Y. S. Lee - The Traitor in the Tunnel

It was a miserable day for a walk: sleety, frigid, dark. Nevertheless, Mary Quinn and James Easton, Private Detectives, were out for a ramble about Bloomsbury, bundled against the penetrating drizzle, straining to distinguish people from lampposts in the dense fog that swamped the streets. Marys skirts were soaked to the knee and much heavier than when shed first set out. Their boots were thick with mud.

Mary smiled up at James, squeezing his elbow. Isnt this delightful?

He laughed. Unalloyed bliss, apart from the rain, the wind, and the bitter cold. Can you still feel your fingertips?

She wiggled them experimentally. A little. Could you tilt the umbrella toward me, please? Its dripping on my shoulder. James complied, and they paced on, passing a sodden, shivering boy wielding a broomstick taller than he was. Wait a moment, James. But James was already turning back, pressing a coin into the crossing sweepers unresisting palm. He murmured something and gave the child a gentle pat on the shoulder.

Mary watched the boy stumble away, a slight figure swallowed by the dark smog. She shuddered. It was like a heavy handed morality play to which there could be only one conclusion.

James returned, offering his arm once more. Where were we?

You were complaining about the weather. Not for the first time. She smiled at him again, teasing now. Are you quite certain you dont want to come up to my flat for tea and toast and scandal? As her future husband, James wanted their marriage to be respectable. It wasnt for his sake, particularly, although she suspected he cared about reputation more than he would acknowledge. No, it was for Mary: in order to bury her past and allow her a fresh start, they had agreed to behave with Utter Propriety. No matter how hypocritical and inconvenient the conventions of etiquette, it was worth observing them for the social invisibility it would afford their marriage. These cold and uncomfortable walks about town were a perfect example of their new courtship: How else could an unmarried lady and gentleman hold a truly private conversation, unchaperoned and uninterrupted? Jamess logic was inarguable. And yet, after twenty years of freedom, Mary desperately resented these superficial social restrictions. Was this the moment to propose her little escapade?

His reply wiped all thought of it from her mind. Id love to. Lets just pop into the next church and get married first.

She puffed with amusement and saw her breath in the air. Of course youve a marriage license in your pocket.

Do you doubt it?

Id no idea you were on such intimate terms with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

There are common licenses, you know. One can be obtained from any vicar.

She halted and stared up into his dark eyes. They glinted with mockery, and something else, too: a challenge. Her mouth dried. A-are you in earnest?

Im asking you to declare yourself. We could be married within the hour, if you so chose. His expression was neutral, his tone maddeningly even. He might have been offering her his seat on the omnibus.

She was suddenly at the edge of a precipice, fascinated and terrified in equal measure. Of course she wanted to marry James... someday. But now? Here? I I dont know what to say, she confessed, unable to meet his gaze.

The old man was all but barefoot, with only a mismatched pair of leather flaps, much eroded by time and wear, bound to his feet with strips of rags. The feet themselves seemed scarcely worth protecting: grotesquely swollen, purple with cold, the toenails entirely torn off and yet they kept moving over the slick, rain-soaked cobbles. He shuffled crabwise, shaking as with a palsy, a leathery stick of a man rolled in shreds of rotting cloth. Beggars and vagrants were a common enough sight in the seedier parts of the city, yet there was something about this one that made all recoil. Some stared after him. Others, wiser, kept their eyes averted.

None of this signified anything to the man. He couldnt have told the date of his last meal, his last bath, or his last good nights sleep. But he knew what he needed. It was just around this corner the last endless, filthy corner in this city he detested with all he was and had been. Hate was the only subject that meant anything, the only emotion that lit his eyes, on occasion. But tonight was too cold even for that. With a last gasp of effort, he turned into the alley. The entrance he wanted a hole rather than a doorway had a small sign above, for those who cared to read it: AWAN SURGAWI heavenly cloud, in Malay. Funny. Hed always known it was here. Scarcely remembered a time when hed have walked past it with indifference. Tonight, though, he paused and read the sign for the first time. It was a damned lie, like everything else in filthy, freezing, godforsaken London. In England.

The coins were knotted into the hem of his shirt. Hed felt their weight like a promise all evening, every time he moved. Now he stumbled down the narrow, uneven stairs into a murky hell that couldnt have been less like heaven. Of that much he was certain. But it was good enough for him.

Sayed saw him through the gloom and, with a flick of the eyes, directed him to a straw mat. The man stumbled to it, as close to gratitude as hed ever come, and his bones cracked loudly as he settled himself, as though praying to the battered hookah on the floor. Sayed squatted patiently while the mans gnarled fingers struggled with rotting fabric. Eventually, the coins dropped into the waiting hand.

Not much here, Uncle, said Sayed dubiously.

The man didnt reply. Hed come with less, in the past.

Sayed sighed and pressed his lips together. Ill see what I can do. He measured a parsimonious amount of opium heavily cut with cheapest tobacco into the hookahs bowl. After a brief pause, during which he refused to meet the old mans gaze, he added a little more. He covered the bowl with a small metal disk, then lit a match. Once the flame caught, he pressed the snake-like smoking tube into the old mans trembling palm. Wait, he said in a warning tone. Not yet.

The old man kept an impatient vigil as the water heated and sufficient steam built up. At long last, it was ready. Raising the mouthpiece to his lips, lungs hollow and aching for the thick smoke, he felt a very specific sense of calm amid his frantic need. This was new an omen. He disliked both those things intensely. Yet as he sucked on the pipe, welcoming the fragrant poison into his body, it was the calm that remained with him. As though his troubles were nearly over. As though tonight, in some way, he would meet his fate.

Pipe dreams, he thought, and drifted away.