Jacob forced his way through the crowd, stepped out into the street, and flagged down a cab. The driver looked at us in horror. “You’re not thinking of putting them young ladies on my clean seat, are you?” he asked.
“They’ve just been rescued from the fire,” Jacob said. “Surely you don’t want them to have to walk home in their condition. What if they were your own daughters?” He reached into his pocket. “There will be an extra dollar to aid with the cleanup,” he said.
The cabby’s eyes widened as Jacob produced the dollar bill. “You’re right, sir. We couldn’t expect them to walk in their condition, could we?” he said with a grin. Jacob opened the door and bundled us inside. As we drove away I glanced out of the window and again I thought I caught a glimpse of Daniel’s face in the crowd.
The cab made its way slowly through the great crush of people. I looked back but Daniel’s face had gone. I turned back to Katherine, who was sitting tight-lipped, staring straight ahead of her.
“You say that Michael was the one who killed Nell Blankenship? Couldn’t you have stopped him?” I asked as the cab got up speed and turned into the Bowery.
“I had no idea.” She hugged her arms to herself, shivering. “My God, don’t you think I would have stopped him if I had known what he was going to do? She found out where we were hiding. Michael had done some work for the Eastmans, so they let us hide out in a shed behind their headquarters. This woman came and she asked questions about me. Mike thought that—” She bit her lip, looking younger and more fragile than her photograph. “He said he’d take care of her. I never dreamed . . . then he came back and told me he’d killed her by mistake and we’d have to stay hidden until we could make a run for it and go out West where they’d never find us.”
“What I don’t understand,” Jacob said, “is why it was so terrible that the detective found you? You are a married woman, after all. Your parents might be annoyed but legally there is not much they can do.”
Katherine sank her head into her hands. “You don’t know the half of it,” she said.
“Don’t worry about that now,” I said. “I’ll hide you where you’ll be safe.”
The cab driver reined in his horse and poked his head down to us. “Patchin Place did you say, sir? I don’t want to take the horse all the way down, on account of how it’s hard to back him up again.”
“That’s fine. We can walk a few yards,” I said.
Jacob jumped down first and handed us down from the cab. Katherine looked around her. “This is nice,” she said. “It reminds me of London. Quite different from the New York I have seen up to now.”
We walked the length of Patchin Place and stopped outside Number Nine. I knocked on the front door. Sid opened it, looked at me, then her jaw dropped open.
“Molly—what in God’s name have you been doing to yourself?”
I had quite forgotten that I had no skirt or petticoat on, that I was dirty and covered in soot. Katherine didn’t look much better.
“We were in a fire,” I said. “We got trapped and we had to climb out over the rooftops.”
“Mercy me.” For once Sid sounded less sophisticated than usual. “Come inside, do. I’ll find the brandy and I’ll get Gus to run you a hot bath. What an awful experience for you.”
Her eyes moved past me to Jacob and Katherine. “You were in the fire too?”
“Katherine was. I was merely the comforting shoulder afterward,” Jacob said.
“Katherine?” Sid’s eyes opened wide. “The Katherine?”
“The Katherine.”
“But I thought she had drowned.”
“Does everyone in New York know about me?” Katherine asked, uncertainly.
“Only my very closest friends,” I said. I looked up at Sid. “I want to ask you a favor.”
“Other than a hot bath and a good meal?”
“I want to ask you to hide Katherine for a few days. Her husband is trying to find her and that would not be a good idea.”
“Then for God’s sake don’t stand there on the doorstep. Get inside.” Sid grabbed at Katherine’s shoulder and yanked her into the house. “Gus, dearest,” she called, “you’ll never believe who has come to visit!”
Gus came running down the stairs, wearing a painter’s smock, brandishing a paintbrush and with a smudge of orange on her nose.
“Molly, what on earth have you been doing to yourself? Are you making a protest against the wearing of skirts, a la bloomer?”
“I had to abandon it in a fire,” I said.
“When she jumped from rooftop to rooftop,” Katherine said. “She was fearless.”
Gus’s gaze turned to Katherine.
“This is Katherine,” I said.
“The Katherine,” Sid added.
“Resurrected from the dead?” Gus asked.
“Never died in the first place. Went underground. Wicked husband,” Sid said. “Wants us to hide her.”
I smiled at Sid’s succinct account. That pretty much summed it up.
“Well of course we’ll hide her, but let’s clean her up first,” Gus said.
“May I suggest brandy for shock first,” Jacob said.