by Suzanne Weyn
He hurried to the front desk, and his words put me on full alert. “Could you tell Mr. Tesla that Thad is on his way up?” he requested.
Instantly, I was on my feet, frantically wondering what Sherlock Holmes would do at such a moment as this.
Follow him! Of course.
It was difficult to hang back inconspicuously, as Holmes would have done, since Thad was heading for one of the elevators. If I let him get on and go up without me, I’d have conducted the briefest tail in the history of all detective work. So I picked up my pace and scooted into the car alongside him, just as the white-gloved elevator operator closed the gated door.
“Floor?” the operator inquired, looking first to me.
My mind raced. I had no idea what to reply. Then it came to me. “Top floor, please,” I said, trying to sound confident. If I went all the way to the top, I could claim to have changed my mind and jump off when Thad got out.
The operator nodded and looked to Thad. “Mr. Tesla’s room?” he inquired.
“Yes, thank you, Charles,” Thad replied.
As we began to move, I turned my attention to Thad. I gazed up at a set of vivid blue eyes, beneath a forehead that bore a faded white scar, which I felt gave just the right note of character to a face that might have been too blandly handsome otherwise.
He nodded and smiled slightly. “Hello.”
“Hello,” I said, relieved that he had spoken first since it wouldn’t have been seemly for me to have started speaking to him.
A moment of silence passed between us during which I felt consumed with panic and had not a clue as to what to do next. Do what Holmes would do; observe something, I thought. “That looks heavy. What’s in your package?” I asked, noticing that he clutched to his chest a parcel wrapped in brown paper.
He laughed lightly. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Let me guess,” I ventured. “Will it light all of Manhattan?”
His smile faded into a look of startled suspicion. “No.”
“Will it contact alien life on other planets?”
Thad tightened his grip on the parcel, as though fearing I might snatch it away from him. His eyes darted nervously to the lights on the ascending elevator, no doubt checking to see how long it would be until he could escape me. “No,” he replied.
“Is it an earthquake machine?” I persisted.
“Charles, forgive me, but I think I’ll get out here on the fifth floor,” Thad said abruptly.
“As you wish,” Charles complied.
The elevator doors slid open and Thad stepped out quickly.
“I’ve changed my mind, too,” I said as the doors closed once more. “Please let me out on the next floor.”
Charles hid whatever annoyance he must have felt beneath a mask of polite professionalism. “Very well.”
On the sixth floor I hurried out, my eyes darting frantically around the quiet, elegant hallway in search of stairs to take me back down to the fifth floor. If I was fast enough, I could continue to follow Thad, though now that he was onto me, I would have to hang back even more than before. This wouldn’t be easy but I was determined to find Tesla.
At the end of the hallway was a stairway and I ran to it. I was only a few steps down when I came face-to-face with Thad, who was running up.
“Who are you, anyway?” he asked.
“Jane Oneida Taylor.”
“Mind telling me how you know so much about my parcel?”
Talking fast, I told him everything, starting with that day back in 1898 when we were caught in the Tesla-induced quake and continuing with how I’d avidly followed Tesla’s career. I finished up by telling him about the Sun contest. “And what better person to write about than someone I’ve been researching all my life—so if I could only meet him and get a quick interview…Do you think you could get me in to see him?”
I don’t think Sherlock Holmes would have been impressed with my approach, so completely lacking in subtlety or cleverness. Just the same, Thad was much more relaxed once he heard my story. “An aspiring journalist, huh?” he said, seeming impressed as he leaned against the banister and looked me over. “You sure picked a great guy to write about. Tesla’s the smartest guy alive, even brainier than that Einstein, if you ask me.”
“Can you get me in to see him?” I pressed.
“Maybe,” he said. “Come back here in an hour. I’ll meet you.”
“Can’t you just tell me what room he’s in?” I asked.
He shook his head, still studying me as though he hadn’t yet decided if I could be trusted. “No. If he says it’s all right, I’ll come back and take you to him.”
He continued on up the steps, and I went with him. He stopped at the top step and faced me. “You can’t keep following me,” he said.
“Is it wonderful being his assistant?” I asked.
He shrugged. “He’s a weird guy. Brilliant. But sort of nuts.”
“In what ways?” I asked, a little disturbed at this.
He grinned mischievously. “You’ll find out.”
He turned to leave, but I found it hard to let him go. “You never told me what’s in the parcel,” I reminded him.
He glanced at it, then back at me. “You’re right. I didn’t.”
In exactly one hour, Mimi and I were standing by the stairs on the sixth floor waiting for Thad.
“He’s not coming,” I fretted.
“He’ll be here,” Mimi insisted optimistically, but I noticed she was twirling a curl at her neck that had fallen from her thick, upswept hair.
Just when I was despairing of Thad’s ever arriving, the elevator door opened and he stepped out. He spied us and, with a quick wave of acknowledgment, headed our way.
“He’s handsome, isn’t he?” I quickly whispered to Mimi.
With a sly smile she pinched my waist. “Jane’s in love.”
I pinched her back. “No!”
In the next moment Thad was standing in front of us. I introduced Mimi and then asked the burning question: “Will he see us?”
“Yes. I’ll bring you to him but you can’t say a word until his meeting is over.”
At the same time, Mimi and I both put our index fingers over our lips in a gesture of assured silence.
“Come on,” Thad said, waving for us to follow him. We went into the elevator and Thad directed the operator—no longer Charles—to take us to the private floor. Mimi and I exchanged darting, thrilled glances—the private floor!
We got out at the very top of the Waldorf-Astoria. There were many fewer doors—only about four—than in the hallways of the lower floors, and the ceiling was easily three times the height. I clutched Mimi’s wrist as we followed Thad down to the farthest of the doors. “Is this where Tesla lives?” I whispered to Thad.
Thad shook his head. “It’s Astor’s guest suite. He uses it for meetings,” he answered quietly.
My heart bounced with excitement the moment I spied Tesla sitting at the end of a long dining room table in the spectacularly lavish suite. The two-story-tall windows beside the table framed Tesla in a field of blue sky that made him seem to be sitting in some heavenly realm. After so many years of seeing him frozen in newspaper photos, it hardly seemed possible that he was a real, moving, living person. But there he was.
Tesla was deep in quiet conversation with an elegantly dressed, middle-aged man in a suit. The man’s hair and beard were close-cropped. Frameless pince-nez glasses were propped on his straight nose, attached with a black silk cord. “That’s George Boldt,” Thad whispered to us. “He runs this place for the Astors.”
We couldn’t hear their low-pitched conversation, but I deduced it wasn’t going well from all the head shaking going on. After another terse exchange, Tesla rose abruptly and headed straight for us.
My mind went blank. This was the moment I’d waited so many years for…and I hadn’t prepared anything to say! What had I been thinking—or not thinking?
I stood there smiling
eagerly like an empty-headed fool, but Tesla did not seem to even notice Mimi or me. Instead, he spoke only to Thad. “I am having one of my flashes,” he stated in a dull, lifeless voice, not at all the animated man I remembered from so long ago. With that, he returned to the suite.
“What was he talking about?” Mimi asked Thad.
“He gets these flashes, where everything kind of overloads. He feels like he hears smells and sees sounds,” Thad explained, keeping one eye on Tesla as he disappeared into one of the bedrooms. “This day has probably been very stressful for him. Astor was supposed to be here to talk to him, but he hasn’t shown up yet.”
“Will he be all right?” I asked.
Thad nodded. “He’ll lie down in one of the guest rooms until the flashes pass. When they’re over, most likely he’ll have a brilliant idea.”
“How long does that usually take?” I asked.
“As long as it takes,” Thad said with a shrug.
“Hours, days, months?” I pressed him for some kind of parameter. “Should we return home and come back in two years?”
“He’s usually knocked out for two to four hours,” Thad estimated, which was a bit more helpful.
Someone rapped on the door and Thad opened it. A somewhat heavyset man in his late thirties with black, slicked-back hair entered. Behind him was a much younger woman, with curly brown hair swept up onto her head. She was slim and beautiful; her dress was a floral crepe de chine adorned with a black lace collar that climbed up her neck all the way to her face. She wore rouge and red lipstick. I guessed she was about twenty-five.
The man strode past us and went directly to Mr. Boldt, who still sat at the table.
“Mr. Guggenheim!” Boldt greeted him in a heavy German accent, surprised to see him.
Guggenheim! It had to be Benjamin Guggenheim, one of the richest men in New York, if not the world. I had seen his picture in many papers. And now here he was, in the same room as me! I was glad Mimi was there, because there was no way Amelie, Emma, or Blythe would have believed it without a witness.
“What’s this? I arrive to find my suite is in use,” Mr. Guggenheim said. “Aren’t I Jack’s favorite guest?”
“We weren’t expecting you,” Mr. Boldt explained.
“Does that make a difference? Jack said I could always count on having this room.”
“By Jack does he mean John Jacob Astor?” I whispered to Thad.
“John Jacob Astor the Fourth,” Thad replied with a nod. “He owns the place.”
“I know,” I whispered, remembering the newspaper article I’d read.
“Why is this person so important that he got my suite?” Benjamin Guggenheim demanded.
“Mr. Tesla had some business to discuss with Mr. Astor, and I thought this suite was available. Regrettably, Colonel Astor has been delayed in Rhode Island.”
Guggenheim snickered as if he knew some secret about John Jacob Astor that was too embarrassing to mention. “I’ll bet he’s been delayed. Say no more. Tell this Tesla that Benjamin Guggenheim has arrived and he has to clear out!”
“I’m afraid Mr. Tesla is presently feeling ill and lying down inside. He has his own apartment in the hotel but I’m reluctant to disturb him in his current state.”
“Oh, I know who you mean now! Weird Tesla. That nutty inventor pal of Jack’s!” Mr. Guggenheim threw an unhappy glance toward the closed bedroom door. For a moment, I thought he would storm in and pull Tesla out.
I bristled, disliking Guggenheim intensely. How dare he call Tesla names!
“May I offer you Colonel Astor’s suite down the hall? He is apparently remaining in Newport this night and will not be using it,” Mr. Boldt suggested in a conciliatory tone.
“I wish Jack wouldn’t insist on being called Colonel Astor,” Mr. Guggenheim cried. “It’s so ridiculous. He donated his yacht and bought himself a brigade of volunteers just so he could have that ludicrous title! It’s absurd.”
“Colonel Astor served his country with distinction during the Spanish-American War,” Mr. Boldt insisted loyally. “Shall I prepare his suite for you?”
“Very well, I suppose,” Mr. Guggenheim agreed grudgingly. “I think Jack’s suite is bigger than this one, anyway.”
“Somewhat larger, yes,” Mr. Boldt agreed.
When I turned to check on what Mimi was making of all this, I discovered she’d stepped out into the hall with the young woman who’d come in with Mr. Guggenheim. She was showing Mimi the lacework on the underslip of her dress. They were laughing and appeared to be getting on quite well—amazingly well, I thought, for two people who’d only just met. When they noticed me watching, they came back into the room.
“Benjamin, mon chéri,” the young woman said to Mr. Guggenheim in a charming French accent when he returned to the front door, “can we invite these lovely people to our suite to have a bite to eat? The trip here has been très dull and I would so love to be amusée.”
“I’m tired and I want to unpack, Ninette,” he grumbled.
Ninette pouted prettily. “You sound like an old man,” she complained.
Her barb must have hit its mark because Benjamin Guggenheim relented and invited Mimi, Thad, and me to the suite of John Jacob Astor the Fourth.
I caught Mimi’s eye and opened my mouth just enough to express my total disbelief. She stifled a grin and nodded. She felt the same as I did:
Could this really be happening?!
Chapter 10
If possible, John Jacob Astor’s private suite had even more floor-to-ceiling windows than the one we had just left—and more crown moldings, and a larger fireplace, and an even more spectacular view of the city. One of the windows was actually a door that opened out onto a terrace of greenery overlooking the city. The furniture was fit for royalty.
A bellhop arrived with an overloaded luggage cart. A strikingly handsome, dark-haired man in his early twenties entered the suite behind him. He handed the bellhop a tip and instructed him to bring the suitcases to the master bedroom.
“Bonjour, Mr. Giglio,” Ninette greeted him.
“Bonjour, Mrs. Aubart,” he responded with a quick, polite bow.
Mimi was trying not to stare, but I caught her looking at him. I could understand why. He reminded me of an actor one might see on stage playing a prince or a knight, broad shouldered and tall.
He departed with the bellhop, but not before noticing Mimi. Their eyes met, and then Mimi looked away shyly.
“You like him, eh?” Ninette whispered to Mimi mischievously when he was gone.
“He’s very…handsome,” Mimi whispered. “Who is he?”
“Victor Giglio, Benjamin’s new valet. Come, Mimi. I will show you the dress I was talking about,” Ninette said as she pulled Mimi with her deeper into the suite. “It is the latest from Paris. You are going to adore it!”
Then, as though remembering her manners, she hurried back to Thad and me, scooping two menus from a side table and handing them to us. “Order what you would like for lunch. I will have the lobster. You should, too. Order everything on the menu!”
“Yes, order us a fine lunch,” Mr. Guggenheim agreed. “If you’ll excuse me, I must go call my broker.”
When he disappeared into an office off the main living room, Thad and I were left alone to look at each other and down at the hotel telephone on the table. I burst into incredulous laughter at the sheer fun of it all. “Well, I never expected this,” I remarked.
“Me, neither,” he agreed, unsmiling. “It’s all so…obnoxious.”
“Obnoxious? I thought it was kind of…marvelous. We’ve stumbled into the life of luxury.”
“Yeah, for us it’s a lark. But don’t you think the way these people live is ridiculous?”
Ridiculous? I didn’t see anything ridiculous about it. I thought it was all too good to be true.
Thad gestured around the room. “Why do they deserve all this when the rest of us have to struggle? Are they better than us?”
I’d never t
hought about it before. “Luckier, maybe?” I ventured.
“You bet they’re luckier. They’re lucky their fathers were born before they were. John Jacob Astor and William Waldorf, his cousin who also owns this place, inherited their money. They didn’t work for it.”
“They run this hotel,” I pointed out.
“They hire guys like Boldt to run it for them.”
“What about a man like Thomas Edison who’s earned his fortune from his brains?”
Thad waved me off dismissively. “Don’t talk to me about Edison. He’s a greedy industrialist like the rest of them. If anything, amassing wealth through your own ruthlessness and treachery is even worse than inheriting it.”
I recalled how Tesla felt Edison had wronged him. “Tesla’s not like that, though,” I said.
“And look what it’s gotten him. He’s constantly on the brink of bankruptcy because he’s not out to build a personal fortune. He wants his inventions to serve the people. He wants to pull energy down from the air and light the world for free. Do you think guys like Edison and his backers will ever let that happen? Not when they’re making fortunes charging people for electricity!”
“You sound so bitter,” I remarked.
“I’m sorry,” Thad said. “It’s not directed at you. I can tell that you’re not wealthy.”
I was suddenly painfully aware of the plainness of my blue cotton dress and the scuff marks on my well-worn boots. But Thad seemed to think they were superior to the lavishness surrounding us, so I didn’t feel as bad as I might have otherwise.
“It’s just that I see what Tesla’s up against every step of the way. These rich guys won’t let him succeed in his work,” Thad went on. “The only reason he gets anywhere at all is because he finds wealthy backers who hope that Tesla is smarter than the other guys—which he is, by miles—and that he’ll invent something that makes them a fortune. But then Tesla finds ways to produce his inventions inexpensively and they decide there’s not enough profit in it, so they withdraw their funding. Even worse—they trip him up, mess up his work, set fire to his labs.”