The Jewel and the Key (39 page)

“Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. Tom has the original. I can write and remind him....”

She thought quickly. “He can just leave it for me in Meg's office at the Jewel,” she said. It seemed the safest way. Then she smiled and added, “I loved what you wrote. Make sure I get the whole paper, with the article in it, too.”

“Really?” He looked pleased. “Well, if I'm going to have a readership of one, I'm glad its you. Though you'd better hide it away, even if Meg's just interested in the pictures. I don't know if I like the idea of my mother getting into trouble over my radical connections.”

Sam Sadler was watching this exchange with obvious enjoyment even while sorting his cards and bidding. “Too bad about the article. But remember, friend, you can write for the
Call
anytime. We'll even whip up a pseudonym for you, if you don't want to shock your people.” He turned to Peterson. “Not to pry, but what's the getup in aid of, Gustaf? You aren't planning a jaunt to the peninsula in those togs, are you?”

“Nah. Reg here loaned it to me. He's enlisted—”

“What a pity!” Mrs. Olivereau exclaimed. “I wish I'd had a chance to dissuade you, Mr. Powell.”

Reg ignored this. “It's to put interested parties off the scent,” he explained.

Sadler raised his brows. “Anyone interested beyond our usual friends?”

“I don't think so. But there was an actor trying to impress an APL man at the theater tonight. He actually stumbled into Gustaf a few days ago.”

“The American Protective League?
Mon Dieu
!” Mrs. Olivereau gave Peterson a worried look. “And someone saw you at the theater?” She cast another worried look at Sam Sadl er. “We'd better hope no one finds out we're helping him. It could give the city attorney an excuse for a prosecution. That's all they need.”

“Don't worry. Teddy Nickles is picking me up soon.” Peterson turned to Sadler. “You heard from him yet?” He pointed at the knapsack Reg had dumped on the floor beside him. “I'm ready when he is.”

“He called from the peninsula. The rains have the road in a muck, but he'll make it. He always does.” Sam Sadler put the cigar in his mouth and lit it. The tip glowed orange.

“Where are you going?” Addie asked Peterson.

“Camp Disappointment. Sounds homey, don't it? A timber camp out on the peninsula. Frida will come out, too, when the coppers ease up a bit.” He turned to Reg. “I'd be in a heap more trouble if it weren't for you and your ma. You let her know.”

Addie's ears pricked up. For a moment she thought she heard a moaning sound outside the building, like the beginnings of a windstorm. But then it died away.

“I will,” Reg said. He shook Peterson's hand formally. “Good luck to you. Now, the sooner we get our duds switched, the better.”

The moaning swelled again. Addie went over to the window, trying to see what was happening, but it looked out only on the side of the next building. The sound was becoming louder and more piercing. She stood stock-still, concentrating. Everyone else was still talking. She held up her hand. “Hey! Does anyone else hear that?”

Mrs. Olivereau came and stood beside her, putting her hand on her shoulder. She turned to the men at the card table, who were still calling out bets. “Shhh! Stop chattering, you ox heads!”

As the room quieted, the sound swelled.

“Fire engine?” Peterson asked uneasily.

Mrs. Olivereau rushed across the room and grabbed him by one arm and Reg by the other. She pushed them toward the door. “Siren. Fire or police, you can't stay to find out. Go!” They stared at her.
“Vite!”

“But I'm supposed to meet Teddy here. Hows he gonna find me?” Peterson objected.

“Think of another meeting place. We'll send him to you.”

“Where?” The siren was blaring now.

“The Jewel?” Mrs. Olivereau suggested.

“You're joking,” Peterson said harshly.

“What about the lumberyards on Skid Row?” Reg suggested.

“No!”

Addie was about to jump out of her skin. She couldn't bear it if, after all they'd been through, Peterson was arrested. “Send him to my—I mean, to Mrs. Turner's house,”
she blurted out, thinking of the safest place she knew. “Up in Wallingford.”

“That's not a good idea,” Reg said quickly.

Lights were swooping through the chinks in the boarded-up windows. “They're here! We don't have time to argue. Give me the address.” Mrs. Olivereau snatched up paper and a pencil and handed them to Addie. She scribbled down the house number and street and rushed out into the hall with the others, following Sam Sadler down the stairs and toward the back of the building.

The siren's shrieking cut off abruptly. Car doors slammed and people ran up the front steps. Sadler wrenched open the back door, and before they knew it they were in the alley. They stumbled down the steps and ran to the flivver.

They could hear Louise Olivereau arguing loudly with someone around the front of the building. Reg cranked the engine. Addie looked around frantically, hoping the police wouldn't suddenly burst into view. She couldn't imagine how they were going to get away.

And even if they did, she realized, Meg wouldn't be home, would she? Not on opening night. Still, did it matter? As long as they got out of here.

The engine caught, making an unholy racket, and Reg jumped in. He knocked a switch with his finger, and the headlights pierced the darkness.

“Turn those
off!
” Peterson hissed.

“I can't. I'll crash into garbage cans.”

“Then leave them on,” Addie said. “Just go!”

But as Reg sped down the alley and around the corner,
a man came up the side street toward them. He shouted something she couldn't hear and ran back down the block toward the
Daily Call
office.

“Reg! That was a policeman!”

“I know!”

He shoved his foot down on the accelerator, and the car picked up speed.

For a block or two they were on their own. But then the back of Addie's neck prickled, as if someone had just sat down behind her. She stuck her head out the window and twisted around to see.

Another car was right behind them. A police car? There were no flashing blue and red lights, and if it had a siren, it was off. All these cars looked the same. All the flivvers with their rickety headlights and black paint jobs, like a fleet of hearses.

“Left! Turn left!” she shouted. “I think they're following us.”

Reg jerked the motorcar into the left lane and they skidded around the corner.

“They're turning too!” Peterson yelled.

“Oh, no.” Addie slumped down in her seat. “Reg! I don't think you should head to Meg's house after all. You'd be taking them right to the guy who's picking up Mr. Peterson.”

“What should I do?”

“I don't know!” She thought for a second. “Slow down, for one thing. Drive normally. Then they won't necessarily think—”

“Go to the station.” Peterson leaned forward. He put his arm across the leather seat, and Addie saw the gleam of the brass button on his cuff catch the light of a streetlamp. “King Street. Where you'll catch the train. You want a big crowd. That's our best chance to lose them.”

“What if we don't?” But Reg was backtracking already. “If they catch us, we'll have to bluff it out,” Peterson replied. “We've still got a chance.”

“Do you think so?”

“Sure,” Addie said. “Mr. Peterson has a uniform on. He'll fit right in.” Addie's throat felt dry. “He can be your uncle. Isn't that what you said before? Its just acting, Reg. We can do that.”

“Then you'd better be ready to pitch in, Madam Director,” Reg said grimly.

Addie nodded, looked back at the headlights coming closer, and tried to sound confident. “Of course I will. Were a good troupe. We'll manage.”

King Street Station looked like the site of a city evacuation. A chaos of cars and horse-drawn carts jammed the side streets, disgorging whole families, including grandparents with canes and mothers with screaming babies.

All the way there, Addie kept her eye on the police car, which was still doggedly following the flivver. But luck finally smiled on them as they reached the far end of Jackson Street, so close to the water that the smell of fish invaded their nostrils. An arthritic-looking horse pulling a peddler's cart lumbered into the intersection behind them, nearly clipping their rear wheel, and cut them off from their pursuers. The horn on the police car blared as the two vehicles nearly collided.

“They're stuck!”

Reg glanced over his shoulder and drove halfway up onto the sidewalk to park. “Jump out then, and keep watch.” He pulled off the flat cap and tossed it to Peterson. “We'll switch clothes in the motorcar.”

When Addie leaped out, she saw that the peddler's horse had balked and refused to go farther. She wished she could have patted its sad, soft muzzle and told it to ignore the old peddler who was barking, “Git on, you brute! Pull!”

But a second later a heavy police officer appeared.

“Move that bag of bones!” he yelled.

“What do you think I'm trying to do?” the peddler shot back. He slapped a stick against the beast's flank.

The police officer made a disgusted face and shouted something to his partner in the blocked car. Then he turned and began to plow through the crowd of people streaming toward the station. Horrified, Addie pounded the side of the flivver. “You don't have time to change. Get out now!”

She darted into the street, thinking the cop was sure to see her if she stayed on the sidewalk. Reg was already out of the car, settling the strap of the overalls and Gustaf's knapsack on his shoulder. “Damn it, Addie—”

“He's heading this way. Come on, Mr. Peterson.”

Addie snatched the workman's cap from where Reg had left it on the seat and jammed it back on his head. Peterson pulled himself out of the back, setting the uniform to rights. A muscle at the corner of his eye was twitching.

They hurried along the row of parked cars toward the station, swerving around opening doors.

Then, just as they were almost at the entrance, Peterson called, “Wait a second!” He grabbed Reg by the shoulder and reached into the top pocket of his overalls, pulling out a small red booklet with the letters
IWW
engraved over an image of a globe and the name
Gustaf Peterson
printed below. “If anything happens, it'd be best not to have this on you.”

Addie plucked it out of his hand. “You'd better not either,” she said, stuffing the union card into her bag.

“Good thinking.”

They cut through the taxi stand in front of the station as drivers pulled in and out without looking to see if anyone was there—car, cab, pedestrian, or dog—and they had no choice but to merge into the throngs of people on the sidewalk. Addie glanced over her shoulder, and her heart sank as she caught sight of the police officer still bulling his way through.

“I think he sees us.”

“What should we do?” Peterson asked.

“Just act like we have a perfect right to be here,” Reg answered.

We do,
Addie thought with a pang.
This is where Reg is supposed to be tonight, to catch the train for the army camp.

“Pretend we're seeing you off,” she said. “Remember, if he catches up with us, you're ... Reg's uncle. What did you say his name was?”

“Rob Hamlin.”

“That's it. So until we get rid of that cop, you have to be the soldier going off for training.”

“All right. Once we shake him off, we'll switch.” Peterson dodged around a lamppost in his path, its light diffusing in the mist around it.

“Just don't speak too much,” Addie told him. “And try to sound more American. Flatten your vowels and—I don't know, mutter a bit so he can't tell you've got an accent.”

“Flatten—?”

“Like...
cat
—make the
a
come through your nose.
Ae.”

“There's no time for elocution lessons.” Reg glanced up at the clock on the station's red-brick tower. “We're cutting it close enough.”

“But we need to work out what we'll say. Who are you if anyone asks?”

“Dunno,” Reg answered impatiently. “Janitor doesn't make sense anymore. Driver? Hired man?”

“Okay.”

Their breath hung in veils in the cool night air. Addie shivered, and Reg slipped his arm around her. Briefly, she huddled into the warmth of his body, then, at the same moment, they drew apart, remembering that he was supposed to be a hired man.
And I'm supposed to be ... who?
Addie wondered.

“Does he have a daughter? Your uncle Rob?”

“Sophie. But she's five.”

“Now she's seventeen,” Addie said, and kept talking before Reg could object. “I know it's crazy, but I'm not leaving you, and I need a story, too. I'm Sophie.” She turned to Peterson. “All right?”

“I heard ya.”

Addie walked closer to Peterson—he was supposed to be her dad, after all.

The hands on the huge station clock pointed like daggers to five past ten. “Reg!” Addie exclaimed. “We'd better find your mother, so she doesn't give us away by mistake. Where'd she say she'd meet you?”

“The café. Follow me.”

He pushed the bronze door handles, smudgy with the prints of innumerable fingers. The air from inside rushed out, thick and sweaty from the crowd. Addie almost tripped over a little girl in a funny square hat who was jumping up and down in frenzied excitement. The girls mother caught her hand firmly, sending an apologetic smile to Addie. A man in uniform crouched down, and the little girl ran into his arms.

As they squeezed through the press of bodies, Addie looked back again, hoping the police officer was having as much trouble as they were.