Mabel nodded her thanks and turned away.
Her father had always said that persuasion trumped force. Give people the benefit of the doubt, shayna. Appeal to the good inside them. Show them you will work with them. Offer hope in place of hate. Hope and reason gave people a chance to think for themselves, to be a part of the solution. Yes. Hope. She’d go to Arthur and reason with him. She’d get him to see that they were all poised on the razor’s edge of becoming everything they’d been fighting against. There was another, better way. There always was. Yes. Hope. Yes.
Mabel slipped into the Grand Pavilion. On the broad wooden stage, the Christian Crusaders played a noisy march. The bang of the drum, sharp as a gun, startled Mabel and she jumped. Everywhere she looked there were children. Whole families waving small flags on sticks. A mother bent to wipe the mouth of her little boy. Oh, god. Faster, Mabel! She pushed her way to the back and the door that led down to the housings. A policeman stopped her. “You can’t go that way, Miss. It’s not open to the public.”
“Oh,” Mabel said, trying not to cry. “I’ve lost my brother. I have to find him. He… he went this way.”
And then Mabel did cry. The overwhelming fear. The betrayal. There was no stopping her tears.
The policeman softened. “Aww, now, Miss. Go on, then. But don’t tell anybody I let you back there.”
“Thank you. Oh, thank you,” Mabel cried.
Hope. Persuasion. Appealing to the good. It had worked in this moment. She hoped the policeman’s faith was not misplaced. She had to stop Arthur from making a terrible mistake.
Quickly, Mabel slipped down the stairs. As she came around the corner, she stopped short at the sight of four Pinkerton agents huddled together, smoking. One of them was Brown Hat, the man who’d been following them the past several weeks. Mabel hid in the shadows beneath the stairs and waited.
“You think he’s on the level?” one of the Pinkertons asked.
Brown Hat hooked his thumbs underneath his jacket lapels. “That gutter rat? I wouldn’t trust Arthur Brown farther than I could spit.”
“He’s been your informant for a while, though. If not for him, we wouldn’t’ve been able to catch those anarchists downtown. We arrested that bookstore owner, Jenkins, today.”
Arthur?
Arthur was a stool pigeon?
Mabel’s knees buckled, and she grabbed hold of the stair railing for support.
Brown Hat tossed his cigarette to the ground and wiggled it dead with the toe of his shoe. “And then he blew up Marlowe’s mine. That wasn’t part of the plan. He was supposed to deliver the Secret Six to us, but he didn’t show up for our meeting last night. Once a traitor, always a traitor. I’m betting he’s here somewhere. We’re gonna turn this place out looking for him.”
Mabel pressed herself against the wall as the agents’ feet thundered past her head and up the staircase. It was all lies. She’d loved him. She’d thought…
Bile scratched up her throat, and she gagged against its hot truth. She didn’t know whether to run back to the others and tell them they were walking into a trap or chase after the man in the brown hat and demand to know everything. If she did, he’d arrest her on the spot.
No. There was only one person who had the answers she needed.
Mabel made her way to the basement. Her tears had dried. Her earlier panic had become an icy numbness thick in her chest. She found the small room directly under the stage and quietly let herself inside. Arthur had his back to her. He was crouched over the bomb at his feet.
“Arthur,” she said coldly.
He leaped up, eyes wide. “Mabel! What are you doing here?”
“I know all about it. About you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know that you’re a double agent working with the Pinkertons. You’re a spy for them. All this time, you’ve been lying to us. To me.” Mabel’s voice broke on the word. The tears were coming. She sniffed them back. “You didn’t want to help workers. You wanted to bring down the movement.”
Arthur’s expression went slack for a moment, but he didn’t deny it. Mabel had half been waiting for him to tell her how wrong she was, but she could see now that she was right, and she both hated and respected Arthur for not lying to her just now.
“They were going to execute my brother. They let me out of jail and told me they’d commute his sentence if I worked for them. But that was before what happened at the mine. Those children burned to death in their tents. Women shot by machine guns. It was before I fell in love with you. You changed me, Mabel. I had been half-dead, but you made me believe in the cause again. You made me want to be a good man.”
A bitter “ha” escaped from deep in Mabel’s throat. “I’m supposed to believe that?”
“You don’t have to, but it’s the truth, Mabel, I swear.”
“Your word doesn’t mean anything,” Mabel shot back. “I suppose indicting the Roses’ daughter as a member of the Secret Six was supposed to be the feather in your cap.”
“They were going to use you to blackmail your parents into cooperating. But I told them you were innocent!”
Tears blurred Mabel’s vision. “Gloria’s right—I’m such a fool.”
“Mabel, I promise you, I love you. I want to marry you.”
Arthur moved toward Mabel. She pushed him away hard even as she wanted to hold him. “Don’t.”
“How can I prove I love you?”
“If you truly love me, you’ll destroy that bomb.”
Arthur looked down at his creation. One switch, Mabel knew, and it would tick down to destruction. “He’s a bad man. The whole system’s rigged and rotten, Mabel. We need to send a message.”
“Not this way.” Mabel stood firm. “I’m not leaving, Arthur. If you set that bomb, you’ll kill me, too.”
“Mabel. Please.”
“Once, you saved me. In Union Square, remember? Pulled me into an alley and into your world. Now I’m saving you.”
Arthur teared up. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s not a good world, Mabel.”
“Yes, it is. It just needs a lot of help.” Mabel was crying, too. “We can do that, you and me. I still have hope, Arthur. I can’t give up on the world just yet.”
Arthur looked at Mabel. He was tearing up again, and Mabel fought the urge to comfort him. He swiped an arm across his eyes. “Sometimes it feels like…” There was a catch in his voice. “Like the world has given up on me.”
“I haven’t given up on you,” Mabel said.
Tears slid down Arthur’s face as he reached out and gently stroked Mabel’s soft cheek.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
“Okay.” Arthur knelt before the bomb. He lifted his face to Mabel’s. His eyes were red. “For you, Mabel Rose.”
Footsteps pounded toward them. Arthur leaped up. Mabel moved to his side. The four Pinkerton agents entered the room, guns drawn. Brown Hat was at the front. “Make a single move and I’ll shoot you where you stand! This is the only warning you get.”
“Put your hands up, Mabel,” Arthur said gently.