“Now this is a surprise,” he said. “Please, come in.”
I did, and I must have looked confused, so he said, “Joan is upstairs with the children. Glad to see you. Tell me, what brings you out this way?”
After that greeting, I was more than sad to tell him. Framed by the brocades and chintzes of a private home, he looked older, gray and white strands having taken root throughout his hair, even his beard. Seeing him here reminded me that he was just a man, a human like any of the rest of us, and not an unearthly hero who could solve all the world’s troubles with a sweep of his arm. It also reminded me how much I owed him. He could have dismissed me after the ring went missing, and he hadn’t. How different things would have been if he’d thought I was lying. Then he’d trusted me with the Ladies’ Bureau. As wrong as things had gone today, I hoped this failure didn’t cause him to reconsider. From upstairs, a little girl squealed, whether in delight or fear, I couldn’t tell.
We stood just inside the doorway as I told Pinkerton the story of Mortenson and Hattie’s failure to snare the counterfeiters, sketching it in broad strokes as briefly as I could. He looked alarmed at first, then concerned, then resolute.
“But he seems fine?”
“As fine as anyone can be with a hole blasted in his thigh.”
“Good to know Dilloway has surgical skills in the crunch.”
“I’m not sure that’s the key lesson I’d take.”
He said, his voice tense, “Warne, I’m trying my best to find anything positive at all in this.”
“Understood. Then yes. I was pretty impressed with his stitching.”
“And Hattie?”
“It wasn’t her fault.”
“You’re sure.”
“That’s what she says, and I believe her. Mortenson was drunk, and he let his emotions get the better of him. I hope your punishment for him will be severe.”
“I suspect you’ll be very happy with it,” he said grimly.
He put on his hat, and we both went out into the street. I walked half a block with him toward the office, my feet moving automatically. He stopped.
“Warne,” he said, “go home. Hasn’t your day been long enough?”
“It has,” I agreed.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
So it wasn’t until the next morning that I found out what had happened.
When I walked into the outer office, the misadventures of the day before still hung heavy in the air: the wet-iron smell of blood, chairs scattered haphazardly, the empty flask discarded. I also noticed a gash on the side of Pinkerton’s desk—had I missed it? Had it always been there? Or had it happened during the makeshift surgery? It seemed unlikely, but the scene had been such a circus, I was sure I’d missed much.
Almost before I could turn my mind to other possibilities, DeForest was at my side with the gossip. “Did you hear?”
I was in no mood for guessing games. “I’ve heard a great many things in my life, Graham. Be specific.”
“About Mortenson.”
“I was here for it.”
“You were?”
“I saw Dilloway sew him up.”
“Not that, although you need to tell me the details in a minute. I mean his dismissal.”
“Pinkerton dismissed him?” So that was the punishment. Harsh, but I couldn’t argue with it. An operative who stepped in thoughtlessly without regard for the case could be very dangerous, to anyone present and to the whole company. Mortenson’s failure was unacceptable. Bellamy had a foolish, dogged chivalry to him, I knew, but he’d never let it jeopardize an operation.
“With half a dozen other agents standing witness. He answered it by pulling a knife and trying to jump the old man.”
“Good God! Then what?”
“Pinkerton disarmed him, knocked him down, and called the police to haul him off for assault. Dilloway and Bellamy helped restrain him. He can do a lot of things, but escaping handcuffs isn’t one.”
“I doubt he could put up much of a fight with that hole in his leg. Lost a lot of blood too.”
“You’d be surprised. I’ve seen men in a fury do things they shouldn’t have been able to do.”
“So count Pinkerton lucky. Did he seem surprised?”
“Angry, mostly.”
We reflected on that. I couldn’t cast stones, of course, knowing my own anger had spiraled out of control, and Mortenson wasn’t even my responsibility, only Hattie.
“So,” I said, “one less colleague for us.”
“And one more enemy.”
“One among so many. Will we even notice?” But I knew we would. Mortenson was a smart man, and he knew our ways. Should he put his mind to criminality, he would be a formidable foe.
The first few weeks after his departure, I found myself scanning crowds and peering around corners for him, but he was nowhere to be seen. I asked around the office to find out any news, and both Taylor and Waldorf reported having heard that he’d gone back to Kentucky. I breathed a little easier after that.
? ? ?
After Hattie’s baptism by blood and fire, I expected a cakewalk from Mrs. Borowski. Alas. Once her training was complete, I assigned her to three cases. A bank job, a domestic accused of stealing, and a grocery clerk skimming at the till.
She failed at all three. It didn’t take long to find the common thread.
She brought back tales of the accused bank robber’s hard-luck childhood, in painstaking detail, but nothing we could use to predict where his gang might strike next. In the domestic’s case, it happened that both women originally hailed from the same area of Poland, and all we could learn was the depth of the servant’s homesickness. The grocery clerk was more withholding, and Mrs. Borowski refused to push hard enough to get any information—so we had nothing at all. In short, she was too kind. In any other business, this would be an asset. As an operative, it was the worst of liabilities.
After the third failure, I knew pure honesty was what I owed her—and the only possible path to improvement.
“You’re a wonderful person,” I said.