The scream was painful to hear, a clear note twisted horribly sharp as if wrung by malicious hands. Edward was crossing the machine floor landing; his head snapped around instinctively in the direction of this piercing cry. A girl was advancing towards him in the dull ochre light. She’d just walked out from among the small chucking lathes, cutting devices used in the shaping of the pistol barrels. Her movements were odd, the footsteps shuffling and irregular. There was a look of stunned helplessness on her wide, plain face. Edward found that he recognised her. She was a regular in the Spread Eagle; her name was Nancy. Only two nights previously she’d laughed at him from across the bar when he’d looked in briefly – and in vain – after the factory had closed.
Nancy was very far from laughter now. Her hands were clasped between her thighs, and a black stain was spreading fast down the front of her dress. Their eyes met. A question started to form on his lips; but before he could speak she screamed again, even louder this time. Several other female operatives rushed out from their posts, surrounding her, addressing her with firm concern, telling her that she had to show them what had happened. After a few seconds she complied, her left hand jerking out into the open. Edward gulped; the index finger was completely gone, clipped clean off down to the knuckle, and a good portion of the ring finger was missing too. Two little jets of blood, thick and viscous like crimson wax, pumped from the wounds in grotesque symmetry. Those gathered around Nancy gasped out curses and prayers. She herself began to shake uncontrollably, moaning with terror.
Amid the general alarm one of the women took charge, removing her apron and wrapping the mangled hand in it as best she could. She then began looking around, calling for the overseer. It was Caroline Knox.
‘Bind it!’ Alvord had appeared at the far end of the machine room and was striding down the central aisle. He had the strained air of someone to whom such bloody incidents were simple delays – inconvenient, tedious facts of his existence. ‘Bind the wound just below where she’s cut! Do it now, damn it, as tightly as you can!’
Miss Knox attempted to obey him, peeling back the apron, but as soon as he reached them Alvord pushed her aside and took over. ‘Quit your wailing,’ he barked at Nancy, tearing off the apron’s fastening cord, ‘you ain’t in any serious danger here. You’ve lost a digit, that’s all – and due to your own carelessness, more’n likely. Now hold still.’
Grimacing, the stout Colt man coiled the cord around Nancy’s hand and tightened it without mercy. The injured girl fell directly into a faint, slumping into the arms of the woman standing behind her. Alvord swiftly bound the wound in the remainder of the apron and then gave Nancy’s face a hard slap. She came to her senses, retching up a cupful of bile. The overseer asked the operative holding her if she knew her way to the nearest infirmary, where some proper dressings might be applied. She said she did; Nancy was helped to her feet, and the two of them hurried off towards the staircase. They passed Edward on their way out. He overheard Nancy, her voice wobbling with agony, mumbling desperately that she was still good to work her machine and could return later in the day – that the Yankees weren’t to give her position to anyone else in the meantime.
The machine room was still and stiflingly hot, hushed by the accident. The driving cylinder spun on above, grinding slightly against its brackets; an incongruous snatch of the protesters’ latest hymn drifted in through an open window. Edward glanced at Miss Knox. She was already looking at him, and he could see guilt in her, as plain as day. This brought him a moment’s gladness. She does not despise me at least, he thought; there is some other explanation for the determined distance she has placed between us. He’d made many dozens of attempts to meet with her since that first evening in the Spread Eagle, nearly three weeks ago now, when everything seemed to be going so swimmingly well, and all had been thwarted in some way. Slowly, dejectedly, he’d made himself accept that it must be purposeful on her part.
She looked careworn, a little unwashed and ragged even, and very tired. The easy humour that had so animated her during their previous encounters was conspicuously absent. Edward smiled, intending an expression of warmth, of friendly support – but he could feel the accusation upon his face.
Alvord clapped his hands, breaking the bewildered silence, ordering everyone back to their appointed labours and reminding them in the time-honoured fashion of overseers everywhere that their employer was not paying them to take their leisure. Miss Knox immediately headed back to her machine, turning away from Edward with unmistakable relief. He frowned, lowering his head, trying to cover his incomprehension by putting on his hat and then patting his waistcoat as if he had mislaid his pocket-watch.
Alvord was studying the blood and bile that were spattered across the floorboards with weary distaste. ‘You lost something, Mr Lowry?’ he asked, without looking up.
The secretary excused himself and continued on his way to the post office.
‘These fellows,’ said Richards, raising his voice to be heard above the music, ‘these damned fellows…Look at ‘em, Lowry. Go on, take a good bloody look.’
‘I see them, Richards, believe me.’ Edward murmured his words through gritted teeth; the press agent was drunk once again and unable to gauge exactly how loudly he was talking. ‘I see them.’
Richards knocked back his latest glass of spirits and then held it aloft to summon the waiter. ‘I know London, old chap, I know her thieves and her bloody cads, and this lot right here are the worst specimens I’ve seen in a good long while. See that coat there – look, there.’
He was pointing across the balcony of the famous Argyll Rooms towards the main body of their company. Discreetly, Edward pinched the bottom of his sleeve and tugged his arm back down. The coat in question was obvious enough. Cut from black velvet in an eminently fashionable style, it was worn by a great glossy hound of a man, broad-snouted and sharp-whiskered, who was leaning in towards James Colt with every appearance of loyal attention. When studied a little more closely, however, it became plain that this character was working on two quite distinct levels. He was speaking with James as a confidential friend; but he was also monitoring the American carefully, waiting for a chance of some kind to present itself.
‘That coat is far too bloody smart for my liking. The smarter the coat the deeper the trick, my friend,’ said Richards, tapping the side of his long nose as if imparting a valuable piece of wisdom. ‘The deeper the bloody trick.’
James Colt, however, saw nothing sinister in his predatory cohort. He was lounging beneath a silken canopy at the balcony’s rear, doing his best to project an aura of wealth and power – coupled with a strong suggestion of rakish high spirits. Such was his resemblance to his accomplished brother in both face and physique that he was frequently mistaken for him, an error Edward had noticed that he was rather lax in correcting. The secretary had soon learnt that this visual similarity, initially a source of reassurance, was entirely deceptive. Samuel Colt’s formidable, demanding nature, his absolute focus upon his guns, his strict intolerance for anything that might waste his time or impede his path to his objective, were replaced in James only by pleasure-seeking indolence; and his gallery of intent, boiling scowls by the vaguely self-satisfied simper that was seldom far from his younger brother’s face. James shared the Colonel’s taste for costly, colourful clothes (that night, for example, he wore a terracotta-coloured jacket with a waistcoat of sunflower yellow), but his garments also featured odd, dandified touches such as frilled cuffs, voluminous neckties and embroidered lapels. He walked with a slight limp – according to Richards, this was the result of a wound received in a scandalous duel fought over a married woman in the city of St Louis. Edward found this rather difficult to believe. To him, James Colt simply did not seem capable of the sheer nerve that would surely be required for such a dramatic act. Neither could the secretary detect any trace of the political and legal acumen that had been claimed for their new manager. All in all, he seemed to lack a mainsail, a driving shaft – to want
for the vital propelling agent that had made the elder Colt what he was.
That evening, James was holding court with a band of followers whom he’d introduced only as ‘the Harum-Scarum Club’. Upon their arrival in the casino, it had taken less than a minute for this debauched club to attract a half-dozen of the gay women who haunted its upper regions. Obtaining access into the balcony cost another shilling on top of the door price, and these ladies were accordingly of a superior class to those found fishing for custom around the dance-floor downstairs. Their faces were painted with the utmost delicacy, their rich gowns cut low across smooth, wool-white bosoms, and their smiles immaculately suggestive. They had infiltrated James’s group effortlessly, gliding beneath the folds of the canopy, settling among the men like sleek pigeons upon a scattered handful of seed. Batting long eyelashes, the women were putting on an expert show of amusement at the most banal, boorish remarks, and reaching out to touch the backs of male hands with titillating forwardness. James and the fellow in the too-smart coat were discussing one of their number with salacious interest – a slender, feline-featured girl of no more than eighteen who was arranging herself upon an upholstered stool. The younger Colt made an observation, cocking his head to one side; his friend met it with a grin; both shook with unpleasant laughter.
Edward and Richards were positioned at the very periphery of this party. They sat at the far end of a long seat, beside an expansive potted palm at the balcony’s edge. The inebriated press agent had been sliding down slowly among the palm’s rubbery leaves, which were now threatening to engulf him completely. Below them, through an ornate wrought-iron balustrade, a swirling waltz was underway, all dark coats and vibrant crinolines, the many revolving couples interlocking on the crowded floor like the gears in a massive multicoloured machine. Directly behind their seat hung a huge mirror, its frame embellished with gilded scrolls. Another of similar dimensions had been placed opposite and a couple more off to the side; they’d been arranged to create an impression of size, the reflections artificially expanding the really quite modest proportions of the room and multiplying its compact crystal chandeliers into glittering, serried lines.
The secretary and press agent had been instructed to attend the Argyll Rooms because Colt Company business was supposedly to be conducted there. The only other sign that this might actually be the case was the presence of Lawrence Street, accompanied by an underling of some description. He was sitting across from them, also on the fringes of the gathering; posed rather stiffly in an armchair, he had yet to so much as acknowledge their existence. A man of unchallengeable gravity, the Honourable Member was as out of place in the fashionable casino as a cleric in a Chinese opium den. One of the finer courtesans had been sent over to talk with him and was admiring his fine blond hair; he was replying in frosty monosyllables, looking off in the opposite direction, making her work very hard indeed.
Needless to say, the women all gave Edward and Richards a wide berth, immediately recognising their lack of both ready funds and importance. This was a blessing; Edward really wasn’t in the mood to fend off their well-practised advances. His mind was occupied almost entirely with its thousandth restaging of that moment in the machine room when Caroline Knox had turned away from him. Over and over again he saw the resolute rotation of her shoulder, the angle of her head as it dipped down, and the unfathomable haste in her step. He raked through his memory for an explanation, going over every word that had passed between them, yet he could not find so much as a single grain of genuine discord or misunderstanding. Indeed, such reminiscence made him feel only that he might very possibly be in love, however inappropriate or inconvenient that might prove. Her last words to him as she left the Spread Eagle that night had been, ‘I must see to this, sir, but I promise you I’ll be back before you even know it.’ And she had smiled as she said them. What could have happened after this to spoil things so completely?
‘My eye, what a blasted booby,’ Richards sneered from his place in the palm, nodding at James as he stretched out to take a fresh drink from a waiter. ‘He fancies himself a Carnival Roman, don’t he, cruising the bloody Corso. Rather than a jumped-up simpleton, a – a wastrel, Lowry, who rides upon our Sam’s coat-tails like a bloody…a bloody…’
Before the press agent could recover his train of thought, Mr Street came before them, pushing the departing waiter aside with graceless annoyance. ‘Did he honestly think that this would mollify me?’ he demanded of Edward. ‘That this wretched, meretricious place was an appropriate venue for the discussion of our mutual interests?’ He moved closer. ‘It is offensive, quite frankly. Colonel Colt would never so much as consider such a damnably stupid course.’
Edward got to his feet, offering profuse apologies. He had to agree with Street on this point; it was wholly impossible to imagine the Colonel in the Argyll Rooms, for any purpose whatsoever.
‘The Colonel had his priorities in order,’ Street continued. ‘He knew how to conduct his business. Why he has left this dissolute fool in charge of his London affairs is quite beyond me.’ The gay woman who had been making such a determined effort to talk to him came to his side, slipping a neat gloved hand through the crook of his arm. He shook her off. ‘I am leaving. I cannot risk being seen in here. I will have nothing more to do with the Colt Company until the Colonel returns, do you understand? Nothing more.’ Five seconds later he was at the balcony stairs, his lackey in tow, putting on his hat as they went down to the main doors.
There was a loud rustle and an agitation of leaves, followed by the snap of a stalk; Richards was attempting to disinter himself from the palm, with limited success. ‘Who the devil was that?’ he asked. ‘D’you know him, Lowry? You keeping secrets from me, old boy? From Alfie Richards, your fellow Englishman, your one true pal at the Colt Company?’
Edward smiled dryly at this description, one that a more sober Richards would certainly never have made. ‘He is an associate of the Colonel’s, that’s all. I’ve met him once or twice before.’ The secretary decided that he would change the subject, and reveal no more about Lawrence Street. ‘Sounds as if he has the measure of our Jamie, wouldn’t you say?’
The press agent, as Edward had guessed, was too lost to drink to pursue or even recall his question. ‘His godforsaken family are a millstone, a bloody great millstone around poor Samuel’s neck,’ he proclaimed, managing to gain limited purchase on the back of the seat. ‘They are the one disadvantage that has attended on his life, and hampered his progress whenever he’s been so good as to let ‘em. The father is a bankrupt, y’know, always tapping him for money. And have I told you about his bloody sister, and what she did?’
There was movement beneath the canopy; James had spotted Street’s departure and was rising from his seat, looking their way. ‘Quiet, damn it,’ Edward hissed, jabbing Richards’s ankle with his boot.
The younger Colt drifted over to them in his customarily careless manner. ‘Edward, did I just see our guest take his leave without so much as a farewell?’
The secretary, still standing, told him that he had.
James was unconcerned. ‘Now there’s a rum critter. This entire evening was arranged for his benefit, yet he’s run off afore I could say six words to him. Was the scoundrel skylarking us, do you think?’
‘I fear that he might have been expecting your conversation to take place somewhere a little quieter, Mr Colt.’ Edward nodded towards the gay women. ‘Somewhere a little less filled with distraction, perhaps.’
James had fixed him with a questioning smile. ‘Why won’t you call me Jamie, Edward? How many times do I have to ask you?’ He chuckled, shaking his head. ‘You might be right, I guess. Too late now though, ain’t it? And what’s the loss of one jumpy customer, anyways? We’re selling guns, by God. Another will be along soon enough.’
Edward almost winced to hear this. Did James have no understanding at all of Street’s importance – of the connections he had, the opportunities he could provide? Had the Colonel really not imp
ressed this upon him?
James put an arm around Edward’s shoulders. ‘There’s something I need you to do for me at the works tomorrow, my friend, something important.’ He turned slightly, seeking out the eye of the young courtesan upon the stool. ‘I’m told we had an accident on the machine floor.’
‘Indeed we did…Jamie,’ Edward replied. ‘A girl lost a finger in one of the machines. I witnessed it, in fact. A truly nasty piece of luck.’ He wondered briefly if James was concerned about poor Nancy’s well-being, and maybe wished to see her properly cared for. There were occasional stories of factory managers displaying such benevolence. ‘She still suffers terribly, I hear. They say that a fever has set in.’
James’s lip was curling slowly as the woman held his gaze. ‘It’s a mistake to employ females in a gun factory. I can see why Sam chanced it – the cheaper wage-bill and so forth – but the simple fact of it is they just can’t understand the machinery, and accidents like this are the certain result.’ He looked back at Edward for a moment and then added softly, ‘I want you to get rid of ‘em for me.’
Edward went quite cold. He found himself staring hard at the pattern of swooping nightingales that was stitched along James’s brick-red collar. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think I –’
‘The female employees,’ James clarified. ‘Remove ‘em from the works, every last one. Do it tomorrow morning, first thing.’ He took his arm from around Edward and held out a hand to the girl, making his selection. She rose from her stool with queenly elegance and started towards him. ‘It looks like I’m going to be indisposed until pretty late in the day, I’m afraid, but I’m sure there’ll be others around to provide assistance.’ James looked down at Richards. ‘Like this gamesome true-blood here, for instance. What do you say, Alfie? You’ll help Edward out, won’t you?’
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