The Hostage

She shivered, knowing that skipping the social engagement was only the first act of defiance she would commit tonight. She had never before carried out a rebellion, and she didn’t know if she could accomplish it.

As the carriage wended its way up Michigan Avenue, Jeremy had to slow down before an onslaught of pedestrians, drays, teams and whole family groups. They seemed to be heading for the Rush Street bridge that spanned the river. Despite the lateness of the hour, crowds had gathered at the small stadium of the Chicago White Stockings.

Rapping on the curved windshield, Deborah called out, “Is everything all right, Jeremy?”

He didn’t answer for a few moments as he negotiated the curve toward River Street, heading for the next bridge to the west. They encountered more crowds, bobbing along in the scant illumination of the coach lamps. Deborah twisted around on the cushioned bench to look through the rear window. The pedestrians were, for the most part, a well-dressed crowd, and though no one dawdled, no one hurried, either. They resembled a dining party or a group coming out of the theater. Yet it seemed unusual to see so many people out on a Sunday night.

“They say there’s a big fire in the West Division,” Jeremy reported through the speaking tube. “Plenty of folks had to evacuate. I’ll have you home in a trice, miss.”

She knew Kathleen’s family lived in the West Division, where they kept cows for milking. She prayed the O’Learys would be all right. Poor Kathleen. This was supposed to be an evening of pranks, pretenses and fun, but a big fire could change all that.

She wondered if Dr. Moody’s lecture would be canceled because of the fire. Probably not. The Chicago Board of Fire boasted the latest in fire control, including hydrants, steam pump engines and an intricate system of alarms and substations. Many of the stone and steel downtown buildings were considered fireproof. The city’s elite would probably gather in the North Division to gossip the night away as the engineers and pumpers brought the distant blaze under control.

She stared out at the unnatural bloom of light in the west. Her breath caught—not with fear but with wonder at the impressive sight. In the distance, the horizon burned bright as morning. Yet the sky lacked the innocent quality of daylight, and in the area beyond the river, brands of flame fell from the sky, thick as snow in a blizzard.

Apprehension flashed through her, but she put aside the feeling. The fire would stop when it reached the river. It always did. The greater problem, in Deborah’s mind, was getting her father to understand and accept her decision.

The coach rolled to a halt in front of the stone edifice of her father’s house. Surrounded by yards and gardens, the residence and its attendant outbuildings took up nearly a whole block. There was a trout pond that was used in the winter for skating. The mansion had soaring Greek revival columns and a mansard roof, fashionably French. A grand cupola with a slender lightning rod rose against the sky. A graceful porch, trimmed with painted woodwork, wrapped around the front of the house, with a wide staircase reaching down to the curved drive.

“You’re home, miss,” Jeremy announced, his footsteps crunching on the gravel drive as he came to help her down.

Not even in a moment of whimsy had Deborah ever thought of the house on Huron Avenue as a home. The huge, imposing place more closely resembled an institution, like a library or perhaps a hospital. Or an insane asylum.

Squelching the disloyal thought, she sat in the still swaying carriage while Jeremy lowered the steps, opened the door and held out his hand toward her. Wild gusts of wind pushed dead leaves along the gutters and walkways.

Even through her glove she could feel that Jeremy’s fingers were icy cold, and she regarded him with surprise. Despite a studiously dispassionate expression, a subtle tension tightened his jaw and his eyes darted toward the firelit sky.

“You’d best hurry home to your wife,” she said. “You’ll want to make certain she’s all right.”

“Are you sure, miss?” Jeremy opened the iron gate. “It’s my duty to stay and—”

“Nonsense.” It was the one decision she could make tonight that was unequivocal. “Your first duty is to your family. Go. I would do nothing but worry all night if you didn’t.”

He sent her a grateful bob of his head, and as he swept open the huge, heavy front door for her, the braid on his livery cap gleamed in the false and faraway light. Deborah walked alone into the vestibule of the house, feeling its formidable presence. Staff members hastened to greet her—three maids in black and white, two house-men in navy livery, the housekeeper tall and imposing, the butler impeccably dignified. As she walked through the formal gauntlet of servants, their greetings were painstakingly respectful—eyes averted, mouths unsmiling.

Arthur Sinclair’s servants had always been well-fed and -clothed, and most were wise enough to understand that not every domestic in Chicago enjoyed even these minor privileges. To his eternal pain and shame, Arthur Sinclair had once been a member of their low ranks. So, though he never spoke of it, he understood all too well the plight of the unfortunate.

She prayed he would be as understanding with his own daughter. She needed that now.

“Is my father at home?” she inquired.

“Certainly, miss. Upstairs in his study,” the butler said. “Would you like Edgar to announce you?”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Marlowe. I’ll go right up.” She walked between the ranks of silent servants, surrendering her hat and gloves to a maid as she passed. She sensed their unspoken questions about her plain dress and shawl, the disheveled state of the hair she had not bothered to comb. The stiff, relentless formality was customary, yet Deborah had never enjoyed being the object of the staff’s scrutiny. “Thank you,” she said. “That will be all.”

“As you wish.” Marlowe bowed and stepped back.

With a flick of her hand and a jingle of the keys tied at her waist, the housekeeper led the others away. Through the doors that quickly opened and shut, Deborah could see that valuables were being packed away into trunks and crates. A precaution, she supposed, because of the fire.

Standing alone in the soaring vestibule, with its domed skylight three storeys up, Deborah immediately and unaccountably felt cold. The house spread out in an endless maze of rooms—salons and seasonal parlors, the music room, picture gallery, dining room, ballroom, conservatory, guest suites she had never counted. This was, in every sense of the word, a monument to a merchant prince; its sole purpose to proclaim to the world that Arthur Sinclair had arrived.

Dear God, thought Deborah. When did I grow so cynical?

Actually, she knew the precise moment it had happened. But that was not something she would reveal to anyone but herself.

Misty gaslight fell across the black-and-white checkered marble floor. An alabaster statue of Narcissus, eternally pouring water into a huge white marble basin situated in the extravagant curve of the grand staircase, greeted her with a blank-eyed stare.

Beside the staircase was something rather new—a mechanical lift. In principle it worked like the great grain elevators at the railroad yards and lakefront. A system of pulleys caused the small car to rise or lower. Her father had a lame leg, having been injured in the war a decade ago, and he had a hard time getting up and down the stairs.

To Deborah, the lift resembled a giant bird cage. Though costly gold-leaf gilding covered the bars, they were bars nonetheless. The first time she stood within the gilded cage, she had felt an unreasoning jolt of panic, as if she were a prisoner. The sensation of being lifted by the huge thick cables made her stomach lurch. After that first unsettling ride, she always chose to take the stairs.

The hand-carved rail of the soaring staircase was waxed and buffed to a high sheen. Her hand glided over its satisfying smoothness, and she remembered how expert she had been at sliding down this banister. It was her one act of defiance. No matter how many times her nanny or her tutor, or even her father, reprimanded her, she had persisted in her banister acrobatics. It was simply too irresistible to prop her hip on the rail, balance just so at the top, then let the speed gather as she slid down. Her landings had never been graceful, and she’d borne the bruises to prove it, but the minor bumps had always seemed a small price to pay in exchange for a few crazy moments of a wild ride.

Unlike so many other things, her father had never been able to break her of the habit. He governed her sternly in all matters, but within her dwelt a stubborn spark of exuberance he had never been able to snuff.

Deborah started up the stairs. The study housed Arthur Sinclair’s estate offices, and he worked there until late each night, devoting the same fervor to his business as a monk to his spiritual meditations. He regarded the accumulation of wealth and status as his means to salvation. But there was one thing all his money and influence could not buy—the sense of belonging to the elite society that looked down on his kind. Acquiring that elusive quality would take more than money. For that he needed Deborah.

She shuddered, though the house was overly warm, and took the steps slowly. She passed beautifully rendered oil portraits in gaudily expensive gold-leafed frames. The paintings depicted venerable ancestors, some dating back to the Mayflower and further. But the pictures were of strangers plucked from someone else’s family tree. She used to make up stories about the stern-faced aristocrats who stared, eternally frozen, from the gleaming frames. One was an adventurer, another a sailor, yet another a great diplomat. They were all men who had done something with their lives rather than living off the bounty of their forebears.

She would never understand why her father considered it less honorable to have earned rather than inherited a fortune. She had asked him once, but hadn’t understood his reply. “I wish to have a feeling of permanence in the world,” he had said. “A feeling that I have acquired the very best of everything. I want to achieve something that will last well beyond my own span of years.”

It was a mad quest, using money to obtain the things other families took generations to collect and amass, but he regarded it as his sacred duty.

She reached the top of the stairs and paused, her hand on the carved newel post. She glanced back, her gaze following the luxurious curve of the banister. Through the inlaid glass dome over the entryway, an eerie glow flickered in the sky. The fire. She hoped the engineers would get it under control soon.

But she forgot all about the fire on the other side of the river as she started down the hall toward her father’s study. A chill rippled through her again, carrying an inner warning: One did not contradict the wishes of Arthur Sinclair.

Chapter Two

Tom Silver arrived in Chicago with murder on his mind. Heaved up by wind-driven waves, the deck of the steam trawler shifted under his feet. He knew it would be hard going to get to shore in the dinghy, but he didn’t care. He had a job to do.

Yet when he saw the city in flames, he paused in putting spare cartridges in his belt loops and gaped at the fiery orange dome over the sky. The unnatural arch of light and flame was so eerie that, just for a moment, he forgot everything, including the deadly purpose in his heart.

“Hey, Lightning,” he called, thumping his foot on deck to summon his companion, who was in the engine room. “Come have a look at this.”

The lake steamer Suzette chugged toward its final destination at Government Pier. Its point was marked by a lighthouse beacon, but Tom had a hard time keeping his mind on navigation. The sight of the burning city clutched at his gut, made his heart pump hard in his chest. He couldn’t help thinking about the tragedies that would strike tonight with the swift, indifferent brutality of fate. Fire was like that—random and merciless.

And damned inconvenient, given his purpose tonight. He had come hundreds of miles, from the vast and distant reaches of Lake Superior, to hunt down Arthur Sinclair. He wouldn’t let a fire stop him.

The smell of steam and hot oil wafted up through the fiddley, and the clank of machinery crescendoed as a hatch opened. “What the hell is going on, eh?” asked Lightning Jack, emerging through the narrow opening. He shaded his eyes and squinted at the city. “Parbleu, that is one big fire.”

“I guess I’ll get a closer look tonight,” Tom said, making his way down to the engine room.

Drawing back on a lever, he tamped down the boiler and then climbed abovedecks to help Lightning Jack drop anchor in the deep water. Though it was late, he had to shade his eyes against the light of the conflagration. People had gathered on the long fingerlike pier. Boats shuttled between the mouth of the river and the long dock. At the Sands, the fire reared so close that people drove wagons into the lake to escape the leaping flames. But their backs were all turned to the lake. Like Tom, they were mesmerized by the spectacle of the city in flames.

The skeletal tower of the Great Central elevator, surrounded by smokestacks, threw a long black shadow on the churning water. The fire tore across the city with the prairie wind, hot and muscular, feeding on the close-set structures.

Tom had seen any number of fires in his lifetime, but never one like this. Never one in which the wind seemed to bear the flames in its arms. Never one that moved with such furious speed. Flames covered the homes and businesses like blankets, building by building, block after block. He could see the deadly veil of crimson covering the West Division and pushing relentlessly at the edge of the river.