“Well,” said Mary when they were once more standing outside on the street. “That was an experience.” She could still smell the sweet, cloying odor of the opium pipes. She felt a little sick. “On to the second address on Diana’s list.”
At the second address, only a few streets away, it was the same—the exotic rooms, the bowing Chinaman, who could have been a brother to the first, and rooms of men and a few women smoking opium pipes, lost in dreams.
The third had a beggar sitting out front, and when Mary saw him, she exclaimed, “Poor Richard!” Yes, it was the beggar who had spent the night beside the dead body of Molly Keane, the third victim in the Whitechapel Murders. He was looking just as ragged as the last time she had seen him, with a long multicolored scarf wound around his throat.
CATHERINE: Readers who do not remember Poor Richard should consult their copies of The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, the first volume of these Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club. If they have not yet read that most excellent book, it is available for two shillings at booksellers and railway stations, or direct from the publisher.
MARY: Will you stop that, already?
“I seem to remember you from somewhere, lassie,” said Poor Richard, looking up at her. “But I don’t rightly know where. My memory ain’t what it used to be.”
“I was with Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson,” she said. “I wasn’t dressed like this, and I don’t think we were ever introduced—I’m Mary Jekyll.” She leaned down and held out her hand. He shook it, looking searchingly up into her face. He had rheumy eyes and the veined, bulbous nose that accompanies a life of habitual drunkenness, but his smile was as gentle and gap-toothed as a child’s.
“Ah, that was a terrible morning, to find I’d been sleeping all night beside a corpse! It’s good to see you again, miss. You’ll be looking for Dr. Watson, then?”
“What do you know of Dr. Watson?” asked Justine. “Do you know his location—”
“Oh, aye,” said Poor Richard. “He’s here, in this den of iniquity, or house of merciful dreams as some calls it. Mr. Holmes said to me—Richard he said, I think they’ve discovered who I am, and if they have, then they’ll come for me, most likely tonight. You go tell Dr. Watson where you saw me, and tell him the man who kidnapped me is an old enemy of ours who we thought dead. Or something to that effect—I don’t remember his words exactly. He would not give me a note, he said, in case they found it on me. He wanted me to remember, despite my memory not being so good, as I said. So I went to find Dr. Watson, but I had a bit of a tipple first to get my courage up, and on the way to Baker Street a copper stopped me for begging and vagrancy, so I spent a week in prison before the warden got around to my case and realized it was me—we’re old friends, the warden and I. He said there was no harm in me, and anyway they needed the cell for another, so he let me go instead of sending me before the judge. Then I made my way over to Baker Street and told Dr. Watson what Mr. Holmes had told me, but I could not remember exactly where I had seen Mr. Holmes, except that it was one of the opium dens in this part of town. So I offered to lead Dr. Watson here, feeling badly for having forgotten which one I had seen Mr. Holmes in, and for being in gaol for a week, though it weren’t my fault. That was—it must have been yesterday, or maybe the day before that—I don’t rightly remember.”
“More than a week ago,” said Mary. Evidently, Poor Richard did not have a very firm grasp of time. That was when Dr. Watson had disappeared—he must have been going from opium den to opium den ever since, trying to find news of Mr. Holmes. Mary hoped Poor Richard was right and Watson was inside this particular establishment. The beggar might mean well, but his memory was not to be trusted. “An old enemy of ours, that we thought dead—whom could Mr. Holmes mean by that?” asked Mary. “Does it have something to do with the opium trade? Each of these houses seems to be run by a Chinaman.…”
“Oh, that’s just for show,” said Poor Richard. “Like them gold dragons on the walls and the Chinese furnishings. People expect a Chinaman, so the proprietor supplies them. It’s part of the image, you see. But all the opium houses in these streets belong to an Englishman—Colonel Moran, they call him. He’s a big fellow that looks as though he could break bones. He’s a toff, he is—I’ve seen him come down in his fancy brougham. I called him ‘Your Lordship’ once, hoping to get a few pennies. He said, ‘Out of my way,’ as though I weren’t nothing but a bit of refuse blowing about the streets, and his lieutenant pushed me so that I fell in the mud.” He looked as scornful as a fundamentally gentle man can look. “He makes a bundle out of these houses, I’ll be bound. A lot of gentlemen come here to forget themselves and their sorrows.”
“And you say Dr. Watson is inside this establishment?” said Justine.
“Indeed, and you’d best talk with him yourselves—I’ve told you all I know. I ain’t seen Mr. Holmes since that day he gave me the message for Dr. Watson.”
Mary had no money—she had given it all to Mr. Justin Frank, who was more likely to have a full purse than Mary Mulligan, which was the name she had chosen for herself. “Give him a shilling, won’t you?” she whispered to Justine, although if she was going to keep tipping informants at this rate, she would soon run out of money! Detecting was an expensive business. “And come on. We need to find Dr. Watson.”
MRS. POOLE: I cannot believe the two of you went into such a place! With all those men lying about on the floors and whatnot.
MARY: It really wasn’t that different from any gentlemen’s club, Mrs. Poole. Except for the lying on floors bit. Although they weren’t on floors, but on cushions mostly, the kind they call ottomans I think. But you could smell the opium—a thick, heavy smell.
MRS. POOLE: What your mother would think, I simply don’t know.
Once again they were greeted by a Chinaman, although this time instead of bowing silently he said, “Welcome, honorable visitors, to this humble house.” No doubt it was supposed to sound foreign, but his accent was decidedly cockney.
This opium den resembled the others, as though they had all been decorated by the same person who had been told to leave out no detail that could refer to the East, but in an even more sumptuous style. There were gilded sculptures of dragons guarding the doorways, and screens with dragons on them partitioning the rooms, and dragons embroidered on the cushions. The light was dim, the decor opulent, the air heavy with the smell of opium. Mary kept almost tripping over low tables on which were placed opium pipes, cups of tea without handles, and plates with a selection of biscuits and sweets. The clientele was well dressed: These were gentlemen, for the most part. Of course, working men could not afford such a place, nor the release that opium provides.
“He’s not here,” said Justine, looking around the first room and behind the screens. “We must venture deeper.”
Dr. Watson was not in the second room, either, but in the third room—there he sat, looking dejected, next to a fair-haired man from whose fingers dangled an opium pipe. Mary was so relieved to see him that she almost forgot her disguise. But no, she must remain Mary Mulligan, at least for now. It would not do to call out to him, and he could not see them—he was looking steadily at the floor, and talking to the fair man in low tones.