Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

by Michael McDowell

  “Oh!” cried Helen, and the card fluttered to the floor.

  Duncan Phair found an identical card in his, but one which bore the text: ASLEEP IN GOD. DUNCAN PHAIR.

  “Peter!” he cried out, “run after the boy!”

  Peter Wish rushed out of the room, and in the meantime the Stallworths at the table stared at the mourning cards in their hands, each of which announced his or her own death. Edwin and Edith’s cards lay beside their mother’s plate, unopened.

  “A poor poor joke,” said Judge Stallworth, and ripped his card in two.

  Chapter 30

  Of the six members of the Stallworth family who sat at the dining room table that first Sunday in October, only Duncan Phair took at all seriously the funeral announcements that had been delivered by a little boy dressed in black. He had by no means forgot Black Lena Shanks’s vow to see three of the Stallworths dead. Duncan watched his father-in-law and, inwardly trembling, tried to match the old man’s annoyance and suggested the names of several persons who might be suspected of so malicious and pointless a joke.

  The others, if they could not entirely dismiss the unpleasant incident, at least did not imagine that the cards had any real import or constituted any actual threat. Edward Stallworth considered that his position as minister of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church had been impugned, and was incensed against the perpetrator. Marian was outraged that she should be the victim of someone’s morbid witticism and comforted herself with the reflection that someone’s jealousy of her rapid social rise had occasioned the hoax. Helen was shocked to think that anyone could be so callous. Benjamin, so obtuse that he did not align these cards with Black Lena’s curse (which he had kept so secret that he had forgot it), only laughed in perplexed surprise.

  Among themselves, the funeral cards excited much comment and speculation; but outside the family the incident did not become known. Peter Wish alone had seen any of the cards, as he looked over Marian Phair’s shoulder. He was enjoined to tell no one, and he told only the other servants.

  The unpleasantness of the incident soon passed, to all but Duncan Phair; for the mourning cards suggested that the foundation upon which his recent prosperity rested was perhaps not so much to be relied upon after all. His own life in the past six months had been of particular agreeableness, if only for its contrast with the bedeviling insecurity of the time when he had been in danger of being exposed by Maggie Kizer and Maggie Kizer’s friends. His difficulties had ended, he thought, on the day that the two policemen were killed by Black Lena Shanks and her grandchildren.

  Duncan had not told his father-in-law of Black Lena’s vow of vengeance; he had hopefully assumed that the Shankses—all wanted for murder—would be impotent to implement such a scheme. For some weeks he had gone about his business with as much insouciance as he could muster, and had tried to give the impression that all was right with him. Soon, he was himself convinced; and in the time since then, only one thing had shaken his growing confidence. A family of squatters in the north of the city, just where the northernmost cross streets were now being laid out, said that two men had come in a wagon and dug up several graves in the potter’s field. They were not simply resurrectionists, for all the disinterred corpses were discarded except the last, and that one they took away with them. The grave had proved to be that of the West Houston Street abortionist, Daisy Shanks.

  However, since nothing had come of the incident, Duncan forced himself to regard it as a puzzling, inexplicable coincidence.

  Once he had conquered the cloying fear that had beset him, Duncan began to enjoy the benefits that had accrued from his attachment to the Tribune: increased business for the firm, increased respect among his colleagues, and an increasingly amiable homelife. Marian Phair’s opinion of her husband was enhanced by society’s approbation of him.

  Occasionally, of course, Duncan Phair thought of Maggie Kizer; not Maggie as she had been to him, but Maggie where she lay now: moldering in her unmarked grave in the unshaded prisoners’ burying ground on Blackwell’s Island. She was silent and harmless, and he wished her peace.

  Duncan’s relationship to his father-in-law had altered since the revelation of his connection with Maggie Kizer, and Duncan understood that it was not the connection itself to which the judge had objection, but rather to Duncan’s perfidy in keeping it secret from him. It was apparent that the judge, having this once only been disappointed in Duncan’s honesty, had determined never to trust him again.

  Judge Stallworth’s superficial attitude toward Duncan was unchanged: he conversed with him as usual, he sought out his company and advice on legal matters, he did not fail to advise him in all things—but there was a substantial difference, and one that Duncan felt tremendously. The old man’s hopes for advancement had been centered in Duncan, and he had hoped to see his daughter’s husband elected mayor of the city before his death. This hope he gave over entirely, and with an ease that was disturbing to Duncan, the judge resettled his hopes upon a different object—his grandson Edwin.

  “Edwin,” Duncan once overheard Judge Stallworth say to Marian, “is a fine child—I have scarcely noticed him before, but I believe he is a fine child. We may expect fine things from Edwin.” Edwin was occasionally brought to Washington Square—itself an unheard-of indulgence—and allowed to play with Pompey. In the past six months Pompey had actually been three dogs, one male and two bitches, and Judge Stallworth was enormously pleased with Edwin that the child had the good sense and taste not to remark on the alterations in Pompey’s appearance. After being brought one afternoon into the front parlor of his house by Pompey’s bark and discovering Edwin entertaining the dog with a series of elegant handstands executed on the ladder of a flimsy chair, Judge Stallworth began to encourage the child in his athletic and gymnastic prowess. At the child’s behest, this was kept secret from his mother.

  On the Tuesday afternoon following the delivery of the funeral cards, Duncan Phair brought Edwin to his grandfather’s by special invitation. While the boy was romping with Pompey in Washington Square, watched over by Judge Stallworth from his study window, Duncan Phair told his father-in-law of Black Lena Shanks’s curse on the family.

  “I wasn’t trying to keep it from you, you understand. It wasn’t that sort of thing at all. I simply didn’t take the matter seriously. How could I? The family was already wanted by the police, and after the killing of the two policemen they became actual renegades. What harm could such persons do us?”

  “None,” said Judge Stallworth. “Why do you tell me this now?”

  “It occurred to me that Lena Shanks, or perhaps the surviving daughter, might have sent the mourning cards on Sunday.”

  “I think not,” said Judge Stallworth. “I’m rather inclined to follow your initial reasoning: the curse of that woman—as you call it—was sheer impotent rage. We have nothing to fear from that family—what little there is left of it now. Besides, such persons as that never take revenge on their betters—vengeance they reserve for their own kind. I tend to agree with Marian: the mourning cards were the joke of someone jealous of our recent advancements, and that is all.”

  The judge smiled and pointed out the window. Edwin and Pompey had drawn a little crowd just below the great marble arch in the Square. When Pompey stood on his hind legs and barked, Edwin would promptly and obediently execute a flip; and if Pompey barked twice, Edwin would double his maneuver. It was an amusing tableau of reversals, and pleased the judge immensely.

  Duncan Phair was as busy now as he had ever been in his life. The investigations into the Black Triangle had not left off, and the new business of the firm, not all of which could be relegated to George Peerce, brought him early to Pearl Street and kept him there until late.

  On Wednesday, October 4, Duncan did not finish his day’s work until half-past seven, at which late hour George Peerce and the four clerks had left for the day,
leaving him alone in the office. He extinguished the lamp, locked the chamber door, tried the other doors, and finally passed out into the hallway. From the top of the stairway leading down into the entrance hall he looked down and saw two women, richly if inelegantly attired, standing on either side of the front door. “Scylla and Charybdis,” he thought to himself. The small ceiling lamp did nothing to illumine their features, for their faces were covered with veils that were overshadowed anyway by their peaked, feathered hats. Both were dressed with unmodishly large bustles and a multitude of flounces and both carried large fringed reticules in the crooks of their folded arms.

  “Yes?” called Duncan from above. “May I help you? All of the offices in this building are closed now, I believe.” He began to descend the steps.

  “Yes,” replied the woman whose dress was dark green. “We’re waiting for Mr. Phair.”

  “I’m he,” said Duncan, pausing at the foot of the stairs. “My offices are up one flight. Why didn’t you knock there?”

  “We’ve particular business,” said the woman whose dress was crimson.

  “It must wait then,” replied Duncan, “for I’m late for my supper. You must come back tomorrow, during regular hours. Please return tomorrow, or at your convenience, and apply to my clerk for an appointment. You may state your business to him.”

  “Our business is with you,” said the woman in crimson.

  Duncan attempted to pass between them, but the two women seized his arms powerfully and flung him toward the staircase. His back struck solidly and painfully against the studded newel post there.

  “What!” he exclaimed.

  The woman in the green dress, whose hands had been hidden behind her reticule, now held them before her as she advanced on Duncan. The nails were more than two inches long, and glinted in the light of the overhead lamp. They were made of brass and had been filed to a slicing sharpness.

  The crimson woman slipped behind Duncan, lifted him from the floor, and held his arms behind him. He struggled to escape, but his thrashings were ineffectual. He had never known so strong a woman before, and the very novelty of being captured by a female deprived him of strength.

  The brass nails flicked against his throat in what was almost a playful gesture, but a moment later he felt the warm trickle of blood down his collar. When he raised his hand to protect himself, the brass nails sliced across his knuckles, drawing rivulets of thick blood.

  The brass nails were poised together, and then poked clawlike into Duncan’s mouth where they gouged with dizzying pain into his gums. His mouth filled with blood.

  He gagged, and the nails jabbed again, shredding his lower lip.

  The woman in the green dress drew back, and Duncan stared at her with stupefaction. He was lifted higher from behind.

  Holding her third finger and forefinger close together before her face to form a prong of brass sharper than a meat fork, the woman smiled.

  She advanced slowly and Duncan stood stock-still. Instead of swallowing the blood that gathered in his mouth, he held it in his cheeks.

  The woman raised her hand before his face, and with a graceful circular gesture, pointed the brass prong at his right eye.

  Duncan lifted his right foot and brought it down with as much force as he could gather onto the foot of the woman who held him. Her grip faltered and he pulled away from her.

  The woman in green lunged at him, and the two fingers plunged into his bearded cheek, piercing it through. Duncan gasped in pain and jerked away, tearing the nails from her fingers. She turned on him with a vicious cry, and dug her hands into his shoulders.

  He spat a mouthful of blood in her face and she stopped, blinded.

  Duncan threw the weight of his body against the double doors. He crashed through, tumbled down the steps, and with the two brass spikes embedded in his cheek, ran as fast as he could down dark, deserted Pearl Street.

  The two policemen dispatched to Duncan Phair’s offices found no evidence of the struggle but splattered blood about the base of the staircase and a length of fringe that the lawyer identified later as being from the reticule—he thought—of the woman in green. The two brass nails, once they were dug out of Duncan’s cheek, were curiously and minutely examined by the police. One old officer, now relegated to desk duty at Mulberry Street, said that he recalled a young woman during the Draft Riots who had affected these long brass nails on both hands and had inflicted great injury. “Don’t think it could have been the same one though, she’d be past sixty now, I’d think, had her teeth filed too—incisors like steel drills, plant ’em in your arm and fill her mouth with blood. Maybe it’s her daughter. . . .”

  None of the injuries Duncan had sustained—on his face, in his mouth, and upon his hands—was of any real seriousness, but all required time and leisure to heal. He was advised to rest in bed at least a week.

  Marian Phair had been shocked and indignant when her husband was returned to Gramercy Park in so disreputable a condition. She considered that victims of crime deserved as little sympathy as the perpetrators; there was something in one’s physiognomy, she contended, that invited victimization; something, she was certain, that all the Stallworths lacked, and that others—Cyrus Butterfield for instance—possessed in large measure.

  “What happened, Duncan?” demanded Marian sternly, sitting at her husband’s bedside, just after the physician had left the house.

  “I was attacked, Marian, by two women in the hallway of my offices. Just within the front door.”

  “Why did they attack you? Did they want money?”

  “No,” said Duncan, turning his face, “evidently not.”

  “Duncan,” she said, “does this have anything to do with the cards that we received on Sunday? Are you keeping this from me? You and Father? Not telling me that we’re in danger?” Her voice became increasingly shrill. “May I expect to be set upon in the street by two harpies, dragged from my carriage, and trampled upon in the mud! Is that what you’ve cut out for me!”

  “No, of course not, Marian,” he said uneasily. “This is unconnected with the cards that were sent on Sunday. That was a joke, this was serious business, but with the careful descriptions that I gave to the police, those women are likely to find themselves at the Island if they come near me again.”

  “I don’t believe you,” snapped Marian, and walked out of the room.

  Duncan was anxious to speak to his father-in-law, for despite his protestations to Marian, he was certain that this attack had been initiated by Lena Shanks. To his surprise, Judge Stallworth declined to take that view.

  “No,” said the judge, standing at the foot of his son-in-law’s bed, and holding a docile Edwin by the hand. “Depend upon it, Duncan, these women were after money—”

  “No,” protested Duncan.

  “—or,” he went on, over Duncan’s objection, “they mistook you.”

  “Father,” said Duncan, “they called me by my name. Before they attacked, they made certain of my identity!”

  “Well,” said Judge Stallworth, unperturbed by Duncan’s reasoning, “I will admit that it is possible that the women sought revenge of some sort. You helped to jail their father, or their sons, or their husbands, their lovers—or sent them to jail themselves. You say you didn’t recognize them, but you can’t remember every petty criminal that passes through the courts and neither can I.”

  “These wounds I wouldn’t call ‘petty,’ ” said Duncan peevishly. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to take a mouthful of food without discomfort.”

  “Doubtless, Duncan, this was merely an unfortunate consequence of your researches into the Triangle. We needn’t concern ourselves more with it. These women—whatever their motives for their attack were—are satisfied now.” Judge Stallworth lifted Edwin onto his shoulder, tenderly rubbed the child’s belly with his bony hand a
nd, warning the child not to knock his head against the doorjamb, walked out of the room without another word to Duncan.

  Duncan decided that he had done his duty by telling his father-in-law his fears; he had resolved never to be culpable again in a matter of withholding information from the old man. Helen, Benjamin, and Edward Stallworth, each of whom in turn came to visit Duncan, declared themselves disturbed not only by the violence of the attack but by its meaninglessness, its lack of motive. Duncan Phair eagerly agreed, and resignedly bemoaned his position as an unoffending victim of the harpies dressed in crimson and green.

  After a week’s careful searching, the police could find no trace of the two women who had assaulted Duncan Phair. It was a mysterious thing, the police considered, and persisted in their belief that it was all a matter of personal vengeance. And, as the days passed and the members of the family remained unmolested, Duncan allowed himself to think that the murderous attack had been intended only for himself, a result of some minor portion of the Black Triangle investigations. This small deception, practiced upon himself, was far preferable to the thought that Lena Shanks might have begun to act on her fearful threat.

  Chapter 31

  In the second-floor chamber of number 1 King Street, where Mrs. General Taunton had spoon-fed an aged, dying married couple, Black Lena Shanks sat in a scarlet-cushioned wicker chair, and by means of a mirror that was attached to the window casement, observed the traffic that moved constantly between MacDougal and Varick streets. On this pleasantly chill Saturday morning early in October, her daughter Louisa and the pugilist Charlotta Kegoe sat stiffly in chairs a few feet distant. The children reclined on their grandmother’s bed, playing cards.