Chapter 28
CHARY
Despite the very early hour, the Caddy was there to greet them at the station, with Mikhail back in the driver’s seat instead of August, but when they came up the drive, Brasher wasn’t in the reception hall.
It meant Chary probably needed to hire another butler.
At least if he was planning to live there full-time.
What it meant for August, he wasn’t sure. But he’d summoned them, hadn’t he? Chary was late, but surely August was still there.
There was one foolproof way to tell: the hobby furnace in the cellar. August always put the furnace on to soak for him before he arrived.
Chary led Laurie down to the cellar hand-in-hand after they’d barely got their driving coats off. Despite his groaning about unexpected things, Laurie clearly relished them.
Weeks before, in showing Laurie the house and the cellar, he’d only pulled out the few almost-finished pieces he had annealing.
Sheets of cerulean blue for St. Michael’s stained glass.
Two panels of leadlight for his own greenhouse directly above.
A basket of glass eyes, brown and blue, requested from Dr. Reed, in borosilicate.
Least importantly, two new mold-blown styles of blueberry preserve jars he hadn’t yet tested, these plain old Wright-recipe soda-lime.
If Laurie had been interested in all of that seriously, Chary hadn’t seen. Maybe, he thought, Laurie hadn’t let him see one way or another.
Laurie was interested this morning. His half-shut eyes, lazily covetous, were stuck on the steel door. It was almost his look of carnal want. Chary wondered if he might like lots of things—specific things—gift-wrapped. Did he like magicians’ shows? Illusionists? Certainly, he liked disguises.
Probably not millionaires who’d lied about their childhood and their inheritance, though.
Chary shoved this firmly down, unlocked the steel cellar door, and called, “August?”
A grunt of surprise and clink of thrown-down wrench. His brother called up, “Down here, Chary!”
Stairs were difficult to manage with legs turned limp with relief, but he made it. Laurie, pending and warm and considerate behind him, made it easier.
The house’s brand-new cellar partition was the most indulgent expense of its renovation, simply because of what it held: a miniature, day-tank glass furnace.
Gas-fueled, steel exterior, insulated to the teeth, Chary had designed, built, and tested it himself in the glassworks warehouse basement, then moved it here, brick by brick.
There was even—and Chary was extremely proud of this modernism—a heat-recovery flue pipe which, in winter, could pass hot air beneath the glass-walled greenhouse above.
Being summer, the flue blew hot, crispy air straight up to the outside. In spite of this and the cool morning, the cellar became warmer the farther down the stairs they went. It meant August had indeed fired up Chary’s furnace.
Chary said, “I’m sorry I’m so delayed. I didn’t get your telegram until Friday afternoon, when I happened to go to the townhouse.”
August had made some changes to the cellar since Chary was last there. To the steel ceiling braces he’d welded a railing that split the cellar across its widest point; from that railing hung a long, black rubber curtain that blocked off half the space. What on earth?
August himself appeared from behind the curtain, seated on a wheeled stool. He gave Laurie a nod of greeting and waved off Chary’s concern. “I needed to set up anyway.”
Set up? “Set up what?”
August ignored him, smirking, wheeling closer; another brotherly kind of taunt, holding one’s toy far above his head.
“Hiram wouldn’t give me the address of your love nest. I figured it might take a couple days for you to get it.
” His smile broadened at Laurie’s snort.
“He got me back for answering his boss’s emergency wire. ”
“H’s eye-for-an-eye sense of justice is overdeveloped.” Laurie crossed his arms. “You had the surprising sense not to show up at Mulberry Street, though. Telegram or no telegram.”
“No, I didn’t. I ran. Are you kidding? Chary was arrested! Locked up!”
Understanding light came into Laurie’s eyes. “Hiram stopped you from coming into the police station.”
“Physically. Right down onto the wet pavement. He was right, though. Best to come at Tjo with force, and by surprise.”
Laurie laughed: an odd kind of approving snicker. “Annoying when H is right, isn’t it?”
August grinned back. “Very.”
The two men had endeared themselves to the other.
Chary did not understand precisely how, but had no time to be grateful for it; he was too overcome with curiosity.
“What is that curtain for?” he demanded.
And does it have to do with jam jars with no mark of hand-blowing?
“What’d you set up? What’s the meaning of this, August? ”
“It’s a working experiment. An invention. Enh, more an iteration.” He leaned back and peered up the stairs. “You shut the door?”
“Yes?” Chary looked to Laurie; he nodded.
“Good,” August said. “It’s not patented yet.”
“Hm,” Laurie said, before Chary could stomp like a child and demand, What isn’t patented? “You sure you want me here, Wright?”
“’S’nothing to me, anti-capitalist. You didn’t sell out Chary on first meeting him, you won’t now. Not even to subdue the advance of mechanization, I’d bet. You’re a goner and always have been.”
Mechanization? “August!”
“Trust me, I know the look.”
“Hmm.” Laurie didn’t deny it nor look discomfited; on the contrary. He gleamed with mischievous knowledge and gleeful revelation. “Trade secrets,” he murmured. “Raberding didn’t want you dead.”
Of course, this meant Chary felt very outside of the joke. He didn’t know. He could surmise, however. He wasn’t Lawrence Tulley, but it wasn’t hard. Consistently sealing jam jars, no pontil mark, no personal aptitude for hand-blowing—a rival of a jealous ex-lover, wanting a merger—
“You built an automatic jar machine,” Chary said. “Didn’t y-you?”
“Maaaybe.” August wheeled to the edge of the curtain and, with a flourish and one smooth shove backward, sent himself rolling across the cement floor. With him came the curtain, sliding open smoothly as if moved by rigging. It was all very dramatic, which suited him.
The revealed machine—because of course it was a machine, a bottlemaker—suited him more. It was a great, spindly thing, made of hinged black iron, hydraulics, hoses, hinges, gears.
“The bottle-spider,” August said proudly. “Semiautomatic.”
“My God.”
Chary hadn’t a mechanical mind; to him, it might as well have been a big tangle of iron string.
But it was impressive. After a moment of looking at it, circling, he thought he knew—vaguely—how it was supposed to function.
He’d seen other schematics, read descriptions of such machines, but never one in motion.
“How does it work?” he asked.
August wheeled to plug it in to the electrical. Chary watched as the thing stretched itself and spun, molds clacking emptily. He tried not to recoil. Spider seemed perfectly apt.
“There are four molds,” August said, “for every one blower they move beneath. Stand back.”
Laurie did so, hands in pockets. He’d probably seen many machine minders mauled. Chary, who had not, got closer.
August said, “It’s built with a simple boy operator in mind. They or the gaffer becomes the minder.” He put on Chary’s gloves, grabbed a gather from the furnace, and plopped it into the machine’s reservoir. “Everyone else…”
“…it will make obsolete,” Chary finished.
In time with the spin of the machine, August filled molten glass. The machine did the rest, working around its core: the initial blow, the clamp of the mold, the second brief puff, the release of mold. It finished in but a moment: four neat little jars done in half the time as one.
As Chary gawped, August plucked the jars out and set them on the marver.
“You see? I’m too impatient to properly blow, don’t even know how, really, and I can do it. Anyone could.”
Laurie chuckled. “The Local loved that, I bet. This, against some of the most skilled laborers in industry.” He gestured to a jar, as though he wanted to inspect it. August handed him one of his gloves.
“Careful,” Chary said, “it’s still hot enough to spontaneously shatter.”
“I watched nine-year-old boys run these halfway across a warehouse.” Laurie shoved on the glove and picked up the jar.
“My source told me of some blond, bearded gaffer observing union meetings, advocating machines, speaking for the runner boys. Knew his stuff, had a referral, but they kicked him out. It was you, Wright, not Chary. Wasn’t it? ”
He sounded as though he already knew, and of course he did.
“Kicked out forcibly,” August confirmed. “My referrer did it—the one who got me in in the first place. I don’t blame him; he was worried for his own skin. Now I understand more why.”
Laurie considered the jar, then set it down. “Because they went one step farther.”
“They sure did.”
“What was the goal there, hmm? Not to get your brother almost murdered.”
Now it was, quite suddenly, an interrogation, and August the defendant.
“I feel bad about it, all right?” August said. “I apologized. I didn’t know it would happen. Would you have thought they’d consider murder, Tulley? Your own kind of people? I thought they were done with me and that was it. Then you came around asking more questions, and they weren’t done.”
“I ain’t excusing murder, or my blame in this,” Laurie said.
“But you made ’em scared, then confronted them with their fears as an inevitability: losing all their jobs.
Because this is many times more productive than even Chary’s shop, so of course the glassworks owners are gonna use ’em.
That’s fewer jobs to pay. What did you think would happen? ”