The Angel Of Darkness

CHAPTER 39

I did my damndest not to interrupt the scene, knowing that what was happening was crucial; but the sogginess of the streambank below me prevented the attempt. Standing there holding my breath, I began to feel my foot sinking into a deep patch of grassy mud. Letting out a little holler, I yanked my leg up, a move what produced a loud and slightly humorous sound. The pair of these noises caused the Doctor and Clara to spin round quickly and get to their feet. The little girl rushed to hide behind the Doctor’s leg, though when she saw it was only me-and then that the bottom of my leg was covered in a thick sludge-she began to laugh some, in that hoarse little way of hers. The Doctor smiled, too; as for me, I could feel my own face going red.

“Sorry,” I said, shaking chunks of clay and mud off my boot. “I didn’t mean to barge in, but-” I just looked down at my foot, and then the two of them laughed even harder.

“Well, Clara,” the Doctor said, “I think that someone’s been trying to sneak up on us. What do you think?” The girl’s laugh shrank to a smile as she looked at me; then she reached her head up, wanting to whisper into the Doctor’s ear. He bent down to listen, then laughed again. “No, he certainly is not very good at it!” Giving me a meaningful look what said if my business wasn’t important I’d best beat it, the Doctor went on, “And so, Stevie, what brings you?”

I tried to keep my voice casual, not knowing just what might upset Clara. “It’s Mr. Picton, sir. He says maybe it’s time to call it a day.” I let my tone get a little more pointed. “Seems he’s had a telegram-from Mr. Moore.”

The Doctor’s eyes did a little dance, but he kept his emotions under control. “I see.” He glanced down at Clara, then back at me. “All right. I’ll meet you at the house. Five minutes.”

I nodded and departed, the Doctor turning to have a serious heart-to-heart with his young patient as I went.

By the time I got back to the house, the mud on my foot and leg had started to dry, but it was still sufficiently stupid-looking for El Niño to get a big damned howl out of it. He kept going as I removed my boot and tried to get myself cleaned up, but when the Doctor and Clara appeared he snapped to attention and became all respectful business. The girl found the aborigine a strange sight, but not, it seemed, a threatening one; and she whispered a few remarks into the Doctor’s ear again once she’d fully sized him up. The Doctor smiled and then put a hand on Clara’s head, telling her that El Niño’s size was normal for people like him.

“He comes from the other side of the world,” the Doctor explained. “There are many unusual things there. You might see them someday, if you like.” He then crouched down to look her in the eye. “I’ll be back in the morning to take you to the court house, Clara. And I’ll stay in the room there with you, just as I promised. Only Mr. Picton will ask you any questions-so you see, there’s really nothing to be afraid of. It will help-the truth will help everyone.”

Clara nodded, trying hard to believe the Doctor’s words as Josiah Weston came over to put an arm around her. Obviously very much aware that we were on the eve of Clara’s first big test, Mr. Weston shook the Doctor’s hand with what seemed like confidence; but at the same time I thought I could see a bit of lingering doubt in his eyes about whether they were doing the right thing. But as the Doctor turned to board his hired gig, Clara rushed over and threw herself around the Doctor’s leg, the way I’d seen many kids at the Institute do; and I think that convinced Mr. Weston more than any words could have that they had truly started down the only path what would ever lead to any kind of real peace for her.

As we rolled back along the Westons’ drive, I pulled over to one side to let the Doctor bring the gig up beside us, and then gave him a quick version of the situation in town, or what little I knew about it. As to what Mr. Picton had meant by the Doctor’s business at the Westons’ being “all taken care of,” it seemed that Clara had actually started talking that morning, and that the Doctor had dispatched Peter Weston to town with the news immediately, so that Mr. Picton would know that he could count on having the last weapon in his arsenal at the ready when he went before the grand jury. After telling me this, the Doctor slowed the gig, got behind our wagon again, and then put his mind to the task of keeping up with me: the rest of our ride back was as fast and rough as the trip out’d been. When we reached the court house, the Morgan stallion finally made it clear through a series of heavy sighs that he’d done all the running he was going to that day; and I told El Niño, as he led the two horses and rigs back to the livery stable, to make sure that Mr. Wooley gave the remarkable animal an especially good meal and brushing down for his efforts.

The sight of Mr. Picton’s surrey outside the court house clued the Doctor and me in to the fact that Miss Howard had beaten us back with her charges, and the thought that the three of them might be upstairs coercing whatever mysterious news had arrived from New York out of Mr. Picton before our arrival caused us to charge into the court house and toward the marble steps at high speed. The big guard by the door, the one Mr. Picton had called Henry, called out to us resentfully, saying that we couldn’t just go tearing around the place like we owned it, that there were rules what had to be followed; but we paid him no mind. Observing similarly few formalities when we reached Mr. Picton’s offices, we just barged on in, to find the others waiting.

“At last!” Mr. Picton said, smoking and gnawing on his pipe like one of the more nerve-racked types I’d occasionally seen during the Doctor’s visits to Bellevue Hospital’s Insane Pavilion in New York. “I was afraid that if you didn’t arrive soon these three were going to physically assault me and take the telegram! But fair is fair, that’s what I told them-the Doctor and Stevie deserve to hear the news at the same time as everyone else!”

“Please,” the Doctor said breathlessly, ignoring Mr. Picton’s kindly consideration, “go ahead…”

“The wire arrived at just past six,” Mr. Picton said, setting his pipe aside for the moment and adjusting himself nervously in his chair. “And it’s my hope that together we can make more sense of it than I’ve been able to do alone. I’ll just read it to you-” He unfolded the thing with a loud flutter, then cleared his smoky throat and proceeded:

“MR. RUPERT PICTON, BALLSTON SPA COURT HOUSE, BALLSTON SPA. URGENT. L.H. DECLINES RIGHT TO APPEAR BEFORE G. JURY, REFERS STATE TO HER AFFIDAVIT AT TIME OF CRIME. NOTHING MORE TO ADD. LOCATED REV. PARKER YESTERDAY. ALIVE, THOUGH NOT UNDAMAGED. WILL TESTIFY IF GUARANTEED PROTECTION. MICAH HUNTER DIED YESTERDAY OF MORPHINE OVERDOSE. CORONER SAYS SELF-INFLICTED, BUT CAT IS NOW OUT OF BAG. TWO LOCAL COPS ACCOMPANIED CORONER, L.H. KNOWS THERE IS NO OFFICIAL POLICE INVESTIGATION INTO HER ACTIVITIES. DUSTERS NOW TOO DANGEROUS FOR US TO REMAIN ON WATCH. ALMOST KILLED TAILING HER AS SHE MOVED A.L. TO THEIR PLACE. TRYING TO ARRANGE FOR EYES ON THE INSIDE. VANDERBILT BACK IN TOWN. L.H. WENT TO HIM IN FULL MOURNING. V. HAS ENGAGED CHICAGO LAWYER TO ASSIST IN HER DEFENSE. MARCUS DEPARTED LAST NIGHT TO FIND OUT WHO MAN IS. I RETURN BY NEXT AVAILABLE TRAIN. WOULD APPRECIATE TRANSPORT AND LARGE WHISKEY AT STATION. MOORE.

“And that, my friends,” Mr. Picton said, taking his pipe back up, “is the sum of things. I’ve checked the timetables-John should be arriving at about eleven, though of course there’ll be delays. Which gives us several hours in which to figure out just what he’s talking about.” Mr. Picton waved the telegram above his head. “Some of it’s obvious, of course, and none too surprising-I didn’t honestly expect Libby to show up for the grand jury proceedings, for instance. But there are other elements that are quite confusing.”

The Doctor got up and reached toward the telegram. “May I?”

“Oh, yes, of course, Doctor,” Mr. Picton answered, handing the thing over. “You’ve known John far longer than I have, after all, so perhaps you’ll do better with some of his vague references-starting with the statement that Reverend Parker is ‘alive but not undamaged.’ ”

“Either Moore was simply demonstrating his usual clarity of language,” the Doctor answered in what you might call a dry tone of voice, scanning the piece of paper, “or he didn’t want to take the chance that anyone might get hold of a copy of the message. Vanderbilt’s reappearance, looked at in such a light, is somewhat sinister.”

“Yes,” Lucius agreed. “There’s not a lot his people wouldn’t be able to find out, if they had a mind to.”

“I’d be willing to bet,” Miss Howard said, “that the business about Parker means that Libby did sic the Dusters on him at some point. If John and Marcus could find him, she must’ve been able to also. And God knows what shape he ended up in.”

Cyrus shook his head. “Bad enough to make his life a genuine misery, I expect, miss,” he said quietly. “Maybe bad enough to make him wish he was dead. It might be that she’d take more satisfaction from that than from actually having him killed.”

Miss Howard gave Cyrus a grim look what indicated she agreed with him; the Doctor, too, nodded. “Yes,” he said, still studying the telegram, “but a more permanent solution was apparently necessary for Micah Hunter. That, too, is understandable. He probably never knew anything about what happened up here before he married Libby-but when Marcus brought the news about the grand jury, Hunter doubtless began to suspect the truth. And it wouldn’t have been much work, even for his drug-ridden brain, to draw the obvious inferences about the ill-fated children his wife had been ‘attending to’ in New York.”

Mr. Picton cocked his head, with something that almost looked like respect in his face. “Killing him’s a clever tactic for the trial, too. Libby’ll now arrive in the clothing of a recent widow who spent years nursing a Civil War veteran.” His look of strange admiration suddenly turned into a wince. “My God, what a depressing thought. Judges, juries, and the public are prone enough to side with a woman during a trial-but the grieving widow of a Union soldier… nothing like a black dress and the flag to bring out sympathy. But tell me, Doctor-what does Moore mean when he says he’s ‘trying to arrange for eyes on the inside’?”

“It relates to yet another clever move on our antagonist’s part, I’m afraid,” the Doctor replied. “I had hoped that, if summoned to Ballston Spa, she would arrange for some temporary caretaker to look after Ana in her house.”

“And why would that have helped our cause?” Mr. Picton asked.

“It wouldn’t,” the Doctor answered. “Not in terms of the trial, at any rate. But in the event that we fail, and she’s acquitted-”

“Then she’d have to get rid of that caretaker on returning to New York,” Lucius finished for him with a nod, grabbing hold of the idea. “And with any luck, we could’ve been there to catch her in the act and prevent it.”

“Or if we failed in that attempt, we would at least have had-and I do not mean to sound excessively callous, here-another murder which we might have attempted to lay at her door,” the Doctor said. “Now, however, knowing that the police are not in fact investigating her, she can be far bolder-Moore says that they actually saw her transferring the child to the Dusters’ headquarters, a place the police do not frequent without the strongest of motivations.” Pausing, the Doctor focused his eyes more sharply on the telegram. “I’d say that John is endeavoring to find someone within, or at least close to, the Dusters who will be willing to keep watch over Ana-for if we should succeed in convicting Libby, the child’s fate will be sealed unless we have inside help.”

“But-who could he possibly contact?” Lucius said. “I mean, even approaching anybody who’s known to frequent that place would get him a broken skull.”

At that point I became aware of a pair of eyes fixing on mine, and looked over to see Cyrus staring at me. “Not necessarily,” he said gently; and as he did, my own heart sank with the realization of what-or who-he was talking about.

“What do you mean, Cyrus?” Miss Howard asked. “Who could he possibly-” Following Cyrus’s gaze and looking at me, Miss Howard suddenly caught on. The Doctor and Lucius also glanced my way, knowingly and uncomfortably.

All of this attention caused me to start shifting my feet. “But-” I said quietly. “But-she’s gone.” My heart beating faster by the second, I soon found it impossible to keep my voice down. “She’s gone!She went to California-”

“We don’t know that, Stevie,” the Doctor said evenly. “And there doesn’t seem to be anyone else that Moore could possibly be referring to.”

I’d started to shake my head even before he’d finished talking. “No,” I said, in an effort to convince myself, as much as anyone else. “She left, she’s gone!” But then I remembered the glimpse of Ding Dong I’d caught on the Twenty-second Street pier before our departure from the city, and my voice died away as I realized that my argument wasn’t worth the air it took to voice it.

“I’m afraid I’m a bit behind, here,” Mr. Picton said, puffing on his pipe and seeming to sense that the moment was a tricky one. “It may, of course, be none of my business, but-who are you all talking about?”

The Doctor-once he saw that, though I was still upset, I was starting to get myself under some kind of control-turned to Mr. Picton. “It is the friend of Stevie’s of whom you’ve heard us speak-Miss Devlin. We had thought that she’d left the city for California.” He glanced my way once more. “It would appear that we were mistaken.”

“But that’s splendid!” Mr. Picton’s warm, loud words threw me and everybody else in the room off kilter for a second; I looked up to give him a very puzzled stare. “Well, I mean,” he went on, with warmhearted sincerity, “the girl’s been a great help with the case so far, Stevie. If she’s still in New York, what better person to continue to ask for assistance?”

The thought, one what none of us who actually knew Kat would have come up with, was strangely comforting, and I found that it had the effect of calming the pounding in my head and my chest, to the extent that I could even nod a bit.

“That’s true, Stevie,” Miss Howard said, in her most encouraging tone. “We don’t have any reason to believe that Kat won’t do what’s right. She has so far, after all. Whatever her flashes of temper.”

Even Cyrus, who knew best of all of them how open to question Kat’s participation would probably be, tried to be positive about the notion: “They’ve got a point, Stevie-she’s a tough girl, and Lord knows she’s unpredictable. But she’s done right by us at every turn.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I guess that’s so…” But I wasn’t going to buy into the thing fully until I saw a look of certainty in the Doctor’s face.

I turned-but the look wasn’t there. “We have to hope, Stevie,” he said, one of his eyebrows arched. He’d never lied to me in the past, and I think he knew I wouldn’t’ve wanted him to start at that point. “It’s all we can do. But it won’t be blind hope-that much, at least, is the truth. She has truly been a help to us in this business.”

I just nodded again, swallowing hard and ready to move on to some other subject, being as I wouldn’t be able to begin to come to real terms with the question of Kat ’til later, when I could have a few smokes on my own.

Thankfully, the Doctor moved everyone’s attention on to other matters by going back to the telegram. “The final question, then-and I fear the most perplexing-is who the devil this ‘Chicago lawyer’ Moore mentions may be.”

“Perplexing, indeed!” Mr. Picton said, standing up and heading over to his window. He glanced out it and started to tug at the bristly ginger hair on his head so hard I thought the stuff might start coming out in clumps. “Chicago… why in God’s name Chicago? New York has the best criminal trial attorneys in the country-and with Vanderbilt behind her Libby could have any one of them!”

“Maybe Vanderbilt’s got some special contact in Chicago,” Lucius said. “He must have some reason for going that far afield for help. After all, he’s no fool.”

“No,” Mr. Picton agreed, kicking at a pile of papers on the floor. “But he is a railroad man. The only people he’d have any reason to be well acquainted with in Chicago would be corporation lawyers. I can’t see where one of them would-”

At that moment we all turned at the sound of a knock on the outer office door. It was quickly followed by the voice of the guard from downstairs: “Mr. Picton? Mr. Picton, sir?”

“It’s all right, Henry!” Mr. Picton shouted. “Come in!”

The big guard opened the outer door slowly, then cautiously made his way inside, slouching over slightly in what looked to me like some kind of automatic deference at being in one of the offices. He was holding an envelope.

“This just came for you, sir,” he said, handing the item over as Mr. Picton crossed the room to receive it. “From the Western Union office. I told ’em to bill the D.A.’s account.”

“Well-that was quick thinking, Henry,” Mr. Picton said, as he started to open the envelope. The guard frowned, not knowing whether Mr. Picton was serious or mocking him. But the shorter man’s next comment made his attitude pretty clear: “Do you know everyone, Henry?” he said, looking up into the guard’s pasty, small-eyed face and then indicating the rest of us. “Or shall I make introductions?”

The man scowled down at Mr. Picton. “No, sir,” he said glumly. Then he turned the dumb, injured look on the rest of us. “I guess I know ’em all right, sir.”

“Well, then,” Mr. Picton said, “if you’re waiting for a tip, I can only remind you that’s it’s against county policy. Good evening, Henry.”

Not knowing how to respond to that, the guard simply nodded and then lumbered moodily back out the door.

“Idiot,” Mr. Picton mumbled once he’d gone. “To think that someone with a mind might actually make use of all the food and oxygen it takes to keep that sort of-” He stopped as he got the envelope open. “Well! News from Marcus.” Scanning the thing quickly, Mr. Picton shrugged and then handed it to the Doctor, crossing back to his desk. “Though precious little! He seems to have learned the name of the lawyer Vanderbilt’s engaged. He’s trying to assemble a case record on the man, and talk to some people who have dealt with him. There’s a possibility that he can get an interview with the fellow himself, too.”

“All that could be helpful,” Lucius commented with a shrug.

“What’s his name, Rupert?” Miss Howard asked. “Do you recognize it?”

Mr. Picton was gazing out his window, pulling at his hair again. “Hmm? Oh! Darrow. Clarence Darrow. I can’t quite place it-but there is something…”

“I’ve no knowledge of him, certainly,” the Doctor said simply, dropping the telegram onto the desk.

Mr. Picton kept struggling, then threw up his hands. “Nor, it appears, do I,” he said, his face twisting unhappily. Then it straightened out. “Or do I? There was something-wait a minute!” Bolting across the room, he gathered a stack of law journals what were piled on the floor up into his arms, then threw them onto his desk. “Somewhere, there’s something …” Going through the journals in his usual style-which meant hurling them around the room so that the rest of us had to occasionally duck to keep from taking one of them in the mouth-Mr. Picton eventually grabbed the particular number he’d been looking for. “Ah-ha!” he said, collapsing into his chair. “Yes, here it is! A piece that mentions Clarence Darrow-who is, in fact, on the payroll of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, though it’s only a part-time retainer. But he used to be their corporation counsel, and that’s no doubt where Vanderbilt first heard of him.”

“But I still don’t understand,” the Doctor said. “Why hire a corporate attorney for a criminal case?”

“Well,” Mr. Picton answered, holding up a finger, “there are some interesting details that may provide an answer. You remember the Pullman strike, back in ’94?” There were general mumblings in the affirmative, as we all thought back to the infamous time when the American Railway Union had struck against the Pullman Car Company in Chicago. The battles what’d taken place during the action had been so infamous and so bloody that even I’d heard them mentioned, among those labor-minded enthusiasts what made up the most loudmouthed portion of the population in my old neighborhood. “Well, despite the fact that he was still a consulting attorney for the Chicago and Northwestern, Clarence Darrow agreed to represent Eugene Debs and several other officers of the railway workers’ union. It wasn’t a criminal trial-Debs and the others were only charged with inciting the workers to strike, which is technically an antitrust matter. But Darrow managed to argue the thing all the way to the Supreme Court, just the same.” Mr. Picton flipped a few more pages of the journal, growing silent.

“And?” Miss Howard asked.

“And, he lost, of course,” Mr. Picton answered. “But it was quite a good fight. And, more importantly, while Debs and the others were serving several months in jail for the civil violations, they were indicted on a more serious criminal charge: attempting to obstruct the mails by way of the railway strike. Darrow took the case again, and won by default-the government eventually dropped the charges. So while he lost the less serious civil case, Darrow won the more important criminal one.”

“Which doesn’t tell us,” Lucius said, “why Mr. Vanderbilt thinks that a man who splits his time between working for railroad corporations and workers’ unions-a combination that strikes me as awfully odd, by the way-is the ideal candidate to come in on a murder case.”

“No,” Mr. Picton answered, his mood brightening. “No, it doesn’t. But I’ll tell you, Detective-I’m relieved! Whatever Darrow’s talents may be, Vanderbilt could, as I say, have brought some very big guns up from New York, once he chose to get involved.”

“Perhaps that’s the point,” the Doctor said. “Perhaps Mr. Vanderbilt senses that there may be something untoward about this case, and doesn’t want his name connected to it in any New York circles.”

Mr. Picton considered that, then nodded. “I suspect you’re right, Doctor-I suspect you’re absolutely right! Doubtless Marcus can confirm the theory for us when he gets back. But for now”-Mr. Picton clamped his pipe between his teeth and put his hands on his hips-“I vote that we go home and have ourselves a pleasant dinner. Things are starting to look up, I daresay!”

Feeling much relieved by this turn of events, as well as by Mr. Picton’s confidence, we all started to head for the office door, hungry and more than ready to take his advice regarding a relaxing evening at home. True, we had the grand jury to wrangle with in the morning; but with Clara Hatch now talking, there seemed little reason to think that we wouldn’t proceed easily past that obstacle to the criminal trial what lay beyond, where, we happily assured ourselves, we’d be faced by a lawyer inexperienced in such cases, who wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight against two men as seasoned in these sorts of contests as the Doctor and Mr. Picton.

It was one of the worst errors of judgment we made during the entire case.