City of Promise (28 page)

“Yes. Thank you. Do ask him. That would be excellent.”

“Good. Settled then. Now, tell me about the murder weapon.”

“What about it?”

“Was it a knife from downstairs? From your own kitchen?”

Josh remembered his initial reaction the moment he first laid eyes on poor George’s body. His thought had been that the dwarf had been stabbed with a dagger. That’s what he’d put in the note summoning the police.
A man in my employ . . . came home at the height of the storm to find him dead in my study, with a dagger between his shoulder blades.
“No. I’d never seen the thing before and it was nothing I’d expect to find in this house. Sort of an oversized bowie knife.”

“I see. Plunged up to the hilt, was it?”

“Simon, I know doctors deal with all manner of gruesome details and you read all those scary stories as a boy, but this isn’t an exciting adventure as far as I’m concerned. The man worked for me. I’m responsible in a sort of way. And as soon as the roads are passable I have to go downtown and tell the men at the foundry what’s happened.”

“Mollie shouldn’t be alone,” Simon said at once. “Can the woman with the hat remain with her? At least until your household’s back to normal.”

“I’ll ask her,” Josh said. “But in any case I shall send for Mollie’s Aunt Eileen this afternoon. I’m sure she’ll come the moment she can get through.”

“We was thinking,” Ebenezer Tickle said, “that George got hung up somewhere ’cause of the storm. That we’d see him back once the streets was cleared.”

“I’m truly sorry, Mr. Tickle,” Josh said. “And I came to tell you as soon as I could.” It was Tuesday, five full days since the storm. The horsecars were operating on some of their runs, though the
streetcars—dependent as they were on following tracks laid on the ground—were still idle. The elevated railroad, meanwhile, had proved itself the easiest means of transportation to restore to normalcy. The sun had a better chance to melt the snow on the tracks suspended above the city over Greenwich Street and Ninth Avenue. Getting around wasn’t easy, but it was at least possible. “I take it the police haven’t sent anyone to speak with you yet?”

“No coppers, no. Ain’t likely they’ll trouble themselves too much,” Tickle added. “Not about one of us.”

Josh didn’t argue with that.
These sorts of people, sir, they get up to all kinds o’ things a gentleman like yourself wouldn’t even imagine.
That from a police sergeant clearly more interested in getting home to his dinner than solving the mystery of what had happened in Joshua Turner’s front room. “Mr. Tickle, have you any idea what George was doing at my house? I certainly didn’t send for him. I wasn’t even home.”

Ebenezer didn’t answer immediately. Josh looked over to where Tickle’s cousin Obadiah stood with Israel McCoy, the third of the original three dwarves who came to work at the foundry. Neither man made any pretense about how avidly they were listening to the conversation.

The foreman waved them off. “Here, you two, show some respect for the dead. Go back there and get George’s things together.”

Ebenezer waited until they’d moved off, then turned back to Josh. “I sent him,” he said quietly. “Didn’t have any idea the storm was coming.”

“No way you could have known. But what did you send him for? And why at midday when I wasn’t likely to be at home?”

The dwarf shook his head. “Poor George. I never thought . . . I’d not have sent him if I’d any idea . . .”

“I know that, Mr. Tickle. I’m not blaming you for anything, I assure you. But why did you send him?”

“To find you. Said he should check your house first, then go on up to the building site if you weren’t there.”

“From Wall Street all the way up to Sixty-Third,” Josh said quietly.
“I think you’d better tell me the reason for that, Mr. Tickle. Given that it was Thursday and except for the storm, which as you say none of us knew was coming, you would have expected me on Saturday with the pay packets, it seems a rather extraordinary errand.”

“You might say.”

“I do, Mr. Tickle.”

The dwarf glanced over his shoulder. The other two men were still occupied at the far end of the foundry. “Trenton Clifford,” he said. “He’d been hanging about down here. I seen him twice. Last time was that same day. Before the storm started. He was down here looking around. Before that George had told me he seen Clifford as well. Three times he said.”

“And that alarmed you,” Joshua said.

“It did.”

“I think, Mr. Tickle, it’s time you told me the nature of the connection between you and Captain Clifford.”

Ebenezer peered into the shadows, though Josh had no idea what exactly he was looking for. “Not here,” the dwarf said. “I’ll take you to a place.”

11

“I
T’S A STORY
as takes some time for the telling,” Ebenezer said. “And this is a good place to tell it.”

They were in Mama Jack’s Cave. Come not by the entrance through the hidden tunnel at the end of Washington Square Mews, but through a saloon on Eighth Street. Tickle had led Josh along a long, narrow taproom, paying no attention to the many pairs of eyes that followed them. More of the same when they walked through the storeroom at the back where they kept the kegs of beer and ale until they were wheeled to the front to be tapped. Tickle ignored the lot and led Josh down the stairs to a deep cellar lit by pitch torches that cast flickering shadows. And finally, into this remarkable drinking establishment where everyone Josh saw was queerly made one way or another, and a truly enormous woman, her bulging and sagging flesh draped in satins and jewels, sat on a throne raised above their heads, watching over everything that happened.

“Mama Jack,” Ebenezer said, nodding his head toward the raised dais. “Used to be with Barnum. Fat lady in his freak show. Got fed up and started this place.”

“Were you with Barnum?” Josh blurted the words and was sorry as soon as he said them, but Tickle seemed not to take offense.

“Never. Got me a skill as can be done if you’re tall or small. My daddy seen to it I’m an iron man like he was. Don’t need to put myself on display to eat. Some here ain’t the same.”

They were walking through the throng as they spoke and a path, Josh noted, was being made for them. The talk meanwhile was all around them in waves. It abated as they came close, then rose again behind them, so Josh couldn’t catch hold of what was being said. Only an occasional word. Murder, he heard. Higgins.

They came to a corner with a low table and stools that were dwarf-sized, and Tickle dragged over another, full-sized, for Josh. When they’d settled themselves a woman appeared and deposited two mugs of ale on the table. She was exceptionally tiny, Josh noted, half Tickle’s size, and with no hint of his disproportion. Her hair was long and yellow-blond, like a doll his sister Goldie had when she and Josh were children. The same big blue eyes as well, but not painted on a head made of china. Those real blue eyes looked at him intently. Taking his measure, Josh thought.

“This here,” Tickle said, “is Maude Pattycake. She’s going to marry me.”

“Keep your tongue in your mouth, Ebenezer. I ain’t said yes yet.”

“You will,” he said, no hint of doubt in his voice. Then, “Keep us filled up. I got business to talk with Mr. Turner.”

Maude said she’d do that and moved away. Ebenezer took a long swallow of ale, then said, “You been wanting to know about Trenton Clifford. Guess it’s time I told you.”

Josh was conscious of the attention of everyone in the room. “Why here?” he said. “You were afraid of being overheard at the foundry when it was only Obadiah and Israel, but here there’s—”

“Ain’t no one here going to take Clifford’s part in anything.”

“But—Which one?” he demanded as a possible explanation came to mind. “Who don’t you trust? Your cousin or McCoy?”

“Going to tell you a story about steel before we get to Clifford,” Tickle said, waving the question aside. “You remember who Bessemer is?”

“Fellow who owns the patent on the steelmaking process. I remember very well.”

“Like I told you, he claimed he made steel back in England same time as Kelly was making it in Eddyville. Did it the same way as well. Had the identical process down pat according to him, and already had a patent over there. So he didn’t have to pay but a pittance to get Kelly’s patent. Wasn’t worth all that much to him, Bessemer said. Just might be a small nuisance if he didn’t have it. Bought it for next to nothing. Didn’t even bother to ship Kelly’s converters over to London. Said he had the same already. Made locally over there, so why pay for shipping.”

“Why did Kelly sell to him if he was offered such a dismally bad deal?”

“’Cause he was broke. Like I told you, Mr. Kelly was a scientific type, not a businessman. Been to school to study what’s called metallurgy. Spent years experimenting until he got to understand about taking out some of the carbon—not too much and not too little—and how cooling down the molten pig iron would make it hot. Everything like you seen us do to make steel.”

Josh nodded and took a drink of ale. It was good brew, just bitter enough to be refreshing.

“Mr. Bessemer,” the dwarf said, “he didn’t go to school to study metallurgy. Didn’t know nothing scientific about iron and steel. Course he knew steel was much stronger than iron, and how everyone wanted an easy way to make it. Something better ’n the old open-hearth way as takes days and days. But you could stop ten strangers on a street and find six or seven as knew that. How to do it? That’s a different matter. So I’m asking you, Mr. Turner, how did Bessemer figure it out? The way he told it, he just came up with the process. Overnight like it were. Figured it out and built himself one converter and it turned out to be exactly the right one, did the job perfect first time. Presto change-o like they say in Barnum’s show.”

Tickle leaned in. Josh lifted his ale to his lips and the dwarf waited until the other man took his swallow and set the tankard on the table between them. “Best guess how it happened,” Tickle said, “is somebody told Bessemer how to do it. Somebody as worked for Kelly and seen how it was done told the tale. That’s how Bessemer knew what to do and how to do it.”

“Did Clifford work for Kelly?” Josh asked.

Tickle had his pipe going and he sucked on the stem while he shook his head. “Nope. Never. Trenton Clifford, he’s a real proper Southern gentleman. Ain’t never going to be soaked in his own sweat in a foundry. But Captain Clifford did some business with Mr. Kelly. Had him make a steel door as would take two tons of dynamite to blast apart. Big wheel on the outside and you had to know which way to turn it and how many times in each direction in order to get it to open. Last big thing them Kelly brothers made, that special door. Captain Clifford, he watched the making of it. By then the Kellys was broke and Bessemer was in Eddyville nosing around, getting ready to make his offer for the patent. Seemed like that was two lucky-for-some things happening together and there was questions. Clifford said he didn’t know Bessemer. Said he never met him.”

The dwarf paused long enough to tap the ash out of his pipe and set about refilling it. “Thing is,” he said, “Captain Clifford on his own, he didn’t know enough about how steel is made to explain it to some Englishman. All the same, Clifford was in London a year and a half before Bessemer showed up in Eddyville.”

“How do you know that?”

“I heard him say so.”

“Where? When?”

“Getting there.” Tickle refused to be hurried. “First, you got to understand what sort of a man Trent Clifford is.”

“Trust me,” Josh said. “I already do. He was in charge of the rebel prison on Belle Isle. I was one of the prisoners.”

The dwarf considered that for a moment, then nodded. “So it
seems like you got a good idea about the kind of bad he is. It’s not the usual sort, Mr. Turner. There ain’t no passion in Clifford’s evil. It’s just the way he sees the world. Like it’s set up for his convenience. Nobody else’s. The other part of him is that he finds things out. Knows how to get people telling him things he finds a use for.”

“I know that as well. How else did I find you? Though I’ve yet to see the advantage to Clifford in the arrangement.”

“That,” Tickle said, leaning forward, “is what’s been on my mind right along. I almost didn’t agree to work for you because of it. Talked to George and Israel about it right here. We decided to take a chance. Guess you did the same.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Josh said.

“You were willing to take a chance on me, even though it was Clifford as put us together.”

Josh nodded. “I was. I judged you were worth the risk, Mr. Tickle. Frankly, I’m glad I did. But it appears George has been considerably less fortunate in the arrangement than either you or I.”

Tickle lifted his hand and signaled to Maude Pattycake and she brought them two more tankards of ale. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you about. George’s bad luck. How it might o’ happened. Like I said, no doubt in my mind it was Clifford gave the information about making steel to Bessemer. Told him what Mr. Kelly figured out after years of studying and experimenting. But somebody had to have told him first. Clifford wouldn’t get enough information just by watching. Not unless somebody explained about the temperatures and such, and how to build a converter.”