An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  The suburbs of New York began to slide by. His hands were clenched so tightly that the knuckles showed white. He began to mentally pray, making every bargain with God that he could think of.

  ‘Let her be safe,’ he reiterated to himself like a mantra. ‘Dear God, please let Maura be safe!’

  The train approached the northern outskirts of the city running parallel with the Hudson. Rocky precipices began to appear on the western bank. Still no-one approached him. Still no-one made any attempt to appropriate the trunk.

  He was agonized by his imagination, wondering where Maura was being held, what conditions she was being held under, if she was tied, gagged. The palisades continued, the train sped past Tarrytown and past Sing Sing prison.

  If only he hadn’t reacted so violently over her cooperation with Bennett on Bennett’s first slum-landlord exposé. They could so easily have become reunited that night. He had been almost senseless with relief at discovering that she hadn’t spent the summer in Kansas; at her stunned mystification when he had said that was where he thought she’d been. But the article had been in that day’s Herald and he had been so furious about it that he had allowed his fury to destroy everything they could so easily have recaptured.

  The train whistled past Peekskill. They were entering the Highlands now. The scenery was stunning. The river looped and turned. Mountains soared. Dunderberg; Anthony’s Nose; Sugar Loaf.

  Alexander was oblivious. He knew why he had been so angry at the Beekman ball. It was because everything that Bennett had printed about him had been the truth, and because he had felt guilty and ashamed.

  The train sped past West Point and approached Cro’Nest and Storm King. The most important thing in the world was that he had his children’s respect and Maura’s respect and he would never have that respect while men like Bennett could publicly proclaim him to be the prime source of so much human suffering. The improvements to his properties that he had already set in motion were not enough. Entire blocks of tenements needed razing to the ground and purpose-built housing for the poor erected in their place. He would embark on the most ambitious housing project that the city had ever seen. He would transform his properties and he would make sure that Astor and his other fellow landlords transformed theirs.

  Poughkeepsie came and went. The trunk remained untouched. On the west-hand side the Catskill Mountains rose blue-green, blue-grey, blue-brown. He thought of Tarna and nearly drowned in the pain that engulfed him. If only his father hadn’t died when he had; if only they had never left Tarna; if only he hadn’t hurt Maura so deeply by bequeathing Tarna to Stasha.

  The conductor approached him, a letter in his hand.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. Before we left New York a gentleman asked me if I would deliver this to you just after Poughkeepsie …’

  Alexander snatched it from him.

  In approximately five minutes’time the train crosses the river by a bridge. You are to push the trunk out of the train so that it falls on land on the Albany side. You are not to speak to anyone after reading this. You are being watched and if you do the arrangement is off. And your wife will be killed.

  Alexander didn’t hesitate. He crammed the note in his pocket. A man opposite him raised his eyebrows towards him enquiringly and rose to his feet. Alexander pushed past him. He wasn’t going to speak to anyone. Not even God Himself.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ The Pinkerton man was at his elbow as he heaved the trunk from the luggage compartment. ‘If you could tell me what was in the letter, sir.’

  Alexander ignored him and with strength born of desperation manhandled the trunk towards the car door.

  ‘If you’re going to do what I think you’re going to do, sir, I strongly advise against it! Mr Pinkerton said that …’

  They were on the bridge. Alexander braced himself and flung the door open. In the meadow next to the river was a horse-drawn cart and two waiting figures. The door rocked on its heavy hinges, the wind tugged at his hair.

  ‘I’ll get the conductor to stop the train!’ the Pinkerton man was yelling at him. ‘We can be after them within minutes!’

  With superhuman strength Alexander heaved the trunk from the train, grasping on to the door-frame and watching as it fell and bounced down the embankment. The two waiting men raced towards it. Then he turned round and before the Pinkerton man could carry out his intention, he slammed his clenched fist into the side of his jaw.

  By the time the alarm was given the train was nearly at Albany.

  ‘You’ve ruined everything, sir!’ a Pinkerton man said despairingly after several of his colleagues had leapt from the now stationary train and were haring back in the direction of the bridge. ‘We’ll never be able to catch them, never be able to follow them …’

  ‘I had no choice.’ Alexander was grey. ‘If men had leapt from the train in pursuit of them their accomplices would have killed Maura.’

  ‘They can still do that, sir,’ the Pinkerton man said brutally, anticipating Allan Pinkerton’s wrath at a botched job. ‘And we’ve no chance of finding her now before they do so.’

  A spasm crossed Alexander’s face. He had known as he had heaved the trunk from the train what he was risking. The men now had the money that they had demanded. If they now released Maura as they had promised, it was quite possible that Maura would be able to give information about them that would lead to their eventual arrest. There was nothing to stop them from killing her. It would be the safest thing that they could do.

  ‘Jesus,’ he whispered to himself brokenly. ‘Jesus Jesus Jesus!’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Maura returned to partial consciousness several times. Each time it was to the dim awareness that her legs and arms were painfully confined and that she was being transported, for she was being rocked and jolted. And then there was nothing again, only a sea of blackness.

  Even when full consciousness returned, the blackness remained. There was fabric around her eyes, rope at her wrists and ankles.

  ‘Have a drink,’ a male voice said to her, not unkindly. ‘It will make you feel better.’

  She fought against the dulling effects of the ether. ‘I can’t. Not with my hands tied.’

  Terror rose up in her throat like bile. Where was she? What was going to happen to her? How, in God’s name, was she going to get away?

  ‘Don’t untie her,’ another male voice said sharply. ‘Not yet.’

  She sensed someone approaching her and every nerve and muscle she possessed tensed against a sudden assault. None came. A metal cup was pressed against her lips. Clumsily and gratefully she drank not very pure tasting water.

  As the fogs of ether receded she forced her brain into a frantic assessment of her situation.

  She was sitting on a linoleum-covered floor. There was a faint smell of manure and every now and then she thought she could hear the sound of hens. She wasn’t in the city any longer. She was on a farm or smallholding. And her only chance of survival lay in not asking to have her blindfold removed. As long as she couldn’t see her captors, she couldn’t identify them.

  She said with a calmness she was far from feelings ‘Where am I? What are you going to do with me?’

  The men were moving restlessly around the room. She could sense another person’s presence; hear the swish of a skirt. She felt a shaft of optimism. It was quite possible that a woman would be sympathetic towards her.

  No-one answered her and she said persistently: ‘I can’t sit in this position any longer. I’ve got cramp in my legs. Will you untie me so that I can move a little?’

  What she had said was true. She felt dizzy with pain.

  There was hesitation. She could imagine her captors looking enquiringly at each other. The voice she was beginning to equate with leadership said: ‘Only her ankles. Not her wrists.’

  It was a start. At least she would be able to stand. She would be able to keep her blood moving.

  When the cords around her ankles had been cut and she had been able to shi
ft into a more comfortable position, she said acerbically: ‘Is this how you would have treated my son if your plans hadn’t gone awry? Would you have kept a small boy like this? Tied and blindfolded?’

  ‘Tell her to shut up,’ the woman said unemotionally.

  ‘Shut up,’ said the man who had initially advised against untying her.

  As the blood began to move once more along her veins and as she thought of how terrified Felix would have been, she felt a roar of anger. He would have been absolutely petrified, and he would have been unable to make any attempt at escape. She wondered when and how she would be able to make her own escape-attempt. If they were on a farm it was unlikely there were other buildings and people near by. Running with her hands tied would be excessively difficult, and she certainly couldn’t run blindfolded.

  ‘Tell her what her husband’s going to have to pay for her,’ the woman suddenly said. ‘Tell her how it’s going to go down in the history books as the biggest ransom ever paid.’

  ‘Ten million dollars,’ their self-appointed spokesman said to her. ‘And for a man worth sixty million that’s a very reasonable demand.’

  ‘Ten million dollars?’ Maura was seized with an hysterical desire to laugh. ‘Ten million dollars?’

  It was an amount so extreme as to be farcical. And Alexander would never pay it. Not for a wife from whom he had requested a legal separation. He would probably not even have paid it for Felix. Only for Stasha would he have raked together that kind of money.

  Time began to have no meaning. The woman gave her bread to eat, feeding it humiliatingly to her mouthful by mouthful. When she reluctantly expressed the desire to go to the lavatory, the woman led her outside to a privy and a bucket.

  She tried to make contact with the woman, to talk to her, but there was not even a monosyllabic response from her, only tight-lipped silence.

  The only one of the three to make any conversation with her was the reasonable-sounding man who had first offered her water. She was intrigued by his voice, and by the voices of his companions on the rare occasions when they talked to each other. Their accents were English, not American. And although they didn’t possess the plummy vowel sounds of the middle-class English, their voices were very far from being uneducated and the knowledge filled her with even more terror than if they had been illiterates. Reasonable education meant that they had thoroughly thought through what they were doing. It meant that they would allow for no mishaps. It meant that there wasn’t the remotest chance of their being foolish enough to allow her to escape.

  At night she was given a couple of blankets and her ankles were again tied, only this time more loosely, and cord was attached from the cord at her wrists to a heavy immovable object. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it was a stove. Whatever it was, there was no chance of her dragging it after herself even if she had been left unguarded and an escape attempt had been possible.

  It was impossible for her to sleep. The October night was bitterly cold and she kept thinking about Felix, wondering if he had returned home safely or if he was wandering the New York streets, shivering, lost and frightened. She kept thinking about Alexander, wondering what his reaction had been when he had received the ransom note. The sum demanded was an amount no sane person could be expected to pay. She wondered what he would do. Would he stall for time in the hope that her kidnappers could be tracked down? Would he offer to pay a much smaller amount for her safe return? And if he did, and if her kidnappers refused to accept it, what then? Would they kill her?

  She shivered on the icy linoleum floor. Who would look after Felix and Natalie if she were murdered? Alexander would marry again. He would probably marry Isabel. Would Isabel be a loving mother to Felix and Natalie, or would she, too, favour Stasha?

  Dawn came slowly. She was so cold and stiff that she wondered if she would ever be able to move again. Her captors began to stir. There came the sound of plates clinking together, water being boiled.

  She wasn’t sure when one of them left the room. The knowledge that someone had done so only came slowly. He was gone a long time and when he returned he called for the other two to join him in the yard.

  She strained her ears to hear what was going on but words were not distinguishable. All that she could discern was an atmosphere of palpable urgency.

  When the three of them returned they did so in a great hurry. She could hear the pages of a newspaper being shuffled and belongings being speedily collected.

  ‘Gag her,’ the more taciturn of the two men said abruptly.

  As a shadow fell over her, she heard him say to the woman: ‘Don’t leave so much as a hair behind.’

  Cold terror washed through her veins. They had realized the hopelessness of their demand. They were going to cut and run and they were going to kill her before doing so.

  She struggled vainly against the bonds constraining her. Her shoulders were seized roughly as other hands tied a gag around her mouth. Still she struggled. Twisting and turning, the cords burned into the flesh of her wrists and ankles. ‘Stop wasting time,’ the harsh voice said to his companions.

  She was pushed violently, her cheek making painful contact with the linoleum. And then there was nothing. No knife in her back or between her ribs. No pistol shot. No deadly pad of ether.

  All three of them left the room. Seconds later she heard the clink and rattle of a horse and cart moving off over beaten earth. The sound grew fainter. Disappeared entirely.

  She struggled back into a sitting position, still attached by the cord at her wrists to the stove. How long were they going to be gone for? Had they gone for good? And if they had, how was she to free herself? How was she to reach water? How was she to survive?

  She had no way of judging time. It seemed endless. By dint of rubbing her head ceaselessly against the wall she managed to eventually dislodge the blindfold. It slipped down, still fastened, around her neck. The weak October sunlight hurt her eyes.

  When she could bear to focus, she saw she was in the living-kitchen of an obviously uninhabited smallholding. There were no furnishings, only an iron stove, and a sink. Wryly she realized that her captors must have been nearly as uncomfortable as she had been and as she still was.

  The next bond she needed to free herself from was the gag. She needed to be able to shout for help. She needed to be able to hobble to the sink and to turn the tap with her teeth and to be able to drink.

  She used the same method for the gag as she had used for the blindfold. It took a long, tedious time. Through the dusty window she could see a weak sun climbing high in the sky. It was mid-afternoon on what she assumed, but couldn’t be sure, was the second day of her capture.

  When she eventually wore away the knot of her gag her head was raging with pain from the effort. With her legs still hobbled, and still attached to the stove by the cord at her wrists, she reached the sink. The tap was another matter. No matter how hard she tried, even at the risk of losing every tooth she possessed, she couldn’t turn it. All she could do was let intermittent drops of water fall on to her parched tongue.

  Every ten minutes or so she shouted for help. There was never an answer, only a resounding silence broken occasionally by the sound of scavenging hens.

  As evening approached the prospect of death by freezing or starvation seemed increasingly probable. Her captors had obviously panicked and were not going to return. She had made no headway in freeing herself from the cords binding her wrists or ankles. No-one was within earshot of her frantic calls for help.

  The night that followed was the most frightening of her life. She was ravenously hungry, burning with thirst that couldn’t be slaked by the drops of water she was able to obtain. There was no way that she could reach the privy in the yard because the cord attaching her to the stove was not long enough to permit her to reach the door. Helplessly she urinated where she lay, overcome with horror at the thought of eventually having to defecate.

  She tried to work out how many hours it had been since her captors h
ad so hurriedly made their departure. Surely by now it would have been possible for them anonymously to have informed the authorities of her whereabouts? Surely if help was coming it must already be on its way?

  Improbably she slept. When she awoke it was to a feeling of utter hopelessness. Alexander had abandoned her. He hadn’t even entered into negotiations with the kidnappers, thereby giving the authorities time to try and trace her. When she was eventually found she would be dead. She would be emaciated and lying in her own filth and …

  There came the sound of distant hoofbeats. She struggled into a sitting position. It wasn’t one horse but several. And drawing nearer.

  ‘Help!’ she shouted through cracked lips. ‘Help!’

  The hoofbeats thundered towards the farm and through the dusty window she saw a posse of men swirl to a halt.

  She had no way of knowing if any of the men slithering out of their saddles were the men who had kidnapped her. She had no way of knowing if she was saved or if her ordeal was about to continue.

  The door crashed open. A thick-set man with fair hair and a heavy blond moustache burst into the room, a half-dozen others at his heels.

  ‘Pinkerton!’ he announced, striding towards her. ‘Have you been harmed, Mrs Karolyis? Are you hurt?’

  She couldn’t answer him. She couldn’t speak. Tears of overwhelming relief choked her throat. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

  Her saviour was sawing through the cord at her wrist with a lethal-looking knife. Another of the men was offering her water from a flask. The others were swarming all over the room, looking for clues that would help lead them to the identity of her captors.

  The man with the knife was saying formally as the cords fell from her wrist, ‘Allan Pinkerton at your service, ma’am.’

  ‘I thought no-one was going to come! I thought no-one was ever going to come!’