by S. L. Stoner
“What’s wrong? Did something happen to Meachum? Is he hurt?” Alarm sharpened her words. Mae Clemens liked the Flying Squad’s leader. Like them, Meachum was one of St. Alban’s undercover operatives. But Meachum’s role was more dangerous. He and his small group of men rode the rails, confronting the violent railroad bulls who beat, robbed and killed the thousands of homeless men forced to hop boxcars as they searched for work. Meachum and his Flying Squadron never killed the bulls. Instead, they tossed them off the trains on slow curves—usually without their boots.
Sage straightened in his chair and scrubbed his face with his hands. “No, Ma, far’s I know, Meachum is just fine. At least, I haven’t heard otherwise. His schedule is always kind of iffy.”
She pointedly looked at the bed and at her son in his chair. “Well, something sure the heck happened. Did you catch any sleep last night?”
He heaved a sigh. “No. And, yes, something happened.” He told her about his encounter with William Gladney Tobias and how he’d seen the boy snatched off the street.
“The poor child. What do you suppose they wanted with him?”
Sage grimaced. “I hate to think.” Then he added, knowing what he said next would be a blow to her heart. “Ma,” he began gently, “he was the spitting image of Mickey—right down to the gap between his front teeth.”
She sagged down onto a chair, the searing memory weakening her knees. “I see,” she said. Looking at her son, her dark blue eyes, so like his own, were sympathetic as she added, “Maybe the boy is why Sergeant Hanke is sitting at the kitchen table downstairs.”
Sage lurched to his feet. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I filed a police report. Maybe they’ve found Glad.”
As he hurried to the door her dry voice stopped him in his tracks. “Surely, you’re not going to walk through Mozart’s dining room as John Miner?”
She was right. Many considered Mozart’s Table the second most elegant restaurant in Portland. Only the Portland Hotel’s dining room ranked higher. Ironically, their restaurant was merely a cover for their labor union work. Sage, disguised as John Miner, moved around the city in workingman’s clothes when he was on one of St. Alban’s missions. But in his role of Mozart’s well-to-do proprietor, John Adair, he wore only silk, linen, gabardine, and fine worsted wool. It was in that role that he was able to mingle with and, gather information about, the shenanigans of the city’s wealthy elite.
So, she was right. He couldn’t mix the two personas. “Will you ask him to wait while I change?” he asked her.
“I’ll ask but, from the look of him, I don’t think he’s planning to go anytime soon.”
“Oh. So, he’s got his feed bag on?” Sage guessed. Hanke started partaking of their cook’s culinary delights when he worked as a beat patrolman. Even after his sergeant’s promotion, Hanke still dropped into Mozart’s kitchen now and again.
Mae shook her head. “Fact is, that’s what’s got me worried. He turned down food and he’s not smiling.”
“Damn,” Sage said. He snatched clothes from the wardrobe and headed for the bathroom down the hall.
Ten minutes later, with mustache ends waxed, hair pomaded, an expensive suit and vest donned, and accessorized by a gold watch chain, Sage stepped into Mozart’s kitchen where the big policeman sat waiting for him. After taking a seat and gratefully accepting a mug of coffee from Ida, Sage asked, “Is this about the report I filed last night? Did you find the boy?”
Hanke stared into his coffee mug before looking at Sage. “Maybe. We found a boy’s body. It’s with the coroner over at Crofton’s funeral home. He looks about the right age and all.”
Sage groaned and felt his mother squeeze his shoulder. He hadn’t realized that she stood behind him. He reached up and put his hand atop her’s.
Hanke said, “I was hoping you’d take a gander—see if it’s the Tobias kid. We need to find and tell his folks if it is. If not—” Hanke’s shrug finished his sentence. The police would try to find the dead boy’s family but, with so many children working and living on the streets, they might never identify the body.
Crofton’s funeral home was also the City morgue. That’s how it worked in Portland. The chosen funeral home’s director also served as the coroner and pronounced the cause of death. Crofton’s narrow, pale face was glum when he opened the door.
“Sergeant, given the circumstances of the child, I thought it prudent to call in Dr. Harry Lane to consult. Just to make sure there wasn’t foul play,” he said, before leading them down the basement stairs.
Sure enough, the doctor awaited them, smoke from a briar root pipe wreathing his head. His strong chin jutted forward and his gray eyes coolly scrutinized Sage from head to toe. “You’re that John Adair fellow. You run that fancy restaurant,” he announced in an accusatory tone.
Momentarily taken aback by the man’s unfriendly attitude, Sage said nothing. Lane kept talking. “Been there. Good food but don’t particularly like the company. Too many self-satisfied nabobs. I prefer rubbing elbows with the plain folk.”
Sage couldn’t disagree but this was neither the time nor place to voice his opinion. Lane turned his attention to Sergeant Hanke. “Let’s get a move-on. I have patients waiting.”
Peering over Lane’s shoulder, Sage was relieved to see that only one small, sheet-covered body lay on a zinc-covered table. The rest of the tables stood empty. Even so, the room with its medicinal and other scents gave him the willies.
The four of them crossed the room to stand around the body. Saying nothing, Lane drew the sheet off the face. Sage’s heart stopped and then stuttered back to beating. The little face had a red puckered scar on one side and the hair was dirty yellow.
“It’s not him. It’s not Glad Tobias.” Hearing the relief in his own voice, Sage felt shame. After all, a boy was dead. One about Glad’s age. He rushed to ask, “What killed him, doctor?”
The lines around Lane’s tight-lipped mouth deepened. Despite his cranky attitude, Sage knew the doctor cared. He’d never met the man but he’d heard of him. Born the grandson of Oregon’s first territorial governor and senator, Lane had thrown social prestige aside to become a physician who treated the poor without charge. In fact, he was known, locally, as, “The Poor People’s Doctor.”
Lately, Lane had been raising a ruckus over the City’s failure to inspect butcher shops. Before that, he’d fussed over human waste fertilizing the city’s vegetable gardens. When no one listened, he stopped the practice by shooting the urns used to hold the stuff. Lane was a man with causes who also took action. Had to admire that.
Lane gently pulled the sheet down to the boy’s waist. It was a painful sight. Every single rib in the boy’s sutured chest protruded. He was so underfed that his collarbones nearly pierced his thin pale skin. Lane gently pulled an arm from beneath the sheet. It was sticklike and sprinkled with other red scars, some old some new. The doctor turned the wrist so that they could see the calluses on the boy’s fingers and palms. Tenderly, Lane returned the hand to the body’s side. “His lungs are also scarred.”
“Scarred?” Sage repeated.
The doctor nodded. “He was in some place where he breathed in harmful particles for a considerable time. That’s what did the scarring.”
The doctor drew the sheet back over the body. “I found no broken bones, no evidence of strangulation. I don’t think he was murdered. I think he was starved and worked to death or, at least near enough to death, that he couldn’t survive last night’s cold.”
Hanke cleared his throat. “A patrolman found him early this morning, wrapped in a blanket, lying behind a row of dust bins. At first, he thought the child was just sleeping.”
The doctor nodded. “That’s why he looks so peaceful. Probably died in his sleep from hypothermia. There’s not an ounce of fat on his frame. The bl
anket wasn’t enough.”
“What are those scars on his body?” Sage asked.
“Burns. Some old, some relatively new. Whatever work they had him doing involved fire.”
They stood around the covered body, each one contemplating the horror that had been the child’s life until Hanke finally asked, “How old is he, do you think?”
Lane waved his pipe in the air, sending out a trail of smoke. “Hard telling. He’s been worked hard and starved, so his growth is stunted. That’s always the case with these factory children. I’d guess somewhere between nine and twelve. Can’t tell you anything more.”
With that, Lane nodded at them, tapped the brim of his hat and headed toward the doorway. When he reached it, he turned, removed his pipe and pointed its stem at Hanke as he said, “I’m counting on you to find the bastards who did this.” His lips twisted before he added, “Unless some damn politician tells you to back off, of course.” There was no mistaking the contempt he gave the word, “politician.”
They trudged back to the police station in silence beneath a heavy blanket of gray clouds. As the station came in sight, Hanke stirred himself to say, “The boy had a few other belongings with him. You want to see?”
The possessions lay on Hanke’s desk: A shirt that looked far too large, a penknife with a broken tip, a creased photograph of a grim woman and a kerchief, bright red against the faded blue of the shirt. Profound sadness washed through Sage.
Hanke seemed to feel it too, because he dropped into his chair behind the desk with a heavy sigh. “He’d wrapped himself in that big shirt to keep warm. I’m guessing he’s a runaway. Given how skinny he is, I’m also thinking he might be one of them orphan slaves.”
Sage sat down across from the police sergeant as he echoed, “Orphan slave?”
Hanke nodded. “I’ve been knowing about them. They’ve too many orphans back east so they ship them west on trains. Folks actually go to the train stations, pick out the one they want, pay for their fare and take them home. For the lucky children, it means hard work but a good home. For others—” here he shrugged, leaving the rest to Sage’s imagination.
“You don’t think he had a family, then?”
“Well, of course, there are some families, especially those without a father, that have no choice but to have everybody out earning money as best they can. And, I’ve seen where some folks send their little kids out to work so they don’t have to or because they want the family to get ahead at any cost.”
Hanke heaved a sigh before saying, “But, a family seems unlikely since his folks would have at least fed him just to keep him working. Looks like nobody cared whether our young fellow got enough food. Orphan slaves, they’re treated like they’re replaceable. I’ve seen it before.”
“Here? In Portland?” Appalled didn’t begin to describe what Sage felt. “We have orphan slaves here in Portland?”
Hanke shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope not. I saw lots in Chicago when I was growing up. At first, I just thought they were sick kids because they were so little, pale and skinny. Later on, I learned about orphan slaves. I’ve also seen burn marks like his before.”
“You know how he got burned?”
Hanke’s lips were tight as he said, “Yup. Pretty darn sure it was molten glass. I’m thinking the poor kid ran away from a glass factory. They’ve got tons of them in Illinois. Not that many around here and I’ve never heard of them using kids.
“So, I’m thinking maybe he rode a freight train in from somewhere. God only knows where he came from. I hate to think it was all the way from Chicago. Though, I suppose the hobos could have looked after him. Lots of them would try to help a kid that young.”
Mae met him at Mozart’s front door. The noon dinner hour was in full swing but she walked right past waiting customers to take his hat and coat and hang them on the hall tree. Her face was set and ready for bad news. Sage didn’t keep her waiting. He shook his head. “It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Glad,” he said, and watched as her face reflected the same train of thought that his own had traveled upon first seeing the dead boy’s face—first relief, then shame, and finally, sadness.
He glanced behind her. The dining room was full, the ever-dependable Homer was rushing to and fro, as was the second waiter they’d just hired. “Where’s Mr. Fong?”
She said, “I told him to go home. Kum Ho is very sick. He was too worried to work.”
That news gave Sage pause. Kum Ho would have to be very sick indeed if she’d let Fong stay home with her. The two of them owned a small provision store that catered to the city’s Chinese. She usually ran the store while Fong worked at Mozart’s, and sometimes slept there in his third-floor room. Originally, Fong wanted to work at Mozart’s Table so he could learn how to run a fancy restaurant. His plan had been to open one that served Chinese food. No one would call the town’s nondescript Chinese cafés, “elegant.” Fong had meant to open the first upscale one catering to whites as well as Chinese.
But everything had changed when Fong used martial arts to repel an attack against Sage. In the aftermath of that attack, he and Mae had told Fong the truth about their mission in Portland and he’d wanted to help. Now the three of them carried out St. Alban’s assignments and Fong taught Sage the snake and crane martial art. He’d also become Sage’s closest friend.
Sage periodically offered to fund Fong’s Chinese restaurant only to have Fong wave a dismissive hand as he said, “When I get old and tired, then I run restaurant.”
Sage looked around the crowded dining room. “Do you want me to take over the podium or the busboy job?”
“Podium,” she answered without hesitation. “You aren’t exactly dressed for hauling dirty dishes. Besides, we’re about to get several more customers. A new lawyer in town, Ambrose Abernathy, has reserved a table for twenty people. Apparently, it’s his wife’s birthday.”
“He must have come to town with heavy pockets,” Sage said drily, as his inner voice sarcastically observed that yet another rich lawyer was just what the town didn’t need.
“Where do you suppose Glad is?” she mused, once the restaurant was closed and the two waiters were in the kitchen prepping for the four o’clock tea hour.
“That’s what’s nagging at me. That and wondering about that little fellow who died.” Sage was sipping whiskey, hoping it would slow his thinking enough that he could sleep for a few hours. “Children of that age shouldn’t have to—” he began until he remembered who was sitting across from him.
Unshed tears glittered in her eyes. “You go ahead and say it, Sage. Say that ‘children that age shouldn’t have to work’. I agree with you. You know I do.”
“You had no choice.”
She shrugged and he knew his words failed to lessen her guilt. Still, she agreed, “No, I didn’t have a choice. Your uncle had that black lung. It was only a matter of months before he coughed himself out of work. And, I couldn’t earn enough to feed the three of us. Still, I nearly lost you.”
They didn’t often talk about Sage’s year spent as a breaker boy or his subsequent descent into the mine at the age of nine. Nor did they talk of the mine explosion and Sage’s rescue of the mine owner’s grandson. They also avoided talking about their twelve years apart when he was fostered and educated by that same mine owner.
Those memories pained them both. For her, it was a revisiting of the sorrow she’d felt every day for his lost childhood and long absence. For him, it was twelve years of bitterness—of enduring the mine owner’s resentment that the explosion had killed his only son instead of the “hillbilly”, Sage. It had been a life of luxury awash with undercurrents of contempt and anger.
He reached across and squeezed her hand. “But you didn’t, you didn’t lose me. I’m right here.”
She dabbed at her eyes with
the corner of her apron before straightening in her chair. Her face turned resolute and strong. It was a look that always reminded him of a ship’s figurehead, one proudly leading the ship into the unknown.
“Anyways, come tomorrow, how do we find out what happened to Glad and that poor dead boy?” she asked.
Three
“Let me take your coat, Sir. My, you’ve brought her a lovely bouquet today.” Elvira’s formal tone signaled that strangers were about the house.
After taking the roses, she ushered him into the second parlor where heat radiated from a tall coal-burning stove. It was his second favorite room in the house. He smiled. His liking for his favorite room had little to do with its décor.
The best thing about the second parlor was that it contained little of the bric-a-brac so popular with the day’s Victorian sensibilities. Most of its too-busy wallpaper was hidden behind framed landscapes and mirrors. The room’s corners each had a purpose. One held a whiskey table and another sported a potted rubber tree. In the third corner, a folding screen concealed a lounging divan while the fourth corner held a walnut gramophone with its huge brass horn.
Along the two side walls stood four hard-backed, green velvet chairs facing a matching two-person settee. The red Oriental rug lying between them got rolled up whenever the customers wanted to drink and dance before heading upstairs. There’d been no changes since he’d last been in the room except for the newly installed electric sconces and floor lamps. She entered as he was pulling the chain on one of the latter, switching the light off and on.
“Do you like them?” she asked.
Turning, his mind momentarily froze as it always did when he first saw Lucinda Collins. He smiled wryly and shrugged. “Well, the light is less harsh than I expected. Guess I’m used to saloons with their ugly dangling wires and bare bulbs.”
“Does that mean you might reconsider and electrify Mozart’s dining room?” she said with a grin only to hurry on before he answered. “Can I be the one to tell Mae? She’ll be so delighted.” Her teasing referred to an on-going dispute between Sage and his mother. So far, only the restaurant’s kitchen was electrified and then, only with a single bare bulb.
