“You’re just saying that because you’re my father,” Mabel said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m saying that because it’s true,” her father said above the din of his typing, and even though the compliment had come from her father, which rendered it mostly moot, Mabel still appreciated it.
Mabel took a big bite of her father’s uneaten hamantasch. It was poppy seed, her favorite. “Wha ahr you wridding abouw?”
“A textile strike in New Jersey. A few nights ago, someone sabotaged the machinery at the factory so they couldn’t hire any more scabs.”
“Who did it? The workers?”
“No one knows. Possibly the Secret Six, that group of anarchists trying to make a name for themselves in the worst possible way. They’re causing us no end of headaches.”
Mabel swallowed the hard lump of pastry. “They would never do that.”
Her father stopped typing. “And you would know this how?”
Mabel looked down at the plate to hide her face from him. “I mean, it just doesn’t seem like something they would do. Is that all they did? Sabotage the works?”
“Yes. For now. But this sort of destruction breaks down talks and makes it hard for the rest of us trying to help the workers. And it can lead to greater violence. I’ve seen it.” Mabel’s father frowned. “You know the Secret Six was the name of the six men who subsidized the raids of John Brown, the abolitionist, just before the Civil War. These anarchists must think mighty highly of themselves to take that name.”
Mabel pretended to be very interested in the pastry. “You want the same things the Six do, though.”
“We share the same goals, yes, but violence is never the answer. An eye for an eye is supposed to be a deterrent, not a prescription, shayna. You want to help your mother and me paint picket signs tomorrow?”
Mabel sighed. That was all she was good for here. Serving coffee to socialist leaders. Handing out pamphlets. Painting signs. Boring. “I can’t. I’m meeting Evie,” she lied.
“Tell the troublemaker I said hello,” her father said, using his pet nickname for Evie.
“Maybe I’m the troublemaker,” Mabel said.
“You? My Maideleh Mabeleh? Never!” her father said, getting back to his typing.
Oh, Papa, Mabel thought. If you only knew.
After Arthur saw Mabel to the Bennington, he rode the subway back downtown and returned to his apartment. He opened the steamer trunk and examined the blueprints, making notes. Then he locked them up again. He lifted the blinds on his dormer window and peeked out. In the upstairs room of a brownstone across the way, an artist in a paint-splattered undershirt worked on a large canvas, and Arthur looked at his own, abandoned sketches with both longing and regret. Down on the noisy sidewalk, the barber, Mr. D’Agostino, stepped out of his shop to smoke. A trio of short-haired women dressed in tuxedos walked toward Macdougal Street, presumably to the famous nightclub that catered to an all-female clientele. Just another Friday night in Greenwich Village.
The man in the brown fedora was easy to miss at first. Just a man standing under a street lamp smoking a cigarette. But then he looked straight up at the bookstore’s attic, right at Arthur, and Arthur drew quickly away from the window, out of sight.
Evie read the late-edition article about the reports of HAUNTED HOSPITAL! and realized that she still hadn’t heard from Woody about a trip out to see Luther Clayton at the asylum. She rang the Daily News. “Woody? Evie O’Neill. Say, have you had any luck getting us in to see Luther Clayton?”
“Not so far, Sheba. What with the murder out there, they’re leery of newsboys like me trying to…”
As Woody talked, Evie flipped through the newspaper, stopping when she came to a picture of Sarah Snow serving porridge at the Salvation Army: SAINTLY SARAH DISHES UP A BOWL OF KINDNESS.
“You’ve just got to make it happen, Woody!”
“I got other stories to chase down, Sheba. There’s a murder every day on this island. Why don’t you decide to forgive Lucky Luciano or Legs Diamond instead?”
“Hahaha. They didn’t try to shoot me.”
“Give ’em time.”
“Woody, are you going to help me with this or not?”
“I’ll try again with the warden over there, but it may be a lost cause, Sheba. I’m telling you, they’re not letting anybody over to Ward’s except crazy people. Say, on second thought…”
“Good-bye, Woody,” Evie said, and hung up.
A CRAZY DREAM
1916
Department of Paranormal
Hopeful Harbor, NY
“Will, hurry! They’re waiting!”
Margaret “Sister” Walker paced impatiently at the door to the office of her friend and colleague, Will Fitzgerald. At his desk, Will laid down his pen and closed his notebook. He yanked up his suspenders, slipped on his suit jacket, and slicked a hand through his unruly hair, and then he and Margaret were moving quickly down the maroon-carpeted staircase and through a ballroom aglow in sparkling prisms of chandelier light.
“It’s transmitting, Will. Do you realize what this means?”
“I… I didn’t hope to imagine,” Will said as they bustled into the estate’s wood-paneled library. “I thought it was just a crazy dream.”
“Not anymore.”
Will rushed to the middle bookcase and pulled down two books in the center of the third shelf, and the bookcase swung open, revealing a private elevator. Margaret pushed a button marked S, and the lift rattled upward. With a shake of her head and a laugh, she reached over and adjusted Will’s off-kilter glasses. “I have never met anyone whose spectacles simply refused to stay put. It’s a wonder you can see at all.”
“That’s why I’m lucky to have you as a friend.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
The elevator stopped and the door opened. Sunlight poured in from a glass panel in the roof. It glinted off every shiny surface of the top secret laboratory. A metallic hum filled the room and, under that, the steady scratching of some instrument at work.
“There you are!” Rotke called. She hurried over, grabbing Will by the hands. “This way.”
“Don’t mind me,” Margaret muttered, and followed, head held high.
“Will! Come quickly! You must see this,” Jake called to his best friend, grinning. He was talking without punctuation, as if his mouth were a harried stenographer racing to keep up with the dictation of his busy thoughts. “Electromagnetic… boosted the signal… necessary energy field… recalibrated the gyrometer and bam! There it was.”
“There what was?” Will asked, pushing up his wayward glasses once more.
“This.”
Jake positioned Will in front of one of the many machines he’d been toying with over the past few months. It was a cube with a whirring gyrometer on top and, in the center of the cube, a large glass tube alive with an erratic, pulsing light. Coming out from the bottom of the cube was a stylus. Its mechanical arm scratched excitedly over a roll of paper that had spooled inches thick on the floor.
“It’s been going all morning,” Jake said. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all night, but his smile was ecstatic.
“And you’re sure?” Will asked.