The Black Hand Read Online Free PDF Page A

plenty of time to sum up for the jury.
    “If he wasn’t involved with Mr. Barker, this wouldn’t have happened,” she insisted. “He would not have been hurt if he just came straight to the restaurant in the mornings.”
    “Madame, I deeply regret Etienne’s injury. Mr. Barker is anxiously waiting for him to get out of surgery.”
    “We’se here, miss,” the cabman announced, pulling up to the curb, putting an end to my misery.
    “Pay the man,” Madame replied, and the pair of them alighted from the vehicle. Clothilde stopped to fix me with a look of pure loathing. I sighed and reached into my pockets.
    “Is she the missus?” the cabman asked when she was out of earshot.
    “No, thank the Lord.”
    “She’s a stunner, no mistake, but if I was you, I’d run in the uvver direction.”
    “That remark,” I answered coldly, “is uncalled for. However, it has just earned you a tip.”
    When I arrived inside, the Dummolards, mère et fille , were speaking in a mixture of voluble French and English to a doctor while Barker made his way around to me as warily as a man walking through a swamp infested with crocodiles.
    “We’ve just been informed that Etienne’s out of surgery,” he said, as we watched the women remonstrate with the staff. “The wounds were deeper than I had suspected. I believe his attackers were armed with swords instead of daggers.The doctor says the operation was successful, but Etienne has not yet awakened.”
    “Should we leave Madame to look after her husband? I could use a cup of coffee after that cab ride. Perhaps there is a café in the area.”
    “Good thinking, lad. A café is a perfect idea, but not in Charing Cross. Let us find one in Soho instead.”

Demo version limitation

Demo version limitation

Demo version limitation

Demo version limitation

10

    W E WERE COMING OUT OF OUR DOOR THE NEXT morning when we heard the loud, braying voice of a street vendor a few streets away. We did not get many out here in Newington. I would not have noted it in passing, but Barker’s ears are more acute than mine, or perhaps he was listening for it. It made him turn and follow the voice to its source. At the corner of Brook Street, there stood a hokey-pokey man with his cart.
    There were two of them, to be precise, a man in his fifties and a boy no more than twelve. The man was alternating between offering his wares and singing snatches of Verdi. He was talented enough to have attracted a handful of people so early in the morning.
    “He is too well dressed to be a hokeypokey man,” Barker commented.
    The man had a heavy mustache, black hair going gray at the temples, and wore an elegant frock coat. He did not touch the ice cream at all but left the messy work to the boy,a cheerful lad with a halo of black curls and sleeves rolled to the elbows.
    “Could he be training the boy?” I ventured.
    “It is rather early in the day for ice cream and too much of a coincidence that he should appear on a corner so close to our home.”
    “Tutti-frutti!” the man bawled. “Italian ices. Ecco poco , only a little!”
    “Gigliotti runs most of the ice cream vendors in London, because he holds a monopoly in the ice trade here. The Neapolitan is only one of his enterprises.”
    “What sort of criminal activities is he involved with?” I asked.
    “Merely those that ensure his monopoly stays a monopoly. Any attempt to start a rival business is run off.”
    “Are you going to speak to this fellow?”
    “He’s not breaking the law, Thomas.”
    “Gentlemen!” the man called out to us from across the street. “May I interest you in a bowl of cold ice cream on this warm morning?”
    “Not at the moment, thank you, sir,” Barker answered, raising his hat.
    The Italian broke into song again, while my employer turned into Newington Causeway. The incident left me with an unsettled feeling. It seemed to me that the man had sinister intentions, but then it’s easy to feel that way in the middle of a