Will Thomas: The Black Hand

“We must discourage them somehow-not the Sicilians as a whole but the criminal element.”

“Men armed with knives and the wherewithal to use them might be difficult to discourage,” I pointed out.

Cyrus Barker reached into his pocket and retrieved his old repeater. “Thomas, I’ve been remiss. Go to Le Toison d’Or and inform Madame Dummolard of her husband’s injury.”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes. I must stay to hear of Etienne’s condition when he gets out of surgery, and it would frighten Madame to death if Inspector Poole arrived in the restaurant. Bring her,” he ordered, “though God help us all.”

It’s easier to stand on the tracks and argue with the approaching express train from Brighton than with Barker once his mind is made up. Not finding a cab, I walked to Soho, a matter of ten minutes. It was still too early for the restaurant to open, so I entered through the back door. Before I even knew what happened, Madame Dummolard had me by the shoulders and was shaking me.

“Thomas, ou est Etienne? What has happened?”

Madame, a blond woman in her mid-thirties, is a true beauty, but she towers over most men. As she shook me, I clutched my hat to keep it out of the potage cooking nearby on one of the stoves and had to extricate myself from her clutches before I could speak.

“Etienne has been attacked. Stabbed. He stumbled into our offices half an hour ago. He is in surgery now.”

“He is not dead. Tell me he is not!”

“He was awake when I last saw him. He spoke to us.”

“Where is he?”

“Charing Cross Hospital.”

“Take me to him at once, Thomas. Vite!” She pushed me out the door again. There was no question of her walking the distance I had just come, but cabs congregate in Soho, even at that early hour. I hailed a hansom and told the driver to take us to Charing Cross Hospital.

“No!” Madame cried. “Clothilde! His stepdaughter must be by his side. It is but three streets south of here. Go!”

Madame can be difficult enough, but the thought of sharing a cab with her sharp-tongued daughter was even more daunting.

“Where was he stabbed?” Madame Dummolard continued, once we were safely ensconced in the cab and on our way.

“In the stomach and the back.”

“Ma pauvre!” she cried. “Did he have the note with him?”

“The Black Hand note? Yes, Mr. Barker has it.”

“It was shoved under our door yesterday morning. It was from the Sicilians, I know it. They are trying to take over Soho,” she cried. “They want to shut down Le Toison d’Or and fill the district with cheap little coffee shops.”

There wasn’t much use arguing with her. The cab pulled to the curb in front of a row of town houses on the south edge of Soho in Old Compton Street. The Dummolards were doing well for themselves, I noted. They lived in a sand-colored three-story building with window boxes full of bougainvilleas. We sprang from the cab and I followed Madame into the hall.

Clothilde Dummolard is a miniature version of her mother. She’s the kind of girl that could swoop down upon one like an eagle, and suddenly one wakes up with three daughters, a position in the city, a house in the country full of furniture one wouldn’t sit on, and a mortgage it would take two lifetimes to pay. Luckily, I didn’t have an earldom to attract her, but I saw through her schemes and she found that vexing.

“Injured, you say?” she demanded. “How badly?”

“He’s been stabbed,” Madame cried. “Stabbed in the street, and is now in the hospital!”

“Don’t stand there like an idiot, Thomas,” Clothilde said, pushing me out the door. “Take us to him at once!”

I ushered the ladies into the waiting cab.

“Now, tell me everything from the beginning,” the girl ordered, once we were in the cab and on our way again. “How did Papa get stabbed?”

I explained in as much detail as I could what had occurred, but it only took up half the brief journey, leaving her plenty of time to sum up for the jury.

“If he wasn’t involved with Mr. Barker, this wouldn’t have happened,” she insisted. “He would not have been hurt if he just came straight to the restaurant in the mornings.”

“Madame, I deeply regret Etienne’s injury. Mr. Barker is anxiously waiting for him to get out of surgery.”

“We’se here, miss,” the cabman announced, pulling up to the curb, putting an end to my misery.

“Pay the man,” Madame replied, and the pair of them alighted from the vehicle. Clothilde stopped to fix me with a look of pure loathing. I sighed and reached into my pockets.

“Is she the missus?” the cabman asked when she was out of earshot.

“No, thank the Lord.”

“She’s a stunner, no mistake, but if I was you, I’d run in the uvver direction.”

“That remark,” I answered coldly, “is uncalled for. However, it has just earned you a tip.”

When I arrived inside, the Dummolards, mere et fille , were speaking in a mixture of voluble French and English to a doctor while Barker made his way around to me as warily as a man walking through a swamp infested with crocodiles.

“We’ve just been informed that Etienne’s out of surgery,” he said, as we watched the women remonstrate with the staff. “The wounds were deeper than I had suspected. I believe his attackers were armed with swords instead of daggers. The doctor says the operation was successful, but Etienne has not yet awakened.”

“Should we leave Madame to look after her husband? I could use a cup of coffee after that cab ride. Perhaps there is a cafe in the area.”

“Good thinking, lad. A cafe is a perfect idea, but not in Charing Cross. Let us find one in Soho instead.”

The Cafe Royal is the unofficial headquarters of Bohemia in the heart of London. Men such as James Whistler and Oscar Wilde ate there while plotting how next to amuse society. People came for reasons other than dining, although both the food and the cellars were considered the best in London. They came to be seen and to further their careers. Artists pushed themselves upon playwrights, who fawned over aristocrats, who collected intellectuals, who hoped to meet famous beauties.

The man we were coming to see fit none of these categories. If pressed, I’m sure he would say he was of no fixed occupation, though I understand he had read for the bar, as if that were some trifling thing he picked up in passing. The Honorable Pollock Forbes was a gentleman, son of a Scottish laird. That was more and less than what he actually was. If there was a scandal brewing, Forbes would be summoned. If some great man threatened to throw over his wife for a dancer, Forbes would discreetly talk him out of it. If a criminal attempted to blackmail an earl, Forbes would buy him off or warn him off or, for all I know, kill him off. The dandified silk gloves he wore belied the chain mail underneath, and mail there was. His people had fought at Culloden and Bannockburn, but before that they had fought in Jerusalem. Forbes was a Freemason and the only man in London who I felt carried as many secrets as Cyrus Barker, which is saying something. I’d heard them joke about splitting the town between them, East End and West End. And yet there was a finiteness to this young man’s abilities. Forbes, I knew, was fighting tuberculosis. He only had so long to live, and every time I saw him I was cognizant of the fact that one day I might come into the Royal and he would not be there.

Barker and I slid between the Regent Street doors of the establishment. It was easier to slip in here than into the Neapolitan, but, then, there was far less danger of someone entering armed. I’m not slighting the service, which is impeccable, but the Royal was not the place for an over-attentive waiter. People came here to mingle and chat and sometimes disappear into various discreet rooms, or so I’ve heard. It would not do to be inquisitive, or rather to seem so. Any information is funneled into the ears of one of two people: the first is Monsieur Daniel Nicols, a French exile, owner of the place, the second Forbes, who makes it his pied-a-terre.