Death in the Age of Steam (24 page)

The stateroom opened off the dining salon and had a window onto the promenade. The furnishings included a wash stand, a large looking glass and a soft bed onto which Harris threw himself in exhaustion and despair.

He felt idiotic. He might, from the way Vandervoort had had the run of the ship, have guessed at the inspector's influence with the captain. Had storming aboard the
Cytherean
at Niagara saved any time? It would all be spent in a small-town lock-up. Harris knew enough of the personnel of Station No. 1 not to expect Toronto police to be in a position to answer a telegram before breakfast or more likely, as it would be a Saturday, before noon.

Harris rolled over to face the varnished partition wall. From this side, merry voices in the next room sounded taunting and pitiless.

Could he truly be this sorry for himself? Well, his pride was hurt, he had to admit. Look at him—dodging bullets, crawling through fields, climbing out windows, running about like a demented squirrel. How had this creature grown out of the sober, trusted, filial individual who eight days earlier had been respectably employed receiving deposits, granting loans, denying loans—sometimes to steamboat captains—at the corner of Bay and Wellington? His reputation was falling off him like the peel from a Christmas orange.

It added to his chagrin that it was inadmissible even to think of such matters while Theresa's safety remained in doubt. This search he had undertaken—he wasn't up to it.

“Can't see nothing.”

A pair of children on the promenade had their faces pressed to Harris's window.

“Someone's sleeping, looks like.”

Harris forced himself to his feet and the two scampered off. He washed the grit from his hands. They weren't badly cut. Then he remembered the letters that he had picked up at the hotel and found that he wasn't quite done pitying himself yet. No friend or relative had written. After ten days, there was still no reply from Theresa's riding companion Marthe. There were only bills and advertising circulars to remind him that he was earning nothing above a few modest rents and was spending like a sailor on a spree.

He should perhaps have haggled more over the bond. Then again, suppose the captain's offer of close confinement were no bluff. By the time legal remedy could be sought, the
Cytherean
might well have sunk back into the waves with Harris still nestled among the ropes. Three hundred lives a year were lost on the lake. His release would be at the top of no one's mind if storm or fire threatened.

It would not take much of a storm to roll this vessel, either,
with her narrow wooden hull and her heavy walking beam up there in the sky. It would take even less to ignite her. She was all tinder, with fresh coatings of flammable varnish to make her blaze the brighter.

Harris's stateroom would blaze as bright as the rest, but was at least above the waterline and no more than fifty yards from the nearest life preserver. A happy thought.

Happier yet was the arrival of a steward asking what Harris would take for dinner. Through the open door, passengers could be glimpsed clinking crystal across white table linen and slurping down what appeared to be a thick fish soup.

Harris felt a space the size of a watermelon open in his stomach. Besides the soup, he had the steward bring him mutton with caper sauce, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, uncooked celery, boiled custard, raspberry tart and half a pint of cider. He requested also a small table, stationery, pen and ink.

No gourmand, Harris nonetheless took cheer as well as strength from good food, and when he had dined became considerably more resolute. Oscar had mentioned a brother in Weston, a small enough place that a note addressed to Mr. Eberhart there should reach him. Harris set down what had become of Oscar, and he didn't mince words—although the oleaginous phrase “unfortunate accident” did keep threatening to slip through the iron nib onto the page. To learn what remains if any had been recovered, he recommended applying to the Welland and Lincoln County authorities.

To the American Hotel, Harris wrote an apology for the strange manner of his departure and a request that they keep his room for him. Of three difficult letters, however, the one to Jasper Small occasioned the greatest embarrassment of all.

It was humiliating to remember his friend with Mrs. Vale's ring in his nose. Small had always liked his pleasures, certainly. Never before had he seemed their thrall. The added responsibilities Sheridan's death had thrown on the surviving partner must have overwhelmed him, and Harris had to wonder if Small were still capable of attending to even the simplest task.

Three sheets of
Cytherean
letterhead were wasted on false starts.

“My dear J.,” Harris scribbled at last. “Hope you'll excuse brevity—this written in great haste. Hot on Th.'s trail but shall soon want funds. Can you undertake to liquidate real estate holdings named below? If too busy, pls. advise. Am. Hotel will forward mail. Yours always, I.”

Once the three sealed envelopes were in his coat pocket, he removed the coat and closed the shutters against the last hour of daylight. He intended only a short nap, for he wished to be awake when they docked and able to take advantage of any opportunity to escape detention ashore. His body betrayed him, however. He slept until someone rapping on his door announced their arrival in Port Hope.

Having no light, Harris groped his way towards the sound. The door opened before he reached it. In the reduced glow of the dining salon lamps, stood not one of the Negro stewards but the captain himself, accompanied by a crusty old blue jacket with handcuffs at the ready.

Unmanacled promptly on reaching his cell, Harris completed his night's rest on a straw pallet from which the mice obligingly decamped. When he awoke, he reflected that—while not at liberty—he was at least in the right town. “Nelson in Port Hope,” Oscar had said.

With Constable Pitt, Harris maintained the pretence of wanting to leave it. No deep cunning was required. If, in the black of night, this official had appeared seasoned, the light of day showed him to be positively elderly. The conditions of detention were not onerous, apart from the tedium of endless cribbage games. The longer the two men played, the more trouble Pitt seemed to have reading his cards.

“My eyes were getting weak,” he confided, “before I took to bathing them in rock salt melted in brandy. French brandy
mind. Would you care for the
exact
receipt?”

“No need at present.” Harris stifled a smile and a yawn. “I was wondering how often steamers leave for Kingston?”

“For the eyes, by the way, some swear by wild violet tea.”

“There's the early morning one I came on,” Harris suggested.

“Every day but Sunday—and another at four thirty in the afternoon. Except on Sunday of course.”

Harris was about to ask the present time when the clock in the cupola three storeys above them struck four.

It was Saturday afternoon, and Port Hope was humming. No less construction mad than Hamilton or Toronto, the small town danced to the song of saw and hammer. Behind the new Town Hall, meanwhile, the market raised its dust and voice. Bushels of grain, hogsheads of whisky, miles of lumber were offered, declined, accepted at scarcely lower prices, and carted to the docks. Waggon wheels and manure-stained boots rushed past the basement window of the police lock-up.

Only inside did life assume a pastoral gait. “Miss the four thirty today,” said Pitt, “and you'll be cooling your heels till Monday.”

Feigned horror at this prospect gave Harris the excuse to ask who in Port Hope might have a horse to sell. Pitt, who had been about to play a card on Harris's five, put it back in his hand while he rhymed off livery stables plus a couple of local breeders, though on reflection they raised mostly plough horses.

His catalogue was interrupted by the approach of light, brisk steps. They stopped at the police station door. An envelope was pushed under it. Then they faded back down the corridor and up the basement stairs.

This door Pitt had locked before letting Harris out of his cell to play cards. Why, though, had the messenger not knocked? Telegrams were to be personally delivered. Harris vainly watched the window for feet to fit those steps. There was in any case no necessity for anyone leaving the Town Hall to pass this way.

“A very crabbed hand,” said Pitt. He was standing by the
window too, turning the envelope's contents to the light. “Of course, Sager's Hotel has a horse left by one of their guests, but I believe they are holding it for a Toronto gentleman. Ah, is your name—”

“Yes, yes,” Harris blurted. After so many empty hours, everything seemed to be happening at once.

Pitt gave him the paper to read. It wasn't a telegram but a note signed by John Vandervoort, Detective Inspector of Police: “You may loose Mr. Isaac Harris to continue his travels where he will. Any breach of the public peace he may have caused on leaving Toronto can be dealt with at a later date.”

“I don't suppose you would care just to finish the hand,” said Pitt. “You're too late now to make that boat.”

“I must try.” Harris suspected that on leaving the Town Hall he would be followed by Vandervoort's messenger. “Could you mail these letters for me, constable? Here's nine pence for the postage.”

The quarter hour chimed as Pitt was unlocking the door.

“Now I don't need to tell you,” he said, “that those of us that have to keep a sharpish look-out need something stronger than violet tea. Salted brandy is what I recommend. There you are. Free to go. Don't worry about those letters. I'll see to them.”

Swallowing his apprehension, Harris thanked him on the way out.

“Wait.”

“I cannot.”

Pitt shoved into Harris's hand an envelope identical to the three he was leaving. “Your bond, Mr. Harris. The captain of the
Kith 'n' Kin
asked me to return it to you.”

Harris nodded and ran. Early this morning he had counted three blocks north, one west, two north. Reversing the sequence, he turned down Queen Street with the river on his left and the west side of the frame and red brick town climbing the hill to his right. He dashed between the towering, still growing, brick piers of a future railway viaduct. Then he was over Smith's Creek onto Mill Street, of which the steamer dock
formed an uncommonly commodious extension. Harris found three vessels moored there.

Confusion was momentary. Harris was advised to follow a lad in a shako cap and baggy jacket, who was running for the farthest ship and glancing back over his shoulder as if expecting a companion even later than himself. Hurrying after, Harris looked back too. He still thought it possible he was being followed but could not make out by whom.

Ahead a black wall loomed. He recognized the Crane-built
Triumph
—a vessel he had in fact sailed on before. She had a sleek, iron-plated hull driven by underwater screws. For efficiency, she had
Cytherean
beat. Nor, Harris noted approvingly as he crossed the gang-board into the hold, would this steamer's sheer sides tempt dinghy sailors to folly.

“You're cutting it fine, sir,” remarked a steward. The whistle had not yet blown.

Call this fine? Harris thought—but he lacked breath to answer with more than a smile.

Just as the departure signal sounded, a cab came clattering down the dock with two passengers who were cutting it finer. One was heavy-jowled and laden with luggage including a birdcage. The other man appeared tall, weaselly, and just like the sort of informant Vandervoort might recruit in the Dog and Duck. Perhaps too like.

Harris bought his ticket. Kingston was
Triumph'
s next port of call, and as he didn't anticipate going that far, he economized by taking deck passage. His morning coat he again left with the stewards for pressing.

In the pungent privacy of a w.c., he loosened his boot laces. He then transferred to his oilskin moneybelt the portrait tracing plus all his coins and banknotes, including the fifty dollars from the
Cytherean
envelope. This useful sum he had not written off. At the same time, he had not truly expected to see it again until he had leisure to present his receipt at the steamship office in Toronto. All credit to the captain and the constable!

Triumph
had cast off. The water in the bowl was jiggling with
the distinctive high-frequency vibration of a propeller under steam. Not wanting to get too far from shore, Harris hastened to the promenade. He chose a free stretch of rail about two thirds aft on the starboard side, away from the receding docks.

Yesterday's clouds still had not cleared. The cold grey water streaming by looked a long way down. On the other hand, there was little wind. Harris's half-mile run had doubtless taken something out of him, but for the moment he felt limber rather than tired.

He took a last look left and right. Since leaving the purser's wicket, he had seen none of the late arrivals. A thin, light-haired woman in a low-necked dress was his nearest neighbour, and she seemed absorbed in following the swoop of the seagulls through a pair of gold opera glasses.