“Ah well, I envy you that, Mr. Drumont. Now, Prime said that your friend Knowles is a fellow rather like me.”
“A policeman? No…”
“No, no, I mean an immigrant from Great Britain—”
“Ah, un immigré…”
“—a fellow my age, and given that you two met in the streets of Paris, during the revolution…”
“Yes. We meet at the revolution.”
“Therefore I deduce that Mr. Knowles is a bit of a red republican, a democrat, a radical—”
“Yes!”
“—probably a good Chartist, as I myself was before I left the sceptred isle.”
Drumont’s weeks searching the taverns and coffeehouses and lecture rooms of radical London had educated him in the vocabulary of British radicalism. “You? Chartist? Now? In America?”
“Mm, no, not exactly, but there is important work to be done even in America—three millions of us are slaves, you know.”
“Les Nègres, the Negroes in…le Sud—‘Go to Alabama with a banjo on my knee.’”
“Yes, from the South, and thousands escaping here, to our free states. Most of my work outside the official purview falls into that category—pro bono, for the Underground Railroad, as we call it. By the way, hurrah for the reform spirit in your country, sir—I was gladdened to hear the new regime in Paris has liberated every slave in all of your colonies.”
“Yes.” In fact, Drumont had been disappointed by the news. He had daydreamed about living a slave master’s life in the Caribbean.
“Perhaps it might require a small second rebellion here in the States to free our slaves, eh? Well, sir, I welcome your assistance in this investigation on behalf of Mr. Prime. My time for private cases is limited—we have all of twelve men in the sheriff ’s department—only twelve, if you can imagine, to police this half-wild city of thirty thousand.”
“Only twelve police.” Drumont did not understand most of the words, but he happily took the meaning—the farther west, the fewer police, the easier his task would be.
“I propose,” Pinkerton continued, “that we agree to split Prime’s fee. To divide the money in half, same for you, same for me? You fifty, me fifty? Do we have a deal?”
Drumont was tempted to say: Non, gardez l’argent, monsieur, keep the cash for yourself, I want only Knowles. But that would make the man suspicious. And besides, after Drumont had apprehended his enemy he could use his half of the detective fee to pay his way to Guadeloupe or St. Martin or Martinique, some warm and fragrant island teeming with barely unshackled French-speaking slaves.
Pinkerton held out his right hand. “Are we in accord, sir?”
Drumont shook. “Oui, en accord, yes. Good. Tell me, please, is Priscilla, Miss Christmas, living now at the Sherman House, Randolph Street?”
Pinkerton lifted his eyebrows and smiled, surprised and impressed. “Why, you are a detective, sir, aren’t you? Priscilla Christmas and her friend Miss Lucking are long gone from the hotel and the city. Precisely where they have gone is the question…although at no time in Chicago, at least, did they rendezvous with your Mr. Knowles. But come, Mr. Drumont,” he said, placing a hand on his new collaborator’s arm, “let me share the file with you, so that you may know what I know…and advance you some cash for your expenses.”
Indiana
THE ROAD OUT of Evansville was rutted, but the coach would reach New Harmony by midday. If they failed to discover Polly and Priscilla there, they would catch a Wabash River steamboat, the Telegraph, leaving New Harmony that afternoon for Terre Haute. As they bumped along, Skaggs struggled to read the day’s Evansville Courier & Press. Before they went five miles he came across an article that would have riveted his attention even if they had not been looking for Polly Lucking.
It was an editorial attack on “a certain notorious settlement” in the central part of the state. The community was said to be inhabited by “a most nauseous sect of socialists and, worse, united fornicators, who live according to a theory of promiscuous intercourse of the sexes so loathsome in its details, so horrifying to all the sensibilities of even the grossest of respectable people, that we shall not sully the columns of this paper with their narration.” Among the communist fornicators, “who clothe themselves exclusively in satanic red,” the Courier & Press noted with relish, were “girls of only thirteen or fourteen, and an actress, formerly of New York City. This ‘dramatic artist,’ who calls herself ‘Miss Lucky,’ was the first of the sect to speak frankly and openly concerning the true and disgusting nature of their heathen way of life, which until now local residents had only suspected.” The editors were pleased, they wrote, that the county’s prosecutor was convening a grand jury with an eye toward “ridding his otherwise decent, Christian province of these blasphemous freethinkers and brazen adulterers.” The colony, “called by Lovely and many furtive aliases in the past, has been known lately as Glee.”
Skaggs closed his newspaper. Lovely was number eleven on their list, just after New Harmony. He was pleased at the prospect of being spared hundreds of miles more of jangling coach travel to Illinois and Wisconsin and all the way through Iowa. But he also felt some melancholy at the prospect of their adventure ending, and returning to life as it was in New York. Should he share the news, or keep quiet and let them discover it tomorrow for themselves?
He folded the paper in half, then quarters, and looked out the window of the coach. Ahead of them he saw a swamp rabbit race across the road toward a mangrove-choked pond, and seconds later a wild dog running after it. The dog stopped short at the water and started barking angrily, sending two geese into flight. Forgetting his rabbit, the dog turned and ran in the direction of the honking, ascending birds. A wild-goose chase. Skaggs sighed loudly.
“What is it,” Ben asked, “that agitates you?”
Skaggs turned to face him. “I believe, sir, that we are close. Our great quest in the West is nearly finished,” he said, handing the newspaper to Ben.
INDEED, THEY WERE very close, and before day’s end would be absurdly closer.
A few hours after dark on the edge of Terre Haute, a stagecoach heading west along the National Road was stopped at the bridge over the Wabash River, waiting as the drawspan was winched open to let a steamer pass through.
The boat had just discharged passengers, including three from New York—two Americans and an Englishman—and now chugged north.
The coach, carrying Polly and Priscilla and the young Billy Whipple and five other travelers, would be at the drawbridge awhile.
Billy stepped outside to wait on the bank. Priscilla stayed in the coach. Sitting at the window next to her, Polly swatted idly at gnats and watched the ripples of moonlight on the black river. She felt content, as unburdened and hopeful as she had been when they’d steamed out of New York. She was happy to be wearing her own good clothing and not any shade of red or pink or peach. She felt liberated. This morning James had called her “damnably, tragically fickle and conceited,” but hadn’t he also said, again and again over the last month, that Glee was “a noble experiment on the human soul”? And during their second (and final) night in bed together, come to think of it, when she’d declined to be gagged with an apple and buggered, he had rather grandly said to her, “‘Experiment,’ my dear, is a verb as well as a noun.” So it was. And noun or verb, it meant a search for some unknown truth by trial and error. Starting today, Polly was going to continue to experiment—to conduct her own experiment.
Glee had been a trial and an error. At their first Session of Mutual Criticism as consociates, Priscilla was chided for “showing both coquetry and selfishness” in her attentions toward Billy. At their second Session of Mutual Criticism, a few days after Polly happened to mention that she had acted on the stage in New York, she was warned by Charity and Hackadiah that plays amounted to “the glorification of insincerity” and that actors were “paid professional liars.” And it had been resolved by a majority vote that Polly and Priscilla would no longer be permit
ted to indulge in their “solitary and unproductive pursuits” of drawing pictures, particularly since “our real trees and grasses and water and sky are superior to any representations of them.”
James, however, had suggested that Polly’s “artistic impulses” be “harnessed productively for the good of the community.” Since she was both “trained in techniques of public performance” and had been “at large in the world” more recently than the rest of them, he suggested that she be appointed “an ambassadress of Glee.” Her mission was to travel among the neighbors to gather signatures on a petition affirming to the county authorities that Glee’s members were “persons of good moral and spiritual character and lovers of good order who mind their own business.”
Within the week, the most shocking details of Polly’s far too candid descriptions of life on the notorious farm had reached the county courthouse in Greencastle. Angry sermons were delivered. Writs were delivered. Glee panicked. Some of the consociates accused Polly of being a “spy” and a “provoker.” The members of Glee had voted that the two women should recompense them by contributing all of their savings to the general treasury, the money to be earmarked for hiring a lawyer to defend the community and for buying one of John Deere’s new self-scouring steel plows to replace their miserable old iron job. Before James had voted aye, he’d pointed at Polly and quoted Scripture: “‘They that plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.’”
The next morning, in the grass not far from the breakfast tables, Priscilla had discovered the blackened remains of Jonathan, her stuffed toy dog.
And the day after that they had left Glee for good, with all their own money in hand.
The steamboat’s stern passed beneath the big oil lamp bolted to the bridge’s trestle. It was the Telegraph, and the name set Priscilla thinking. “Polly? Will you send another wire to Duff? Billy says the wire has reached St. Louis now. To let them know—let him know where we are?”
Polly had not received a reply from Duff. “I shall post a letter to New York. I needn’t give another dollar fifty to the telegraph company.”
For herself, Priscilla had this morning written to her father in New York informing him of her wedding plans. Peregrine Christmas had beaten her and stolen her earnings, but she was, after all, his only living child. He deserved to know that she was to be married.
Nor was this Priscilla’s first letter posted east—last month, at the Sherman House in Chicago, Priscilla had written to Mr. Knowles encouraging him to tell Polly of his loyalty and love, if he still loved her. The note to Ben remained her secret.
“Polly?” she asked.
“Yes, dear?”
“Have you received any letter at all from…from Mr. Knowles, either?”
Polly shook her head. “No,” she said softly.
When she had wired Duff, she knew that he would give Ben her address in Indiana, and she had hoped he might write. She had thought he would at least send her some clarifying gentlemanly epilogue to their affair. Several mornings at Glee, after awaking from dreams of him, she had dared even to imagine that he might write an apology. But did she deserve any apology? Perhaps, she worried, her animal desires did indeed amount to hysteria, a disorder of the mind. In any event, she realized now that her hope for a gallant farewell message was simply another of her romantic notions. Tears formed in her eyes.
“I am quite sure,” she added, affecting a blithe tone, “that I am far from Mr. Knowles’s thoughts.”
“Perhaps,” Priscilla ventured, “he is…bereft, and returned to England.” She paused. “I had one of my daydreams…he was traveling on a steamer.”
Before Polly could answer, the Telegraph’s whistle moaned one last farewell to Terre Haute. The drawspan was closing, and Billy climbed back inside the coach. He was still dressed in a uniform from Glee, but after dark, at least, his maroon coat could pass for black or brown, and his burgundy trousers for blue.
Polly was glad that Priscilla, at least, had come away from Glee with Billy. They’d communed rapturously, Priscilla had told her, practically every night she slept in the Hive. Polly approved of the boy. He smiled easily and sang well. He was kind to children. He also knew a trade, saddlemaking, and had mustered the conviction and resolve at age seventeen to deny his family’s Mormonism and leave them. Priscilla and Billy had pledged to each other that if their affections thrived in the ordinary air outside Glee, and survived the rigors of the journey that lay ahead, they would marry on the twenty-sixth of August, the day after Priscilla’s fourteenth birthday. Polly had extracted a further pledge from him disavowing “the law of the priesthood” and “celestial marriage” and any other Mormon euphemism for taking multiple wives.
“Westward ho,” she said quietly, with a smile, as they rolled noisily onto the planks of the bridge.
Billy had crossed Illinois twice before. “We should make Teutopolis by morning,” he said. “Hitch up a fresh team. And get a good breakfast,” adding almost salaciously, “with bacon.”
“But can we also buy you a new suit of clothes there?” Polly asked with a smile, making Billy blush.
She had come to think of her search for a new way of life as akin to drawing pictures—the blank sheet was always every bit as daunting as it was inviting, and she crumpled and threw away many more sketches than she kept. As for finding some congenial piece of the West to inhabit, she was still curious to try.
The fifteenth and westernmost place on Brisbane’s list was a settlement on the far side of the Missouri River called Humblebee. It had been established by socialist farmers from New Jersey on frontier land. If they were lucky, Polly, Priscilla, and Billy would reach St. Louis on the thirteenth, the day after next, just in time to catch the steamer Omega, and a week later would step into Indian country.
DUFF HAD HIS gun wedged into his belt. It was a clumsy arrangement. The thing weighed almost five pounds, and the tip of the barrel reached halfway to his knee. But he had decided that western Indiana was far enough west that he could wear his revolver without dismaying the inhabitants. He was wrong. All the way from Terre Haute people had eyed the Colt’s suspiciously, and when the coach changed horses in the village of Brazil, the fellow who operated the stage barn asked him directly why on earth he wore a pistol in such a fashion.
“He was wounded in the war,” Skaggs answered, which shut up the man.
IT WAS DUSK when Ben knocked on the front door of the big house. Duff had his coat pulled back to expose the gun.
A woman in a pink dress opened the door and her glance went immediately to the enormous black barrel hanging on Duff ’s hip.
“Good evening, madam,” Ben said, “I am Benjamin Knowles, and we are seeking—”
The door slammed shut. From inside they could hear frantic cries and squeals and running.
“You see?” Skaggs said to Duff. “You’ve only frightened her. Pack that blunderbuss away.”
Ben knocked again.
“Have you come from Greencastle?” asked a well-bred male voice from behind the door. “Is it the sheriff, and if so, do you have a proper warrant?”
“No, no, sir, we are travelers,” Ben shouted. “From New York. We wish you no harm.”
When the door opened again a fierce-looking codger had a shotgun pointed at their shins, and behind him stood a tall, younger man with dramatically long, dark hair combed straight back.
Skaggs gasped. Duff ’s hand tightened around the walnut butt of his pistol.
“Good evening, sirs,” Ben said cheerfully. “We are searching for our friend Miss Lucking, whom we—”
“Slicky Jim Danforth!” shouted Skaggs. “My God! You are the nobo-daddy of this place? You old rapscallion! The last time I saw you, you were drenched in rum and munching the tits of a Portuguese whore in Market Square! In…my Lord, when now?…the summer of ’32! What became of you that night, Slicky Jim? We looked in every grog shop and whorehouse in Portsmouth. We worried you’d gone for a swim in the sea with your senhorita and drowned!”
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br /> During their freshman year together at Dartmouth, James Danforth and Timothy Skaggs had run in the same social circle. At the end of the school year, several of the boys spent a dissolute seaport weekend together in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was the last time Skaggs had seen him.
Granby, the codger with the gun, was now eyeing James.
“Hallo, Timothy,” Danforth finally said. “What a great surprise to see you here. And you, good sir,” he said to Ben more warmly, “are after Miss Lucking? I am afraid that you are an instant late.”
“Goddammit,” Ben shouted, stamping his foot on the porch.
Inside the Hive, they were presented with water and plates of cold corn and raw asparagus, and offered beds for the night in two sleeping huts. Presence, Charity, and Hackadiah joined them as they ate. Seeing that every article of clothing worn by every inmate was dyed some shade of red, Duff nudged Skaggs, who furtively nodded. Ben asked if they might light a lamp or a candle, but Danforth explained their prohibition on animal-fat illumination—including, he was sorry to say, the new Cincinnati candles Skaggs had in his bag. Duff asked if beeswax candles, expense aside, would be considered acceptably humane, which provoked an excited discussion among Presence and Charity.
As the visitors listened to the brief debate, each of them silently considered the more or less identical vulgar question: Could these ordinary, thoughtful, Quakerish women really be the sluts and slammerkins the newspaper had described? In Skaggs, the idea produced an erection; in Duff, embarrassment and pity. And for Ben, the thought was only a momentary stepping-stone, alas, to the inevitable contemplation of Polly in their orgiastic company.
When Danforth explained that Polly and Priscilla had resigned their places at Glee only twenty-four hours earlier, “by mutual agreement,” because “they did not see eye to eye with our principles,” Ben was cheered. The women had left this morning, Danforth added, bound for St. Louis and then, they said, up the Missouri River toward the big Mormon settlements.
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