It irked me to realize I would have to enter by the ladies’ entrance on the north porch. The evening was warm and dark with a slight breeze you could hear rustling the young trees that lined the road. The smell of roast beef and beets still hung in the air, although the sounds from the dining room were of clearing up, not the gentle rattle of cutlery created by diners. I was too restless to go in, and the night was warm, so I walked past the north porch and around the side where I saw a curious sight. Light spilled out from a doorway and the clatter of dishes made it clear the kitchen was beyond. A woman wiping her hands on an apron was talking to a man who held a carton in his arms. I caught my breath at the distinct voice that I could recognize even at that low tone. It was Raoul LeClerc.
The woman heard my approach. She twisted the apron in her hands and frowned with suspicion. He turned then, and saw me. I stopped, not wanting to intrude as he spoke again to the woman. He stepped quickly to a small cart and added the box to some others. I saw that Fiona MacGregor was with him. She looked up at him, glowing with adoration, as he smiled, whispered in her ear, and gave her a pat on the shoulder.
As she turned to pull the cart away, using a long handle, he took two quick steps to stand in front of me. “Miss Cabot, you have caught us.” He took my elbow and told me confidentially, as Fiona disappeared into the shadows, “The kitchen staff, they have leftovers . . . things that would only spoil . . . not good enough for the company men tomorrow.” The woman still stood in the doorway glaring at me, but he smiled and shook his head at her and she finally turned back into the kitchen. “At first we came to pick through the garbage. But the staff, they know what they cannot keep and would only throw away. So they give it, you see? Only it would be trouble for them if Jennings and the others knew. But you would not tell them, would you?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“Of course not. You, who have come to feed the hungry with the help of Hull House. We are all so grateful for that.”
“I only wish we had more supplies so you did not have to dig in the garbage of the company managers. I am so sorry there is never enough.”
“No, no, it is not for you to be sorry. Not at all.” He looked around and gestured to the road. “Come, a little walk? I do not wish to be seen—you understand? And there is the lake. One of Pullman’s many little artificial beauties. This way.”
I let him guide me across the road to the path around the little lake in front of the empty factory. The moon had just risen and was reflected on the serene face of the water. I had to admire Mr. LeClerc. While we were all becoming discouraged by the situation, he remained optimistic. When I admitted to having taken a room at the Florence, he was enthusiastic. “But, of course you must, Miss Cabot. Emily, may I call you Emily? You see, you must eat every meal there and not feel guilty, really. You will know that all the leftovers and scraps will go to good use. The more they have staying there, the more they can prepare, and the more they can pass out the door to us at the end of the night.” He put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. I couldn’t help but be warmed and invigorated by him, yet I was worried.
“Mr. LeClerc . . . Raoul . . . I don’t understand how you can be so cheerful. Haven’t you heard that Mr. Pullman has left town? Now there can be no arbitration without him. He has left and tomorrow is the deadline. Even the threats of the ARU not to hook up his parlor cars had no effect on him.”
“Exactly.” His face was close to mine in the darkness, almost touching. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow, Emily, will begin a new day. A new world. Because tomorrow they will learn the power of workingmen when they unite. Not just Pullman, but all of them. The railroad men.”
“Raoul, there is something you should know. There is a group of railroad men, in the Rookery. They are prepared for a strike.”
He laughed. “The General Managers’ Association? Do you think we don’t know? But we know, Emily, and we are prepared, too.” We had stopped and he stood facing me now, hands on both my shoulders. His excitement ran through me like an electrical current. He stroked my cheek lightly. “You must not worry. You will see.”
And then he kissed me, lightly at first, and then with strength and passion. I knew I ought to pull away but, for once, I wouldn’t let myself. I returned his passion with my own. I felt his hands moving down and with my own I felt the muscles of his shoulders. I stroked his hair. I knew it was wrong but somehow it did not matter. How could it be wrong to share such warmth? To depend on and explore each other? I felt a small dread of what I was getting into, but I squelched it and pressed myself into his arms. His mouth was on my neck.
Suddenly he dropped his hands. “I must take you back to the hotel, Miss Cabot.” He began to walk and I had to pull myself from a trance and trot to keep up with him. I was afraid for a moment that I had done something wrong, but he grabbed my hand and swung it.
“Tomorrow,” he told me. “Tomorrow at noon. You must come to Twelfth Street Station. Bring your brother. It will be worth his while, I promise you.” He stopped. We were back opposite the hotel entrance. “You will come, won’t you?”
“I . . . yes . . . certainly. I will come.” I could get someone else to cover for me at the relief station.
“Until then, Emily.” He faded into the darkness, but I could hear him whistling as I climbed the steps to the ladies’ entrance. I found my heart was beating rapidly.
SIXTEEN
It didn’t happen quite as soon as Raoul expected. I arranged for someone else to cover for me at the relief station and contacted Alden. But when we arrived at Twelfth Street Station at noon we saw no unusual activity. Alden found out that the Illinois Central Railroad had made up trains of cars ahead of time, including Pullman cars. Then they had chained, padlocked, and sealed the couplings. We did not see Mr. LeClerc and I felt badly for him that the action had not started as he had hoped. It was another disappointment and it did not bode well.
“Don’t worry, Em,” my brother told me. “It’ll happen all right. Just not so fast. You’ll see. This is going to be really big.”
I decided to go to Hull House while in town and report on the problems down in Pullman. Miss Addams had received bad news about her sister, who was very ill. She welcomed my visit, as I could help her to put things in order before she left for what she feared might be a final visit. Her absence would make it even more difficult to resupply the relief station, but a death in the family waits for no other circumstance—something that I had learned with my mother’s death in Boston a few months previously. My heart went out to Miss Addams—there is such a dread when going to see a loved one with the knowledge that it may be for the last time. One feels so inadequate.
I had already planned to return to Pullman later that day, but received a message from my brother saying that he would come and escort me after dinner. When he arrived, he was full of information about the suspense.
“Nothing yet,” he told me on the cab ride to Twelfth Street Station. “Your friend Jennings, and some of the others from Pullman, will be down there for the send-off of the Diamond Special for St. Louis. It leaves at nine. They’re already calling the ARU action ‘ineffective’. We can get you on the nine-thirty local down to Pullman. We’re here. Come on.”
He jumped out and I followed him into the new, modern terminal, which had been built for the World’s Columbian Exposition the year before. The tall structure housed many tracks and was always bustling with travelers. I had been there many times during my two years in the city, but never before was I conscious of the men who actually ran and serviced the streamlined mechanical monsters we had come to take for granted. Where would the country be without the continual throb of these engines that pulsed in the air of the huge shed? The roads, as they were called, had become the arteries that carried the life-blood of the nation. Chicago itself had grown thick and prosperous as the crossroads where food and goods and people from the East and West passed through.
The crowded tenements of immigrants from Europe who surrounded
Hull House on the West Side had all been delivered here by the railroads—coming from Eastern ports already overburdened with new arrivals. And Pullman had designed his palace cars to allow the privileged among us to ride along in style, cushioned from the noise and smells and sounds, in an atmosphere of luxury comparable to a Prairie Avenue parlor. And it was the carrying of just that small part of the whole that was going to stop. Looking around at the lines of sturdy metal boxes all preparing to depart, I could only think that the Pullman cars must be a very small part of this picture. If only George Pullman would have a little pity on the people of his town, there would be no need for even this comparatively minor disruption of the vast movement of goods and people across our continent.
Alden beckoned me towards a man in a worn tweed jacket who was slouching against a column. “Emily, this is Piper from the Times. He thinks there’s going to be some action. Piper, this is my sister. She’s at Hull House and she’s been running the relief station down in Pullman.”
The man nodded, not bothering to remove his hands from his pockets. “Over there, that’s the Pullman Company contingent. Track Eight.” I looked across and saw Jennings towering above some of the other men I was familiar with from the Florence Hotel. “That’s the Diamond Special.”
“Are they palace cars?” Alden had his pencil and notepad out.
“Yeah, but made up ahead of time. They’re gloating, but they may be in for a surprise. The ARU is here too, over there.” He nodded in the other direction. This time I recognized Raoul LeClerc. I took a step back so the pillar blocked my view. Somehow I did not want him to see me if this would be another demonstration of failure for the ARU. I thought it would gall him to see me there, and I had no wish for that. I also felt a little uncertain of how I would feel, meeting him for the first time after our encounter the night before. I feared my brother’s ever-inquisitive eyes.
“But the men at the union rally last week were so firm,” I objected. “How can they not go through with it?”
“Oh, they’ll go through with this. You wait and see. The union hasn’t declared a strike on the railways, see. They want to make sure that is clear. They are only refusing to handle Pullman cars. All they want the railroads to do is to leave those in the yards, that’s all. It’s a small number of cars. By delaying the action, they are trying to make that clear.”
“So, will they just move the trains without the Pullman cars?” I asked. “The rest of the trains will continue. Surely the railroads can agree to that.”
“You would think so, and most of the railroad men don’t care for Pullman.”
“That’s what they told us at the General Managers’,” Alden said.
“But they’ve laid it down. The General Managers put out a statement yesterday that the proposed refusal to hook up the Pullmans is an action in support of something they have nothing to do with—the Pullman Company isn’t even a railroad. So, they say any employee who refuses to hitch up a Pullman car will be discharged, even if he’ll do every other duty. Most likely the first ones will be the switchmen. If one of them refuses to switch a palace car onto a train, then he’ll be fired, right there. They tell someone else to do it, and he’s fired for refusing. They fire a switchman, and the other unions come into play and the others—engineers, etcetera—all walk off. Like dominoes falling. But the managers say they’ll just hire others in their places. It’s a poker game. Got to see who’s holding and who’s bluffing. Look, there goes the Diamond.”
I looked as the steam from the engine filled the shed and the wheels started turning. The crowd around Jennings clapped and whooped. I peeked out to see where LeClerc was standing with some workingmen. He showed no emotion.
“Was that one made up ahead of time?” Alden asked.
“Not sure.” Piper stood up from the column he had been leaning against. “Here it comes, watch this now.”
As the Diamond Special slowly moved out of the station, the track beyond it was revealed. I heard a yell and saw one of the men in LeClerc’s group trudge away and take a ladder down to the tracks. He stood beside a box on the ground and folded his arms.
“Switchman,” said Piper.
A man with a clipboard shouted down to him from above. The switchman looked at him, raised his eyebrows, and shook his head.
“That’s it, he’s firing him for refusing.”
Sure enough, the man quietly climbed the ladder and walked back towards LeClerc. The men around him were silent. They did not seem angry or surprised. They expected this. Jennings and his crowd had started to leave but they stopped and watched now, frowning. The man with the clipboard shouted again. I couldn’t hear the exact words, but the whole station had gotten unusually quiet. There was still the clatter of wheels, and the occasional shriek of a whistle, and the pounding of the engines, but people seemed frozen like statues.
Another man shook his head, was fired by the man with the clipboard, and walked away. A shout from the departing man started an exodus of others. We saw the engineers from another train walking away. The man with the clipboard was shaking his head angrily and shouting out their names. He was writing down names as he recognized the men. As a group they walked to another track further down. There they joined a parade of men quietly walking away from their jobs.
“Oh, boy, the Pullman crowd is unhappy.”
I looked across and sure enough, Jennings was getting redder in the face every minute. The men in his group shook their heads and talked loudly, although I couldn’t hear what they said. Jennings found Raoul LeClerc in the crowd of workingmen and glared at him. LeClerc merely nodded, then spoke a few words to the men around him and they dispersed.
“The ARU doesn’t want trouble,” Piper commented. “Here comes their man.”
Raoul came over to us.
“So it has begun?” Piper asked. “How many do you expect to walk off?”
“It depends on the workers,” LeClerc told him. “All types of workers have been urged to participate, whether they are ARU or not.” We all watched as the walkout quickly spread to other tracks. There was a quiet and orderly parade of men just walking away. “It seems that many of the workers want to participate. We’ll see.”
“Look at that, would you?” Piper whistled. “I wouldn’t have believed it. That’s a few hundred already. I need to go get some numbers, and some reactions.”
“Me, too. Emily can you catch your train down to Pullman without me? I need to go.” Alden was clearly eager to pursue the story.
“I’ll take her to Track Two,” Raoul offered. “There are no Pullman cars on that local, Miss Cabot. And I happen to know that it will continue to run, despite the action.”
Things were beginning to stir as passengers realized they might be delayed or even be unable to make their trips. Raoul took my elbow and led me to the train.
“I’m glad things happened so smoothly for you,” I told him. “I know the people of the town of Pullman are very grateful for the support of the ARU and the railway men. It will make such a difference to them. I hope above all that this will bring Mr. Pullman to his senses and that he will make a just settlement with his workers.”
He gave a small smile. “We can only wish it will be as simple as you propose. However, we will have to see.” There was a blur of activity behind him as we said goodbye. There was tension in the air and uncertainty about the future. I was glad the strike had come off and the workingmen were standing together. But I was uneasy as we pulled out of the station and I saw several engines stopped with wisps of smoke lingering around them. I had heard that once an engine was cold, it would take a long time to get it going again. Certainly some of the engines would go cold that night. How long would it last? And how long would it take to get this mighty surge going again, once it had come to a halt?
And now that it had started, I couldn’t help wondering when I would see Raoul LeClerc again. The memory of our walk by the lake lingered in my mind.
SEVENTEEN
“And you bro
ught the letter to Mr. MacGregor first of all, is that correct, Miss Cabot?” Detective Whitbread was obviously not happy with me about that fact, but I could only admit it.
“Well, yes. You see it was slipped under the door when I arrived here this morning.” We were in the relief station with the door firmly closed—Detective Whitbread, Mr. MacGregor, and myself. I was especially hoping not to rouse the curiosity of Dr. Chapman, downstairs in his clinic. He would be unhappy with this turn of events and sure to scold me. “It seemed the best thing to do under the circumstances, and Mr. MacGregor was the one who insisted, he absolutely insisted that we bring you into it immediately.”
Mr. MacGregor was sitting in a hard-backed chair looking small and uncomfortable. The lanky detective was tipped back in his chair, balanced on the two hind legs in a manner I found alarming. He was reading the scrap of paper that had been folded and forced under the door. The words were carefully, almost painfully, spelled out in rounded letters, printed in pencil.
“I know it is important to report such a threat to the authorities . . . to you . . . ”
“Miss Cabot.” Detective Whitbread landed all four legs of the chair on the worn, wooden floor with a bang. “This letter threatens a bomb. A bomb, Miss Cabot. How could you even consider withholding it?”
“I never meant to do that. I mean, of course I knew we would spread the alarm. It’s just that, well, you know how difficult the struggle has been down here. This letter makes it seem like the striking workers will set off a bomb. But it’s really a trick; it’s not legitimate.”
“But a bomb, Miss Cabot. Exactly what did you hope that Mr. MacGregor could do about this?”
“Call you, just as he has done. But won’t it be better, much better, if he and the other strikers help you to foil this plot?”
“Ah, I see, you expected Mr. MacGregor to find the assassins, expose them, and save the day?” I blushed then because I had had something like that in mind. “And what of the bomb, Miss Cabot? How did you expect Mr. MacGregor to deal with that, may I ask? At least the man has the common sense not to try to handle this without police help. I’m sorry I cannot say as much for you. What did you think would happen? Two groups of men fighting, a bomb blast, and people killed? Of course the very strikers you wish to help would be blamed. Have you no sense at all?”
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