The Last Days of Night(49)

“I trust you a little,” said Paul. “You’re asking me to trust you a lot.”

At any moment, all Agnes would have to do was speak a few ill-considered words at a dinner, and both Tesla’s life and Paul’s career would be over.

“If you’re worried that I’m going to sell you out to Edison, perhaps you should think on it this way: If I want to, I already can.”

He blinked. She had a point. Paul found himself both impressed and afraid of her, in equal measure.

“You should be a lawyer,” he said.

Taking this as a sign of assent, Agnes went to her clothing rack. She removed a long green coat and a pair of small flat shoes.

“We’ll have to get him into new clothes so he won’t be recognized. The costume department will have plenty. Then you and I will need to leave separately. If Edison is having you followed, we can’t take any chances. A few minutes after you go, I’ll take him to a carriage and get him to Gramercy.”

“What will you tell your mother?”

“That’s my problem,” she said as she slipped the soft shoes onto her feet. “I’ve a performance tonight. Come over after, to check on him. Midnight, on the dot.”

“All right.”

“Now help him up.”

Paul felt nervous about leaving Tesla again. After finally locating him, he was letting him once again out of his sight? And yet he had no other choice.

Paul turned quickly to Agnes. “Thank you,” he said. “I promise this affair will not distract unduly from your singing.”

“Well, I’ll tell you an awful secret about the opera,” said Agnes as she rang the bell for a stagehand. “It’s the same show every night.”





Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

—THOMAS EDISON



PAUL DECIDED THAT he would not say a word to Westinghouse about the sudden reemergence of Nikola Tesla. Not now.

How could he? Westinghouse was isolated in Pittsburgh and without much experience in high-society subterfuge. He was a blunt boss with little patience for dissembling. If Westinghouse knew, then so might a half dozen top engineers in his lab. Or any of the executives in his manufacturing divisions. All of whom had worked for Westinghouse for years longer than Paul had. Paul trusted Westinghouse with his life. But he could not trust him with this secret. Not yet.

Paul grew angry. Not at himself, for deciding to withhold pertinent information from his client. Not at Tesla, for his mental instability, or at Carter and Hughes, for their small-minded treacheries. Not at Westinghouse, for being so unsuited to secrecy as to require being deceived.

Paul was angry at Thomas Edison. This soul-corroding position in which he found himself was the result of a war that Edison had started.

Thomas Edison was the devil himself. And the real measure of his villainy was the behavior he’d forced on Paul.

—

That evening Paul paid the first of many nighttime visits to Gramercy. Most nights, after leaving the office, he would descend from the hanging step of his carriage between the hours of eleven and twelve and peer quickly around the park. He would search for signs of anyone watching. But of course in such a vibrant setting it would be impossible to tell. The restaurants and alehouses along Irving Place overflowed with revelers, young men and women promenading gaily beneath the streetlamps even into the winter. The theater at Irving Plaza was only a few blocks down, and if Paul happened to arrive when a show was getting out, he would find the streets flooded with merry music lovers. In all the visits he paid to Agnes’s house, he never failed to hear a tune in the air outside it.

Gramercy was not the sort of neighborhood that would take too much notice of a young man paying late-night visits to an actress’s darkened home.

On Paul’s first visit, Fannie was the one to open the door and bid him to enter. She tilted her neck back to stare him straight in the eyes.

“I don’t like this,” she informed him.

“Were I in your position, I wouldn’t like it either, Mrs. Huntington. If there were any other solution, I can promise you that I wouldn’t be here, and neither would my suffering friend.”

“My daughter has come too far, in too short a time, to be set back by the blackmail of a dishonest theater manager, the debauched soirees of high-fashion pedophiles, the rantings of a head-sick lunatic, or the schemes of a wily attorney just slightly too clever for his own good. My daughter likes you. I don’t. So you may rest assured that I will turn on you, and your friend Tesla, at the very first opportunity you give me to do so.”

However Agnes had convinced her mother to allow them to host Tesla, it had worked. Still, she could hardly be called a willing accomplice to their plans. Understandably so. If the wrong eyes caught sight of the small-hour visits a young man was paying to her daughter, there would be hell to pay.

This would be the longest of Paul and Fannie’s interactions. He would typically nod a hello in future visits. She would scowl in return. They exchanged little beyond the barest of formalities.

On some nights Agnes would be home upon Paul’s arrival, on other nights not. After the first few days, she gave Paul a key so that he might let himself in, but he still felt it impolite to enter without warning. Some proprieties, at least, must be preserved.

Inside, Paul would be greeted by the flickering gas lamps along the smoothly carved vestibule. He’d hang his coat. And, once November had given way to early December, he’d smack the snow from his scuffed leather boots.