Chapter 18
Captain Murphy and Hendricks took Nora Button to Station Five, Murphy agreeing to guard her overnight until it was decided where she would go.
Hendricks left for Wolfe Street, hoping against hope that Brown had made it home.
It was near four in the morning when he tapped on the door.
A dark-skinned man and Patrick Brown opened the door, both with rifles in their hands.
A woman hurried down the steps, calling Phillip’s name.
“Where is he?” she said when she realized he was not who she was looking for. “Where is my brother?”
Patrick Brown pulled him to the kitchen, while the other man stayed by the door. Brown’s lip was huge with a split down the middle and one eye was just beginning to blacken. “Where is he?” Patrick Brown repeated.
“Back at the warehouse,” Hendricks said and wiped his hand across his face. The sister handed him a glass of water. “He was running to catch the wagon, and one of Bruner’s men, their coachman, shot him.”
“Shot?”
Hendricks drank every bit of the water and sat down on a stool. “Turnbull had the team moving fast, and I was barely hanging on. I’m going back to the warehouse and see if he got away.”
But it was no more than another few minutes until they heard the rumble of a carriage in the alleyway. Patrick Brown moved the curtain over a back window and then hurried to the door. “It’s Phillip!”
He and Hendricks hurried to where Phillip was speaking to Littleman through the window of her carriage, Thomas McDonald on top with the driver.
“Christ almighty!” Patrick said. “Hendricks said you were shot.”
Phillip turned. “I was and it hurts like the devil, but it’s through and through.
Littleman packed it and wrapped it, if you can believe that.
” When Phillip glanced back to the alley, the carriage was already gone.
“Have to get to Wetherby’s before Norris hears that the Button girl is out of Shelly’s. ”
“The gaming den? That Wetherby’s?” Hendricks asked.
“Bess Turner told me she gave Norris the key to the room on Washington and Eastern the day before Josephine Button’s murder. Turner met him at Wetherby’s a while back and got into some money trouble there, but he took care of it. She does him a favor now and again in kind.”
“So Norris is the man we want,” Hendricks said.
“I believe he and some of his men drugged the two of them, put them side by side in the bed at Moulder’s, and stabbed Button in the heart, guaranteeing that Timothy would swing,” Phillip said.
“How are you going to get him to confess?” Patrick asked.
“Haven’t figured that out yet,” Phillip replied.
“When are we going?” Hendricks asked.
“As soon as I change out of this bloody shirt and get a drink of water.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Virginia heard from her father by messenger before daybreak.
He had heard from Mr. Crimlock that Nora Button had been rescued and was being guarded at the police station by no less than the captain of the department.
Phillip’s uncle had sustained some injuries, including a black eye, but he did not know of any other injuries.
Virginia dressed quickly after instructing Mr. Oliver to see if Mr. Turnbull had returned yet and if he would be able to take she and Colleen to Wolfe Street.
They were in the carriage shortly after, and she was glad she’d worn a coat as the morning had a distinctive autumn feel of cool weather coming.
She wanted to hear the details of how they’d rescued that poor girl, and she wanted to see with her own eyes that Phillip Brown was in one piece.
Turnbull rapped on the Brown door and stepped aside. They were greeted by Phillip’s Uncle Patrick with a rifle in his hands. She turned to Mr. Turnbull.
“Please go home now. I know you’ve been up all night. Find your bed.”
Virginia followed Colleen inside and saw Sarah Brown coming down the stairs, linens in her arms.
“Virginia?” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”
“Sense into who?” she asked as she hurried along to the kitchen, which she could see was brightly lit. She heard Phillip’s voice and breathed a sigh of relief.
“My brother,” she said and stepped down the two stone steps, leaving Virginia with a clear view of a shirtless Phillip Brown, a bloody streak on his upper arm.
“What has happened?” she said, feeling breathless, finding it difficult to remove her eyes from the broad expanse of bare muscled chest in front of her. “I thought everyone had escaped injury except your uncle.”
“Just a scratch,” he said and winced when Eliza pulled away a bloody pad from the wound.
“He was shot,” Sarah said. “And yet he insists he is going back out.”
“Out where?” Virginia said and walked up to him, waiting until he looked at her. “Where are you going? I thought the young girl had been rescued. Please tell me.”
“We’ve got to get to Norris before he hears what happened tonight, that Nora Button is safe. He’ll either come after one of us or leave town. I can’t let either of those things happen.”
“Do you even know where he lives?” she asked.
“We’ll start at Wetherby’s. It’s a gaming hall. I think he keeps offices there. Someone will know where his rooms are.”
“Who’s going?” Uncle Patrick asked.
“I think just Hendricks and me. I’m hoping we can get in a back door, and I’d be worried the women would be here alone. There’s no telling what they’d do if they got in the house.”
“Hold still,” Eliza said and wrapped a bandage around Phillip’s arm.
“What can I do? What can we do?” Virginia asked.
Phillip flinched as Eliza pulled the bandage tight and helped him on with his shirt.
“If we can get you to the police station, I’d like someone to talk to Nora Button.
Find out if she knows anything useful. Let her know that Fanny is safe.
And someone has to tell her that her sister was murdered. She may not know.”
“I can do that, if you get me to the station.”
“Come on, then. You can ride in front of me on Daisy. And just stay there until I come for you.”
“Collen? You’ll be comfortable here?” Virginia asked.
“Absolutely. I’m going to watch Miss Eliza make her bread, which I’d like to be able to replicate,” she said with a smile. “But, Miss Wiest, please be very careful.”
“I’d like to go soon, Virginia,” Phillip said. “I can’t let him get away.”
The sky was lightening just as Phillip, Virginia tucked in front of him, and Hendricks arrived at Station Five.
As much as she dreaded telling this poor young girl that her sister was murdered, she thoroughly enjoyed riding with Phillip, within his arms, as he guided Daisy through the streets.
Officer Hendricks pounded on the station door while Phillip dismounted and reached up to lift her down.
When her toes touched the ground, she looked up at him, seeing her same feelings reflected in his eyes.
“Please do be very careful,” she said and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. She would not prolong their parting any longer, though, knowing he needed to be on his way quickly, or distract him from what would be dangerous. She turned and hurried in the door of the station house.
Phillip and Hendricks rode to Wetherby’s, taking care to stay off the main avenues and streets, knowing that it was likely that word had already made it to Norris that Nora Button was safe.
They trotted down the alley behind the gaming house, both surprised that candles were still burning in windows and that music could be heard faintly, especially when one of the doors was opened.
“I would have thought it would be locked up tight by now,” he said.
“Some of them stay open all night and into the day for the dock men working the overnight shift and willing to give up a paycheck,” Hendricks said. “This must be one of those places.”
A whicker at the end of the alley alerted them to other riders. Hendricks and Phillip pulled their horses into the shadows of an overhang attached to an outbuilding.
“Brown?” Phillip heard.
“O’Malley?” he replied.
“What are you doing here?” his boyhood friend asked.
Phillip noticed another rider beside him. A big man dressed in dark clothes. O’Malley’s partner, Smythe. All four men dismounted.
“We plan on getting Norris, if he’s here,” Phillip said.
“Oh, he’s here,” Smythe said with a chuckle that made the hair on the back of Phillip’s neck stand on end.
“That’s our plan, too,” O’Malley said.
Phillip eyed his friend, the daylight beginning to decrease the shadows. He was white-faced, and Phillip could swear his hands were shaking. There was a bead of sweat across his upper lip.
“He most likely killed Josephine Button,” Phillip said. “I need him to confess to the captain at Station Ten, Bender, where the investigation is being done.”
Smythe nodded. “That’s our plan.”
O’Malley swallowed visibly. “Just helping out another station. You can head on out, Phillip. We have good information that Norris is inside. We’ll deliver him to Bender.”
“No need to interfere with official police business, Brown. We’ll handle it from here,” Smythe added.
“I’ll be with you, then,” Hendricks said, looking at Smythe and O’Malley. “I’ve got just as much invested in this as anyone.”
Smythe eyed him. “Stay behind O’Malley, then. Don’t want a fellow officer to be caught in the crossfire.”
Virginia waited a few minutes until Nora Button began to stir on the bed in one of the cells in the basement of the station house.
She moved from the stool she’d been seated on to the edge of the thin mattress.
Nora’s eyes opened suddenly, looking panicked, and she backed up on the cot, pulling the wool blanket around her shoulders.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Virginia Wiest. I’m a friend of Phillip Brown. He’s the man who got your sister away from that place.”
“Shelly’s, you mean?”
Virginia nodded. “He said you were very brave to give your sister a chance to get away. I imagine they were angry with you for doing it.”