Railroad Read online

  Cordially,

  Jack Foreman

  Collis slowly folded the letter up again. This was the damned limit. He had promised Nathan Hackett that he would set a thirty-pound lobster on a plate in front of him. If he couldn’t, he was going to be down by $300, and $300 on top of the $500 that Herbert Carpenter of the Madison Saloon was demanding was $800. Where the hell, with his father in perilous debt, was he going to find $800?

  He said hoarsely, ‘Do you have the depositions?’

  Makepeace searched in his pockets again and eventually handed over five soiled and scrappy pieces of paper, smelling of fish. Collis looked quickly through them; some were signed with crosses, others with crude, jagged signatures. Collis examined them all, then sighed.

  ‘It seems that times have changed since I was in the fish business,’ said Makepeace with an uneasy smile. ‘Lobsters don’t get the time to grow that large.’

  Collis turned away. ‘So much for the lobsters you had to boil in your wash-house. Nothing but windbaggery. Now what the hell am I going to do?’

  ‘You can show those depositions.’

  ‘Father, depositions are not lobsters. Depositions can’t be cracked and eaten. Depositions can’t be set on a plate with pepper sauce, and served up for dinner. I promised lobster, not depositions, and now I’m sunk for three hundred dollars.’

  Makepeace coughed and took out his handkerchief. ‘I can’t let you have three hundred. Not that much. Not just now.’

  ‘So what do you suggest I do? Welch on a bet?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have made the bet in the first place. It was ridiculous.’

  Collis didn’t feel like arguing about it any more. His father was beaten, defeated, and struggling to keep his pride while his whole world collapsed around him, and Collis didn’t want to add to the landslide.

  Nodding to himself, Makepeace went off down the hallway, to say good evening to Ida, and Collis watched him go with a feeling of desolation and unfamiliar regret. He looked so old and humbled that it was difficult for Collis to stay angry. He just hoped that Nathan Hackett would be equally understanding.

  Maude came bustling downstairs, in a nasty medicine-pink dress.

  ‘There’s a smell of fish around here,’ she said, wrinkling her nose.

  Collis smiled. ‘It takes a haddock to recognise one,’ he told her, and then dodged past her ferociously swung purse to run upstairs and get himself dressed.

  Later that evening, he met Henry Browne in the bar of the St Nicholas Hotel. The bar was crowded with gentlemen in white ties and evening dress, like a noisy gathering of black-backed gulls, and the burble of conversation under the gilded ceiling and the glittering gas-light was of horses and money and prize boxing. Henry Browne was sitting at a table in the corner drinking whisky and draught beer, and he seemed distinctly depressed.

  A waiter with a curly moustache came over to take Collis’s order, and then Collis sat back and took stock of his friend with a sympathetic smile.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked him. ‘You look as though you bought at fifty and sold at five.’

  ‘Well, it’s something like that,’ said Henry. ‘I just heard that a railroad company in which I was foolish enough to invest five thousand dollars has gone very much to the wall. They didn’t even get as far as knocking in one single spike.’

  ‘I think everybody’s had the same trouble,’ said Collis cautiously. ‘My father lost a bit of money on a railroad in California. Well, more than a bit. Quite a few thousand, from what he tells me.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ said Henry, swallowing a mouthful of whisky with a sharp grimace, ‘if you ask me, these railroad fellows are better at milking money out of overenthusiastic speculators than they are at building railroads. My crowd got one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars out of the government for no more effort than closing their eyes and drawing a supposed railroad line across an inaccurate map. It was conveniently swallowed up when they went bankrupt, of course.’

  ‘I suppose you’re rather strapped, then.’

  ‘I will be for a while. Why?’

  Collis shrugged. ‘Nothing special. I could have done with a loan of a thousand or so, that’s all.’

  ‘A thousand? What about your father?’

  ‘I think he’s a little – well, unnerved at the moment. He hasn’t been very free with his spare change.’

  ‘I could lend you a couple of hundred, if that’s any use.’

  ‘I’m going to need more than that just to pay off Nathan.’

  ‘You mean you can’t find a thirty-pounder?’

  Collis nodded.

  ‘Oh,’ said Henry. ‘That’s embarrassing.’

  ‘Yes. And that isn’t all.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me?’ asked Henry. He took out a long Russian cigarette from a monogrammed silver case and lit it. The air was clouded with the sweet, musky aroma of Turkish and Balkan tobaccos.

  Collis was almost tempted to explain all about I. P. Woolmer’s Bank, and his father’s disastrous speculations, but he decided against it. His father had trusted him to hold his tongue, and that was the least he could do for the silly old duffer. ‘It’s too early yet. Perhaps I’ll be able to tell you when I hear from my friends in high places.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had friends in high places. Apart from that dark-haired lady on the top floor of that house in Mercer Street.’

  ‘No, no. This is a Senator.’

  Henry ran his hand through his fair brown hair and shook his head. ‘Don’t talk to me about Senators. Senators are the serpents of the earth. This railroad of mine was headed up by a Senator, and if you ask me he was the trickiest fellow in the whole sorry operation.’

  ‘Have I heard of him?’ said Collis.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. A Southern gentleman. Do you want another drink?’

  ‘A Southern gentleman? Not William Stride?’

  Henry’s expression tightened. ‘Yes, that’s right. How did you know?’

  Collis suddenly felt flushed. The bar around him was bright, but unfocused, a fuzzy vision of talking and laughing faces and sparkling lights. ‘What was the name of his railroad company?’

  ‘You look extremely pink, Collis,’ Henry said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Henry – what was the name of his company?’

  ‘The Sacramento Valley Railroad. But why?’

  Collis covered his eyes with his hand. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘He must have thought I was a raving lunatic.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Collis told him. ‘Well, rather, it does.’

  ‘Collis, I don’t know what the blue blazes you’re talking about.’

  ‘It’s Stride. It’s all absolutely ridiculous. If you can imagine the worst possible thing that could happen, it’s happened.’

  Henry crossed his legs and stared at Collis with an urbanely creased forehead. ‘My dear Collis, the worst possible thing that could happen would be to die of heart failure just before eating one of Delmonico’s stuffed woodcock. Or maybe to fall and fracture one’s leg while following Kitty Brough upstairs.’

  ‘Henry,’ said Collis, ‘what I have to tell you is highly confidential. But I really feel I must confide in someone. The whole damned situation is driving me mad.’

  ‘You know me,’ said Henry. ‘I’m the essence of secrecy itself.’

  ‘Well, sometimes you are,’ Collis replied. ‘But this time, I must insist. It’s too important to get out. It could ruin hundreds of people, yourself included.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Henry, lifting his beer glass, ‘I give you my word as a disgraced officer and a disgraceful gentleman.’

  Collis leaned forward, so close that Henry recoiled a little, as if he were afraid that Collis might kiss him. But Collis pulled him back again and whispered in his hairy ear: ‘My father’s bank may be going bust. To the tune of two million dollars.’

  ‘God Almighty,’ said Henry.

  ‘God Almight
y hasn’t helped very much so far. The trouble is, Father hasn’t only lost his investors’ money, he’s lost a whole lot of his own, some of which he borrowed from the bank.’

  ‘That was cavalier of him,’ remarked Henry.

  ‘Don’t ask me what it was. A brainstorm or something. He’s never done anything like it in his life, not until now.’

  Henry nodded. ‘I know. Your father has an enduring reputation as one of the stodgiest bankers who ever breathed. Lewis swears that he’s fashioned out of solid sourdough.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Collis. ‘What I’ve done has made the whole situation a hundred thousand times worse. When I went out with Delphine, our chaperone was Alice Stride, and it occurred to me that if she introduced me to her father, the well-known and wealthy Senator Stride, I might persuade him to underwrite I. P. Woolmer’s for the lost two million. Or some of it, at least.’

  He paused, and then he said frustratedly, ‘What never entered my damned stupid mind was that Senator Stride could have been party to the very damned speculation by which my father was busted. I should have known he was tied up in some railroad deal or another. Almost every damned politician is these days, from Jeff Davis downward.’

  ‘Awkward,’ commented Henry.

  ‘Awkward? I don’t know how Senator Stride managed to listen to me cajoling him for money and still keep a straight face. As if he was going to underwrite my father for two million dollars that he’d already gone to considerable pains to gyp out of him.’

  Henry stared at Collis from only two or three inches away. They blinked at each other for a while. Then Henry said, ‘In my opinion, humble as it may be, you’ve landed yourself in the creek.’

  Collis sat back. ‘It’s even worse than that. God, this place is hot – why don’t they put in some fans? The Senator’s going to tell Delphine’s father that my family is flat broke, without any chance of getting ourselves out of it, and that’s going to put a stop to my courting Delphine. And God knows what’s going to happen when he starts spreading the word around Wall Street that Woolmer’s is on the verge of bankruptcy, which he surely will. Father will kill me with his bare hands. That’s if Mother doesn’t kill us both first.’

  Henry slowly and thoughtfully stroked his cheek.

  ‘Do you like this Delphine?’ he asked Collis.

  Collis didn’t answer, but swigged back his drink and set the empty glass firmly back on the table.

  ‘I know. Why don’t we have another?’ said Henry, with the brightness of a man who has suddenly and intuitively solved a complicated problem.

  Collis shook his head. ‘That won’t help. It’s the end of the world.’

  ‘I know it won’t help.’ Henry smiled. ‘But I always think life looks so much more manageable when one is lying helplessly on one’s back, don’t you? At least, that’s what the colonel’s wife told me.’

  The waiter came up and stood beside them, twiddling his moustache. Collis raised his eyes to him wearily and then at last said, ‘Oh, very well. We’ll have the same again.’

  The two bruisers must have been following Collis all evening. As Henry and he left the brightly lit frontage of the St Nicholas and crossed Broadway to the north side of Spring Street, they emerged from a darkened store doorway and crossed the street only a few feet behind.

  Collis and Henry were both in better humour. Collis was laughing almost uncontrollably at a long story Henry was relating to him about the time he had been obliged to hide in a brother officer’s wardrobe (having already availed himself of the brother officer’s bed and the brother officer’s wife), and how the brother officer had pulled open the wardrobe door, said, ‘Oh, excuse me,’ and promptly closed it again. Henry, after seven whiskeys and as many beers, had decided that $5000 probably wasn’t too much to pay for a salutary experience; and Collis, after six stone fences, had almost forgotten about his problems with Senator Stride and Delphine Spooner.

  They turned into Spring Street, still laughing, but as soon as they were out of the gaslights of Broadway and into the shadows, the two men behind them quickened their footsteps and practically ran to catch up with them.

  Collis turned. Henry turned, too. Only a few feet away, as bulky and implacable as two small buildings, were Herbert Carpenter’s two Chatham Square toughs, their fists raised and their faces set in those rigid, frowning expressions that men of low intelligence consider obligatory for any tasks of violence.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Collis, with as much clarity and resolve as he could muster.

  The tough with the shaven scalp and the bottle scars answered. ‘Compliments of Mr Carpenter, this is. On account of you kicking him downstairs.’

  Henry looked at Collis blurrily. ‘Do you know these men?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Collis. ‘I think they’ve come to beat me up.’

  Henry tried to stand very straight. In a slurry voice, he announced, ‘I think you’d better know that I was boxing champion at West Point, 1849. My left hook broke an instructor’s jaw, and my right hook was so deadly that they considered bedding me down in the armoury, along with the Springfield rifles.’

  ‘Well,’ answered the tough with the shaven head, ‘I don’t mind about that. It’s him we’re after, not you.’

  ‘You’ll have to fight me first,’ said Henry gallantly.

  ‘I don’t mind about that,’ the tough told him.

  Without warning, the other bruiser, with spiky hair and a tight-fitting tailcoat, stepped forward and punched Henry very hard in the face. Collis, in a split second, saw Henry rolling across the street in a flurry of evening dress and horse manure, and then something as fast and heavy as a cantering pony collided with his shoulder and sent him hurtling against the iron railings. He bounced off, as if he were made of India rubber, but his back was bruised and he hit his ear on the sidewalk. He tried to get up, but a huge boot kicked him in the hip, and he felt as if the night was bursting in every direction.

  He heard Henry yelling a hoarse drunken yell, and he lifted his head. The tough in the tailcoat had Henry’s neck in an armlock and was screwing his knuckles into the side of his temples. Collis tried to pull himself to his feet, and had almost succeeded when a fist as hard as a doorknob punched him in the ear and he pitched over again.

  From somewhere, Henry’s voice shouted, ‘Collis! On your feet! Run!’ and somehow he managed to grasp the railings and pull himself upright again, with bright pinpoints of light sparkling in front of his eyes.

  The shaven-headed tough called, ‘More? You want more?’ and charged at him again, his fists revolving like a funfair ride. But then Collis, his left shoe uncomfortably squashed down at the back, his pants torn at the seams, his silk hat crushed over one eye, was up and running. Henry was already halfway down Spring Street, his legs pumping up and down as if he were dancing a very fast polka.

  The bruisers came hard behind them, silent and dogged. Collis only once glanced over his shoulder, as they ran across Lafayette Street, dodging between the carriages, and the two toughs were almost close enough to sink their broken teeth into his ear.

  ‘Collis! Follow me!’ Henry shouted, and unexpectedly turned down a narrow, pitch-black alley between two dilapidated red-brick houses. Collis ran after him blindly, holding his hands out in front of him in case he struck a wall or a fence in the dark. The alley reeked of damp and sewage, and echoed with the splank-splank-splank of running feet.

  They turned right, tripping over someone who was lying drunk and asleep on a heap of rubbish. A coarse voice yelled: ‘Wake a man up in his bed, would you? Wake a man up in his bed?’ but they were running towards the lights of the Bowery now, and all of a sudden they were out of the alley and pushing their way through the crowds that swarmed along the warm sidewalks outside the theatres and the bars and the novelty saloons.

  ‘We can slow down now,’ panted Henry. ‘They won’t attack us here. Not with the Bowery b’hoys around.’

  They slowed to a walk, bruised and filthy and still gaspin
g for breath. Behind them, the two pugs emerged from the alley and followed them for a short way, but then, thwarted, they turned off at Stanton Street and were lost in the darkness. Collis and Henry kept walking uptown, making their way as inconspicuously as they could through the parading crowds of hard young men in red shirts and elaborate cravats, with flouncy young bonneted women on their arms. Collis looked firmly ahead of him, avoiding the hostile and curious stares that followed them along the sidewalk, for these were the Bowery b’hoys and girls, and they were just as inclined to and capable of pasting intruders like Collis and Henry as the two Chatham Square bruisers.

  At last they found a cab, with the driver asleep on the box. Henry shook the man awake, and he agreed to take them up to the Union Club. They both felt like a stiff drink and a brush-up before they retired for the night.

  Inside the cab, lighting a cigarette, Henry said hoarsely, ‘That was no fun. What have you been up to, to make a couple of thugs like that so furious?’

  Collis was still shaking. He looked across at Henry, whose face was hidden in curling smoke and the shadows of the carriage, and shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know. It seems to me that heaven has decided to single me out for some singularly unpleasant punishment. Like Job.’

  ‘How odd,’ said Henry. ‘Let’s just hope you don’t get boils on your bottom.’

  Chapter 3

  His father’s fury, the following morning at breakfast, was worse than boils. The coffee grew cold in the silver urn, the scrambled eggs went stiff and dark yellow, and the toast curled up in despair. Ida, at one end of the table, sat mute with shock, her face white and stiff as a meringue. Maude, sitting opposite Collis, pulled such a variety of disgusted and disapproving faces that in happier circumstances he would have had to laugh.