To Kingdom Come by Will Thomas

would be under double guard and his walks curtailed until our assignment was done in case the Irish should catch on that Barker was not who he said he was and try to see if van Rhyn was still sequestered here. Before I left, he extracted a promise that I would return someday with another bottle of schnapps and a detailed account of our adventure.
    As for Pierre Vigny, I have never seen a man so obsessed. To him, the world began and ended with a stick. He had gathered every reference ever written about the use of the stick, from Aaron’s rod to Napoleon’s sword cane. He’d studied primitive cultures for their use of cudgels and tried to reconstruct their techniques.The fiercer the battle between us, the more his eyes lit up and a smile grew on his face. I don’t know how good I was, but I loved the feel of the wood and felt an affinity for it that I would never feel for a dagger or my revolver. On the final day, he finished up the lesson by informing me that I had gone from the beginning to the apprentice stage. Barker was present, and I think he looked on with some degree of satisfaction.
    I was the one that was dissatisfied. With all these train rides and nightly instruction, I had been removed from the actual investigation. What of Davitt and Dunleavy, and that cool fellow from Ho’s, O’Muircheartaigh? Had anything turned up on Parnell, and how close were the Special Irish Branch to finding the secret faction? Just how much had Henry the Sponge soaked up, besides five pounds’ worth of alcohol? These were the questions I put to Barker when I returned to the office a little early from my final lesson with van Rhyn, my head thumping from the chemicals I’d inhaled during the nitroglycerin-making process.
    “One at a time, lad. All your questions shall be answered,” Barker said, from the recesses of his leather chair, as placid as a Tibetan lama. He didn’t have the demeanor of a man about to set out on a dangerous mission. I still didn’t know where we were going. It could be Dublin or Manchester or Paris. The faction could even be concealed in London, for all I knew.
    “Are we closer to finding out the leader of the faction?” I asked casually.
    Barker looked over his tented fingers. “We’ve already ruled out Rossa, Davitt, and Cusack. I’ll admit I’m not certain about O’Muircheartaigh. He is a master strategist, and he plays a subtle game, but how much Irish freedom means to him is anyone’s guess.”
    “Wasn’t there another one, though?” I asked. “Another name beginning with ‘D’?”
    “Very good, lad. There was. Dunleavy, the American. He’sAmerican by birth, Irish by descent. He’s dropped from sight. Very possibly, he is our man. I’m hoping Mr. Cathcart will have turned up some information.”
    Just then, Jenkins came into the room. He had very definitely begun to show signs of strain. The building was still standing, figuratively speaking, but there were cracks in the foundation. I am all for temperance, and I must admit that our clerk’s nightly self-pickling had concerned me in the past, since he had become something of a fixture in my life, but watching him in the throes of sobriety was almost more than I could take. I wished he would break his vow and frequent another public house until the Rising Sun reopened, for all our sakes.
    He entered with the afternoon post as usual, but the orbit he made by my desk was slightly elliptical and the letters in his hand flapped like pigeons in Trafalgar Square. They came in contact with the edge, but only partially, and when he let them go, they all slid into the dustbin. Jenkins tottered off like a clockwork toy while I retrieved the post. A few minutes later he returned, bearing the same tattered business card we had seen at the beginning of the week.
    “Mr. Cathcart,” Jenkins announced. The inebriate came slowly into the room, step by step, as if gravity were a tricky business and not to be taken for granted. Eventually, he came