Will Thomas - Some Danger Involved

"Give it up, Giorgio," Gigliotti purred. "You're hopelessly outclassed. You know Mr. Barker's reputation. Our friend here is the most scientific and the dirtiest fighter in England."

Barker didn't talk but hefted Serafini into a chair so violently that it skittered across the tile a foot. The man glared at my employer, and his face was now as red as a side of beef.

"I haven't said you did anything," Barker said. "I'm asking you. Were you paid to shoot at my assistant?"

"I was not," he said, sullenly.

"And did you shoot at him?"

"No, I didn't. I've never even seen this pipsqueak before. If I'm sent to kill someone, I kills 'em. I'm h'on the job every hour, day and night, until it's finished. I heard all about the little muck-up. If I'd missed the first shot, d'you think I'd run? No! I'd drop the cabman and come in and finish the job at my leisure. It don't matter if I'm seen. What can't be bought off can be warned off."

"There you have it, gentlemen," Gigliotti said, "the answer to your question. You are dealers in logic, and the fact that this little fellow still lives is proof that the great Serafini did not try to kill him."

"Serafini don't try anyfing!" the assassin bellowed.

Barker stood. "Very well, gentlemen, you have convinced me. Mr. Serafini, please forgive any pain I may have caused you, emotionally and physically. I suggest ice for yourЕ erЕ gun hand. As for you, Mr. Gigliotti, you are, as always, the consummate host. Excellent food, and ah! The fine entertainment. May we use your back door?"

Gigliotti waved a hand toward the rear and bawled over his shoulder, "Antony, forget the gelato. Bring Giorgio an espresso and some ice."

We left the restaurant, and I was never so glad to leave a place in my life. On the way out I noticed that the man at the back door was still unconscious. At least, I hoped he was just unconscious.

The alleyway was a simple and ancient lane with a sewer trough in the middle and two rows of anonymous doors. I sensed danger as soon as we stepped outside, and there was a movement in the shadows. I ducked, and just beside me came the sharp sound of metal against the rough brick of the wall. A long, thin dagger clattered at my feet.

"Round the corner, lad, now!" my employer barked. I didn't need a second invitation. There was a small figure approaching in the darkness of the alley. Barker made an abrupt movement, a sudden reaching motion toward it, and a shriek echoed through an alleyway, followed by a volley of curses in a high voice. I reached the street and turned into a shop front, awaiting developments. Barker appeared a moment later, as casually as you please, and began stuffing his pipe, scanning both sides of the street.

"Who was that?" I asked.

"Serafini's wife," came the unlikely response. "Serafini's a pussycat compared to the missus. You don't get one without the other, you know. The woman's practically feral."

"What did you do?"

"Oh, I gave her a lesson in kind. One shouldn't throw knives in public."

"You threw a knife at her?" I asked, incredulously.

"Of course not," he answered, with an air of innocence. "I merely gave her a token of my esteem."

"What is the Camorra?" I asked, remembering the name and its effect upon Gigliotti.

"It, or rather they are one of the crime families of Naples. Like their rivals, the 'Ndrangheta of Calabria and the Mafia of Sicily, they rode into power on the coattails of Garibaldi. They've divided the country into personal city-states, concentrating power like the Medicis."

I shook my head in wonder. "How did you come by the knowledge, if I may ask?"

"It is my duty to know it," he said, once his pipe was lit. "These societies have very long arms, reaching all the way to London, and anywhere else its immigrants go."

"So there's a headquarters of an Italian criminal organization in Westminster, but a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace? I can hardly believe it."

"Yes," Barker said, with one of his rumbling laughs. "London's a right raucous old lass when you get to know her, isn't she?"

We walked for several blocks, while my heart rate slowly returned to normal. Barker appeared to be moving to some purpose, for at one street, he pointed and began moving in another direction. We had reached Belgravia and were heading east, I think. Ornate shopwindows offered chocolates, jewelry, and all of the other baubles of a spoiled society. All was splendor and respectability here. It was hard to imagine that ten minutes ago a madwoman had thrown a dagger at me.

"Did she really mean to kill us?"

"That was no rubber knife she threw, Thomas."

"But if they're telling the truth, and it was some other chap dressed as Serafini, why did she throw the knife at me?"

"She's a vindictive little vixen and dangerous as a king cobra. I just humiliated her husband in there, and she dotes on the fellow."

We walked on for a minute or two, by the pretty shops full of books and millinery. I must admit I'd had some most interesting conversations since I began this case. "What was it you threw at her?" I asked my employer.

He reached into his coat pocket and placed a penny in my hand. I was perplexed, until I noticed that the edges had been ground down to bladelike sharpness all around. I flipped the heavy coin into the air a time or two, and let it rest in the flat of my palm. "One of my calling cards," he stated.

"Can you hit a target with this?"

"As easily as a bullet. There were rough gangs in Foochow, where I grew up, and any coin or piece of metal that came to hand could become a weapon. We used to make rude targets out of boards and rice sacking and practice for hours."

"It sounds to me as if you had a very interesting childhood."

"Interesting enough, as childhoods go," he said, but I could get nothing further out of him on the subject.

"So where are we going now?"

"Jermyn Street, to look up an old acquaintance."

"Another of your 'watchers'?"

"No, lad, a suspect. Or, at least, I hope he is."

"YouЕ hope?"

"I desperately hope. It is Nightwine."

"The explorer? I thought he was dead."

Barker shook his head. "Not Elias Nightwine, but his son, Sebastian. Perhaps you recall that the father, aside from his travels in Asia, wrote several books espousing what he called 'social atheism.' Something like, If there is no God, then to whom are we accountable, and how is society to be restructured in the new century? Anyway, he voiced these ideas up until his unfortunate demise in a hunting accident in Africa two years ago, leaving his son with a valuable estate just in time to pay off Sebastian's list of creditors and some gambling debts."

"Are you suggesting he may have killed his own father?"

"I'm suggesting that he has no respect for human life whatever. Any form of conscience was trained out of him by his father. He's one of the most dangerous men I've ever come across."

"Incredible," I said. "How does this fit in with the Jews?"

"As an avowed atheist, he has a strong aversion to the Bible and its people. More importantly, I've received information that he's consolidating power among the underworld in London, using extortion and other methods. He lives high and goes through money like water. Sooner or later, he'll try to frighten the Jews, who have a strong, conservative money base in the City. A public crucifixion is just the sort of grand display he'd attempt in order to spread fear among them. This is all speculation, of course, and were I to say it in public, I'd be swarming with solicitors in a trice, for he is litigious to a fault. Nevertheless, it rings true, as you shall see in a few minutes."

Jermyn Street is known for its boot makers and its bachelor apartments, and any up-and-coming young men on the Exchange or in the Home Office would be sure to have chambers there. Mr. Nightwine had not contented himself with a mere pied-а-terre, but had taken out an entire residence. His white brick housefront had an air of respectability about it, which was augmented by a solid-looking and phlegmatic butler, to whom Barker presented his card.