Rattled the old boy.Tennant smiled.That’s when blackguards fall out.
The inspector hailed another cab and followed the doctor to the corner of East Pall Mall and Whitcomb Street. Scottmounted the steps of the Topkapi Club and disappeared through its exotic doors.
Tennant paid off the cabbie. An interview with the club’s secretary could wait, and the short walk would ease the cramp in his leg, so he headed back to the Yard on foot. The rain had passed, and the London air felt cool and cleansed.Only a temporary respite,Tennant thought,and a good thing, too.
Stackpole would be released in the morning, and a little fog and mist would make trailing him easier.
CHAPTER14
Inspector Tennant, Sergeant O’Malley, and two constables dressed as dockmen waited for the prisoner’s release.
They counted eight bells from a nearby church tower. Then the iron doors swung open, and Stackpole emerged. He headed straight to Blackman Street at a rapid clip and turned right. The two coppers on opposite sides of the pavement followed while the inspector and his sergeant trailed behind.
“Heading for London Bridge, I’m thinking,” O’Malley said. “Thirty minutes on foot, give or take.”
The congestion made their task easy. Nothing—neither beast, ’bus, nor cart—moved quickly in the midmorning crush. Stackpole crossed the bridge and hopped on an omnibus heading east. Tennant and company followed in a hackney cab, stopping when their quarry jumped off at the West India Dock Road.
The police arrived at the most exposed part of the enterprise when their quarry turned into a narrow lane with little foot traffic. Tennant and O’Malley hung back, keeping the constables in sight.
The air was dense with the stench of tar and offloaded coal. Screeching gulls signaled that the riverfront was close. Their calls vanished when Tennant and O’Malley entered the dark tunnel of the London and Blackwall line, its railway cars thundering overhead. Tennant’s forehead beaded with sweat. He sucked air between clenched teeth and focused on the light ahead. When they broke free of the tunnel, he turned away from O’Malley and drew a steadying breath. Ahead, one of the constables waited, and they caught up to him outside a cooperage on the corner of Limehouse Causeway.
Everywhere, a foreign presence was evident. A grocer and a laundry displayed signage in English and Chinese. Men wearing seamen’s trousers and jackets had tied their hair in long, black braids: sailors who hailed from Hong Kong, not Hammersmith.
Tennant caught up with the constable on the corner. “Where is Stackpole?”
“He ducked into a pub three doors down. My partner gave it a minute and followed him in.”
“Walk by the door,” Tennant said. “Cross over and come back with the name.”
The constable pulled down his cap and ambled off. He finished his circuit and returned.
“It’s a pub and boardinghouse called China Sal’s.”
They watched the comings and goings for about ten minutes. Then the pub’s door banged open, and Stackpole staggered across the pavement and tripped into the street. A stocky Asian followed. He grabbed two fists of the lanky seaman’s jacket and hauled him to his feet. He growled something into Stackpole’s ear, shoved him stumbling down the street, and returned to the pub. Tennant and his companions ducked behind the cooper’s barrels as the seaman passed them, cursing.
“Go after him,” Tennant told the constable. “The sergeant will trail you at a distance.”
A minute later, the copper who’d followed Stackpole into the pub joined Tennant.
“What happened, Constable?”
“The blighter headed for the back room, so I ordered a pint and waited. After some back and forth that I couldn’t hear, a man shouted, ‘Those effing coolie girls belonged to me. You had no right.’ A woman cut him off, saying, ‘She’s dead’ and ‘He had the papers to take them.’ Then he calls her a liar and a thieving bitch, and she shouts, ‘Yee, Yee.’ A scuffle breaks out behind the door, and the next thing you know, it slams open. A thuggish Chinaman frog-marches Stackpole to the exit and into the street.”
“We saw the rest. Sergeant O’Malley and your partner are trailing him now.”
“Looks like this Yee bloke is China Sal’s muscleman.”
“A first-rate job, Constable. I’ll take over from here. I’d rather not have anyone spot you as a copper in civvies.”
“Right, guv. You’ll find a pub room, an office, and a back room. Saw some groggy Chinamen wander out of it.”
Inside China Sal’s, a sweet, faintly floral odor replaced the usual pub-reek of ale and tobacco. The scent drifted between the strands of a beaded curtain that covered an inner doorway.Opium, Tennant thought, not surprised. The drug was legal in Britain, and opium had its tentacles around many of Sal’s customers, merchant seamen from the East. China Sal could offer them a beer, a bed, and a pipe while they waited for an outbound clipper ship to hire a crew.
The pub room was empty save for a few idled seamen who had started drinking early. Coughs came from behind the curtain. Between the stringed beads, Tennant spotted the on-and-off glow of opium pipes.
A barman with rolled sleeves and forearms tattooed with sets of Chinese characters polished a pint glass and eyed the inspector.
“Please inform the proprietress that Detective Inspector Tennant of Scotland Yard is here to see her.” When the man turned his back and picked up a second glass, Tennant said, “I know she’s in the back room. If you prefer, my constables can close the premises to carry out a search for several missing persons.”
