Will Thomas - To Kingdom Come

“Mr. Penrith,” Dunleavy said. “Would you care to say a few words?”

“Me?” I asked. I hadn’t expected to give a speech. “No, sir. I merely wish everyone to know that Mr. van Rhyn’s goals are my goals. If he has thrown in his lot with you, I’ll give all that I have to help you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Dunleavy said, flashing a munificent smile upon me. “There you have it, boys. If Her Majesty’s government sees fit to ignore our little warning, as they appear to have done, then we have no choice but to teach them a lesson. Go on with your private lives and continue to train yourselves, but be ready within the week for a demonstration that would make the Prime Minister weak at the knees if he could see it.”

That was our introduction to the desperate men who had bombed London. They all stood and shook our hands, full of confidence in their leader and his plans. The two men O’Casey and McKeller had brought with them, Padraig and Colin Bannon, shook my hand before leaving. They were thin, tough-looking fellows in tweed caps, twins who smoked short clay pipes and spoke little.

“Glad you happened along when you did,” Fergus McKeller said, grasping my hand. His hand was like a vise, clamping down and beginning to crush mine. It was the sort of trick one saw in the school yard, but effective for all that. If I didn’t put an end to it, he would attempt it every time I met him. Luckily, Barker had shown me a trick or two. I reached across and casually pulled back on his little finger. It is the weakest part of the hand, with the tensile strength of a carrot. Evidently, McKeller agreed. He let go, gave me an evil grin and a wink, and went over to confer with his friend O’Casey.

“I’ll show you to your room, gentlemen,” Miss O’Casey murmured behind us, and my employer and I gathered our belongings and followed her up the stairs. She seemed a demure, proper young woman, but having led a bachelor’s existence in Barker’s household, I couldn’t help but notice the rustle of her dress and the gentle sway of her form as she climbed the staircase. I heard the Guv clear his throat behind me. It was a none-too-subtle reminder to keep my thoughts on the case.

Our room wasn’t Claridge’s, or even the Midland Hotel, but it was serviceable. It was a long room with two narrow beds, two chairs, a wardrobe, and a large bureau. There were feminine touches in the room, such as an embroidered coverlet. I hazarded a guess that the girl had made them all.

“You have no objection to my leaving the window open a little, Miss O’Casey?” Barker asked. “I prefer fresh air in the evenings.”

“Of course,” she said. It was my first chance to get a proper look at her. She was a beauty, with fair skin, lightly freckled across the nose, fine blue eyes, and a head of thick auburn curls. She wore a plain black dress with an apron tied around her waist, but even in severe clothing, she was still quite charming. In this somewhat shabby house, she had the kind of beauty society girls in London struggled hard for and paid fortunes to attain, and very rarely succeeded.

“And tobacco?” Barker continued. “May I smoke in this room?”

“Provided you’re not in the habit of falling asleep while doing so. I shall leave you to settle in.”

After she left, the Guv looked after her, and favored me with a cold smile. “I would say she is not the sort of woman to be trifled with,” he pronounced. “In her own way, she is part of the faction. There is a desk downstairs which is too dainty to belong to anyone else. On it is a Gaelic grammar book. She is part of the movement to return Ireland to its native language.”

“Why have we moved here, sir, if I may ask? I would have thought that you’d wish to stay close to the faction’s leader.”

Barker sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs, and put a foot up. He spoke in a low tone so he wouldn’t be overheard. “You have to understand the situation, lad. We have to remain adaptable and react quickly to any new information. Dunleavy was grafted onto this faction, but McKeller, O’Casey, and the Bannon brothers have likely been friends since childhood. They function as a team. Perhaps they were fortunate to find such a well-known spokesman as the colonel, but he, too, was fortunate to come across a group of such earnest, radical-thinking young men. I need to get as close to the inner workings of the faction as possible.

“The last two hours with Colonel Dunleavy have been very informative. As I previously mentioned, he fought for the Confederacy. I would say that he possesses bravery, spirit, and a natural ability to influence others. I do not think, however, that he is a very intelligent man, and that worries me. Either his threat was made on the spur of the moment, and he is attempting to deliver what he has promised, or the plan to bomb London was calculated by someone else. I don’t care for either of the choices. I wish I could convince myself that this was solely his doing.”

“What makes you think him incapable?” I asked.

“I suspect that through much of his youth he got by on family money. I would hazard a guess that he is the youngest son of the Dunleavy family and hence was relegated to the military. Alfred Dunleavy appears to be a very spoiled man. I imagine he started debauching himself in military college and hasn’t stopped since. The loss of his side in the war was a deep blow to him, and was followed by his family’s financial losses. He was trained for nothing but war and drinking, and being of Irish descent, he naturally drifted to the radical fringe, where he joined in a mad attempt they made to hold Toronto for ransom in 1868. It was a failure, as well, and serving on losing sides must haunt him. Note his fondness for Confederate gray. Dunleavy was imprisoned four years for his part in the affair, and he is very proud of it. It is his continuing entree into Irish-American politics and the coffers that go with it. He spoke of a book he is writing, his memoirs, but if he were an astute man, he’d have finished it long before now and used it to his advantage.”

“You’ve formed an opinion of him quickly,” I noted.

“It is important in our work, lad, to be able to evaluate men quickly, and to make a few constructive inferences. The most important thing right now is that I believe that this plan is brilliant, and I do not think him a brilliant man. Therefore, it is possible someone else is doing the thinking for him.”

“Could it be one of the faction members, like Garrity or O’Casey?” I asked. “It would be a good combination of their brains and his name.”

“You could very possibly be right,” he admitted. “If everything goes according to what Dunleavy said, he could find himself the first official leader of Ireland, with both the younger men standing in the wings. Between the three of them, they could have Irish politics sewn up for the next twenty years, at least.”

“If it isn’t them, then who could it be?”

“First of all, it could be one of the men we spoke of earlier: Rossa, Davitt, Cusack, or O’Muircheartaigh. The latter, I’ve said before, is a master strategist, but I cannot picture him sharing his plans with another faction when he’s got one of his own.”

“I see.”

“What do you think of the Bannon brothers as candidates?” he asked.

“Them? I hardly think so,” I said. “They seemed rather slow, and those clay pipes of theirs …”

“Not necessarily, lad. Pipe smokers are often strategists, and the more silent they are, the more I wonder what they are thinking.”

“Well,” I said bitterly, “you’ve narrowed it down to just about everyone in this business but Dunleavy.”

“Yes, but there is still time yet. Not plenty of time, but time enough. If it makes you feel better, by all means, include the colonel as a suspect. It’s still conceivable that the old fellow had a rare stroke of genius.”