a pillow.

  “Sir!” I said, appalled. “Sir, no. You take the cot! I can’t let you sleep like this.”

  “Thomas, there have been nights in my life when I would have given a kingdom for a soft rug and a book to rest my head upon. You get some sleep. I want you fresh in the morning. Be a good lad and turn down the gas on your way out.”

  The last thing he did after rolling away was to reach up and put his spectacles on the desk above his head. It was the first time I’d ever seen him remove the black lenses, and they looked strange and empty on the blotter without his face behind them. If only he would turn my way. I idled about a moment, hoping he’d do just that, hoping just once to see how he looked without them.

  “Thomas.”

  “Yes, sir. Good night.” I turned down the gas and left the room.

  3

  I was having the most wonderful dream. I was in an outdoor cafe slathering gooseberry preserves on a fresh croissant. I felt the boulevard breezes on my face and smelled the heavenly aroma of fresh coffee. My attentive waiter refilled my porcelain cup with coffee and cream from matching silver pots before I could ask.

  I was just beginning a second roll when a beautiful woman began wending her way toward me among the tables. She had lips the color of poppies, and a vibrant cobalt blue dress hugged her every curve. I leaned forward, longing to know what intimate secret she wished to reveal to me.

  She came closer and bent toward me as I looked up into her pellucid blue eyes, drinking in her beauty. She took my chin lightly in her gloved hand and brought her impossibly red lips to my ear.

  “Eh, Thomas! Wake up, you idiot! Your coffee ees getting cold!”

  Someone’s boot was on my hip, shaking me awake, and none too gently, either. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes, my dream in tatters. Etienne Dummolard’s face is difficult to take on any morning, let alone in comparison to the beauty in my dream. He is built along the lines of a bear. His purple nose resembles a turnip freshly pulled from a field, and his hair looks as if a miniature haystack had been set down upon his head.

  “What are you doing here?” I mumbled, sitting up.

  “Nobody was at home for breakfast, so I brought it here. Coffee and fresh croissants and jam. Monsieur Mac has sent along a fresh suit of clothes for each of you.”

  Losing the girl was a disappointment, but I sat at the clerk’s desk and contented myself with the coffee and rolls. It was better fare than I had anticipated under the circumstances. The boulevard breezes of my dream, I reasoned, had been due to the missing glass in our waiting room windows.

  “While you are enjoying your meal,” Etienne said, “I shall step around and see this amazing sight, this Scotland Yard all en deshabille.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, rising.

  “If you insult my croissants by standing, I shall kick the legs from under you. Sit and digest,” he ordered.

  I nodded and poured a second cup of coffee from the pot he had brought. It’s not a bad thing to be forced to eat fresh pastry prepared by a master chef. After he left, however, I committed the sacrilege of chewing the last of my roll while crossing to the office.

  Inside, Barker was seated at his desk, for all the world like any other day were it not that the office was in shambles. He was engrossed in conversation with a workman over the telephone set at his desk. The Times was spread out under his elbows.

  I was standing in the doorway, remarking to myself that it was seven o’clock by the extremely loud tolling of Big Ben just down the street, when I was struck a glancing blow on the shoulder. I almost thought it was another explosion, and it was. It was Jenkins.

  Our clerk leapt into the room, taking in the windows, the overturned pedestal, the dust-covered books. His eyes were the size of billiard balls. It was the first time I’d ever seen him fully awake. Neither Barker nor I had thought to send word to him that we’d been bombed. He’d known for less than a minute.

  “Wha’-what’s happened here?” he demanded. “And what are you two gents doing here at this hour on a Saturday?”

  “A small matter of an explosion at Scotland Yard last evening,” Barker explained. “We thought it necessary to spend the night.”

  “Cor! It’ll take days to clean this place up. Look at all this winder glass. It’s everywhere!”

  “It gets worse,” I told him. “The Sun was also damaged, I’m afraid.”

  Our clerk looked stricken. The Rising Sun was Jenkins’s port of call, when not at work. I can only compare it to telling a man from the Exchange that the Market has plunged. He went white.

  “Oh, s’truth, not the Sun!” He rushed past me and out the door. I heard his footsteps echoing down the court.

  “The news is worse this morning,” Barker said, handing me The Times. “Aside from the dozens hurt in Whitehall, fourteen men were injured at the Junior Carlton Club. Also, two servants were blown off their feet at the private residence of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, across the street in St. James’s.”

  “Sir Watkin!”

  Barker’s brow sunk between the twin disks of his spectacles.

  “You know Sir Watkin?”

  “I don’t know him personally, but he has always been revered in Wales. He’s a landowner who has given back much in charity to the Welsh people. Was he injured?”

  “I don’t know anything beyond the published account. Have you finished your coffee?”

  “Er … yes, sir.”

  “Good. We have an appointment at the Home Office at eight o’clock. The ministries are awake early this morning, thanks to the bombing that occurred there last evening. Do try to get cleaned up, Thomas. Your appearance might be suitable for the public houses but not for visiting one of Her Majesty’s government agencies.”

  Barker led me to the back room where the cot had been and removed a black leather bag containing toiletries from one of the cupboards. There were brushes for hair and teeth, a mirror, a razor, and a small ceramic bowl. I took it outside to fill from the pump in the yard. In twenty minutes I was changed and clean-shaven again, and my medusa head of curls beaten back into submission.

  Jenkins looked unwell when he returned just then, leaning on the arm of Dummolard like an old man. We sat him in his chair while the Frenchman poured him coffee. I thought our clerk might faint.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said. “This is a nightmare.”

  It took some time to calm him and then to get him started cleaning up the glass about the place. Dummolard left for his restaurant, and soon it was a quarter to the hour.

  “Are you ready, lad? Capital. Let’s be off, then.”

  Skirting the debris from the explosion, we reached the corner of Downing and Parliament Streets and looked up at the tall, non-descript exterior of the Home Office. The building projected an aura of wisdom and competency, but at the same time, I almost felt it willing us to go away. I saw it for what it was: a vault of secrets. From here, the eyes of the British government were watching. If my few months in Oxford Prison caused me to distrust policemen, my natural antipathy toward spies and spying was stronger still.

  Understandably, the guard at the Home Office was reluctant to let anyone as formidable looking as my employer into the building. He let us cool our heels in the lobby and sent a clerk along to deliver our cards to Mr. Robert Anderson. After a wait of a quarter hour, the man himself came out to meet us. He was a mild but capable-looking fellow in his mid-forties with a saltand pepper beard, which belied his official title of Spymaster General.

  “Mr. Barker,” he said, giving us a brisk bow. Barker stood, and they shook hands.

  “Mr. Anderson,�
�� my employer answered in his foggy voice. “Thank you for responding to my note. May I present my assistant, Thomas Llewelyn?”

  “How do you do. Will the two of you care to step down the hallway with me? There is someone I wish you to meet and something I very much want you to see.”

  Anderson led us down a carpeted hall, lined with offices containing government employees, all intent upon the latest outrage. I wondered how those men felt this morning when they arrived at work. I don’t believe any violent results of their policies had ever occurred so close to their offices before.

  We reached a room dominated by a long table. It seated twenty, by the number of chairs that were around it, and was built of dark mahogany, several inches thick, with heavy legs carved like the limbs of a lion. There were two things I noticed as I stepped into the room: the gentleman seated at one end and the large carpetbag at the other.

  “Sir Watkin,” Anderson said, “may I introduce you to Mr. Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn.” Anderson turned to us. “Sir Watkin is here at Her Majesty’s request as a liaison between the Crown and the Home Office.”

  Sir Watkin Williams Wynn shook Barker’s hand, then turned to me. I wondered what my father would have said if he could have seen me shaking hands with the great man now.

  “Pnawn da,” I said, as the old gentleman grasped my hand.

  “Good morning to you,” he replied in Welsh. “It’s good to hear the old tongue so far from home, especially on a day such as this.”

  Instinctively, Cyrus Barker gravitated toward the bag at the other end of the table. “Is that what I believe it to be?”

  “Yes. It was found this morning at the base of Nelson’s Column. So far, we have not notified the gentlemen of the press.” Anderson’s lips curled as he spoke, but whether it was due to the bomb, the press, or the bag’s garish colors, I couldn’t say.

  “May I?”

  “You may. It failed to go off, and we have had the wires cut by one of our experts.”