Will Thomas: To Kingdom Come

“You and the Coldstream Guards,” he jeered. “Go soak your head.”

I made for him, but he was up and on his feet in a trice, keeping the desk between us and taunting me all the while. As a Classics scholar, I had to admit he had an imaginative way with words. In half a minute, he made my blood boil. I wanted to see just how far my fingers would reach around his throat.

“Ah, Vic,” my employer said, suddenly behind me. “Good to see you. I’ll take it from here, Llewelyn.”

“’Lo, Push,” the tattered boy said. I’d heard Barker called “Push Comes to Shove” in our previous case. “’Oo’s the shirt?”

“Thomas Llewelyn, my assistant. Thomas, this is Soho Vic.”

Vic wiped his none-too-clean nose with his hand, then offered it to me to shake. When I refused, he stuck his tongue out and returned to sucking on his cigar, which he was puffing in quick drafts like an engine about to leave a station.

“Found the Sponge for you,” he said cryptically.

“Excellent. Where is he?”

“’Round the corner, paying ’is respects to the Sun. Said ’e’d be ’long directly.”

The Guv pulled out a half-sovereign from his waistcoat pocket and proffered it. The boy snatched the shining coin from Barker’s fingertips and thrust it between his dirty teeth. It passed inspection there, so he tossed it in the air a few times, as if admiring its weight, before thrusting it into his waistcoat pocket.

“Pleasure doin’ business wiff yer, Push. Got other errands to run. Cheerio!”

“You may use the front entrance,” Barker said, pointing toward the door.

“No fanks, Guv,” came the reply. “Got to ’ave me exercise. Not gettin’ any younger, am I? Fanks for the smoke and the beneficence.” Then he was gone out the back door, and presumably over the back wall as well.

“Soho Vic,” I said to myself. “What names these street arabs have. I assume he was born in Soho?”

“Krakw, Poland,” Cyrus Barker informed me. “His real name is Stanislieu Sohovic. It’s amazing how foreign names get anglicized, isn’t it? Came here with his father when he was still in nappies, then the old man was killed in a boatyard accident. Vic’s been fending for himself ever since.”

“You trust him to do business, then?”

“As well as any other merchant in London. Any enquiry agent worth his salt uses Vic and his kind to deliver messages and track down people. He’s got a number of mouths to feed, and despite his flippant exterior, takes his work very seriously.”

“And this … this Sponge person will help us find the Irish faction?”

“We can but cast our nets, lad,” Barker said, and with that bit of philosophy, nothing more was mentioned of the matter.

The Sponge, if I may call him that, arrived shortly after four, when Jenkins came into our chambers with a calling card in his hand for Barker. It was none too clean, I noticed, and a corner had been creased and straightened. It bore the legend: HENRY CATHCART, ESQ.

“Show him in, Jenkins,” Barker said, after a glance at the card.

“Very good, sir,” Jenkins replied, but as he passed me he raised his eyebrows as if to say Wait until you see this one.

In a moment, our visitor came in, slowly, gravely, as if he were a headmaster at vespers. I saw what had caused Jenkins’s brows to flutter. First of all, the fellow had the purple ears, veined cheeks, and swollen nose of the inveterate drinker. His pale eyes did not seem to focus on anything in particular but floated about like poached eggs in water. His clothes were patched, the bottoms of his trousers frayed, and his collar had been worn on both sides, and yet there was something in his well-cut, gray-shot beard and the careful knot of his tie that told me he still cared about his appearance. It had been I who had undergone such a scrutiny of dress when I was hired a little over two months earlier, and now I was doing the scrutinizing. Mr. Cathcart did not come out well. I began to think the Sponge soaked up nothing more than liquor.

Barker rose. “How do you do, Mr. Cathcart?”

“As well as to be expected in this hard world of ours, Your Honor, I thank you. And you?”

“I am well. May I present my assistant, Mr. Thomas Llewelyn?”

The old fellow, if indeed he was old, bowed gravely to me.

“Good afternoon, young man,” he said. “I hope you appreciate your position here. There are many who covet it.”

“Yes, sir, thank you,” I said, wondering if he had been one of the applicants for the position.

“Would you care for a cigar, Mr. Cathcart?” Barker continued, raising the lid of the box on his desk. He was treating the old sot well, I thought.

“I thank you, sir,” Cathcart said, taking one from the box and pocketing it. “I shall enjoy it later, with your permission.”

“But of course. I would like to avail myself of your services for the week, if you are available.”

“As it happens, I am between engagements,” the fellow said with a slight air of pomposity, as if he were a master craftsman. “Where might I be working, if I may ask?”

“The Crook and Harp in Seven Dials.”

“Ah! The old Crooked Harp. I know it well. The main room seats over seventy, and the Guinness is always fresh, since they go through it so quickly. A word of warning, however: they water down the whiskey after nine of a Friday night.” He tapped the side of his nose with his finger.

“Er, we shall remember that, thank you. Are your terms still the same?”

“Well, sir, I’ve been much in demand of late among your brethren. I still charge a pound a night, but some have been good enough to add a small remuneration at the end of a case.” Cathcart stroked his beard daintily. I had to stop myself from laughing.

“I would expect nothing less. Thomas, give Mr. Cathcart a five-pound note.” I took out the note from the wallet I carried for my employer, and then subtracted the amount from the ledger on my desk. Henry the Sponge pulled a change purse from his pocket and folded the bill until it finally fit.

“When shall I report?”

“Friday, before five.”

“Is there anything specific I should listen for?”

“Fenian activity involving the bombing of Scotland Yard.”

The old man nodded sagely. “Presumed as much. Friday it is, gentlemen.” He raised a disreputable bowler an inch off his head, then solemnly made his way out of the room. Something about his stately manner made us go to the bow window and watch as he passed down Craig’s Court and into Whitehall Street.

“So, he’s an informant. One of your watchers,” I said.

“Henry Cathcart has a unique gift. He can slip into a public house unnoticed and drink himself into oblivion.”

I smiled. “I gathered that, but so could anyone.”

“True, but who else could wake the next morning and be able to repeat word for word every conversation that went on around him all night? They don’t call him the Sponge for his intake of alcohol. He’s got a horror of the regular police, but he’s worked for me on a case or two. He works for whom he wishes and can pick and choose.”

We took a cab home and changed for dinner. Though it was just the two of us, Cyrus Barker insisted upon formal attire when we dined together. There were to be no dressing gowns and no lounge suits or smoking jackets. The Guv had stated on several occasions that it is all too easy for standards to slip, and when that happened, it would be easier to glue an eggshell back together than to return things to how they had once been. For my part, I appreciated observing the formal rituals of a genteel life. The moldy garret of three months ago was still recent enough for me to remember how hard the world can be.

We were halfway through dinner, and Barker was making some point about the Irish view of English imperialism, when the telephone rang. My employer frowned. Modern contrivances are all well and good but not when they interrupt dinner.