“You must forgive me, gentlemen,” he said, sniffing once or twice. “This is a spiritual battle that I have fought my entire adult life.”
“Not at all, sir,” Barker replied. “It does you credit. Tell me, do you have many Sicilians who are members of your parish and come to Mass?”
“Yes, hundreds. We are too small a district to divide ourselves by point of origin.”
“Could you speculate upon how they would feel if the Mafia were here?”
Amati gave a grim smile. “You needn’t be so circumspect, Mr. Barker. The Mafia is here. I know it. I see the signs. We all do. As to your question, the old ones are fearful. They have seen too much. The young are impressionable and idle. They can’t find enough work to keep them occupied. These are the same conditions under which the Mafia began. As for the rest, they don’t want the Honored Society here, but they have been conditioned to fear and obey; and they, too, struggle to find work. I wish I had something better to tell you, but there you are. You are not Catholic?”
My employer and I glanced at each other.
“No, sir,” he replied. “We are both nonconformists.”
“But you are men of faith?”
“Aye,” Barker replied. “I think we can agree on that term.”
“Then I shall renew my prayers and add your names to them, if you don’t mind.”
“I thank you, but don’t mention our names to anyone else. At this point, we don’t know for certain whom to trust.”
The remark made me think of the Barker clan motto, which was painted on a faded shield on the wall behind my employer’s desk. Appropriately enough, it was in Latin. Fide, sed qui, vide. “Trust, but be careful in whom.”
“That is a difficult thing to know, even in the best of times,” the priest replied. “My office is at your disposal. If I can help you in any way, you have but to ask.”
We stood and made our way out of the church and then walked several streets in silence. Barker was deep in thought, sometimes coming to a stop in the middle of the pavement. I let him alone, knowing he’d tell me when he was ready to speak.
“I keep thinking that a smarter man than I would find a better way to flush out the Mafia than the way a beater does partridges. They do beat for partridges, don’t they, Thomas?”
“I believe so,” I hazarded.
“A smarter man would not use something as obvious as a fight at the docks. There must be a better solution. If only I could think!” The latter remarks were punctuated by my employer smiting his forehead with his fist.
“Perhaps there isn’t a better solution,” I told him. “If there had been, I’m sure you would have thought of it. They may be common uneducated criminals-”
I never finished my sentence. A cab pulled to the curb, scraping the wheel against it. We both reached into our pockets and grasped our revolver butts. The occupant leaned forward out of the gloom of the cab, and he was the last person I expected to see.
“Inspector Pettigrilli,” Barker rumbled. “I thought you were in Liverpool.”
“I was,” the inspector replied, reaching into the confines of his coat. I had a premonition of what he would give us. “This was waiting for me at my hotel. How did they know? They are dogging my steps even now!”
His hand shaking, he gave Barker the note. From where I stood, I could see that it was marked with the accursed black handprint.
14
"I knew it was only a matter of time before Faldo found me,” said Pettigrilli. It had obviously been penned by the same author as the previous notes. Pettigrilli translated for us: “Your days on this earth are numbered. I am the eraser that will wipe away the chalk marks of your days.”
“Poetic,” Barker commented, “if a trifle melodramatic. What is your plan?”
Pettigrilli folded it and put it back in his pocket, patting his breast. “I’m taking it to Scotland Yard,” he said. “I know a serious threat when I see one.”
“Why are you here in Clerkenwell?” I asked. “It is out of your way.”
“I leased a flat here last week, but this has changed my mind. London is no safer than Palermo. I have collected my belongings and terminated the lease. I believe I shall return to Paris immediately. Ah! But, forgive my manners. This is Constable Newton, who, he assures me, is no relation to the great philosopher and astronomer. He met me at Euston Station and is to escort me as far as Whitehall.”
The constable tugged on the brim of his helmet in greeting.
“Mr. Barker, I wonder if you and your assistant would accompany us back to A Division as well,” the inspector went on. “It was a mistake to come back to Clerkenwell. I have noticed the stares from passersby. They know something is afoot.”
“Certainly we shall see you back,” the Guv said. “There is a cab coming down the street now. We’ll follow you.”
We snared the hansom and were soon following Pettigrilli and Constable Newton.
“There are certainly a lot of Black Hand notes fluttering about London lately,” I commented. “Perhaps whoever is plotting this Sicilian onslaught has engaged the services of a professional scrivener.”
“I’ll wager that note was posted to Liverpool from here in Clerkenwell,” Barker growled.
“If they were Irish instead of Italian, Scotland Yard would have this entire district locked up. Come to think of it, wasn’t the very first Irish bombing here in Clerkenwell?”
“Very good, lad,” Barker said. “That was in ’sixty-seven, long before my time. This was the Irish district then.”
“And before that, it was the setting for Oliver Twist.”
“Who?”
I keep forgetting Barker doesn’t read popular literature. “Dickens, sir. It’s another book by Charles Dickens.”
“I suppose I shall have to read him, if merely to understand your references. Blast!”
This latter was due to a delivery van that had insinuated itself into the space between our two vehicles. Our cabman cursed loudly and pulled the reins hard, bringing us to a shuddering standstill. The van took its time crossing in front of us, while the deliverymen traded remarks with the cabman in two languages. One of them unlocked the gate to a small courtyard, while the other backed his pair of draft horses into it step by step. Farther down the street ahead of us, there was a loud report, followed a moment later by another.
“Pay him!” Barker cried, struggling through the doors of the cab. I reached into my pocket and tossed up a handful of coins through the trapdoor before jumping down to the pavement. I was under no illusion that the sounds were something innocent. I followed Barker as best I could, noting as I ran that there was no sign of Pettigrilli’s cab anywhere ahead of us.
Barker stopped, and when I reached his side, I caught the acrid odor of gunpowder. My employer pointed down to fresh wheel tracks crossing the pavement in front of us leading to a pair of livery stable doors. We both reached into our coats for our pistols, making an elderly gentleman coming toward us turn and scuttle away. Cautiously, we pushed the doors open and stepped forward. The odor was stronger inside the stable.
My eyes took a moment to adjust to the change from sunlight to deep shadow. Motes hung heavily in the air. In the center of the stable was Pettigrilli’s cab, its horse pushing and pulling in an effort to get out of the traces. There was no one on the driver’s perch and the stable appeared empty. We moved forward cautiously. The windows on either side of the vehicle had been blown out, shattering glass and wood. A pair of limbs extended out under the bat wing doors, unmoving. Gingerly, I leaned in and then wished I hadn’t. The cab was awash in gore. Constable Newton and the inspector lay slumped over each other, their heads almost blown apart. Each had received a blast through the windows beside them.
“Lad,” Barker said, pointing with his gun. A second pair of doors on the other side of the stable had been left open, and there were wheel tracks in the straw.