Will Thomas - The Limehouse Text

“I need to explain,” she said to me in a low voice.

“You don’t, actually,” I responded. “It was just dinner, after all, not a proposal of marriage. I’m not exactly overjoyed by your personal arrangements, but of course you are free to make your choice.”

“No chance for another dinner sometime, then?”

“Well, not while he is living in your house, no. I do prefer no audience when I kiss you.”

She smiled, but what it meant exactly I could not tell. I was distracted by the arrival of Mr. K’ing himself. He had not sent an emissary but had actually come in person. The triad leader swept through the door and set his wide-brimmed hat upon the table.

“I cannot be in this room!” Woo announced. “This fellow is a known criminal, and as an official of the Asian Aid Society, I must not be seen to have dealings with such a person!”

I was about to ask why he should be so particular now, when I had seen him get out of Mr. K’ing’s cab the other night, but I stopped myself. Barker might not care to have that information revealed.

“Mr. Woo, I warn you that the text must not be translated for the Foreign Office,” K’ing stated. “It is the personal property of the Chinese imperial government and must not be read by the English.”

“It is not your part to say what the property of the imperial government is or is not,” Woo answered. “You are a common criminal.”

“Nonsense,” K’ing countered. “I am a businessman.”

As they bickered, I heard the last invited guest behind me before I saw him. One could not mistake the sound of hobnails on a wooden floor.

“’Zis a private party?” Patrick Hooligan spoke in his raspy voice. “’Ello, K’ingy, old boy.”

Now it was K’ing’s turn to be uncomfortable. “You are in triad territory,” he snapped.

“Yes, well, I got-what’s the word?-I got dispensation. An invite from old Push hisself here. Command performance, you might say.”

Hooligan took a seat at the table and immediately started cleaning his nails with a knife, as if the proceedings did not interest him at all.

We were all assembled. At the head of the T-shaped table, Barker and Poole sat. I flanked Barker while Ho stood at his elbow. Down the right side sat Hettie Petulengro, Charlie Han, and Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch. Pollock Forbes sat at the foot, and on the left were Patrick Hooligan, Jimmy Woo, and Mr. K’ing.

Barker stood to address the group. “I have called you here today because you are all involved in the investigation of the death of Inspector Bainbridge or my late assistant Quong or one of several other murders that have occurred. I am not implying that anyone in this room is the killer, merely that each of you is involved in some fashion.”

The room erupted. Everyone began speaking at once, denying the accusations and blaming each other.

“Silence!” Poole boomed. “You can take your medicine here or you can take it down in A Division. Which’ll it be?”

That silenced the group. Barker surveyed them and continued.

“Thank you. Let me begin by saying that one of you is not as he seems. Forbes?”

Pollock Forbes knit his fingers in front of him. “Ah, yes,” he began. “At Mr. Barker’s request, I did some investigating at Cambridge. It appeared they do have a record of a James Woo, a student from China, but no one there seems to recall him, and if anything, I think Mr. Woo here is rather memorable. I took a closer look at the registry entry. I am afraid it was a forgery.”

Barker turned to Woo and said, “Would you care to comment, Mr. Woo, if that is your name?”

Woo looked a little deflated. He removed his monocle and put it in his pocket.

“Very well, Mr. Barker,” he said, adopting a more serious tone. “You leave me no choice. I am an agent of the imperial government,” he explained. “I was sent to recover the text by the Empress herself. When I arrived here, it became necessary to adopt an identity and search for it street by street. I chose to work as an interpreter at the Asian Aid Society, so I could get to know the Chinese in England. I inserted the record in the files at Cambridge.”

“You also worked for the Foreign Office and for Mr. K’ing,” Barker pointed out. “That’s quite a conflict of interest.”

Woo looked uncomfortably at the triad leader. “It became necessary to get to know Mr. K’ing’s operations and what the Foreign Office was doing to recover the text. I thought it likely K’ing had the text in his possession.”

“If you had acquired the text, what would you have done with it?” Barker asked.

“I would have taken it back to the Forbidden City, old sp-sorry. I would give it to the Dowager Empress.”

“And what would she do with it?”

“Whatever she wishes, of course. It would become her property. I assume it would be watched by armed guards with the other treasures in the palace. Not that it is a treasure, mind you.”

“It would not be returned to the Xi Jiang Temple?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Woo said. “It is best to keep it in the Forbidden City. The area near the Xi Jiang monastery has been unstable since the Heavenly War. The south is still full of revolutionaries, anxious to overthrow the Manchus.”

“I can’t believe this,” Campbell-Ffinch finally spoke up. “This little popinjay, an agent for the Chinese government?”

“Do shut up, Campbell-Ffinch,” Woo said. “The hardest part of my assignment has been working with you. If all Foreign Office men are as incompetent as you, I fear for this country of yours.”

“Well, I never!” the English agent blustered.

Looking across, I saw a slight smile on Pollock Forbes’s face.

Barker turned to Patrick Hooligan. “And you, Mr. Hooligan. If you had the text, what would you do with it?”

“I told yer, Push, I’d sell it. Sell it to the highest bidder. All this talk about it not having worth is codswallop. Start threatening to sell it to someone else and you’d be surprised at how high the biddin’ can go.”

“What would you do with the money?”

Hooligan looked over at his rival, Mr. K’ing, who was eyeing him as if he were vermin. Barker and I knew he’d use it to gain more power and influence in the East End, but he wasn’t about to say it in front of K’ing. “Dunno. P’raps buy a good racehorse. You can make a powerful lot o’ money with a good racehorse.”

“I see,” Barker said. He turned and faced the other side of the table. “Miss Petulengro, let us say for the sake of argument that you owned the manuscript. What would you do with it?”

“I did have the manuscript,” she pointed out. “It means naught to me. It’s just a book with stick figures in it. I can’t read it. It’s nothing but trouble as far as I’m concerned. I’d give it to you. You might be a copper, but you seem straight as an arrow to me.”

She couldn’t help looking at me and I at her. If Barker noticed the fraternization between his assistant and one of the witnesses, he didn’t let on. Instead, he turned to Charlie Han.

“And you, Mr. Han. Let us say I were able to put the text into your hands right now. What would you do with it?”

Han shrugged. “I dunno. I cannot read. I sell it, buy more betel nut, if Hettie don’t want it.”

Barker turned to Mr. K’ing. “Sir,” he said. “Shall I repeat the question I have asked everyone else?”

K’ing ran a finger over his thin mustache. “I have no personal interest in the text, Mr. Barker. I realize it is dangerous. I suppose I would see it delivered to China on the Blue Funnel line and into the hands of a responsible person, who would take it back to the Xi Jiang Temple.”

Barker nodded. “And you, Mr. Campbell-Ffinch, I suppose you would-”