The Limehouse Text by Will Thomas Page B

move the patient but to make him comfortable. Comfortable, to Barker, meant slapping a pillow under his head and grilling him for the next twenty minutes over and over again on events that took all of about twenty seconds to occur.
    I suppose I’ve been rather hard on Dr. Applegate. I have strong views on the medical profession, due perhaps to the loss of my wife, and nothing that has occurred since then has changed my view—that for all our science, we are merely one step away from bloodletting and witch doctors. Applegate has a chilly bedside manner and a pinched face, as if chronically dyspeptic. For all his skills and his willingness to come the few streets from his own private house to Barker’s, he lacks a cheery countenance. One feels that if one passed on under his care, he’d merely nod sagely and move on to his next patient without a second thought.
    Dr. Applegate eventually arrived and clucked his tongue over the patient. He then called for bandages and alcohol and began pulling the pellets from Mac’s wound. A half hour later, the three of us carried Mac to his bed.
    It was my first glimpse into Mac’s private sanctuary, an odd combination of cleaning supplies and homey touches. There were antimacassars on the chairs, beaded lamp-shades, and a photograph of a dour Jewish couple who must have been his parents. I saw a bookcase against one wall and, being something of a bookman, I made my way over to it. There were a few serious Jewish texts, Mrs. Beaton’s Book of Household Management, and some Jane Austens along with a Brontë or two, but the majority of the titles were of a Gothic turn. The novels of Mrs. Braddon were much in evidence, as was Wilkie Collins, Horace Walpole, the American Poe, and the Baroness Orczy. Jacob Maccabee was a secret romantic, and though this was too good a card to waste, it would be unsporting of me to use it now, when my opponent was down. I helped them try to make him comfortable.
    Dr. Applegate gave Mac a walloping dose of morphine that knocked him out as stony cold as a mackerel in Billings-gate. Afterward, the doctor put on his top hat, wrapped his scarf around his neck, told Barker to expect the usual bill, and left.
    It was then that I realized I had been wasting the last half hour. I had been studying the room and watching the doctor as he went about his business, when all the time I should have been watching my employer. Had I done so, I would not have been surprised by his next statement.
    “We are at war,” he said.
    “Sir?”
    “There has been a killer in this house. He has murdered nearly a half dozen people, by my estimate, and he came here tonight prepared to kill again. Never in the five years that I have lived here has anyone dared to enter my home unbidden. He knows my reputation, I have no doubt, and yet he has found it of little consequence.”
    Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the yellow from the gas lamps in the room actually penetrated Barker’s black spectacles enough for me to see the glint of his eyes. They looked like small flames, and it gave him a hellish aspect. I wondered if the killer of Quong had seriously underestimated my employer, or whether this unknown person was his equal in dangerous matters. He had killed several people now, after all. What does such power do to a person’s soul?
    “What shall we do, sir?” I asked.
    “We must prepare. This is a siege, lad. He may try again tonight.”
    “Forgive me, sir, but why didn’t you just give the book to Scotland Yard or the Foreign Office and have done with it? We have nothing like their manpower.”
    Barker gritted his teeth, as resolute as I have ever seen him. “Because Quong left it for me to give it to whom I choose. Here.” He picked up the shotgun and broke it open before handing it to me. “The shells are on the table.”
    I had never used a shotgun, but I didn’t want to lower myself in the Guv’s eyes. I put two shells in the barrels and closed the gun, wondering