The Jewel and the Key

by Louise Spiegler

  Mr. Humphries glowed and held out his hand again.

  “Why aren’t you in costume?” Mrs. Powell said sharply.

  “You’re looking for people undermining the war effort, aren’t you?” Andrew went on, speaking only to Humphries. He was more than flushed, Addie thought. It was like there was a rash on his cheeks.

  “Sure,” Humphries said. “That’s our job.”

  “Andrew.” Emma Mae’s voice was whittled thin. “You’d better get ready. It’s you and Harrison in the very first scene, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “The witches are first. And this is important.” Andrew drew a folded paper out of his coat pocket and hesitated just a second before holding it out to the four-minutem an.

  Addie stifled a gasp. Then, without a second thought, she snatched the paper out of Andrew’s hand.

  Mr. Humphries twisted his thick neck around to look at her in surprise. She slapped a pleased look onto her face. “Andrew! You darling!”

  She shook open the newspaper and took a cursory look at the close-printed type. As she’d suspected, it was the original copy of the Daily, the copy Andrew had snatched from Peterson. “I thought you might have the write-up of the previews. Aren’t you just wonderful for getting them for me? Meg said they’d be useful.”

  “I didn’t bring it here for you.” Andrew turned to Mr. Humphries. “There’s an article in here. Propaganda.” He tried to take the paper back from Addie, but she turned casually away, pretending to skim the page.

  “What kind of propaganda?” Mr. Humphries asked.

  “For the war, of course.” Addie looked up and said lightly, “Isn’t that what you do?”

  Andrew glared at her. “What do you think you’re—”

  “Thanks so much!” Addie folded the paper, shoved it into her bag, and, wondering if she was going too far, gave Andrew a peck on the cheek. Then she turned to Emma Mae. “Meg will be delighted, won’t she? Shall I run this over to her now?”

  Humphries was looking from Andrew to Addie, a frown furrowing his froglike lips.

  “No. Not now.” Reg grabbed Addie's elbow and propelled her toward the back door. “We’ll be late for that sendoff the fellows are giving me.” He turned to Humphries. “One last evening with my girl. I’d love to stay and chat, but ... you understand.”

  The four-minute man smiled indulgently. “No need to explain.”

  “So if you’ll excuse us?” They were almost at the door now. Reg grabbed a military greatcoat from the coat stand.

  Emma Mae followed them. “All right, then. I’ll see you at around tenish, is that right? And I’m to bring the duffel?”

  “Thanks, Ma.”

  Reg pushed open the door and stood aside to let Addie go through first. Hardly daring to breathe, she stepped out into the alley, and the door closed behind them.

  27. Solidarity Forever

  Reg grabbed Addie's hand and they ran. She had to sprint to keep up with him, and for a few seconds it didn’t even occur to her to wonder where they were running to.

  But before they could reach the end of the alley, a cart rattled around the corner and they leaped out of its way. The horse shied, the driver flinched, and bottles of milk clinked together in the back. They had to flatten themselves against the back wall of the Jewel between trash cans and a water pump to let it go past while the driver shook his fist and berated them.

  “Sorry!” Reg called.

  Addie put her hand on his sleeve. “We can’t just leave Frida’s dad back there. What if Andrew has figured it out and tells the four-minute man about him?”

  Reg slapped a hand to his forehead. “You’re right. I thought we could come back later and get him, but ... just wait here. I’ll go.”

  “I don’t think you should.” Addie glanced nervously at the door of the theater. “Andrew’s trying to get you in trouble. Who knows what he said once we left. I’ll get Mr. Peterson.”

  The cart had stopped and the driver was putting milk bottles down at the loading dock. Addie darted out from behind the trash cans, but Reg grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “No chance. I’m not sending you in there to catch hell for me. Besides, I’ve got a better idea.” His face brightened. “In fact, I’ve got a brilliant idea.”

  “You have a lot of those. Hiding Peterson. Interviewing the Wobblies. Joining the circus, probably. Why don’t you let me take care of this?” For the second time, she tried to go. But he got hold of her shoulders and swung her around, gently but firmly.

  “I’ll be fine. Besides, you’re underestimating my mother. By now she’s got Andrew tied to the chair in his dressing room while Meg swings his contract back and forth over a flame. Don’t worry.”

  Addie wriggled to free herself, but Reg didn’t let her go. “It’s partly your own fault,” she said. “You shouldn’t have teased him so much.”

  “Well, he shouldn’t be such an ass! How was I to know he’d send a fellow to jail rather than lose a part in a play? Or imagine he’d lose a part, the idiot. No. I’ll bet he gave up on his scheme after you snatched away the evidence. He doesn’t want Mother to dismiss him, after all.” He watched the driver get back into his seat, chirrup to the horse, and rattle away. Then he turned back to Addie. “And, by the way...” He drew her closer, leaning his forehead against hers for a moment. “That was pretty marvelous, the way you got my newspaper away from him.”

  Then he was running back down the alley and up the loading dock. Addie, a bit wobbly in the knees, watched him take out his key and turn it in the lock. What if Humphries was still standing just inside?

  She held her breath as Reg cracked the door and peered in. But then he turned back to the alley and jerked his thumb in the air. Resignedly, Addie stuck up her thumb in response.

  Pretty marvelous, she thought. She pulled the copy of the Daily out of her handbag, and there was Reg’s article about Peterson’s friends, right on the front page. She read it, moved and impressed. Reg told the men’s story so well. And yet, had anyone read it? If the fact that it was missing from the microfiche files at the library was anything to go on, it seemed unlikely anyone had. Ever.

  The sound of a heavy door closing brought her quickly to attention. She stuffed the paper back into her bag and looked up to see two men walking toward her: a soldier and a workman. Oh, good. No problems, then. She came out from behind the trash cans to greet them.

  But the soldier wasn’t Reg.

  He was a middle-aged man with cellar-pale skin and a hunted look in his watery blue eyes.

  “Oh, my God,” she muttered. So this was Reg’s brilliant idea.

  She gazed at Gustaf Peterson in astonishment. In the uniform, he looked like a real soldier. Like that officer’s braid on the cuff actually meant something. She wondered briefly how Reg was going into the army as an officer. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the greatcoat sat on Gustaf’s shoulders with an assurance it hadn’t on Reg. The hat concealed Peterson’s sandy hair, and she noticed that he was clean-shaven. It was a perfect disguise.

  While Reg ... Addie was caught between a shiver and a laugh. It was weird how modern he looked wearing Peterson’s rough overalls and a flannel shirt, a flat cap on his head. He could have been one of the guys repairing the earthquake damage at her school.

  “You are clever,” she said when they were close enough to talk.

  “Hello, Miss Addie.” Peterson sounded positively chipper.

  Addie smiled. “I’m glad to see you, Mr. Peterson.”

  “If anyone asks,” Reg told her, shifting Peterson's knapsack on his shoulder, “he’s Mothers brother, Rob—Robinson Hamlin. Good thing Uncle Rob moved to Montana ten years ago. No one’s likely to question it. Unless we run into really old friends of the family.” He pulled the brim of the cap lower over his forehead. “In other words, lets get moving.”

  As they were turning out of the alley onto the street, Addie glanced over her shoulder. The back door of the Jewel was inching open. She poked Reg’s arm and poin
ted as a man emerged onto the loading dock.

  Reg propelled her quickly around the corner. “Probably just the custodian,” he said, glancing at Peterson. “The one Mother’s been giving so much time off so you can do his job.”

  Peterson didn’t respond. He was looking around, blinking in the fading light, as if every detail of the outside world was new and full of wonder.

  The sidewalk in front of the Jewel thronged with men in dress coats and women in velvet jackets and wide-brimmed hats, all streaming toward the theater entrance. Tobacco smoke and perfume infused the air. Above their heads, the theater’s electric marquee gleamed: RED CROSS BENEFIT: STANDING ROOM AVAILABLE. It was so crowded that they had to walk in the street, skirting around ranks of parked taxis. At the intersection, Addie glanced down the hill to the Sound. The sunset was streaking out orange and smoky above the distant shores of Bainbridge Island.

  For a moment she felt as if she was the luckiest person in the universe.

  But then she caught sight of a police officer scanning the bustling crowd of theatergoers, and her heart thudded in her chest. She caught up to Reg and whispered, “Wherever we’re going, get us there fast,” and they quickened their pace.

  It was a relief when they turned onto a side street and Addie saw the Tin Lizzie parked and waiting, its right tires up on the curb. She darted toward its back door, but Peterson stopped her.

  “Sit up front, miss. I’ll hunker down in the rear out of sight.”

  Addie got out of his way and let him slide into the back seat. Then she opened the door to the passenger side of the front seat, stepped onto the running board, and climbed in. Reg cranked the car to life, ran around the other side, and jumped behind the wheel.

  “There was a policeman,” Addie said as they pulled away from the curb. “Did you see?”

  Reg nodded and turned onto the main road, swerving around pony carts and trolleys and other motorcars.

  Once they were away from the theaters glittering lights and the downtown shops, the city was much darker than Addie had ever seen it.

  Occasional street lamps pierced the gathering dusk. As they drove, Reg would be illuminated by their faint glow for a brief moment, only to fade again into the darkness. It felt uncanny. Addie reached out to touch the heavy flannel of his sleeve, as if to assure herself he was really there. He closed his hand around hers and just as quickly let go. But beneath the spark of his touch, Addie felt a wrench in her heart and saw the cold marble and the list of names on the cenotaph, and had to fight down a rising tide of despair.

  The car took a sharp turn and pulled over into an alley. Reg engaged the parking brake, turned, and grinned at her. She tried to remember that this was their adventure, and she should be elated at their success. She tried to smile at him. “Nothing to it,” he said. “We’re here.”

  “Here?Y oum ean—the Daily Call office?”

  Reg nodded.

  “That’s good.” She shoved her fear far down inside and climbed out of the car.

  As they left the alley and came out onto the street, Peterson stopped short. In the window of a hotel barber shop on the corner was the Wanted poster with his picture on it. Peterson ripped it down and tore it in half. He carried it with him as he turned and ran up the steps of a brownstone with Reg and Addie close behind. At first tentatively, and then more loudly, he knocked on the door.

  The door creaked open and a woman’s husky voice came from the shadows. “We’ve been waiting for you, comrades.” In the faint glow of the street lamp Addie saw a tall woman with a worried expression on her heavy but pleasant-looking face. She seemed strangely familiar, with her brown hair pulled loosely into a bun, her homely plaid dress, and the thick wire spectacles that made Addie think of John Lennon.

  “Who’s this?” she asked Gustaf. “Your daughter?” A faint French accent tinged her words.

  “Nah, Louise. This is Miss Addie McNeal. And you know the boy.” He handed her the ripped poster. “And I got some junk for you to dispose of.”

  “Hello again,” Reg said. He turned to Addie. “This is Mrs. Olivereau. She’s the secretary of the Seattle IWW.”

  Mrs. Olivereau hooked her free arm through Gustaf’s and pulled him into the dark hallway. “Quickly, then, all of you. No use standing out on the stoop, waiting for les poulets—the police.”

  They followed her through the hall to a door and up a stairway. At the top they stopped at another door. Light glowed through its frosted-glass pane, and a rumble of voices could be heard within. Addie watched Mrs. Olivereau turn the knob and racked her brain to remember where she’d seen her before.

  Then, suddenly, she knew. It was at the demonstration where Whaley had gotten arrested. Louise Olivereau was the lady she’d seen giving the speech from the soapbox.

  Dazed, Addie followed the others into a large loft room. The smells of ink and paste were overwhelming. A fire was burning in the fireplace, and the heat mixed with heavy cigar smoke made her head swim. Along the back wall stood a big iron machine Addie recognized from its brother at the university: a printing press. Editions of the Daily Call were strewn everywhere. Posters lined the walls, and her eyes were drawn—again!—to the screeching black cat in front of a full moon, its fur all on end, like the cat on the flyers Mrs. Turner had made. The words above the image read NO WAR FOR WALL STREET.

  Four men were playing cards around a table. Three of them were rough-looking men in ink-stained aprons. The fourth wore a rather wrinkled brown suit. He was big in the shoulders and sat with his legs outstretched, taking up as much room as possible. He looked genial, but also powerful, with a close-clipped brown beard and a cigar balanced behind his ear. Something about him made Addie think of a large brown bear. As they entered, he laid down a straight flush. The other men groused and laughed.

  The winner chuckled and rose from his chair. He slapped Mr. Peterson on the back and said, “Well, well. The fugitive goes free. Glad to see you, Gustaf.” Then he held out his hand to Addie, who shook it. “Sam Sadler,” he said, and Addie introduced herself.

  He turned to Reg, smiling broadly. “Thanks for helping out our comrade. If there’s anything we can do for you someday, just ask.”

  “Peterson’s mopped our theater for free this last week and given us his daughter at starvation wages,” Reg said. “You probably ought to chew me out instead of thanking me.” “Darn good wages,” Peterson said. “Who in hell cares about mopping?”

  “Don’t disillusion Mr. Sadler, Gustaf,” Reg told him. “I don’t want him to think we in the ruling class are as altruistic as all that.”

  Sadler laughed, and Addie saw a flash of gold in his mouth. “Don’t worry that I’ve got any illusions about your class, Mr. Powell. At the moment, I see you as an exception.”

  “You in, Sam?” one of the printers asked him.

  Sadler nodded. He sat back down again, picked up the new hand of cards that had been dealt him, and said to Reg, “Glad we could help you out with that paper of yours. When can we expect to see the article?”

  “Never,” Reg said, with a trace of bitterness. “The provost had all the copies destroyed.”

  Finally, Addie thought, she would find out. “Didn’t you print the edition again, with the article hidden away on the second page?” she asked.

  “Sure we did. But when Tom and I got back to campus, we found a padlock on the office door. So we couldn’t print it on our press.”

  “What?” Addie nearly laughed in disbelief. “You mean that old provost sneaked over and locked you out? How ridiculous.”

  Sadler looked up at her over his cards. “We’ve had our windows smashed and our press broken and our friends shot by sheriff’s deputies. Your friend got more high-class treatment than that, at least.”

  “I’ll try to feel grateful,” Reg said dryly. ‘At any rate, since I’d just been over here talking with Mr. Sadler about Gustaf, I thought of the printing press these fellows had. So we asked, and they very kindly printed the entire edition for us.”<
br />
  Addie wrinkled her brow. “So there are copies somewhere?”

  “Tom and I managed to drop the papers off at the newsstands in the middle of the night. But when we got to campus the next morning, all the editions were gone.”

  “Professor Hanson had them destroyed? I just—I can't believe it. Are you sure it was him?”

  “Who else? He told me himself, when he called me in for ‘a rather tedious’ meeting in his office, the purpose of which turned out to be expelling me from college. So it seems Tom was right about that.” He shrugged in a way that Addie thought was supposed to be insouciant but didn’t quite succeed. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I told him I’d joined the army, and he said if the Hun didn’t do me in, he’d like the honor himself.” He hesitated. “I haven’t told Mother yet. You—um...”

  “Of course I won’t tell her!” Addie said, a bit indignantly. And then, realizing what this meant, she added, “Reg, I wanted a copy of that edition—for the pictures, remember? They can’t be all gone!”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry. Tom has the original. I can write and remind him....”

  She thought quickly. “He can just leave it for me in Meg’s office at the Jewel,” she said. It seemed the safest way. Then she smiled and added, “I loved what you wrote. Make sure I get the whole paper, with the article in it, too.”

  “Really?” He looked pleased. “Well, if I’m going to have a readership of one, I’m glad its you. Though you’d better hide it away, even if Meg’s just interested in the pictures. I don’t know if I like the idea of my mother getting into trouble over my radical connections.”

  Sam Sadler was watching this exchange with obvious enjoyment even while sorting his cards and bidding. “Too bad about the article. But remember, friend, you can write for the Call anytime. We’ll even whip up a pseudonym for you, if you don’t want to shock your people.” He turned to Peterson. “Not to pry, but what’s the getup in aid of, Gustaf? You aren’t planning a jaunt to the peninsula in those togs, are you?”