“Did you hear that, Nick?” the girl said. “Our new best friend from London is going to buy our meal.”
The wild-haired man grinned. “In that case, I want a hot pastrami sandwich, too. Why didn’t you just put on a decent coat, London? It’s December.”
“Because it’s not supposed to be so insanely cold here,” he defended. “New York is ten latitude degrees south of England, so this freeze makes no sense.”
“It’s called the Gulf Stream,” the girl replied. “Didn’t they teach you about it in those fancy British schools?”
He suppressed a smile and tried to sound firm as he paid for their food. “The two of you are pure torture.”
Of course he knew about the Gulf Stream, which carried warm air from the Caribbean all the way across the Atlantic and kept Britain warmer than other countries at the same latitude. But it was one thing to study it in a book, and quite another to freeze to death because he hadn’t taken it seriously. Having spent the past two years in Africa, he had forgotten how miserable twenty degrees felt.
“Thanks, London,” the wild-haired man replied. “We’ll put up with your mangled pronunciation anytime if you keep treating us to free food.”
“I’m mangling the language?” he asked.
“You said ‘tow-cha’ instead of torture,” the girl observed as they moved farther down the path.
“Dearest, the British have been mangling our pronunciation since Shakespeare. Sadly for you, we get the final say. The proper pronunciation of the word is ‘tow-cha.’”
She flashed a fantastic grin. “I think my brother and I need to give you a lesson on how to speak properly. Otherwise you’re bound to make a fool of yourself over here.”
“Go ahead.” He heroically stopped the laughter from leaking into his voice. “I am dying to hear your insight into the mother tongue.” He had gone to school with Queen Victoria’s grandchildren. In England his lofty accent put people on notice of his class, and they tended to automatically defer to him. But he liked these two. They introduced themselves merely as Lucy and Nick, and when they learned he worked for Reuters, they thought it was hilarious.
“I don’t believe you work for Reuters,” Lucy said. “You can barely speak English. How can you possibly spell?”
They took a seat at a table near the bandstand and traded insults while they ate. It might have been the most fun Colin had ever had. His fingers and toes were so cold they could barely move, the hot chocolate was watery and the brass band badly out of tune, but it was a magical evening spent with two wonderfully irreverent people.
It came to an abrupt and mortifying end when Lucy made a play for him. When she found out he had never been to Steeplechase Park, nor had he ever ridden a Ferris wheel, she grabbed his arm.
“We must go!” she said, her eyes lively in the moonlight. “I could meet you there sometime. Couples pair up for the ride. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
It would, but he was not a free man, and his attraction to her was growing by the minute. He couldn’t afford this. He stared at the spot where her hand clutched his arm and wished every nerve ending in his body hadn’t flared to life at her touch.
He hardened his face, and she withdrew her hand. “That is, if you like,” she stammered.
“A fair like that really isn’t my sort of thing,” he said. “It sounds a bit riffraff, doesn’t it?”
Lucy seemed to shrink within her heavy overcoat, but Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, Lucy,” he said through clenched teeth, “are we riffraff and never noticed it before?”
An awkward silence descended. He hadn’t meant to sound quite so arrogant, but he needed to put some distance between himself and this girl who disrupted his equilibrium.
“No offense, but I’m not exactly the type of man who can consort with any pretty girl he meets in a park.”
Nick stood. “I don’t know what ‘consort’ means over in London, but my sister didn’t just ask to consort with you, mister.”
True, the word had some unsavory connotations, but it was nothing worth coming to blows over, which was what it looked like Nick wanted.
Colin rose and excused himself just before the fireworks began, and hadn’t spoken to Lucy since. In the intervening months, he’d seen her in the elevator and in the cafeteria on the first floor of their shared office building. He’d recognized her immediately, for her heart-shaped face and dark, flashing eyes were impossible to forget.
He only wished he could.
With a sigh, he turned his attention to the day’s mail. A letter had arrived from the home office in London, and it deserved his full attention.
It wasn’t good news. Reuters continued to lose subscribers to the AP, and it was beginning to affect morale. The previous director of the New York office had quit after hemorrhaging close to a hundred subscribers to the fledgling news agency, and it was Colin’s job to stem the loss. Even worse than losing the subscriptions was that some of their correspondents were jumping ship and signing on with the AP. That had to stop.
He drummed his fingers on his desk. Until last year, Colin had been one of those correspondents in the field. He’d cut his teeth covering foreign wars for Reuters. This new management position was a challenge, but one he welcomed. Although he had no managerial experience, he had connections, charisma, and a desperate need to prove himself. He would do so.
A knock at the door broke his concentration. It was Albert Fergusson, one of their best telegraph operators, looking pale and nervous and clutching a slip of paper in his hands. “Are you ready for our appointment, sir?”
Colin had entirely forgotten their eleven o’clock meeting, but he stood and gestured to the chair across from his desk. “Of course. What can I do for you, Mr. Fergusson?”
“There’s no easy way to say this, but I’m afraid I need to tender my resignation. I’ve accepted a position with the AP.”
Colin wanted to mutter a curse, but he kept any trace of emotion from leaking onto his face as Mr. Fergusson set his resignation letter on the desk. Colin refused to touch it. He affected a pleasant smile. “May I ask why?”
“I got married to an American lady last month, so I’ll be living in New York for good. I might as well throw my lot in with the local team, right?”
Quitting Reuters in favor of the AP was beyond appalling. It was opting for ground hamburger when prime steak was on the menu.
“And if I may be so bold,” Mr. Fergusson continued, looking more uncomfortable than ever.
“Please.”
“There’s been a lot of grumbling out on the floor. People see more subscribers going over to the AP, and when the Pacific cable goes into service, everyone knows we will lose even more. Some are saying our best days are behind us.”
That last line was a slap in the face. Colin had dedicated his life to this company. He’d fought and nearly died for it. Their best days would never be over. The sun would never set on the British Empire. The man standing before him was a lost cause, but Colin couldn’t let this crumbling morale spread and infect the rest of the staff. He needed to handle the situation with dignity and aplomb. He rose and offered his hand.
“Congratulations, Mr. Fergusson. I wish you and Mrs. Fergusson the very best.”
The moment the telegrapher left, Colin pressed the buzzer on his desk to summon his secretary.
“Tell the staff to close down their sounders at twelve o’clock. I have something to say.”
His secretary looked surprised. Shutting down the telegraph machines was serious business, but it was Colin’s duty to light a fire under his staff, and bringing the office to a standstill underscored the importance of his message. It was time to rally the troops. He wasn’t going to let the AP best him in anything.
At twelve o’clock sharp, he stepped onto the main floor of Reuters, where five aisles contained sixty telegraphers, who received news wired in from all corners of the globe. Most of the telegraph operators had already stopped receiving messages and looked at him with curiosity
and concern as he stood at the front of the office, waiting for the last of the operators to finish translating their stories, close their sounders, and prepare to listen. In addition to the operators, a dozen translators, ten secretaries, and a butler all awaited his announcement.
“Rumor has it that the AP is gaining on us in terms of newspaper subscribers,” he began. “Although it is to be expected that newspapers here in the States might want to patronize our American competitor, it is our job to convince them otherwise. I’ve heard that some people fear the Pacific cable is going to be a problem for us. Please! It isn’t a bunch of cable wires that makes us great—it is our writers, our telegraph operators, our willingness to venture into the wildest and most dangerous corners of the world and bring the stories back to the home front. Who cares if the Americans get a fancy new cable? It is decades of experience, centuries of empire, and a crusading spirit that make Reuters great, and no Pacific cable can ever undermine that.”
He slowly scanned the room, making eye contact with his staff and injecting new energy into his voice. “Reuters is the greatest news agency in the world. Our territory spans the globe. Everywhere we go, we are examples of civilization and dignity. The Americans like to pretend they are the founders of democracy, but please—England is closing in on the 700th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the original breakthrough in democratic ideals. We have more creativity and imagination than the rest of the world combined. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton. King Arthur and Robin Hood. Cricket, the long bow, the steam engine. We discovered or invented them all.”
His statement was greeted with a rumble of laughter and a little foot-stomping. One of the telegraph operators reached over a partition to shake Colin’s hand, but he wasn’t close to being finished yet.
“We can claim the sandwich and the world’s best cup of tea. Proper queuing. Have you noticed how these Americans swarm like uncivilized beasts? Our dignified, single-file queue puts them to shame.” His statement was met with huge grins and vigorous nods. A few in the back stood and clapped. His voice rose in volume to project all the way down the hall.
“We’ve faced down invasions from the Romans, the Huns, the Vikings, and the good Lord knows we have faced down the French.” He stepped closer to the work floor, paused, and gave a slow smile of satisfaction. “My friends, we can handle the AP.”
The room broke out in spontaneous applause.
Chapter
Three
Lucy snapped awake in the dead of night, uncertain what had roused her. She lay motionless in bed, holding her breath while listening for any disturbance in the apartment, but all was silent. Even so, her cloying sense of unease would make it impossible to sleep again. It felt as though someone was watching her, but that was foolish. Her bedroom door was closed, and since her window faced a brick wall across the narrow side alley, no one from the ground could possibly see into her fourth-story room. Rolling out of bed, she padded into the front room, where weak illumination from the gaslight outside was enough to read the clock. Four thirty in the morning.
She walked to the window and looked down into the street. During the last years of his life, her father often stood in this exact spot and stared into the street below. It was usually late at night or in the early predawn hours that she’d seen him here, always tense, always ill at ease. What had tormented him so?
She was certain it related to the lawsuit, for Uncle Thomas could be fiendishly clever in his attacks. The one time Lucy had a suitor brave enough to court her, a series of foul tricks brought the relationship to an abrupt end. Samuel had been her lawyer’s legal assistant. He was smart and endlessly optimistic, the kind of man who walked between raindrops without getting wet. They courted for three months and were soon engaged to be married. How eager she’d been to begin sharing her life with someone! She might look prim on the outside, but inside she churned with a pent-up longing to take care of someone and be taken care of.
Samuel seemed perfect for her. He knew everything about the Saratoga Drakes and said he wasn’t afraid of them. When a dead cat was placed in his mailbox, he shrugged it off. Then a dead cat arrived on his mother’s doorstep, and he took it more seriously. A few days later, they attended a vaudeville show, and he’d been nervous and distracted, chewing his thumbnail the entire performance and never once cracking a smile.
The next day there had been broadsides with his photograph tacked on telephone poles up and down the street where he lived, accusing him of consorting with prostitutes and being a confidence man. Samuel was attending law school, and this sort of thing could make it impossible to be admitted to the bar in New York.
He severed ties with her the following day. She did her best to smile and say she understood, but she sobbed into her pillow for the next three nights.
That was the last time anyone had been brave enough to court her. Would she ever find a man who would stand alongside her and face down her uncle?
Lucy wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, chilled at the memory, as she stared into the street below. Early morning activity had already begun. A street sweeper guided a rotating brush pulled by a pair of horses, and a bread factory wagon lumbered toward the grocers on the neighboring block. These were normal sights, but the man who set her teeth on edge was leaning against a lamppost directly across the street from her apartment.
His features were entirely obscured by shadows, but she’d seen him before. He was tall and thin, dressed in a dark overcoat and a battered derby hat, the glow of a cigarette tip showing beneath the brim. It was hard to tell, since his coat was baggy, but it seemed one of his shoulders was a little higher than the other. Or maybe it was merely her imagination after hearing Mr. Garzelli’s description of the man snooping around his tenement building.
It seemed like he was looking directly at her. She slid to the side of the window just to be safe. She was certain she’d seen him before, and there must be a reason he stood watch outside their apartment.
The temptation to wake Nick clawed at her, but he’d be annoyed if she did. She didn’t want to admit it, but Nick was growing frustrated with her. The odds of the man leaning against the lamppost being affiliated with Uncle Thomas were minuscule, and what could he learn by staring at their darkened apartment, anyway?
She swallowed her sense of unease, and by the time she dressed and headed to work two hours later, the lamppost leaner was gone. She tried to banish him from her mind as she settled into her station and got to work.
Rattling clicks filled the air as information was piped in from all over the world. There had been a time when individual newspapers tried to send their own journalists to the major cities of the world, but it was an expensive endeavor few could afford. It soon became evident that the American newspapers ought to band together and follow the model created by Reuters, in which a single company sent journalists across the globe, and any newspaper willing to pay a subscription fee could have access to all the stories submitted by AP reporters.
Lucy opened a connection that carried all the way to San Francisco, beneath the sea to Hawaii, and then to the newest station added to the line on the tiny outpost island of Midway.
An uninhabited island between Hawaii and Japan, Midway was only two square miles in size and, until recently, a mere patch of sand without any trees or wildlife. But the government had selected it as the midway point for laying the undersea cable, so for the past year, the navy had helped settle the island by importing trees, farm animals, and plenty of supplies for building an outpost. An assignment on Midway was considered the least desirable post in the entire world. There was literally nothing to do other than drink or gamble with the other eleven men who’d been stationed there.
Lucy opened her sounder to summon the Midway operator. She clicked a four letter message. “M B—P 4.” It was the code that identified the AP’s Manhattan office, sending a message to the Pacific Four station on Midway.
Nine minutes later, her call was answered. “P 4 Roland here. Who calls?”
>
She smiled. Roland Montgomery was one of her favorite operators and always game for a little gossip. Chatter along the wires could be heard by any of the dozens of telegraph operators between here and Midway, and sometimes conversations got quite lively during slow news days. Should anyone need the wire for official business, they broke in and took over the wire, but as soon as the business was completed, the operators went back to gossiping.
“Lucy,” she clicked back. “Any news on completion of the cable to the Philippines?” The moment the Pacific cable was completed, they would have no need to deal with Reuters or the insufferable Colin Beckwith ever again.
When Roland replied, it was not good news. “Storms off the Mariana Islands slowing the ships. Two-month delay.”
She groaned. The mighty cable-laying ships were unwieldy, carrying tons of wire in enormous coils near the back of the ship, which made the vessels unsteady in rough water.
“What news of TR?” Roland asked, and Lucy rolled her eyes. While most of the operators on Midway wanted gossip from home, Roland followed politics with the zeal of a bloodhound and always wanted news of the president.
Another operator broke in on the conversation. “TR is a wonderful, brave, and wise man. You have convinced me. He is the best president we have ever had.”
“That was not me!” Lucy immediately keyed as fast as she could type.
One of the problems with chatting on the line was that unless operators identified themselves, it was impossible to know who sent the message or from where. She and Roland enjoyed a healthy debate about President Roosevelt, and most operators along the wire knew she could barely tolerate the president, while Roland idolized him as though he were King Arthur come to save the nation.
His response soon came from Midway. “TR is the first real man to sit in the White House. News of Panama?”
“Hold,” Lucy replied and closed the circuit while she ran to snatch a copy of today’s New York Times. Of all the bold moves President Roosevelt had initiated, plans for a canal through the Isthmus of Panama was at the forefront. The narrow strip of land was part of Colombia, a nation reluctant to permit American engineers into their territory for the construction of the forty-eight-mile canal. Rumor had it that Roosevelt was encouraging rebels in the northern part of the nation to revolt and create their own independent country that would be called Panama. Lucy skimmed the paper, quickly landing on two stories about the topic, and summarized them as concisely as possible.
A Dangerous Legacy Page 3