A Golden Grave

by Erin Lindsey

  He sighed. “I had a feeling you might say that.”

  “There’s a warrant out for our arrest. It seems our truce with Inspector Byrnes has expired.” I related what Sergeant Chapman had told me, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. Thomas, for his part, received the news with a weary nod.

  “We knew the threat of Price’s ledger wouldn’t hold him for long. He’s no doubt taken countermeasures by now, assuming he even genuinely feared exposure in the first place. I daresay it was the shock of it more than anything that stayed his hand the other night. That, and the apparently fleeting notion that we might be of some use to him.”

  “The coppers will have been to the house by now. Poor Clara.”

  “Clara is more than capable of handling them,” Thomas said, sliding gingerly off the cot.

  She’d certainly had enough practice, thanks to Thomas and me.

  “Give me a moment to change and then we’ll confer. Putting the Bloodhound in play is a sound measure, but we can’t afford to sit tight and wait for results. Things are moving fast now, and we’re going to need a plan.”

  “It sounds as if you have one.”

  “The beginnings of one, at any rate. One advantage of being out of commission is that it gives one time to think. I’ve had an idea, though I should be very reluctant to admit it to the gentleman who inspired it. He makes an improbable muse, to say the least.”

  “What gentleman is that?”

  “Mark Twain.”

  CHAPTER 24

  LABOR VERSUS CAPITAL—TRULY PETRIFYING—ROSE GALLAGHER AND EDITH ISLINGTON, SUFFRAGISTS

  “I keep revisiting something Mr. Clemens had said. About Labor versus Capital.”

  “Oh.” I eyed Thomas over the rim of my teacup. “That’s … um.”

  He paused to sip his own tea, humming appreciatively. “It is hard to imagine a more perfect pleasure than proper Chinese tea, don’t you think? So much more flavorful than the counterfeit bergamot blend we find in the shops here. Now, where was I?”

  “Labor versus Capital.”

  “Ah, yes. You’ll recall Mr. Clemens regaling us with his second-rate Karl Marx? He opined that so far as the mayoral race was concerned, the true contest was between the Republicans—the party of bankers and robber barons, I believe he called them—and the United Labor Party, with the Democrats of trifling relevance.”

  “I remember.”

  “It’s certainly true that Henry George and his labor party have captured the working-class imagination. His platform appeals particularly to the sorts of firebrands responsible for the rash of violent strikes we’ve seen lately. Men of extreme political passions, as it were.”

  Radicals, the papers were calling them. Personally, I failed to see what was so radical about wanting a fair wage, but I guess I was missing something.

  “Men of such convictions might be willing to resort to more serious violence to further their cause.”

  I frowned. “That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? Setting a few streetcars on fire is a long way from committing murder.”

  “I don’t mean to imply that all labor men are violent, only that they have violent men among them. Witness the Haymarket Affair this past spring.”

  “That’s hardly unique to labor. Violence and politics go together like peas and carrots.”

  “Quite. Tammany is known for its brawlers, and the tyranny of the industrial barons could itself be considered a type of violence, especially when it’s maintained through force of arms. The police or the military or—”

  “Pinkertons.”

  Thomas cleared his throat delicately. “In any case, without debating the merits of their cause, the fact remains that anarchists and socialists have been baying for capitalist blood for years. Propaganda of the deed, they call it. What was it Johann Most said about Vanderbilt and Gould?”

  “That they ought to be strung from the nearest lamppost.” The papers had gnawed on that bone for weeks.

  “Assassinating Theodore Roosevelt would be entirely of a piece with that sort of thinking.”

  “So you think Foster is an anarchist?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. His methods to date strike me as too surgical for a true anarchist. I think it more likely that he’s trying to help put Labor in power. Not that the ULP would thank him for it. George himself would doubtless be horrified at the notion that anyone would commit murder in his name.”

  “Even if you’re right, why single out Roosevelt?”

  “Mmm,” Thomas said into his teacup. “I’ve been thinking about that, too. Do you recall my remarking upon Roosevelt being surprisingly blue-blooded for a mayoral candidate?”

  “You said people of his class usually stay out of politics.”

  “Mr. Clemens mentioned that, too. Grotesque, he called it. As though the elite weren’t already hoarding enough for themselves, they now grasp at one of the few levers of power accessible to persons of humbler birth. What is more, Roosevelt is also known to be lucky.”

  Adding insult to injury, Mr. Clemens had said, and I was beginning to see why.

  “I can readily imagine that in some circles, it would be taken as an intolerable provocation. Perhaps that was so for Foster. Perhaps his original intent was merely to gather intelligence, but when he heard that an aristocrat like Roosevelt was to be the nominee, it was the last straw.”

  That certainly fit with my instinct that he was improvising. “I suppose we won’t know for sure until we catch him.”

  “As to that, the Bloodhound remains our best option. But in the meantime, Henry George will be speaking later this afternoon at the Battery, and I thought you might attend. I would of course prefer to go with you, but”—his tone soured—“my physician has forbidden it.”

  I eyed him doubtfully. “You don’t really think Foster will be there?”

  “Alas, that is probably too much to hope for. But we know at least one of his colleagues from the Fifth Avenue Hotel is working with him, and there may be others. I thought perhaps between you and Miss Islington, you could scout the crowd for familiar faces.”

  “Even if we do recognize someone from the hotel, that doesn’t prove they’re part of the conspiracy.”

  “True, but they might lead you somewhere interesting.” Thomas paused, his gaze turning solemn. “Just promise me, Rose, if you do end up following someone—”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said, anticipating him.

  Or so I thought. “That’s good to hear, but I was going to say, please leave Miss Islington out of it.”

  “Oh.” I took a hasty sip of my tea.

  “She’s not one of us, and she mustn’t be put in danger on our account. It’s difficult enough knowing you’re at risk. I simply couldn’t bear it if she came to harm.”

  I swallowed, the tea suddenly bitter on my tongue.

  “I should be off,” I said, avoiding his eye. “I’ll come by after the rally to collect you. I suppose we’ll go to Mr. Burrows’s?”

  “Until this nonsense with the police has blown over.”

  “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  Thomas caught my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Keep your head about you. There’s more to fear than Jack Foster now.”

  I started to turn away, but his fingers tightened around mine, and he pulled me close. My breath hitched, but I kept my eyes on the floor. His watch ticked through a measure of silence. Gently, he tipped my chin until I was looking up at him. “You are hearing me, Rose?” he murmured.

  I was hearing him, all right, and feeling his touch with every nerve of my body. I stared up at him mutely, afraid to break the spell.

  Something passed through his eyes that I couldn’t place. He sees you, I thought irrationally. He knows.

  “Forgive me,” he said, his hand dropping away. “I shouldn’t … I didn’t mean to presume.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “Yes, I was.” He sighed, and now he was the one avoiding my glance. “When this is over, I think p
erhaps you and I ought to talk.”

  Sweet Jesus, how those words terrified me. I know, I know—there was an assassin on the loose and every copper in New York was looking for us, and here I was worrying about we need to talk? All I can say is that if you’ve ever been in love, you understand how truly petrifying those words can be.

  My mouth had gone dry. Wetting my lips, I took a deep breath, summoned all my courage, and said, “I’d better go.”

  I fled the room, striking out in search of a telephone and the comforting distraction of mortal peril.

  * * *

  Edith found me on the promenade, gazing out over the bay at the distant spectacle of Mr. Bartholdi’s great statue. At this distance, the workmen crawling over her Grecian robes looked like ants, as though they were disassembling the poor lady piece by piece and carting her off to their nest.

  “She’s quite something, isn’t she?” Edith said, shading her eyes. “Though I don’t see how they’ll manage to have her put together by next week, even with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.”

  “I can hardly believe they’ve managed this much. Two hundred and fifty tons, the papers say, half of that in copper.”

  “The dedication will be quite the affair, I suppose. What do you say—shall we come down to view the festivities?”

  “Assuming we’ve caught our killer by then.”

  Edith blew out a breath. “Well, that’s me feeling foolish. I do beg your pardon. I’m not used to all this cloak-and-dagger business. How did it go with the sketch, by the way?”

  I hadn’t filled her in on yesterday’s events. It hardly seemed like the sort of thing one ought to discuss over the telephone, but now that she was here, she had a right to know what she was getting into. I recounted the incident as delicately as I could, emphasizing that Thomas was recovering well. Even so, by the time I was through, she’d gone quite pale, and for a moment I was afraid she’d change her mind about helping me.

  I needn’t have worried. “This Jack Foster belongs at the end of a rope,” she said coldly. “I’ll do whatever I can to help see to it he gets there.”

  “For now, all I need is your eyes and ears. If we do see someone we recognize, I’ll take it from there. Mr. Wiltshire was quite insistent that I mustn’t put you in any danger.”

  “That’s sweet of him, but he isn’t here, is he?” Flashing her arch smile, she looped her arm through mine and started toward the broad square beside the fort, where Henry George was to speak. Already, a large crowd had assembled, many of them carrying banners. The unions were here in force, as were the newspapermen; I recognized William Foote, the reporter Thomas and I had interviewed last Sunday, along with a few other regulars from the stoop. Souvenir boys hawked badges and medals of the Statue of Liberty, and the hot-corn girls were doing a brisk business. There was even a trio of fiddlers calling themselves the Henry George Boys, though I suspect they were just mud-gutters scenting an opportunity.

  “How very festive,” Edith remarked. “Rather different from Mr. Roosevelt’s speaking engagements, isn’t it?”

  Festive, and utterly chaotic. How would we ever sift through this throng? “There must be a thousand people here.”

  “Most of them working-class men. Thank goodness you warned me to dress down. I daresay I’d have stuck out in a sable tippet and pearls.”

  We stuck out anyway, by simple virtue of our sex. Anxiously, I scanned the square for coppers, but I spied only one, and he seemed more interested in his roasted corn than the crowd.

  “Oh, look,” Edith said, pointing, “here’s the man of the hour.”

  The assembly erupted in cheers as Henry George stepped up to the platform. He was a serious-looking fellow, bearded and balding, short enough that I had to stand on my toes to get a view over the sea of hats. I confess that until that moment I hadn’t taken him very seriously, but all that changed when he began to speak. “I see in the faces before me a power that is stronger than money,” he roared, “something that will smash the political organizations and scatter them like chaff before the wind!”

  “Goodness,” Edith said.

  Reluctantly, I tore my attention away from the speaker. “We need to find a better spot. We can’t see anybody’s faces from here.”

  “What about over there?” She pointed to an elevated pier nearby. “We ought to be able to see the whole square.”

  We climbed the steps and looked out over the crowd, a thousand faces fixed on the candidate as he thundered on. “Why should there be such abject poverty in this city? What forces our girls upon the streets and our boys into the grog shops and the penitentiaries?”

  “Do you see anyone familiar?”

  Edith shook her head. “To tell the truth, I’m half surprised, but I suppose that’s silly. Our little world up on the Avenue is so small, one half forgets just how big this city has become. And how angry, apparently. We really are terribly sheltered, aren’t we? Or is it different in Boston?”

  “Actually…” I hesitated, but she deserved the truth. “I’m not really from Boston. That was just part of the cover story.”

  “Aha. I didn’t think you sounded terribly Bostonian. I’d put it down to a sensitive ear, or perhaps a great deal of travel.”

  I could have left it there, but Clara’s accusation from this morning still rankled. “No travel for me, I’m afraid. My family could never afford to go anywhere.”

  “I tell you that a child born in the humblest tenement in the most squalid district of New York comes into life with as good a title to this city as any Astor…”

  We kept scanning the crowd, but I could sense Edith’s confusion. “Are you from New York, then?”

  “I grew up not far from here, actually. In Five Points.” In other words, in exactly those blighted districts Henry George was fulminating against at that very moment. And now for the worst part. “Until recently, I was a housemaid. Mr. Wiltshire’s housemaid, in point of fact.”

  Silence fell between us, louder even than the din. I could feel Edith’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t face her. There now, I thought. She knows you for a fraud.

  Edith burst out laughing.

  A furious blush scalded my cheeks, but then she said, “Rose Gallagher, you will insist on being the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

  I glanced at her sharply, but there was no hint of irony in her countenance. “I—I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  “I quite understand. But I do hope you feel you can confide in me now, because I simply cannot wait to hear the tale of how…”—she lowered her voice—“how a housemaid becomes a Pinkerton detective.”

  George was nearing his zenith now, and the crowd was in an uproar. It made it awfully hard to see the faces, what with all the hat-waving and fist-shaking. “Anything?” I asked, raising my voice above the clamor.

  “Yes and no. That well turned-out fellow near the back works at A. T. Stewart’s. This young man over here picked me up in his cab once, and that one runs a lunch wagon in Union Square. So the city isn’t so very big after all.” Sighing, she added, “But nobody from the hotel.”

  Henry George closed his remarks with a plea to his supporters to do their duty at the ballot box, and with a final farewell, he departed, sent off like an ocean liner to a flutter of hats and handkerchiefs. “Oh, well,” I said, trying not to sound too crestfallen, “it was worth a try.”

  We came down from the pier and joined the dispersing crowd. The reporters were interviewing people, and the union men pressing pamphlets into palms, but the place was clearing fast. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” Edith said.

  “It was always a long shot.”

  “Beg your pardon, ladies.” A young man in a slouching hat thrust a pamphlet at us. I was about to refuse, but the words printed across the top piqued my curiosity. “Thank you,” I said, taking it.

  “Good to see some suffragists out here. Could use a few more women in our ranks, if you’re interested.” He touched his hat and was
gone.

  “The Knights of Labor,” Edith read over my shoulder. “How dramatic.”

  “Thinking of joining?” said a voice, and I turned to find William Foote of the World, ledger in hand.

  I greeted him with a smile. “Maybe. Have you heard of them?”

  “Sure. Biggest labor outfit in the country, or at least they were, before all that Haymarket business. These days they’re shedding members left and right. Probably why they’re out here trying to drum up new recruits. Bit of a sinking ship. Not sure I’d recommend ’em. So listen—Miss Gallagher, wasn’t it? What do you and your friend say to answering a couple of questions? It’d be good to get a few words from some suffragists.”

  I glanced at Edith, who was biting down on a smile. Apparently she found the idea of being interviewed as a suffragist very amusing indeed.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Foote,” I said, “but I don’t suppose Mr. Wiltshire would want his clients reading about his secretary at a Henry George rally.”

  His expression curdled. “Sure, fine.”

  I paused, something tweaking my memory. “You mentioned Haymarket a moment ago.” Thomas had brought it up, too. “You’re referring to the riot in Chicago last spring, where the bomb went off? Were the Knights involved in that?”

  He shrugged, already scanning the crowd for another mark. “Depends who you ask. They were there, but they swear they had nothing to do with the bombing. Either way, they’ve never recovered from the accusation. Discord in the ranks, as they say. Local assembly here in New York is a case in point. Factions peeling off every other day. Moderates this way, socialists that way, anarchists over there. Sinking ship, like I said.”

  “Anarchists, you say? Do you think any of them are here today?”

  “S’pose so, but don’t expect them to own up to it, at least not in public. It can be downright dangerous being labeled an anarchist these days.” He must have spotted new quarry then, because he touched his hat hastily and rushed off.

  Edith considered me with a bemused little smile. “You’ve a keen look in your eye. That was useful, I take it?”