The Hanging Women

by John Mead

  “Perhaps, we would get on quicker if you hit him only when he fails to answer,” the manager pointed out.

  “Maybe, maybe now he knows to answer quick without thinking,” again the white man’s voice went from a light, mocking tone to an angry, harsh shout. “I’m waiting, Jack.”

  Jack had been wondering whether his jacket and guns were on the table but quickly responded, “I was looking for Chicago Joe, I have a business proposition for him.”

  “Oh, a business proposition,” the light, mocking tone had returned, then the man bent to ensure all his strength went into the blow he gave to Jack’s left knee with the cosh he now wielded. The pain rippled up and down Jack’s leg, shooting even into his guts, as he tried to double up pulling against the ropes that firmly bound him to the chair. After a pause for Jack to regain his senses the light voice continued, “You a friend of Chicago Joe?”

  “No, never seen him,” Jack managed to explain as he struggled to control his breathing so he could speak, “for all I know, either of you could be him. But, I have information for him,” Jack went on, knowing his best way out was by talking and the closer he stuck to the truth the easier for him to lie.

  “Now, why would Chicago Joe be interested in hearing what you have to say?” the light tone remained but less mocking and more inquisitive.

  “The police are looking for him,” Jack thought he was on the right line, the man hadn’t struck him and was curious enough to suggest that either he was Joe or he knew him. “They think he murdered those two women, found down by the river the other day.”

  “That’s a lie,” the man almost struck him again but held back as the manager stood and intervened.

  “Hold up,” his voice commanding, suggesting he was more in charge of the situation than the other man. “Why would they think that?”

  The question alone suggested that the manager knew nothing of the deaths, “They have found a link between the two dead women and Ruby’s, I thought Chicago Joe would be interested to know or at least Black Rube might.”

  “What’s the link?” the white man shouted, slapping Jack though without the force of previous blows.

  “A young black woman who is a piano teacher and a blond woman, her pupil. Does that sound familiar at all?” If Jack hadn’t been in so much pain he might have smiled. The two men moved out of the limited amount of the room he could see and muttered angrily to each other in the corner. Whilst they talked Stevens got his breathing under control and tested his bonds, which were tight, even if he got loose he doubted he could walk, let alone run, given the pain still throbbing up and down his left leg. “Look,” Jack, deciding that talking was still his best chance to get away, raised his voice to attract the men’s attention. “You both obviously see some value in what I have told you, so doesn’t it make sense for us to do some business, just tell me what you want in exchange for the message you want me to deliver.”

  There were sounds of a slight scuffle which Jack took to result from the manager holding the white man back, before the manager asked, “What do you mean by, ‘what we want’?”

  “This works in a simple way,” Jack began feeling himself closer to safety with each word. “You probably want to deflect suspicion away from Ruby’s by letting the police know what you know, or suspect about the murders,” Jack explained, taking his time so tempers cooled. “You won’t want to give-up that information for nothing, not if you want the police to believe you. And, to reduce the risks associated with dealing with the police, I act as the middle man. It is a role I play on behalf of many of the top men in the city.”

  “What will this cost…” the manager started to ask when a door, to Jack’s left banged open and, what sounded like two men came in. Only one man advanced into the room and if Jack had not been able to recognise him from his voice he easily did so from the man’s well tooled foot wear and stylish trouser legs. Only Jaunty Tipwell spoke with such a nasal twang and wore such flamboyantly fashionable suits. Jaunty must have recognised him and, keeping his voice low so Jack could not hear his words, had pulled the other two into a corner to explain the error of their ways in harming a friend of Hank Tipwell’s.

  After a brief pow-wow the white man, recognisable by his ankle boots, approached Jack, who half-expected an apology and his bonds loosened to release him. Instead Stevens saw a thousand stars quickly fade to blackness as his head exploded.

  5

  Diamonds And Death

  Day Six – Sunday April 20th 1886

  Minsky cursed in a mixture of Hebrew and Russian, throwing the small key-like piece of metal across the room.

  “Although I don’t understand your jibber-jabber,” Martha told him, trying to play down the latest setback in their plans, “I am sure you should not be using such language in front of a lady.”

  “You are right,” Minsky took deep breaths to calm himself, it would not be fair to lose his temper with Martha after all she had done for him, but he had spent more than a hour crouched before the duplicate safe she had procured for him and, despite the instructions and tools he had purchased from the housebreaker he had consulted with, he had not managed to do more than jam the lock. The safe, a heavy cubic foot of metal, refused to open even when he now tried the keys that came with it and for all his efforts his only achievement was to give himself backache. “However, with only a day to go before the ball I despair of being able to open this infernal device.”

  Martha had not wasted time in arranging a meeting with Mrs O’Shea for Saturday morning and, with her daughter, had not only been shown the O’Shea’s house, off of South Prairie Avenue below East 14th Street, from attic to cellar, but also her ‘fabulous’ diamonds and, most surprisingly, the safe in which the diamonds were kept.

  “It is the latest design,” Patricia O’Shea, enthusiastically told them, she seemed inordinately proud of every item in the house, including the doorstops, though she obviously considered the safe and its contents as her crowning glory. “The key,” which she kept in a pocket below the waist of her inner skirt, “operates a double lock, an anti-clockwise turn releases the mechanism, then push in and turn clockwise to open. We are assured that it cannot be opened with a false key and there are only three keys to it in existence: mine, one in Brandon’s safe and one at our bank.”

  It was disconcerting for Martha to see Mrs O’Shea, “Please, call me Patricia, I would say Nina but only your husband and Brandon call me that, and I shall call you Martha,” smiling and chatting so happily. However, Martha had achieved her goal more easily than expected and, with Minsky, had visited the safe makers that afternoon and purchased a safe of exactly the same design.

  Martha had left Minsky to take the safe to his home whilst she had returned to see how Jack was doing. Despite her husband being carried home, grievously injured and near dead late on Friday, she had blamed him for the state he was in and the upset it caused her. Her blood boiled all the more heatedly when she heard him repeatedly muttering, “Ruby, Joe,” Joe obviously being short for Josephine. “If he must consort with harlots from the docks,” she thought to herself, taking the word of the two men who had found him, associates of Mr Tipwell, as they styled themselves, “then he deserves to be attacked and robbed.”

  She was not mollified when the doctor arrived and said the blows to Jack’s head were severe but should not prove fatal. Nor did it help when Inspector O’Leary arrived, the police having been informed by Andrew after Martha had sent word to her children, and after a few moments explained he knew the meaning of Jack’s words and told her, “Your husband has done the police force great service,” and had then dashed off again. The doctor left, having given Jack a draft to send him into a deep sleep, giving instructions that he would send a nurse to tend the patient who should stay in bed for a few days, kept from alcohol and fed broth and plain food only until the swellings on his head and left knee went down.

  Whilst Martha and Abiga
il visited Mrs O’Shea, Inspector O’Leary was putting in motion a series of events that would lead to an ‘unplanned’ police action. The Pinkertons, as yet ignorant of Jack’s plight, were in a tense meeting with the head of their agency. And, poor Kitty having learned of Jack being attacked had spent all of Saturday worrying and concerned about how her lover fared. All the time wondering at the strange noises coming from her upstairs neighbour and hoping, though failing, to get a better look at the face of his mysterious lady friend who now seemed a frequent visitor. In the end she resorted to spending Sunday morning at church service, praying fervently for divine intervention to bring about Jack’s swift and complete recovery. Through it all, Jack swam in the deep, dark, cold waters of an uninhabited sea, with some unseen and dread being grasping at his feet with icy fingers, his only thought to follow the small ruby red glow that danced before his eyes.

  “Every minute I spend in the house is a danger,” as Sunday afternoon drew towards evening and a squall of rain pattered against the windows, Minsky reviewed the obstacles they faced to successfully complete their plan. “The safe’s hinges would require a sledgehammer to break, even if I had the strength of Hercules, the noise would alert everyone to my presence. The darned thing is too heavy to carry, I had to pay the cabman to help bring it up here, and it can hardly be concealed under my jacket. My only hope was the skeleton keys I purchased but either I am an imbecile in their use or the makers’ claims about the lock are true.”

  Martha contemplated her lover’s despair; she had once held a passion for Jack’s best friend, who had subsequently died so tragically in the war, but it had been a largely platonic and girlish desire. Whilst for Minsky, she felt an earthy, physical passion that encompassed laughter and joy as well as a bond of friendship; she did not like to see him in despair and defeated as he currently was. Jack, however, she knew could not be defeated, as the black rage that stormed beneath his placid outer shell drove him relentlessly to complete any task he started regardless of cost.

  “I dare say if Jack were here he would simply suggest blasting the safe with dynamite and shooting his way out,” she had meant it light-heartedly but Minsky did not smile as he stood with one foot on the safe, staring down at it in thought. “I meant it as a joke,” she assured him, wondering if she had hurt his feelings in bringing up Jack. “I know you can’t blow it up.”

  “Perhaps I can,” Minsky mused, “I remember Brandon once talking to his cronies, years ago before I left his employ, about a substance called night… nitro… nitro something. If only I could remember.”

  “Not Nitroglycerin?” Martha stated, remembering Andrew had recently informed them that the DeWert mines were starting to use army ordnance made of the strange sounding chemical, instead of dynamite.

  “Ha, you are a wonder and a wonderful woman,” Minsky shouted with delight, pulling her to her feet so they could do a wild, laughing jig around the broken safe. “Now,” he crowed as they danced, “if only I can buy some before tomorrow evening then, like Cendrillon, I will go to the ball.”

  “I may yet lose my job but I have achieved what no other police officer in the city has,” Inspector O’Leary informed them, raising his glass to toast himself. “To my success!”

  “What is it that you have achieved that threatens you so much?” Jack wanted to know, taking a sip of whiskey, his first in virtually two days. Martha had rationed him to one glass and despite his initial intention to make it last the evening he downed it in one after the first sip.

  “I will not be pouring you another,” Pinky told him, sitting opposite Jack in another of the padded armchairs that made their late night meeting in Jack’s parlour, with its fire chasing away the chill, damp spring air, so much more comfortable than a bar. “Your wife was very specific on the matter and neither Pug nor myself want her angry with us again.”

  “She has only recently forgiven us,” Pug confirmed his agreement with Pinky’s position, “for passing on your message about being dead, and that was years ago and hardly our fault.’

  “I did not mean for you to relay that message, only that I would not be returning,” Jack defended himself.

  “You clearly said that the money you had paid into the bank on your family’s behalf was their inheritance, how else should we have taken it?” Pinky raked over the old argument once again.

  “Nor will I intervene,” Cage told them, “Mrs Stevens seemed unhappy enough with me when I told her you had gotten your injuries by helping my investigation, though I thought it better than the story those pair of layabouts told when they delivered you to her doorstep.”

  “I do not know what the world is coming to when a man is treated so in his own house,” Jack bemoaned. Stevens was propped up on cushions with his left leg supported on a low table to ease the pain of his knee, he had managed the stairs with the aid of a stick and, having been fussed over by so many females for the past two days, was glad to come down for the masculine company. Being comfortable and his leg still smarting from his recent exertions he decided not to try and retrieve the decanter of whiskey by his own efforts, instead he would bide his time. “You haven’t told us your news yet, Cage,” he reminded the inspector.

  “The words you muttered in your delirium, ‘Ruby and Joe,’ set me thinking,” Cage explained, making a show of enjoying his whiskey as he spoke. “It caused me to make up my mind to put a plan I had already formulated into action.”

  “Without even informing us,” Pug pointed out.

  “Only my sergeant and a few other trusted officers were summoned to a bar,” Cage continued, “and then taken by cab to their unknown destination. Only at the last minute did I reveal we were to raid Ruby’s. I had already had an iron bar prepared so the rear exit could be secured from the outside, cutting off any retreat, and I sent the youngest cop to the nearest emergency telephone to say an officer was attacked and injured by Black Hawks in the back alleyway. Then the sergeant and I sauntered down to the entrance and held it open at gunpoint whilst our men, took down those guarding outside. As reinforcements arrived, to help their fellow officer in distress, we pushed on into the main room and the new arrivals swarmed in behind; after that it was plain sailing.”

  “Rumour has it,” Pinky put in, “that two officers were wounded, though not seriously and a number of the staff were injured resisting arrest.”

  “It was a little hot,” Cage agreed, “for the first few moments. Though once those inside realised the net was closed on them they gave up quickly enough.”

  “Did you bag anyone of significance?” Jack, wanted to know, judging whether his desire for another whiskey yet outweighed the pain in his leg and deciding it did not, simply stared ruefully at the decanter.

  “The manager, who claimed the name Ruben, though all the guests and most of the staff gave false names. But, my sergeant recognised, amongst other personages, Mr John Wesley Blackstaff.”

  “The brother of the murdered girl?” Pug knew enough of the Blackstaffs to wonder why such a man should be visiting Ruby’s. “An odd coincidence?”

  “Despite his father, the reverend, the son is a bachelor of some wealth,” Cage added, “so his attending such a club might seem natural to some and simply a coincidence, although it is a strange one given his sister’s connection to the place.”

  “Which certainly seems beyond doubt from what one of the customers told me,” Jack informed them. “Although from the way the manager and his friend, the pair that did this to me, talked, I don’t think they had anything to do with killing the girls. Certainly the manager seemed surprised at the allegation.” Jack had decided to keep Jaunty’s role in the affair secret for the moment, partly as the the man had saved Jack and partly because he wanted to confront him himself; if Jaunty Tipwell had visited the Black Hawks without Hank’s knowledge he would be punished.

  “Everyone at Ruby’s denied knowledge of any Joe, Chicago or otherwise, and of the Misses Blacks
taff and Walsh. Although I suspect they lied as we found some old menus which included a description of the piano teacher and her pupil that seems to fit our murdered pair.” Cage told them.

  “They must have died within a few hours of their last performance there, yet there doesn’t seem a direct connection with the place,” Jack pondered the point. “Although I have no proof of it, I suspect the slim, easily angered man who enjoyed using his cosh on me is Chicago Joe.”

  “You now that description sounds a lot like Joseph Mannheim, the second-in-command of the Kings,” Pug stated, to nods from Pinky and Cage. “Although I have never heard him called ‘Chicago Joe’.”

  “This makes my brain spin, and it aches enough as it is. I could do with a whiskey to clear my head,” Jack said wistfully, only to receive shakes of the head from all three of his companions. Jack had slept for much of the previous day, the doctor giving him a sleeping draft, but he had been plagued by his old nightmares, whether as a result of his injuries or the shock of the attack he could not say but truth was he felt far from well and believed in the maxim: ‘Whiskey, the cure for all ills’.

  “At least, we can rule out anything in Mary Walsh’s real life to warrant her being killed,” Pug explained. “Our boss was reluctant to say anything about her but we did get sufficient from him to rule that avenue of investigation out. It seems she was from the New York City branch of a well known Chicago family, she was well educated having a degree in Classics.” Cage and Jack both raised eyebrows at the unusualness of this. “How exactly she became involved with the Pinkertons is not clear, but she was wealthy in her own right and seems to have been investigating abuses in the factories she and her family owned here in Chicago. It was suggested that she already had connections to the Knights and may have approached WP directly herself about concerns that the organisation had been infiltrated by extremists.”