The Limehouse Text by Will Thomas Page A

class. He believed that if gentlemen studied rigorously and committed themselves to ruling with compassion and wisdom, society would run more smoothly. I noted that Barker had underlined all the analects that had to do with how a gentleman behaves, such as:
    “The gentleman must be slow in speech but quick in action.”
    “In his dealings with the world the gentleman is neither for or against anything. Rather, he is on the side of what is moral.”
    “The gentleman is easy of mind, but the small man is always anxious.”
    What I had before me appeared to be a plan for how Barker was conducting his life, at least since he came to England. That left me scratching my head. Wasn’t Barker a Christian? Was he influenced by both? Even as I was getting closer to the core of the man, I was coming up with more questions than answers.
    Having got through most of the analects, for the book is short, I turned to Lao-tzu and got mired right away. The words were translated into English, but the meanings were almost gibberish. With my clouded Western mind, I could not make head or tail of it. How does one make sense of statements like: “Though the uncarved block is small, no one in the world dare claim its allegiance”?
    As for Mencius, he was one of Confucius’s students. I might have understood him better had I begun with him first. Instead, I found myself reading a phrase once, going on to the next, not making sense of it, and going back to the first. I was tired and my brain could not hold any more Oriental philosophy. Like a man of wisdom, I went to bed.
     
    The next I knew, I was awakened by a loud report from the room below. I opened my eyes and tried to focus. It sounded as though there was a fight going on. I heard a cry and threw back my covers, yanked open my door, ran down the steps not two feet ahead of Barker, who had come down from the upper floor in a nightshirt and dressing gown. When we reached the ground floor, we found the back door wide open and Harm disporting himself in the dark of the garden, running in circles and barking as if to say, “What larks!”
    We hurried into the study and found Mac on the floor, clutching his leg and moaning. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air. His trusty shotgun lay beside him, and it took but a moment to deduce what had happened. Barker’s butler had interrupted a burglary attempt and had been shot in the leg in the course of it.
    Harm came bounding in, all energy and excitement, and went so far as to bark at us as if we were complete strangers. Barker bent and put his hand on Mac’s shoulder.
    “Do not try to get up. Thomas, bring a towel.”
    I dashed into the kitchen and seized the first cloth I could find. The Guv used it to make a tourniquet around Mac’s leg to stem the flow of blood. When he was done, he said, “Tell me what happened.”
    Mac lay on the wooden floor, propped up on his elbows. He was pale and grimacing from the pain. “A sound of papers being moved about woke me up, sir. I knew it couldn’t be you or Mr. Llewelyn, else I’d have heard you coming down the stairs. I took the shotgun I always keep under my bed, threw open the door, and charged into the study, but he came out of nowhere. It was as though he was invisible. He bent my arm down, forcing the gun to discharge into my leg.”
    “Did you get a good look at him? Was he Oriental?”
    “I really couldn’t say, sir. He was crouched and came up under my gun.”
    Barker let out a grunt in exasperation. I don’t suppose anyone had dared storm the citadel of his private home before. It was unthinkable, like Mount Olympus having its silver nicked.
    “We must get him into bed and call Dr. Applegate,” he told me.
    Barker and I attempted to lift Mac up from the floor, but the butler gave such a cry of pain that even I felt sorry for him. For once, the Guv was at a loss as to what to do. He managed to get hold of Dr. Applegate by telephone and the latter agreed to come over, telling us not to