by Bess McBride
“Miss Reed, not in your nightgown! You’re not even wearing any shoes,” Mrs. Olson called out.
Sara waved a hand over her head but didn’t turn around. She hopped along the railing and balanced herself on one foot at the edge of the road. The brick building on the opposite curb, which had seemed so close, now seemed miles away. Wagons, carriages and a wide dirt street came between her and the building.
Raymond’s carriage was no longer there. He must have left. Sara could only hope that he had dropped Matthew off. Surely Matthew hadn’t had enough time to do whatever he needed to do in the building?
Sara had no idea how she was supposed to get across the road without anything to hang on to. By now, she was aware that several pedestrians stared at her, and some drivers of wagons looked down at her with odd expressions.
“Miss! Where are you going dressed like that?”
Sara turned to see a policeman approaching. Robust, middle aged with a large handlebar mustache, the uniformed man packing a nightstick shook his head vigorously.
No! No! This couldn’t be happening. Surely she wasn’t about to be arrested for standing outside in her jammies?
She looked over her shoulder to see Mrs. Olson running down the walk with a blanket in her hands.
“Officer, officer,” Mrs. Olson said. “Miss Reed is staying with us.”
“Well, she can’t be out here dressed like that,” he said.
“I have to get to that building,” Sara said doggedly. “I have to.”
“No, miss, you need to come inside,” Mrs. Olson said. She draped the dark-green blanket over Sara’s shoulders.
“No!” Sara barked. “Matthew Webster is in there! I need to talk to him.”
“In that office building?” the policeman asked. “No, I don’t think you have any business over there today.” He turned to Mrs. Olson. “Is she...” He pointed to his head.
“No, of course not. She has had a foot injury and was in bed,” Mrs. Olson said irritably. “Miss Reed, you have to come inside now.”
“She’s right, miss. If you don’t, I’m going to arrest you for public indecency.”
Sara looked down at the cotton nightgown that trailed in the dirt.
“In this thing? It covers everything. Let me just run across the street, you guys! This is nuts!”
Mrs. Olson tugged the blanket across Sara’s chest.
“This is your last warning, miss. I take you in if you don’t go inside!”
Sara launched herself forward, trying to use the toes of her right foot. She fell flat on her face. The blanket fell to the side.
“That’s it then! If you can’t control her, lady, I will!”
He pulled Sara up like a rag doll and threw her over his shoulder. She kicked with her good foot and shrieked.
“Let me down! Let me down!”
From her awkward angle, she lifted her head to see Mrs. Olson wringing her hands and crying.
“Please don’t take her,” Mrs. Olson called to the policeman’s back.
The policeman ignored them both and carted Sara down the street.
“Mrs. Olson,” Sara shouted. “The building across the street. Find Matthew Webster!
“Put me down!” she barked. She kicked and was rewarded with a smack on her rear end.
“Stop that, lady!”
They stopped in front of a small boxy dark carriage, and the policeman stuffed her inside. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw another policeman holding the reins.
“Where are you taking me?” she shouted, banging on the roof of the windowless carriage. She tried the doors, but they were locked from the outside.
No one answered. The carriage moved forward, and Sara grabbed the strap. She twisted her body and lifted her throbbing ankle onto the bench seat. Her predicament was only now dawning on her.
She was being arrested...again, and in her nightgown. She was going to jail in her nightgown with no shoes, no coat, no identification. She only hoped Mrs. Olson found someone to help her.
The drive didn’t take long, and they stopped in about fifteen minutes. The door opened, and Sara shrank back against the far corner of the coach. The policeman pulled her out and set her on her feet.
At her cry, he looked down.
“Still hurts, huh?” He lifted her over his shoulder again and carried her up a steep flight of stairs. He entered a large room and dropped her none too gently on a wooden bench in front of a counter.
“Don’t move,” the policeman said with an admonishing finger as he stepped forward to talk to another officer at the counter.
Nothing in Sara’s experience in the Kalispell jail prepared her for the flurry of activity and bustle of the Seattle jail. Five or six men and two other women shared the bench beside her, though all appeared to be fully dressed in day clothes. Sara self-consciously pulled her nightgown closer about her and tucked her now filthy feet under the hem.
“Well, that’s one way of advertising your goods, dearie,” one of the women, a buxom, middle-aged blonde, said.
Sara turned away. She hadn’t thought anything would be worse than the Kalispell jail, but she was mistaken.
“You should try it sometime, Aggie,” a skinny, elderly man sitting next to her said. He snorted and cackled. “Some of the rags you’ve been wearing wouldn’t attract a mule, much less a man.”
“Well, I’m going to guess she got arrested for walking around in her nightgown, Bert, so maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all.” She elbowed him and giggled.
Sara assumed the woman was a prostitute, although from the clothing she wore, Sara wouldn’t have suspected. Dressed not in a bright-red satin saloon costume with low cleavage, Aggie wore a filthy white blouse, grayish sweater and plain brown skirt.
Sara looked up to see the policeman pointing to her. Surely they were going to let her go. Public indecency? Please!
To Sara’s dismay, a stocky lady, dressed in the dark-blue uniform of the police, albeit with a long skirt instead of trousers, came forward and pulled her to her feet. Sara tried to balance on her one good foot but swayed.
“What’s the matter? Have you hurt your foot?” She bent and lifted the hem of Sara’s nightgown to look at the bandage. With an expression of exasperation, she turned and spoke to the policeman.
“Ernie, you didn’t tell me she was injured.”
“Oh, yeah, some kind of foot injury,” he said, almost as if he’d forgotten all about Sara.
“Well, I see that now.”
She turned back to Sara.
“Come on, I’ll help you down to a cell. Hopefully, a family member will come to bail you out fairly quickly, because I don’t think you really belong here, young lady.”
“I was on the street in my nightgown,” Sara said needlessly. She leaned on the woman and hobbled down the hall.
“That’s what I heard,” she said. “I’m Matron Miller.”
The kindly matron toted her out of the booking area and down a steep flight of stairs to a basement area. The smell of sewage immediately assaulted Sara’s nose, and she cupped her hand to cover her face.
“They call this the Black Hole, and now you know why,” the matron said in a dry voice.
She dragged a reluctant Sara past a row of cells holding crying, moaning and cursing men until they reached what must have been the women’s section. Dampness permeated the basement, and mold crawled down the walls.
“Oh, please don’t put me in here,” Sara cried. “Please don’t.” Had she known this would be the result of running around in the street in her nightgown, she never would have done it. She would have sent Mrs. Olson to find Matthew.
Matron Miller opened a cell door and gently stuffed Sara inside.
“Hush now! You’ll see the judge in a few days unless someone comes to pay your fine. I sincerely hope you have family though. A few days in here can be a death sentence.”
With a shake of her head, the matron clanked the door shut and walked away, keys jingling at her waist.
Something warm, furry and fast ran across Sara’s feet, and she screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Matthew tried to sign the documents that needed his immediate attention, but all he could do was brace his forehead in his palms as he sat at his desk.
He could not fathom why Sara would leave, especially when she had promised she would not. Yet, there was so much about her that he did not know. Did she have family in Seattle? Friends? Someone who would take her in? Had she lied to him all along? To what end? She had been on the train to Chicago, not Seattle. Where could she have gone?
A query to the police earlier that morning had elicited nothing. They had never heard of Sara Reed.
The shrill sound of a woman’s voice outside his office roused him from his reverie, and he rose from his desk with irritation. Given his sleeplessness the preceding night, he had little patience.
“Charles,” he barked as he pulled his office door open. “What is going on?”
His secretary, a slender young man of twenty-two, pushed his glasses back onto his nose and spoke hastily.
“Sir, this woman insists on seeing you.”
Matthew regarded the woman—a servant, from the standard gray uniform dress and white apron that she wore. Her plump anxious face was blotched with tears.
“Yes, madam. What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Matthew Webster?” she cried out.
“Yes, madam?”
“I’m Mrs. Olson. I’m the housekeeper for the Conrad family just across the street.” Her words came out in a hasty jumble.
“Yes?” Matthew tried to curb his irritation at the intrusion into his reverie.
“Miss Sara Reed. She’s been taken to jail!”
“What?” Matthew ran out of his office and grabbed the woman by the arms. “What?”
“Mr. Webster, you’re hurting me!”
Matthew unhanded her. “Forgive me, Mrs. Olson. Where is Miss Reed? What happened?”
“She’s been taken to jail.”
Matthew noted his secretary watching them both with rounded eyes.
“Come with me, Mrs. Olson. Tell me everything.”
More gently this time, Matthew took the housekeeper by the arm and led her from his offices down the stairs and out into the street.
“How did this happen? When?” he asked hurriedly.
“Just now,” she said. “Only a few minutes ago. They took her away in a paddy wagon.”
“Why? Where has she been?”
“She was out in the street in her nightgown,” Mrs. Olson said, tears slipping down her face. “I told her she couldn’t go out like that, but she didn’t seem to understand why. I think she was trying to get to your building.”
“Her nightgown? What on earth?” He searched the street for a hired carriage, regretting that he had told Raymond to pick him up in an hour.
He flagged down a carriage.
“She hurt her ankle. Not knowing who she was or where she lived, Mr. Conrad brought her home last night. That is our house, right across the street.” She pointed to a brownstone.
“She hurt her ankle?” Matthew cursed himself. She must have gone for a walk and hurt herself.
The carriage stopped, and Matthew shouted the direction to the driver before jumping in.
“Thank you, Mrs. Olson. Thank you!”
“Please get her out, Mr. Webster!”
“I will, Mrs. Olson,” he called out.
A short fifteen minutes later, they arrived at city hall, and Matthew told the carriage drive to await him.
He stepped inside and followed the directions to the jail, where he presented himself to the counter.
“Yes?” a police officer asked.
“I am here to pick up Miss Sara Reed. I understand she was erroneously arrested only a short while ago.”
“Erroneously?” the short, stocky policeman asked with a lift of his eyebrow.
“Yes,” Matthew said firmly.
“I doubt that.” Nevertheless, he consulted a ledger. “Yes, a matron just took her downstairs to the cells. Says here she was arrested for public indecency.”
Matthew stiffened and turned to survey those within hearing distance. The motley crew sitting on the bench worried him not at all.
“Utter nonsense! What do I need to do to get Miss Reed out of jail?”
“Well, if a fine had been set, you could pay that, but until a judge reviews the case, we won’t know what that will be. You could check back on Monday.”
Three days? No!
“Who is the judge?”
“Judge Clemson Wilson?”
“Please give me some paper. I wish to send a note to the judge.”
“We don’t send notes to the judge, mister.”
“You will, or Judge Wilson will want to know why you did not.”
The policeman narrowed his eyes and stared at Matthew before handing him paper and a pen.
Matthew jotted a note off to the judge, a friend of the family.
“Send the note. I will wait here.”
The policeman took the note and handed it to a young policeman, who nodded and left the jail.
Matthew looked at the bench with hesitation but took a seat between a buxom woman and a scrawny man.
“Hello, dearie, what are you in for?” the woman asked, fixing him with a broad, mostly toothless grin.
“I am just waiting,” he said. He faced forward. How could Sara possibly have ended up in such a place? He had heard tales of Seattle’s jail, often referred to as the Black Hole given its reputation for vermin infestation, disease, filth, sewage, dampness and mold. He prayed Judge Wilson would respond soon.
“Well, I was just waiting for someone like you,” she cackled with an elbow in his ribs.
Matthew deduced the woman was a prostitute, albeit an aging one.
“Hey, are you trying to take my girl?” the man to his left squawked, followed by a weak guffaw as he leaned over Matthew to eye the woman with a wink.
Matthew wished himself anywhere but here.
“Not at all,” he said politely.
“Aggie, are you cheating on me?” the man continued to laugh, his breath foul.
A short, sturdy woman in uniform approached the bench and hauled Aggie to her feet.
“Come on, Aggie. I guess you’re not going to jail this time. Out you go.”
“Thanks, matron! See you later, Carl!”
Carl, the scrawny man to Matthew’s left, waved a hand.
“I’ll see you on the streets, Aggie!”
The matron gently pushed the woman out of the jail door. With a wipe of her hands, she turned and regarded Matthew.
“Please tell me you’re here to get Miss Reed.”
Matthew jumped up.
“Yes! Is she all right?”
The matron shook her head.
“Not really. I hated to take her down to the basement. I hear they won’t set a fine until Monday at the earliest though.”
“I’ve sent a note to the judge. He is a family friend.”
“How could you let her get picked up like that?” she asked with a disapproving frown and pursed lips.
Matthew thought of making excuses, but he resisted.
“I did not watch her closely enough. It is my fault.”
“She seems like a nice young woman. Let’s hope the judge gets your note.”
She shook her head, and to Matthew’s dismay, she disappeared out the door. Matthew wanted to keep her in view as he felt certain that she would be the person to bring Sara out of the jail.
An hour passed, and in that period of time, Matthew rose impatiently to pace just outside the booking room several times before returning to reclaim his seat. He watched various prisoners being booked and taken away.
An hour of Sara sitting in the disease-ridden jail. Intolerable.
He rose and approached the policeman at the counter.
“Did the judge receive my note?”
The policeman sig
hed and turned.
“Jimmy?” he called out.
The young man who had taken the message hurried forward.
“Was the judge upstairs when you took the note?”
He shook his head.
“No, sir, but I left it with his clerk.”
“Is the judge in town? Is he at work today?” Matthew asked.
The young man nodded. “Yes, the clerk said he would be back in an hour.”
“Thank you,” Matthew said. He retook his seat and checked his watch. Almost 5:30 p.m. He knew it would have grown dark outside, with a correlating drop in temperature. He could feel the chill even inside the city hall building.
He did not care to think how cold Sara was in her cell, which he suspected was unheated. Even if the jail provided blankets, they would no doubt be thin and probably dirty. He rose and paced again.
A well-dressed young man entered the jail and surveyed the booking room with some distaste. He held several envelopes in his hand.
“Mr. Webster?” he asked.
Matthew swung to face him.
“Yes?”
“I am Daniel McAllister, Judge Wilson’s clerk. Here is a note for you. Miss Reed is to be released with no charges.”
“Thank you!” Matthew said. “Tell the judge thank you!”
“Certainly.” Young Mr. McAllister handed the other envelope to the policeman on duty, who read it and signaled to Jimmy.
“Go get matron and have her bring Miss Reed up.”
Matthew opened his note.
Matthew, my boy!
Good to hear from you. Yes, of course, we will have Miss Reed released at once. I cannot imagine what they were thinking to arrest her in the first place. Utter foolishness!
Remember me to your mother and father.
Yours,
Clemson Wilson
Matthew stuck the note in his overcoat and paced anxiously. Within fifteen minutes, the matron returned, her arm under a filthy, pale and hobbling Sara.
“Thank you,” Matthew told the matron. “Sara,” he murmured as he swept her cold and shaking body up into his arms and hurried out of the jail.
Sara wrapped her arms around his neck and began to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I went for a walk, then I disappeared. I’m sorry. They had me on morphine. I didn’t know the address of the house. No one did.”
