The Technologists (59 page)

“How?”

“Because I won’t stand out as much carrying this.” Marcus held open his carpetbag to reveal the disassembled rifle he had taken from the Hammond collection.

When the train reached the station closest to Hammond’s works, somewhat remote from the city center, they found a messenger and sent notes to Bob and Ellen. They had tried sending a wire through the telegraph office of Whitney’s Hotel the night before, but by that time the operator at the hotel informed them disruptions had forced him to cease sending out any new messages altogether.

Marcus and Edwin approached the avenue that divided the two rows of buildings comprising the Hammond Locomotive Works. The usually bustling compound seemed uncomfortably quiet and still without the rumbling thunder of machines and the combined roar of boilers, furnaces, and supervisors and workers trying to meet schedules or fill urgent orders. Marcus thought there should be piles of scrap iron around the corner that they could use to break through one of the boarded windows in the lower machine shop that had been shattered by the explosions.

“Marcus, hold on!” Edwin whispered as he began making his way behind the buildings.

Marcus turned and saw that he had opened the street door to the business office in the main building.

“Not locked?” he asked softly, joining Edwin in the threshold.

“Someone must be inside.”

“It’s
him
. He’s here right now.”

“What if Hammie left it ajar on purpose? A booby trap, like at his private laboratory?”

Marcus gave this less thought than Edwin might have hoped. “Then we will finish our business with him here and now.”

Edwin wiped his brow with his handkerchief and patted his pocket Bible. “I wish Bob were with you, Marcus, I do. He could help you more than I could, for he is never chicken-hearted.”

“You are a man of good courage, Edwin, as much as anyone I know. Bob would say the same. Keep cool and all will come out all right.”

Edwin forced a nod, and the two moved cautiously through the dark business office, which was stocked with plans for new locomotive orders. Marcus lit a small lantern and swept it across each hallway, motioning for Edwin to follow. Barely breathing, they sprang into chamber after chamber, prepared to confront Hammie, whose form they saw in every shadow, whose whisper they heard in the passing breeze, then they repeated their steps into the corridor and then through the next department, and then all over again.

As they walked among the massive machinery of the foundry, they were captivated by an unexpected sense of wonder. The machines at rest resembled slumbering beasts, ready to be roused by a single misstep on their part as they walked through. It was an eerily dynamic netherworld, still warmed by the artificial heat of industry that could never properly be removed through even the most advanced system of ventilation.

“Do you smell that?”

“What?” Edwin asked.

“Tobacco smoke.”

Edwin sniffed. “Are you certain?”

Marcus gestured for Edwin to follow him to the threshold of the boiler shop, from which thin curls of smoke emerged. He took one step inside, raising the rifle and peering through the target sight. “Hammie!”

Chauncy Hammond, Sr., turned around, a cigar crimped between his lips, his eyes alive with surprise. He was feeding papers into the stomach of a furnace lit bright red.

“Mr. Hammond,” Marcus blurted out, lowering the weapon. “How …”

He was going to ask how he had reached Boston before they did, but he knew the question was foolish before he finished it. Hammond did
not need to rely on the railroad schedule—he
was
the railroad. Edwin joined Marcus in the passageway to the shop.

“Boys, forgive me. I fear I cannot take visitors in here at the moment,” Hammond said, smiling at them wearily. “You haven’t found my son, have you? Isn’t that my Whitfield rifle? Why have you brought it here? What’s the matter?”

The gaslights were flickering above them.

Edwin leaped to his own conclusion. “You cannot do this, not even for Hammie’s sake, Mr. Hammond. It constitutes destroying the evidence!”

“You don’t understand—I
need
to do this,” the industrialist snapped. “It is the only way to stop this, Mr. Hoyt. To rescue everything and everyone I care about. Now, Mr. Mansfield, Mr. Hoyt, please do as I ask and find my Junior, so we can all be safe!”

“Hammie must not be protected anymore,” Marcus said.

“I’d give my life for my child, just as every good parent would. What are you trying to do? I thought you wished to help! I thought you were his friends. I see my mistake now.” Hammond’s face tightened. Just like the flames of the furnace, the magnate’s anger seemed to gather itself and then literally flare up within him. He put down the bundle of papers and whistled two sharp notes.

Through the dim halls of the next chamber came a gigantic figure, bearing down on them through the aisle of furnaces. The light revealed Sloucher George, the enormous machinist. He had bandages on his face and neck, which Marcus presumed were from injuries suffered during the boiler explosions.

“You didn’t bolt the door, you ape,” Hammond groused. Though he kept his eyes on Marcus and Edwin as he spoke, the reprimand was addressed to the machinist, whose big face reddened as he joined his employer. “Please help our friends find the exit while I finish my work here.”

Sloucher George blocked the way as Marcus moved closer to Hammond. “You hard of hearing, Mansfield? Mr. Hammond said you can’t be here right now. I wouldn’t have expected you’d try something like this. You still remember your way out, I’d wager. You can give me that rifle.”

“George, my friend and I need to speak to Mr. Hammond right now.”

Hammond, back to his task, was once again the brusque businessman. “Mr. Mansfield, I must repeat that I am at some very urgent business just now. Take Mr. Hoyt, be on your way. I promise we will speak later—come to my offices tomorrow morning.”

Marcus didn’t move.

“You pigheaded whelp! I’ve always wanted a good excuse to lick you, Mansfield,” George said, his huge hand landing on Marcus’s shoulder. “Try to interfere with Mr. Hammond’s plans, and you’ll give me one.”

“Careful,” Edwin said, leaning in toward the machinist bravely. “Just the other day my friend licked a whole gang of Harvard men who started a row!”

Sloucher George laughed and raised his massive fist. “I ain’t no collegey, little fellow,” he replied.

“We haven’t time for polite conversation,” Hammond said quietly, nodding a signal at his man. “Now!”

George pitched his body into Marcus, grabbing the rifle out of his hands even as he raised it, and throwing it across the boiler shop. George picked up Edwin by the collar and tossed him like a pebble across the greasy floor. Marcus came up swinging but was easily blocked by the machinist, who delivered a rapid series of body blows in return.

Staggering backward, Marcus recovered himself enough to stumble into the foundry toward Edwin, who was still on the floor. Before he could reach him, the large steam hammer plummeted down, sending sparks of fire shooting into the air over their heads. Marcus ducked, shielding his face.

Sloucher George, at the handle of the machine, laughed harshly. As Edwin tried to rise, George maneuvered the small hammer into position and snapped its iron arm down ferociously into the floor, sending Edwin back onto the floorboards.

“Ready to leave now, fellows?” the machinist yelled happily over the noise of the machine.

“You have to help us, or we’ll all be at risk!” Edwin shouted to the machinist. “You can’t let him shield Hammie!”

“Shield Hammie! What does Hammie have to do with it?”

“You don’t know, George?” Marcus asked, regaining his footing and
his confidence. “You will be under the threat of arrest for destroying evidence of serious crimes.”

“What don’t I know? Crimes? Boss Hammond told me we had to destroy the plans for a new locomotive engine before Globe Locomotive tried to steal them while our operations were still down. It’s those wretched commercial thieves I’m here to guard against!” George spun around to face Hammond, who stood in the entryway, taking in the exchange.

“Hold your tongue, boy,” Hammond said, pointing threateningly at his employee. “As long as you work for me, you do exactly as I say.”

“First tell me what these fools talk about! What is this about Hammie?”

“Nothing of your concern. Get back to the steam hammers and do as you’ve been instructed. Clear them out.”

George hesitated, wringing his hands and clenching his teeth. “Mr. Hammond, I want to know what Mansfield is talking about first,” George shot back.

“I believed you a loyal man, George!”

“When Mr. Rapler tried to recruit me at the beer hall to organize against you, I told him to jump off a bridge. But he was right. You’re dishonest with your workers! You aren’t telling me the truth—I can smell it,” Sloucher George roared, swinging his body back and forth between Hammond and Marcus as if unsure where to turn or whom to hurt.

Hammond pressed a hand wearily to his temple. “It seems you boys have all forgotten your places. I’m sorry it now comes to this. I never would have wanted any of you to be harmed.”

Seizing Edwin by the shoulders, George was suddenly shaking him. “Someone’s going to give me answers. You! What is all this about Hammie? What’s that little swell done?”

Edwin wheezed for breath in the frantic machinist’s clutches. As Marcus leaped forward to pull him off, the lights in the large chamber of machines flickered off. The three young men groped in the dark to find their bearings, Sloucher George shouting for Hammond to restore the lights.

“Marcus!” Edwin called out.

“I’m over here, Edwin. Don’t move— Oh, God. I think he’s—”

With a flash of fiery sparks, a revolving shaft of a suddenly live machine clutched Sloucher George by the jacket and threw him twenty feet into the air.

“Marcus, what’s happening?” Edwin cried out.

“George! George, where are you?” Marcus called, but there was no reply and no trace of him in the pitch-black cavern of the foundry. He began to grope his way across the wall in the direction of the tossed workman. Massive machinery whirred and clicked all around them. Marcus called out again to Edwin to stay still as he braved one methodical step after another, following his memory of the arrangement of the foundry. A slight lapse, a momentary brush with the wrong machinery in action, could rip an arm off a shoulder in a flash, or separate head from neck.

He followed the groans now coming from the fallen machinist. Just before he reached George, the floorboards, damaged by the boiler explosions, gave way, and Marcus crashed through the floor down into the planing room.

“Marcus! No!” Edwin screamed.

Marcus landed on his back on the top of the enormous wheel lathe, thirty feet above the floor and now activated at full strength. Light was streaming in from a boarded-up breach in the brick wall. When the dust clouds cleared, he drew his head up and assessed his situation. At first relieved his fall was broken, once he realized where he was he was horrified.

Edwin, dashing down the stairs from the foundry into the planing room, stopped short of the machine, now staring up from below at his fallen friend.

“I need help, Edwin,” Marcus said as calmly as he could manage.

“Can you jump down?” Edwin asked. But even if Marcus could survive the fall, the wheels on the machine were spinning below and would likely catch him and sweep him under the lathe. “You’ll have to climb down the wheel, Marcus.”

“I can’t. If I move more than an inch up here, it will mimic the operator inserting a plane of wood—the wheel I’m on will turn and I’ll be thrown right into the moving parts of the machine.”

“Then I’ll find a rope and pull you up from above.”

Marcus shook his head. “The boards are all broken on the foundry
floor—you won’t be able to get close enough. Edwin, I need you to shut the machine down as quickly and carefully as you can, but without jolting anything.”

Edwin hurried to the other side of the wheel lathe, where the controls were operated under a hood. The massive wheel on which Marcus balanced was shifting back and forth as he tried to keep his weight centered between the sharp wheel spokes.

“Edwin!” The wheel creaked and shivered.

“Don’t speak, Marcus! Try not to move a single muscle! I’m going to stop it! I won’t fail!”

Even as he said the words, both Tech students knew the truth: Even the blessed brain of Edwin Hoyt could not train itself on the controls of the sophisticated machine in the next thirty seconds. That was all the time remaining to Marcus—sixty seconds, maybe, at most—before his weight would inexorably trigger its movement and he would be crushed under the wheel, swept into the machinery, or thrown into one of the other heartless machines now activated by Hammond.

If he jumped he’d have a chance, however slim, of surviving. He closed his eyes and prepared himself. And then the machine sputtered and groaned and came to a screeching stop below. Lifting his head slightly, Marcus stared in amazement at what he saw.

“Edwin!” he cried in distress.

Edwin had lodged his body into the main gears that were turning the engine. “Marcus, you’re clear! Climb down!” Edwin shouted, followed by a rush of tears as he watched blood flow down his own flank. Marcus launched himself down the spikes of the now-fixed wheel and yanked Edwin’s body out of the machinery. His suit had been torn to shreds all along his side. Marcus ripped the sleeve from his uniform and wrapped it around his friend’s bloody abdomen.

“Edwin, what have you done?”

“Find him,” Edwin said, coughing and spitting blood. “You need to find Hammie!”

“Come on.” Marcus pulled him to his feet. Miraculously, they found he was walking with less pain than they had expected and dreaded.

“I’m not dead,” Edwin cried, marveling. He clung to Marcus’s shoulder.

“You’re hurt, Edwin.”

“But I’m not dying, Marcus!”

They came to a sudden stop.

“What’s wrong?” Edwin asked, trying to pull him forward. “We haven’t any time to lose. I can keep up.”