A Good Man (44 page)

Ada wonders if “the perfect understanding” she had held up to Wesley as an ideal is the meani found in moments such as this.
I do this thing because you ask it of me. I do this thing because I want to see you more clearly
. Perhaps there is nothing better than this, the sincerity of gestures, the willing slope of a shoulder turned to the task, the earnest curve of a back gleaming in the lamplight, love acting, the body as witness.

Ada has spent most of the morning sewing covers to her pupils’ new readers. By eleven o’clock she realizes she will need more bristol board, which necessitates a trip to town to renew supplies. The work has left her feeling lighthearted. Every time she pulled a thread through those pages she had felt she was giving a pull to Mr. Hooper’s nose. After making her purchase, she drops by the post office to see if a new circular from the Chicago bookseller she patronizes has arrived. It’s a morning of angled late-summer sunshine that makes windows flash and gives a coppery glint to the street dust hovering in the air.

There is no circular but there is a letter. The writing on the envelope is unfamiliar. There is no return address and the postmark is smudged and difficult to read, but it looks like it might be Omaha. She knows no one in Nebraska. Perhaps it has something to do with the house, a communication from some lawyer whom Lieutenant Blanchard has hired to represent Celeste’s interests. She thrusts the letter into her reticule.

Back at the house, she sits down, and beginning to feel some trepidation that the letter might contain a demand that she vacate the premises, she slits open the envelope and begins to read. The letter frightens and disturbs her; she has no inkling who might have written it until its author reminds her that he had kept her safe from Gobbler Johnson. She skips to the last page. The signature confirms that the author of the letter is indeed Mr. Dunne.

Michael Dunne, the faithful dog thumping his tail on her porch, begging someone to pat his head, the way he imagines stronger, deeper emotions underlying the insipid kindnesses she dealt him, how could he have imagined such things? She feels unbalanced, as if the ground has suddenly shifted. Just to think of the dreadful man turns her hands clammy with anxiety.

And that his insane delusions also concern Wesley – the claims that he has poached on Dunne’s preserve; that he is a libertine; that he is a seducer; that a great cloud of scandal hangs over his head. It appears Dunne will stop at nothing. She is uncertain how to respond to this outrageous farrago of nonsense and slander. At first, she is tempted to do exactly what Dunne asks, send him a wire, a wire that will demand he
leave her alone
. Inform him in no uncertain terms that
she has no feelings for him whatsoever
. But, then again, any contact with this lunatic might be ill advised. What good could come from opening a conversation with a man suffering such bizarre delusions? Mightn’t it encourage him to lay further charges of moral turpitude against Wesley? Perhaps lead to another declaration of love? The very thought of his doing such a thing is enough to make her heart skitter with fright.

Let Dunne hang fire in Omaha; complete silence may be the best and sternest refutation of his hallucinations.

Briefly, she considers showing the letter to Wesley, but then decides against it. He would surely read it as a call to somehow take action on her behalf, or as a demand on her part that he provide answers to the supposed revelations. Wesley has alluded to a scandal in his past that ended his engagement, but he clearly did not wish to speak further of it. She has always assumed another woman must have been at the bottom of that but never considered it any of her business to ask him to air youthful dirty laundry. No, she will not speak to Wesley about Dunne. Better to draw a curtain of privacy around this matter as one should do around a deathly ill patient.

Dunne had to wait until August 16 before he received the summons to the Franklin Hotel to meet with General O’Neill. At eight o’clock that night, Collins met him in the lobby and escorted him up to a suite of rooms on the third floor where the General, wearing a lavishly embroidered dressing gown, reclined on a chaise longue, one naked foot, with an engorged and inflamed big toe, propped on a pillow.

After Collins had made introductions, O’Neill said, “Excuse me for receiving you in such an informal fashion, Mr. Dunne, but I am temporarily
hors de combat
. I am losing a skirmish with the gout. But please, sir, draw up a chair beside me and let us talk about your proposal.”

Dunne knew the General was tight as a tick. It wasn’t that he slurred his words; rather, he spoke them so clearly and so deliberately it was obvious he was rehearsing everything he meant to say before he uttered it, and then merely reading it from the book of his mind. His face had a spongy look and his eyes didn’t have much shine to them, as if somebody hadn’t cleaned the chimney lamps for a long time and the buildup of smoke and grime was dimming whatever pitiful light his brain could still throw.

Collins picked up a chair, carried it over, and set it down near the General, signalled Dunne to sit, and went to stand behind the chaise longue as if he were providing himself as a pillar the General could lean on if the need arose.

“Now,” said O’Neill, “Mr. Collins tells me you claim you can raise a large sum of money. You had better detail how you think that can be done.”

Which Dunne did as if it were the old days and he was making a report to McMicken. There was a man by the name of Wesley Case who had a small ranch near Fort Benton. His father was a bigwig in Ottawa and had more money than Carter had liver pills. With O’Neill’s help, he could snatch this Case and hold him for ransom. He guessed the father would cough up as much as twenty-five thousand dollars to get his golden boy back, maybe more. But as Dunne laid this out, he sensed the vague light that showed in the General’s eyes was growing dimmer and ever more cloudy by the second.

When Dunne had finished, the General sat silent for a long time, stroking the lapels of his dressing gown with his fingertips. At last he said, “If the gentleman in question were a soldier, a policeman, a member of Parliament, I would consider him fair game. But he is a civilian. I wage war only on those who take a hand in oppressing Ireland.”

“Well, so happens he did just that,” said Dunne. “Take my word on it, he was one of the militia officers that fought you at the Battle of Ridgeway. He was in the North-West Mounted Police until a year ago. His old man pours money into that hound Macdonald’s pockets. I ask you, do the Irish have a worse enemy than John A. Macdonald?”

Collins cleared his throat. “I can verify what Mr. Dunne says, sir. Case was in the Police. That was well known in Fort Benton. And what he says about Macdonald – he has a point.” O’Neill craned his neck and looked up incredulously at his lieutenant. Then he turned back to Dunne.

“If this Case were on British soil, I would take him in the blink of an eye. It would give me joy to break the Englishman’s law, which is the cudgel of a tyrant. He beats us to our knees with it and if we strike back, why then he cries to the world, ‘Look, these Irishmen have no more respect for law than does a Hottentot. Patriots? No, they are nothing but common criminals.’ ” O’Neill fell silent; he appeared to have abandoned the thread of his thought in favour of staring at his gouty toe.

After a time, Dunne said, “That’s a pretty speech. Here or there. What difference does it make?”

Dunne’s challenge roused O’Neill. He pushed himself a little more upright on the chaise longue, wincing as his foot shifted on the pillow. “Mr. Dunne, I have no compunction about doing injury to Englishmen to gain our liberty. Americans are another matter.”

“Who said anything about harm to Americans?”

“And if things go awry, if you are pursued by the law, what then? Do you surrender or do you fight to keep your prize?”

“That’s an if.”

“A big if. A bigger if is a dead peace officer. We have our friends in Congress. Public opinion supports our cause. I don’t intend to jeopardize either by committing mayhem on American soil. It’s not worth it.”

“I’d say twenty-five thousand dollars is worth it. Your dirt farmers would have to sell a lot of sacks of potatoes, a lot of ears of corn, a lot of bushels of wheat to raise that kind of money.”

“I see the
big picture. I paint it,”
said O’Neill fiercely. “I juggle considerations you are incapable of appreciating. Get him out of here, Mr. Collins,” he said. “I have nothing more to say to this dolt.”

Collins stepped around the chaise longue. Dunne rose from his chair. The two men walked to the door. Collins paused and said to O’Neill, “I will see Mr. Dunne out, then go to my room. I have paperwork to do.”

The General was attempting to fish a bottle from under the settee. He made a last precarious lunge at it, snatched it up, and nestled the whiskey in his lap. “Yes,” he said without a trace of interest, “very good.”

Dunne and Collins went out and down the hallway. They passed two doors and when they came to the third the General’s aide stopped Dunne, lifted a finger to his lips, then unlocked the room and ushered him in. Dunne looked around him. The last light of a summer evening was on the walls. The room was hardly bigger than a broom closet. Squeezed into it was a roll-top desk piled high with papers. A cot was jammed tight under the window. Collins began to pace the last scrap of avable floor space, head lowered, hands clenched behind his back. Dunne leaned a shoulder against the door and waited. Collins stopped, lifted his head, and said, “He was a great man. A very great man.”

“Every dog has his day,” said Dunne.

“Most
days,” said Collins emphatically, “he’s drunk before breakfast. Too many hopes defeated. His will is gone. The Hero of Ridgeway they once called him. People who leaned on him, admired him, now they revile him. It’s very sad.” Collins shook his head. “I feared he would refuse. That this would happen.”

“It don’t need to happen,” Dunne said implacably, face wiped clean of any emotion.

“What do you mean?”

“I got most of it already in place. I know where to hold Case. It’s safe; nobody would find it. I been spending a good deal of time in Helena lately. There’s a young fellow there, an old friend of Case’s from their Police days by name of Peregrine Hathaway. I spotted him working in a bank there. He’ll be of use.”

“In what way?”

“He can be the one to contact Case’s papa, act as a buffer. The money can be paid to Hathaway, then he hands it over to us.”

“I’m not following. You mean to take on another confederate? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“No, no, we
use
him. I know this boy’s nature. He was moony over the daughter of a man I worked for. The girl’s mother used to talk about how much this Hathaway admired Case – used to make me grind my teeth to hear it.”

“And if he decides to go to the law?”

“He ain’t going to the law. Not if he knows Case has a pistol to his head, knows we mean business. He ain’t going to nobody. He’s a weak sister – soft from the top of his head right down to his toes.”

“You seem very sure.”

“I’m sure. He’ll be like butter in my hands.” Dunne paused. “Something more. He’s a high-toned Englishman, the sort that gets money dropped in their laps from the old country. Case’s papa can arrange a bank draft through lawyers that looks like a inheritance from some relative of Hathaway’s – father, maiden aunt – it don’t signify who.” Dunne smiled. “It gets better. Since he works in a bank, they know him, there won’t be no questions about his identity. Once the money is got, he delivers it to us. That’s all she wrote.”

Collins nodded. “Your thoroughness is admirable, Mr. Dunne.”

“All I need’s a little expense money – and a few men.”

Collins thought for a moment. “Contributions to the cause pass through my hands. A little that might be skimmed with no one the wiser. As to the men … how many would you require?”

“I can make do with three if they’re good. Hard men is necessary.”

“That may take a little time. I can’t recruit anyone from O’Neill City. Word would be sure to get back to the General. But I can think of three men who would suit. Two last known to be in Philadelphia. One in Baltimore. The Baltimore one, Halligan, is a holy terror.” He considered for a moment. “But it may take time to get them here.”

“How much time?”

“It’s difficult to say. I must locate them first. As you can guess, they make it a habit not to be easily found. Maybe as long as a month. Perhaps longer. Then I must get them here.”

“All right,” said Dunne. “But I’m in charge. I don’t want no misunderstanding on that score.”

“Agreed.” Collins put out his hand. Dunne shook it. “One other thing – if things go amiss, this cannot land on the General’s doorstep,” warned Collins. “His standing must be protected at all costs. For the good of the cause. You agree?”

“Yes.”

“But if we succeed – that’s another matter. The General won’t refuse the money. He will see the light. He burns for another chance to redeem himself.”