by John Jakes
“I’m not certain of that, Mr. Douglass.”
He smiled. “But I am.”
The press of the line behind them forced Amanda to break off the conversation. As she followed Rose up one of the aisles, she glanced at the box from which the hissing had come. If the box was still occupied, it was impossible to see by whom.
Presently the two women reached the packed lobby. Through the open outer doors, Amanda saw that snow had started falling in the February darkness. Forward movement was almost impossible.
The crowd filled the lobby and spilled outside. Lines of hacks and carriages waited three deep. As each vehicle maneuvered for a place at the curb and loaded its passengers, she and Rose were able to take another step or two. But progress was infernally slow.
As she supped her hands deeper into her muff, Amanda felt Rose tap her shoulder. She turned and saw Mr. Greeley of the Tribune.
Amanda had met the Whig publisher at a Christmas fete at Rose’s mansion in Gramercy Park. She’d been struck by his aura of age. Though Greeley couldn’t have been much more than forty, his mutton-chop whiskers were already whitening. His piercing eyes seemed those of an old man who viewed the world with simmering discontent.
Greeley had been intrigued when Rose mentioned that her friend had survived the Alamo massacre. He had also been openly skeptical, reminding the women that there were no American survivors save a lady named Dickinson.
Amanda pointed out that the list of Mexican survivors was much less precise. She expected she’d be shown on the record not under her maiden name but under her husband’s, which was Spanish, if the record carried any mention of her at all.
A few details of the massacre soon convinced Greeley that Amanda was telling the truth. He suggested an interview with one of his reporters. She declined, saying that the idea of personal publicity struck her as ostentatious, and she didn’t care to be painted as any sort of heroine; she’d merely survived as best she could. Actually, her real reason for turning him down was a wish to avoid any chance of the Kent name appearing in print. Mr. Greeley had been testy with her the rest of the evening.
Now, though, the incident was forgotten. He tipped his hat in a cordial way. “Mrs. de la Gura—Rose—good evening.”
“Happy to see you awake again, Horace,” Rose said.
Greeley ignored the jibe. “Douglass gave a splendid talk, didn’t he?”
“Splendid,” Amanda agreed.
“Marred only by those disgusting interruptions from the box behind me.”
“Did you see who was doing it?” Amanda asked.
“Of course. A certain gentleman who enjoys making his obnoxious opinions known in public. A member of the exalted Order of the Star Spangled Banner. I prefer not to discuss the subject any further. His performance made me sick.”
“But Horace, who was it?”
Greeley paid no attention to Rose’s query. He was staring at two men in the crowd. With a sour expression, he said, “And I’m experiencing the same feeling right now.”
Amanda recognized handsome, blue-eyed Fernando Wood, a wealthy politician with ambitions for the mayor’s office. With him was his brother Ben. Both were Democrats, and hence Greeley’s foes.
Fernando Wood and his brother were arm in arm with a pair of gaudily dressed young ladies who might have come straight from a Paradise Square brothel—but then, the Woods made no secret of having the poor, and even most of the city’s criminal element, in their political camp.
The Woods had grown rich in real estate, and also by operating as licensed gamblers, under a dubious “charter” granted them in Louisiana. They were close friends of the Tammany politician Isaiah Rynders, who bossed the Sixth Ward, owned several slum saloons—and could always rally a street gang to harry an opposition candidate. Rynders was notorious for his hatred of blacks and foreigners—his Irish constituents excepted. He had been in the crowd that had started the Astor Place riot. The ringleader, some said.
But none of this seemed to rub off on the Wood brothers tonight. They waved and chatted with friends as they worked their way out of the lobby. They saw Greeley; Fernando Wood said something that was obviously contemptuous. His brother and the young girls laughed. Greeley’s jaw showed a tinge of scarlet as he turned back to the women.
“By the way—have either of you read Mrs. Stowe’s novel?”
“It’s not due out until next month, is it?” Rose asked.
“No. But Jewett’s of Boston is distributing advance copies.”
The conversation touched off Amanda’s anger. If only the secret campaign she and Joshua Rothman were waging had proceeded a little further—if only she’d been in control of Kent and Son—the firm might have had a chance to publish what everyone predicted would be the literary sensation of the year. Perhaps of the decade. She forced herself to speak calmly.
“I’m afraid Rose and I aren’t important enough to be on Jewett’s list. How did you like the novel, Mr. Greeley?”
“Oh, not very well. I read several episodes when it was serialized in the National Era. The complete version’s more of the same—too sentimental for my taste. The book’s purpose is worthwhile, though.”
“Rose introduced me to Mrs. Stowe’s brother last week,” Amanda told him. “We drove over to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn to hear Reverend Beecher preach.”
Greeley whipped a small pad from his coat and jotted on it with a pencil. “Must remind Dana to send a reporter over there to see whether Henry’s still planning that mock slave auction. Last time I saw him, he was trying to find a good-looking young Negress who wouldn’t object to being paraded before a crowd, and sold from his pulpit—”
As Greeley put the pad away, Amanda said, “The Reverend told us they’re working up a dramatization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin for Purdy’s Theater in the fall.”
“Meanwhile,” Rose said, “I’ll have Kent’s send you another review copy of The White Indian. It’s obvious you misplaced the first one.”
“I doubt that,” Greeley retorted.
“Really, Horace! You should pay attention to the book. We’ve gone to a fourth printing already.”
“Rose,” Greeley said, “I’m very fond of your hospitality. But not of your characters.”
“Not so loud!” she cautioned. “You’re one of the few people in New York who knows Mrs. Penn’s identity.”
“Well, I wish Mrs. Perm would change her style. Characters who make four-page declarations about virtue or courage put me in a torpor.”
“I can certainly say the same for those incomprehensible foreign features you’re publishing!”
“Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels are astute observers of the European social and political scene.”
“I fall asleep after the second paragraph. Many more essays of that sort and I’ll start reading Gordon Bennett’s paper. Or the Times.”
“The Times!” Greeley sputtered. “Upstart rag! I’m astonished it’s survived this long. It certainly won’t last till the end of the year. As to your fable of the fur business—”
“The story may be fictional, but Amanda here provided me with the background. It’s absolutely authentic.”
Greeley still looked put upon. “All right, send another copy to my editor, Mr. Dana. At your own risk!”
The stout woman pulled a face. “Horace, you can be positively vicious.”
“The function of the free press is to provoke, not pacify, dear lady.”
“But I thought you fancied the west.”
“The real west.” He nodded, with a clear implication that he still believed Rose had written about something else. “It’s astonishing how the public prefers fancy to fact. I’m already enthroned for having urged some anonymous young man to go west, when it was Mr. Soule, who edits the Express out in Terre Haute, Indiana, who actually turned the phrase last year. I merely repeated it in a letter to a friend—which he promptly made public.”
Rose teased him. “The price of fame, Horace.”
With another sarcas
tic expression, Greeley tipped his hat. “There’s my carriage.” He began to elbow his way outside.
Rose stood on tiptoe, trying to find her own driver in the confusion of vehicles and stamping horses in front of the theatre. A few gusts of snow began to blow into the lobby. Suddenly the heavy woman exclaimed, “I’ve had enough of being pushed and shoved—let’s do a little of our own. Follow me, Amanda—”
She turned sideways.
“I wonder if you’d excuse us—we’re trying to get through—damn it, get off my skirt!”
The man turned abruptly. Inside her muff, Amanda dug her fingers into the palms of her hands.
She’d been in New York City for over a year. And although she’d driven by the immense house just off Washington Square a number of times, she’d never set eyes on its owner—though she’d kept track of his activities through items in the press.
And now, unexpectedly, he was directly in front of her, slender and erect despite his age—fifty-eight or thereabouts. If Rose’s outburst had angered him, he didn’t show it. His shoulder cape displayed its crimson lining as he raised a glove to the brim of his black top hat. In his other hand he held a gold-headed cane.
A white silk scarf was tied around his head. It cut obliquely from the left side of his forehead, across the bridge of his nose to the right side of his chin. The scarf fluttered in the wind. Amanda glimpsed a bit of ugly, discolored scar tissue. The man’s left eye, brown and amused, seemed to glow like a dark gem.
Amanda held herself rigid, somehow afraid to speak or even be noticed.
“My sincere apologies, Mrs. Ludwig,” Hamilton Stovall said.
Chapter IV
Suspicion
i
“MR. STOVALL! I DIDN’T SEE you in the audience—”
“I don’t sit with the audience,” he said. “I always take a private box.”
Rose’s eyebrows shot up. “Behind Mr. Greeley?”
“Quite right.”
“So it was you interrupting Douglass!”
Stovall chuckled. “Really, the man’s incredible. If he didn’t have such a grip on so many minds, baiting him would be amusing. Under the circumstances, I view it more as a public duty.”
Thus far he’d hardly taken notice of Amanda. She was trying to breathe evenly, maintain a polite but none-too-interested expression.
“I wonder if there’s a city ordinance prohibiting a baboon from dressing in a man’s clothing,” Stovall went on. “If not, there should be—and it ought to be enforced against Mr. Douglass. However, I do apologize for making my presence known to you so clumsily, Mrs. Ludwig.”
Stovall’s words carried a faint sarcasm that robbed them of any sincerity. He turned to a man twenty years his junior hovering at his elbow.
“May I present my secretary, Mr. Jonas? Jonas, this is Mrs. Rose Ludwig—”
“Ah, yes, one of the bloomer ladies,” Jonas replied, his eyelids drooping briefly. He had an effeminate face, and pink, pouting lips.
Stovall turned to Amanda. “I’m afraid I’m not acquainted with your companion, Mrs. Ludwig.”
Amanda felt her cheeks must be red. To be so close to the man who had made Jared suffer was almost unbearable. She wanted to strike at his face—
She fought the irrational impulse. She tried to appraise Hamilton Stovall without emotion, as she would a business adversary. It was obvious he had once been exceedingly handsome. But his exposed cheek had a purplish, blotchy look. What little she could see of his hair was pure white. His teeth were so perfect—and so yellow—she was certain they were false. Their artificial uniformity gave him a sort of a skull’s grin. His glittering brown eye seemed to spike into her mind, drawing out all her secrets—
Foolish! Get yourself under control! He doesn’t know who you are—
Rose remedied that in an instant. “Amanda, let me introduce Mr. Hamilton Stovall. This is Mrs. Amanda de la Gura.”
Stovall’s good eye blinked. But it was young Jonas, standing unusually close to his employer, who spoke first. “Indeed! So you’re the free-thinking lady who tried to buy Kent and Son!”
Amanda’s stomach hurt. “Yes, I tried to buy it. The rest is your judgment, Mr. Jonas.”
Stovall’s eye held hers. “I’m fascinated to make your acquaintance at last. Of course I regret it was impossible for me to accept your offer—I could have put the money to excellent use. But I simply couldn’t turn the firm over to someone whose views are so far removed from mine. Misguided, if you don’t mind my saying so—” He obviously didn’t care if she did. “I might even go so far as to call them dangerously radical.”
Hoping she sounded sufficiently calm, she replied, “Making you aware of those views was my error, Mr. Stovall.”
“You’re quite correct.” The yellow-tinged teeth glared in a fixed smile. But his eye held no humor.
“Of course I wasn’t aware you had informants at the firm.”
Stovall dismissed it. “Oh, one must—to protect one’s own interests.”
Abruptly, Jonas asked, “You’re from California, are you not?” Amanda’s stomach quivered again. Stovall had checked into her background.
“I am.” She gave them no more to work on.
But Stovall refused to quit. “Why in the world would someone with substantial mining and textile holdings—”
He knows that too.
“—abruptly decide to venture into book publishing?”
“I was searching for a way to diversify. A publishing house seemed a sound investment.”
“Yes, I do recall hearing some such explanation from the gentlemen who acted on your behalf. I find one thing odd, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not aware that you’ve attempted to buy another book firm. Was Kent’s the only one in which you were interested?”
Amanda hedged. “At the time we negotiated—yes.”
“The fact is, you’ve bought no other properties at all—at least under your own name. Forgive me, but it’s almost as if you had some reason other than a business one for wanting Kent’s.”
“That’s purely your speculation, Mr. Stovall.”
“I admit it. There could be no personal basis for your interest, could there?”
“None.”
“We’ve never met before—”
“Never.”
“Well”—he shrugged—“I must be wrong.”
“A rare occurrence with Mr. Stovall,” Jonas informed them with a smug smile.
The outrageous flattery pleased the older man, though. He touched Jonas’ gloved hand in an almost affectionate way. Then he said to Amanda, “Financially speaking, I really wish we had been able to reach an agreement. Publishing is a risky enterprise—another circumstance which makes me wonder why you chose it for diversification. I have very little interest in the firm, actually—only in what it earns. I never wanted the company except as the means to an end. But perhaps you don’t know the story. I assumed ownership many years ago as a result of a sporting wager—”
Amanda heard Rose’s sudden intake of breath. Stovall’s brown eye watched her for a reaction—
Or did she just imagine that?
“—and a desire to see the founders, a clan of wild-eyed Boston mobocrats, put out of business.” He licked a snowflake from his lower lip. “The heirs of a Mr. Gilbert Kent. Despicable people.”
Amanda’s lips pressed together. She was trembling. Hands clenched tight inside the muff, she was conscious of both Stovall and Rose watching her closely. She hoped she hadn’t given herself away—
“I know nothing about them other than the name, Mr. Stovall. I’ve spent most of my years out west.”
“Of course,” he murmured. “Well, there’s no need for civilized folk to quarrel over an aborted transaction—” He patted the secretary’s arm. “Jonas, be a dear chap and see what you can do to hurry the carriage.”
The secretary started for the curb. He whistled and motioned. Again Stovall touched his top ha
t.
“Mrs. de la Gura—Mrs. Ludwig—my distinct pleasure.”
His good eye raked Amanda as he turned away. Did he know more about her than he was revealing?
No, that was impossible. Outside of her immediate household, only Rose, William Benbow and Joshua Rothman knew she was Gilbert Kent’s daughter—
A man blocked Stovall’s route to the carriage door which Jonas was holding open. Stovall lifted his cane and prodded the man with the ferrule. “One side!”
The man, much less elegantly dressed, whirled around. “Who the hell are you poking with—?”
“You, my shabby friend. It’s quite obvious you couldn’t afford a private carriage—while mine’s waiting just there.” Stovall pulled the gold-headed cane close to his chest, as if ready to lash outward with it. His voice had a savage note in it. “If you want to be impudent, I’ll give you impudence that’ll lay you up for a week!”
The man glared, then shifted his glance to the cane head. Amanda couldn’t see Stovall’s face, but the other man obviously had a good view of it—and it intimidated him. Stovall’s voice was equally intimidating with its unmistakable suggestion of violent temper held in check.
The man stepped back.
Hamilton Stovall climbed into the carriage. Jonas touched him, apparently to assist him on the step. Then the carriage door slammed. The driver whipped up the matched grays and the vehicle lurched off.
Amanda watched it until it was completely hidden by the wind-driven snow. I blundered, she thought. After the Kent negotiations fell through, I blundered by not covering myself with another purchase—immediately.
And had she reacted too visibly to Stovall’s remarks about the family? That worried her most of all; she might well have given herself away—or at least aroused his suspicion to the point where he’d think about making further inquiries. Perhaps even in California—
That’s too far-fetched, she decided.