Magdalene ushered Katya into the first pew on the right, and they sat huddled, looking around the room. Katya did not know how many homeless had crawled into the church pews for a secure place to rest. She hoped the game runner knew what he was doing meeting them there. Their voices could carry anywhere in the cavernous room, waking the sleeping and feeding them the unfortunate business of the country’s most interesting attraction.
Chapter Ten
Katya remembered Mrs. Weeks following the newspapers closely for months while the inventor Thomas Edison struggled with his experiments on electricity and light. Katya had paid the most attention to the articles that mentioned how his work, if successful, could be applied for purposes of entertainment. Unlike Mr. Warden’s carnival, the visionaries speculated, rides and coasters could be run on electricity rather than steam. Instead of so many gas lamps creating heat and fire hazards, light bulbs would more efficiently illuminate the night. Some said the bulbs would stand on posts as the gas flames did already, and others ruminated the bulbs could be hung in strands strung over the grounds. Light bulbs could brighten the top of the Tower, the spokes of the Warden wheel, and the tracks of all three coasters.
At the time, seated comfortably in the Weekly Boarder’s dining room, and even now, occupying the solid wooden pew waiting to find out if the carnival could indeed be referred to as Mr. Warden’s, Katya denied the idea that the carnival could be improved through such an innovation. Whoever had created it put the best technology of the times to new uses, and Katya respected that. The withering heat of the gas lamps, exploding valves, and chugging machines were small prices to pay to work there or enjoy it as a patron. Katya had fallen in love with the carnival’s grandeur the first time she saw it advertised on a poster: Management seeks qualified workers for all positions! She had lost her breath when she saw it in person and entered its hallowed grounds. It still struck her with its ingenuity and gleaming presence every night she worked there. Electricity could no more improve it than a phonograph could replace the musicians in the band.
Katya glanced toward the door, but no one had moved much in the time she and Magdalene had been waiting. The more she thought about the carnival, the more she wanted to know the truth. Was it Mr. Warden’s success, or did it belong to this man whose name no one knew?
The front door of the church creaked open. Katya exhaled with relief and patted Magdalene’s hand.
The game runner stole into the room, and Magdalene waved to catch his attention. He sat down beside her in the pew, lowering his hat to rest on his thighs. Katya leaned forward to see him past Magdalene.
“What’s your name, sir?” Magdalene whispered.
“Brady Kelly.”
Katya spoke up with insistence. “How come you’ll tell her and not me?”
Brady’s apologetic eyes flicked to Katya’s face. “It’s nothing against you, Miss Romanova. I didn’t want to speak my name at the carnival. Mr. Warden knows that name, or at least he should. He stole that notebook from me. I’ve spent three years trying to get it back.”
“You invented the carnival?”
“Yes.”
Magdalene picked up the conversation again. “That’s what we don’t understand, Mr. Kelly. How did Mr. Warden use your ideas to do what he did?”
Katya interrupted. “More importantly, how did you ever think of the carnival? What inspired you to draw such fabulous things?”
Magdalene glanced at Katya, not so much condemning as wondering how creative brilliance rivaled the underhanded nature of Mr. Warden’s accomplishments for what they needed to discuss.
Brady moved his hat to the empty space beside him, his fingers clutching the brim. “I’m not sure I can answer all your questions, ladies, but I’ll try.” He fiddled with his hat, rotating it one way and then the other. “I had a family once, in Illinois. My wife, Sarah, cleaned houses so we could afford our own to raise our little boy, Nathaniel. They made me so happy, I would’ve lived with them anywhere. I was already working with engines and machinery, fixing and designing them. I thought, what would be more perfect than a place for families to go where they could enjoy themselves and see something they couldn’t see anywhere else?”
Brady pulled his hat into his lap, his fingertips tapping a jittery dance against the band. “Nathaniel caught diphtheria when he was three. I’d already started the journal – my notebook, as you call it. I had some basic ideas of how to connect the steam engines to the gears that would make the rides move. He died never seeing more than that, just my drawings.” Brady tore at his hat brim, pulling it and folding it. “Have you ever listened to someone dying from diphtheria?”
Katya and Magdalene shook their heads.
“He couldn’t breathe. He coughed and coughed, but he couldn’t breathe. He could barely swallow, his throat hurt so bad. Sarah sat with him as long as she could. She wiped the drool from his lips and the blood from his nose. He shook from the chills but burned with fever. We buried him.” Brady nodded slowly, his eyes unfocused as he remembered it. “They shouldn’t build coffins so small, but there are a lot of them, aren’t there?”
Katya nodded. One of her sisters had not lived past her first few weeks.
“My wife,” Brady continued, “Sarah. She caught consumption the year after. I gave up my job to care for her, but nothing helped. We sold the house, and she passed much the way Nathaniel did, coughing and fighting for breath. She sweated all night, no matter how much I fanned her. When she died, I took whatever jobs I could, and I threw myself into that journal. I dreamed of a place where families – anybody – could go and enjoy themselves and be together.”
Katya interjected gently. “Did you know how you were going to build it?”
“No. I got lost in those drawings. I didn’t know if it would ever really happen. Then the notebook disappeared, and I had no idea what to do.” Brady raised his hand, resting it over his face for a moment.
Magdalene’s voice fell soothing and quiet. “Did you know William Warden?”
Brady composed himself with several blinks. “Loosely. He stayed at the same boarding house for a while. We worked together at a factory. He was a friend of the foreman, so he didn’t spend very long fixing machines before he was simply supervising the rest of us. He didn’t really have the technical knowledge needed for the job, but he could discipline.”
“Did you tell anyone what you were working on?”
“No. I always figured Warden was a petty thief. He must’ve stolen bigger, more expensive things than my journal, although the journal did pay off.”
“Do you have any idea how he turned your journal into the Steampunk Carnival?”
“Not exactly. He’s a smooth talker, Warden. People like him. People who don’t know much about him, that is. It’s easy to picture him in a boardroom of some city skyscraper with a cigar between his teeth, selling my inventions to a group of builders and investors.”
Katya recalled multiple headlines and articles about the carnival. She could not resist sharing its colorful history with Brady. “It wasn’t called the Steampunk Carnival in the beginning. People weren’t sure what to think of it when the workers were building it. I think they were excited, but they were also quick to condemn it. The night we opened, reporters from the News and the Journal and the Mirror were all there taking photographs and interviewing people. Everything was so disorganized, only the children seemed to enjoy themselves. The newspapers called us the steam-run carnival for punks, writing us off, thinking we wouldn’t last long.” Katya felt proud to reveal the change in public opinion. “The carnival caught on like wildfire, and there wasn’t enough room in the papers to keep calling us that, so they shortened it. Mr. Warden liked the phrase so much and so many people repeated it, he had it printed on that sign put up outside the gates even bigger than the original name.”
Magdalene adjusted her position on the edge of the hard bench. Her next question came almost inaudibly. “Mr. Kelly, did you send those death threats to Mr. Ward
en?”
Brady lowered his gaze. “Yes. I got the job at the carnival to see it for myself and be a part of what I dreamed about for so long. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but it’s close. I wasn’t sure what to do then.” Brady’s eyes widened as he focused on Magdalene’s face. “I’d never kill Warden. I only meant to scare him.”
“You might have scared him into throwing out the journal. He might’ve been trying to get rid of the evidence against him.”
Katya leaned closer to Magdalene and Brady. “Why doesn’t Mr. Warden recognize you?”
Brady sighed a dry, short sound. “My appearance isn’t what it used to be. I used to keep my hair trimmed, my beard trimmed. It’s amazing what losing your family and everything that means something to you will do to you. He’s never recognized me by voice or any other way. I never gave him my real name when I approached him about the job.”
“And that was good enough for Mr. Warden?” Magdalene guessed, her sad tone revealing her lack of surprise.
Brady shrugged. “He didn’t want to know the workers he managed before. This is the way I wanted it, Miss Harvey. I kept to myself as much as possible. I didn’t start calling myself the Mick to gain friends. Everybody has kept their distance except the two of you.”
“I saw you with the boy,” Katya admitted. “The one who stole a stuffed bear from your game stall. You were so pleasant to him. Even if you did threaten Mr. Warden, I didn’t think you’d hurt us.”
The trio fell silent. The homeless lay still in their pews, either straining to listen or dead asleep.
Magdalene’s voice cut into the silence. “What are we going to do now?”
Brady shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve thought of every possible plan.”
Katya broached the crux of the problem. “We can’t even go to the police. They’d never believe us. Mr. Warden has too much influence over every corner of the city.”
“I know. If I accused him of anything, they’d pin the death threats on me, and I’d never see the light of day again except on a chain gang.”
Magdalene peeled her gloves off and laid them in her lap. “We have the journal as proof. There’s enough of your handwriting in it that experts would be able to link it to you. Mr. Warden obviously hasn’t looked at it in a long time, or he might have recognized your handwriting in the letters.”
“It’s not enough,” Brady insisted. “Unless I get a public confession out of Warden, the police will never believe me. People have to see him for what he is, a cheat who got lucky off other people’s work.”
“Is that what you want us to strive for, Mr. Kelly?” Magdalene asked.
Brady rubbed a smudge on his hat brim with his thumb. “I don’t want to drag you ladies into it. Lieber’s as dangerous as they come, and Warden would do anything to hold onto the carnival.”
Katya revolted against the idea of leaving Brady to take care of things himself. She struggled to keep her voice low. “We’ve worked at the carnival longer than you have. We’ve been in the city longer. We know everybody better. I might not have much pull with Mr. Warden, but I do have some. Where do you think you’d get by yourself? It’s too important to tell us to go on our way. It’s all we’re going to be thinking about anyway.”
Brady hesitated, pressing his thin lips together.
“Mr. Kelly,” Katya tried again. “Let us help you. Please. The carnival means everything to me. It’s the only job I ever wanted, the only place I’ve ever loved with every bit of my soul. You designed it that way. If the carnival is a lie, how can I feel good about helping the patrons spend their money when it all goes into Mr. Warden’s pockets?”
Brady nodded reluctantly, his grey eyes preoccupied and darkly shaded. “All right. You can help me. We just need to figure out what to do.” He ran his fingers through his thick, unkempt hair.
Magdalene rested her hand on his arm. “We’ll think of something, Mr. Kelly. I don’t think we should threaten Mr. Warden anymore. Any additional security might make it harder for us to take action.”
“I won’t do anything unless we decide on it.”
Magdalene stood up. “It’s been a long night. We should all get some sleep.”
Katya and Brady rose to their feet.
Brady met their eyes intensely. “I appreciate this. I do. I never thought I’d see that journal again. I wasn’t sure how I was going to expose Warden’s fraud.”
“We’ll find out what we can about Mr. Warden’s schedule. We’ll let you know what we discover.”
“But we have to be careful.”
“We will. It’ll be easy for Katya to stop by your stall long enough to ask you to meet with us.”
“Should we have a code phrase?”
Magdalene nodded. She thought for a moment.
Katya remembered what Mr. Warden had said about the great wheel. “‘The wheel is very popular tonight.’ It’s true every night, but the patrons won’t know that.”
“I look forward to hearing that phrase,” Brady said.
Brady turned and led the two women out of the sanctuary. They crossed the front hall, and Brady eased one of the double doors open into the slow summer wind.
“Can you get home all right?” he asked.
Magdalene looked up the street for the streetcar. Horses’ hooves struck the road several blocks away. “We’ll be fine. How are you getting home, Mr. Kelly?”
“I’ll walk this way and see if I can’t find another horsecar.” Brady set his hat on his head, adjusting it briefly. “Thank you again, ladies. Good day.”
“Good day, Mr. Kelly,” Katya and Magdalene replied.
Brady walked away down Tennessee Street, and the two women started in the opposite direction. They soon spotted the horse-drawn streetcar and waved for it to stop.
Magdalene loosened the drawstring of her purse. “How much from here to Plum Street? It’s just over the river.”
The driver tipped his hat, revealing neatly combed grey hair. “You ladies work for the carnival, don’t you?” He beamed. “I’ll let you ride for free. I can take you straight there. There’s nobody else at this hour.”
“Thank you so much.”
Katya wasted no time in climbing up the step behind the driver at the front of the streetcar. She sat down in the second seat, leaving room for Magdalene to sink down beside her.
The streetcar turned to the right, taking the angled Kentucky Avenue away from the five-point intersection toward the river. Katya craned her neck and caught a glimpse of Brady walking alone through the hazy gas lamplight before the buildings at the next corner blocked her view.
Chapter Eleven
Katya double-checked her appearance in the oval mirror above the water closet sink. She made sure the perfect number of dark curls showed over her forehead beneath the brim of her hat. She had worn her largest hat tonight, angled heavily to one side. It was covered in royal-blue silk with thick, fluffy ostrich feathers cascading from the band. Lizzie’s employer had altered it for her, gluing charms and discarded watchmaker’s gears amidst the feathers.
Katya smoothed the front of her cobalt-blue jacket and the skirt of her silver gown. She needed to look her best, and she finally satisfied herself she could look no better. She let herself out of the water closet, almost bumping into the charwoman carrying a bucket of murky water. Katya jumped back to avoid soiling her clothes. The charwoman ducked back as well, sloshing water out over her shoes.
“I’m sorry,” Katya said quickly. She meant it, and she was doubly sorry she did not sound sincere.
The charwoman bobbed her head, her eyes scanning the ground as she strode past Katya.
Katya pushed on through the edge of the crowd to the nearest food stall. She stood at the side counter, apart from the customers, trying to get one of the cooks’ attention. “Excuse me.”
The cooks continued working, frying and plating and doing it again.
“Excuse me, I need a snack for Mr. Warden. He’s waiting for it.”
&nb
sp; Without looking up from plopping a long sausage on a thin bun, the nearest cook blurted, “What does he want?”
“Anything. He’s just hungry. He wants it fast.”
The cook passed the prepared plate to the worker at the counter for the customer line. He set down a fresh white plate, dropped a bun on it, and used his pair of tongs to center a sausage across it. He squirted a steady, practiced stream of mustard down one side and handed it to Katya.
“Thank you.” Katya hurried away with it, swinging out around the line of ravenous customers. She carefully avoided meeting Brady’s eyes as she passed his game counter. She steered clear of Magdalene working the front of the other food stall, simply noting the modest red hat and jacket brightening the corner of her vision.
Katya stepped into the shadows leading up to Mr. Warden’s office. She pulled a small, folded slip of paper from the left shoulder of her dress and hid it under the plate. She did not listen at the door this time, well prepared for Mr. Lieber’s presence. Katya knocked a few times before she opened the door, finding the two men in the same places she usually did. Mr. Lieber glared from his standing position on the left side of the back office, and Mr. Warden leaned over from his desk chair on the right to see through the doorway. Whatever they had been discussing, it had left a thoughtful frown on his lips.
“I brought you a snack,” Katya greeted him, passing through the front room. “I thought you might be hungry.”
Steampunk Carnival (Steam World Book 1) Page 6
