Dance with Death Read online

  “He’s toying with you,” Barker said.

  A few minutes earlier Barker and Rachkovsky were ready to fight to the death. Now they were comparing professional notes.

  “Oh, yes. I think he could have shot the tsarevich a half dozen times if he went to much effort. The man is very talented but he seems to be a dilettante.”

  “How can we help you, sir?” Barker asked.

  “Help me?”

  “Help you find the man attempting to assassinate the tsar’s son.”

  “I need no help.”

  “No? How many of your men speak English? I regret to inform you there are few people in London who speak Russian. Also, you aren’t familiar with the City, whereas Mr. Llewelyn once sat for a cabman’s exam and knows every mews and back alley in London Town.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Rachkovsky asked.

  “If I learn a piece of information that I believe you require, I shall give it,” Barker said. “The same applies to you. Someone shot at a future sovereign this morning. Very nearly two.”

  “How could he mistake the Englishman for the tsarevich?” the Okhrana leader asked.

  In response, the Guv reached to the edge of his desk where a newspaper lay. It was The Pall Mall Gazette, known for having illustrations and photographs within its pages. He placed the copy in front of Rachkovsky.

  Prince George was on the cover, along with his future bride, Mary of Teck. I could see the light dawn in Rachkovsky’s eyes. Despite growing up on two different continents, the two royals were nearly identical.

  “The assassin shot at the wrong man.”

  “It was a stage prop,” Barker replied. “The other bullet was not.”

  “Why shoot at the assassin and not George?” I asked. “The prince was still visible. Was it accidental? Did the assassin just get in the way of firing at Prince George?”

  “No,” Barker stated firmly. “The sharpshooter wouldn’t have missed. It was vexation. It was hubris, which says one thing about him. He is emotional. He considers himself a professional. The other fellow blundered about with his prop, spoiling his chance, and made him angry. He wasted the only chance he had to kill Prince George and spent the bullet on his rival instead.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “It was my fault.”

  Barker turned his head in Rachkovsky’s direction.

  “Mr. Llewelyn has a habit of taking blame for everything he cannot control,” the Guv explained. “I’m not sure if it is a Welsh trait, or something peculiar to himself. If you will recall, Thomas, there were three of you tugging on the one man and two of them were guardsmen. I do not believe you can take full blame. On the other hand, you were the first to tackle him, which goes to your credit.”

  “It would be difficult to identify a man with no head and no identity papers,” I said, wanting to change the subject.

  “Does your Scotland Yard use the Bertillon method of identifying criminals?” Rachkovsky asked.

  “It does, but I do not consider it conclusive,” the Guv said. “It would be difficult to gauge how tall he was.”

  “You have impressed the tsarevich,” the Okhrana leader said, frowning at Barker. “He wishes to meet you.”

  “You do not approve,” the Guv stated.

  “I most certainly do not!” Rachkovsky answered. “I suspect you are a spy yourself. Suppose this entire matter with the dead assassin was a charade to place you close to Nikolai and you are an assassin yourself. What is a detective but a soldier for hire, willing to do whatever is expected of him?”

  “Codswallop,” Barker said. “We’re in the business of saving lives, not taking them.”

  “We have wasted our time coming here. However, His Imperial Highness has asked to see you. I believe he wishes to thank you.”

  “Just how large is the Russian delegation?” Barker asked.

  “Forty-five, according to my list.”

  The Guv and I glanced at each other. Forty-five people. Rachkovsky made no attempt to apologize or explain. Forty-five servants to accompany one man in order to serve him or save his life. But they had failed, twice if one counted an assassination attempt in Japan.

  Suppose every monarch attending the royal wedding requires fifty servants, and all need lavish rooms? The hotels of London will be swollen with them.

  “I can make no promises, Mr. Rachkovsky,” Barker said. “I have certain duties to my country. However, I have no wish to join your camp. There is an assassin loose in London, and I need to stop him, and I cannot do so if I am nursemaiding a boy. There is unrest, and Mr. Llewelyn and I have our duties to perform.”

  “We are perfectly capable of protecting him,” Rachkovsky said, though the handkerchief stuffed in his nostril did not inspire confidence.

  “Of course you are,” Barker answered. He was being diplomatic, maybe even magnanimous.

  We had just bested his men, the two of us.

  The Okhrana leader stood. “We are guests in your country, gentlemen. However, we do not brook interference.”

  “That is your duty.”

  “It is,” he said, nodding. “Nikolai wishes to see you now. He is awaiting you. I suspect he wishes to offer you a temporary position. You will, of course, refuse.”

  Oh no, I thought to myself. He’d been doing so well until that order. One doesn’t tell Cyrus Barker what to do. It only makes him more determined to do as he pleases.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Our cabs formed a procession all the way to Kensington. Rachkovsky rode with Barker while I was made to go with Olgev. He was nursing a bruised eye, which would be purple by morning. Luckily, I hadn’t given it to him. I could very well have found myself sharing a cab with the fellow I kicked in the cobbles. Olgev was sullen and so we traveled in blessed silence.

  What does one say to the tsarevich of Russia? I wondered. I hoped I would not be noticed. Barker takes over a room, so it was possible I would not have to speak at all. If pressed I could say how glad we were to have him in our country. But after that, nothing came to mind. I am creative, but not spontaneous.

  Soon we found ourselves in the drive in front of Kensington Palace. A few people stopped to watch us alight, but when they realized we were actual people and not royalty, they melted away like snow on a warm day. We were marched to the Orangery and taken inside, then led through innumerable halls and finally into a gold-lined chamber with a very high ceiling. The tsarevich was there. When we entered, he shooed the guards and the Okhrana away. He looked us up and down as if wondering what we were there for. Then he broke out in a grin that almost made him look like a youth.

  “I say,” Nicholas said, with almost no trace of an accent at all. He turned to Barker. “You’re that fellow, the one that turned me about and herded me back into the palace.”

  “I am,” the Guv rumbled.

  “If it weren’t for you, I believe there would have been a second bullet. And you,” he said, looking at me. “The last I saw you, you were covered in blood.”

  “Yes, Your Highness. I seem to recall the incident.”

  “Ha!” he said to the room, as if wherever he stood embodied the imperial court. “Very droll. I like this fellow.”

  I spotted Jim Hercules in the back. He wore the outfit he had warned us about: a tasseled fez; a long, frogged jacket of a fiery red; baggy harem trousers; and Persian slippers. Not to mention he carried a scimitar. I’d have been embarrassed to wear such an ensemble in public, but I supposed it was better than being an itinerant boxer. One goes where the work is.

  “So, you two are…” He paused and looked at Hercules. “What was that, Jim?”

  “Private enquiry agents, sir.”

  “Yes, that. It was awfully good for me that you arrived when you did.”

  I glanced at my partner. “Yes, wasn’t it?” I murmured.

  Barker merely nodded in reply.

  “It’s dreadfully dull around here. Would you care to be a part of the imperial delegation? I imagine you have some stories to
tell.”

  I could tell one or two but I wouldn’t without the Guv’s permission.

  “Alas,” Barker said, “if we guard you here, how can we track whoever is menacing you with an air rifle?”

  “An air rifle?” he repeated, frowning. “I do not believe I have heard of that. What is it?”

  I looked askance. The fellow was at least a major in the Russian army but had no knowledge of military weapons. I wasn’t particularly surprised, however. It would be an honorary position given to him so he could dress up like a soldier.

  “An air rifle,” Barker explained, “is a rifle that uses compressed air instead of gunpowder.”

  “How is it compressed?”

  “Mechanically. It is often pressurized by cranking a gear.”

  “Does it take any bullet?” the tsarevich asked. “Or only the kind that busts open a skull like a melon?”

  “It can use a regular bullet of the proper caliber. The shootist, if I can call him that, took the time to scratch an X in front of the bullet, which causes it to fragment when it reaches its target.”

  “In effect, it is like a tiny bomb.”

  Barker considered the question. He is not obsequious. If he objected to the idea he would have said so. “That is an apt description.”

  Nicholas shrugged. It was nearly a convulsion. “I hate bullets and I hate bombs. I saw my grandfather, Alexander the Second, carried into the Summer Palace, legless, his face disfigured by a bomb that blew him apart. I had to watch him die, you see. It is imperial protocol. He choked on his own blood. Pints of it soaked into the sheets and mattresses until it dripped on the floor beneath the bed. I held my father’s hand and tried not to cry. I was thirteen.”

  I murmured in sympathy.

  “I have nightmares, you see. I am being carried legless, leaving a trail of blood along the Persian carpets. Or I am in front of a firing squad of peasants, surrounded by cheering rabble. I don’t imagine I shall end well. It is a bad time for monarchs.”

  “‘For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away,’ James 4:14,” Barker quoted.

  “You sound like the patriarch of Saint Petersburg, Mr. Barker,” Nicholas said. “He has a verse for everything. I am to be tsar. Surely there are enough men in the Russian Army to see that I live to a ripe old age. Jim here makes a better attempt at protecting me. He recommended you, and it angered Rachkovsky to no end, so of course, I summoned you.”

  “You have no use for the Okhrana?”

  “One has the rabble on one side and the secret police on the other, and neither allows one to sleep at night,” the tsarevich said, flexing the muscles in his shoulder. “I suspect the Okhrana is a puppet in the hands of my uncles, the grand dukes, each of whom would very much like to be tsar himself.”

  “I see,” my partner said, although I suspected he knew the fact already.

  “I thought I might be safer in London, but apparently you have Socialists and anarchists of your own.”

  “They arrived after the pogroms,” I replied. “From Russia.”

  The tsarevich nodded. “I have seen the shtetls burning, set on fire by the Cossacks. I had no quarrel with the Jews, but too many people owed them money. It was easier to drive them out than pay them back.”

  Nicholas shook his head. He was very melancholy, this young man.

  “Mr. Barker, you know this city,” he said. “The Socialists must congregate somewhere. Surely you can track them and this madman with the air rifle. Aunt Victoria is plotting my wedding. I should like to be present for it. Go, stay, whatever you see fit. Do whatever must be done to keep me alive. Oh, and keep Cousin George alive as well. I’m rather fond of my English twin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Keep Jim posted about your activities. May I assume you have no problem reporting to an Ethiop?”

  I glanced over. Hercules tried to preserve his sangfroid, but it is not easy when one is dressed like a djinn from a tale by Burton.

  “None whatever,” Barker replied.

  “Good, then.”

  “And one more thing,” Nicholas added. “Gentlemen, I have a delicate matter to discuss with you. The Okhrana refuses to let me see Mathilde. Mathilde Kschessinska, I mean, the famous ballerina of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre. She is my mistress. My cousin, Sergei, brought her here from Paris to see me, but that pig Rachkovsky won’t allow me to get near her. I need to speak to her, you see. She knows the Queen is scheming to create an alliance by marrying me off to Princess Alix of Hesse and she is madly jealous. Mathilde wants to be tsarina. She has a temper. If I can’t see her she will take it to mean that I refuse to see her. I was wondering if perhaps you might get a message to her from me, to tell her I haven’t forgotten her and will get away as soon as I can.”

  “Get away?” I asked.

  “Well, not for very long. An hour, perhaps two. She’s difficult to convince. Ballerinas are sensitive creatures. Oh, I cannot describe how she dances. It’s as if she will take flight at any moment!”

  “Hmmph,” Barker said. He did not approve of mistresses.

  Nicholas didn’t need a pair of private enquiry agents following him about. We were hired to take messages to Mathilde. Whenever the time was right, we were to secret him away for a tryst. Yes, I thought, a tryst. I did not fall for the statement that he required two hours to “calm her nerves.”

  “In fact, that is the perfect thing,” Nicholas continued. “You go off and deliver my message to Mathilde and bring her answer on the pretext of giving me a shooting lesson. Yes! I’m so clever sometimes. You will do that, won’t you, gentlemen?”

  “I don’t think—” I began.

  “I don’t think that sounds too onerous, Your Highness,” the Guv said. “We will be glad to do so. Write your letter, and I suggest a long one if you are going to mollify a young lady. Have Jim here deliver it to me and I will see that she gets it.”

  Nicholas grinned like a naïve schoolboy. “Wonderful. I’ve got a letter to compose tonight. At last, something to do in this wretched old pile!”

  “Your Highness,” I said.

  Nicholas turned and frowned. “Yes?”

  “Are we to defend you, deliver your letter, or give you a shooting lesson?”

  “I thought that was obvious,” the young royal replied. “All three.”

  Jim Hercules cleared his throat.

  “Getting a cold, are we, Jim?” the tsarevich asked.

  “You have an appointment, sir,” Jim drawled. “Lady Wagstaff.”

  The tsarevich harrumphed. “Another dinosaur, no doubt. They’ve trotted them through here hourly. Lady this, Viscountess that. I gather their husbands are intelligent enough to hide. Most of them have bad teeth. I want to go riding. I want to talk to people my own age. I’d like to sample English ale and walk about Whitechapel incognito, like cousin Albert did. You know, to see the guttersnipes your Jack the Ripper slaughtered. London is no Paris. It is such a dull place.”

  “It has its moments,” I said.

  Nicholas pointed a finger at me. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about. Let me go about with the two of you. I’ll bet that will be jolly. I could be a private enquiry agent for a day.”

  Barker shook my head. “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t fear being assassinated one minute and then want to ride about in unprotected cabs with us the next.”

  “I could wear one of those sets of false whiskers and spectacles like yours, Mr. Barker. They’d think I was an anarchist trying to kill the tsarevich. That would be … what would that be, Jim?”

  “Ironic, sir,” Hercules supplied.

  “The very word.”

  Hercules had made it sound as if he and the tsarevich were the best of friends, but he seemed more Nicholas’s lackey. Just how did a former boxer turned harem guard get put in charge of a baby tsar?

  “I fear that is not possible, Your Imperial Highness,” Barker insisted. “It is far too dangerous, and the Okhrana will
demand to know where you are at all times.”

  Nicholas pointed to me again. “Can he stay? He seems sardonic enough. He could keep me entertained, I’m sure.”

  “Alas, I need him. He takes notes, asks questions, stays armed.”

  “Are you armed?” Nicholas asked. “Really? Have you got a pistol?”

  I nodded.

  “Teach me to shoot a pistol,” he said, smiling. “That would be marvelous and I could defend myself. Take that, you swines! Bang! Bang!”

  “The very thing,” Barker said, clapping me on the shoulder.

  “Well, that’s something like. That’s the English expression, isn’t it? I read it this morning in the newspaper. Something like?”

  “You speak the vernacular like a native, Your Highness,” I said

  “It’s settled, then,” he replied. “We shall squeeze a lesson in between old cows of the aristocracy. Surely Kensington Palace can create a makeshift shooting range on the property. There’s plenty of room in this old pile. It’s dull here! Dull!”

  I thought the tsarevich was an enfant terrible. It appeared no one had told him no before and he was spoiled. For once, I felt sorry for whoever was in charge of him. Just then another young man entered in a military jacket and looked about.

  “What is all the rumpus?” he asked.

  “Georgie!” Nicholas cried. “You’re back.”

  “Hello, Nicky. Whom are you torturing now?”

  “These are the men investigating the shooting,” Nicholas said to his cousin. “This one is going to teach me to shoot.”

  “That will be entertaining,” George said, stepping forward. “Gentlemen, how do you do? I am George, Prince of Greece and Denmark.”

  “Your Highness, were you not the one who defended the tsarevich in Japan?” the Guv asked.

  “I am.”

  “Oh, let’s not dwell on that!” Nicholas said. “He was in the perfect spot to step in, but really, I could have defended myself.”

  Prince George, not to be confused with England’s prince of the same name, was a good-looking young fellow, blond-haired and mustachioed. He looked particularly fine in a pale blue military jacket. The prince bowed. This fellow was every inch the royal.