Black Drop

by S. L. Stoner

  * * *

  By 8:00 p.m. Sage had given up on the idea that Eich was going to return to Mozart’s. He donned his overcoat and headed out into the growing gloom of a rainy dusk. Of his four major worries, Fong, the assassination, Meachum and the imprisoned boys, it was the latter situation that remained unsettled in his mind. He needed to find out whether McAllister had agreed to rescue the boys.

  He was in luck. He found Clooney clacking away at a typewriter in the anteroom while McAllister intently paged through a heavy black book in his office. Clooney looked up and smiled. “I thought I’d give E.J. a hand since he stubbornly refuses to learn how to type with more than two fingers,” he said.

  The two men told him that they’d met with Eich and were heading over to the BCS after dinner. They figured that would be the easiest time to find Matthew and learn how best to free the boys imprisoned on the top floor.

  “Now, I’m a bit worried, ” McAllister said. “When Mr. Eich left here at least two hours ago, he said he was just going to let Mrs. Clemens know we were coming and then head over to meet with you. He said nothing about stopping anywhere else. He should have been there by now.”

  Alarm rippled through Sage. “You certain he didn’t say anything about going somewhere else before heading to Mozart’s?” he pressed.

  McAllister responded by standing up and donning coat and hat. Clooney did the same. McAllister said, “I am positive that Mr. Eich was going straight to your place once he’d seen Mrs. Clemens. He was anxious about getting there because he said he was already late. We’d better get going.”

  They moved quickly along the damp, dark streets toward the BCS. Sage’s eyes scanned all the nooks and crannies along the way. Portland’s dark alleys had proven to be potential hiding places for thugs. His effort yielded a reward but not the one he wanted. About a block from the BCS, Sage spied a familiar shape inside the narrow, dark gap between two buildings. He stepped into the gap and then gestured his two companions over. “Tell me that isn’t Eich’s cart,” he said, lighting a match and holding it close to the contraption knowing, even as he did so, that no such assurance would come.

  “It is his cart!” Clooney exclaimed. “I recognize that stained patch on the canvas. I walked him down to the street when we were finished talking and I saw his cart. That’s it. I’m certain.” All three men stared at the cart, dread now thickening their silence.

  “I think we better get moving,” McAllister said. “Robert and I will go in the front and see what is happening. I am afraid, Mr. Adair, that it will be up to you to confront Mrs. Wiggit in her kitchen. Let’s meet in an half-hour at that saloon across the street.”

  * * *

  Sage stepped down the single outside step to the kitchen door and rapped on it with his knuckles. The door swung open and a small boy, his face streaked with tears, nose running and mouth lax, looked up at Sage.

  “Andy,” Sage thought. His mother had talked fondly of the boy and told Sage of his affliction. Sage knew from her that Andy was much smarter than he looked and sounded.

  “What’s the matter, fella?” Sage asked, his voice gentle. The boy gulped, his eyes filled with tears and he mumbled what sounded like, “Matthew didn’t come play with me like he promised and Mama hit me.”

  Before Sage could respond, Andy was yanked away from the door opening and shoved behind the skirts of a wide woman who also sported reddened eyes. Sage’s gut clenched but he tried to keep his voice light and steady. “Greetings, ma’am. I am here to see Mrs. Mae Clemens.”

  The woman shot a look behind her and her face, when she turned back to him, was a mix of fear and suspicion. “And, just who might you be?” she demanded.

  “I am a friend, and you are Mrs. Wiggit. Mrs. Clemens talked about you. She said you were a good person and ran an efficient kitchen.”

  Sage thought he detected a slight weakening of the woman’s defenses and sure enough, after one more glance behind her, she opened the door further. “You’d better come in, sit there at the table,” she commanded, pointing toward a large oilcloth-covered table in the center of the room. The oilcloth was so large that its red-checked expanse hung all the way down to the floor. He did as she ordered and took a chair. The woman picked up another kitchen chair, walked over to the inner door that presumably led into the rest of the basement and push the chair against it. She then picked up a child’s picture book from the table, tucked Andy under her arm and carried both to the chair. She put the child in the chair, put the picture book in the child’s hands and told him softly, “Andy boy, you sit right here and listen very carefully for any sounds on the other side of the door. If you hear anyone coming, you call out ‘Mama’ okay? This is very important.” The boy gave a solemn nod, his eyes big in his face.

  Mrs. Wiggit paused at the cookstove to slide a pan farther from the fire box before she sat down across from Sage. “I hope to God you are truly a friend of Mae’s. If you’re not, then I guess Andy and me will be out on the street before nightfall. It doesn’t matter. I can’t stay here anymore. Too many bad things are going on and today is the last straw,” she declared even as a tear escaped from her eye. Her work-reddened fingers impatiently flicked it away.

  She didn’t wait for Sage to respond. Instead, she leaned across the table. “First thing you need to know. If Andy there tells us someone is coming, you and he are going under this here table. You understand? I expect you to protect him as best you can. Dangerous things are going on and I won’t have my boy hurt. So, you scoot under here,” she pointed, “and keep yourselves quiet as a house mouse when the cat’s around. Andy knows how, God knows Andy boy’s had to do it enough times. The Cap’n doesn’t like the look of him.”

  Sage could only make an inarticulate murmur of sympathy. He didn’t trust himself to find the right words in light of the strain this woman had must have endured from the rejection of her son and the continual need to shield him from her employer.

  She must have seen his compassion in his eyes, because, for the first time, her face showed both resolve and a lightening of misery. Her backbone straightened, she twisted to look over her shoulder toward a small nook where Sage noticed, for the first time, a young girl slowly swishing water across crockery.

  “You might as well get your fanny in here, Gussie,” the cook called, “I know your ears are flapping out big as an elephant’s.” The kitchen scullery let the dish slip to the bottom of the basin and was soon sitting alongside Mrs. Wiggit at the table. Her eyes were enormous in a pale, wan face. From the look of them, she too had been crying.

  Mrs. Wiggit studied Sage a moment before her substantial bosom heaved and her breath whooshed out. Her face bleak, she said, “Well then, Mr. Friend-of-Mae’s, I don’t know where she is, but wherever she is, it’s not good.” With those words, the woman’s chin wobbled and her backbone sagged once again.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Dispatch: May 20. 1903, President’s train pauses in Eugene, Oregon.

  “This country spurns the thought of inflicting wrongs upon the weak.” —T.R.

  McAllister and Clooney wore grim faces when they finally entered the saloon. Although his watch said Sage had been waiting only fifteen minutes, it had felt like half a day. He’d been nervously rocking his empty beer glass on the table until he realized his fidgeting was attracting the bartender’s attention. Next, it had been his right leg jumping under the table. He’d had to quash that as well.

  All three stayed silent until the beers they ordered were sitting on the table before them. Once the bartender was out of earshot, McAllister leaned forward over the table. “It doesn’t look good,” he told Sage. “How about you? What did you learn?”

  “The cook says Mae went to use the restroom and never came back. Instead, the Cap’n came in and told her he’d found Mae in the main building. He claimed he fired her on the spot. Said she wouldn’t be coming back.”

  “Do you trust what the woman told you?” Clooney asked.

  Glumly, Sage sighed. “‘F
raid so,” he said and repeated what he’d learned from Mrs. Wiggit. After she’d repeated the Capt’n words, the cook had pointed toward a row of coat pegs and said, “I know Mae didn’t leave this building of her own free will. It’s nippy cold outside and that hat and coat are hers. No way she’d leave them behind. They ain’t fancy, but they’re well-mended and warm.” Sage, Mrs. Wiggit and Gussie silently stared at the peg where Mae’s long black coat still hung, her small-brimmed hat on the peg beside it.

  Sage had cleared a throat suddenly constricted by a fear. “Um, Mae has a friend. A ragpicker fellow. Gray-haired, with a beard, boots to his knees. I don’t suppose you saw him today?” he asked.

  Mrs. Wiggit started saying, “He was here but left . . . ” when Gussie’s piping voice sounded for the first time, “I did! I saw the ragpicker! He was out in the courtyard. With that other man.”

  “What other man?” Mrs. Wiggit asked sharply. “Why, that friend of the Cap’n’s. The one staying upstairs.

  The one who came into the kitchen and told the ragpicker to go away. They was in the courtyard and the Cap’n’s friend had ahold of the ragpicker’s arm. It was kinda funny. The ragpicker looked mad and so did the other man. But the other man was sorta helping the ragpicker inside.”

  “Inside?” Sage asked. “Yeh, he led the old fellow inside this building that we be sitting in right here. They was walking real close together. And kinda fast.”

  “And, that’s about all they knew,” Sage said. “It looks like they must be holding Mae and Herman somewhere in the building. I suspect Matthew is a prisoner too since he didn’t turn up to play with Andy and Matthew would never disappoint the boy like that.” Sage stopped talking and gulped half a glass of the tepid beer without tasting it.

  McAllister and Clooney exchanged somber looks. McAllister softly hit the side of his fist against the table. “It all fits” he said. “The Cap’n and his conspirators have Mrs. Clemens and Mr. Eich for sure. And, we suspect they also have Matthew.

  Between us, Clooney and I managed to look in every room accessible to the public. No Matthew. Nor were the other two anywhere in sight. When we tried to search the third floor, we found the stairs guarded by the Cap’n’s henchman, Grindstaff. No way he was letting us go up there. That means the Cap’n has imprisoned our folks with those boys up on the third floor. We must act soon.”

  Clooney shifted in his seat, leaned closer and spoke softly. “The Cap’n has to be getting desperate. He knows his game is about to be exposed. Ollie’s escape told him that. He also has to realize that it’s only a matter of days before those picketing women get the whole town in an uproar. The house Lynch bought in Northwest Portland is useless for their purposes now. I’ll bet the Cap’n thinks every witness to their wrongdoing is locked away on the BCS’s third floor. It’s guaranteed that he’s going to try to get rid of those witnesses and soon.”

  Sage put his elbows on the table and held his head in both hands, overwhelmed by all they had to accomplish in the next twenty-four hours. On one hand, those BCS miscreants needed to be stopped and all their captives freed before harm came to any one of them. But the BCS conspiracy was separate and apart from the assassination. They still had to rescue Meachum, find the duped assassin, identify the second assassin on the platform and prevent harm to the president, all of it without Fong’s help.

  Gradually, he became aware that McAllister was speaking. He lowered his hands, “What did you say?” he asked.

  “I said that Robert and I, we intend to mount the rescue tonight. After the Cap’n has gone to bed. We devised the plan while we walked over here. You do know, don’t you, there’s more men than Robert and I who want to stop the Cap’n’s trade in young boys? Right?”

  He wasn’t sure where the lawyer was heading, but Sage was beginning to see a glimmer of hope. He felt his shoulders straighten.

  McAllister continued, “So, we propose getting everyone to immediately converge on the BCS. We figure it will take about a couple hours to get everyone in place. I’ll go round them up while Robert checks in as a guest to keep an eye on things. If we keep the place hopping and full, it might stop anything bad from happening until we’re ready.” Sage saw the wisdom of the plan. The Cap’n was unlikely to murder three people when the building was full.

  The lawyer continued to lay out his plan. “The group of us will stay there until closing with Robert staying overnight. He’ll let the rest of us in the alley door near the swimming pool after the Cap’n closes up and goes to bed. We’ll probably end up having to give a few of the Cap’n’s men a thumping but we figure, because of sheer numbers, we’ll be able to overwhelm them before they know what’s happening. Besides, we’re going in armed. Once we’ve taken control, we’ll search the third floor, free whoever we find and spirit them away into hiding.”

  “But, you said Lynch and his buddies threatened to expose you. Make it so you can’t practice law anymore. They can still do that.” Sage reminded him. “And they can hurt all your friends too,” He glanced toward Clooney.

  McAllister grinned, “You know, Adair, there is a heck of a lot more to life than being a lawyer. And, when matched against the loss of Matthew, Mr. Eich and Mrs. Clemens, and the horror those young boys face if we don’t act tonight, I conclude that the exchange is worth both the risk and the damage if it comes to that.” A glance at Clooney showed him to be gazing at McAllister, with pride and hell, might as well acknowledge it, with love. He thought of Lucinda, felt regret and then let it go. Now was not the time.

  Sage looked down at his hands gripping the beer mug. He hated to relinquish leadership of the BCS rescue effort. It was his mother, after all, who needed rescuing. But the determination on McAllister’s face, as well as the man’s proven intelligence, had to be enough. He had to let go and focus on preventing the assassination and finding Meachum. Time had nearly run out.

  It was galling that not everything Roosevelt did favored working people. He was still too close to the big corporations that owned Congress. And he belonged to that score of politicians who were trying to save the capitalist system through regulation of its inherent greed. Regardless, Roosevelt’s death at the hands of a duped union member would be disastrous for the union movement. That act would reverse what little progress working people had made toward economic justice. Roosevelt’s murder would vindicate the corporate overlords and strengthen their ability to enact more anti-union legislation. The tiny progress Roosevelt had made toward empowering ordinary citizens would be set back for years, maybe decades.

  “All right,” Sage said with a sigh, “I’ll leave the BCS rescue in your hands. I have to find Meachum before he’s murdered and the assassins before the president’s train pulls into Union Station tomorrow morning. And, first, I have to go check on Mr. Fong.”

  * * *

  The hospital ward hummed with mingled sounds of cutlery clattering against tin plates and subdued visitor hubbub. Fong’s bed, however, seemed enclosed in a thick bubble of silence. The Chinese guard, leaning against the wall, looked relaxed but his watchful eyes glittered as they constantly swept the room.

  Kim Ho sat slumped in a bedside chair but she managed a weak smile when he approached. She shook her head, her dark eyes wide with worry, her lips pressed tightly together as if to suppress their trembling. Fong was still unconscious.

  Sage advanced to look down at his friend. Fong’s eyes were closed, his face haggard and exceedingly pale below the stark white of the bandage encircling his head.

  “No change then?” he asked.

  “He same,” she responded in a sorrowful voice.

  “You’ve been here the whole time?” At her nod, he asked, “Who is watching your provision store?”

  “Cousin,” she responded. Not for the first time, Sage thought about how fortunate the Chinese were to have their fraternal tong connections that were, seemingly, as strong as family bonds were among the various European nationalities. Probably stronger. He supposed the tongs were one of the benef
its f the Chinese culture–an intelligent response to the extreme adversity the Chinese encountered in America. Of course, all was not perfect in the Chinatown. There were, after all, those bloody tong wars. As he gazed down at the still face, he pondered whether the tong’s negative aspects would go away if the adversity lessened. Would the tongs evolve into social clubs once the Chinese had better economic opportunities and the right to bring their wives and families to America?

  “You too young to make such big wrinkles in forehead,” came a hoarse whisper from the bed.

  Sage started. With a sharp little cry, Mrs. Fong leapt from her chair to her husband’s side.

  Fong’s eyes were half-open as they moved between the two of them. “Head really hurts,” he whispered, before closing his eyes.

  Kim Ho took Fong’s limp hand into her small one. Sage tarried just long enough to see his friend’s fingers tighten around hers before he hurried off to find a doctor.

  Leaving the hospital an hour later, Sage’s step was lighter, and not just because he was heading downhill. The doctor said that it was a very positive sign that Fong had regained consciousness already and appeared to have retained his “marbles.” Not exactly a precise medical term but Sage had managed to convey its meaning to Kim Ho, causing her face to brighten. Fong had awakened one more time and stayed conscious long enough for them to tell him he’d been shot.

  Just before his eyes closed, he’d asked whether Sage and Mr. Li had met. Upon being reassured that they had and were working together, he said, his voice weak from the throbbing pain in his head, “Happy to hear. Good you not going it alone.” After which he smiled slightly and closed his eyes.