Barry led Doyle briskly through the maze of Covent Garden, where in the stalls of the vegetable and flower sellers the commerce of the New Year was off to a bustling beginning. Yawning flower girls smoked cheap cigarettes and leaned against each other to ward off the chill, awaiting turns to fill their peddler’s trays. Costermongers combatively picked over the marketed yields of the farmers’ winter gardens. Doyle’s digestive juices were whipped to a boil by the marriage of aromas that souped the morning air: Arabian coffee beans, fresh breads leaving the oven, grilled sausages and hams, hot French pastries. His gastronomic longings lurched toward despair when he realized he’d left his purse and all his money in the bag that Larry had transported by now to God-knows-where. Appeals to Barry to pause for a restorative snack—at Barry’s expense—fell on deaf ears. By the repeated tipping of his hat, bobbing up and down as regularly as a mechanical dandy in a Dresden clock tower, Doyle deduced that Barry was passingly familiar with more than a few of the merchants’ wives and an unusually high percentage of the female shop attendants. Where there’s smoke, thought Doyle: Barry’s gay-blade reputation must be authentic after all.
Their trail took them to a gymnasium in a Soho side street, a squat, filthy brick of a building, its walls a palimpsest of posters trumpeting the forgotten but once epic collisions of yesterday’s fistic gladiators. A soot-obscured homily traced the arch of the Greek Revival entryway, extolling the virtue of exercise to the development of a sound moral character.
Inside the gym, on the far side of the squared circle, a boisterous knot of wrestlers, bare-fisted boxers, and physique enthusiasts knuckled around a cutthroat game of dice. Well-wrinkled cash and cheapjack gin bottles defined the area they’d set aside for the bones to settle after hitting the musty wall—a most unsavory scene that had seen more than one dawn pass by unnoticed. Barry instructed Doyle to wait some distance from the bunch—he was only too happy to comply—while he waded in to separate the object of their quest from the pack. He returned a minute later with a flat-faced hulking mass of hardened flesh, whose bulging bare arms were adorned with tattoos of mermaids and pirates engaged in a succession of suggestive pas de deux. The man’s nose spread out horizontally to the width of his gaping mouth, the only useful organ for breathing he had left. His eyebrows were an omelet of scar tissue and scraggly hair, his eyes set as deep as pissholes in the snow. A well-traveled trail of tobacco juice trickled down his chin. The man’s haircut was distressingly similar enough to the one Doyle now sported to suggest that Barry must be the man’s barber, if not his confidant.
“I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Bodger Nuggins, former light-heavyweight champion of Her Majesty’s colony of New South Wales and Oceania,” said Barry, bringing the two men together.
Doyle accepted the behemoth’s two-handed handshake; it was flaccid, and the man’s palm as soft and moist as a skittish soubrette’s. The stink of gin wafted off him in clouds.
“Arthur Conan—” began Doyle.
Barry cleared his throat with emphatic vehemence, followed by a vigorous shaking of the head just behind and out of Bodger’s field of sight.
“Maxwell Tree,” corrected Doyle with the first name that leapt to mind.
“Bodger Nuggins, former light-heavyweight champion of New South Wales and Oceania,” said the boxer redundantly, still holding Doyle’s hand in both of his and moving it semi-circularly. “Call me Bodger.”
“Thank you, Bodger.”
Bodger’s eyes were slightly askew, the one on the right cheating in as if it secretly desired a better look at the incredible nose plateau prominent to the south.
“That’s what folks who knows the Bodger calls him. Calls him Bodger. Rhymes with Dodger,” Bodger elaborated cooperatively.
“Yes. It does at that,” said Doyle, trying gently to liberate his hand.
“Cedric,” said Bodger mysteriously.
“Cedric who?”
“That’s me Christian name. Me muther named me Cedric.”
“After…?” offered Doyle, trying to help him to his anecdote’s destination in the hopes of effecting a release from Bodger’s determined grasp.
“After I was borned,” said Bodger, simian brow creased with the profundity of a Mandarin court astrologer.
“Tell the gent’l’man wot you told me, Bodger,” prompted Barry, and then whispered to Doyle: “He’s a coupl’a sheep short in the top paddock.”
Doyle nodded. Bodger’s facial contortions redoubled. His eyebrows rode out the effort like a mechanical wave machine in a stormy melodrama.
“Wot you told me about Mr. Lansdown Dilks,” Barry added.
“Ow, right! Bugger!” Thwap! Bodger punched himself in the nose. Judging by its pancaked state, it had to be a habitual response, whether an aid to jog the memory or stem corrective to the stubborn gears of what remained of his mind it was difficult to say. “Lansdown Dilks! Balls! Bodger Nugs, wot a muffer!” And he punched himself a second time.
“Here, here—perfectly all right, go easy now, Bodger,” said Doyle. If the man was indeed a former champion, he didn’t want a knockout self-administered before beginning his interrogation.
“Right,” said Bodger, finding a sudden forgiveness for himself.
“Did you know a Mr. Lansdown Dilks?” asked Doyle.
“Ahh. There’s a story goes with this,” Bodger said, intimating that an imperishable drama loomed just around the corner. “Let’s see.…”
Being somewhat more familiar with his narrative technique, Barry slipped a pound note into Bodger’s mitt.
“Right,” said Bodger, his pump primed. “I come from Queensland, see. Down under. Brisbane, to be exactical. Across the deep and briny.”
“Yes,” said Doyle. “I do follow you: You’re from Australia.”
Bodger snapped his fingers, pointed at Doyle, and winked broadly, as if he’d just discovered they were brothers in the same secret lodge. “Eggzac’ly!”
“We understand each other. Do go on, Bodger.”
“Right. Fisticuffs, that’s my nut, see. Bloodsport. A man wants to strut his stuff among men, let ‘im do it wit’ his hands as naked as a newborn babe, that’s what I say. Done all right by Bodger Nuggins, hadn’t it? Champeen of New South Wales and Oceania, light heavyweight.”
By way of demonstrating his credentials, as boxers are compulsively wont to do, Bodger threw a punch at Doyle’s midsection, pulling it an inch away from sending him to his knees in search of oxygen.
“Mind you,” Bodger went on, “this Marquis of Queensberry ponce, he’d like to put dresses on us bare knucklers, wouldn’t he, have us dance about and slap each other with lit’le tea gloves.” Unable to resist an additional compulsion to editorialize, Bodger contemptuously hawked a plug of tired tobacco to the floor. “The old ponce wants to watch lit’le girlies fight, why don’t he go to St. Edna’s Academy for Women and Ponces?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Doyle. “Regarding Mr. Lansdown Dilks—”
“I’m gettin’ ’ere,” said Bodger, flexing his muscles ominously. “So the Bodger takes his leave from his old Homestead to have a go in the fight game on this side of the puddle. England. By boat it was. Uh…”
“The pursuit of your boxing career brought you to London,” said Doyle.
“Promised the Bodger a bash at the heavyweight title, these blokes did, but first they wants Bodgkins to fight this other bouff head. You know, like a…” He went blank. Frozen as if he’d spilled sand in his gears.
“A tune-up fight,” said Barry, after a respectful silence.
“Right,” said Bodger, thwacking himself in the face again and jolting his mental machinery free from its rut. “Like a tune-up fight. Some drongo. Want to see what Bodger’s made of ’fore they puts their precious title on the line. So the Bodger says to them, wot’s fair is fair. Never let it be said Champeen Nuggins is a piker: Old Bodger puts on a show, he does, when some right gents lays out a few sponduliacks to catch my action.”
“
So you had this tune-up fight.” said Doyle.
Bodger nodded and squiffed out another squirt of hot juice. “First thing, they tells me the tune-up’s not to take place in your stadium, your gamin’ hall, or even in your ring, as such. What they do is, see, they takes me to this warehouse like, down by the ribber.”
“This was not a legally sanctioned bout,” said Doyle, feeling more and more like an interpreter for some idiot prince.
“Not the full quid, no,” said Bodger, seeming to comprehend. “But truff be known, we bare knucklers are not unfamiliar wit’ the procedure.”
“So I take it that once you reached the wharf, these gentlemen introduced you to your opponent,” said Doyle patiently.
“Some ponce,” snarled Bodger. “Soft. Face like a stunned mullet. Like he’s never tussled wit’ the gloves off in his life. So we’re off: The ponce won’t mangle much, but ’e won’t lie down neither. No technical know-how. Bodger blinds him with science. Sixty-five rounds we go: His face is a mask of claret. Ask me, his corner should’a skied the towel long about fifty. But it’s not my fate they should take the advice of Bodger, was it?”
“Apparently not, no.”
“And now we comes to round sixty-sixth. That’s why to this day sixty-six is the Bodger’s unlucky number.”
Bodger took Doyle by his lapels and pulled him closer as his deathless tale built to its thrilling climax. If I hadn’t already shaved my mustache, thought Doyle, Bodger’s breath would have torched it right off.
“We comes out and touches fives, good sportsman that we were. Then Bodger greets him with a wicked-fair left hook to the liver. The drongo doubles down. Then the Bodger straightens his starch with a Bodger special: an uppercut to the nozz, a cracklin’ good judy settin’ him up for the bone-crushin’, death-deliverin’ grand finale Bodgerific combination to the point of his pozzy that send the wowser airborne. And by the time his head hits the ground, the spirit of man has fled his poncey body.”
“He was dead,” said Doyle, as agreeably as possible.
“Dead as a duck in a thunderstorm,” said Bodger, still holding Doyle close enough to count his back teeth.
“How unfortunate.”
“Not for the ponce; he’s gone to his reward, ’adn’t he? After all that muckabout, it’s Bodger who’ll have the hard rain fall. In comes the coppers. Manslaughter, they says. Bare knuckles and all, no Marquis of Queensberry, they says. Trial by jury. Fifteen years’ hard labor. Hello, Newgate Prison; bye-bye Bodger.”
Bodger released Doyle and sent a stream of variegated brown glop ten feet into the air, rattling over the edge of a spittoon in the corner.
“Where I take it,” said Doyle, rearranging his clothes, “you at long last make the acquaintance of Mr. Lansdown Dilks.”
“Mr. Lansdown Dilks. A hard moke in his physicaliosity, not all that dif’ernt than the Nugger man hisself.”
“Somewhat Bodgeresque, you might say,” said Doyle.
“A most Bodgerlike top dog indeed,” confirmed Bodger. “All very fine and large to ’ave one such feller in a given coop-up. ’Sonly nature’s way. Put two such specimens in the same yard, and wot you’s got there is one rumbustrious ruck-us.”
“So you quarreled, the two of you, is that what you’re saying, Bodger?” said Doyle, with another stab at translation.
“Most violent and frequently,” said Bodger, cracking his knuckles: They reported like a rifle volley. “And neither one of these two smug pups ever able to best the better of the other. The first time, Bodgie’s not ashamed to say, that the Nuggins ever met his match on either side of the ropes.”
“And so you served your time together until the execution of Dilks’s sentence.”
Bodger’s eyebrows knit together again. “Execution.”
“Last February. When Dilks passed on.”
Bodger’s mystification deepened. “Passed on.”
“Died. Gone west. Slipped the cable. Hung by the neck,” said Doyle, finally losing his patience. “And flights of angels sing him to his rest. Do you mean to say this represents some sort of news to you, Bodger?”
“Not half. Dilksie looked in the pink last time the Bodger clapped eyes on him.”
“And when was that, pray?”
“When we gots off the train together—”
“Surely you’re mistaken,” said Doyle.
“If Bodger means off the train, that’s what he’d say, idn’t it?” said Bodger, giving vent to no small irritation. “Off the train is what the Bodger means, and off the train is wots ’e’s sayin’.”
Doyle and Barry exchanged a quizzical look. Barry shrugged: This was fresh embroidery on the story for him as well. “Off the train where?”
“Up north. Yorkshire, like.”
“When was this?”
“So happens the Bodger remembers the exactical date, seeing as how it was ’is own birt’day: March the fourth.”
“March the fourth of last year?” Doyle was growing more confused with every word the man uttered.
“Say, wot are you, a ponce?”
“Bodger, forgive my thickness,” said Doyle. “Are you telling me that you and Dilks took a train to Yorkshire a month after he swung and years before your sentence was due to expire, on March the fourth of last year?”
“Right. Lansdown and me and the others wot signed on.”
“Signed on how?”
“Wit’ the bloke wot come round the prison.”
“Newgate Prison?”
“You catch on fast, don’tcha mate?”
“Please, I’m doing my best to understand: What man was this?”
“Don’ know his name. Din’t give it, did he?”
“Can you describe him?”
Bodger rolled his eyes skyward. “Beard. Glasses. Looked like a ponce.”
“All right, Bodger, what did this gentleman who came around give you to understand you were signing on to do?”
“I can tell you this: He didn’t tell us nuffin’ ’bout what went on in that bleedin’ biscuit factory. No, sir. That’s why I run off like I did. And don’t think they’re not after me for it neither—”
The air was shattered by a piercing chorus of police whistles.
“Coppers!”
The alarm went up, and the men in the dice game scattered. Before Doyle could react, Bodger turned tail and sprinted for the dressing room, the front doors burst open and a squadron of bobbies, batons raised, rushed into the gym. Another phalanx burst through the back exit, and the battle was joined, a half-dozen of them occupied solely with Bodger, whose prowess did not by its demonstration seem in the least bit overstated. Barry took Doyle’s arm, holding him in place.
“It’ll go better for us if we don’t run, gov,” he shouted over the din.
“But Bodger was just about to tell us—”
“No worries; chances are ripe we’ll be sharing a cell soon enough.”
“But we’re not here to play dice.”
“Try telling the grasshoppers that. Rum go, but there it is.”
Two policemen were moving toward them. Barry put his hands on top of his cap and advised Doyle to do the same. Doyle instead began walking lively toward the officers.
“Now see here,” asserted Doyle, “I’m a doctor!”
“And I’m queen of the May,” said the bobby.
The first blow caught Doyle along the side of the head.
Barry’s concerned face was the first sight that greeted Doyle when he opened his eyes.
“Feelin’ a bit wonky, guv?” asked Barry.
“Where are we?”
“The clink. Gaol. Pentonville, I fink.”
Doyle tried to sit up, and his head spun like a multicolored pinwheel.
“Easy on, guv,” said Barry. “Quite the cue ball you’re cultivatin’ there.”
Doyle raised a hand to the blood-pounding site on his forehead and found a swollen goose egg residing there. “What happened?”
“You missed the ride in the Black
Maria. Bein’ hauled into lockup was nuffink special. Been ten minutes additional since I set you on this bench.”
As his vision stabilized, Doyle perceived they were in a large common holding cell, shared by a milling mix of roughnecks and reprobates, many of whom he recognized from the gymnasium dice game. The room was filthy and reeked to high heaven, a quality traceable to the common latrine adorning one wall. Roaches the size of thumbs scuttled fearlessly around the margins and over the boots of men who seemed all too accustomed to their company.
“Ever been between the bars before, guv?”
“Never.”
Barry regarded him sympathetically. “Not much to recommend it.”
Doyle searched the faces roaming the cell. “Where’s Bodger?”
“Bodger Nuggins is not among our numbers,” said Barry.
“Was he in the Black Maria?”
“I would have to answer in the negative.”
“Did you see him escape the gym?”
“No.”
Doyle gingerly probed his throbbing head. “What have they charged us with?”
“Charged us? Nuffink’.”
“They can’t very well hold us here if they don’t charge us with a crime.”
“This is your first time, idn’t it?” asked Barry with a subtle smile.
“But this is all a dreadful mistake. Tell them we demand to see a barrister,” said Doyle, with somewhat hollow conviction. “We have our rights, after all.”
“Well…suppose there’s a first time for everything,” Barry replied, trying to make a good show of mulling it over.
Doyle studied him: The irony in Barry’s musing quickly communicated the utter futility of pursuing what Doyle had assumed to be the ordinary channels. Instead, Doyle searched his pockets and fished out his physician’s prescription notepad; the sight of the Rx gave him a jolt, as if he’d uncovered a relic of some long-forgotten civilization.
“Barry, can you secure me something to write with?”
Barry nodded and sidled over into the flow of convicts. He returned minutes later with a scrounged nub of a pencil. Doyle took it and scrawled out a hasty message.
“Now we’re going to need some money,” said Doyle.