Soldier of the Horse

by Robert W. Mackay

  The policemen sat him down in an interview room where they removed the handcuffs, leaving him alone, and took up station just outside the open door. A few minutes later John Evans came in and shut the door behind him.

  Tom straightened. Besides being a big-shot lawyer, Evans was the father of Ellen. Good lord, what must Ellen think when she heard about all this?

  John Evans was a slim, immaculate figure in a three-piece suit. “Your father has asked me to advise you.”

  Tom wasn’t sure he needed advice. What he needed was to turn back the clock, get out of this mess. “I really don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I think you may know more than you’re letting on. But never mind that for now. I’m not comfortable acting for you. For personal reasons. And because nobody knows where the police investigation will go next.” Evans paused. “I must attend to something right away, but I’ll be back in a few minutes. You can decide if you want me to help you, or not.” He turned on his heel and walked out.

  This was a nightmare, a nightmare parallel to the one Tom sometimes dreamed in which he had to run from terrible danger but could move at only a tenth his normal speed. Like trying to run in water up to his waist. But this time he was up to his neck.

  For years, Tom had looked forward to becoming a lawyer. His family had scrounged and saved so he could go to university. He looked up to lawyers—ironically, he had even looked up to Henry Zink. Zink had a colourful history, but what mattered to Tom was completing articles so he could be called to the bar. He wanted to share in the camaraderie and professionalism of the lawyers he had met; he wanted to help people, and he wanted to make money and gain the respect it would bring. But back in his cell, Zink was talking like a crook.

  Tom was in big trouble, and John Evans, King’s Counsel, wanted to “advise” him. But Tom knew Evans had some sort of problems of his own, in spite of the lawyer’s position. What would be next—advice that Tom should plead guilty?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Only a few weeks before, on the day Tom met John Evans for the first time, the Portage Avenue streetcar had bumped and rumbled west along the avenue of the same name. There was nobody in it but the driver, Tom, and a sixtyish, well-dressed woman who glared at him through tiny glasses perched on the end of her nose. A Union Jack brooch clung to her ample bosom. In her spare time she’d be knitting socks for the boys going overseas and no doubt was wondering why he, young and fit, wasn’t with them.

  He scanned the front page of the Free Press. The British government—and hence Canada—had declared war on Germany barely a month before. Now, in early September of 1914, the professional soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force and the French army had been staggered by the German army’s rush through Belgium. British and French alike were struggling with Germans on the outskirts of Paris. In response to these doleful circumstances, Canadian recruiting offices had been overwhelmed with volunteers; the Canadian Expeditionary Force was mustering in Valcartier, Quebec, where it prepared to cross the Atlantic to save the Empire. Well, the Canadian army could do it without Tom. He was an articled student of the law with a fine career beckoning.

  He left the newspaper on the streetcar when he got off and walked the three blocks south to John Evans’s home on Wolseley Avenue. A whiff of burning leaves spiced the clear fall air; the elm trees that lined the street glowed green in the late afternoon sun. Winnipeg was the largest city in western Canada, the Gateway to the West. Located at the strategic junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, it boasted electric streetlights and the magnificent Walker Theatre, an opera house that rivalled anything in eastern Canada.

  Tom was nervous about this, the first Evans garden party to which he had been invited. The parties were a fixture of the season, a must for up-and-coming young lawyers and other professionals, and many of Winnipeg’s leading lights would be there. And with any luck, some eligible young women.

  Tom walked up to the brass-studded door and banged the knocker. While he waited he took a quick look around at the expensive homes with their well-tended lawns. Two years earlier, while he was in university, he had worked for the summer installing sewers two blocks over. He was finished with crawling in muddy ditches and damn glad of it.

  Steps echoed from inside the house and the door opened. An older man in grey striped trousers and a charcoal jacket stood to one side, his face neutral.

  Tom stuck out his hand. “Tom Macrae, Mr. Evans. How do you do?”

  The man ignored his hand. “I am the butler, sir. This way.”

  The butler turned away and Tom followed him in. He could feel his cheeks burning. Great start, Tom.

  They walked through the house, dark after the brilliant outdoor light, and out to a back garden with an acre of lawn, scattered flowerbeds, and ornamental trees. The butler approached a dapper, elegant man in his fifties, speaking to a girl who looked to be in her late teens, and an elderly couple.

  “Mr. Tom Macrae,” the butler intoned.

  The dapper man, who had a well-barbered head of grey hair and a thin mustache, gave Tom a cool smile and a hand to shake. “John Evans, Mr. Macrae. Welcome to our annual affair.”

  The other couple meandered off, but the girl stayed. She had a direct gaze, blue eyes, and a spray of freckles. She was tall, almost as tall as Tom, and her chestnut hair cascaded to her shoulders.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us, Daddy?” she asked, as she linked her arm in her father’s.

  “Of course, my dear. This is Mr. Tom Macrae, an articled law student. He works for Henry Zink, one of our . . . more colourful criminal lawyers.”

  The girl made a small movement of her head and shifted her body slightly, the movement striking Tom as somewhere between the start of a curtsy and a royal nod. He reluctantly turned back to John Evans, who was still speaking. “Mr. Macrae, my daughter Ellen. She has been attending school in the east.”

  Tom took in Ellen’s willowy, fashionable shape, draped in a demure blue dress that failed to hide her appealing figure.

  “You work for Mr. Zink?” she asked. “Then you’ll know all about Bloody Jack Kravenko. Have you met him?”

  “Oh, I’ve met him right enough,” Tom replied, and was about to let some titillating detail slip to keep Ellen’s attention. His recent working days had been spent with Henry Zink and Kravenko, preparing for Bloody Jack’s murder trial.

  John Evans frowned and interrupted. “Now, I am sure Mr. Macrae doesn’t want to talk about clients. And I see more guests have arrived. Come along, Ellen, and we’ll say hello.”

  Evans guided Ellen away, but as he did so, she looked back at Tom with a quick, direct glance and a conspiratorial smile that made him feel lightheaded.

  A punch bowl and sandwiches were set up on a table under the rustling leaves of a willow tree. Tom wandered over and helped himself to a glass of punch. It looked innocuous, a neutral yellowish liquid with pieces of fruit floating in it, but his first sip revealed a refreshing citrus tang, followed by a slight tingle. He refilled his glass, and turned as a tall, khaki-clad man marched up to stand next to him. Calf-high leather boots glistened below the uniform of a lieutenant in the Canadian army.

  “I’m told you are Henry Zink’s latest student,” he said, in what to Tom sounded like a vaguely English accent, while ladling a measure of punch into a glass.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Cedric Inkmann. You must know my brother Bernard.”

  “Of course.” Tom knew the Inkmanns were well connected in Winnipeg—indeed, Canadian—society. Cedric was a larger version of his brother, who continued to work for Zink in some ill-defined role. “How long have you been in the army?”

  “Years,” Inkmann said. “In the militia. Now that war has been declared I’m on active duty. I work at Winnipeg Depot, on training staff. Bit of a challenge, teaching farm boys to march.”

  Tom noted another characteristic common to the Inkmann brothers: They never quite looked you in the eye when they spoke.

  To
m had drained his second glass. He refilled it again, and looked around to see if there was anything interesting going on, such as any sign of Ellen Evans. He caught sight of her as she strolled with another girl on the far side of the lawn.

  Cedric Inkmann interrupted Tom’s thoughts. “You needn’t waste your efforts there. She won’t have time for the likes of you.”

  Tom felt a surge of anger at Inkmann’s tone. The aristocratic accent didn’t help. “You should mind your own business,” he growled, temper flaring. He felt like smashing Inkmann in the face, but instead he placed his glass on the table, working hard to stop his hand from shaking, giving his anger time to dissipate. On his best behaviour, he turned and walked away.

  Tom was his father’s son. Bill Macrae was a hard-driving, hard-drinking prairie contractor; he would hire dozens of rambunctious teamsters and labourers for various projects, and didn’t hesitate to maintain order with his fists or whatever tool came to hand. Sometimes Tom, as the boss’s son, was sent to collect teamsters from back alleys in the North End where they were sleeping off the effects of a night’s carousing. Still drunk or angry men sometimes took a swing at him and the fight would be on. But Tom reasoned that bare-knuckle brawling was not a requirement for a law career and might even interfere with it, so he did his best to avoid trouble.

  He took a deep breath and contented himself by exploring the back of the Evans lawn, which looked out on the Assiniboine River. The sight of the grey-brown river, slowing to flow into the Red two miles downstream, calmed him until the punch bowl once again beckoned. Inkmann had moved on and was nowhere to be seen.

  The sun had slipped down behind trees to the west, and some of the guests, as if responding to its pull, were leaving. Tom saw a group of young people, mostly men, around Ellen and her friend. One of the uniformed men was Bill Reagan, whom he knew from university.

  He walked over and noticed that Bill stood face to face with Ellen, which puzzled him. Bill was several inches shorter than Tom.

  Ellen said something to Bill that Tom didn’t hear.

  “Fort Garry Horse,” Bill responded. “It’s a reserve unit, but we’re being brought up to full strength in order to be ready to go overseas as soon as possible. Cavalry.”

  “Cavalry?” Tom butted in. “The papers say there’s no place for cavalry in modern warfare.”

  “Nonsense.” Bill snorted as if he were a horse himself. “Mounted soldiers are very mobile.” He added with a laugh, “And at least I’ll go to war like a gentleman. On horseback.”

  “A gentleman? Guess that lets me out,” Tom joked, and was rewarded by appreciative chuckles.

  He saw that Bill was standing on a flat stone, one of several that bordered a flower bed. No wonder he was eyeball to eyeball with Ellen. When he teetered a little, Tom reached up with his right hand, grasped the back of Bill’s tunic and pulled him down off his perch. He put his arm around his friend’s shoulders and grinned at Ellen.

  “Now where did Bill go?” Ellen laughed. “I could have sworn I was just talking to him.”

  “Oh, Bill is right here. He always lands on his feet, even if he falls from a great height.”

  “And what about you, Tom Macrae? Do you always land on your feet?”

  “Always. And I’ve got nowhere to go but up.”

  Ellen gave him a frank look and smiled. “You must tell me about it some day. But I see Daddy waving, and I have guests to say goodbye to. I do want to hear all about Bloody Jack Kravenko and Henry Zink, though.”

  She gave a little wave of her hand, which might have been an embrace, given its effect on Tom as he watched her walk away. He had felt lightheaded earlier; now he figured it was a miracle his feet remained on the ground.

  Miss Ellen Evans wanted to see him again.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Tom’s reveries were interrupted by the sound of John Evans’s voice out in the courthouse hall, talking to the policemen. Evans came back into the interview room, closed the door behind him, and sat across the table from Tom. His face was haggard, as if he, too, hadn’t slept well.

  “I’m willing to help in a limited fashion, but after today I have worries of my own.”

  “I don’t want . . .”

  Evans cut Tom off with a raised hand. “I’m going to bring you up to date, then you can decide what you want to do. As you know, Bloody Jack is on the run. He escaped using a gun smuggled in to him by persons unknown.” Evans gave Tom a sharp glance. Tom was annoyed at the unspoken question, but at the same time he was amused at Evans’s tone, which would have been more in keeping with an address to the House of Lords. “Kravenko used the gun to subdue the guards. He locked them in a storage room and climbed to the roof. Once there, he let himself down the outside of the jail, but the rope, which had also been smuggled in, parted when he was halfway down.”

  Tom would have laughed aloud if he hadn’t been in jail himself. Jack Kravenko, the scourge of the entire province of Manitoba, the man who had eluded and taunted the police for months, had taken a pratfall while escaping jail. Tom was almost afraid to ask. “What kind of gun did Bloody Jack have? Where did he get it?”

  “I don’t know. But I fear the worst.”

  “Meaning it was smuggled in by Henry Zink?”

  “Precisely.”

  Tom’s mind raced. Henry Zink, Bloody Jack’s lawyer, had been arrested, presumably due to the jailbreak. Tom had been arrested, linked to the escape by the simple fact that he worked for Zink, but not only that: Tom, and others, had often met with Kravenko in his cell. And somehow a gun had ended up in Bloody Jack’s possession.

  “Unfortunately, for Kravenko and perhaps for others,” Evans continued, “he appears to have been injured in the fall. Even so, he hobbled off and made good his escape, although he dropped the gun at the scene.”

  “What do you mean, unfortunate for him ‘and perhaps for others’?” Tom asked. A thought flashed through his mind: too bad Jack hadn’t broken his neck; it would save the government the hangman’s fee. But that was no way for a student lawyer to think.

  “What I mean, Mr. Macrae, is that if and when the police capture Kravenko, they will take a statement from him. Who knows what he will say in an effort to gain some advantage?” Evans gave Tom a searching glance. “And that could affect a lot of people. I must also tell you that your employer, Henry Zink, is under arrest.”

  “I know Henry was arrested. We shared accommodation last night.” Tom mulled over what Evans had said. “Just a minute,” he cried, relief in his voice. The words rushed out. “You. You were in the cell with Bloody Jack and Zink and me before his escape. We all carried briefcases. I was the first to leave, and I took my briefcase with me.” He stopped. He had been about to say that, for all he knew, Zink or Evans could have smuggled in the gun. He didn’t trust Zink, but he did not want to come to the same conclusion about John Evans.

  As if he read Tom’s mind, Evans said, “I do recall you leaving, but for some reason you were not signed out. I was. So was Zink, later on. So I have corroboration that Henry was in with Bloody Jack, after I left. You don’t have that corroboration. My evidence would help you, but that makes me a witness, so I can’t act as your lawyer in any formal way.”

  Again Tom desperately cudgelled his memory. Why had he not signed out of the jail after the meeting with Evans, Zink, and Bloody Jack? And who knew what story Zink was concocting to clear his name while implicating Tom? His mind rocked with an image of himself once again behind bars.

  “I’ve got to get out of this.” His voice cracked. He felt like ramming his head against the wall.

  Evans spoke quietly. “There is something we can do.”

  Tom looked at him.

  “Judge Paterson of the appeal court has taken a personal interest in your case. I know him well and have arranged an interview with him.” He pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket. “He’s waiting for us now.”

  Tom had nothing to lose. Evans led the way out of the room and down the hall to the
judge’s chambers, policemen pacing behind them. He knocked on a door, and one of the constables put his hand on Tom’s arm.

  “Come,” reverberated a muffled voice from inside.

  Evans opened the door, and Tom and the policemen followed him in. Seated in front of a large desk was Tom’s father, Bill, and behind the desk, in a tall, ornate chair, was Court of Appeal Justice George Paterson. Paterson had once been Bill’s lawyer.

  On the wall behind the judge was the Manitoba coat of arms; paintings of buffalo and Native encampments were hung on the other three sides of the room.

  Paterson nodded at the policemen. “That will be all, gentlemen.” They left, shutting the door behind them with a barely audible click.

  Paterson stood, not a tall man, but an imposing, portly figure in waistcoat, striped trousers, and wing collar, with his robe tossed casually across a side table. He held out his hand and Tom shook it, not knowing what to expect. The judge steered him and Evans to chairs, then returned to his own.

  “This is rather unusual. I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re here,” said Paterson, as Tom glanced from the judge to his father. “Your father and your counsel,” he continued, nodding at Evans, “have brought me up to date on the charges you face. I’m discussing this with you, by the way, out of respect for your father and of course I know John Evans well. But if any aspect of this matter reaches the Court of Appeal I will excuse myself and leave the field to my brother judges. So much for the formalities. From what I understand, the police, in spite of the charges they have laid, do not have a strong case against you. Their theory is that you filed the serial numbers off a gun, then smuggled it in to Kravenko.”

  “I didn’t smuggle any gun. Or file off any serial numbers.”

  “I’ll take your word on that, for the sake of our present discussion,” Paterson said, frowning. “I understand, however, that a Colt hammerless automatic, probably the weapon Kravenko used in his escape, was stolen from Ashdown’s Hardware by persons unknown. I also understand,” and he flashed a glance at Evans, “that it was delivered to Zink’s office. And that you, Zink, and Mr. Evans here visited Kravenko in his cell some time after that.”