The Inquisitor's Apprentice (21 page)

But of course it wasn't lack of space that made so many Americans hate immigrants the way they did. And even the beautiful scenery couldn't keep Sacha from brooding over the dybbuk. What would Inquisitor Wolf do if Sacha told him about it? Would he help?
Could
he help? Or would the Inquisitors just arrest every Kessler in sight and let a jury of "real" Americans sort the guilty from the innocent?

Lily woke up just as they passed Sing Sing Prison and started asking Wolf a bunch of ridiculous questions: Could his Inquisitor's badge get him in there? (It could.) How many criminals had he personally sent there? (Too many.) And had any of them been put to death in Thomas Edison's electric chair? (If they had, he wasn't saying.)

Sacha looked up at the grim gray walls with their jagged crowns of barbed wire and shuddered. If Wolf's investigation took an unlucky turn, it was all too possible that his grandfather could end up in this awful place. A wave of breathless panic swept over him. His chest felt like it was being squeezed by iron bands. He prayed Wolf wouldn't look at him.

Luckily Wolf was too busy answering Lily's endless questions to even notice Sacha. And by the time they passed beyond the prison and chugged into Ossining's regular commuter station, Sacha had more or less recovered.

The three of them climbed off the train, stretching stiff legs and backs, and set off up the steep hill that rose from the river to the town. From what Sacha could see, Ossining was more like a park than a place for people to live. Spreading trees shaded acre after acre of soft green grass. And the gingerbread-swathed houses dotted here and there upon the greensward looked barely substantial enough to keep the weather out.

The Worley house was as elegant and gracious as any of the other homes on its quiet street—or at least it would have been if the lawn hadn't been littered with furniture, books, cooking implements, piles of bedding, and pretty much everything else that ought to have been inside the house.

At first Sacha thought the Worleys must have failed to pay their rent and been kicked to the curb by their landlords. He'd certainly seen that happen enough times on Hester Street to know what it looked like. But he couldn't believe that sort of thing went on in this neighborhood. And even if it had, he would have expected to see the children of the family sitting on top of the piles of furniture to protect them from petty thieves while their parents ran around frantically trying to find a new and cheaper place to rent.

Instead of children, the Worleys' yard was full of hard-eyed men who were all stalking around inspecting the furniture as if they were trying to decide how much to pay for it. And sure enough, Wolf had no sooner set foot on the front walkway than a sweaty little man with piggy eyes thrust a price sheet into his hands and told him to look sharp because the auction was going to start in eight minutes.

"What auction?" Wolf asked.

"The creditors' sale!"

"So Mr. Worley has declared bankruptcy?"

"Mr. Worley hasn't declared anything. He jumped off a bridge last week. It's his widow who's bankrupt."

"And ... er ... where is she now?"

"Gone to the devil, for all I care!"

"Did she leave a forwarding address?"

"Nope, and I don't need one either." The man spat in disgust. "This auction won't cover all Worley's standing debts, let alone leave something to send along to the missus."

"Do you happen to know how we could contact her?"

"No," the auctioneer said churlishly. "And I don't have time to find out for you, either." But then he relented—perhaps because he felt bad, or perhaps because he hoped there might be a reward involved. "You could ask Mrs. Worley's maid. She's still hanging around for some reason, though I don't know who she thinks is ever gonna pay her."

They found the maid in the kitchen, blowing her nose into a handkerchief that had already seen plenty of use that day. Wolf sat down across the kitchen table from the girl, smiling far more charmingly than Sacha would ever have thought he could. Within moments, he was drinking a cup of tea and patiently listening to Mary Mulvaney's entire life story (starting in Ballyseede Castle parish, Tralee, County Kerry),
followed by Mrs. Worley's entire life story (starting on Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia), followed by the sad saga of Mr. Worley's bankruptcy and suicide.

As far as Sacha could make out—the maid kept bursting into tears in the middle of sentences, which made it hard to keep track of things—Mr. and Mrs. Worley had enjoyed a nice normal life right up until two weeks after he filed the patent application for his Soul Catcher. But then a smooth-talking lawyer had shown up in a long black motorcar and paid him an unspeakable amount of money for all the rights to his invention. And from the moment he took the money, he was cursed to misery and misfortune.

Every investment he made crashed as soon as he bought into it. Crops failed. Bridges collapsed. Ships sank. Respectable businesses floundered under the weight of unspeakable scandals. Soon he had lost not only the money from Morgaunt but his entire life savings as well.

"It's them Wall Street Wizards what done him in!" Mary Mulvaney wailed. "It oughtn't to be legal, what they do! The stock market's just a cheat and a scandal, and it'll ruin any honest man who puts his faith in it!"

"So why did Mr. Worley put his faith in it?"

"Because of them! Before they got their claws into him, he was as sensible a man as you could ever ask to work for. Well, except for the inventing. But he only did that in his spare time, and he always provided for his family decentlike. And such a loving husband. In the end, I don't think he killed hisself over the money at all. I think he just couldn't live with what he'd done to Mrs. Worley."

"It must have been a terrible shock to her," Wolf sympathized.

"I can hardly stand to think of it. She's always been that nice to me. I would've given anything I had to help her, but what could I do?"

"Well, I'm sure your being here is a great help to her," Wolf said kindly.

The girl sighed. "She couldn't bear to see the auctioneers going through her things, so I stayed behind to close up the house and, and—" Sobs threatened to overcome her again.

"I understand Mrs. Worley isn't here right now?"

"She left for the city last week." More sobs. "She wouldn't let me go with her 'cause she can't afford to pay me no more, but ... but I can't bear to think of her alone in that awful place!" Mary buried her head in her sodden handkerchief.

Sacha felt a sharp stab of sympathy. It was obvious that she was a nice girl who'd had a hard life, even by Hester Street standards. And it was just as obvious that there had been real affection between her and the Worleys, the kind of attachment that went far beyond doing a job and collecting her wages. They must have been genuinely kind people to have earned such loyalty.

He felt an odd rush of heat that flushed his cheeks and set his heart thumping. It took him a moment to recognize the feeling as anger. He couldn't imagine why he would be so angry about something that had happened to people he didn't even know. But he was. And even though it wouldn't bring back Mrs. Worley's husband, Sacha suddenly wanted very much to punish the men who had driven him to kill himself.

When had he become so vindictive? Was he starting to think like an Inquisitor instead of a normal person? Uncle Mordechai would probably say it was the first step in his transformation into an anti-Wiccanist tool.

"And what are you going to do now?" Wolf was asking when Sacha forced his attention back to the conversation.

"I hadn't even thought yet," Mary sniffled. "Go back and stay with my sister in the tenements while I look for work, I guess."

"I meant what are you going to do about punishing the men who ruined Mr. and Mrs. Worley?"

She shook her head bitterly. "Men like that, they're too rich to be punished."

"Maybe. But if I can't find them, I can't even try. And I can't try to get Mrs. Worley's money back, either."

"You could do that?" she asked, as if he'd just promised a miracle.

"Probably not," Wolf admitted. "But like I said, I can't even try until I find them."

Mary stared down at her handkerchief, biting her lip. Then she went to the breakfront cabinet and flipped through a tin box of recipe cards until she'd found the one she was looking for.

"You understand I wasn't supposed to tell anyone," she warned Wolf. "She'll be that upset with me, she will! She might not even speak to you."

"Don't worry," Wolf said, flashing that surprisingly charming smile again. "It won't be the first time I've had a door slammed in my face."

She stood in front of him, clutching the recipe card close to her body as if she still hadn't quite made up her mind to give it to him. Then she thrust it into his hands as if it burned her.

Sacha craned his neck to peer at the card over Wolf's shoulder. It was a recipe for Sally Lunn cake, whatever that was. Wolf turned it over to reveal the hastily scribbled address on its back—and looked up in astonishment.

"Mrs. Worley is living on the
Bowery?
"

D
USK WAS DESCENDING
on New York by the time they pushed their way off the El and followed the rush-hour crowd down the wrought-iron stairs to the Bowery. The arc lights had just come on, and they blazed so brightly it hurt to look at them. These days Broadway was slowly eclipsing the Bowery as New York's Great White Way. But despite Broadway's high-class theaters and fancy beer gardens, the Bowery was still where ordinary New Yorkers went to have fun when the sun went down and the lights went on.

As they reached the curb, Wolf took Lily and Sacha by the arm to shepherd them safely across the flood of carts and carriages and trolley cars. And then the most extraordinary thing happened.

Wolf dropped their arms and leaped into the middle of the street alone—straight into the path of an oncoming omnibus. Just as it seemed the horses were about to trample him, Wolf bent down like a baseball player diving for a ground ball, swept something small and dark up off the cobblestones, and flung it into the air with all his might.

There was a swift flash of blue and white and russet feathers. Then, inches in front of the startled horses, the hurtling ball of feathers exploded into full flight. For a moment Sacha was certain the swallow would be dashed lifeless against the hard metal roof of the omnibus. But at the last instant, it swerved up into open air. And then it was gone, its shadow rippling along the cobblestones as it winged away under the blazing lights and vanished.

"A grounded swallow," Wolf explained, rejoining them at the curb. "They're the most perfect flying machines. They live their whole lives on the wing and nest in the cornices of the skyscrapers. But on the ground they're helpless. They can't walk. They can't even take off again unless someone throws them back into the air by sheer force. Landing is practically a death sentence." Wolf suddenly got that sheepish look Sacha had seen him wear when he thought he'd said something too personal—though Sacha couldn't figure out what was so personal about the flying habits of swallows. "Anyway, saving a swallow is supposed to be good luck. And right now we need all the luck we can get."

They didn't have any trouble finding the address Mary had given them. The sign over the door of the building was neither the tallest nor the newest on the Bowery, but it was by far the longest. In fact, it was so notorious that Sacha could have recited it to Lily without even looking at it:
MAN
DELBROT'S AETHERO-THERAPEUTIC INSTITUTE AND DIME MUSEUM.

As they approached the museum, he could hear the practiced patter of the museum's barker promising geeks and egg cranks and tattooed marvels and waxwork figures. Last but not least on the list of attractions was Madame Worley and her mysterious Soul Catcher.

Wolf bought three tickets and handed the change to one of the beggars who seemed to be drawn to him by some kind of invisible magnetic force. Then they ran the gauntlet of freaks and spectacles. And then they were standing at the back of a half-empty theater whose stage was occupied by a tired-looking middle-aged woman and a machine just like the one they'd seen in Morgaunt's library.

The show had just ended. The audience was getting to their feet, muttering and rubbing their eyes and searching for hats and gloves. Sacha didn't get the feeling that the performance had been a success. Wolf waited until everyone had filed out, and then strode down the aisle and stepped onto the stage.

Mrs. Worley, who had already started to pack away her machine, stopped and shook her head. "The money's all gone." She sounded like she'd said the words so many times they no longer meant anything to her. "You'll have to go to Ossining and put your name on the creditors' list."

"I'm not here about money," Wolf told her. "I'm here about your husband's murder."

Mrs. Worley stared.

"So," Wolf said, "you
do
believe he was murdered."

"
Who are jou?
" she whispered. But when he showed her his badge, her face twisted with bitterness at the sight of it. "You're wasting your time, Inquisitor. Unless you want to be out of a job tomorrow, I suggest you forget you ever saw me."

"Why don't you just tell me what happened?"

She sighed, and her shoulders slumped a little—but only a little. She was the kind of woman who'd had good posture drilled into her since childhood, and she wasn't about to give it up merely because she was widowed and bankrupt and putting on a glorified magic show in a Bowery dime museum.

"They came with compliments and flattery," she said. "In a big, long, shiny motorcar. They offered my husband more money than he'd ever seen in his life. Far too much to refuse. No matter what conditions they put on it. It was only later that we realized the money was cursed."

"Wall Street Wizardry?"

"Of the subtlest kind, Inquisitor. Nothing you could ever prove even with an army of accountants. They took everything we had. And then they took my husband and replaced him with that ... that
thing.
"