Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

“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.