Will Thomas - To Kingdom Come

It is not an easy task to go from sound sleep to fully dressed and out the door in three minutes, but somehow I managed it. I wouldn’t pass inspection in Savile Row, with my collarless nightshirt thrust into my trousers, but at that point, I was glad to have each shoe on the right foot. We stealthily moved down the stairs, but once we were outside, Barker was off like a shot.

“Are you sure it was Maire?” I asked, still skeptical that she wasn’t in bed, enjoying a well-deserved slumber. “Perhaps it was Dunleavy.”

“The figure I saw was in a cloak, but only Miss O’Casey is that small. Hurry along, lad. Don’t dawdle.”

For the hundredth time, I wished I had my employer’s long legs and his stamina. It took all I had to keep up with him, and he was sporting half a stone of extra weight.

We reached the intersection of Water Street and the Strand and headed deeper into the poor section of Liverpool.

“Could it have been another woman delivering a message?” I asked, still convinced it could not be Maire.

“Possibly,” he growled. “This part of town has been a front for more than one faction, or so Dunleavy has informed me.”

“So someone could have sent the O’Caseys a message,” I insisted.

“Or Miss O’Casey herself is delivering one in return.”

I pondered that for a moment as we walked along Strand Street. We were in the Irish slums now. Broken-down tenements stood on either side of the street. My attention was distracted by a beggar child, and when I looked up, the figure ahead of us had disappeared like a will-o’-the-wisp.

“Where did she go?”

Barker pointed to the left. “Into that court there.”

It was a villainous-looking square. The worst section of Whitechapel could equal but not surpass it. The court was formed by back entrances to bawdy and public houses. Men leaned against the walls with dazed expressions or slumbered on the dirty ground.

“What’s that smell?” I asked. It was cloying and slightly sweet.

“Opium,” he answered, pointing. “She appears to have gone in that door there.”

Barker plunged into a doorway. I followed. We were in a dark hallway, lit by a single, uncovered gas jet. The Guv’nor hurried down the hall until we came to a fork in the road, that is, a stairwell going up and down.

“Should we-”

“Ssh!” Barker put his hand on my shoulder, and we listened intently. He had a complete knowledge of the nervous system and how to attack various places he called pressure points. I hoped it was merely training that caused his thumb to press against one of the nerves near my collarbone just then. My fingers started to tingle.

“This way!” He was off down the stairs like a hound who’d heard the huntsman’s horn. Under normal circumstances, nothing could have induced me to go down such a rickety-looking stairwell, but I didn’t have the luxury of refusing. I hurtled down in the semidarkness after my employer.

We were in a hallway lined with doorways, with women standing in them. Fallen women they were, of the lowest order. The rooms were little more than cages. One glimpse of the first rouge-cheeked, scrofulous wretch, old beyond her years, was enough to keep my eyes riveted to the floor from then on. I hurried along behind my employer, despite the painted talons that brushed my sleeve or ran through my hair. It was a nightmarish world, the light from a silken shawl thrown over a gas lamp splashing scarlet over everything.

At the far end of the hall, Barker plunged down yet another stairwell. I began to feel as if we were descending through the various circles of Hell. We were now a full two stories underground. The wooden floor had given way to earth, and the walls were beamed like mine shafts. These appeared to be merely tunnels dug to escape the law. We reached the far end of one and found nothing but a dead end and a stone wall.

“We’ve been outfoxed,” Barker said, turning and walking back. “Let us double back up to the next floor and see if the trail is cold.”

I followed him up the last staircase and we stood a moment, debating what to do next. I certainly didn’t want to go down the red-tinged hallway again.

“Cold as an Orkney winter,” the Guv’nor declared. “Oh, well. It may have been nothing, as you say. Let us continue up this stairwell and see where it leads.”

On the next floor, there was what passed for a reception hall of one of the illicit establishments. Luckily, the men and women there were too gin soaked to notice us as we passed among them and out of the building. I was glad to get the odors of patchouli and opium and unwashed humanity out of my nostrils.

“There’s nothing else for us here,” Barker decided. “Let’s go back to our beds.”

“That sounds like a good plan,” I said. “Do you still think it was Maire?”

Barker shrugged. “Who can say? I thought it was Miss O’Casey, but she was a good distance away. It is even possible that we were deliberately lured out of the house, though the reason for such a ruse escapes me, unless they are onto us.”

We were passing by the Strand again, and I was just about to make some remark, when there was a sudden clatter of shoes, and I was suddenly knocked off my feet. My head hit the cobblestones, and I tried to struggle, but there was more than one man on top of me. The familiar cold steel of bracelets closed about my wrists. I was thrown over onto my back, a bull’s-eye shone in my eyes, and my throat felt the unwelcome weight of a truncheon. I couldn’t see my attackers behind the lantern or what had happened to Barker, but if he was in a similar situation, we were in a fine mess.

“Sir!” I cried.

“Do not struggle, lad!” I heard my employer’s low voice from a half dozen yards away.

A face came into the light, looking me over carefully. It was a meaty face with a brushy mustache and a blue helmet, a sergeant of the Liverpool police.

“We been waitin’ for you two blokes to come back down here. Glad you could oblige us.”

As Barker and I were hefted to our feet and prodded along, bruised and shackled, to the station in Wapping Street, I reflected on how that which you most fear will happen so often comes to pass.

Breathe in, I told myself. Breathe out. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Anything but dwell on the fact that there were darbies on my wrists again and a truncheon prodding me in the kidneys. No more, I told myself. No more. I’d learned my lesson. I’d sworn I’d never give anyone reason to throw me back in stir. How did I get in this situation? We were just walking down the street, like normal citizens. We hadn’t been doing anything illegal. We would have been safe if only we’d stayed in our beds, but our fool’s errand had brought us in harm’s way.

We were tricked, I told myself. We’d raced out after her, and now we’d been jugged as easily as a hare. Barker couldn’t reveal our identities and our reason for being in Liverpool. I knew we’d promised Anderson we wouldn’t involve the Home Office, but back then, the chances of discovery had seemed so remote. Surely, I thought, the emergency of the situation warranted disclosing who we were to the authorities .

I looked over at Barker, wondering what he was thinking. He was marching along with his hands behind his back, his head down. He might have been wandering in Hyde Park, deep in thought, for all his appearance. I envied him his ability to retreat at any moment to some remote corner of his mind, as cold and mystical as Lhasa or Kathmandu.

Suddenly, Barker did something I’d never seen him do before. He tripped, sprawling face-first in the street. Barker never tripped. He was as sure-footed as a cat. As the men swarmed over him and yanked him again to his feet, I tried to read his expression. His cheek was bruised, and he looked disoriented. Was it defeat, or was he up to something?