by Mary Burton
She knew both their families had charged him with watching out for her in the big city. It had been wonderful to have him show her around her first few days in Memphis and help her settle into a rented room at the YWCA, but she didn’t want a Nosey Parker watching her every move. After all, it was 1920, the start of a new decade. Just last week, Tennessee had ratified the 19th Amendment finally giving women the right to vote. She set her lips in a firm line.
Burnell sighed and looked grave. “Come on—it’s just nine blocks to Gerber’s. I’ll tell you on the way.” They were nearly to Main Street before he began, and Vera let him take his time. “Last night a young lady was found in an alley behind the William Len Hotel. It was real late and no one else was around. At first, the policeman on the beat thought it was a drunk passed out. But then he saw it was a woman, dressed in real nice clothes, a lady. Not what you usually see down around South Main. She didn’t smell boozy, but she wouldn’t wake up, and she looked like there’d, um, been some trouble.”
Vera’s brow creased. A disturbing story, but why had Burnell come to tell it to her? He hadn’t been with the police but a few months; still, he must have seen disturbing things before this.
Burnell sighed again, more deeply. “The officer got some help, and they brought her in, had the doctor look her over. She’ll be all right, but she was, um, assaulted.” His head bowed slightly, then came back up. “Not robbed, though. Still had her jewelry, and they found her handbag nearby, but she can’t remember a thing.” Burnell looked Vera in the eye. “The doctor thinks someone gave her knockout drops. Do you know about them?”
“You mean it wasn’t just some bad hooch?” Vera queried. “I know Boss Crump doesn’t enforce Prohibition here in Memphis, but it does mean the liquor is mostly home brew, even in nice restaurants like the one in that hotel.”
“No, and that’s what scares me. She thought she was just going out to dinner with a decent man, then woke up being carried into the police station. She’s so embarrassed; she won’t say a thing about who she was with. Says she can’t believe he would do anything wrong. Mostly I think she’s just afraid talk will get out—you know she’d never live it down. We may be ‘modern’ now, but no young girl wants something like that getting out about her, whether she’s a ‘flapper’ or not.”
“She won’t tell you who did this to her?” Vera gasped.
“No, she won’t, and we can’t make her. Anyway, we could never prove he drugged her or, well, anything else. I don’t blame her for keeping it to herself, but I’m afraid this piker, whoever he is, will do it again. That’s why I’m telling you.” Burnell turned to face her, his eyes deadly serious, and reached out to take her arm. “You’ve got to know how these drops work. They’re clear liquid, so you can’t see them, and it doesn’t take much to make you woozy. The doctor said they have kind of a bitter taste, but it’s pretty easy to cover up. Seems their effect is unpredictable—what would make one person sick to their stomach might make another one lose consciousness or even kill them.”
As they approached the employee entrance to the department store, Burnell took a newspaper from under his arm and held it out to Vera. “Look here, I don’t want you saying anything about this to anybody. The girl’s not talking and it would only make trouble for her.” He sighed yet again. “But I brought you this newspaper with an article about knockout drops so you can share it with the other girls and warn them. The doctor had a few copies and he handed them out, told us that even if we couldn’t tell about the girl last night, we could still warn the womenfolk.”
Vera’s eyes were drawn to the lurid headline: Dangerous KO Drops Found in Chicago, NY, Memphis, on the front page of the Chattanooga newspaper. “Two girls in Chicago were assaulted, robbed, and murdered by some men using these knockout drops,” Burnell said, summarizing the article. “And a man in New York was robbed after someone put the drops in his drink. Doesn’t remember a thing, even though he walked for blocks before he collapsed.” Burnell shook his head and looked directly at Vera. “And it’s not just up North—seems the State Pharmacy Inspector got a tip, so he has come to Memphis to check out all the pharmacies.” He paused, shaking his head.
“Burnell, I’ve got to be in uniform by eight,” Vera pleaded, worried about her job.
“Okay, okay, but be careful. The inspector has found plenty of problems. He’s fined some pharmacies and even made arrests. But he’s still looking for some missing chloral hydrate—knockout drops—so you and your friends need to watch out for anything suspicious.” He turned agonized eyes on Vera. “Go on, now. I’ll be here to see you home when the Tea Room closes at 5:00.” He thrust the paper at her and walked quickly southward down the alley toward Front Street and his boarding house.
Vera dashed down the stairs into the cellar locker room and hurriedly changed into a dark shirtwaist that matched her skirt. It struck her that her shift didn’t end until 6:00 when cleanup was done, but there was no way now to tell Burnell. “Oh well,” she thought, “he’ll just have to wait in the store.” As she attached her white collar and cuffs, she considered how to share news of the knockout drops with the others.
After she’d put on her white cap and apron, the girl at the locker next to her asked, “Vera, check me over, will you?”
“Just right, Ellen. Do the same for me?” Ellen fastened Vera’s hairpins, and they joined the other waitresses climbing the back stairs to the kitchen of the 5th floor Tea Room to report at 8:00 sharp. It wouldn’t open until 10:00, but the girls would be busy setting tables, folding napkins, arranging flowers, and handling the many other delicate touches that made Gerber’s Tea Room the favorite gathering place of Memphis society. Vera shot Ellen a concerned glance when they saw the new bob haircut on Louise, one of the older, more experienced girls. “I hope Mrs. Florence doesn’t fire her,” whispered Ellen.
Vera barely managed to secrete Burnell’s newspaper behind a stack of plates before Mrs. Florence stepped up to inspect them all. The manager’s compressed lips telegraphed her displeasure with the new haircut, but all she said to Louise was, “Meet me in my office after your shift.”
Poor girl, she’ll be out of a job by the end of the day, thought Vera. Everyone knew Mrs. Florence insisted that “her girls” present a traditional model of decorum. Vera was grateful that the job was teaching her about city manners, dress, and society’s expectations. It was a great chance for a girl straight off the farm. She might have made more working in a cotton mill, but $8 a week to start plus meals and tips was nothing to sneeze at.
Preparations for opening kept Vera too busy to do anything with Burnell’s newspaper. She concentrated on lining up napkins, silverware, and glasses just so, making sure the linen was spotless, putting carefully arranged fresh flowers in tiny vases on every table, and precisely placing portions of desserts on doily-lined china, ready to be served. A few women were waiting to enter at opening time, and patrons poured in until past the lunch hour. Her assigned tables were in the back, the last to be filled, but Vera kept busy in the kitchen when she wasn’t serving customers.
It was nearly 2:00 before she had a chance to retrieve the newspaper from its hiding place. She had decided to simply give the article to Mrs. Florence when Louise saw it in her hand and drawled, “What you got there, sugar? Not busy enough?” She snatched the paper from Vera, adding, “Why don’t you take over those two women at Table Eight? It looks like they’ll never leave.” Vera understood, since she had quickly learned that women patrons were often much more demanding, kept their seats longer, and tipped less than men. She didn’t much care for Louise, but didn’t want to antagonize the pretty, willful girl who was admired by many of the other waitresses for her boldness and daring. She started to acquiesce when it occurred to her that Louise might be the solution she needed. The girls would listen to a warning about knockout drops from the worldly Louise much more readily than from herself or Mrs. Florence.
“Sure, I’ll take Table Eight, if you like.” Vera said nonc
halantly. She nodded at the newspaper, now in Louise’s grip. “Look at what it says about knockout drops. There is chloral hydrate missing right here in Memphis. Anybody could drop some in what we’re drinking without us even knowing. We girls have to watch out for each other.”
Vera smiled, satisfied to see the other waitresses in the kitchen crowd around Louise, who began reading the article aloud. Out in the Tea Room, Vera was pleased by the appreciative smiles from the women at Table Eight when she brought them a fresh pot of tea along with their desserts. She returned to the kitchen, shaking her head at Louise’s attitude toward female customers, and was dismayed to hear Louise dismissing the newspaper article.
“What are they trying to say, that we should all run and hide just because some old pharmacists can’t keep their inventory straight? I’ll bet those girls in Chicago were no better than they should have been, and that’s how they ended up murdered. And that man in New York probably just didn’t want to tell his wife where he’d spent all his money,” Louise guffawed and looked pointedly at the girls around her until they joined in her laughter. She smiled in satisfaction, “Scare tactics, trying to keep us in our place. But we can take care of ourselves, right, girls?”
Disappointed, Vera seized a dishcloth and began wiping the table where the desserts were lined up. “Burnell would never make up a story like he told me. I wish I could tell them what happened last night,” she thought, frustrated. Ellen came up next to her and started laying doilies on china dessert plates, preparing for the usual rush of customers from 3:00 until closing at 5:00. Men came more frequently in the afternoon and the cook would be kept busy filling their orders, which tended to be much heavier and require more cooking than the omelets, chicken salad sandwiches, and soups that women favored.
“I was thinking about those knockout drops,” Ellen whispered. “Do you know much about them?” Vera shook her head and responded just as quietly. “Just that they have no color, taste a little bitter but not real strong, and people react differently to them, from getting sick to being totally knocked out.” Vera waited for Ellen to say more, but she seemed to drop the subject and instead started talking about how she’d spent the previous weekend.
“Last Sunday, Sarah asked me to go to the Fair with her and a man she met working at the Old Tea Shop, you know, the one on Monroe Street near the Medical Center. Lots of men go there, so she does pretty well with tips, but she says you have to learn how to not let anybody get too fresh. She’s a real good girl, and I think she manages her customers pretty well.”
Ellen continued, “One man was friendly to her—in a nice way—and when he invited her to visit the Fairground, she said she wanted to bring me along. He was respectable, name of Albert, a new doctor at the Medical Center. At first, it seemed all right. He picked us up at our boarding house in his Model T—it was fun to drive all the way to the Fairground in that,” Ellen smiled, but then got quiet and looked down at her shoes.
Vera prompted her, “But it wasn’t all right?”
Ellen wrinkled her nose as she answered. “Well, I can’t put my finger on it, but he seemed a little strange. For one thing, he bought us all sodas, and insisted we drink them. I didn’t want mine—soda makes me burp, but I couldn’t tell him that, so I just said I wasn’t thirsty. He wouldn’t stop teasing me for being persnickety, so I finally took it. I took a drink, but I didn’t like how it tasted, so I poured most of it out on the grass while he was talking with Sarah. I don’t think he saw me, but after that he kept looking at me funny. Sarah drank hers up, because he told her to. Pretty soon, I said we had to go, but he kept trying to keep us at the Fairgrounds. I could see, though, that Sarah wasn’t feeling too well, so I finally got us home.”
“Did you have to find your own way home?” Vera was appalled to think the man had left Ellen and Sarah to get themselves home alone after dark.
“Oh, no, he was a perfect gentleman as far as that goes, drove us to the door. But Sarah was not well. I put her right to bed when we got home. I just felt like something was strange, you know, the way I had to keep insisting that we needed to leave?”
Mrs. Florence came into the kitchen through the swinging doors and admonished, “Girls, keep a watch out for patrons at your tables. The rush will start soon, and we don’t want to keep anyone waiting.”
Vera and Ellen glanced meaningfully at each other as they returned their attention to waitressing. Patrons soon filled the tables, and Vera was too busy to think about Ellen’s story. She was on her way to give the cook an order when she heard a loud CRASH! reverberate through the Tea Room. Looking back at her tables, she saw Ellen frozen upright with a pile of dirty china and utensils on the floor in front of her. Vera seized a rag and rushed to her side. Smiling reassuringly, she took the tray from Ellen’s hand and bent down to start piling dishes on it.
Ellen knelt beside her and started wiping the floor. “He pinched me!” she whispered, furious.
Vera carefully avoided looking at the two men at the table behind them as she worked, but her ears pricked up when one said to the other, “I’ve worked out most of the issues, but the Dean thought you might be able to help me solve the problem with the chloral hydrate.”
With Mrs. Florence’s eye upon them, Vera and Ellen carried the tray with its collection of broken dishes and the dirty rags back to the kitchen, eyes modestly cast down. Once inside the swinging doors, Ellen hissed, “It’s him! It’s Albert, from last weekend!”
Knowing that Mrs. Florence was watching them closely to see how they handled the cleanup, Vera nodded to Ellen, picked up two menus, and returned to the tea room.
As she approached the two men at the table, the dark-haired man looked directly at her and, with a slight motion of his head, indicated she should come to his side of the table rather than the side where she was headed. Unsure which of the two men was Albert the pincher, she ignored him. He repeated the action and, curious to see if he was doing this so he could pinch her, too, she decided to follow his lead. Drawing herself up stiffly, she moved to his side and proffered both menus to the dark-haired man, who took them and passed one to his blond companion.
“Aw, Glen,” smirked the blond man, “are you trying to keep all the pretty girls for yourself?”
A small, satisfied sigh escaped Vera at Albert’s self-revelation. “I’ll be right back for your orders, gentlemen,” she told them, then slipped behind the nearest pillar.
In just a few moments, she heard Albert say to Glen, “What makes you think I can help you find the missing chloral hydrate?”
Glen’s reply was very dry. “Is it missing? I only told you I needed your help with an issue concerning it.” Unable to stay in one place any longer, Vera returned to their table and asked for their order. As she was leaving, she heard Glen say, “As it happens, Albert, you’re right, it is missing. Can you account for it?”
She took their order to the kitchen, where Louise seemed to be waiting for her. “Say, I could take that table of yours with the two guys right by the first pillar there,” she said in an almost wheedling tone.
“No thanks, Louise,” Vera answered, reluctant to put herself in debt to Louise. “I can manage.”
Louise tossed her head, setting her bobbed hair swinging, and retorted, “Fine. Anyway, just so you know, that’s my gentleman friend at that table. Albert. I’m seeing him tonight. He’ll wait downstairs until I’m off, and then we’re going to have a great time. I just thought I’d make it clear, that’s all.” She flounced through the swinging doors, letting them snap smartly.
Relieved at Louise’s departure, Vera was nonetheless concerned for the older girl. Her thoughts raced. Louise was seeing Albert tonight. Albert was rude to women, as Ellen experienced last weekend and again today. The man named Glen was concerned about some chloral hydrate missing from the medical college pharmacy. He thought Albert had something to do with it. Ellen must have told her about the weekend episode with Albert because she suspected Albert of using knockout drops in their s
odas. Albert isn’t leaving Gerber’s before meeting Louise, so he must be carrying the drops on him now, to use on her tonight. Louise isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I can’t let her become the next victim. An impish grin replaced Vera’s frown as a plan grew in her mind.
She took the men their meals, smiling at Glen when he again signaled her to come to his side of the table. His face lit up and his friendly brown eyes held hers a little longer than necessary. She tried to ignore the warmth she felt and concentrate instead on her plan. “I hope I don’t lose my job because of this. But I probably will.”
The crowd thinned as 5:00 approached, and Vera saw the hostess seat her cousin Burnell, already in his police uniform, close to her section. He had come as promised to walk her home. She was relieved to see him. He, at least, would understand what she was doing.
She approached Table Four beside the one where Glen and Albert sat, and picked up the family’s nearly full teapot, promising to bring them a fresh one. Sidling between tables, she positioned herself right behind Albert. Suddenly she jerked forward, pretending to stumble and grabbing his chair to steady herself. The teapot she was carrying freely poured out warm tea, drenching his suit coat. He jumped up and pulled it off, swearing and gesticulating wildly.
Vera burst out with apologies as she deftly snatched up his coat. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir. I’ll take your coat right back into the kitchen and make sure it is as good as new by the time you’re ready to go. I’ll just leave your personal things here on the table.” Moving quickly around the table toward Glen, she listed each item aloud as she removed it from the drenched coat’s pockets and placed it on the table. “Here’s your billfold, comb, watch and chain.” She ignored Albert’s splutters and shot a desperate look at Glen, who had also come to his feet. Glen responded to her look by moving closer to her, a questioning look on his face. “Here’s your fountain pen, change purse, and, oh—what’s this?” she asked, holding up a small glass bottle. “Chloral hydrate, the label says.” She stepped behind Glen, who protectively fended off Albert as he lunged across the table at her.