Dry Rot

by S. L. Stoner

  handful of men who stood beside him.

  Sage stepped to the vice president’s side and asked softly, “What nonsense is that O’Reilly spouting now?”

  “Same thing as always—action, action, action,” Henry replied. “What kind of action?”

  “Well, he’s a little vague on that point. He’s got them agreeing to meet tomorrow night at the saloon down the road where he promises he’ll be specific. I don’t like it.”

  “Why? What’s got you worried?”

  “He keeps talking about the Frenchies and throwing wooden shoes into machinery. Leo’s in jail for murder and this flim-flammer is talking violence. Things are souring real quick.”

  Sage didn’t like the picture either. Henry was right. This strike was lost if the men pursued violence, because that’s where the newspaper reporters would focus their reporting instead of on the strikers’ demand for an eight-hour day. Even The Journal couldn’t avoid reporting strike violence. As a consequence, the strike would collapse, its demise goaded along by police clubs and the selective arrests of the strike s natural leaders—like Henry. Worse, violence would inflame opinions against Leo, leading the public to demand a death sentence.

  Henry interrupted Sage’s thoughts. “I’m standing here trying to think how to stop these men from doing something stupid and I can’t think of anything. I’ve already spoke my piece. It was just like talking to that stump over yonder. They’d rather listen to that O’Reilly there.” He spat a stream of tobacco juice into the mud. “Leo’s going to be upset about this.”

  One of the men in Henry’s group cleared his throat to say, “Those hotheads decide on taking some foolish action and I’m walking away from this strike. I won’t go to jail for no job. Besides, we’ll never win this strike by force. Mackey’s got enough money to hire all the experienced hoodlums he needs and he already has the police force on his side.

  Murmurs of agreement rose from the small group even as O’Reilly continued his oratory, eventually bringing the other men to cheers with his exhortations.

  Sage momentarily envisioned the disappointment on St. Alban’s craggy, careworn face. His boss and labor leader took every failure personally and credited every success to others. Sage spoke firmly to the small group of men, “I agree. We need to nip what this O’Reilly fellow is pushing in the bud, men, or this strike is lost. Promise me you’ll attend O’Reilly’s little meeting tomorrow night.” The men all nodded without even showing a glimmer of enthusiasm.

  “But talking ain’t going to help. We’ve already talked until we’re blue in the face,” one of them grumbled.

  “We’ll see. In the meantime, don’t lose hope just yet,” Sage said. He patted Henry’s shoulder before turning to walk back up the road. As he picked his way around the deepest potholes he muttered to himself, “I wonder how Herman would interpret Mister O’Reilly’s sound in the world?”

  TWENTY

  Bittler’s Italianate mansion was dark except for a faint glimmer behind an upstairs window curtain. Bittler was hiding out in that room, Mae reported, because it was the only room that provided no sight line for any sharpshooter who might be stationed outside the house. As his mother promised, the unlocked front door swung open on well-oiled hinges so that Sage was able to make a silent entry into the house. He snapped the lock shut behind him and mounted the carpeted stairs.

  When he pushed open the bedroom door, Sage saw the single bed that his mother said was the younger daughter’s, a dresser and two chairs: a ladder back and a rocking chair. Bittler occupied the rocking chair, his teeth so busily worrying a fingernail that he was oblivious to Sage’s entrance. A nickel-plated revolver lying on the table at Bittler’s elbow glinted dully in the candlelight. It was the same gun that Sage had seen tucked into Bittler’s waistband when the engineer hailed the cab. Sage snatched the gun and stepped away before Bittler’s sleep-deprived brain fully grasped that his sanctuary was breached.

  Bittler started to jump up only to collapse into the chair at the sight of the stranger blocking the door and holding Bittler’s own gun. Gasping like a beached fish, Bittler’s toes pressed him back into the chair so fast that Sage thought it might tip over backward. At the same time, Bittler’s heavy brows flew upwards as his small eyes widened within black circles of fatigue and his mouth struggled to form words. “Whaa, whaaa, what do you want?” he finally sputtered, his voice a whimpering quaver that, for a brief instant, tugged at Sage’s humane inclinations. That empathy vanished in an instant. How many lives was this man’s greed jeopardizing? Besides, for Sage’s plan to work, he needed Bittler to fully anticipate these terrible seconds before his death. Sage said nothing, merely watched as the man paled, the muscles in his neck swelling as they readied to cry out his fear.

  Now was not the time for Bittler to rouse the household. “I am not here to hurt you,” Sage said in a calm, low voice. “I don’t work for Mackey.”

  These two sentences worked. Bittler shut his mouth, his Adam’s apple jumping like a frog in a gunny sack, his rigid body relaxing slightly, though he still remained wary.“You! You’re that union man who accosted me in the Trade Exchange Saloon,” he said after licking his lips with a darting tongue.

  “Yes, name’s Sam Graham.”

  “You better scram out of here, Graham. Mackey’s men find you here and you’ll be sorry,” he quavered before resuming his frantic gnawing.

  Sage smiled widely, grabbed the other chair in the room, slung it around and straddled it, facing Bittler over its back. He carefully laid the gun down on the bed close to his hand and far from the cringing man’s. Bittler eyed the gun, said nothing and made no move.

  Sage kept his voice low and calming,“I know that Mackey’s men watched me enter your front door. They’re out there. My men saw them.”

  Bittler glanced toward the window and back at Sage. “Oh God,” he breathed, “they’ll think I invited you here. Oh God, oh God.” His chair rocked frantically.

  “Probably,” Sage said. “But I don’t think that makes much difference. That bullet hole in your downstairs window tells me Mackey has already decided how he intends to deal with you and the information you have against him.”

  “Information?” Bittler’s eyes cut to one side.

  “Don’t play ignorant, Bittler. That dog won’t hunt. Not when you’ve been hiding up here in your daughter’s bedroom for—how many days has it been?”

  Bittler shifted in the rocker, again gnawing on his cuticle, his fingernails already bitten to the quick.

  “Look, Bittler, we know all about the bribes for the shoddy bridge inspections. That’s why Mackey has to eliminate you. If you’re dead,” Sage paused and the intensity of Bittler’s gnawing increased. “If you’re dead,” Sage repeated, “Mackey will tell the world that the workers are the ones to blame for the dry rot. That they conspired to steal the new timbers and let the rotted ones remain in place, all of it with your help.

  Bittler started shaking his head from side to side. “He’d never kill me. I’ve been to dinner at his house . . . “

  “Shh . . . ,” Sage interrupted, hearing the sound of a hard object striking the window. In the ensuing silence, a faint noise came from the porch below the window. Sage snatched up the gun, stepped softly to the door and opened it halfway. The faint rattle of a distant door came up the stairwell.

  A backward glance at Bittler showed that the man was again a cringing knot in his chair. He’d heard the noise too.

  The sound of glass breaking and falling onto a wood floor below galvanized Sage into action. He leaned toward Bittler. “Crawl under the bed and stay there,” he whispered. Bittler complied with an alacrity that set the empty chair rocking.

  Sage stepped carefully down the stairs, his ears straining to identify the sounds he was hearing. Glass being ground underfoot, the rustle of moving fabric. Wheezy breathing, bumping noises and the shuffle of boots issued from the darkness. The sounds came from a room that opened off the left side of the downstairs hall
way. As did the pungent smell of kerosene. Its stink hitting Sage’s nostrils as he stepped to one side of the archway and peered around the casing.

  The French doors to the outside stood open, the faint evening light outlining two dark shapes moving stealthily in the gloom. The same light caught on the side of a metal canister as one of the dark figures sloshed its liquid contents around the room.

  “Hurry up,” the second figure hissed.

  Sage needed to act and quickly, before a match was struck. Not that he really cared whether Bittler lost his house. But the man’s wife and daughters were huddled somewhere upstairs with someone Sage cared about—his own mother. As one man flung the kerosene around the other began fumbling in his clothes— likely looking for his match safe. Sage extended Bittler’s revolver into the room and with deliberate care thumbed back the hammer so that it made an unmistakable metallic clicking sound.

  Both intruders froze, seeming to hold their breath.

  “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot you dead,” Sage growled into the silence.

  As expected, each man ignored the warning and, as one man, they bolted for the open door. Sage aimed carefully and deliberately shot out one of the door’s glass panes. As much as Sage wanted retribution for his cooperage ordeal, he wasn’t going to shoot a fleeing man in the back. Besides, shooting them would require too many explanations.

  Faint cries sounded above. He ran to the French doors, slammed them shut, pulled the heavy drapes closed and pushed a heavy table against the door to prevent further entry. He raced back up the stairs to find his mother standing in the upstairs hallway, fully clothed, a raised fireplace poker in one hand. Wordlessly he raised a thumb to signal all was well and pointed toward the closed door from behind which fearful cries issued. She headed in that direction.

  Charging into the daughter’s bedroom, he reached beneath the bed, grabbed Bittler’s arm and hauled the yipping man out. “Hush up. It’s me. They’re gone.” He gave Bittler’s arm a shake.“You take ahold of yourself and go calm your family. Then you and I are going to reach an agreement or else I’ll toss you off your front porch right into the arms of Mackey’s men.”

  Sage tugged the man down the hallway to the other room. Inside, lamplight fell on a woman’s terrified face. Her arms clutched two little girls to her side. He shoved the protesting man across the threshold. When she saw Bittler, his wife slowly straightened, relief replacing the terror in her face. To his credit, Bittler managed to start talking soothingly to his family. Mae Clemens slipped out and closed the door.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  “Mackey’s men broke in and started throwing kerosene around the parlor downstairs. I stopped them and fired a warning shot as they escaped.”

  “You sure they’re gone?”

  “Yup, they didn’t expect discovery. Gave them a good scare. I’m hoping it gave Bittler a good scare too. How about keeping his wife and daughters upstairs while I talk to him?”

  “Yes, I will, the poor dears will be shaking like aspen in a windstorm. You want me to send Bittler back out to you?

  “That I surely do.”

  As soon as Bittler stepped out of the room, Sage clamped onto his arm and pulled him along the hallway and down the stairs with the man offering foot-dragging resistence the entire way. When they reached the parlor, Sage let go of Bittler’s arm and twisted the electricity knob to light the room. Bittler gasped. “They broke inside,” he said. The dazed man shuffled over to where a large can lay on its side in the middle of his expensive Aubusson rug and picked it up. Cautiously, as if afraid the can might nip off the end of his nose, Bittler sniffed its opening. “Kerosene,” he croaked.

  Not likely to be anything else. The whole room reeks of it. Sage thought, though he kept that sharp retort to himself. No sense in distracting Bittler before the man fully comprehended what had almost happened. Sure enough, the city engineer stood rooted in the middle of the room, first as realization, then horror, raced across his face.

  Bittler’s stunned expression was Sage’s cue. “Snap out of it, Bittler,” he barked. “Mackey’s men intended to set fire to your house and kill everyone in it, including your children. It’s time you face the situation and realize that I am the only one who can save your miserable hide from this fix you’ve got yourself in.”

  TWENTY ONE

  “How? how can you save me?”Anxiety contorted Bittler’s face. Sage’s lips twisted. “Me?” Trust Bittler to care about no one’s safety except his own. Again, Sage held his scornful words in check. He needed this man’s cooperation.

  “Bittler, this is what you are going to do,” Sage said as he strode over to a lady’s desk against the wall, fished paper and quill pen from its pigeonholes and slapped them down on its writing surface.

  He slung a chair before the desk and pointed at it. “You sit here and write down every single bribe you took from Mackey and you list every single bridge that might contain dry rot as a result. Your fancy eastern engineering school taught you how to write, didn’t it?”

  Bittler began blustering, “I won’t write that down! It . . . it will ruin me! I’ll go to jail if I write that down!” he protested even as he promptly sat in the chair as directed.

  “You’ll write it down or else I am going to personally deliver you to Mackey’s thugs tonight. On the other hand, if you cooperate, I will send you and your family to a place where Mackey can’t find you. You’ll be kept safe until Mackey is in jail or until it won’t make any difference to him whether you’re alive or dead. Furthermore, I’m not promising, but there is the possibility that I might even be able to keep you out of jail.”

  For the first time that night, hope glimmered in the other man’s eyes.

  “Won’t they follow us? Won’t they figure out where we’ve gone?” The anxiety in Bittler’s voice was sharp. He’d been having some bad days and nights waiting for the axe to fall.

  “Nope. I’ve a plan about that. You best get busy writing. I’m not doing anything at all until you write down everything like I told you to.”

  Bittler’s dark eyes stopped twitching. “Just who the hell are you anyway?” he asked with narrowed eyes. When Sage didn’t answer, Bittler faced the desk and bent to writing, defeat evident in the limp curve of his backbone. Sage watched him a few minutes before silently leaving the room to ease open the front door. Stepping to one side of the porch, he gave a low whistle. Within seconds, Fong stood below him. Sage gave his friend whispered instructions. As Fong started to move away, Sage called out, “And thanks for that warning pebble against the window. If you hadn’t thrown it, the situation might have turned downright scary.”

  When Sage returned to the parlor, Bittler’s pen was still scratching across the paper. The city’s chief engineer continued writing until dawn sent light squeezing around the edges of the closed drapes. He lay down the pen, pushed the papers to the corner of the writing table and rested his forehead on his folded arms. At that moment, Mae Clemens entered the room, carrying a sterling silver coffee pot and china cups on a tray. Sage looked at the four cups on the tray and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “I received a message at the kitchen door that Police Sergeant Hanke and a Mr. Philander Gray are arriving shortly,” she said.

  Even as she spoke, a knock sounded on the front door. She deposited the tray on the table that now stood in its new location against the French doors. Returning to the hallway, the sound of her murmured greetings drifted back into the room. Seconds later, two men stood in the doorway, both tall, one hefty, one thin. Bittler raised his head to gaze blurrily in their direction.

  “Come in, gentlemen,” Sage said, although not offering them a seat on the kerosene-soaked furniture. He gestured at the mess. “As you see, Mr. Bittler experienced a bit of an upset in the middle of the night. Two intruders tried to burn down his house.” The two men wordlessly accepted the coffee Sage offered as Hanke surveyed the scene, his forehead puckering. “Why didn’t he call the police right away? G
iven the chance, we might have caught them,” he said.

  “I am afraid, Sergeant, that the situation is much more complicated than simple arson. I promised Bittler safety and right now, that means keeping this quiet. I am confident, though, with your help, we are going to catch those two would-be firebugs in the near future. In the meantime,” he said, gesturing to the city engineer, who shrank back in his chair, his eyes averted, “Mr. Bittler here is asking the two of you to sign as witnesses to an affidavit he has drafted. I believe, Mr. Gray, that you are a notary, are you not?”

  Bittler jerked the papers back toward him on the desk and covered them with his arm. “I thought you said the police wouldn’t be . . . ,” he began.