Gypsy

  The silver dollar seemed to work. All at once she was jabbering away.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ Jack asked.

  ‘She heard banging yesterday and someone calling out. She told her mother who said people are always banging and calling out here. But the girl said she’d never heard anyone calling like this lady was.’

  Jack’s heart seemed to leap into his mouth. ‘Where was this?’ he asked.

  Pasquale asked the little girl and she took his hand as if to lead him there.

  Jack followed with Theo, right along the far end of the alley they hadn’t yet searched. The child stopped by a small piece of waste ground, clearly the site of a building which had burned or fallen down. It was full of rubbish and rubble and a crazy-looking tumbledown shack which could’ve once been a stable. She looked up at Pasquale and began speaking again.

  Pasquale smiled. ‘She hides in the shack when her pa is drunk. She slept in there and was woken up in the morning by the banging and calling. She said it came from over there.’ He pointed to the house on the left.

  Jack felt a surge of excitement. The houses on either side of the waste ground were very old and shored up with big timbers, but squeezed behind them in what should’ve been a backyard, were newer buildings. These places, known as back lots, were a common sight all over the Lower East Side.

  ‘Let’s get in there,’ he said.

  Going round to the front of the house, Jack saw the door was padlocked and the windows boarded up. He asked the child if anyone lived there. She shrugged her shoulders and said something in Italian.

  ‘She doesn’t think so,’ Pasquale said. ‘But sometimes men come there.’

  Before Jack could even express his opinion that they’d found the right place, Theo thrust the silver dollar into the little girl’s hand, ran round the back again and shinned up the wall that joined the two parts of the house. It was about eight feet high, but he managed it with ease for it was rough stone with many hand- and foot-holds. He perched on the top for a second, then jumped down the other side.

  Jack quickly followed him, calling back to Pasquale to get the others and bring the lantern. He dropped down into the tiny yard between the two buildings.

  The space was only about four feet square, and ankle-deep in rubbish, fortunately frozen solid. The doors to both houses were padlocked, and all the windows boarded up save one by the door to the front house. The board there had been wrenched off, revealing glass which was partially broken.

  Theo lifted his walking stick and smashed out the remainder of the glass.

  ‘Wait for the others to get here,’ Jack called out, but Theo took no notice and climbed in.

  Jack was just about to follow him when he heard Karl yell that he was coming over with the lantern, so he waited until his friend was on the wall and had passed the lantern down to him.

  Theo’s heavy boots were making a racket on the bare boards inside the house, but as Jack climbed in through the window, he thought he heard something.

  Asking Theo to stand still, he listened, and they both heard a faint cry.

  ‘Beth?’ Theo bellowed. ‘Is that you? I’ve come to rescue you!’

  The two men stood stock still, straining their ears to hear.

  Then, just as Jack began to think they had imagined the cry, he heard Beth’s voice.

  ‘I’m below you,’ she called, her voice tinny and weak. ‘There’s a trapdoor in the floor.’

  ‘I’m just lighting a lantern to see,’ Theo shouted back, indicating to Jack he was to do it. ‘Hold on, I’ll have you out in a trice.’

  Once the lantern was alight they could see an old table and a few chairs to one side of the room, several large wooden crates and a quantity of empty bottles strewn around them. It looked as if men had been coming here for card games.

  But they could see no trapdoor in the floor.

  Karl came in, quickly followed by Pasquale, and all the men pushed at the packing cases to see what was beneath them.

  As they moved the last one, which was heavier than the others, they finally saw the trapdoor. ‘We’ve found it, Beth,’ Theo shouted, and Jack pulled it open.

  ‘There’s a ladder here,’ Pasquale called, dragging it along the passageway.

  Jack moved to be the first one down the ladder, but Theo elbowed him out of the way and disappeared down into the darkness.

  ‘I’ve got you now,’ they heard him say above the sound of Beth crying.

  Theo brought her out over his shoulder, and as he set her down at the top of the ladder, Jack thought he had never seen a sadder sight. Her face was black with dirt, her eyes red and swollen, and tears had made white tracks down her cheeks. Her skirt and boots were soaked and she was so stiff with cold she stumbled when she tried to walk.

  ‘I thought I was going to die,’ she said, and her voice was little more than a croak.

  Theo picked her up in his arms. ‘We must get her away from here and into the warm quickly,’ he said.

  Sam and the others were just coming over the wall, and for a few moments everyone was talking at once, jubilant that their mission had been accomplished. Beth seemed scarcely aware of anyone but Theo, and as they all worked together to lift her over the wall and away to safety, Jack felt a sharp stab of jealousy.

  He had been her real rescuer. He’d planned it, got the men and organized it all. But Theo, who had done very little, had taken over once they’d found her, and to Beth it was going to seem as if he was her saviour.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The coffee shop where they had taken Beth was warm and steamy. She was flexing her fingers and examining her knuckles which were raw from banging on the walls.

  ‘We should get you to a doctor,’ Jack said.

  ‘Don’t fuss,’ she replied, smiling weakly. ‘I’m getting warmer now and I’ll be fine once I’ve had a wash and a sleep. I just wish your friends hadn’t disappeared before I could thank them.’

  It had been as though her mind was as frozen as her body when Theo got her out of the cellar. She couldn’t explain anything and her limbs refused to move. Theo had carried her all the way to this coffee shop, and although Jack and Sam had kept asking her questions about how and where she was snatched, she was unable to answer.

  But now, after two large cups of hot, sweet coffee and some bacon and eggs, she had thawed out enough to tell them how it came about, and how her captor hadn’t returned, not to bring her food or drink or even a blanket. She had told them how she kept up the shouting and banging until exhaustion overcame her, but not that she had given up hope of rescue. Now she was safe, the terror she’d felt as she sat hunched up in the dark with only the squeaking and rustlings of rats for company was fading. She could see anxiety for her etched in the men’s faces and she didn’t want to add to it.

  Yet when she first heard Theo’s and Jack’s voices she had thought she was descending into madness and merely imagining what she most wanted to hear. It was only when the trapdoor began to open, light spilled into her dark prison and Theo’s head was silhouetted in the opening, that she knew it was for real.

  ‘You can come back to my place,’ Theo said, taking her hand and kissing the tips of her fingers. ‘Nobody knows where it is, and it’s a quiet house. You can have a hot bath and a good sleep.’

  That sounded like heaven to Beth, but she caught the horrified glances Sam and Jack exchanged.

  Theo saw them too, and letting go of her hand, looked hard at Sam. ‘You do realize that none of us will be safe? Fingers will be out for our blood, and Heaney won’t offer us any protection because all he cares about is his property.’

  ‘I can’t see why Fingers would have it in for us,’ Sam said belligerently. ‘Even a thug like him can surely understand a man rescuing his sister.’

  ‘It’s all about keeping face,’ Theo said patiently. ‘He won’t give a damn about the rights and wrongs of it. All he’ll see is that we thwarted him.’

  ‘He’s right, Sam.’ Jack sighed, running
his fingers through his dark hair distractedly. ‘Fingers is a madman, and the rough way he treated Beth proves that she meant nothing to him. His whole aim was to provoke Heaney. He’ll have to do something else now and I wouldn’t put it past him to fire-bomb the saloon tonight just to show his muscle.’

  ‘Are you trying to say I shouldn’t work there any more?’ Sam said incredulously.

  ‘Not unless you’ve got a death wish.’ Theo smirked.

  ‘You’ve got to make yourself scarce, Sam. We all have.

  Fingers, Heaney and their foot soldiers aren’t reasonable men, they are mindless, savage brutes, determined to have a turf war, and we’ll be caught in fire from both sides. The best thing you two can do is to take off to Philadelphia today. I’ve got some friends you can go to there, and I’ll bring Beth to you as soon as she’s able to travel.’

  ‘What about my mates from the slaughterhouse?’ Jack asked, his face pale and anxious.

  Theo shrugged. ‘I think they’re safe enough. They aren’t known to Fingers or Heaney.’

  ‘We can’t go just like that, it’s Christmas Eve!’ Sam objected.

  Theo raised an eyebrow. ‘You surely don’t think men like them believe in the season of goodwill? They’ll see tonight as the perfect time to strike when all the bars are crowded.’

  Sam’s belligerent expression changed to one of fear. ‘But what about our belongings back at Houston Street?’

  Theo looked at a clock on the wall; it was just after ten. ‘I doubt word will reach Fingers or Heaney before noon. You can go and pack up now, I’ll take Beth to my place first, then come round to collect her things.’

  ‘What makes you think Beth will be safe with you?’ Sam said suspiciously. ‘You said you’d have to leave too!’

  ‘So I will, for I certainly won’t be able to play cards anywhere in New York for the foreseeable future,’ Theo replied. ‘But no one knows where I live. We’ll be safe enough there until she’s recovered.’

  ‘Let me talk to Beth on her own,’ Sam said curtly.

  Theo nodded and said he’d give him ten minutes.

  As soon as the coffee-shop door had closed behind him, Sam moved closer to his sister. ‘I don’t want to leave you with him,’ he said. ‘Especially at Christmas.’

  Beth understood why he was afraid, but she was too exhausted to concern herself with that for now, and besides, she loved Theo, he’d rescued her and she’d willingly go anywhere he suggested.

  ‘It’s the only thing to do,’ she said, and patted her brother’s face affectionately. ‘I’ll be fine, I promise. I feel so weak that I’d only be a liability to you if I was to come with you now.’

  ‘It isn’t right for you to be alone with a man like him,’ Sam said stubbornly. ‘And I don’t like him telling Jack what to do either.’

  ‘He was talking sense,’ Jack butted in. ‘As soon as all this started I knew I wouldn’t be able to hang around afterwards, I’ve heard what that crew do to anyone who gets in their way. I’d rather Beth came with us now, but she isn’t up to it, Sam, so we ain’t got no choice.’

  Beth looked gratefully at Jack. ‘I’m so sorry you had to get caught up in this and lose your job too.’

  ‘I might get a better one in Philadelphia,’ he said with a resigned grin. ‘And we’re not greenhorns any longer — we might even make our fortune.’

  Beth could barely keep her eyes open as the cab took her and Theo to his place. He had arranged to meet Jack and Sam a little later to collect her belongings and to give them an introductory letter for his friend in Philadelphia.

  ‘They won’t know themselves there,’ he said reassuringly when she’d been a little tearful as they said their goodbyes. ‘Frank is a wealthy man with a finger in every pie in Philadelphia. He’ll have Sam in one of his saloons and Jack in some other business before they even get a chance to unpack.’

  Beth was so exhausted she didn’t notice where the cab was taking them, only that it was some way uptown from Houston Street. She was vaguely aware it was a brownstone house in a quiet square, the kind of area where well-to-do families lived.

  Theo took her up a flight of stairs and into a large room at the front of the house. All she really saw in her exhausted state was a big bed with ornate carved posts, and she collapsed on to it. She vaguely heard Theo telling her she needed to take her boots off and that he would tell his landlady she was there before going back to Houston Street, but she was already sinking into sleep and couldn’t respond.

  She woke later to the familiar sound of a fire being raked, and for a moment or two she thought she was back in Liverpool, for she had woken to that sound throughout her childhood. She was very warm; the covers over her were thick and heavy. But as she stretched a little, an ache in her back and arms brought her back to reality. To her consternation she realized that she was wearing only her camisole and petticoat; her dress, stockings and stays had all been removed.

  Keeping the covers right up to her nose, she cautiously opened her eyes and saw Theo bending down to the fire. She felt rather than knew that he’d been in the room with her for quite some time for the curtains were drawn, the gas lit, and he was in his shirtsleeves.

  The room looked very cosy, with two big armchairs drawn up to the fire and a thick red rug in front of it. The whole room had a rather grand air, for the gas lights on the walls had ornate glass mantles, the curtains were heavy brocade, and there was a linen press against one wall which matched the dark wood of the bed and was equally ornately carved.

  ‘Theo,’ she whispered, ‘what time is it?’

  He stood up straight and turned to her with a smile. ‘At last! I’d begun to think you would never wake. It’s seven o’clock in the evening and I saw Jack and Sam off at the station hours ago.’

  ‘Who took my clothes off?’ she asked.

  ‘I did. I couldn’t let you sleep with them on. They were wet and badly soiled and you’d have been very uncomfortable,’ he replied.

  Beth blushed and burrowed deeper into the covers. ‘Could you get me something to put on then?’ she asked nervously. ‘I need to get up.’

  He went over to the door and took a checked wool dressing gown from the hook. ‘Put this on for now, though I have got all your own things here. If you’d like a bath it’s just down the landing, and I’ve made sure the water is hot. But maybe you’d like to eat first? I got some fried chicken and potatoes earlier, which are being kept warm in Miss Marchment’s kitchen.’

  ‘Will she mind me staying here?’ Beth asked, pulling the dressing gown under the covers with her so she could put it on without revealing any flesh.

  ‘No, not at all. I explained what had happened to you,’ he said. ‘You can meet her tomorrow.’

  Later that night Beth lay in the bed feeling strangely disappointed. Theo had danced attendance on her. He’d brought her a lovely big meal, run her a hot bath and given her a couple of glasses of whisky mixed with honey and lemon which he claimed would ensure she didn’t come down with a bad cold. But he hadn’t even kissed her.

  She could smell his hair oil on the pillows, she could almost feel the imprint of his body in the mattress, but he was sleeping elsewhere in the house and he hadn’t made so much as a tiny hint he’d like to share his bed with her.

  Would she have let him if he had?

  Beth didn’t know the answer to that. Her head insisted she wouldn’t have allowed it. But if that was so, why did she feel let down?

  Then there was the question of where he’d been all these weeks. He’d made no explanation or apology about that. It seemed likely that he had another woman tucked away, but if that was the case, why would he say he’d take Beth to Philadelphia?

  He must love her. Why else would he have planned and executed her rescue? He’d told her about how he discovered that Fingers owned property in both Blind Man’s Close and Bottle Alley and that he stormed into every room of every house until he found the little girl who said she’d heard banging and shouting. Sam, Jack and
Jack’s friends were there too of course, but it was clear Theo was their leader.

  During the evening she’d wandered around his room and taken note of many things: photographs of his family in silver frames, good-quality clothes and shoes, gold cufflinks, silver-backed hairbrushes and at least a dozen silk ties. The furnishings in the room were worn and old, but there was no mistaking that this had once been a wealthy person’s residence; she wondered why he’d led her to believe that he lived much like her and Sam.

  That could be because he might not know that poor people like her didn’t have bathrooms or a water closet just down the hall. Maybe he actually believed he was roughing it because he had to live and sleep in one room?

  But if this was roughing it, with soft sheets on the bed, a feather eiderdown and a roaring fire, then she would gladly rough it with him. This house was as quiet as a church — no babies crying, no raised voices or drunken footsteps on the stairs; the only sound she’d heard all evening was the occasional rumbling of cab wheels in the street below.

  She wanted to believe that Theo had kept his distance tonight because he both loved and respected her, for that was how gentlemen behaved in romantic novels. But a small voice in her head warned her against thinking that way; he had never said he loved her, and as Ira had pointed out more than once, gamblers were a law unto themselves.

  Beth woke the following morning to a knock on the door. Before she could even gather herself, the door opened and a woman came in, carrying breakfast on a large tray.

  ‘I’m Miss Doughty, Miss Marchment’s housekeeper,’ she said, her face stern and cold. ‘Mr Cadogan asked me to bring this up and tell you that he will see you this evening.’

  ‘But it’s Christmas Day,’ Beth exclaimed. She was very pleased by the breakfast of bacon, eggs, pancakes and coffee, but she couldn’t believe Theo intended to leave her alone all day.