Escape to the World's Fair

by Wendy McClure

  “Elijah? Elijah Pike!”

  Eli turned. “Willie?” he called back.

  Jack turned to see the tall teenage boy Eli had pointed out earlier as his cousin coming up the street toward the temple entrance. He headed straight for Eli, who ran to meet him with a grin.

  “I thought that was you walking by the restaurant!” Willie said. “My mama and Aunt Viola have been wondering about you ever since we got word that you left home.”

  “It’s a long story,” Eli told him. “But these are my friends.” He motioned over to Jack, Frances, Harold, and Alexander. “We’ve all been traveling together.”

  “We were on a railroad handcar!” Harold told Willie. “And then in a motorcar. And then a steamboat!”

  Willie shook all their hands. “I bet you have some stories,” he said to Eli. “I’m done with my shift now. How about I buy you a lemonade and you tell me all about it?”

  Eli smiled. “I’ll be back in a little bit,” he said to Jack. He glanced over at Madame Zee, who was still dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “Seems like this day has been all about finding family,” he added.

  As Jack watched Eli and his cousin make their way to one of the refreshment stands, he realized he still had the amulet in his hand. He took it over to Madame Zee, who was showing the others some of her fortune-telling cards.

  “I am glad to have it again,” she said. “I tell you truth—these amulets, they are not real gold. They are sold as souvenirs back in Egypt! But it is good for my heart to have this one back.”

  Harold looked up. “Is it time to give the reward now?” he asked.

  Madame Zee’s brow furrowed. “Reward?” she asked. “But . . . it is only a trinket. I have no reward to give.”

  Jack felt his face grow hot. He had forgotten all about the idea of a reward, and now it seemed foolish to ask for one.

  “But there is a reward, Harold,” Frances said. She crouched down to look eye-to-eye with Harold, and she pulled him close. “Did you see how very glad Madame Zee was when she found out Mr. Zogby was okay?”

  Harold nodded quickly. “She was crying. But it was happy crying, and I hugged her.”

  “That was really nice, wasn’t it?”

  A smile began to spread over her little brother’s face. “Yes.”

  “Well,” Frances said. “I think that was our reward, don’t you?”

  Harold reached up and gave Madame Zee’s hand a squeeze. “Yes!”

  Jack could feel himself starting to smile, too. As much as he’d wished for that reward money, maybe Frances was right and what had happened today was enough.

  “But, um . . .” Alexander began. He was trying to smile, but it was strained. “The thing is, we promised Dutch and those fellows that we would share the reward with them. And, well, this has been a nice reward, but I don’t know how we’re going to share it. . . .”

  “Oh, no,” Jack whispered. “Dutch and Finn . . .”

  “. . . and Owney and Chicks,” Harold continued.

  “We forgot about them!” Frances cried. “You don’t suppose something happened to them after they gave the signal, do you?”

  Alexander looked stricken. “We’d better look for them.”

  “What is wrong?” Madame Zee asked them. “The four of you, you look just like you did when you came out of the Temple of Mirth!”

  “We have four friends who might be in trouble,” Jack said. “They were hiding out in the Tyrolean Alps. But we don’t know if they stayed there!”

  Madame Zee was thinking. “I know a good way you get there fast.” She pointed down the Pike. “You go behind under and over the sea. There is a back door. Go through, and you’ll be in the alley next to the Alps.”

  The directions made Jack’s head spin. Behind, under, and over the sea? He couldn’t imagine what she possibly meant.

  “Go!” Madame said. “Hurry!”

  The four children took off running, past the Ancient Rome exhibit, Hagenbeck’s Animals, and Hunting in the Ozarks. The Pike seemed to Jack like an endless river of flickering electric light and calliope music, a river that could swallow them up if they weren’t careful.

  Suddenly Frances skidded to a stop. “There!” she said, pointing to an arched entrance with the words UNDER & OVER THE SEA on it. Jack nearly laughed out loud. It was another Pike attraction!

  “Madame Zee said to go behind it,” Jack said. They darted down the side of the building. They passed two women dressed as glittering mermaids, and then a man in a sea-monster costume who nearly dropped his frankfurter sandwich as they ran by.

  Finally they were in a dim alleyway that ran between the back of the Pike buildings and the boundary wall of the fairgrounds. Jack could just make out the side of the fake mountain, and they began to walk toward it. But they noticed something else, too, at the end of the alley just below the mountain—something large and dark with touches of glinting brass.

  “It’s a motorcar!” Harold exclaimed.

  It was an impressive car, with a hard top and glass windows. It was parked just around the bend and was so big they could only see the front half of it—the shining black hood that jutted out into the alley. As the children walked toward it they saw that it was flanked by a man with driving goggles and a uniform—Jack supposed he was the chauffeur—and two Jefferson Guards who stood at attention.

  “That car must belong to someone important,” Alexander said. “Look at all the guards.”

  But as they drew closer, Jack realized something. “They’re not just guarding the car,” he said. “Someone’s inside.” He could just barely make out four figures through the windows. Then one of them put his hands up to the glass in the side window and peered out at them.

  “That’s Owney!” Frances whispered.

  After a moment they could see Dutch peering out the window too, and then the other two boys. Dutch put his fingers to his lips as if to say, Be quiet. Jack could tell the guards hadn’t noticed their group coming down the alley yet, but they could at any moment.

  “We’d better hide,” Jack whispered. He was sure that the car belonged to Edwin Adolphius.

  Frances nodded. “Where?”

  Jack didn’t answer. Because just then another figure emerged from around the corner.

  Miss DeHaven walked around the front of the car and faced them. She straightened her beautiful hat and smiled, as if she’d been waiting for them all along.

  26

  WHAT MISS DEHAVEN DID

  “Don’t worry, children,” Miss DeHaven said. “We wouldn’t dare leave without you.”

  She began to walk toward them slowly and deliberately, then nudged the two guards, who joined her. “In fact, we’ve been waiting for you this whole time,” she continued.

  With each step of Miss DeHaven’s approach, Frances took a step of her own in the opposite direction, pulling Harold along with her. Jack and Alexander did the same thing, each one faced with a guard.

  “Just keep backing up,” Jack whispered. “Slowly.” Frances wanted nothing more than to turn around and run, but maybe Jack had a plan of some kind.

  “I do hope you had a delightful visit here at the Exposition,” Miss DeHaven said. “Your friends here”—she nodded toward the car—“couldn’t resist leaving their little hiding place to see the sights!”

  Frances took another step back, then another, trying to keep Harold shielded behind her. Any moment it seemed Miss DeHaven or the guards might lunge at them, but still they didn’t.

  She wants us to run, Frances realized. Running would cause a scene, attract more of the Jefferson Guards. But as long as they kept moving backward, each step took Miss DeHaven and the guards further from the motorcar where the older boys were being held.

  She took another step back as the chaperone moved toward her.

  “I trust you’ll find the industrial
school to be quite exciting,” Miss DeHaven said. “I do hope your young brother is willing to work hard!”

  A cold prickling feeling swept all up and down Frances’s arms and she froze in her place. She took a deep breath.

  Miss DeHaven stepped forward. And forward again. Harold retreated a few more paces, but Frances stayed where she was.

  She stayed rooted there until Miss DeHaven was right in front of her, looking her up and down the way she had back in New York, the day she’d come to the Howland Mission for Little Wanderers. She’d had no idea who Miss DeHaven was at the time, but Frances often thought about what she would have done if she had known.

  Miss DeHaven took one more step.

  Frances put her hands out and shoved her as hard as she could.

  “Why—YOU!” Miss DeHaven screeched. She staggered backward a few steps on her heels. “You little hellion!”

  Frances charged forward and pushed her again. Her eyes burned with hot tears, and the edges of her vision were blurry white. She sensed things happening beyond the white—there were shouts, and the noise of pounding feet—but all she wanted to do was shove and push and shove and shove.

  Just then someone grabbed her arm and yanked her away.

  “That was really something, Queenie!”

  Dutch! The older boys must have seen their chance to escape from the car!

  Chicks and Finn and Owney had joined Jack and Alexander in their standoff with the two guards. The two sides glared at each other as if daring the other to make a move. As for Miss DeHaven, she had retreated several paces back and now hung limply on the arm of the chauffeur—though Frances didn’t believe for a moment that she was truly feeling faint.

  A quick pang of worry hit Frances just then. “Where’s Harold?” she gasped. She turned and saw that he’d run back down the alley and was now standing with Eli and his cousin, who she supposed had come looking for them.

  Pheee-eeeeee! Someone was blowing a whistle down at the end of the alley.

  Another Jefferson Guard had appeared. “Order!” he called, and everyone turned.

  “Stand down, men,” he said to the two guards. “The reward for catching these kids has been cancelled.”

  The two guards nodded. They shrugged at Jack, Alexander, and the four older boys, who relaxed their stances and breathed sighs of relief.

  “What?” Miss DeHaven cried. “What’s going on?”

  The guard pointed to the motorcar. “Is this Mr. Edwin Adolphius’s automobile?”

  The chauffeur nodded as the guard approached him and Miss DeHaven.

  Frances recognized the guard’s curled mustache—he’d been with Mr. Adolphius earlier! He handed a note to the chauffeur, who read it, stunned.

  “Give me that!” Miss DeHaven grabbed the note to take a look. After a moment she gasped. “Arrested? For smuggling?”

  The guard nodded gravely and turned to the chauffeur. “Mr. Adolphius asked that his car be returned to the Southern Hotel.”

  Miss DeHaven turned the note over, and when she saw the other side was blank she crumpled it and tossed it down. “Did he have any message for me?”

  The guard and the chauffeur exchanged sheepish looks. “Er . . . no, ma’am.”

  The color drained from Miss DeHaven’s face. But then she seemed to compose herself, reaching up to fix her hat, which had gone askew when Frances had shoved her. “Very well,” she muttered.

  Frances had been almost holding her breath ever since the guard blew his whistle. But now she met Jack and Alexander’s questioning looks—Miss DeHaven couldn’t do anything to them now, could she?

  “What are you filthy brats looking at?” she said, glancing over at Frances and Jack and the others. Miss DeHaven enjoyed being a bully as long as she could threaten to send children to Mr. Adolphius’s factory or to the Pratcherd Ranch, but there wasn’t much she could do all on her own.

  “N-nothing,” Alexander said.

  Mr. Adolphius’s chauffeur dutifully walked over to the back of the car and began to work the crank. Miss DeHaven patted her hat again and looked all around—she seemed nervous, almost fidgety. She opened the small beaded pocketbook she carried, frowned, and then shut it again.

  After about a dozen cranks the automobile engine sputtered and then began to chug, with a regular rhythm. Frances watched as the chauffeur detached the crank, then put it away in the trunk.

  He looked up as he closed the trunk. “Hey!” he yelled.

  Frances turned in time to see Miss DeHaven shut the car door. She’d climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “She’s taking Mr. Adolphius’s motorcar!” Jack exclaimed.

  Miss DeHaven’s face was grimly determined behind the wheel. The car shot forward, braked abruptly with a screech, then lurched into the alley.

  Frances stood frozen in amazement until Alexander grabbed her arm and yanked her over to the edge of the alley with the others, safely out of the way.

  “Stop!” the chauffeur bellowed as he lunged into the motorcar’s path. But Miss DeHaven steered right around him. Then, with a few more lurches and a sharp pop! of the engine, she turned and drove out of the fairground gates.

  The three Jefferson Guards grinned and scratched their heads.

  “That was the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen!” said Finn.

  “Was that car a Pierce-Arrow?” called Eli’s cousin, Willie.

  “Report that car stolen!” the chauffeur demanded of the Jefferson Guards.

  Frances turned to Alexander and Jack. “Where do you suppose Miss DeHaven’s headed?”

  “Back to New York?” Alexander guessed.

  Frances tried to read Jack’s face at the mention of New York, but she couldn’t. He gave only a wry smile.

  “Maybe she’s going someplace where she feels more at home,” he said.

  • • •

  “Is it true what that guard told us?” Chicks asked as they all walked back along the Pike to the Temple of Palmistry. “That there ain’t no reward for catching us now?”

  Jack nodded. “It’s true, all right.” But his smile wasn’t as glad as it could be, and Frances knew why.

  “But, um, speaking of rewards,” Frances began. She knew the older boys got along with her the best, so she figured she ought to deliver the bad news. “We found the owner of the medallion. But . . . there wasn’t a reward.” Not money, anyway, she thought to herself.

  Finn’s face fell. “Oh,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets.

  Owney shrugged. “I figured.”

  “That’s just how it goes,” Dutch mumbled. “Stuff like that, it’s always too good to be true.”

  “The thing is, though,” Alexander said suddenly, “we do have something we can share with you.”

  Frances and Jack exchanged confused looks. What was he talking about?

  Alexander reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. Right away Frances realized what it was.

  Jack did, too. “The steamboat fare!” he whispered. They’d forgotten all about it.

  “Mr. Zogby gave this to us,” Alexander explained, “so that we could travel first-class on the Addie Dauphin. . . .”

  The memory came back to Frances. “But the man selling tickets told us to ride with the ‘river rats,’ and so we kept the fare. Saved it.”

  Dutch grinned. “River rats. That’s us!”

  “Anyway,” said Alexander, “Mr. Zogby gave that money to us because he wanted us to have a good journey. . . .”

  “And we did! Thanks to you,” Jack told the older boys.

  “You helped us escape!” Eli said.

  Alexander looked around at his friends’ faces. By now Frances had guessed what Alexander wanted to do, and she nodded, as if to say Go ahead. Jack nodded, too.

  The older boys guessed, too. “You’re sharing that mo
ney with us?” Finn said. “After everything that’s happened?”

  “Like when we took your medallion,” Dutch said. “Because we didn’t trust you. I mean, we never trust anyone!”

  “But do you trust us now?” Alexander asked.

  Dutch didn’t say anything for a moment or two. He exchanged glances with Finn and Chicks and Owney.

  Finally they nodded their heads. Yes.

  “Let’s shake hands!” Dutch said, reaching out with his. When he got to Frances, he bowed. “Was a pleasure meeting you, Queenie.”

  She laughed. “Likewise, Mr. Dutch.”

  Owney spoke up. “I know what we should do with the money! The four of us can take a train somewheres. Someplace we can be on our own. And where we can start our own Wanderville.”

  Alexander’s face lit up. “That’s . . . that’s a fine idea! An amazing idea!”

  “Can there be more than one Wanderville?” Harold asked.

  Alexander reached over and tousled his red hair. “Sure,” he said. “Why not? It’s a town that can go anyplace. Maybe that includes being in more than one place at a time.”

  They all decided right then that it would be another law of Wanderville: There can be as many Wandervilles as anyone ever needs.

  27

  MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, LOUIS

  Back at the Temple of Palmistry, Madame Zee had brought them all sweets from the restaurant at the Streets of Cairo exhibit—pieces of Turkish delight, sweet cakes, and little round doughnuts dripping with honey.

  All ten of them—Jack and his friends, Eli’s cousin, and Dutch’s gang—sat on the pillows and carpets in the front room, eating all they could and listening to Madame Zee’s stories of fortune-telling and performing illusions.

  “In fact,” she said. “I will tell my own fortune now. I foretell that my son Philander will read in the newspaper about Mr. Adolphius. And then he will send me a telegram!”

  “I think that will happen!” Eli said. “I hope it’s soon.”

  Afterward, Madame Zee gave them all the leftovers wrapped in paper and wrote down her address in Frances’s reader so that they could write to her one day.