Stories from Suffragette City

by M. J. Rose

  Which wasn’t long.

  Once his target had settled into a comfortable chair, he’d left, hurrying downstairs to ensure the Dictograph was operating properly. For all its wonder, the thing could be finicky. And a bit frustrating, because usually a stenographer had to be on the receiving end, listening through an earpiece, writing down everything being said. But recent changes had been made to the technology so that now it could be hooked to a phonograph and the words electronically recorded.

  Which was marvelous.

  The idea had been to memorialize Brisbane’s private meeting, his extramarital dalliances proven through his own words.

  The Men’s League for Woman Suffrage had come about in 1910 with the idea of openly supporting women in their quest for the right to vote. A noble cause, with some of New York City’s most politically enfranchised men being a part of it. Men whose support would be needed to win the vote. Which made a lot of sense as only men would ultimately vote on the question of whether women should be allowed to do the same.

  The Men’s League would meet from time to time and decide how best to aid the suffragettes. Being involved was risky, since many members had been subjected to public ridicule and condemnation. But hundreds had joined to lend their support. The lounge was where they relaxed. Where men were men and the talk many times turned away from politics to more personal concerns. Apparently, his friend, John Charles Stuart, was hoping that Timothy Brisbane would brag about his extramarital exploits, as men would sometimes do.

  Instead, the Dictograph recorded the planning of a crime.

  No question. The plot clear.

  Somebody was intent on bombing the suffrage march scheduled for later today.

  The event had been planned for weeks. The goal simple. Turn New York City into Suffragette City. Have tens of thousands of socialites, doctors, lawyers, journalists, schoolgirls, nannies, scrubwomen, secretaries, factory workers, you name it, all dressed in white, march down Fifth Avenue demanding a woman’s right to vote. All ages would participate. From the elderly with canes to children, teenagers, and mothers cradling babies. They’d carry yellow pennants proclaiming VOTES FOR WOMEN, which would dance in the sure-to-be-brisk October air, creating a dazzling mass of rippling color in the streets. Hundreds of thousands more people would line the way. Sure, many would come to heckle—that was to be expected. But many more would come in support. To explode a bomb in such a gathering would be to invite carnage and disaster. But that was precisely what he’d heard being discussed.

  One problem, though.

  There’d been several voices, and the Dictograph, for all its ingenuity, was short on clarity, so it was impossible to know who was speaking. When he’d hurried back upstairs to the lounge thirty-five minutes into the conversation to see who might be there, it wasn’t Timothy Brisbane but Samuel Morrison and another man—lean, hard-looking, with a thin black mustache, his identity unknown—who walked out. Where was Brisbane? When had he left? When had Morrison entered? He had no idea of the answers to any of those questions.

  But he did have the recording.

  Samuel Morrison owned a group of gossip magazines and tabloid newspapers that made money off other people’s troubles. He was, though, one of the original founders of the Men’s League, but not among their most genteel members. Randall always felt unclean when around him and tried to keep his distance, as Morrison’s publications exploited anyone and anything to sell more copies.

  “Decency be damned” was their motto.

  And damned it was.

  Why Morrison felt the need to be part of the suffrage movement could probably be explained as a public relations move to the women who routinely bought and read his publications. It simply looked good for him to be with them. Randall found the portly little man offensive in every way. Ethics were something more than words on paper. They were a mantra by which he lived his life. For him, there was the law of God and the law of man, neither of which could be ignored.

  But from what he’d heard—

  Samuel Morrison may be doing just that.

  On both counts.

  * * *

  Randall resolved his quandary by deciding to go to the police first. It seemed the fastest way to inspire action. So he dressed in his best dark-navy suit, loose-fitting in the newest style. He preferred the double-breasted, two-vent jackets, as they shaped his slim frame better. A white shirt with a round collar, a maroon tie, and black patent Oxfords finished off the ensemble that screamed “respected professional.”

  He walked into the 18th Police Precinct promptly at 8 a.m. It was located in a newly built five-story building at 230 West Twentieth Street. He’d worked with its captain, a man named Donnelly, before and trusted him. So he seemed the perfect person to bring into his confidence. But Donnelly was out of the building, at a meeting. His assistant, an officer named Figaro, a small man with a thick mustache and wavy black hair, was temporarily in charge. Not the best choice, but the only one available.

  “Randall Wilson,” he said, extending his hand and removing his dark-gray bowler. “I’m a lawyer.”

  Figaro stood up from his desk and they shook hands. The man was short and bulky, and as they met, Randall noticed the pointed look given to his lapel pin. The round metal badge was provided to every member in the Men’s League and showed the organization’s name, surrounding a stylized black flower on an orange background. Distinctive. Different. Every member sported the button, which signaled not only moral support for the cause, but also a sign to any suffragette that its wearer could help her.

  “I have evidence that there’s a plot to set off a bomb during the suffrage parade today,” he said.

  Figaro’s right eyebrow raised in skepticism. “That’s a serious accusation. What kind of evidence?”

  Randall carefully laid the phonograph on the man’s desk and removed the recording he’d brought with him. “It is on this disk, which you can listen to. Is there a place to plug this machine in?”

  The policeman took the cord. But its length was a little short to meet the wall socket, and instead of carefully moving the unit, Figaro tugged. The machine jerked sideways, and before Randall could prevent it, everything crashed to the floor. He was fast enough to catch the machine, but not the disk, which shattered into three pieces.

  “Damn it,” he cursed.

  “I’m so sorry,” Figaro said. “Can’t you just glue it back together?”

  He stared at the idiot with an incredulous glare. “No, you can’t. The recording is ruined. My evidence is gone.”

  “Can’t you just tell me what was on it?” the officer asked.

  He knew he should have written it all down the old-fashioned way. But the whole point of the machine’s new iteration was to eliminate that chore. Besides, an actual recording was far better than a stenographer’s interpretation.

  He stared at the broken pieces in his hands. “It’s not the same. This had the actual voices on it.”

  “How about you start at the beginning?” Figaro suggested. “Where was this conversation you wanted me to hear recorded?”

  “At the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, last evening.”

  “And what precisely was said?”

  “It was a conversation between two men about how a bomb thrown from a window during the parade could create major havoc.”

  “That doesn’t sound to me like a criminal plan to act. More just a conversation about what might happen if something like that occurred.”

  Randall kept his temper in check. “I assure you, the conversation was much more than that, which you could have heard for yourself if you had not broken the recording.”

  “Who are these two men?”

  Randall knew his answer wasn’t going to be received well. “I’m not sure.”

  “Not sure? Yet you’re here making accusations. You’re theorizing that someone’s going to do mischief at the parade, but you don’t know why, and you don’t know who, and you want us to investigate? How many men are membe
rs of the league?”

  “Over five hundred,” Randall said. “But I saw who went in the room and who came out.”

  “Over what period of time?”

  “About thirty-five minutes.”

  “And you were watching the room the whole time?”

  The officer’s barrage of questions unnerved him.

  “I was not in the room during the conversation,” he said. “It had been reserved by a man named Timothy Brisbane for a private meeting. I was downstairs, below the lounge, where the Dictograph machine was located. I couldn’t get it to work right at first. It took a while. But eventually it started recording.”

  “Why were you doing such a thing?”

  “A favor for a friend that did not turn out as planned.”

  He caught the disapproving look on the policeman’s face.

  Which he did not disagree with.

  “I made my way upstairs, but was waylaid by several members having a conversation in the hall. But eventually, two men came out of the lounge, neither one of whom was Timothy Brisbane.”

  “So during that time, this Brisbane exited the room and others entered? And then that might have even happened again. If you were gone for over a half hour there might have been two or three or more people go in and out, without you seeing them. Is that right?”

  Reluctantly, he nodded.

  He wanted to suggest that Figaro missed his calling and should have been a lawyer. Throwing doubt on a situation was exactly what he did every day in court.

  “I know for a fact that at least one of the men I suspect of having this conversation isn’t ethical.”

  He described Samuel Morrison and how he misrepresented and exaggerated the news to sell magazines and tabloids.

  “I am aware of Mr. Morrison,” Figaro said. “His publications are some of the most popular in the city. Forgive me, Mr. Randall, but it sounds like you are the one with the active imagination. Maybe you should be writing for one of Mr. Morrison’s magazines.”

  He resented the barb. “I know what I heard.”

  “And I know what you are telling me. A conversation between two men about a hypothetical situation is hardly evidence. Not to mention why on earth would these men, who belong to an organization that is helping women get the vote, want to disrupt the biggest parade this city might ever have seen, all in support of that effort?”

  After twenty years as a lawyer he’d developed certain instincts, and every one of them was telling him that something bad was coming. Unfortunately, he simply did not have the right answers that this skeptic would accept.

  “Is that all you have?” Figaro finally asked.

  He nodded. “I did have a recording.”

  Figaro ignored the jab. “We have a busy day ahead of us monitoring the parade and keeping the peace, which is never easy during events like this. They are expecting ten thousand marchers and maybe that many or more onlookers lining the route. At the end of the suffrage parade last year we had every cell full, with both men and women. Tempers run high over this issue.”

  Randall ignored the observation.

  Instead, he gathered up his machine and left.

  Back on the street he checked his watch.

  9:05 a.m.

  Six hours until the parade.

  The weather had turned chilly, with a bitter wind whipping between the buildings and knifing through his clothes. He had to get to Florence’s and try to convince her, yet again, to stay away from the parade. His girlfriend was a staunch suffragist, determined to be part of the cause.

  But first he had another stop.

  He found Samuel Morrison’s town house on East Sixty-First Street, a three-story affair with a brick front. A manservant answered the door and advised that Morrison was at his office, but the obstinate employee refused to provide an address. That forced a visit to a nearby newsstand and a quick glance at the latest City Herald in order to learn the publishing office’s location from the masthead. It took another ten minutes for him to find a carriage for hire, then twenty minutes to reach the Flatiron Building.

  Which had garnered quite a reputation.

  Built in 1902, it stood at twenty stories, one of the tallest in the city, filling a triangular block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East Twenty-Second Street. The name came from its clear resemblance to a clothes iron. Inside, he boarded a crowded elevator up. Morrison’s offices were abuzz with activity, surprising for a Saturday. But, in addition to weeklies, the company printed both a morning and evening tabloid seven days a week. Tonight’s edition would surely be all about the parade.

  A receptionist announced him to Morrison, who agreed to see him, so he was shown into the publisher’s office. They knew of one another, but did not know each other. There’d been a few conversations in the lounge, but always with others around. So it was no surprise when the older man looked puzzled by his visitor’s presence.

  “This is a first,” Morrison said. “How can I help you, Randall? It’s a bit busy around here today, what with the parade starting in a few hours.”

  “It’s the parade I came to talk to you about.”

  Morrison was short and squat, like a tree stump. His long nose overhung a grizzly mustache, but his scalp gleamed nearly bald. A leather armchair was offered, and Randall sat before a large desk awash with paper and piles of magazines and newspapers. He settled into the chair, noticing a map on top of one of the piles with a crayon red circle around a section of Fifth Avenue, along with the time 4:15 p.m. scrawled beside it. It was along the announced parade route, which was also denoted by a red line drawn down a section of Fifth Avenue. Randall had lived in the city all his life and knew every nook and cranny. The circle was not far from here, north on Fifth near East Thirty-Fourth Street.

  Morrison caught his interest and slid the pile, with the map, away, dropping the bundle on the floor. “Just more junk. I have a bad habit of keeping an untidy desk.”

  “I know the feeling. Mine is not much better. Are you marching today?” he asked, not sure where he was headed with his questioning.

  Morrison shook his head. “I have to be here to get out the evening edition. But I wish them all the best.”

  “I’m embarrassed to admit, but I don’t read the City Scope. I assume, like you, it’s pro-suffrage?”

  “What kind of hypocrite would I be if it was anything but? Only an ignorant fool would be anti-suffrage.”

  The words sounded sincere. He’d heard them many times at the league. And why would a man who donated time and money to the suffrage cause, a man married to one of the city’s most vocal suffragists, disrupt the parade?

  “Forgive me, Randall, but what is it precisely you want?” Morrison asked.

  “Do you know of anyone at the league who might not be in sympathy with our goals?”

  Morrison appeared puzzled. “A spy?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Or just someone acting under false pretenses, motivated by hate and bigotry. I heard a rumor that’s made me wonder if we have a traitor in our midst.”

  “What kind of rumor?’

  He waved off the inquiry. “It would be unsavory of me to repeat, until it is verified as true.”

  His host appeared annoyed by the comment, which Randall had meant as a rebuke of what Morrison routinely published. “If we do have a spy, I wouldn’t know who it is. I’ve heard nothing but positive support from all the members. It’s downright inspiring, actually. What’s this about?”

  He could not voice the truth, so he opted for a lie. “Just something that has caused me concern. I saw you in the men’s lounge last evening. I didn’t recognize the other gentleman who was with you when you left.”

  Morrison’s eyes narrowed. “Because he was a prospective new member.”

  The lawyer in him rose up. “Really? What is his name?”

  “It would be unsavory of me to reveal that, until he decides whether to join the cause.”

  Touché. Score one for the opposing team.

  “In fac
t,” Morrison said, “there were several men there last night. All prospective members. We had a lively conversation on how we can be better auxiliaries to the brave women fighting the fight today.”

  That, Randall knew was a lie.

  The conversation he’d heard was between only two and it had been far different.

  “Now I’m sorry, Randall, but I have to get back to work and finish my editorial. I’m writing a glowing tribute to the march and its success. We have a vote to win in two weeks, and the movement needs every bit of support we can offer.”

  * * *

  Out on Fifth Avenue, his bowler back on his head, Randall noticed that traffic was steady, but all that would change in five hours. The march would go from Washington Square to Fifty-Ninth Street, a distance of about three miles, which would take it right by here. He imagined what the scene would be once the parade started. People would line the route on both sides of the street. Officer Figaro mentioned thousands could be here. Recent suffrage parades in other cities had exceeded expectations for both marchers and crowds. The same could be true for today. So many people—who might all be in danger.

  And now even more so considering Samuel Morrison’s lies.

  Damn that stupid policeman for his carelessness in breaking the recording.

  But, at the moment, he needed to deal with Florence and convince her not to march in the parade. She was planning on participating along with her daughter, Margaret. Both were proud of their involvement with the movement and had been looking forward to the march for weeks. But even before the potential threat had manifested itself, he’d tried to talk them out of attending. He supported the movement. Absolutely. Women should have the right to vote. And he would fight with any legal means to achieve their goal.