Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

“Easy now, Jane!”

“I’d bite that man, myself! It’s ridiculous to put such a man in the care of the mentally diseased. Why not hire some good people in pathological conditions of the mind.”

“Like you?”

“Yes, like me!” Jane let out a gasp. “I cannot believe you released that woman back onto the streets.”

“She was put on a train bound for family we found in Iowa.”

“Really?” Jane watched his eyes and body for any sign of chicanery, unhappy that they had arrived at this juncture. “Please tell me you didn’t turn her over to Kohler and Chapman, Christian.”

“I did nothing of the kind. I opted out of the whole entire business days ago. Afraid I still have a conscience.”

She saw no reason to doubt him. “You’re the better man for it, dear Christian.”

“Yes, really very little call for that sort of thing nowadays, however…”

Jane decided there was no help for it. She went home with a splitting headache to be with Gabby and to find some corner of peace. Once home, Gabby found her agitated, and she became worried in turn, making her mother undress and go to bed to fend off any worse headache.

The following morning

“Hold on! Are you telling me that Christian just let her go?” asked Alastair at the kitchen table where this morning he’d joined Jane and Gabby for breakfast. “I tell you, the woman is absolutely daft and belongs in a place where she can do no harm either to herself or others.”

“Apparently, she does only that-harm others,” countered Jane. “Besides, you didn’t charge her with any crime,” countered Jane. As Christian wasn’t here to defend himself, Jane took his side.

“She sounds perfectly dreadful,” added Gabby, pouring more coffee into each cup.

Alastair’s expression changed from one of surprise at Christian’s letting the woman walk to one of shock, horror even. “My God, he’s turned her over to Kohler, who has in turn-”

“Whatever do you mean?” asked Jane, confused. “No, no, you see Christian assured me that he’d have no part in this business between Nathan Kohler and Chapman, Alastair.”

“So he’s told you, and you believe him?”

“I do.”

“She’s been put on a train according to records. Bound for Iowa.”

“Not simply turned back out on the streets, as I was told by Shanks and Gwinn when I went asking?”

“No, nor given over to Chief Kohler, Alastair.”

“Is that what you fear?” asked Gabby.

Alastair rushed from the room as best he could with his stiff leg and cane, fighting to exit the door, the ladies on his heels. He was stopped when Jane shouted for him to explain.

“I must go and go now!” he replied, tearing the door from her hand and clamoring out onto the porch in the morning sunlight. He immediately shouted for a passing cab with a frightened couple inside as this bear of a man descended on their carriage. The man inside shouted for the driver to pull off and do it immediately even as Alastair waved down the driver. “Halt in the name of the law!”

The hansom coach stopped, the two horses lifting on hindlegs, fearful. As Ransom ordered everyone out, saying the cab was commandeered in the name of the Chicago Police Department, Jane shouted, “I am going with you, Alastair!”

“This will not be pleasant, Jane,” he firmly said, shaking his head.

“Since when did you begin treating me as if I am some shrinking violet?”

“I haven’t time to argue with her, Gabby! You do it!” he was half in the cab, half out on the running board when he shouted to the driver, “The Chapman estate north of the city, my good man, and make haste!”

“Haste, sir?”

“All due haste, yes! Time is of the essence!”

The smile on the face of the horseman presaged his pleasure at opening up his team of horses from here to Evanston, Illinois.

Jane leapt in after Ransom and from the window, she shouted to Gabby, “Don’t forget the roast I put in the oven, dear!”

Gabby stared after the dust cloud crafted of debris as the hansom lifted a whirlwind in its wake, the pair of horses pulling it thundering down the dust-laden street for the northern farms region where the wealthy Chapman family lived.

Inside the cab, Jane clung to Alastair where he sat braced with his cane as the coach squealed, its shocks bouncing, wheels revolving below them at an alarming rate, whip snapping, horses crying out in hysteria and bolting along, controlled only by the skill of the hackman.

Alastair pulled Jane Francis close to him and held her firmly against the mad rocking carriage interior.

“You could have at least warned me!” she shouted over the roar, deafening inside the cab, of frenetic hooves over stone. “My God, Alastair! Even on the Ferris wheel at the fair they’re smart enough to give you a bar to hold on to.”

“There wasn’t time and is no time now, Jane! Christ, I should’ve seen this coming! Fool! But I know where they’ve taken Mary Grace, and it is not to a good end!”

“What’re you saying?”

“Chapman will kill her if she does not talk.”

“Chapman? Kill? Talk?”

“Chapman will gouge it out of her one way or another who Leather Apron “could be,” and she will confess after a little pain, and for all I know, they’ve cornered a suspect and have drawn and quartered him by now.”

“Who are they ?”

“Chapman, Kohler, Fenger.”

“Fenger? No! He would not be party to such-”

“Barbarity?”

“Yes, barbarity.”

“Perhaps he has no idea the extent to which men like Kohler and Chapman will go to get what they want out of a suspect or a material witness.”

“I’ve heard that you’ve interrogated suspects into the grave.”

This momentarily silenced him. “Not you, too, and not now.”

“Will you then please tell me what you know of this conspiracy between Christian and the other two. The details?” She wanted to hear it from him.

“If you’ve the stomach for it.”

“I have.”

He told her the whole sordid tale of how Kohler and Christian had cornered him in Nathan’s office with Chapman, and how much money was involved, and how Christian saw it as his last chance to end his debts and his talk of a new wing on the hospital. The story fit with what Christian had relayed earlier.

“When he asked for my help, Christian didn’t tell me the entire truth, and together, we led them to Bloody Mary, didn’t we?”

“None of this is your fault, Jane. Truth be told, Christian is, while shrewd in his field, naive about men.”

“Naive like me? Naive in what way?”

“In how men of power operate. Jane, I once witnessed Nathan Kohler burn a man alive while the poor devil was strapped to a chair.”

“I’ve heard the same story told of you, Alastair.”

“Which story is the more comfortable fit? I was there. I couldn’t stop it, but I didn’t throw the match. Nathan did.”

“Jane shivered at these revelations. All well and true, I’m sure of the other two, but I can’t believe it of Christian.”

“He rammed his shiny new wolf’s-head cane into the top of the cab, beating out a code to the driver that said, “Faster, faster, faster!” He then looked into her eyes.

She returned his gaze as much as possible for one who was so bounced about. “What?” she asked.

“I fear we may be too late.”

The carriage now jostled and quaked over a rough, yet-to-be unpaved road. “Why? Why risk their reputations, their careers?”

“Money is a great motivator, Jane, and who knows that better than Dr. Tewes?”

She glared at him but said, “It’s hardly the same.”

“Do you think for a moment Christian and Nathan haven’t rationalized their crimes down to misdemeanors as well?”