Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century #5)

Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century #5) Page 33

It hadn’t always been like that. He hadn’t always been the kind of man who knew nothing about the people who managed his life and home. Once he’d been a soldier, hadn’t he? A good one. A great one. A serving man of a different sort.

When did it get away from him? Had it been bought with this distancing ease? Too many years riding on the shoulders of others?

“Sir? What should we do?” she asked him.

A pitiful question, yet one he couldn’t answer. Send flowers? Console his family? Summon the authorities? A better suggestion, yes. “Have the appropriate authorities been called?”

Fiercely she nodded. “The police, sir. They’re coming to talk to you, I think. Almost unseemly, one of ’em said, that they’d bother interviewing the president about a nigger, but it was Andrews, sir.” The note of pleading nearly broke his heart. “You’ll speak to them, won’t you? You’ll help them find out what happened?”

“Of course I will, and you mustn’t hold any questions or ill will against the police. When a man’s been murdered—any man—one must always investigate. Especially when he has such ties to … to government. To the president.”

He wished for Julia again, and then unwished for her. He congratulated himself instead on sending her away. Then his warm confidence faded as he wondered: was Maryland far enough?

Still fidgeting and fretting, the girl added, “They say another colored man did it, sir.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry, come again?”

“That scientist. I think you know him. Been living over with the Lincolns, I think.”

“Bardsley…? No, I don’t think so. Not for a moment. They didn’t even know one another, and if they did, there would be no reason … no reason at all for Bardsley to…”

But the story was already arranging itself in his head. No, there was no reason for the scientist to kill an old couple in a small house. But there might be an excellent reason for someone else to raise the question—to cast suspicion, and remove credibility.

Grant had seen the editorial. He’d read it himself, and his skin had crawled. He’d felt it then, too, the coming battle. Gideon Bardsley. The walking plague. Project Maynard. The Fiddlehead. All these things, bubbling together and finding their way into print, into the public. Into the light, for scrutiny.

Readers were talking. Editors were talking. Last he’d heard from Abe, the warning letter was about to run in New York. That’d drum up some real interest, wouldn’t it? A thousand paperboys crying out, screaming the truth on the busiest streets in the world.

Unless.

Unless the truth was coming from a known murderer. Sometimes the answers are so simple.

“And sir? A message. I’m sorry, I almost forgot it.” She came forward, holding a scrap of folded paper in trembling hands. “A lady gave it to me, and said I should give it to you. She said it was important, but I was so … I heard about Andrews, sir, that’s all. I only just now remembered.”

“It’s fine,” he lied. He took it from her hands and read.

Even the smallest actions of great men come with tremendous consequences. Now hold still and be careful not to touch anything else. I can take more from you than your pawns. Baltimore isn’t so far off.

“You can’t threaten me,” he said to the note, or to the woman who must have written it.

The serving girl gave him a puzzled look. “Sir?”

“Not you, dear,” he replied without taking his eyes off the page. “Not you. But I want you to do something for me. I want you to tell the agent outside that I’m retiring for the night. Tell him to stay where he is, and his relief should remain downstairs, too, for I’m not feeling well. Then build me a stack of pillows in my bed, and don’t say a word when I leave through the kitchen.”

Fourteen

“How does it look?” Gideon called to Nelson Wellers from the ruined basement of the Jefferson. He could smell a storm brewing even down there, below the surface; the cold, shifting winds whistled through holes in the floor and spit through the remains of the scientist’s printer upstairs. They rustled the ashes of paper, and scattered the broken press keys like so many pebbles.

The doctor cried back, “As bad as before, if less cluttered. They’ve been taking away the trash, at least. Getting the place cleaned up.”

Gideon shuttered the lantern and stepped past a pile of cables, a stack of paper, and a splintered set of desk drawers. “Getting dark, isn’t it?”

“Starting to. The weather isn’t helping. Can you see all right?”

“Yes.”

“How bad is it down there?”

“Bad.” He looked up through the hole above, and imagined he felt a drop of very cold rain. A second spitting drop very nearly convinced him, but when he didn’t feel a third, he began to hope it was a fluke. “How much waxed canvas did you get?”

“Enough, I hope.”

“That’s a miserable answer.”

Wellers sighed. “Fine. It’s … a stack of sheets about a foot thick. Each one is about … I don’t know. Twenty by thirty. Lincoln said it was all Smithy could scare up on such short notice, so it’ll have to do. I’m sure it’ll cover the machine.”

“The machine, yes. The floor above it … that remains to be seen.” He performed some rough calculations in his head, and guessed the square footage he could cover. “We can deploy the sheets and weigh them down; might be able to save a few things that way. But we won’t be able to waterproof this lower level. Rain will drain down and pool in the mechanisms. Ice or snow will be heavy, and melt. Then the water will freeze, and smash it apart from the inside.”

“Always a ray of sunshine, aren’t you, Gideon?”

“A very practical ray of sunshine, yes. We should start at the southwest corner,” he directed.

“Is that where the worst of the damage is?”

“No, it’s where the machine is. The worst of the damage is at the other end of the room, but we’re running out of time.”

“We’ll do the best we can, and it’ll be enough,” Wellers said, insisting to himself—or maybe to Gideon, who couldn’t see him and only halfway believed him. “I’ll start unloading. Wait.”

“What?”

“Wait,” he said again, low and quiet, directed down the hole above Gideon’s head. Then, to someone else: “Who goes there, eh? What can I do for you fine gentlemen this … afternoon, I suppose. Though it looks rather like evening, more so every minute.”

“That it does,” came the response. Gideon didn’t recognize the speaker. “We’re looking for Gideon Bardsley, and have reason to think he might be here.”

Wellers hesitated, but only for the briefest of moments. “Gideon? No, he’s not here right now. He’s back at the Lincoln place, I believe.”

“You believe wrong.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” the doctor said coolly. “What do you officers want with him? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Officers? Policemen, Gideon assumed. Couldn’t be good. Why were they here? Could they be charging him with libel, over the editorial he’d written? He smiled darkly, thinking of the piece’s reception; he’d heard that countereditorials were being drawn up and printed up even as he stood there. He’d already read one or two. But more than rebuttals, he saw calls for action. Statements of concern. Demands for answers. And the demands were growing louder with every passing hour, much to his grim delight.

“He’s wanted for murder.”

Ah. Something else then. Something untrue. More untrue than libel, anyway. They weren’t supposed to convict a man who spoke the truth, not that it necessarily stopped anyone. And as for murder? Innocent men were convicted every day.

So Douglass had been right. They were disgracing him, since they couldn’t silence him any other way. He might’ve been flattered if he didn’t feel so inconvenienced.

Nelson Wellers replied with a similar disbelief. “Murder? You can’t be serious. Gideon never murdered anybody, and I’d very much like to see whatever evidence brings you out here to arrest him.”

“Two witnesses have independently and confidently identified him, and the dead man himself wrote ‘GB’ in his own blood, right beside his body. Besides that, part of his laboratory coat was found at the scene—a pocket, torn off in the victim’s struggles.”

Laboratory coat? Gideon shook his head. He almost never wore a coat in the lab, only the occasional apron or belt for his tools. To call the charges trumped up was to give them more credit than they deserved.

“That’s preposterous!” Wellers said with exasperation. “You have no way of knowing whose coat, whose pocket…”

But one of the policemen snapped, “The specifics are none of your concern, unless you’re giving quarter to a known fugitive. In that case, it’s absolutely your concern, because it’s evidence against you, as well. Now, where is he?”

“I surely have no idea.”

“According to our sources, he left the Lincoln household with you. To come here. To do … what are you doing, anyway?”

“You don’t care, so what does it matter? You’re looking for Gideon, and I haven’t seen him. We parted company in town when we realized we didn’t have enough supplies to perform our task. You might stop by C. T. Helman’s shipping supplies.”

“And why would we do that?”

“Because,” Nelson said with an exaggerated note of impatience. “That’s where we got the waxed canvas over there.” He must have gestured at the cart. “And I’ll answer your other question truly and on the house: We’re trying to prevent damage to the basement level, where some very sensitive scientific equipment is presently exposed to the elements. If you take a look at the sky, you’ll see we have some elements pending. Any minute now.”