The Museum of Extraordinary Things

by Alice Hoffman

  “Get off !” the younger man cried, choking out the words. He was only twenty-one or twenty-two, clearly unused to a fight. Eddie had no trouble keeping him in check, the branch pressed harder against his neck. “I’ve done nothing to you!” the young man managed to croak.

  This man was a stranger to Eddie. “Why are you following me?”

  “For Hannah. I think I know what happened to her.”

  Eddie dropped the branch away. The young man bent over, coughing, his hand clutching his neck.

  “How would you know anything?” Eddie asked when the other man had begun to recover.

  “We were in love. We planned to marry. She wasn’t ready to tell her father, so we kept it to ourselves.”

  This was the fellow R had mentioned when Eddie interviewed her, the man Hannah had loved. His name was Aaron Samuels, and he’d been a tailor, but no more.

  “I can’t go back to my life. Not with what I know and what I let her do. We thought we could do what the unions couldn’t. She was meeting with someone that morning, a representative for the owners. She had proof they were locking workers into the sewing rooms. I’d helped her, God forgive me. I removed one of the locked doorknobs from the tenth floor—it was on the door that led to the fire escape—and she had it with her. If they refused to change the conditions, she would do her best to go to the city representative for the Lower East Side, Alfred E. Smith, and beg for his help.” Samuels broke down. He chided himself for his own idiocy and neglect. “I should have gone, but she thought she’d have a better chance of getting the boss’s people to show up. They’d consider her less of a threat. Because she was young and pretty and a girl, I believed they’d think she was harmless.”

  “You know nothing about the person responsible?”

  Samuels became agitated, and his dark eyes flashed. “If I did, don’t you think I would have found him?”

  They began to walk together toward the El train, both deep in thought. There were factories along the route, and some vacant areas in which crickets had begun to call.

  “Her sister said she ran off to get something to eat before work,” Eddie recalled.

  “She was meeting him then. Before work. She didn’t want Ella to know.”

  “So it was somewhere close by.”

  “The alley behind Greene Street.”

  Eddie’s brow furrowed. “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  “I didn’t think it mattered,” Aaron Samuels said. “It was only an alley.”

  “Anything more?”

  “She told me not to worry. She always carried a spool of blue thread with her for luck.”

  Eddie had returned the gold locket to Mr. Weiss but had asked to keep Hannah’s other possessions. Hochman always said what a person carried revealed more about his soul than his affiliations with any philosophy or religion. When Eddie came home from the funeral, he arranged Hannah’s belongings on his worktable. First the blue coat, then the hairpins and comb, and last the black buttons. He studied them, but he saw nothing unusual. Certainly, there was something beyond his vision and his understanding. He took out his camera, and though he struggled to work with his splint, he managed by tying his hand, splint and all, directly to the camera with a length of rope.

  Each object looked ordinary enough through his lens. Once the plates had been developed and the prints readied, he tacked them to the wall to study them while they were still wet. The blue coat was in surprisingly good condition, girlish and hopeful, with its round collar and four gold buttons. The comb and pins made him recall that Ella had told him her sister combed her hair a hundred strokes each night. He turned his attention to the close-up photograph of the extra buttons, for they seemed an anomaly, too large and mannish for a young woman’s clothing. Each had a star in the middle with holes at the points in which there were bits of frayed black thread. He looked more closely at these bits of uneven thread. Then, quite suddenly, he understood that Hannah had torn them from her attacker’s coat.

  He felt the swell of excitement he’d experienced as a runner for Hochman when he began to puzzle out the whereabouts of a missing husband or fiancé. He searched the cluttered tabletop for his magnifying glass, then set to work examining his photographs from the day of the fire. When the room became dim, he lit a lantern and several candles. He sifted through photographs he’d taken until he came upon a carriage pulled by two fine black horses. He brought the candle closer, though it dripped wax upon the print. He hadn’t looked carefully enough when he first developed the image. He’d had so many from that day, and his eyes had burned with cinders. Now he recognized the dark-haired man gazing out from behind the velvet curtains of the carriage as Harry Block. He was the attorney for several owners of garment factories near Washington Square, so it was not out of the question for him to be in the area on the day of the fire. Upon closer inspection, Eddie saw that the man holding on to the rear of the carriage was carrying a thick bully stick, meant to do grave damage if anyone in the despairing mob rushed those making their escape.

  The man holding the club was the one who’d chased Eddie from the scene on that day. The same man who had tried to rob him outside McSorley’s. A man who might have used this same bully stick to pull himself out of the mud after he’d rid himself of a young girl’s body, who might have been convinced an old hermit knew of his terrible deeds.

  Eddie took his watch from his jacket and placed it on the table, running a thumb down the crack in the glass. He thought of the look on Block’s face when he’d revealed the watch that had once belonged to him.

  Eddie went to gather the prints from the library gala once more. A chill went through him when he came to the last photograph of the night. He studied the man who had attempted to rob him, the same individual who rode upon the carriage on the day of the fire, the one who was posted in the shadows of the front hall of the Blocks’ town house, avoiding the gold-toned light the Tiffany chandelier threw onto the richly decorated walls. When Eddie leaned closer, he saw what he hadn’t noticed before. Two black buttons were missing from his coat.

  He should have gone back to Brooklyn, to address the matters of his own life and interests, returning for Coralie. Instead he took up his old post on the corner of Sixty-second Street. Something had taken hold of him, the urge to make things right. He barely knew himself or his desires. He had no obligations, and yet he was weighted down with a sense of responsibility. He felt naked without his camera, but he had come to this address for one reason alone. If he waited long enough, he was certain the fellow in the photographs who worked for Block would appear. It was morning, and the streets were busy, therefore Eddie didn’t notice when a young woman came up behind him, having been out walking with her dogs, two large black poodles. The dogs alerted Eddie to the woman’s presence, for they ambled up to him with a sort of haughty familiarity. The larger of the two nudged him.

  “Go on now, big boy,” Eddie said to the dog, giving it a pat and doing his best to send it on its way. He grinned to think of what Beck’s wolf would make of such well-fed urban pets.

  “He seems to know you,” a woman’s measured voice said.

  Eddie turned to the young woman who had come to collect her dogs. She was dressed in an indigo silk and wool dress and wore a large fashionable felt hat, decorated with an assortment of blue feathers in a range from aqua to navy. She had dark blue eyes and a clear, pale face with fine features. “I know you as well,” she said. “You were at the library gala.”

  Eddie realized he was in the presence of Harry Block’s sister. He wished he hadn’t the complication of being recognized.

  “Perhaps you’re thinking of someone else,” he said politely, keeping his attention on the town house steps, so as not to lose sight of Block’s thug if he appeared.

  “No,” Block’s sister said with assurance. “I’m not. You were there.”

  “Only as a hired hand,” Eddie gra
nted.

  “Except that no one hired you, I checked into it. And now it seems”—she paused to observe his splint—“you no longer have a free hand to hire. We’ve never been introduced. I’m Juliet Block, and you’re the man who has my brother’s watch.”

  Eddie searched her face and saw the intelligence there. She gazed back at him critically, but not without interest.

  “Were you never taught not to speak to strange men on the street?” he asked.

  Miss Block laughed. “I was taught all manner of things concerning what a woman should and should not do, and how the world should be run. Unlike the members of my family, I believe that all people have the right to speak, including women and workers.” The poodles were standing beside Eddie, nosing around. Miss Block clipped on their leashes. “They seem to fancy you. I, however, don’t know how I feel about you.” She had quite a serious expression as she recalled their initial meeting as children. “I was terrified you’d steal my coat on the day you found us playing in the office. My father had just given it to me.”

  Eddie smiled. Pretense wouldn’t work with this outspoken young woman. “I thought of it. But I didn’t want to make you cry.”

  “Well, I cried all the same as soon as you left. I cried because my coat cost more than most children my age had to live on for a month. I was embarrassed even before you shamed us. I took a pair of scissors to the horrid coat myself. Made quite a mess. Still, I managed to cut it to shreds.”

  Eddie found he was at a loss for words. They stared at each other, each surprised at who the other had become. When Miss Block began to speak of her activities, it became clear she was an ardent feminist, involved in securing rights for workers and demonstrating for the women’s vote. Her family, she revealed, was not pleased with what they referred to as her “antics,” and had taken away her yearly stipend of twenty thousand dollars as punishment when she had protested at the Opera House and outside City Hall and had briefly been interned in the workhouse on Blackwell’s Island. That was when her funds were cut off. Her brother was set to inherit everything from their father, since Miss Block was not deemed responsible by her father and his attorneys. Harry was the one who insisted that she take the dogs for protection when she went out walking. He’d chosen them for her, and had them trained by an expert. Perhaps the dogs knew Juliet would have preferred to have left them at home. Indeed, she thought of them as an extension of her brother, more or less employees meant to keep her in check.

  “That’s why they prefer you, sir,” she told Eddie. “Not that I share their sentiments. If you don’t mind, I’d like to know why you’re here.”

  “I’m not sure you’d really like that, miss.” Eddie had felt a certain compassion for her on the day he stole the watch. As it turned out, he felt an unexpected concern for her even now.

  “Women shouldn’t know too much? I take it that’s your point. It might affect their brains or, worse, their reproductive organs? You spoke to me once as if I were an equal when you told me to shut up, please do me the same courtesy now. And call me Juliet.”

  Eddie was won over by her candor. Still, he hesitated. He had come for justice, and justice didn’t always resolve as people wished. He’d brought along the photograph he’d taken at the gala, which he now withdrew from within his coat. “The man behind your brother. What do you know of him?”

  “Frank Herbert?” Miss Block said. “He’s my brother’s employee.”

  “Does your family have anything to do with the Triangle Shirtwaist Company?”

  “My brother is an attorney. He may have done some work for them. I believe he did.” She gazed deeply at Eddie. “And the work was questionable, I presume.”

  “What if it was murder?”

  Juliet suggested they walk around the corner, to the park, so they might find privacy and speak more freely. They did so, and the dogs were overjoyed to find they were not being dragged in the direction of home. They took a path that led to the reservoir. There were many starlings and sparrows on the branches of the trees. “Welcome to the petting zoo of the wealthy,” Miss Block said bitterly. Once they had found a bench hidden by bushes, she took out a French cigarette and lit it, which surprised Eddie.

  “Oh, stop looking at me that way.” She laughed. “You can’t be that easily shocked. I’ll do my part to help you get Herbert, and in exchange you’ll forget about my brother. In all honesty, Harry probably has no idea of his henchman’s methods. He says make it so, and it’s done.”

  “It was a young woman that was killed, if that makes a difference to your opinions regarding your brother’s responsibility in the matter. She worked on the ninth floor at the factory, but it wasn’t the fire that did her in. She never made it to work that day because somebody murdered her. They sewed up her mouth with blue thread, then tossed her into the river.”

  Juliet stared at him long and hard. “It matters to me very much, whether you believe me or not. But he’s my brother. My offer stands. I’ll give you Herbert, and in return, you’ll leave Harry alone.”

  JULIET BLOCK was to inform Frank Herbert that her brother had given instructions for him to bring a file of information to a meeting in the alleyway behind Greene Street. Eddie would see to the rest. The hour was late, after workers in the nearby factories had gone home. Dusk was settling. It was murky enough so that Herbert could not see clearly when he turned off the street, yet he spied the slim figure of a young woman who found her way into the alley. He likely gritted his teeth, annoyed to see an interloper in the very place where he was to make a delivery of important papers to his employer. He didn’t like taking orders from a woman, and had felt humiliated being told what to do by Miss Block, who, in his opinion, thought much too highly of herself, as if she was a man’s equal. He had his bully stick with him, and he didn’t mind issuing a threat or two to a stranger, then acting on those threats if need be. But before he could chase off the figure before him, Herbert took note of something odd. The girl in the alleyway looked familiar. Her pale hair plaited into braids, her girlish blue coat. It was the dimness surely, only a trick of the shadows, yet Frank Herbert hesitated, unsure. Quite possibly, the thing before him was not human in nature. Then, thinking himself ridiculous, he moved toward her. “Go on,” he said with menace in his tone. “This is no place for ladies.”

  She looked at him fully. “Neither is the river.” The young woman opened her hands. There were the buttons she’d pulled from his coat when she struggled with him.

  “Get on with you,” he said, confused. He took her now to be the girl he’d had to get rid of. Somehow she had returned from the river and found him. She had torn the blue thread from her lips to speak to him.

  “I have your buttons,” she told him. “From when you killed me.”

  He stepped forward, his club at the ready. “If you’re a ghost, then you won’t die again, though it was easy enough to kill you the first time.”

  It was then the wolf came from behind her, the one who’d been on the porch when he’d seen to the prying old hermit who’d been on the hill the day he dumped the girl’s body. It seemed the wolf had died and returned as a ghost as well, and yet he was real enough that he had to be restrained with a chain, so intent was he on lunging at the man he recognized as his master’s killer.

  “Hold on to him,” Herbert shouted. “He’ll be after me!”

  “Because you killed the old man?”

  “I did him a service putting him out of the misery he lived in. Now go away, the both of you! Vanish from here! There’s real business of the living to be going on in this place, and we don’t need the likes of you.”

  Herbert did not hear the men from the Workmen’s Circle as they circled him, then leapt upon him. They were indeed the living, who beat him down and shackled him with a length of rope, then slipped on iron cuffs. Isaac Rosenfeld got a black eye in the process, of which he was quite proud. There had been six witnesses to Herb
ert’s confession; most Eddie had known as boys in the factories. Eddie took a photograph of the men who gathered around Frank Herbert, a memento they could show their mothers and girlfriends. Eddie had promised Juliet he would not pursue her brother, but that didn’t mean others wouldn’t take up the cause and do their best to connect him to the events that had led to Hannah’s death.

  Rosenfeld took the buttons as further proof against Herbert. Ella, who had so bravely consented to play the part of her sister’s ghost, was asked if she would accompany them to the Tenth Precinct and make her statement as well.

  “I need to go with them,” Ella said when Eddie wanted to walk her home safely. “My father will understand. And it’s you he’ll want to hear from. You’re the one he’s trusted.”

  Mr. Weiss was waiting on the concrete steps outside his building, wearing a winter coat, though it would be summer in a matter of days. Eddie sat beside him, the wolf at their feet. When Eddie confirmed that the murderer had been caught, Weiss nodded. He didn’t seem surprised. “I knew you’d find him.”

  “Yet I feel I’ve failed.” Hannah was still dead. Harry Block was still in the mansion on Sixty-second Street.

  “Every good man feels that he’s failed.”

  Eddie grimaced. He shook his head. “That’s not me. Good would never be a proper term.”

  “Your father told me that you were. That was why I came to you.” Weiss seemed extremely sure of himself. “You know why I believed him?”

  Eddie shrugged. “Because you pray with him each morning and a man you pray with is one you believe?”

  “God is the only one I pray with,” Weiss corrected him.

  “So maybe you trust my father because you grew up in the same town and you worked together.”