Chapter 21 #2
“We don’t use them yet, for lack of license, though I’ve seen schematics. But this is my mold: the Heracles Strongneck.”
“There were dozens more of the same where I found it. Identical.”
“A machine…” Chary trailed off. “I don’t know where he would’ve gotten access to one.”
“Trade secrets,” Laurie said, sudden and revelatory. “August stole from you. Stole from you and handed the mold to his lover. Didn’t he?”
He had. “With my blessing,” Chary said. “At the time, it was a failed design.”
He clutched the jar. This was not. Chary would normally have felt proud, but now it was all for naught. What worth could it have for him or August after Laurie delivered it straight to Raberding?
“With your blessing?” Laurie asked.
Well, mostly, Chary thought.
Laurie, as usual, seemed to read the truth from air. “Ah. A blessing after the fact, maybe?” he said gently. “For a signal-flare kind of theft?”
Yes. A signal flare of the desperate but still prideful.
A man who had learned by force to take care of himself, who rejected rescue, but yet had needed help.
August had never been interested seriously in the business of glassworks, had insisted Tjofabier Raberding wanted nothing from him but his own self.
The theft had been like a scream. August making the best of it once more.
This, not seduction or charm, was why Lawrence Tulley was so good at his job. Why did he have to be a traitor?
“Raberding must want everything,” Chary whispered. “The whole tapestry, until there is nothing left. Of either of us.” He looked up. “How much did he pay you? I’ll pay you more. Whatever it takes.”
Laurie cursed. “No, you won’t, ’cause nobody’s paying me, goddammit, much less him. Something like this, I’m not gonna settle for anything less than the Bayeux. But nobody’s paying me to pull threads on it, for darn sure. That’s exactly contrary to what I want. You understand?”
“I am… not sure I do.”
“The truth is the most important thing. I’m Lawrence Tulley. I don’t write hit pieces, and I don’t write bias. Certainly not for the benefit of one capitalist over another; c’mon. Why would I suddenly take Raberding’s money to do both?”
“Money motivates everyone.”
Laurie shook his head. “No. No. That’s a fallacy.
Rich men like Raberding believe it because it’s what they know.
They know capital leads to an easier life.
Power, status.” He shrugged. “That’s not wrong.
It motivates most, not all. I’m not perfect, but I have what I need; I have enough.
I have enough that I can have other motivations beyond the daily grind, and that’s all I could’ve ever asked for.
That’s the whole goal, for everybody: enough.
Enough so everyone can help further an idealized society.
You know what I mean, Chary Wright. You don’t work fifty hours a week for the six dollars you probably don’t even receive. ”
“No,” Chary said quietly, flushing. “It’s parted out to the boys.”
Laurie gave him a look that seemed too approving to be sincere.
“Well, see? Your brother’s alive, and I’m glad for it, but workingmen have been unjustly arrested and murdered.
I want to know why. You know who’s looking real culpable right now?
” He pointed to the baize door. “That dangerous piece of shit. What does he want, possibly badly enough to kill for it?”
Chary bit his lip. It was plausible. Raberding did have a history of… violence, if not murder.
“He wants August,” he said. Laurie had the decency to not look victorious. “And Wright Glass. A monopoly on New York glass. I can’t tell which came first, but they’re indivisible now.”
Laurie nodded. “I thought so. Your brother, and his company, and his ideas. Power, status, capital. He wants enough of all of those things to live openly, to be untouchable. Enough to stick shut the mouths of police, of society. But he wants it for himself. Nobody else. Please believe me, Chary. I’d never work for a man like that. ”
Chary took a shaky breath. Give the man a chance. Mrs. Simon was the best of people, wasn’t she? Or was she as easily charmed as Chary had been?
“S-say I believe you. He didn’t hire you, and you didn’t tell him a thing; he just magically knows August is alive and precisely where he’s been—immediately after you yourself arrived. What then? Why is he here now?”
“God, you like an adverb,” Laurie said fondly.
“I don’t know how he knows; that’s true.
Maybe it’s partially my fault for poking around and asking questions, after all.
But I imagine he came here to flush him out once and for all back to New York.
” He nodded to the jar. “August and whatever he’s been doing meanwhile. He knows something.”
“I assumed he’d merely want to see him first thing. A chance to reconcile. Even I wasn’t sure August would refuse to see him until he did.” Thank goodness he did.
“Mm. Confirm this for me: your brother faked his death and disappeared from New York society to get out of whatever he’d had with Raberding. You helped him do it, because you love him. Yeah?”
Chary waited a pulse too long.
Laurie said softly, “Do I have it right? Because it had to have been pretty damn bad.”
God help him, but he believed that softness and care. He believed Laurie Tulley. He did trust him.
“August hasn’t spoken to me much”—at all—“about the extent, but I think… yes. Yes, it was.”
“Well, then. Raberding doesn’t want reconciliation. That’s two-sided. Voluntary. He wants August to have no option left but to come back to him. And now he’s going to throw everything he can at him to accomplish that.”
“What’s ‘everything’?” Chary echoed.
Laurie ticked off fingers. “Reporters, the police, the gangs, detectives, the societies against vice”—he ran out of right-hand fingers—“hell, Tammany Hall; I don’t know.
But you and I both know he’s got resources.
I’d bet he’s as Rockefellian as it gets, even with lovers: competition should crawl to a safe buyout in his waiting arms. If they refuse, squash them until they’re underground.
By the way, Chary, you’re the competition in this analogy.
Without you, August has no one but him.”
“Oh, Lord.” More theories. “You think he tried to have me killed? That was the impetus?”
“I think it’s reasonable to assume he might try. How’d he react to your face?”
“Without comment. He had no reaction at all. It would be impolite.” Laurie snorted. “He’s never liked me, anyway—”
“But he didn’t seem shocked.”
“He knew already; it’s a scandal. All those reporters—there are snippets in the Gazette, the Sun, the Herald, the World—and photographs—”
He was interrupted by the perpetual, rolling sound of a combustion engine; an automobile of some kind had pulled up to the carriage bay.
They both went to the kitchen window. Tjofabier Raberding took hat and coat and walking stick from Mrs. Leonard, and slid into the back of a covered, all-black horseless carriage.
“Good lord,” Chary said. “He’s leaving without saying goodbye. But he didn’t drive here, surely?”
“From Bangor, I’d bet. Left the auto in Berryfield so he didn’t look hasty, but he needs it now ’cause he’s in a hurry.” Laurie cursed. “Yeah, he flushed him, goddammit. The cop was right. August should’ve stayed.”
Cop? “Who?”
Laurie faced Chary. “We gotta get to Gotham as soon as possible. We have to find your brother before Raberding or his goons do.” He eyed the remainder of galette longingly for a moment before pushing through the baize door.
Chary followed, mystified. “How do we do that? Another automobile? Power of flight? I have neither. It’s a half-a-day carriage to Bangor. The next passenger train from Berryfield is at seven o’clock tonight.”
“Mrs. Leonard!” Laurie bellowed for the housekeeper, striding through the hall.
“There’s freight trains that pass by the Columbia station.
You know it? Columbia freight, by the barrens?
It’s where I got off in March. We’ll wagon there and jump on a car until we hit Bangor.
We can go back to your first-class box, and Raberding won’t have more than an hour on us when he hits Grand Central.
Might even beat him. Train’s faster than an auto. ”
“A freight train? Jump? Onto a boxcar?” Chary’s voice rose with every syllable. “How do you— People lose toes—and—and then some! I am injured already!”
Laurie murmured something to Mrs. Leonard, who had just appeared, accompanied by Mikhail, the left-behind chauffeur. He had his cap in his hands.
“I’ve done it before,” Laurie said to Chary, as Mrs. Leonard flew away down the hall. (It seemed all of the staff were firmly Team Laurie.) “My first time was on the Erie to Gotham as a boy. It’s not so bad. You’ve got the longest legs I’ve ever seen. You could step on if you wanted.”
Chary doubted that in the extreme. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“I can drive youse in the old carriage,” Mikhail said sheepishly. As though it were his fault the Caddy had been stolen by its owner.
“Thank you, Mikhail.” To Laurie: “New York’s such a big city—surely, August won’t be found within the twelve hours’ difference.”
“Do you know what he’ll do? Where he’ll go?”
Chary flushed. After a day-long train ride, after eight months living in mid-south-nowhere Maine as a dead man, in hiding from his socialite ex-lover? Yes. He had a pretty good idea where August would go.
“Yeah,” Laurie said. “You can bet Raberding knows, too.”
Mrs. Leonard returned, a knapsack in her arms, which she handed to Laurie. “Thanks, Mrs. Leonard.” He turned back to Chary. “It’s a half a day to Bangor. Eight hours ’til the next departure out of Berryfield. But if we hop the next freight that I know will be there… an hour, maybe.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“It’s up to you, Chary. If I get you to New York in time,” he said softly, “and I can—I bet we can catch August before Raberding does.”
“How can you possibly know that? I have an idea what he might do on arrival but not more than that. There are several options.”