Will Thomas - Some Danger Involved

"Your mother-in-law was some bit of work," Barker said, pouring me another glass of porter. "I looked up her record by the address on your antecedents. Cora Ashby. She had quite a long sheet. Fraud. Theft. Public drunkenness. Vagrancy, and worse. She was quite a dollymop in her younger days."

I looked up at my employer. "I'm not making a hash of it, am I, sir?"

"No, no. Pray continue."

"The common proprieties of polite society are far different from the economic realities of the English poor. With her mother's subtle conniving, Jenny and I were wed within a month, and I suddenly found myself almost the sole support of a family of nine. No change in our domestic arrangements was possible, and I continued living in my room at Magdalen, while Jenny stayed with her family. I couldn't mention my marriage to my family, my classmates, or the administrators, because it was forbidden to underclassmen. I was a naive nineteen-year-old at the mercy of an older woman with much experience and few scruples. She had me in her clutches. If I'd worked hard before, I did so doubly now.

"Between attending lectures and tutorials, studying, and the odd jobs, I was hard at work eighteen hours a day. I lost weight and began to look sallow. All my money went into Mrs. Ashby's hands. Luckily, the tuition and boarding payments were paid by Lord Glendenning's solicitors directly, and she could not get her hands on them.

"Things can always get worse, and they generally do. That winter, Jenny developed a cough. Her mother treated it with alcohol and morphine-laced patent medicines, but it was not until she coughed up blood one morning that I realized it was more than a cold. With her delicate constitution, she was a natural victim of consumption, and with unheated rooms and scant food, she wouldn't last long. During the few minutes I saw her in and around my work, she was fading like a bouquet of roses.

"At this time, I was still batting for the odious Mr. Clay. If anything, he'd gotten worse. He was complaining constantly now that I was an embarrassment to his rooms. I admit I was looking rather shabby. My clothing was wearing out, and my hair needed a barber's attention. But the worst thing about serving him was the stack of gold sovereigns that sat on the edge of his mantel. They had been won in some sort of wager, and Clay kept them there to rankle his friend who had lost. They meant nothing to him, since his father was one of the richest men in Manchester, but they meant the world to me. With just one of those sovereigns, I could bring a doctor to Jenny's side. I had never stolen in my life, but that stack of coins became an obsession. I was aware of it, no matter what I was doing in the rooms, and no matter who was there.

"One day, I could fight temptation no longer and was just reaching out to touch the top sovereign when Clay and two of his cronies walked in the door unexpectedly. I flinched and dropped the coin, which was as good as admitting my guilt. I saw a look of triumph on the Honorable's face. I tried to get past him, to get out of there and run, but he stepped in my way, seizing me by my thin jacket. My nerves had been at a fever pitch for weeks. He didn't know who he was facing. I clouted him a good one on the chin and he was down. In five seconds I had compounded theft with assault. Clay's friends, two strapping lads, seized me by the arms, while he struggled back onto his feet. Clay was an amateur boxer, but you might have thought him professional for the going-over he gave me. As I sagged, nearly unconscious, bleeding from the nose and mouth, they summoned a constable, who took me into custody.

"I'm sure you've inspected the hearing and trial records, and I'd rather not speak about the uncomfortable interviews with Lord Glendenning and my parents. Clay's father, a merchant turned peer, brought all of his influence to bear on the case, and the result was eight months' hard labor. I was broken to the treadmill, and my hands shredded from picking apart oakum. I endured beatings and surly treatment from the guards and from the other inmates. Worst of all, I was separated from my beloved Jenny. She came to see me twice before my trial and once in prison. After that, she was too ill to leave her bed and come to see me. The tuberculosis was consuming her from the inside. On the twentieth of March, she died in that squalid little flat and was buried in an unmarked grave.

"Directly after my release, I attempted to find Jenny's family, but they had skipped out on the rent, and I never found them again. Eventually, I drifted to London, looking for work, as my name was thoroughly blackened in Oxford forever. What little I possessed, I pawned for food and shelter. Then, one morning at the British Museum Reading Room, I found your advertisement in the 'Situations Vacant' column of The Times, and you know the rest."

"I know more than that," Barker said. "You'd skipped out on your rent. The suitcase told me as much. And I suspect that you were considering killing yourself that day. I could see it in your eyes."

"Why did you hire me, sir?" I asked, as Barker replenished my glass yet again.

"I wish you could have seen yourself through my eyes, Thomas. I was watching all of you outside from the bow window. You were the most nondescript fellow I'd ever seen. It was as if you were trying to blend in with the brick wall. I almost overlooked you, standing among all the taller men. I was intrigued when you tossed your suitcase into the dustbin, right under my window. Then you came in and presented me with an Oxford education, or at least the beginnings of one. Better still, you had an eight-month tenure at Oxford Prison, which in many ways is more educational than University. You then sailed through every test as if you'd been practicing for weeks, and you kept your temper in check. A man would have had to be an idiot not to hire you on the spot. Whether you know it or not, you're a natural detective's assistant."

"I thought I was fit for nothing."

"You would think that, lad." He patted my sleeve. "You undervalue yourself."

"So, why did you hire Jenkins?" I asked.

I had made Barker chuckle again. "Jenkins came to fill the position temporarily and never went away again. I can sack him any time, and he can quit. He's an odd fellow, but I've grown used to his ways."

I sat up and put my glass down. The beer had thoroughly loosened my lips.

"So, tell me, sir. How did a Scottish boy end up in China?"

Barker put down his porter. He'd been matching me glass for glass, but so far, it hadn't seemed to affect him.

"My father was a missionary from Perth. He followed the tea clippers to Foochow soon after I was born. My parents stayed several years, developing a congregation of Europeans and Chinese as well. They died when I was eleven. Cholera."

"Good Lord!" I said. I could definitely feel the effects of the porter now. I nearly chipped a tooth navigating the glass to my lips. "So, did you go home?"

"That might have happened in England, lad, and possibly in India, but not in China. The right palms were never crossed, so the gist of it was that I was cut loose on my own."

"Cut loose, sir? In China, at eleven? What did you do?"

"Whatever I could to survive. I was just another street urchin. I started out on the docks, scavenging for food, looking for odd work, and learning how to defend myself the hard way. Eventually, I signed on as a cabin boy aboard a broken-down clipper, looking about as thin and desperate as you did that first day I saw you."

I was trying hard to keep up, but the alcohol was swiftly overtaking my brain. If he told me the rest of his story that night, I didn't catch it. After a while, it seemed sensible to rest my hot, throbbing temple against the nice, cool wood of the table. That is the last thing that I remember.

I awoke some hours later. I'd been asleep in my plate, between the bread and the cheese. My head was throbbing and my shoulders ached. Barker was nowhere to be found.