S.O.S.
Page 5
“Yes. I can read it.” Her eyes scan the yellowed letter and her mouth forms the German words as she silently reads. She takes a breath and closes her eyes, letting her hands and the letter fall to her lap.
“And what does it say? About Helga?” Tyrell asks.
“It says that the boss locked them in at night if they failed to meet their quotas. It says that”—she runs her finger along the dark script—“Helga . . . sewed slowly, and she didn’t meet her quota.”
“That’s right. So that night she went up to do extra sewing and she brought a candle with her. She was locked in. The candle got knocked over and lit something on fire, a barrel of something.”
Miss Schneider nods. “Rags. Those barrels were full of oil-soaked rags for the machinery. Quite flammable.”
“Helga tried to get out. She used the scissors to try to break through the door. But she couldn’t. She burned to death in that room.”
“I knew it,” Miss Schneider says in a shaking voice. “I knew she wouldn’t leave and not say good-bye.” The cat bounds into her lap. “There, there, Leroy,” she says, and his purring fills the room as she strokes him.
“That picture you have. It’s her, Helga.”
“Yes,” Miss Schneider says softly. “She played with me. She said I was like her little sister.”
“Marie.”
Miss Schneider raises the letter to her chest. “Oh, dear Helga,” she says. “But where . . . ?” She shakes her head at the thought.
“It was very hot, and it was a small room. The walls, the wood, it was all burned—didn’t you see it?”
Miss Schneider shakes her head no. “The place was locked up. With the floor burned and the stairs ruined from water damage, it wasn’t safe to go up there. After Mr. Zinn cleared the place out, no was allowed. And he had the only key to that room.”
“Mr. Zinn had the key?”
“Yes. He was the manager.”
Tyrell sits back. Zinn didn’t start the fire, but he got back too late to save her. And he lied about it; he said no one died because he would have gone to jail for locking her in. “The keys were his.”
“Papa would never have allowed such practices!” Miss Schneider cries. “I tried to tell him about the flashing light. Helga was sending us a signal.”
“And she still is.” Tyrell leans closer to her chair. “What do you think she wants?”
Miss Schneider looks at the letter. “She must have known you would help her.” Her eyes shine with tears. “I think she wants to be remembered, for people to know what happened.”
“But they won’t now because you’re tearing down the factory tomorrow.”
“No!” Miss Schneider holds up a finger. “Not until we go back there and find out what she wants.”
Chapter 14
It is just getting dark when Miss Schneider hands Tyrell the key and he opens the padlock. “So, are you still pressing charges?” Tyrell asks.
“Oh, that.” Miss Schneider waves her hand. “I never called the police.”
“You were lying?” Tyrell tilts his head at her.
“Well, I had to know if you were fibbing about seeing the madwoman with the scissors.”
“And now you know.”
“Now I know,” Miss Schneider echoes.
They turn on their flashlights, and he helps her up the first staircase. He scours the second floor. “Found them!” he says and lifts the iron key ring from the dust.
“Oh, be careful,” Miss Schneider says, holding the chair steady as he climbs over the file cabinet and onto the seat.
The third floor is dark, but a faint glow comes from the burned room. The warped door creaks as he pushes it open.
“Helga?” he calls out, balancing on the charred floor joist. “We’re here to help you.” He turns to the window. The girl appears in the reflection. She nods.
Tyrell walks carefully over to the chest and crouches. Slowly he lifts the barrel key to the padlock. The lock springs open. He tugs the top up until the lid opens.
Inside are a tattered book and a satin ribbon. The book’s blue cover is worn and washed out with age. The gold title is in German. The ribbon is faded to a very pale pink. He flips through the book’s pages. The same black-and-white photo of the girl that Miss Schneider has is wedged in between the pages. Helga sits with smaller girl—Miss Schneider?—on her lap. She appears to be reading her a book. Helga has a ribbon in her hair. She wears a white, high-collared shirt and a locket around her neck.
“What do you see?” Miss Schneider calls from below.
Tyrell tucks the picture back into the book. “The chest,” he says. He carries the book and the ribbon back out and stops at the top of the mangled staircase.
“Did you find her? Helga?” Miss Schneider says, her hands clasped at her chest, her eyes gleaming.
“In a way, yes.” Tyrell shines the beam of his flashlight on the book and the ribbon.
Miss Schneider gasps and nods. Her eyes narrow and then widen. “She always wore that ribbon—it was a gift from her mother.”
He leans over and dangles the ribbon. Miss Schneider reaches up and gently takes it.
“And this,” Tyrell says. He drops the book onto the chair seat. Miss Schneider’s hand rests on the cover. “Fairy tales,” she says. “Helga read me German fairy tales.”
“That’s what was in the chest. But it doesn’t prove that Zinn knew she was in the factory that night.” Was that what Helga had been telling him, to open the chest?
“What is the German word for ‘chest’?” he asks.
“Kiste,” Miss Schneider says.
That wasn’t what Helga said. He scans the room, the empty tables and broken chairs, the old wood-burning stove.
What was it she said when she appeared in my room? That’s it.
“She said, ‘often,’” he says.
“Often?” Miss Schneider repeats and shakes her head. Then her eyes grow big. “No!” She raises her hands, and her pale eyes meet his. “It’s ofen! It means ‘oven’ . . . she means the furnace!”
Tyrell spins. Of course! He hurries to the wood-burning stove. The metal handle sticks, and he yanks up, hard. The heavy iron door screeches and he shines the beam in.
“What’s there?” Miss Schneider calls.
“I’m looking!” he says. Thick gray ash fills the bottom of the stove. He reaches in and lightly digs, sifting through the cinders until his fingers touch something smooth and cool. He pulls it out. It is an oval locket. He rubs it with his thumb, and the initials HM appear. Mr. Zinn arrived too late to save her, so he burned her body in the furnace to hide the evidence!
Chapter 15
“The Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 was a disaster that prompted new legislation and the organization of the workers,” Tyrell says. He stands in the front of the class. “In fact, we had a tragedy right here in Middleton.”
The class is rapt as he tells the story of how he and Miss Schneider pieced together from the newspaper accounts and memory how one Wearables worker was never accounted for.
“Helga Müller was a fifteen-year-old immigrant worker,” Tyrell says. “But she was also a daughter, a sister . . . ” His eyes stop on Miss Schneider. “And someone’s friend.”
She nods from the back of the classroom. He clicks through a computer slideshow of old pictures of the factory floor. “Like many other poor workers, she felt she had no choice but to work extra hours when the boss made her. Mr. Zinn, the manager, locked her in until she finished her daily quota. But there was a fire, and she couldn’t get out. Because there were new laws against treating workers so poorly, Mr. Zinn covered up her death to escape murder charges. But he didn’t count on someone missing a poor worker.”
Tyrell plays a video interview with Miss Schneider. In it she is wearing a bright blue velour jacket, jeans, and a small gold locket. She recounts her memories of how the factory operated under the new rules. “My father treated the workers with respect,” she says. “And Helga was a work
er but also a friend.”
Then Tyrell shows the contract that proves Mr. Schneider was in Seattle the night of the fire, leaving his manager, Mr. Zinn, to run the factory. “Mr. Zinn claimed, falsely, that Helga had quit and moved away. He felt that nobody would miss an immigrant girl and used his power to cover up how he broke the law,” Tyrell says. “Abuse like this is how workers’ rights legislation came about and why we still need to protect workers.”
The class is quiet.
“But Helga is at peace now,” Miss Schneider says, standing up. “In fact, we’re going to make the property into a park: Helga Müller Park. We’re putting in a big memorial to her. She isn’t forgotten.”
Several students clap.
“How did you figure out that she was missing?” a boisterous classmate calls.
Tyrell shifts from foot to foot. Would they believe the truth? He glances around the room and says, “I just followed a beacon.”
About the Author
J. Fallenstein likes to freak herself out by constantly asking “what if?” She writes sometimes-scary stories that answer that question. You can find her at midnight in the Midwest wide awake wondering what that noise was.