The Black Hand Read Online Free PDF

case. The pair could be no more than they appeared, ice cream vendors, but, in my opinion, the Italian looked just like the sort of man who could plan and operate a Sicilian takeover.
    “Is he one of Gigliotti’s men, perhaps?” I asked.
    “I find it no more comforting to think he’s a Camorran than a Sicilian. Let us be cautious, lad, and keep an eye on this corner either way.”
    “What if the Serafinis had become a hindrance to Gigliotti and he has bigger plans?” I asked. “What if we can’t find the Sicilian leader because he does not, in fact, exist?”
    Barker looked at me for a moment or two. “Now you’re thinking like an enquiry agent, Thomas.”
    “Is it possible?”
    “Aye, ’tis. But there are other scenarios that are equally possible.”
    “For example?” I challenged.
    “Suppose the Sicilians were actually hired by Mr. K’ing or the Irish criminal Seamus O’Muircheartaigh, who has a good quarter of the East End in his pocket. This may all be an attempt to wrest control from Gigliotti’s grasp.”
    “My word,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “And it could just as easily be something else we haven’t thought of.”
    “That’s comforting,” I replied.
    “Come, lad, we have an appointment,” Barker said.
    “With whom, sir?”
    “Mr. Dalton Green. He is in charge of the East and West India docks until a successor for Sir Alan is found.”
    My employer hailed a cab with one of those piercing whistles of his. We were taking quite a number of hansoms, I noted, wondering if the Home Office could afford such extravagances.
    “So has Dr. Vandeleur ruled that Sir Alan was murdered or not?” I asked once we were seated and rolling through Lambeth.
    “Lad,” he replied solemnly, “you really need to read the newspapers every morning, rather than mooning about, ingesting coffee by the bucketful. There is a world out there with events of more than passing interest.”
    “Sorry, sir.”
    “If you had, you would have already discovered that he ruled that the death was due to natural causes. It was his only option, really. Claiming that Sir Alan was murdered without ironclad proof would create a scandal that would have certainly cost Vandeleur his position. The gentry doesn’t like unwelcome news. All the same, Vandeleur takes his work very seriously and must have hated to bring a false report.”
    “So he did the next best thing,” I said. “He told you. This is just the sort of bee Vandeleur knew would get in your bonnet. He could soothe his conscience by knowing that you’d taken over the case.”
    “Unfortunately, he has given me little to work with. Pray give me some quiet to come up with an appropriate ruse.”
    Neither of us spoke for the rest of the journey. I wondered if the hokeypokey man had concerned him more than he let on.
    One smells the West India Docks before one sees them. The smell is not salt water or seaweed or damp, it is rum. The sweet odor pervades everything, so that one expects to see barrels broken on the quayside, instead of lined up neatly and sealed tight. We made our way to the dock offices, where Barker presented his card; and after a twenty-minute wait, we were shown in to Dalton Green. He was a corpulent, jowly man, as if he had been designed with a French curve. The windows were open, admitting a headybreeze, but there was a sheen of perspiration across the man’s brow.
    “What can I do for you, Mr. Barker?” he said a trifle testily. “I can spare you but a few minutes.”
    “Sir, I am investigating a case for a barrister whose client claims he was assaulted by a gang of Italian dockworkers.”
    “Did the incident occur on the docks or out beyond the gate there?” Green nodded his head toward the stone gates separating the docks from the rest of Poplar.
    “Just outside them, sir, in Bridge Road.”
    “I don’t see that it is any of my concern, then,” he replied, waving a dimpled hand in dismissal.
    “The District Council and