Under a Gilded Moon(14)

Ling Yong offered a piece of paper to Kerry. “A cable for you.”

Then, placing a hand on the satchel as if to say he had others to deliver, he mounted his bicycle and rode into the mist.

Two telegrams in three days, after none my entire life. Kerry steadied herself as she tore it open.

It had been received and then typed a few hours ago—Farnsworth’s initials, EDF, at the top—having come from a mill town at least a day’s ride away.

REMA SAID YOU WAS COMING BACK. SORRY CAN’T BE AT STATION.

STUCK IN WHITNEL. REAL GLAD YOU COME HOME. DEARG

For Dearg Tate, this was a torrent of words.

Real glad you come home. There was history behind that. And she would need to sort things out with him later. For now, her mind was already too full.

Several yards away, the two gentlemen in top hats were shaking hands with a man in a wool riding jacket and tall boots covered in leaves and muck.

“Gentlemen, I am Charles McNamee. Mr. Vanderbilt sends his welcome and hopes you will join him for a late dinner at the Battery Park Inn, where you’ll be staying, along with two other guests—though we’re delighted you can at least view Biltmore House in the final stages of construction. If you’ll forgive me a moment, I need to conclude a business conversation.” He gestured with his head toward Robert Bratchett.

John Cabot might have said something, but he was jostled from behind on the still-crowded platform. Aaron Berkowitz stood there, valise in one hand, his reporter’s pad in the other.

The two men stared at each other as Kerry watched, riveted. Though about the same age, the two were a good head apart in height, and from their expressions, they must have recognized each other. Neither apologized for the jostling; neither greeted the other like an old friend. Both looked rattled—horrified, even—at having to face each other.

The reporter turned away first, clutching his valise closer to his side and striding off to the right.

Cabot watched him go.

“Kerry!” Jursey was calling from behind her. “Where’s Tully gone to?”

Oddly, Tully had slipped out of sight. “She’s probably helping look for my trunk—I described it to her. Come on, Jurs, we’ll find her—and it—together.”

Grant squinted into the dusk. “By the time we settle into the hotel, it’ll be too dark to see George’s estate today. What the devil is keeping McNamee?”

Grant strode ahead, enveloped by the mist at the far end of the station. Watching him, Cabot slipped toward its opposite end and disappeared.

With another release of steam and a long blast of its whistle, the train chugged back into motion. Its locomotive headlamp sent a javelin of light ahead into the churning white.

At the whistle, the voices on the platform fell quiet. Even Jursey, at a trot in his search for his twin sister, slid across the moss-slick boards to a halt.

But then, just as the whistle was fading to an echo, came a shout of surprise from out of the darkness at the station’s far end.

Followed by a sharp cry of pain.

And then nothing at all.





Chapter 6

“Tully!” Kerry screamed, already running. “Tully!”

But only silence followed—too full of sounds cut short, and of the darkness that suddenly seemed to deepen around the tracks.

“Tully!”

Past huddles of skirts and luggage, Kerry bolted the length of the platform, its wet boards thundering under her. Fast as a colt, Jursey caught up, grabbed for her. As if whatever was waiting for them had to be faced holding hands.

At the far end of the station, Kerry could make out a circle of spectators looking down without speaking: the agent, McNamee, and other passengers. The scene was lit only by a scrim of moon, the one streetlamp on the opposite end of the platform, and the lantern swinging drunkenly now from the crook of the stationmaster’s arm.

“What the hell hap—” Jackson, the stationmaster, began. But he never finished, the spill of his own light answering for him. He rasped a long breath.

A tremor shooting the length of her spine, Kerry leaped down off the platform’s far end and burst into the center of the crowd’s concentric circles. On the ground, sprawled facedown, lay a body, unmoving. And hunched beside it, a girl.

Tully.

With a cry, Kerry dropped down to the mud and threw both arms around her sister. “Are you all right?”

Tully swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. “Kerry, check. Please. Please say the man here’s only knocked out terrible cold.”

Jursey and Rema ran up close behind Kerry’s back, Jursey taking his twin sister’s hand.

John Cabot knelt beside Kerry. Together, they rolled the man on the ground to his back.

Kerry’s hand went to her mouth. “Aaron Berkowitz! Oh dear God.” Blood gushed from a wound over one eye.

She bent down, bringing her cheek beside the reporter’s nose. “Breathing. Just barely.”

Kerry jerked off her coat. With the flash of her right hand under her skirts, she whipped out the knife she kept always sheathed in one boot and slit the right shoulder seam of the coat. In her peripheral vision, she saw Cabot’s eyes widen. Perhaps in Beacon Hill, Boston, ladies did not yank up their skirts for just-sharpened blades.

But there were days, Kerry knew, that called for keeping a knife in your boot.