“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.
“And?” Miss Howard asked.
“And, he lost, of course,” Mr. Picton answered. “But it was quite a good fight. And, more importantly, while Debs and the others were serving several months in jail for the civil violations, they were indicted on a more serious criminal charge: attempting to obstruct the mails by way of the railway strike. Darrow took the case again, and won by default-the government eventually dropped the charges. So while he lost the less serious civil case, Darrow won the more important criminal one.”
“Which doesn’t tell us,” Lucius said, “why Mr. Vanderbilt thinks that a man who splits his time between working for railroad corporations and workers’ unions-a combination that strikes me as awfully odd, by the way-is the ideal candidate to come in on a murder case.”
“No,” Mr. Picton answered, his mood brightening. “No, it doesn’t. But I’ll tell you, Detective-I’m relieved! Whatever Darrow’s talents may be, Vanderbilt could, as I say, have brought some very big guns up from New York, once he chose to get involved.”
“Perhaps that’s the point,” the Doctor said. “Perhaps Mr. Vanderbilt senses that there may be something untoward about this case, and doesn’t want his name connected to it in any New York circles.”
Mr. Picton considered that, then nodded. “I suspect you’re right, Doctor-I suspect you’re absolutely right! Doubtless Marcus can confirm the theory for us when he gets back. But for now”-Mr. Picton clamped his pipe between his teeth and put his hands on his hips-“I vote that we go home and have ourselves a pleasant dinner. Things are starting to look up, I daresay!”
Feeling much relieved by this turn of events, as well as by Mr. Picton’s confidence, we all started to head for the office door, hungry and more than ready to take his advice regarding a relaxing evening at home. True, we had the grand jury to wrangle with in the morning; but with Clara Hatch now talking, there seemed little reason to think that we wouldn’t proceed easily past that obstacle to the criminal trial what lay beyond, where, we happily assured ourselves, we’d be faced by a lawyer inexperienced in such cases, who wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight against two men as seasoned in these sorts of contests as the Doctor and Mr. Picton.
It was one of the worst errors of judgment we made during the entire case.
CHAPTER 40
Mr. Moore arrived that night, looking bedraggled and persecuted, and rightfully so: he’d had a pretty devilish week in the city, and had barely gotten back out with all of his organs and limbs intact. And even when he and Marcus hadn’t been in situations where their lives were in immediate danger-like when they’d gone to interview the Reverend Clayton Parker-violence had been a topic of conversation: apparently the reverend had been set on about six months earlier by several men who we could reasonably assume to’ve been Hudson Dusters, and’d had both of his knee caps shattered with baseball bats, along with one of his ears cut off. Even as he retold the story to us, Mr. Moore got so jittery that he needed a couple of stiff belts of Mr. Picton’s best whiskey to calm his nerves. But the news that we were ready to face the grand jury the next morning cheered him up considerably, as did the leftovers from our dinner, with which he stuffed himself ’til fairly late in Mr. Picton’s kitchen. By the time he retired, he’d taken in enough encouraging intelligence-along with enough whiskey-to be able to sleep as soundly as the rest of us.
Before I could let him go to the rest he so richly deserved, though, I had to find out whether he’d actually been in touch with Kat and, if he had, what the outcome’d been. As he was unsteadily scrubbing his teeth in his bathroom after pouring half a tin of Sozodont powder over his brush and into the sink, I snuck on in and put the questions. His mouth foaming like a mad dog’s, Mr. Moore told me that yes, he’d met up with Kat outside Duster territory and informed her about our predicament, then asked if she’d be willing to keep a watchful eye on Ana Linares. Kat’d demanded money for her services, making it seem certain to me that all we’d given her, and probably the train ticket too, had gone to Ding Dong; but Mr. Moore said that such wasn’t the case, that Kat’d shown him the ticket and told him that she was just waiting for word from her aunt before setting out for California. When I asked Mr. Moore if he thought Kat was still blowing the burny, he answered that he hadn’t been able to tell, in a nervous way what made it plain he was lying; but I decided that all I had time or energy to do was take heart from the fact that Kat still had the train ticket and was still willing to work for us. The rest I’d have to cope with when we got back to New York.