Will Thomas - The Limehouse Text

When the brougham stopped in front of a two-story building near the waterfront, I had the cabby stop at the end of the street. I peered through the small cab window in time to see the woman’s familiar black-clad figure, with the even more familiar black Pekingese in her arms. I was puzzling over a dozen questions in my mind. Was Barker actually keeping a woman here, and if so, to what end? I paid the cabby and slowly sauntered past.

The house was well kept for the area, without being ostentatious. It was clapboard, but none of the boards was in disrepair and the building had been recently painted. As I watched, a Chinese maid opened a window on the first floor. It didn’t require an enquiry agent to discern that the woman’s room must be there. My vigilance was rewarded when I heard Harm bark in the upper room. But was the home a private residence or let rooms? The question was important, since I couldn’t go into one but might pass freely into the other. Idly crossing the street, I dared press an eye against the window beside the door. I saw a corridor full of doors, no sitting room or hall. Excellent. I opened the door and stepped inside.

I stood a moment on the threshold and closed the door slowly, acclimating myself to the sounds around me. I tensed when a door opened and an elderly Chinese man came out, but he shuffled by without comment or interest and left the building.

I could leave, I told myself, or I could go upstairs and introduce myself. Perhaps I could say that I was in the area and thought I would check on the dog, or that we were investigating Quong’s death and I wished to see the residence whose address he had written in the pawnshop register. No, none of those would wash. I should leave.

I should have, but I didn’t. In his novels, the writer Thomas Hardy often speaks of the Fates as if we are all figures in some universal Greek tragedy, always getting into trouble because of inner weaknesses we cannot control. I though it rather an un-Christian viewpoint, but I went up the stairs just the same.

The upper floor was much like the lower, save that it had a few feminine touches. The maid had just come from serving her mistress and had taken a moment to idly look out of a window in the back of the house that butted against the docks. She turned when she heard me reach the top of the stairs.

“I wonder if I might have a word with your mistress,” I said.

She did nothing save regard me coolly. It occurred to me that she did not speak English.

“Your mistress,” I repeated, a trifle louder, as if it would help. “Miss Winter. I wish to speak with her. I believe she has my employer’s dog.”

I’m convinced that Harm, for all the five years or so he had lived upon this earth, knows only about three words, but one of them is “dog.” From the flat to the right, he began his clarion cry, a sound that conjures up images of his being roasted on a spit alive. The maid still did not move. I took three steps before her arm went out, braced against the wall, barring me from the door. Apparently, she thought herself a bodyguard as well as a maid, which was laughable. She was a pretty little thing, in her pigtail and silk pajama suit, and her China doll face was difficult to take seriously.

“Look here, if you’ll just move,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder.

The next thing I knew I was sliding across the floor on my back. My shoulder hit the railing so hard I careened off it and slid down a short flight of steps to the first landing. Where had this slip of a girl learned to kick like a mule? Had I been alone, I would have nursed my wounds, but the girl who had been so unladylike as to kick me was still watching, so I shook it off. I’d had worse, or at least as bad. I stood up and tried again. I was not going to be stopped from speaking with Barker’s dog keeper by a chit like her.

The girl actually dared raise her arms up in a fighting stance, left hand out, weight on the back foot, front foot up on its toes-what Barker called a cat stance. I was not going to get by her, if she could help it. Very well, I thought, I shall go through you then, if it must be.

I moved forward again and when I was within her reach, she tried another kick, but I was too smart for her. I blocked it handily and the two punches that came after it. It left her vulnerable for a punch of my own and my hand shot out involuntarily before I stopped myself. I had never struck a girl before, and I’d like to believe it was not in my character to do so. Apparently, she had no such scruples. She clouted me on the chin with her small hand rather like the knock from a wooden cane, then kicked at me. I had no choice but to retreat, which brought a small smile to the girl’s face.

I had no idea what to do. I knew six or seven good kicks myself, but I wouldn’t use them on her, she-tiger though she was, and the dozen or more hand strikes, eye gouges, claws, punches, chops, and others were all forbidden as well. This was an absurd situation. I had been taught all my life that women should be treated with kindness and respect by a gentleman, and though she was Chinese, she was still very much a girl. Kicking and striking were out, which only left one alternative and a very intimate one at that: the Japanese wrestling holds that Barker had been teaching me, which he had formerly taught at Scotland Yard.

She clipped me with another left to the chin, but it was a glancing blow, for I was already moving to my right, catching her around the waist with my left arm and coming ’round behind her. Before she had a chance to react, I snaked my other hand around and clasped it over my first as solid as if they had been locked together. I was suddenly very aware that Chinese girls do not wear corsets, if in fact they wear anything at all under those silk pajama suits. I felt a blush rising from under my collar, but it stopped suddenly as a pair of thumbs went into my eyes.

I would like to think in the past eleven months of constant practice and tutelage under Cyrus Barker that I had grown more lean and muscular. Nothing can be done, however, to train a pair of eyes to withstand a woman’s thumbs, save to pull back one’s head, duck away from her, and put one’s head down out of harm’s way. As I pulled away, she hopped on my toes and kicked my shins. Female or not, I was going to have to do something. But what? Bearing down with my forehead as hard as I could, I succeeded in reaching my arms down far enough to get my hands around her lower limbs and I scooped her up off the floor as if she were a basket of laundry. She began spitting words at me in Chinese, no doubt casting aspersions upon my ancestors, kicking her feet madly in the air and clutching for whatever projecting hair or ears I might have about my person. The worst part was, now that I had her I had no idea what to do with her. For the first time, it dawned on me that coming here had not been one of my brighter ideas.

I spied a window off to the side, the very one she had been looking out as I came up the stairs. My ear caught the call of a gull as it swooped by and my nose could not miss the smell of the Thames. It was a matter of a moment to lift her out the window and to drop her out of my arms and I hoped, out of my life for good. As it turned out, the tide was not yet fully in, and the young maid, pigtail flying, pink pajamas rippling, landed in a deep mudbank below.

Western literature makes much of the almond eyes of the Oriental, but hers were as round at that moment as the sun overhead, as she sat covered in mud from her slippers to her plaited hair. It could have been worse, I told myself. At least I hadn’t dropped her on a wooden boardwalk or a stone pier. When she finally caught her breath she began bellowing and I left her to it. I pulled in my head, crossed the hall, and opened the door. Harm surged out, tail wagging, barking his protests that he had missed all the fun.