by Jane Steen
I didn’t know why I put the jewels into my pocket at that moment. With the fashionable silhouette becoming ever narrower, it was getting harder than ever to incorporate a pocket, but like most experienced dressmakers, I prided myself on being able to find a way to hide a small pocket somewhere on my dresses and on those I designed for my clients. My work dresses always had them, usually more than one; I disliked carrying a reticule around the store, but I couldn’t abide not having space for a handkerchief, a small pencil, a thimble, two nickels, two dimes, and a long piece of marked string I used for approximate measuring when I didn’t have my tape measure on me.
I slipped Tess’s brooch and my pendant into the tiny niche in the top of the overskirt, pushing them down behind my handkerchief as I smiled at the men, still laughing a little from my playfulness with Martin.
“We’re almost finished,” I said. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”
I saw a glance pass between Martin and Joe, but then my attention was drawn again to the watchmen as two of them turned back toward the double doors through which they had just entered. Puzzled, I saw them slide the bolts into place, but it wasn’t until I heard the click of the passkey in the lock that it dawned on me—something was wrong.
Martin and Joe had seen it though. They bolted toward the door in unison, only to be stopped by the other four men who were already moving toward them, two by two.
The next couple of minutes were a blur of shouts and blows as Martin and Joe struggled with the watchmen. I looked wildly around the room for something, anything, I might use as a weapon. The prints mounted in frames behind glass—would I be able to break the glass?
But the sickening thud of flesh on flesh diverted my attention back to the fighting men. As I hesitated, one of them detached himself from the fray—which had gone ominously quiet—and drew the large knife every watchman carried on his belt along with a pistol and a club. He pointed it at me. I saw, behind the closed grille across the door, Mr. McCombs staring, open-mouthed. But then my attention became riveted on the knife, the point of which was now far too close to my person for comfort. The blade was long, large, and looked wickedly sharp.
“Good, Mrs. Rutherford.” The man had seen me freeze. “If your husband cooperates, I won’t stab you. If you stand still, I won’t stab you. If you make any move to escape or hurt us, I will stab you. Knives are so much better than guns, you know. A bullet can go astray and make a lot of noise, attract attention. A knife is quiet, and if you understand how to use it, it always does some damage.”
As he spoke, he eyed the baubles still on the antechamber table, glittering on their black velvet trays; but any hope I might have had that they would distract his attention was extinguished as his gaze slid back to me.
I looked away from him, my gaze seeking Martin. My husband, whose normally neat appearance had suffered much as a result of being manhandled, seemed unharmed, although the expression on his face was thunderous. His arms were tightly pinioned behind his back by the two men who’d locked the door while a third extracted his own belt knife with an almost casual air and pointed it at Martin’s face. The last two men were dragging Joe to his feet. A large welt on his left cheekbone indicated a blow; a trickle of blood ran down his chin from a gash in his lip.
“Are we quite clear on the importance of cooperating?” the man nearest to me said. “We’re not killers. Don’t try to turn us into murderers by doing something stupid. Don’t make us responsible for the accidental death of Mrs. Rutherford.”
He smiled, bringing the knife a little closer to my bodice. If only I could be sure of being able to grasp it . . . I noted incidentally that the man’s voice was accented, but I couldn’t even begin to guess at his nationality. There were so many new people coming to Chicago all the time, from every corner of the globe. The men all bore some slight resemblance to each other, but perhaps that was because they were all tall and well-made. All of them, of course, were dressed alike in our plain dark uniform with the Rutherford’s badge, the letter R interwoven with a peacock’s feather.
“Our own men,” Joe said in disgust, his voice a little slurred from his injured lip. “Petrovic, isn’t it? And—and Latas? I’m having trouble remembering the others. But I will remember.”
“Not your men.” The leader, the man called Petrovic, grinned. “And not our true names, so don’t bother trying to recall them.”
“Did your people have something to do with the attempt last year?” Martin asked.
Petrovic shrugged. “How would I know? You were hiring a lot of watchmen afterward though, and we were told to get ourselves hired.” He flexed his broad shoulders. “And wait. So we have waited.”
“The other watchmen will stop you when you try to leave,” Martin said. “The staff entrance is well guarded.”
“Some of the other watchmen are ours. The rest will behave because we will have hostages.” Petrovic smiled and then looked over at Mr. McCombs. “Open that door and come out.”
“I will not.” The older man firmed his jaw, although I saw the tremble in his legs.
“Yes, you will, McCombs.” Martin sounded quite unemotional. “You’ll do everything they say. It’s only merchandise.” He glared at the leader. “I’ll vouch for our cooperation.”
“Good, good.” Petrovic nodded at his men. “The Rutherfords on this side of the room; Salazar on the other. Come to think of it, McCombs, you’ll be useful. I have a shopping list. And let’s get going.” He glanced at the clock on the antechamber wall. “We’re on a schedule.”
The shopping list was surprisingly short. Within five minutes, Petrovic and Mr. McCombs emerged from the vault, a small pouch in Petrovic’s hand.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Martin said derisively.
“Oh, it’ll do a lot of damage.” Mr. McCombs’s soft brown eyes were less frightened now, even world weary. “Our insurers will put up a fight against paying such a large sum. These men are well informed.”
He picked up the sapphire-and-diamond pendant I had examined earlier. “This is the one you wanted.” He handed it to Petrovic, who dropped it into the bag. The men standing guard over us—three for Martin and me and two for Joe—all grinned with the pleased air of men who had done a good day’s work.
“The jewels are just a little extra.” Petrovic shrugged a shoulder. “We were told to keep an eye open for a specific opportunity.” He raised his eyebrows at Martin. “Now, boys, let’s get on with the rest of it.”
“Right then—everybody standing.” One of the other men spoke. Martin and I rose to our feet. Joe seemed a little more reluctant but was quickly dragged into an upright position by the two men guarding him.
“McCombs by the door.” Petrovic brought his knife near to me again. “The rest of you, into the vault.”
I saw by Martin’s face that he didn’t like the sound of that command any more than I did. Probably far less. Was he afraid? I wondered. But when he spoke, his voice was even.
“If you’re thinking of killing us, spare my wife. I don’t care what you do to me.”
“I’m not thinking of anything except what I’ve been told.” Petrovic’s voice was just as neutral, the tone of a professional man discussing a day’s work. “Salazar, you’ll be setting the time lock. Ten hours.”
Horror threaded its way through my veins, squeezing my heart as Martin and Joe shouted in unison. One of the men grabbed me, half-dragging me into the vault, the heels of my shoes sliding on the polished floor.
It was ridiculous how little I could do against his strength. In a few seconds, he was forcing me to sit down in the chair. Truth be told, I was glad to sit; my legs were trembling now, as much as Mr. McCombs’s had been. We were going to be forced to lock ourselves in. Would Joe be able to override the lock and let us out again?
With me inside the safe room, Martin soon followed. He was accompanied by two men, one of whom produced a set of handcuffs. He slipped one end over Martin’s left hand and instructed Martin to bend down ne
ar the table. He then brought the handcuffs behind the stout table leg and slipped the other cuff over Martin’s right hand. The effect was to fasten Martin to the table leg so he stood in a highly uncomfortable-looking stooped position, unable to make any effective movements.
We couldn’t see Joe, but we could hear. It sounded as if they were trying to drag him into the vault, and he was resisting with all his might. To my horror, the noises ended in an agonized shout.
“Joe!” Martin tried to move so he was able to see out of the doorway. “Joe! Don’t be a fool.” He straightened up, perhaps in an attempt to tip the table over. One man foiled him by simply sitting on the middle of the table, shoving the ledgers to one side.
“Mind the lamp. Don’t want to spill oil all over the floor. You might start a fire and roast them.” Petrovic entered the vault. Behind him, two of the men flanked a white-faced Joe, the back of one of his hands bleeding freely from what looked like a shallow cut.
“Now then.” Petrovic turned to Joe, looking down at him from his considerably superior height. “I don’t like Jews. I’ll be quite happy to cut some more lines into you if you don’t get a move on and set the lock. No mistakes, now—ten hours. You don’t want to end up killing your partners, and if you set it for less, I’ll put a hole in your belly.” He drew out a pocket watch and looked at it, then turned to me. “You’ll get a good night’s sleep.”
“You can’t make me do this.” Joe’s voice was unsteady. “There’s no guarantee the air will last that long. I refuse to let you make a murderer of me.”
Petrovic’s only answer was to pull viciously at Joe’s shirt cuff. Ripping it away, he pushed up shirt and jacket, and I watched, aghast, as a line of red appeared on Joe’s forearm. Joe screamed.
Martin and I yelled in unison, formless sounds of sheer horror, and then Martin spoke. “Joe, for God’s sake, do it.” His face was as pale as Joe’s. “We’ll be all right.”
But would we? My mind went back to what Petrovic had said: Joe might kill us if he got the time wrong. Neither Martin nor I knew anything about opening the safe.
And yet I added my voice to Martin’s anyway. Martin had said we would be all right. I had faced danger before and survived. I wouldn’t stand by and watch Joe being tortured, even if it meant we would be locked in a vault for ten agonizingly long hours.
50
Darkness
The worst thing was the silence. Once the bogus watchmen had swung the massive door shut, the only sounds were the hiss of the gaslights, our ragged breathing, and the beating of my own heart. Not a sound penetrated through from the outside world. No voices, no rumble of traffic from the street, so familiar to me I’d hardly registered it while we were in the antechamber. The stillness was that of the tomb; we were entombed. Panic rose in my gorge.
“Take that lamp off the table.” Martin’s voice sounded clipped, furious. “Everything off. At least I’ll be able to stand up straight.”
I jumped up from my chair and complied with his instructions, stacking the materials in one corner of the room. I had meant to help him with the table, which appeared fairly heavy, but in a couple of heaves he had sent the thing crashing to the ground. The walls of the vault absorbed the sound in an ominous fashion, but at least the moment of violent action seemed to calm the temper I saw in Martin’s eyes. He stretched to his full height, rolling his shoulders and flexing his long back before giving me a smile that had more of determination than mirth in it.
“Well, here’s a to-do.” He turned in a circle, surveying the vault. “They’ve got it neatly arranged, haven’t they? I should have come in here before.”
“You don’t have to be brave with me,” I said briskly. “I understand how you feel about this room. And I don’t mind telling you, I was about to launch into a fit of the vapors.”
“If you weren’t in here with me, I’d probably be having conniptions myself.” Martin’s grin seemed more genuine now. “And yet the last thing I want is for you to be here. Can you help me move the table?” He held his manacled hands aloft. “I’d do it myself, but I’m somewhat inconvenienced.” He looked around again. “I’d like to shift it so it’s on its side with the top facing toward the door. Just in case they try dynamite to get us out.”
We worked for a couple of minutes to get the table positioned the way Martin wanted it, with enough room for us to get in and out.
“We’ll lie down in there once we turn the lights out.” He contemplated the gas lamps. “They’ll have to go out, Nellie. The air will be bad enough in here after ten hours without the gas suffocating us.” He looked steadily at me. “You realize it’s going to be a difficult ten hours, don’t you?”
“I’m trying not to think about it too much, to be honest,” I admitted. “Do you suppose they’ll try dynamite?”
“I’m not at all sure that’s a good idea.” Martin hunkered down on his heels, staring at the door.
“Couldn’t we work out how to open the door from the inside?” I moved close to the massive assembly of metal parts, looking at the array of boxes. Behind its etched glass, the timer dial looked like some arcane instrument to measure the tides and the seasons. I noticed, for the first time, that the looping swirls etched into the glass read “Cooper’s Infallible Time Lock.”
As I turned to look at him, Martin’s face gave the answer away; but he let me wait for a long moment before he spoke.
“Would you like the bad news now?”
“I’ve just seen the word ‘infallible,’ so I’m getting the idea. Explain it to me.” I looked back at the case. “And weren’t there two dials before? Have you changed the lock?”
“Did you see any matches anywhere near that lamp?” Martin turned around, frowning instead of answering me.
“No.”
“Then while we’re talking, we need to be searching for some. Once we put the gaslights out, we’ll have no means of making light if we do require it. You start that side of the room and I’ll work on this. Open every drawer and look absolutely everywhere you can.”
We had each opened a dozen drawers before Martin began speaking again. “The trouble with most time locks has been a tendency to fail on occasion. There’s always a bypass method or failsafe of some kind, generally a second dial. That was the first kind of time lock we had fitted. But then, of course, they invented a better method—and I bought it. I wanted to make absolutely sure nobody could get in. It never occurred to me that anyone would want to get out.”
“How careless of you.” I shut yet another drawer full of fabulous jewels that now seemed like so many pieces of glass since what I really wanted to see was matches.
Martin snorted with laughter. “That’s my Nellie. Thank heaven I married a woman who’s braver than I am.” He sighed. “The new contraption can be bypassed if it fails by obtaining a secret code from Cooper’s and using it to hold the time lock open while you dial the usual combination for the door. But if it were possible to do that while the timer was running, a determined thief would simply get his hands on both codes—and there are plenty of ways of doing that. Collusion with a Cooper’s employee would be where I’d start.”
I sighed. “I’d say the solution is to hire honest employees, but I’ve learned too much about the department store business to imagine you can trust everyone.”
“Precisely. The point is you can’t open the blessed thing until the timer runs out or stops because it has failed. If you try, there’s a lever inside that simply moves sideways and blocks the opening mechanism.”
“And dynamite?” I asked. “If you don’t mind me mentioning it again.”
We had come close to meeting in the middle of the drawers now. Martin stopped his search to look directly at me.
“Quite apart from the danger of dynamiting a vault with people inside it, the lock might jam—by accident or design—if it’s subjected to a severe shock. We already realized that if, say, we had an earthquake in Chicago, we might have to take drastic action to get the door open.
But no earthquakes have been recorded in Chicago.” He shrugged. “It seemed like an acceptable risk. I just hope Joe remembers that using dynamite might make things worse.” He began opening drawers again, and I followed suit.
“My prayer is that Joe’s all right.” I reached the last drawer on my side a few seconds after Martin had finished his. “I’ll never forget the look on his face as they dragged him out of the vault. That second cut was bleeding badly, but he was in such anguish about shutting us in I don’t suppose he even noticed it.”
“I won’t forget it either.” Martin spoke the words quietly and then, on a rising note, burst out: “How can there possibly be no matches?”
“Don’t kick or hit out in frustration.” I put a hand on his arm. “You might break or cut something, and then where would you be?” I waited a few seconds, my gaze on his rigid white face before it relaxed and he nodded. “You are perfectly well aware why we never allow our employees to be careless about leaving matches around. We can do without light for a few hours.” I ran my tongue over my lips. “What I’d really like would be a bucket full of water. It’s hot in here.”
“We’re lucky it’s a lot cooler underground than upstairs.” Martin brought his manacled hands up to my face, stroking my cheek. “Will taking off some of those layers of clothing help?”
“Turning the gaslights off and laying still will probably do the most good. What about you? I don’t suppose we can get your jacket off without ripping it to pieces—”
“—and I’m hanged if I’m going to remove my trousers.” Martin rolled his eyes. “If the worst happens, I’d far rather be found with my clothes on.” He raised his hands to his neck. “I’ll take this blasted collar off though.”
Some twenty minutes later, we had both made ourselves somewhat more comfortable. I had torn a page from the back of the ledger—“McCombs will hate that,” said Martin—and we had written brief notes to Sarah, Tess, and Joe “just in case” with my stub of pencil. They were not sentimental. It seemed somehow impossible to be sentimental in the circumstances. I said as much to Martin.