City of Lies

by Victoria Thompson

  “I’m worried about her, too, but it won’t be much longer before they let us all go.”

  “It won’t?”

  “Oh no. Only a matter of days, I expect. They can’t force-feed forty women any better at the Washington jail than they could at the workhouse, and they can’t afford for any of us to die just a few blocks from the White House.”

  Elizabeth managed not to flinch. “Then we’re continuing the hunger strike.”

  “Of course. It’s our most valuable weapon in the struggle. I know it’s hard, but it won’t be much longer now, I promise you.”

  “What about Anna?”

  Mrs. Bates glanced over to see if Anna was listening, but she appeared to be asleep. “I’m going to tell her she must end her strike. She’s proven how brave she can be, and the rest of us can carry the burden from now on.”

  “She won’t listen,” Elizabeth said.

  Mrs. Bates reached across the aisle and took Elizabeth’s hand. “We won’t let her die, I promise you.”

  The train ride from the courthouse in Alexandria to Washington wasn’t long, but when they pulled into the station, the guards told the women to remain in their seats.

  “What’s going on?” Elizabeth asked when she saw the women on the other side of the car peering out the windows.

  “Mr. O’Brien is having some sort of discussion with Warden Zinkhan,” Mrs. Bates said.

  Elizabeth got up and moved to where she could see for herself. Zinkhan gestured excitedly and O’Brien frowned back at him. Gideon Bates and David Vanderslice stood by with the other attorneys. Nobody looked happy, so Elizabeth figured whatever they were discussing would mean more trouble for her and the other women.

  “Maybe they’re having trouble getting transportation for us,” Mrs. Bates said. “The judge didn’t give them much notice we were coming.”

  This was much more than a transportation problem, though.

  “What is it?” Anna asked groggily. “Why is the train stopped?”

  Elizabeth slipped back into her seat and managed a smile. “We’re in Washington. We’re just waiting for them to come and get us off the train.”

  That seemed to satisfy her, and she closed her eyes again. Elizabeth wished she could believe her own lies.

  After a few minutes, Mrs. Bates said, “Mr. O’Brien is getting back on the train.”

  Oh good! Maybe they were going back to Virginia or someplace else where Thornton couldn’t find her.

  O’Brien entered the car and asked for their attention, which he already had, since every woman in the car had been watching him for ten minutes.

  “Warden Zinkhan has notified the judge here, the one who originally sentenced all of you, that he does not have the facilities to take all of you, particularly if you plan to continue the hunger strike, which I assured him you do. Consequently, the judge has reduced your sentences to time served, and you are all now free to return to your homes or go wherever you wish.”

  The women burst into applause and began to hug each other. Mrs. Bates threw her arms around Elizabeth, but she had to force herself to hug her back. Her mind was racing, trying to decide what she should do. She was already at the train station. It would be a simple matter of catching the next train to New York. News of their release wouldn’t be in the newspapers until tomorrow, so even if Thornton knew where she’d been, he wouldn’t know she was free until she was well on her way. The only question was whether she could make the trip by herself.

  She turned to Anna. “We’re free. You can go home now.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth, what will you do? Will you go back to South Dakota?”

  For a minute, Elizabeth couldn’t think why she would want to go to South Dakota. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to let my aunt know I’m all right. Maybe I’ll stay here for a few days to rest before I go on home.”

  “You could come to New York with us and rest there. My mother would love to have you, and she would take such good care of you. Mrs. Bates, tell Elizabeth she should come home with us.”

  “Oh, yes, do,” Mrs. Bates said. “You aren’t in any condition for a long trip like that alone.”

  She was going to New York herself, of course, but she couldn’t afford to let them slow her down. She had to get well away before Thornton and his thugs got wind of it. “You’re very kind, but I couldn’t possibly—”

  “Of course you could,” Mrs. Bates said. “Please at least consider it. You’ll want to stay here in Washington tonight. You’ll have to go back to your hotel to get your luggage if nothing else.”

  “My luggage?” Elizabeth thought of the things she’d left behind in the hotel room when she’d fled for her life. Coleman was going to take them to New York for her if he’d managed to escape Thornton and his men, so she had nothing to collect.

  “Where were you staying?” Mrs. Bates asked. “We were at the Willard.”

  “I . . . no, not at the Willard,” she lied, unable to think of another hotel at the moment.

  “Mother!”

  Mrs. Bates looked up and smiled lovingly at her son, who was hurrying down the aisle toward them. “Gideon, they’re letting us go.”

  “I know. David has gone to get a cab. We thought we’d take you and Anna back to the hotel for the night. You can get something to eat and a good night’s sleep. Then, if you’re feeling well enough, we’ll take you home tomorrow.”

  About halfway through that speech, his gaze had drifted away from his mother and found Elizabeth.

  “Elizabeth, this is my son, Gideon,” Mrs. Bates said with a knowing smile.

  “Do you remember me, Miss Miles?” he asked with a knowing smile of his own.

  “Not at all,” she tried, knowing she couldn’t encourage him.

  “You remembered my advice, though.”

  For all the good it had done her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “Gideon, she’s my dearest friend,” Anna said, oblivious to the undercurrents. “She’s from South Dakota, but I’ve invited her to come home with us for a while. Tell her she must.”

  “You must,” he said.

  But Elizabeth knew she mustn’t. “You’re all very kind, but I couldn’t possibly impose, and I really must get back home to my aunt. She’ll be worried sick.”

  “You can send her a telegram,” Mrs. Bates said. “Tell her kindly people are looking after you.”

  “Gideon!”

  David Vanderslice hurried down the aisle, squeezing by the women who had begun to make their way out of the car.

  “I have a cab waiting. Anna, don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything.”

  She smiled up at her brother. “David, this is Miss Miles. We must take care of her, too.”

  David nodded politely. “Of course we will. Anna, can you walk?”

  Anna said she could, but Mrs. Bates told David to carry her, so that’s how she was taken off the train. Mrs. Bates followed, leaving Gideon to escort Elizabeth.

  “Can you walk, Miss Miles?” he asked with a wicked gleam in his eye. “Because I’m perfectly willing to carry you again.”

  “I can walk, Mr. Bates,” she assured him, pretending not to notice how he was smiling at her. She followed the others, and Bates came along behind her.

  “It’s futile, you know,” he said.

  “What is?” she asked in alarm, wondering what he knew about her.

  “Trying to resist my mother. She always gets her way.”

  “I really can’t—”

  “And what about poor Anna? How can you cause her any more distress?”

  If he only knew the kind of distress Elizabeth could attract. “You’re very persuasive, Mr. Bates,” she said. She knew better than to continue an argument she couldn’t afford to lose. She’d simply excuse herself to the ladies’ lounge and then d
isappear. It would be kinder to everyone.

  The porter helped her down the metal stairs to the platform, and she paused to get her bearings. She saw the doors into the station and the ticket windows beyond. And then she saw Thornton’s thugs, standing at the end of the platform and watching every woman who got off the train.

  “Are you all right?” Bates asked.

  She wasn’t all right at all. She ducked her head, praying they hadn’t seen her. “I feel a bit faint,” she said quite truthfully.

  “You never faint,” he reminded her. “Would you like me to carry you?”

  “No!” She couldn’t cause a scene. They’d see her for sure. “But if you’d let me take your arm . . .”

  “Of course.” He offered it, then laid his other hand over hers.

  She turned her face, nearly burying it in his shoulder as they walked past the two men who would kill her, given the chance. Surely, they wouldn’t dare accost her if she was with Gideon. She didn’t even glance at them to see if they recognized her, but her heart hammered so loudly, she imagined they could hear it. Surely, Gideon Bates could hear it.

  And then they were through the terminal and outside again, where a row of vehicles waited to carry passengers to their destinations.

  David Vanderslice’s shout drew them to a motorized cab, and Elizabeth let Gideon Bates hand her inside and onto the seat beside Anna.

  “Oh, Elizabeth, I’m so glad you’re coming with us.”

  “You’re right. I do need to rest before I try to go home,” she said as Gideon and David took their seats up front with the driver. She’d go to the hotel with them for the night. Maybe she’d even travel to New York with them. She’d be safe from Thornton’s men if she wasn’t alone.

  “So tell us, Gideon,” Mrs. Bates said. “How were you able to get Whittaker to release us?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it at all,” he called back to them. “It was David and an old friend of ours.”

  “What friend is that?” Anna asked.

  “You won’t believe it,” David said. “I hardly believe it myself, come to that. It’s Marjorie’s husband, Oscar Thornton.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Oscar thornton?

  Elizabeth’s whole body went numb. She couldn’t have heard that right.

  “That’s an unkind joke, David,” Mrs. Bates said.

  “It’s not a joke, Mother,” Gideon said. “Thornton found out you and Anna had been arrested, and he offered his help. Honestly, I don’t think you’d be free if he hadn’t.”

  “What on earth could Oscar do that you couldn’t?” Mrs. Bates asked. Elizabeth had never seen her so angry, not in all the time they’d been mistreated and abused at the workhouse. “And how did he find out we were arrested in the first place?”

  “I’m afraid I told him,” David said. “He came to me with a business proposition and—”

  “What kind of business proposition? I hope you aren’t planning to get involved with him.”

  “Mother, please, don’t upset yourself,” Gideon said.

  “I’m not upsetting myself. Oscar Thornton is upsetting me. How dare he approach any of us after the way he treated Marjorie?” Mrs. Bates said. “And then he expects David to help him in some business arrangement?”

  “I have no intention of it,” David assured her. “I’m afraid I used Anna’s situation as an excuse to avoid having to turn him down directly, though, and then he offered his assistance. When it seemed as if he really could help, I had to listen.”

  “And he really did assist us,” Gideon said.

  “In what way?” Mrs. Bates asked skeptically.

  “He sent his bodyguards out to find a deputy to serve Warden Whittaker with the writ to force him into court today,” Gideon said.

  “Gideon and Mr. O’Brien—he’s the attorney for the Woman’s Party—had been trying to find a deputy for days, but they were all hiding,” David added.

  “What do you mean they were hiding?” Mrs. Bates asked.

  Elizabeth’s head pounded as she tried to follow the conversation and make sense of it at the same time. David and Gideon explained how President Wilson or someone had hidden the deputies so they could keep the women in prison, which seemed very strange to Elizabeth. How would the president hide deputies? But somehow Thornton and his thugs had outsmarted someone or other and saved them all. Mrs. Bates couldn’t believe it, but that was only because she didn’t know Thornton wasn’t trying to save her and Anna at all. Oh no. He was trying to get his fat hands on Betty Perkins. Elizabeth shuddered, remembering poor Jake out in the alley.

  “I simply can’t believe this of Oscar,” Mrs. Bates said. “I actually saw him a few weeks ago. That first morning we were in Washington, I think. In the hotel dining room. I’m afraid I was terribly rude to him.”

  Elizabeth looked over at her in surprise. She remembered that morning only too well. Mrs. Bates had been the woman who’d cut Thornton dead the day they dropped the leather. How could she not have known? She hadn’t seen the woman’s face, but still . . .

  “He has apparently forgiven you,” David said.

  “Or else he didn’t even notice you were rude,” Gideon added with a sly grin. “You’ve always believed he lacked genuine human feelings.”

  Another thing Mrs. Bates and Elizabeth agreed on.

  “I shall have to send him a note to thank him,” Anna said, her voice still a whispered croak from the forced feedings.

  Mrs. Bates patted her hand. “I’m sure he’d appreciate that.”

  Elizabeth was so addled, she couldn’t tell if Mrs. Bates was being sarcastic or not. “Who is this Oscar Thornton?” she managed to ask. What she really wanted to know was who Thornton was to them, so she’d know how he planned to use them to get to her.

  “No one you need to worry about, dear,” Mrs. Bates said.

  “He was married to our cousin Marjorie,” Gideon said.

  “And he made her life miserable,” Mrs. Bates said.

  Thornton had mentioned being married, of course. He’d even bragged that his late wife had come from an “old money” family. But who could have imagined the wife would be related to Mrs. Bates? “Did she divorce him?”

  For an awkward moment no one spoke, and Elizabeth wondered if perhaps they found the mention of divorce too shocking to discuss in polite company. Then Gideon said, “Marjorie died.”

  Mrs. Bates drew an unsteady breath. “They said it was an accident.” But plainly, she didn’t believe it.

  Elizabeth didn’t believe it, either.

  “Here we are,” David said with forced enthusiasm.

  The cab had pulled up in front of the Willard Hotel. Elizabeth’s stomach lurched at the memory of her last visit here, when she’d seen Jake beaten bloody and fled in fear for her life. Where was Jake now? And would she ever see him again?

  But she couldn’t think about that now. She was too exhausted to think about anything except getting out of the cab and somehow finding a place to lie down.

  “We have a suite reserved,” Gideon was telling them. “David and I moved into it yesterday in hopes that we’d be bringing you ladies back here today. He and I will share one of the bedrooms, and you and Anna can take the other, Mother. We weren’t expecting Miss Miles, but I’m sure we can find a room for her—”

  “Oh, Elizabeth, don’t leave me,” Anna begged, her eyes enormous in her drawn face. “She can stay with us, can’t she, Mrs. Bates?”

  “If she doesn’t mind being a little crowded. We’d be happy to have you with us. You can help me take care of Anna, and I can look after both you girls,” she added with a smile.

  Elizabeth couldn’t stand the thought of being alone in a hotel room where Thornton could find her. “I don’t mind being crowded. It can’t be worse than the workhouse.”

  Anna slipped her arm thro
ugh Elizabeth’s and snuggled up to her. “You’re so funny. I’m so glad you stayed with us.”

  The men helped them out of the cab and into the bustling lobby. Elizabeth ducked her head when she passed the doorman, hoping he wouldn’t recognize her from her last visit. The elevator carried them up to the top floor, and Mrs. Bates ushered the two younger women into one of the bedrooms in the luxurious suite. Someone ordered food, and the women took turns bathing in the big, claw-footed tub. The luggage Mrs. Bates and Anna had left behind at the hotel when they were arrested miraculously appeared, and Mrs. Bates loaned Elizabeth a nightdress.

  “We’ll see about getting your things from your hotel later,” Mrs. Bates told her. It was the last thing she heard before she fell asleep.

  • • •

  On the second morning, Elizabeth woke up feeling almost human again. Good food and real rest had quickly restored her strength, which made her anxious to make her escape. Anna wasn’t responding as quickly, however, which was why they’d stayed an extra night, and for some reason, Elizabeth couldn’t leave her.

  “Eat just a little more,” Elizabeth urged her as they sat at the tiny table in their crowded bedroom. Neither Anna nor Elizabeth had bothered to dress since they’d been at the hotel, so they’d been confined to their bedroom. They couldn’t take a chance of being seen in their nightclothes by the two young men sharing the suite. Which was more than fine with Elizabeth. She wasn’t too worried about spending time with David Vanderslice. He didn’t seem particularly bright, so he presented no danger to her. She did worry about Gideon Bates, though. He’d already taken too much of an interest in her, and he wouldn’t be as easy to fool. She’d have to be careful with him, so the less often he saw her, the better.

  Anna obediently ate one more forkful of the scrambled eggs, but Elizabeth could see how much effort it took her to swallow it. “There,” Anna said, laying her fork down. “Really, I’m stuffed. I feel fine, Elizabeth. So much better than when we first got here. Stop worrying about me.”

  Elizabeth wanted to; she really did. And she really should. She couldn’t take care of Anna and get away from Thornton, too. Why should she even want to try?