I said nothing. Not to DeForest, not to anyone. Aside from Pinkerton, he was my only ally in the agency. If I exposed him, I would lose a friend. His predilections clearly hadn’t impeded his abilities as an operative, so there was nothing to gain from speaking up. I had to be practical.
The first time I saw him after that night, quizzing him at Pinkerton’s behest about the habits of train-based pickpockets, I was uncomfortable. I asked him questions, but I couldn’t concentrate on his answers. An image of him with the other man, their heads bent together, sprung up unbidden in my mind. His words buzzed in my ears, and I had to ask him to repeat himself. I learned what I needed to, but I was concerned our bond had been irrevocably altered.
The next time I saw him, I only thought words and not the image: I saw him with a man. After that, the information faded, day by day, until it was barely a tickle at the back of my brain.
Walking away from what I’d seen that night, I thought it might be hard to keep it hidden from him, knowing something he wasn’t aware I knew.
But I could keep secrets, even one as potentially incendiary as this one.
And so I would keep it, for a while.
Chapter Nine
A Visit
I had been a Pinkerton operative for more than a year before someone tried in earnest to kill me.
By then, I was living in a smaller, finer boardinghouse just off Des Plaines Street. My unusual comings and goings at Mrs. Borowski’s had started to draw notice from my fellow boarders. I gave a false name at the new house to make things easier. Whoever I was on the inside, as far as this corner of the world was concerned, I was Miss Cora Harris, spinster. That was all they knew and all they needed to know.
My new boardinghouse was comfortable and elegant. I had a good-sized room with a bed and bureau and my own private dressing room. The bedspread was soft under my fingers, and the drapes at the window were new enough not to be faded from the sun. The window overlooked the street at the front of the house, shaded by a pretty, delicate birch tree. I pretended I was fully accustomed to such lush surroundings. Miss Cora Harris had not been raised in theaters and flophouses, terrified of being left behind on purpose or by accident; Miss Harris was a lady.
And while I returned to the boardinghouse nearly every night, all my days were spent on cases. A year of experience had made me wiser and more useful as a Pinkerton operative. I knew nearly every kind of case. Counterfeiting, blackmail, burglaries of all kinds. I had impersonated a fortune-teller to suss out a poisoner, a case that was not just memorable because of its novelty but because the nut juice Tim Bellamy offered me to darken my skin did not fade completely for an entire month. I assumed he’d stained me on purpose, but I didn’t complain, either to him or to Pinkerton. I knew that appearances were everything. If I appeared to be a difficult employee, even if I had every reason, I’d lose the ground I’d gained with the boss. And Pinkerton had come to rely on me more and more. Sometimes, he even seemed friendly.
It was only unfortunate that my least favorite kind of case was also the kind Pinkerton found me most essential in solving: the murders.
The Harrington case began with a tapping on my window, just after four o’clock in the morning.
Groggy with sleep, all uncertain, I heard the noise. Was it even there? Was it part of a dream? I opened my eyes to see.
As soon as I knew for sure that the sound was real, and the gentle tapping became a louder series of knocks, I immediately slid across the bed and pulled my Deringer from the nightstand. I thumbed the hammer, stood, and wrapped my robe more tightly around my body as I walked toward the window. I drew aside the curtain with one fingertip, just the narrowest sliver, and looked out. I could not have been more surprised at what I saw.
Tim Bellamy stood under my window, hunched against the nighttime chill and darkness, staring up expectantly with his cold, blue gaze.
After a few long moments, he said in a normal speaking voice, “Let me in, please, Mrs. Warne. I don’t think either of us likes me standing here.”
I replaced my gun in the drawer and hastened into the hallway, unlocking the front door of the building and holding it open to admit him. He immediately handed me something and stood silently with his heels together on the carpet, waiting, like a messenger boy.
I opened the paper note, hastily folded and not quite square, no envelope. It read:
136 Sedgwick. Fatal case. Come right away. AP.
“He was going to send a messenger,” said Bellamy quietly. “I offered to come instead. I didn’t think you should go alone this time of night.”
It wasn’t the time to argue. I could defend myself against his chivalry some other day. I turned back toward my room and said, “Come on.”
“Mrs. Warne, I don’t think—”
“The hallway’s worse than outside. Someone will come along. Think of my reputation.”
That got him moving. He stood in my room like a statue, facing the closed door, while I dressed hastily. I would have suspected any other man of peeking over his shoulder while I was en déshabillé, but I doubted our white knight would lower himself to something so base. Had the circumstances been otherwise, I would have needled him about it to amuse myself, but had the circumstances been otherwise, he never would have been standing there.
After that, the only question was whether or not to take my gun. But if Pinkerton hadn’t suggested it, I likely wouldn’t need it. It sounded like the violence was in the past tense. I slid a jackknife into my boot just in case.