Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century #5)

Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century #5) Page 28

She performed a girlish giggle, letting the ruse run wild. “It was faster than my feet, and I didn’t see any horses handy. I made do.”

“Were you followed?”

“Two men. Neither one worth describing. Lost them on an electric streetcar.”

He set down his fork and reached one hand across the table to take her fingertips and kiss them. “Is there any chance anyone knew you were headed for the trains?”

“I couldn’t say, though I did my best to remain ordinary and unremarkable. And I don’t think anyone saw me buy my ticket or get on board. Speaking of which … how did you know I’d be in Tennessee?”

“I didn’t,” he admitted, releasing her fingers and retrieving his fork. “But based on some … increased media attention, our uncle recommended that I come here and help our incoming visitors with their packing and their papers.”

Maria gathered the gist and nodded. “I see.”

“And I thought you’d turn up here next, considering what I heard about the hospital.” He lowered his voice. “You’d need a way out, and you wouldn’t be ready to come home yet. They’d be expecting that, and watching the northbound trains.”

“Excellent detective work, Mr.… Henry. If you ever tire of the marshals, you should try your luck with the Pinks.”

“Thank you, ma’am, but I’m happy with the badge I wear already.” He winked at her, and the front door opened, admitting three hungry soldiers into the warm little space.

The rest of their breakfast was spent in more idle chatter, and when they were finished Henry proposed they find a more private venue. “Under normal circumstances I’d never suggest such a thing, but I think you ought to join me in my hotel room over at the Saint George,” he told her. She did not think it was her imagination that he said it with blushing cheeks.

She smiled at him, and when he held out his arm at an angle, she took it. She wasn’t so much older that it looked strange—or she didn’t think so, at any rate—and if he thought she’d be embarrassed by the suggestion or even the company, he had another thing coming. He was a polite, intelligent young man, strong and good-looking in an understated, easygoing kind of way, even with the glasses. His nervousness around her might’ve been due to his age—mid-twenties, she would’ve guessed—or her own notoriety, but either way it added to his charm. And anyway, sneaking up to an attractive lad’s hotel room in the middle of the day? Bah. She’d been accused of worse things. This didn’t even break the top ten.

His room was a clean but empty space, much like any inexpensive hotel room around the world. It was spacious and comfortably private, though it overlooked Broad Street, where the traffic was heavy and sometimes wild. Horses balked at motor vehicles and military men barked orders back and forth across the way; big engines moved big machines up and down the too-narrow thoroughfare, clipping the curbs, scraping stones, and frightening the city’s dog population into a frenzy of howled complaints.

“It’s not too … quiet,” Henry apologized. “But it’s tidy, and I can sleep through almost anything. Real close to the train station, too. So there’s that.”

“It’s almost as big as my apartment in Chicago,” she assured him, with only a slight degree of understatement. “And there’s no need to make excuses for the background noise. The more the better, I say. Let it drown out any stray words that might drift through the walls. But, do you mind … could I bother you to turn up the heat? I’m a cold-natured thing, I’m afraid, and the window isn’t keeping enough November outside.”

He went to the radiator and adjusted its controls, sending pressurized, boiling water squealing through the pipes. “That’s another nice thing about this place,” he said, recoiling from the heater’s valve and waving his hand at it. “Not as much smoke as a fireplace. I hear we’ll have electric warmers in every home one of these days, and won’t that be nice? And maybe they won’t be so uncomfortable to set.”

“Thank you, Henry. I appreciate it. I hope your hand isn’t burned…?”

“Just a smidge of pink, ma’am. If that’s the worst I do to myself today, I’ll be in real good shape. Now, at the risk of seeming ungallant, I believe we should sort out our information,” he said stiffly.

She smiled, hoping he understood she was smiling for him, not at him. “At the risk of seeming unladylike, I’ll take the bed. These papers will require some spreading out, and the desk in the corner won’t do the job.”

Henry drew a chair up to the bed and Maria sat on its edge, emptying the satchel of Captain Sally’s notes and organizing them as best she could. Sometimes the dates were fuzzy or imprecise, and the nurse’s grasp of numbers wasn’t too much keener than her grasp of letters. Still, Maria marveled at the tenacious dedication of a near-illiterate woman writing so much, at such depth and length.

“There must be a whole novel’s worth of material here!” Henry exclaimed.

“It’s difficult to read at times, not merely for the content, but for the presentation,” she said gently. And then she walked him through the letters, hitting the high points and marking some of the more interesting bits with a pencil.

It took two hours, and even then, Maria felt like the summing up had been too shallow.

Henry stood over the bed, festooned with its brittle sheets of damning paper, and put his hands on his hips. “We should send a telegram back to the Lincoln house and let everybody know what you found in Richmond … but we couldn’t send off enough taps in a week of Sundays. Not even if we cut it down tighter than an obituary.”

“No, not even then. Here’s what I recommend: We’ll write out the most important parts, digested down from this … this serialized journal. Then we’ll express the important parts up to the Lincolns, and mail the original journals separately. But not to the Lincolns,” she added suddenly.

“Why not?”

“Because they’re being watched. Someone wants Gideon Bardsley, and he’s staying there. Lincoln strikes me as a competent man, and with Nelson Wellers there to help, I’m not too worried about his personal safety, but we can’t assume that packages won’t be intercepted.”

“We could send the originals to the Pinks,” Henry suggested.

She grinned. “Precisely what I was thinking. I’ll box it up and send it to Mr. Pinkerton for safekeeping. If it’s not secure there with him, there’s no hope for it at all. Is there a Western Union office nearby?”

“Back at the station, yes. I’ll run around the corner and grab some wrapping paper and twine, and you start jotting down the important bits. I’ll be right back.”

Maria took out her pencil.

Regarding the notes of Venita “Mercy” Lynch, nurse formerly of the Robertson Hospital in Richmond, Virginia: Approximately three hundred pages of letters about the northwestern port city of Seattle, where a heavy, poisonous gas has decimated the city, causing it to be largely abandoned.…

She kept writing until she’d revealed it all: the gas, the city in the Northwest, and the connection between the drug manufactured there … and the weapon proposed by Katharine Haymes.

In conclusion …

Maria heard Henry’s feet on the stairs, returning with the promised paper and twine. She thought hard and fast, and gave up on formalities.

In conclusion, gas weaponry is a dangerous, poorly understood can of worms we can’t afford to open.

It took four sheets of paper. When Henry let himself inside, she folded them in half and stuffed them into an envelope, then began stacking the nurse’s letters in a tidy pile before wrapping them up.

Henry took her pencil and reached for the envelope. “I don’t suppose you know the address for the Lincoln estate off the top of your head, do you?”

“I know it well enough. But let’s not write anything down until we get to the shipping office,” she urged.

“You’re right, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”

The war had made mail problematic between the dueling nations, and although the Union still used the United States Postal Service, the Confederacy relied upon independent carriers. If you wanted to pass notes back and forth across the Mason-Dixon line, you either used Western Union or you smuggled the messages yourself. Since everyone knew Western Union was the most reliable way to communicate with the other side, it was watched, and tracked. If you had to use it, you didn’t talk to anyone except the officer who took your money and stamped your package, and even he couldn’t be trusted.

When both packages had been successfully—if surreptitiously—shipped, Maria and Henry left the Western Union office and stepped back into the chilly afternoon. It was crisp and clear, in the way of such places with brutally cold winters but not much snow. Maria’s breath was cold in her chest and warm in the air, where it crystallized and hung in a satisfying fog that reminded her she was still alive.

She tucked her hands into her jacket pockets and wormed her chin deeper into her scarf, until only her eyes and nose poked out.

“And now,” she said, the words warming her lips against the wool. “We need to find … a porter, you said?”

“Ah. Yes.” Henry checked his pocket watch and nodded. “Down at the landing, in an hour. He’ll meet us there, and perhaps we’ll talk him into a late lunch. Have you ever had catfish fried right out of the river?”

“I don’t think so…?”

“That means ‘no,’ because if you’d ever tasted it, you’d never forget it. Come on now, this way. We’ll have better luck finding a cab on the next street over, where the army vehicles don’t block up all the roads. It’s only a short walk to the landing, but you look like you’re half frozen to death already, and we’ve only been outside a minute. I swear, you must be a little icicle all the time, up there in … in your new hometown,” he caught himself. He ducked quickly aside as two soldiers carrying a steamer trunk between them begged his pardon.