Pat O'Malley Historical Steampunk Mystery Trilogy

by Jim Musgrave

  The remaining attackers did the same, smashing into what looked to be an electronic wall between them and me. After this happened, with terrified expressions on their faces, they all got up on their feet and ran for the door, tripping over each other on their way out.

  Anson Burlingame and the gentlemen in the audience were amazed. “How did you do that?” asked Burlingame.

  I first stared at him and then out at the crowd. “I have taken the first inoculation from the Martian Panspermia elixir,” I explained.

  Walter McKenzie and a few of his men had given me the final impetus to win over these business men. They all wanted in on my genetic experiment, and I promised them I would be going with them as an observer to Memphis. I knew they were completely hooked onto my line, and I just had to reel them slowly in.

  Anson Burlingame walked out of the church with me, and it was still raining. He moved next to me and whispered, “Do you think I could get my examination a bit ahead of the others?” he asked. “After all, I did get you this appearance,” he added, a smirk playing on his thin lips.

  “Of course. I shall consult with Mister Jones. We need to create our test lists and batches of booster serum, and I will keep you in mind. Thank you for your cooperation, Mister Burlingame. You’ve been a superb host,” I said, and I was escorted into a long handsome cab. The driver coaxed the horse out into Broad Street, and we headed back to my apartment downtown.

  * * *

  Before I went to bed, I went over all that had occurred. I now had become an integral part of the World Eugenics Collective, and The American Emigrant Company was also ready to make me an officer. The placebo effect from my Panspermia drug should do the trick with these fools.

  I also wanted to collect further information about these men as I compiled my list of booster serum recipients. Becky and I would create the questions we needed to know and hide them amongst the more scientific questions about their genetic heredity. I knew she would find it all quite humorous.

  I also had created an important role for my father. He would soon be working closely with me to prepare our ruse further before we ventured with them down to Memphis. I assumed he would become quite a proponent of Panspermia once he understood what it was. There was no love lost between my father and this Burlingame, and I knew it would all be good sport to keep up our false identities.

  I had never really had any enjoyable experiences with my father. He was a man of hard work, routine, and insulated emotions. This would give us a chance to travel together and see how the world was getting along outside a tavern in Five Points. It would also allow us to get to know each other much better.

  Since I had gone to war, all he knew about me was from my letters home. I had spared him the gruesome details, but now I wanted him to realize what an awakening it had been for me to fight alongside men of different races, religions and creeds. For the most part, battle was an equalizer par excellence, and most of us veterans came through it with a healthy respect for peace and what it takes to keep it. This was the lesson I wanted my father to learn before this case was over.

  I also knew I had to confront General Ulysses S. Grant. I had promised General Sherman I would do so, and I wanted to see just how much Grant knew about this World Eugenics Collective and the men who ran it. Did these men kidnap Dr. Mergenthaler? Did Grant know about this? What were they going to use this genius Jew to accomplish?

  Bessie and Seth needed to know where Arthur was. I wanted to see them again in order to explain exactly what I was going to try to do. It was very important to me that they knew I was on their side. I kept picturing the boy at the window of their mansion, his little face so troubled and his imagination wildly full of fear and speculation. Were his imaginings any wilder than my own? What would men believe if they were given the reasons to profit from a pseudo-scientific ruse like Panspermia serum? They would evolve into little green men to live forever, it seemed, just the way little Seth became invisible to be with his father.

  But Seth did tell me he saw who kidnapped his father. Could he have been telling me the truth? I wrote down on my investigation pad a note to myself: “Ask Seth about who he saw when he was invisible.”

  On that thought, I took off my professor wardrobe and turned in for the night. I set the silk top hat upon the desk near the bed so I could glance at it from time to time. The lights outside were shining on its contour, and I had a sense of intelligent security as I looked at this symbol of the aristocracy. I wished my brother were there to see me. “Timmy,” I would tell him, “I can make you invulnerable to disease. Put down the drink, lad. I shall save you with my own elixir.”

  Chapter 10: Way Down South

  It was the beginning of May when Anson Burlingame contacted us to tell us we should prepare for our excursion down to Memphis. The weather was quite pleasant. Becky and my father were ready to make the trip, but I was still nervous about our disguises.

  Becky was used to becoming all different kinds of personas in her business, but most of my disguises were those of the physical variety. This was the first time I had ever had to become a completely different personality. My father, Robert, was also using an identity that was new to him.

  I understood that with one slip, we could pronounce a word differently, mention something from our histories as Irish men, or even call each other by our real names and it would all be over. These men with whom we were traveling would, most likely, slit our throats and leave us in some swamp or woods to bleed to death.

  It would also be another journey into what had been living hell for me. I had participated in the burning of Atlanta and Sherman’s “march to the sea,” and I knew that the survivors of our rampage were often desolate and desperate, living in poverty, trying to make sense of their extreme losses, and traumatized by the violence of losing a relative or a friend in the war.

  Ironically, I was rather pleased to be wearing a fine gentleman’s attire and speaking with a British accent. I was most especially enjoying my role as an expert in Panspermia from the planet Mars. I felt rather like the author, Mister Mark Twain, telling his outlandish stories of exploration and imaginary locations. Our little detective group was going to attempt to break into the most insidious organization in America, and yet we were also determined to have an enjoyable experience doing it.

  There were two leads I wanted to follow before we bought our train tickets to Memphis. One was to question Dr. Abraham Jacobi about his business and personal relationship with Bessie Mergenthaler. I still believed there was an inside connection in the family who had worked with the kidnappers, and Dr. Jacobi was my foremost suspect. In addition, I wanted to question little Seth Mergenthaler. What he had told me about his being invisible and seeing the kidnappers take his father away was bothering my intuition. I remembered that Nurse Levine, the woman who was charge nurse for Dr. Mergenthaler on the night he disappeared, had also mentioned that Seth was in his father’s hospital room when she returned from her inspection of the outside wall noises. She said Seth had mentioned something about being invisible.

  Dr. Jacobi was at work in the hospital, so I ventured over to his office on the fourth floor of Mt. Sinai. There was a demonstration of disabled veterans that was flooding the streets and backing up traffic, so I had to go down Twenty-Sixth Street and then over to Twenty-Eighth and Seventh Avenue. The doctor was sitting at his desk reading a novel. It was a German book by an author named Goethe. He looked up at me and immediately closed the book. It was as if I had caught him doing something that was embarrassing or even naughty.

  “Mister O’Malley! I didn’t hear you open the door. Please, be seated. What brings you around? Have you had a development in the case?”

  I sat down in the leather chair in front of his desk. There was a full-length child’s skeleton standing in the corner, and there were toys all around the office. One could presuppose that the doctor’s specialty was in Pediatrics.

  “No, we have yet to hear anything, but I am going to do some more investiga
tions about the kidnappers. I wanted to ask you about little Seth. How long have you known the boy?” I asked.

  “I was there when he was delivered, and I was also at his bris. I suppose I know him more than any person who is not an immediate family member.”

  “I want to ask you about the imagination of children his age and also about what you think of Seth’s mental health. We all know he’s been through quite a bit of traumatic stress in the last few months. The nurse on duty the night Dr. Mergenthaler was kidnapped told me she came upon the boy inside the hospital room. The boy told her he was invisible. What do you make of such a statement?”

  The doctor looked down at the cover of his book as if it contained the answer he was looking for, and then he raised his head back up to fix me with a rigid stare. His spectacles glowed with the gas light from his desk lamp. “To a five-year-old, his inner world of imagination is just as real as our outer world of reality. Invisibility, flying dinosaurs, tooth fairies, they are all as real as the bed where upon Arthur was lying in that room. Imagination is to Seth both his safe harbor from the giants outside giving him orders and a place where his life is given an important meaning.”

  “Do you think his saying he was invisible could mean something in reality?”

  “I suppose so. One would have to question him on his imaginary level. He may have reacted to the loss of his father with this fantastic illusion, which was created to protect his mind. Or, it may be cloaking a reality that he actually experienced but was afraid to confront.”

  I decided to probe in a different direction. “Do you believe Missus Mergenthaler is a stable woman? Was she lonely because of her husband’s uniqueness?”

  This seemed to take him by surprise. He stood up and walked over to stand in front of me. “We did not employ you to snoop into the private affairs of this family, Mister O’Malley!” he said, pointing his finger at me. “Bessie has been under even more stress than her son. Why do you ask such questions?”

  “Because she proposed to have a dalliance with me,” I said, and I carefully watched his face. It was as if I had struck him in his jaw. He reeled backward on his heels and staggered, finally plopping down on the low desk, his feet dangling above the floor like a school boy. This frock-coated master of medicine was then a mere child, it seemed, and the stricken look on his face was one of defeat and doom.

  “First it was me she said she loved. Then, when I called our little romance off, she sought out Dr. Letterman. They were having the affair when Arthur was placed in the hospital. She had struck Arthur across the face one evening when he kept ignoring her. Seth was in the room, I was later told by John the butler. Arthur simply left her alone and hid out in his invention room outside the house. Dr. Letterman came over shortly thereafter, and they both left together, Bessie and he were so brazen about it!”

  Dr. Jonathan Letterman! No wonder he wanted to leave for California. That also explained why he had searched inside the hospital room when he entered it. He kept looking under things, and I thought it was odd, but I surmised it was because of the doctor’s recent war experiences. I have met many men with the same fearful mannerisms. If Letterman were the inside connection, then Bessie Mergenthaler could have also been in on the kidnapping of her own husband.

  This case was becoming quite convoluted and frightening in its possibilities. I wanted to go see Bessie and talk to Seth as well. I stood up. “I want to thank you for your honesty, Dr. Jacobi. What you have just told me has perhaps given me my first big break in this case, and I thank you for the information.”

  His head was still hanging down, his whiskered chin resting upon his chest. I left him to his thoughts and headed directly for the Mergenthaler mansion on Fifth Avenue.

  * * *

  I thought back to my interview with Dr. Letterman. Why would he have wanted to conspire with such a racist and anti-Semitic group to kidnap Mergenthaler? I did not suspect him in the least because he was such a hero of mine during the war. He told me all about President Johnson’s pro-slavery stance and how General Grant’s Order 11 was supposed to stop the Jewish carpetbaggers down south. He even said he believed Johnson could be behind the entire conspiracy and kidnapping of Dr. Mergenthaler. I should have realized at that moment that he was attempting to distract me from his own involvement with such enterprises.

  The Letterman development in my case was a strange but logical twist. I needed to uncover the logic behind his relationship with Missus Mergenthaler and whether or not she was aware of the kidnapping plot. I also had to find out how much Letterman was involved. Was he just making a profit from his dealings? Many vets were having difficulty with money and psychological stress, but he was a well-known physician and hero. What would cause him to become so warped inside?

  Bessie Mergenthaler was at home when I arrived at her door. John took me to the parlor where she was involved with the tutor and young Seth. They were going over the boy’s mathematics lesson for the day. Seth was distracted, as he was busily drawing strange pictures of what looked to be monsters on the pages of his notebook.

  Bessie turned and greeted me. She was wearing a black dress and bonnet, and I thought perhaps she had given up hope that her husband would ever be found. Was she in mourning?

  “Mister O’Malley, this is Seth’s teacher, Missus Stamford. Please forgive my grim attire. Today we are remembering the Union war dead, and I have dressed for the occasion. What brings you here? Has there been a new development in the case?”

  “May I speak with you alone? I have some news, and I would like to speak to Seth alone as well.” I really wasn’t certain whether she would oblige, as she was quite close to her son, but she immediately excused the old teacher, told John to take Seth to the playroom, and shut the door to the parlor so we could be alone. As she faced me, I could still see a glimmer of attraction and flirtation in her big brown eyes, and it irritated me.

  “Dr. Jacobi told me about your intimate liaisons with him and with Dr. Letterman,” I said.

  My words failed to move her. She walked over to the divan and seated herself, spreading her white hands over her black dress to smooth the material. She casually glanced up at me. “I told you what my husband was, Mister O’Malley. I am a young woman who needs affection. You would understand this if you were a woman. Why is this of any importance to you and to your employment? We aren’t paying you for an investigation into our family.” She frowned.

  “I believe this kidnapping could not have taken place without somebody on the inside cooperating with the criminals. If your husband were not around, then you could have all the romantic intrigues you desired. Is that not so?”

  Bessie sprang up from the divan like a woman possessed. “How dare you! The only reason I looked for other men was because my husband was ignoring me. This insinuation that I had my husband kidnapped is outrageous!”

  Tears were flowing, and her face contorted itself into a most unattractive arrangement of slippery wrinkles. I decided to try another tactic.

  “Did Dr. Letterman ever tell you anything about President Johnson or General Grant?”

  She stopped sobbing and took out a handkerchief from the front pocket of her dress. She blew vigorously into it and then tucked it back into her pocket.

  “He told me he believed the present government was trying to divide the races. He then asked me if I believed the white race was destined to rule the world,” she said. “I told him that the Germans were supposing such things and that was why we came to America. He just smiled and nodded, but the topic never came up again between us.”

  I wondered what was in Letterman’s personal philosophy to ask such a question. Was he so naïve as to believe that these rogues were including him--an American Jew--in this group of superior white men? I could see why they might lie to him to bring him over to their side, but I believed him to be more intelligent than that. There must be something else they knew about him that I did not.

  “Thank you, Missus Mergenthaler. I am very sorry about what
I said earlier. You do understand that I needed to discover who might be a suspect, and I wanted to be certain you were not aware of any illegal activities going on. This Letterman was there that night when Dr. Mergenthaler was kidnapped. He knew what time was best to do the deed, and he was acting quite suspiciously after I asked Arthur’s brother, Samuel, if he could get me a list of the workers involved in the hospital’s renovation.”

  “How does that make him a suspect? I don’t understand your logic,” she replied.

  “As soon as he knew I wanted this list from Samuel, Letterman asked me to go with him to discuss your husband at a location away from the hospital. When I returned, I found Samuel’s dead body in the morgue. Letterman must have known about the murder taking place. He also must have been aware of Samuel knowing something about his brother that made him too dangerous to be alive.”

  I walked over to Bessie and put my arm around her shoulders. “There is one other person I need to talk to in order to find out information about your husband’s kidnapping. He is now in the playroom. Will you take me to him?”

  Bessie looked up at me. “Why does he have to suffer again? My child is completely innocent.”

  “He told me he saw the kidnappers take his father away that night in the hospital. The nurse on duty, Miss Levine, said she found Seth in the room and that the boy told her he had become invisible. Seth told me this same imaginary reality when I visited you last. I now believe your boy knows something about who these kidnappers were and what they look like.”

  “All right. I’ll take you to him. However, if he becomes nervous or he cries, I shall stop you immediately.”

  “I understand,” I said, and I followed her out of the parlor and down the hall until we reached the playroom. Seth was playing on the floor with toy cavalry soldiers refighting the Civil War.

  “Darling, Mister O’Malley needs to speak with you for a moment. He wants to know about what happened on the night Father disappeared.” Bessie stooped down and stroked her son’s face with the side of her palm.