Snow

1888

THREE OF THEM sat down at the table in Delmonico’s. Frank Master was nervous. He hadn’t wanted to come—indeed, he’d been most surprised when Sean O’Donnell had asked him to meet Gabriel Love.

“What the devil does he want with me?” he’d said. Gabriel Love might be a well-known figure, but he and Master moved in different circles and Frank had no desire to do business with such a man.

“Just come and meet him,” Sean had asked. “As a kindness to me.” So, since he owed O’Donnell quite a few favors, Frank had reluctantly agreed.

Delmonico’s restaurant, at least, had been a good choice. It used to be further downtown, but now it was at Twenty-sixth and Fifth, looking across Madison Park to Leonard Jerome’s old mansion. Frank liked Delmonico’s.

But before he walked in the door, he turned to Sean and said firmly: “Remember, O’Donnell, anything illegal, and I’m leaving.”

“It’s all right,” said Sean. “Trust me.”

Sean O’Donnell, these days, was a very elegant man. His face was clean-shaven; his hair was still thick, but silver. He was wearing a perfectly cut pearl-gray suit. The knot of his silk bow tie was tied to perfection, and the studs down his shirt front were neatly set diamonds. His shoes were so highly polished, it was hard to imagine their owner had ever stepped near a gutter in his life. He looked like a banker. True, he still owned the saloon, and looked in there from time to time, but he hadn’t lived there for almost twenty years. Since then he’d owned a house on lower Fifth Avenue—not a great mansion, but as big as Master’s house in Gramercy Park. Sean O’Donnell was a rich man.

How had he done it? Master had a pretty good idea. While Fernando Wood had known how to extort money from New York City, and his successor, the great Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, had turned the business into an art form, O’Donnell had managed to be close to both men in turn, and he’d benefited hugely. He’d been able to develop scores of properties in the ever growing city, renting and selling at huge profit. “I never had any of the padded contracts,” Sean had told him. Tweed had fleeced the city of millions with those. “But he did let me invest $10,000 in his printing company.” Tweed had then pushed all the city’s printing through the company, at inflated prices. “I got a dividend of $75,000 a year from a $10,000 investment,” Sean had confessed.

And when Tweed had been exposed, and his inner circle had been disgraced, O’Donnell had been one of many who, having profited discreetly in those years, had been able to cover their tracks and continue quietly with their business.

And then there had been the dealings with Wall Street.

That had been the province of men like Gabriel Love.

Gabriel Love was large. He sat opposite Frank Master, and his watery blue eyes rested mildly upon Frank’s face, while his big white beard flowed like a benign waterfall onto the broad expanse of his stomach, which caressed the edge of the table.

Everyone knew Mr. Gabriel Love. He looked like Santa Claus, and his gifts to local charities were legendary. He loved attending church, where he sang the hymns in a high, almost falsetto tenor. His pockets were always full of candies for children. “Daddy Love,” people often called him. Unless, of course, they had been the victim of one of his devastating financial operations. Then they called him “The Bear.”

Gabriel Love greeted Master politely. When the waiters brought the food, he announced that he would say grace, which he did in a voice of great reverence. Then he let Sean provide most of the conversation until he had finished eating an entire chicken. Only then did he turn to Frank and inquire of him: “Are you a betting man, Mr. Master?”

“Once in a while,” said Master, guardedly.

“The way I see it,” said Gabriel Love, “a Wall Street man is a betting man. I’ve seen men bet all afternoon on which raindrop on a window is goin’ to reach the bottom first.” He nodded thoughtfully. “A Wall Street man is greedy, too. No harm in that. Without greed, I always say, there’d be no civilization. But the Wall Street man doesn’t have the patience to till the soil or manufacture things. He’s clever, but he’s not deep. He invests in companies, but he doesn’t much care what they are, or what they do. What he wants is to bet on them. Wall Street will always be full of young men, betting.”

“Young men?” Sean said. “What about older men, Gabriel?”

“Ah. Well now, as a young man gets older, he raises a family, takes on responsibilities. And then he changes—it’s only human nature. You see it on the street all the time. The man with responsibilities does not bet in the same way. His operations are different.”

“How different?”

Gabriel Love gazed at them both, and suddenly his pale blue eyes seemed to grow harder.

“He stacks the odds,” he said sharply.

He knew it. As Frank stared at the great, white, deceptive beard of Gabriel Love, every instinct told him it was time to leave.

Sean O’Donnell was one thing. Sean might kill you, but not if you were on his side. For some time, fate had linked them through Mary, and in other ways since. Sean he could trust. But Gabriel Love was another matter. Did he really want to get involved with him, at his time of life?

Master was nearly seventy-three years old. You wouldn’t have thought it to look at him—most people took him to be ten years younger. His hair was thin, and his mustache was white, but he was still a strong, good-looking man, and rather proud of it. He went to his counting house every day. And if, now and then, he felt a slight twinge of pain, or sense of tightness in the chest, he shrugged it off. If he was getting old, he didn’t want to know it.

But he enjoyed the respectability that his age and long career had earned him. His fortune was considerable, and he could easily augment it without taking unnecessary risks. He had his grandchildren to think of now. And Gabriel Love had just as good as told him that something dishonest was afoot. He started to rise.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m too old to go to jail.”

But Sean O’Donnell’s restraining hand was on his arm.

“Wait, Frank—for my sake—just hear what it is that Mr. Love proposes.”

It was a week later that Lily de Chantal set out in her carriage, from the distant north-western territory of the United States, to drive down to Gramercy Park.

Dakota Territory. Still not a state: a vast, wild wilderness. But when, a couple of years ago, Mr. Edward Clark the developer had built a huge, isolated apartment building on the west side of Central Park—all the way up at Seventy-second Street—he had decided to call it the Dakota. It seemed Mr. Clark had a fascination for Indian names. He’d already built another apartment house called the Wyoming, and had hoped to name one of the West Side boulevards Idaho Avenue. In its splendid isolation, with neighboring blocks empty except for a few small stores and shanties, the mighty Dakota might just as well have been in some remote territory, as far as the fashionable world was concerned.

“Nobody lives up there, for heaven’s sake,” they said. “And anyway, who lives in apartments?”

The answer to that question was simple. Until some years ago, only poor people lived in apartments—houses split up by floors—or in tenements, where even the floors were subdivided. Splendid apartments might be a feature of great European capitals like Vienna and Paris. But not New York. The people you knew lived in houses.

Yet there were signs of change. Other apartment buildings had appeared in the city, though none as grand as the Dakota. The building, a somewhat barn-like version of the French Renaissance, stared rather bleakly across Central Park and the pond where people skated in winter. But, it had to be confessed, it had its points.

Aside from the monumental Indian motifs with which Mr. Clark had decorated the building, the apartments were huge, with plenty of servants’ quarters. With their soaring ceilings, the reception rooms in the largest apartments were quite as big as those in many mansions. And soon people noticed something else. These apartments were rather convenient. If you wanted to go to your country house for the summer months, for instance, you could safely lock your door without even leaving a housekeeper to mind the place. Before long people were even saying: “Oh, I know someone who lives there.”

Lily de Chantal, now in her fifties, had decided to give the Dakota a try. Today, she declared, she wouldn’t think of living anywhere else. She’d rented out the house she owned, invested her other savings, and was able to live quietly and pleasantly at the Dakota with a small staff. Her style of life was made all the more comfortable by the fact that Frank Master, discreetly, paid half the rent.

This afternoon, however, in answer to a note she’d received the day before, she was on her way to take tea, not with Frank, but with Hetty. And understandably, she was a little nervous.

She wondered what Hetty wanted.

March had only just started, but the day was surprisingly warm. As she passed along the south side of Central Park, she saw banks of daffodils. Only as she crossed the top of Sixth Avenue did she frown.

She had never reconciled herself to the long, ugly line of the raised railway that ran down Sixth these days. The El, they called it—the elevated railroads, whose puffing, sooty steam engines rushed their noisy carriages over the heads of ordinary mortals, twenty feet above the street. There were other lines on Second, Third and Ninth avenues, though the one on Ninth gave no trouble to the Dakota, she was glad to say. They were clearly necessary, since they carried over thirty million passengers a year. But for Lily, they represented the ugly side of the city’s huge progress that she didn’t want to see.

The sight of the El was soon past, and a long block later, at the corner of the park, she was turning into the pleasant environs of Fifth Avenue.

You had to say, Fifth was getting better and better. If the El was the necessary engine of New York’s burgeoning wealth, Fifth Avenue was becoming the stately apex. The avenue of palaces, the valley of kings. She’d only gone a short way when she passed what had once been the solitary mansion of the wicked Madame Restell. Solitary no longer. That notorious lady herself was no more, and across the street, now, the Vanderbilts had built their mighty mansions.

She passed the Cathedral of St. Patrick, all complete now, and soaring in Irish Catholic triumph over even those Vanderbilt mansions.

But despite the pace of advance, she was glad that only St. Patrick’s, and Trinity, Wall Street, and a handful of other church spires rose into the sky above the city. The great residential mansions were still only five stories high; indeed, the largest commercial structures, using cast-iron beams, were seldom more than ten.

Moreover, even the most lavish of the newer palaces, whose opulent decorations might have seemed overdone, vulgar, in fact, to the Federal generation, even these plutocratic treasure houses still relied upon the basic motifs of the classical world, as did their cast-iron counterparts. There was tradition, and craftsmanship, and humanity in them, every one.

The city might be vast, but it still retained its grace. And perhaps because she was getting older herself, this was important to her.

She passed the reservoir at Forty-second Street. In the Thirties came the mansions of the Astors. And then she was turning into Gramercy Park.

It was just the two of them, herself and Hetty Master. When she was ushered into the sitting room, Hetty welcomed her with a smile.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Lily,” she said, and indicated that she wished Lily to sit on the sofa beside her.

You had to say, Lily considered, Hetty Master had worn very well. Her hair was gray. But then so would mine be, Lily thought, if I let it. Her bosom was matronly, but she had by no means let herself go, and her face was still handsome. Any sensible man of seventy should be proud of having such a wife.

But then, what man of any age was sensible?

During the last two decades, she supposed they must have met several times every year, at the opera, or in other people’s houses. And on these occasions, Hetty had always been polite and even friendly to her. Once, about fifteen years ago, after a recital she had given—which Frank had financed, of course—Hetty had actually asked her some quite intelligent questions about the music. They had been in a big house with a music room, so Lily had taken her to a piano, and shown her which parts were the most difficult to sing, and why. They’d had quite a long talk, and by the end of it, she could tell that, whatever else her feelings might be, Hetty had genuinely respected her professionally.

But had Hetty guessed that Frank was her lover? There had never been any indication that she did. Lily had no idea what Hetty might have done if she had known, and, as she had no wish to cause Hetty pain, Lily hoped she didn’t. She and Frank had always been discreet, and Frank was forever telling her: “Hetty has no idea.”

Now Hetty poured the tea. She waited until the maid had left the room, however, before she began.

“I asked you to come round, because I need your help,” she said calmly.

“If I can,” said Lily, a little uncertainly.

“I’m worried about Frank,” Hetty continued. She gave Lily a quick look. “Aren’t you?”

“I?”

“Yes,” Hetty said, in a businesslike fashion. “I’m worried about this girl. Have you met her?”

Lily was silent for a moment. “I think you have the advantage of me,” she said cautiously.

“Have I?” Hetty smiled. “I’ve known that you were Frank’s mistress for a long time, you know.”

“Oh,” said Lily. She paused. “How long?”

“Twenty years.”

Lily looked down at her hands. “I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“If it was going to be somebody,” said Hetty, “I suppose I’d just as soon it was you.”

Lily didn’t reply.

“You were quite discreet,” Hetty continued. “I was glad of that.”

Lily still didn’t reply.

“It was partly my fault, I can quite see that now. I drove him away, so he sought comfort elsewhere.” Hetty sighed. “If I had my life again, I’d act differently. It’s hard for a man if he thinks his wife doesn’t respect him.”

“You’re very philosophical.”

“One has to be at my age. Yours too, if you’ll forgive my saying so. In any case, I’d rather be the wife than the mistress.” Lily nodded. “You still have your marriage.”

“Yes. Marriage may not be a perfect state, but it is a protection, especially as we get older. And we are all getting older, my dear.” She glanced at Lily before going on. “I still have my home, my children and grandchildren. And a husband, too. Frank may have strayed, but he is still my husband.” She eyed Lily evenly. “In every way.”

Lily bowed her head. What could she say?

“I was hurt when Frank took a mistress, I won’t deny it, but I’d still rather be me than you. Especially now.”

“Now?”

“This young woman. The one who’s stolen him from you.”

“Oh.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Not a lot.”

“Well, I know a great deal.” She watched Lily for a moment. “Would you like to know?” And when Lily hesitated: “Miss Donna Clipp is a little witch. She’s digging for gold. Not only that—she was prosecuted for theft, in Philadelphia. I have proof.”

“I see.”

“I’ve had a lawyer investigate her. Frank paid for the lawyer, of course, though he doesn’t know it. He thought he was paying for curtains. She cares nothing for him. But she’s after his money.”

“I suppose you think that of me too,” said Lily sadly.

“Not at all, my dear. I’m sure he’s generous, but he can afford to be. Not that I think little Miss Clipp will succeed in getting much out of him. Frank’s not a fool when it comes to money, but she might kill him while she’s trying.” She sighed. “We both know my husband’s getting old. And he’s vain, like most men. She’s a young woman—she’s only thirty, you know—and I’m sure he wants to prove himself.”

“And you think it might be too much for his heart?”

“Don’t you?”

“Perhaps,” said Lily.

Hetty looked hard at her. “Do you love my husband?”

“I have grown very fond of him.”

“Then you’ll help me.”

“To do what?”

“Why, to get rid of this young woman, my dear. We have to get rid of Donna Clipp.”

When Mary O’Donnell had heard that Lily de Chantal was coming to tea with Mrs. Master, she had been surprised. She knew that the two women were only vaguely acquainted; she supposed Mrs. Master might be wanting the singer to perform at one of her charity events. When she was told that Mrs. Master wanted to see her as well, she couldn’t imagine why.

She found the two of them sitting quite easily together on a sofa.

“Now, Mary dear,” Mrs. Master announced with a smile, “we need your help.”

“Yes, Mrs. Master,” said Mary. Whatever could she want?

“We’ve known each other many years, Mary,” Mrs. Master continued, “and now I have to ask you to be very honest with me, and to keep a secret as well. Would you do that for me? Would you promise?”

After thirty-five years of kindness?

“Yes, Mrs. Master, I promise.”

“Well, then. I am worried about my husband. And so is Miss de Chantal. Miss de Chantal is a dear friend of my husband.” She smiled at Lily. “We are both worried about him, Mary, and we think that perhaps you can help.”

Mary stared at her. What was she saying? How much did she know?

“Your brother Sean has had dealings with my husband for many years, as you know, Mary. And Miss de Chantal tells me that your brother knows her too. What we need to know is, has your brother ever talked about Miss de Chantal?”

“About Miss de Chantal?”

“Yes. As a friend of my husband?”

“Why …” And Mary, despite her promise, was about to tell a lie. Except that she blushed. And Mrs. Master saw it.

“It’s all right, Mary,” said Hetty Master. “I’ve known for twenty years. How long have you known?”

“Ten,” said Mary, awkwardly.

“Sean told you?”

Mary nodded. He’d kept it to himself for a long time, you had to give him that, but in the end he’d told her.

“Good,” said Mrs. Master, “that might be helpful. And has he told you about Miss Donna Clipp?”

“Miss Clipp?” Mary hesitated. “I don’t know the name.” This was true. Two weeks ago, Sean had muttered that Master was making a fool of himself, and that at his age he’d better be careful. But that was all he’d said.

“Well, that’s her name. Now, Mary, we need your help. Mr. Master is not a young man, and we must protect him. When are you next seeing your brother?”

“I often go to see him on Saturdays,” said Mary.

“That’s tomorrow,” said Hetty Master, with great satisfaction. “Could you see him then?”

“I could if you want.”

“Then here’s what we need you to do.”

There was no doubt, Sean thought, that Gabriel Love’s plan was a work of art. And part of the beauty of the thing was that it was not what you’d expect Daddy Love to do.

Daddy Love liked to sell short. If he sensed that the market was going down, or better yet, if he had private information that a stock was going to be in trouble, then he’d offer to sell you a parcel of shares, at a future date, for well under their present price. Like a fool, you’d suppose you had a bargain. And sure as fate, when the day arrived, the price of those shares would have dropped far further than you would have dreamed, and he’d buy them cheap himself, and you’d be obliged to take them off his hands at the higher price you’d agreed, leaving him with a handsome profit and yourself with a massive loss. And all he’d needed to do was make the bet—or, more precisely, stack the odds, since he’d certainly known something about those shares that you didn’t.

Only this time, Gabriel Love was going to do the opposite.

In any game there are winners and losers. In this game, the loser would be one Cyrus MacDuff.

“Cyrus MacDuff hates me,” Mr. Love had explained to Sean. “That’s his problem. He’s hated me for twenty years.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I once cheated him out of a boatload of money. But that’s no excuse. If Mr. MacDuff exercised Christian charity, if he knew how to forgive, then the awful fate that is about to befall him might be avoided. It will be his evil nature, I believe, that will blind him to reality, and which the Lord will punish.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Sean. “How is God’s will to be done?”

“Through the Hudson Ohio Railroad,” said Mr. Love.

There was only one thing, in the year 1888, that you could say with certainty about the railroad business. It was dirty.

With the opening of the great American West, the opportunity for carrying goods by rail was expanding hugely. Great fortunes were being made. And wherever there is money, there is competition. While the British developed their far-flung empire, and the powers of Europe rushed to colonize Africa, so the bold entrepreneurs of the East Coast scrambled to build railroads across the huge tracts of the American West.

Sometimes there would be a fight for control of a certain route, or of a company that already had a route sewn up. Two groups could be building railroads almost side by side to see who got there first. Trainloads of armed men from rival companies might even shoot it out—the West wasn’t called wild for nothing. Sometimes, however, the battles were subtler.

The Niagara line had been quite a modest affair. A nice little railroad that would bring wealth to a western farming region as soon as it was linked to one of the bigger railroads carrying goods across to the Hudson. Mr. Love had bought control of the Niagara three years ago, and believed he had a deal to link to the Hudson Ohio.

“And then, sir, that evil man, Mr. Cyrus MacDuff, took control of the Hudson Ohio, and blocked my way. Just to spite me. He was happy to lose the extra profits our Niagara traffic would have brought, just to see me burned. I invested heavily in the Niagara, but if I can’t join the Hudson Ohio line, then my Niagara shares are worthless. Is that,” Gabriel Love asked, “a Christian thing to do?”

“It isn’t,” said Sean. “So what do you propose?”

“I am going to bring light where there is darkness,” said Mr. Love, in a tone of reverence. “I shall buy control of the Hudson Ohio from under his nose, and join it to the Niagara.”

“That’s daring,” said Sean. “The Hudson Ohio’s a big line. Can you do it?”

“Maybe I can, and maybe I can’t. But I am going to make MacDuff think that I can. And belief,” said Gabriel Love, with the smile of an angel, “is a wonderful thing.”

It was only as Mr. Love outlined the rest of his plan that Sean came to see the remarkable beauty of his soul.

He had patience, for a start. Two years ago, he’d started quietly buying shares in the Hudson Ohio Railroad. Just a little at a time, always through intermediary companies. He’d done it with such skill that even the sharp eyes of Mr. MacDuff had not detected what was happening.

“At this time,” he told Sean, “I now have thirty-six percent of the company. MacDuff has forty percent. Another ten percent is owned by other railroads and investors who I know for a fact won’t sell. A scattering of investors have four percent and the last ten percent is in the hands of your friend Frank Master.”

“I didn’t know he was so big.”

“It’s his largest holding. He’s built it over time, and in doing so he has shown his good sense—it’s an excellent investment.” He smiled. “But if he sold it to me, I’d have control of the company. And since he’s a friend of yours, I’d like you to introduce us.”

“You want him to sell his ten percent to you?”

Gabriel Love smiled. “No. But I want MacDuff to believe that he might.”

So Sean had set up the dinner at Delmonico’s. By the end of it, his admiration for old Gabriel Love knew no bounds. The neatness, the symmetry of the thing was a work of art. And what did Frank Master have to do? Nothing—except go away for a few days.

They were to meet once more, at Delmonico’s, next Friday, to ensure that everything was in place.

Sean was contemplating this business on Saturday afternoon, when his sister Mary arrived to see him.

They spent a pleasant hour, chatting about this and that, and after a while, their conversation turned to the Master family.

“You know you told me that Frank Master was making a fool of himself, and that he’d better be careful?” Mary remarked. “Well, am I right in thinking he’s got a young lady?”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t know. He looks pleased with himself, but also a bit tired. I just wondered.”

“Well,” Sean smiled, “you’re right. Her name’s Donna Clipp. Clipper—that’s his pet name for her. And he ought to give it up.” He glanced at her. “Why, do you think his wife guesses?”

“She’s never given any sign she’s known about Lily de Chantal, all these years,” answered Mary. “If she’s never known about her, then why would she know about this one?”

“Glad to hear it,” said Sean. “She’s a good woman, in her way, and I’d be sorry if she was hurt.” He paused a moment. “Did you know Master’s going upriver on business next Sunday? He’ll be gone a few days, and he’s taking the girl with him.” He shrugged. “I just hope it’s over soon.”

“No fool like an old fool,” said Mary.

“Keep that to yourself, though.”

“Did you ever know me to talk?”

“No,” said Sean, approvingly, “I can’t say I did.”

An hour later, Mary informed Hetty Master: “He’s taking her with him upriver on Sunday. And he calls her Clipper.”

“Good,” said Hetty. “That’ll do nicely.”

Frank Master had hesitated, but finally, on the following Wednesday, he made up his mind. Leaving his house late in the morning, he went eastward along Fourteenth until he came to the station, climbed up the open staircase of the El, and came out onto the platform.

As he climbed the stairs, he felt a faint twinge of discomfort, but it seemed to pass, so he took a deep breath, puffed out his chest, congratulated himself that he was still pretty damn fit, and lit a cigar.

It being quite late in the morning, there weren’t many people about on the platform. He walked along it and gazed down at the clusters of telegraph lines strung between their poles, and the slate roofs of the small houses across the street. The rooftops were grimy with the soot from the El trains that passed above them, and they usually looked sad and depressed at this time of the spring. But the weather this March was so warm that they seemed dirty but cheerful in the morning sun.

Frank didn’t have to wait long before a series of puffs and rattles announced that the El train was nosing its way along the high rails toward him. All the same, as the train carried him downtown, Frank wished he wasn’t on it. For two reasons. First, he was going to see his son. Second, that meant a trip into Wall Street.

It was a couple of weeks since he’d last seen Tom. He loved his son, of course, yet there was always a faint tension in the air when they met. Not that Tom ever said anything—that wasn’t his way—but ever since that day at the start of the Draft Riots, he’d had the feeling that Tom didn’t approve of him. Something in his look seemed to say: You deserted my mother, and we both know it. Well, maybe. But that had been a long while ago—long enough to forgive and forget. True, he’d been seeing Lily de Chantal for most of the intervening time, but he was pretty sure Tom didn’t know that. So there was no excuse.

However, Tom had his uses. And it seemed to Frank, as the train carried him downtown, that he needed Tom just now.

He got out at Fulton and walked into Wall Street.

Why did he feel uncomfortable in Wall Street? He used to like it well enough. Trinity Church was still there, presiding over the street’s western end, in all its solemn splendor—a comforting sight. Wasn’t Trinity the very soul of Wall Street’s tradition? Hadn’t the Master family belonged to Trinity, members of the vestry more often than not, for generations? Wall Street should have felt like home. But it didn’t.

The place was busy as usual. Fellows in dark coats, rushing in and out of the Exchange with orders stuck into the bands of their high hats. Clerks hastening to their high stools and their desks. Messenger boys, street vendors, cabs delivering merchant gentlemen like himself. It was the old New York, wasn’t it?

No. Not really. Not any more.

He passed a stern and bulky building. Number 23. The House of Drexel, Morgan. And as he passed, it was all he could do not to bow the head. Yes he, one of the Masters, friends to Stuyvesants and Roosevelts, Astors and Vanderbilts, must experience a trembling of awe as he passed the offices of Morgan. That was the trouble. That was why he didn’t belong here any more.

But his son Tom did. And a few moments later, he came to his door.

“Father. An unexpected pleasure.” Tom pushed his big chair back from his roll-top desk. His tailcoat was hanging on a stand. But his gray waistcoat was as spotless as his white shirt, his silk cravat and the pearl pin that held it in place. Everything about him told you: this man does not handle goods, he only handles money. Tom was not a mere merchant like his ancestors; he was a banker.

“Got a moment?” said his father.

“For you, of course.” Tom didn’t need to say he was busy. The gold watch chain across his waistcoat told you his time was valuable.

“I need some advice,” said Frank.

“Glad to help,” said Tom. But in his eye, like a clergyman whose parishioner asks to see him alone, was a faint suggestion of caution, and impending judgment.

That was the trouble with bankers, thought Master. A merchant wants to know about the deal. A banker wants the money just as much, but he has appointed himself the enforcing conscience of the tradesman, and therefore affects an air of superiority. His son Tom was in his forties now, silky smooth and stinking rich and pompous.

Oh well, he needed his advice, and at least he wouldn’t be charged for it.

“I own ten percent of a railroad,” said Frank.

Then he stared at his son in surprise. He hadn’t said it to impress—he’d just stated a simple fact. Yet the transformation in Tom was remarkable.

“Ten percent of a railroad?” Tom was all attention. “How big a railroad?”

“Middling sized.”

“I see. Might I ask which one?” There was a politeness in Tom’s voice that his father had never heard before.

“That’s confidential for the moment.”

“As you wish.”

There was no question—he could see it in Tom’s eyes: he was being treated with a new respect. Even his moral status seemed to have improved. It was as if the clergyman had been faced not with a vulgar tradesman, but a serious donor. Seeing his new situation, Frank did not fail to improve upon it.

“My ten percent,” he said quietly, “gives me the balance of control.”

Tom leaned back in his chair and gazed at his father with love. It was as if, Frank thought, all his sins had suddenly been remitted, and he was entering Heaven through the Pearly Gates.

“Why, Father,” said his son, “this is exactly what we do here.” His face broke into a smile. “Welcome to Wall Street.”

It was the Civil War that had really changed Wall Street. The Civil War and the American West. Massive flows of capital were needed to finance the one, and to develop the other. And where was capital to be found? In one place only, the money center of the whole world: London.

It was London that had bankrolled America. Just as the century before, the economy of America had grown on the great triangle of London, New York and the West Indies sugar trade—and later on the Southern cotton trade—now a new, less visible, but equally powerful engine was making the running: the flow of credit and of stocks between London and New York.

That’s where the House of Morgan had arisen. Junius Morgan, a respectable Connecticut gentleman whose Welsh ancestors had taken ship from Bristol to America two centuries before, had returned across the ocean and set up as a banker in London. He was liked, he was trusted, he was in the right place at the right time, and he had the intelligence to see it. He arranged loans from London to America, and those loans grew huge. In the course of this steady, respectable business, he’d become a very rich man.

But it was his son, John Pierpont Morgan, who was at the helm now. Over six feet tall, big-chested, with a great nose that would flare up like a swelling volcano when he was agitated, and commanding eyes like the headlights of an oncoming train, Mr. J. P. Morgan was becoming a legend in his own time. It was J. P. Morgan and a few men like him who were the kings of Wall Street now, and because of them, even a substantial merchant like Frank Master no longer felt comfortable there. For the bankers’ deals and industrial combinations were growing so large, the sums of money involved so vast, that fellows like Master weren’t of much account any more. The bankers didn’t buy and sell goods; they bought and sold businesses. They didn’t finance voyages; they financed wars, industries, even small countries.

Oh, Morgan might serve on the same vestry; Frank might meet him socially in the same New York houses. But Morgan’s game was too big for him, and they both knew it. Frank found the fact humbling. And no man cares to be humbled.

But bankers were interested in railroads. Railroads were big enough.

Mr. Morgan himself was active in railroads—he’d placed huge quantities of the best railroad stock with London investors.

But now, Mr. Morgan had decided that it was time to sort out the chaos. Like a monarch faced with a land of barbarian warlords, he had called the railroad men to his house to try to end the warfare and bring order to the competing lines. And he was beginning to make progress. There was still time, however, for the unruly railroad barons to make some spectacular raids.

“I’ve reason to believe that there’s going to be a fight for control of the railroad,” Master explained. “If there is, one of the parties is going to try to buy more shares. But unless I sell, there won’t be enough out there in the market for him to buy. And that shortage will drive the price of my shares up.”

“Sounds good to me,” said his son.

“I’m intending to do nothing. Let the price rise. But if it gets high enough, I may sell—at least some of them.”

“You don’t care who controls the railroad?”

“I don’t give a damn. Question is, am I breaking any laws?”

Tom Master considered. “From what you’ve told me, I’d say it’s fine. Is there anything else I need to know?”

“One of the parties wants me to hold off selling, to drive the market up. He wants the other fellow to buy him out, but for a high price.”

“Hmm. Is he paying you?”

“No.”

“Then I’d say it depends what else he does, and what else you know. There are rules in the game these days.” Tom smiled. “We bankers are trying to bring some order to the market.”

We bankers: Tom was so proud of being a banker. He worshipped Morgan—even had a roll-top desk like his hero. But you couldn’t blame him. And if the bankers were taking the moral high ground and telling everyone how to behave, you couldn’t deny that they had a point.

The fact was, Frank thought, when you looked back over the last few decades, for most of his own lifetime really, the New York Stock Exchange had hardly been a respectable place. If the railroad show had been a big attraction, the stock market had been the fairground. You could get away with almost anything.

The easiest ploy was to control a company. Men like Jay Gould would cheerfully issue new stock without even telling existing shareholders, taking new money from new shareholders while diluting the stock values of the old ones. Watering the stock, they called it. You could set up new companies to buy the old ones until nobody knew what the hell they had. You could buy politicians to vote for concessions that would favor your business, and give them shares for doing it. Above all, you could manipulate the price of the stock of your own company, and then speculate in its shares.

But solid men like Morgan were insisting on new rules, now. The market was being cleaned up—slowly.

“The thing that’s most frowned upon at the moment,” said Tom, “is companies manipulating their own stock. For instance, a company offers to sell you a parcel of its stock at a discounted price. Then, by whatever manipulations, the company deliberately makes its own stock seem worthless. So it can satisfy your order by buying its own stock at a rock-bottom price. A week later, the artificial panic’s over, and the company’s made an extra profit. Some companies have done that sort of thing again and again. And of course, when brokers start placing bets on stock-price movements, they can get badly burned by these games. Gabriel Love is one of the great offenders. Do you know him?”

“Know the name,” said Frank Master, cautiously.

“He belongs in jail,” said Tom firmly. “But your railroad operation doesn’t sound like that. Effectively, you’d have cornered the market in the shares, and you may profit accordingly. So long as there’s nothing else going on.”

“So you think it’s all right?”

“I’d be happy to handle the business for you, if you like.”

“That’s kind of you, Tom, but I think I can take care of it.”

“As you wish. If you get wind of anything that might be improper, you’ve a very simple option, you know. Just hold on to your shares. Don’t sell them, or at least wait a while, till the whole thing’s blown over. The stock may stay at the higher price, and you could lighten your holding then, and take some profit. That’d be all right.”

“Thank you, Tom.”

“My pleasure. You don’t want to tell me what this railroad is?”

“Not just now.”

“Well, good luck. Just remember one thing. Stay away from Gabriel Love.”

“Thanks,” said Frank. “I’ll remember that.”

The second dinner at Delmonico’s took place that Friday. It was just the three of them again: Frank, Sean O’Donnell and Gabriel Love. As before, Gabriel Love lowered his great frame slowly into his chair, and gazed benignly over his white beard at them both. And Sean smiled at Frank reassuringly, as if to say: “Ain’t he a character?”

Master had prepared himself carefully for this meeting. So, as soon as they’d ordered drinks, he came straight to the point.

“Mr. Love,” he said, “I’d like you to go over the precise details of this transaction one more time.” He smiled. “Just so that I know what I’m getting myself into.”

As they had before, the pale blue eyes gazed out of their watery domain. But did Frank detect, in their benevolence, a hint of impatience?

“The business, my friends,” said Mr. Love, in a voice of great gentleness, “is simplicity itself. And your role in it requires only that you should absent yourself from the city for a day or two—that you should take a small rest, away from the cares of business, in a place where you cannot be reached by the telegraph. Nothing more.” He smiled in a kindly way. “In short, a vacation, free from all care.” He turned to Sean. “Isn’t that right?”

“That’s it,” said Sean. “Upriver.”

“Tomorrow is Saturday,” Gabriel Love continued. “The markets are open in the morning, before closing for the rest of the weekend. And tomorrow morning, just before the market closes, I am going to purchase, in the name of several third parties, some blocks of shares totaling one half of one percent of the Hudson Ohio Railroad. I know that I can secure them, because they are already in the hands of my agents, who will obligingly sell them to me. Those transactions won’t cause any stir, but the activity will be noted by the market.

“Mr. Cyrus MacDuff is in Boston. He is attending his granddaughter’s wedding tomorrow. In the unlikely event that his agent informs him of the share activity by telegraph, it is possible that he might try to send a cable to you. If he does, you will not respond. More likely, however, he will know nothing of this activity.

“On Sunday evening, a certain judge of my acquaintance is dining with Mr. MacDuff. He will inform MacDuff that he has heard I have secretly purchased over thirty-six percent of his railroad, and that my agents are rumored to have purchased some more on Saturday morning. Meanwhile, I shall see to it that the rumor is circulated widely in New York.” He nodded sagely. “And that, my friends, is where the evil nature of Cyrus MacDuff will get the better of him. The devil will have that man in his grip.

“He will attempt to make contact with you, so that you can assure him you are not selling your ten percent. Or that you will sell it to him, and not to me. He will first try to cable you. He may even try to take a train to New York, if he can find one so late. But he will be unable to reach you, because you will have departed. All attempts to reach you will fail. He will not know if you are holding or selling. He will be in a state of great anxiety. And why? All because he hates me, and does not want me to have any part in his railroad. There will be wailing, gentlemen, and gnashing of teeth.

“On Monday morning, Cyrus MacDuff or his agents will be trying to buy shares in the Hudson Ohio Railroad. They will be urgent. They’ll bid up the price of the shares. But there will be scarcely any shares to be bought.

“In fact, my agents will sell them a few of my own shares, to keep things lively. But not nearly as many as they will need. The market will see. The market will become excited. And then the market will remember something else. It will remember because my agents will be pointing it out. ‘If Gabriel Love gets control of the Hudson Ohio,’ they’ll say, ‘then he’ll join the Niagara to it, and the value of the Niagara Railroad will multiply many times.’ While MacDuff’s men are scouring the market for Hudson Ohio shares, the share price of Niagara will go up like a rocket. It’s a good bet, after all. And during that time, I shall sell my Niagara shares. By day’s end, I expect to be out of it.”

“And during this time, you want me to do nothing?” said Master.

“You will not be here, you will know nothing. But following our previous meeting, you have already left secret instructions with your broker.”

“If the price of Hudson Ohio ever passes one twenty, he’s to sell half of them for the best price he can get.”

“Reasonable instructions, such as any investor might leave. And I think they’ll go much higher. By that time the whole market will be after those shares. Nobody’s going to know what’s going on. I shall be selling my own shares too. We’ll both have a handsome profit, Mr. Master. Very handsome indeed.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Sean.

“Its beauty,” said Mr. Love benevolently, “is that everybody gets what he wants. I shall be out of the market with a big profit. Mr. Master here will have a profit too, with no risk. Even the people who bought Niagara will do well. Because once he discovers I’m out of it, Mr. MacDuff will have no reason not to do the obvious thing, and join the Niagara to the Hudson Ohio, giving value to their shares. Even MacDuff will have what he wants, because he will surely end the day with an absolute controlling interest in the Hudson Ohio.” And here Mr. Love’s watery blue eyes not only grew hard, but seemed miraculously to narrow, until his whole face, instead of resembling Santa Claus, reminded you of a large, white rat. “But,” he whispered, “he will have paid me through the nose to get it.”

A brief silence followed. Then three waiters appeared, bearing three plates of lobster Newburg. Delmonico’s was famous for it.

“I shall say grace,” said Gabriel Love. And putting his fingers together, he gently prayed: “Oh Lord, we thank Thee for this Thy gift of lobster Newburg. And grant us also, if it be Thy will, control of the Hudson Ohio Railroad.”

“But we ain’t wanting control of the Hudson Ohio,” Sean softly objected.

“True,” said Gabriel Love, “but the Almighty doesn’t need to know that yet.”

Was it all right? It seemed to be. Frank glanced at Sean for reassurance. Sean smiled at him.

“What I like,” said Sean, “is that it’s all perfectly legal. You buy shares, MacDuff panics, the market gets excited, you and Master sell at a profit. Nothing wrong with any of that. And it’ll work. So long as MacDuff doesn’t smell a rat.”

“That’s why I waited until he was away,” said Gabriel Love. “If he could walk into Master’s office and confront him face to face, if he could even reach him by telegraph, my plan falls to the ground. But if he can’t, then he must be uncertain, and uncertainty breeds fear. He will be off balance as well. It’s his favorite granddaughter that’s getting married and MacDuff is an emotional man.” He sighed. “Human nature, gentlemen. It is original sin that leads men to misfortune, every time.” He gazed at them both, serenely. “I am a speculator in the market, gentlemen, and that is part of God’s plan. Men only learn through suffering. So I punish human weakness, and God rewards me.”

“Amen,” said Sean O’Donnell with a grin.

They had finished their lobster. Charlotte russe was proposed, and accepted, to be followed by brandied pears. The conversation turned to the theater, and from there to horse racing. A French dessert wine was served. Frank felt a little unwell; his brow was clammy. He decided he was eating too much, and held back when an extra portion of the charlotte russe was offered.

“So,” Sean was saying to Gabriel Love, “after this trick, what are you going to do next?”

“Next?” Mr. Love surveyed the table placidly. “Nothing, Mr. O’Donnell. I shall do nothing.”

“That’s not like you,” said Sean.

“I am retiring,” announced Gabriel Love. “I am devoting myself wholly to good works.”

“Lost your taste for the market?”

“Too many regulations, Mr. O’Donnell. Too many bankers like Morgan. They’re too mighty for me. And besides,” he shook his head sadly, “they are taking the life, and sweetness, out of the business.”

There was a pause, while the two men contemplated the former sweetness of life.

“The sixties,” said Sean O’Donnell. “Those were the days.”

“True,” said Gabriel Love.

“You had things wrapped up,” said Sean. “You and Boss Tweed.”

“Our system, back then,” said Love, “approached perfection.”

Frank listened. Of course, everyone knew about the years after the Civil War. If the railroad men of today were like feudal barons, the Wall Street of the late sixties had been like the Dark Ages—when New York City corruption had come to the markets. To hear the story told by one of the operators was an opportunity not to be missed.

“I always said that your friend Fernando Wood could have done even better for himself,” said Gabriel Love to Sean, “if he’d stayed closer to Tammany Hall.”

“Probably right,” acknowledged O’Donnell.

“Tammany Hall is the answer to everything in this city, and Boss Tweed understood that. You can make money in a small way without politics. But to make the big money, you need to buy the legislature. Can’t be done otherwise.”

“City contracts,” said O’Donnell, with affection.

“City contracts, certainly,” Love echoed. “By all means, there’s fortunes in city contracts. But that’s only a beginning for a man with vision. And Boss Tweed had vision. You want your railroad to go a certain way, and the city or the state has to grant you the permission? Then you need to pay the legislators. Put some of them on your board. Your company is being sued? Then you need to buy a judge. Tammany arranged all that. Boss Tweed was your man.” He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the memory. “The police were all good Tammany boys. The judges, the legislators, even the governor of New York State, he’d bribed them. On Wall Street, we made hay. You could water stock, short-sell your shareholders, anything was possible. And if a judge ruled against you, why, he’d get another one to give you a counter-judgment that would keep the game in play for years.

“Those were the days for men of vision. Jay Gould—and he, in my opinion, was the greatest speculator of them all—he almost persuaded the President of the United States, Ulysses Grant himself, to hold back the bullion reserves so that Gould could corner the gold market. For Ulysses Grant, great man though he was, did not understand such high matters. Yes, sir, he made use of the president himself. And if some interfering villain hadn’t told Grant what Mr. Gould was up to, he would have pulled it off. That would have been sweet.” He sighed. “But the Stock Exchange, and the damn Bar Association, and Mr. Morgan and his like, they’re closing all that down.” He shook his head at the folly of the thing. “The joy is leaving the market, gentlemen. The odds cannot be properly stacked. And Gabriel Love is leaving too.”

“But the game’s not over,” said Sean. “There’s plenty that can still be done on Wall Street—look at what you’re doing now.”

For just an instant, so quick you hardly saw it, Mr. Love shot O’Donnell a warning glance.

“Why, even Mr. Morgan could do what we’re doing,” he said reprovingly. Then he sighed again. “I’ve retired, O’Donnell,” he said. “For me, the game is over.”

During all this conversation, Frank had been listening with a horrified fascination. Not that a bit of corruption had ever worried him—that was part of city life. But to hear these two men, with whom he was doing business, describe the whole vast machine of fraud and corruption so lovingly, and with such familiarity, was making him nervous. This deal seemed legitimate, but was there something about it he didn’t know? If Jay Gould would cheerfully use the President of the United States as his stooge, he thought, then is Gabriel Love making a fool of me? And the words of his son Tom came back to him with a terrible urgency: “Stay away from Gabriel Love.”

The clammy feeling on his brow returned.

“Are you absolutely sure this business is legal?” he suddenly blurted out.

“It’s fine,” said Sean with a smile. “Trust me.”

But Gabriel Love wasn’t smiling. He was giving him a very strange look, one that Master didn’t like at all.

“You’re not going to let me down, are you?” he asked.

“No,” said Frank, unwillingly.

“Don’t ever let me down,” said old Gabriel Love.

“He won’t let you down,” said Sean, quickly.

Gabriel gave Sean a look. Then his face broke into a smile.

The brandied pears arrived.

The next morning, Frank Master ate his breakfast quickly. Then he went into the yard behind the house. The weather was still surprisingly warm, well into the fifties. An article in the newspaper had mentioned a storm afflicting the Midwest, but the forecast for the weekend was warm weather, turning cloudy with a few showers. At present the sky was blue. The little clumps of crocuses in the garden had all opened out days ago into a pleasing array of mauve and white and yellow.

After pacing about in the garden for a little while, Frank decided to go down to Wall Street.

This time, he took a cab—a mistake, as it happened. For as they reached the Lower East Side, they encountered a great fleet of laden wagons entering the city. The Barnum, Bailey and Hutchinson circus was arriving in town. He should have remembered. He must make sure he and Hetty took the grandchildren before it left. But the circus was blocking the streets, and it was some time before the cab could get through.

Saturday mornings were usually quiet on Wall Street. But the market didn’t close until the middle of the day, and there were plenty of people about. Master walked into the Stock Exchange. A quick look at the floor told him that shares were trading moderately. He went up to a broker.

“Anything happening?” he inquired.

“Not much. Some Hudson Ohio stock was just bought. Nothing dramatic though.”

“It’s a good stock,” said Master with a shrug.

So Gabriel Love had made his trades. The trap was set. Master waited about for a while. The market seemed ready to end the week without excitement.

What should he do? He’d been thinking about it ever since he awoke. His son’s advice had undoubtedly been sound: If in doubt, do nothing. He just needed to give his broker a different instruction before he left. Tell him not to sell at any price. Simple as that.

On the other hand, if Gabriel Love’s deal was legal, the profit on his stock would be substantial. At one twenty, he’d have doubled his money. And it might easily go higher. It was tempting, no question.

Was there really any reason to worry? Had he let his imagination run away with him at the dinner last night? For another twenty minutes, he hung around, unable to make up his mind. Then he cursed himself for a coward and a fool. The hell with it, he told himself. Be a man.

He was going upriver tomorrow with Donna Clipp. No one was going to know where he was, and he was going to have a good time. And if Gabriel Love stirred up the market while he was gone, so much the better. His broker would sell, and he’d arrive back in the city a damn sight richer. Why the hell not?

This was Wall Street. This was New York. And he was a Master, for God’s sake. He was big enough to play the game. With a feeling of manly triumph, he walked out of the New York Stock Exchange.

He’d gone a hundred yards when he saw J. P. Morgan.

The banker was standing on a street corner. With his tall top hat and his tailcoat, his unsmiling face and his barrel chest, he made you think of a cross between a Roman emperor and a prizefighter. He wasn’t fifty-two years old, but already he seemed to belong to the immortals. If J. P. Morgan wanted a cab, he didn’t hail one. He just stood in the street and, like a lighthouse, turned his eyes upon the traffic.

And the great banker was directly in his path. He walked toward him. As he drew close, Morgan turned.

“Mr. Morgan.” He bowed politely.

He thought Morgan would acknowledge him—it would have been rude not to—but you couldn’t expect much, for Morgan was a man of notoriously few words.

The banker gave him a nod. It was hard to be sure, but under his bushy mustache there might even have been a faint smile.

Then, just for a moment, Frank Master had a foolish impulse. If only he could reveal the plan to J. P. Morgan. If only he could step into a saloon with the great man for a moment or two, sit down, tell him fair and square about it and say: “Mr. Morgan, without presuming upon our acquaintance, sir, how do you think I should handle this affair?” Of course, he couldn’t do it. Unthinkable. He passed by respectfully.

J. P. Morgan stepped into a cab, and was gone.

And no sooner was he gone than, with a terrible sense of horror, Master realized the profound stupidity of the impulse. Who, Morgan would have asked, was proposing the deal? Gabriel Love, he would have had to answer. He’d have had to tell J. P. Morgan that he was in business with Daddy Love.

However great his ill-gotten wealth, however venerable his white beard, however much he gave to charity, Mr. Gabriel Love would never cross the threshold of the House of Morgan. Mr. Morgan did not speak to a man like Gabriel Love; wouldn’t even look up from his desk at him. Some might call it Morgan’s proudness. Some might call it snobbery. But the fact was, Morgan was right.

He was doing business with a dreadful old criminal, and he could only pray it turned out all right. Swiftly, Frank Master walked out of Wall Street and made his way home.

It was already dusk when Mary left the house in Gramercy Park. The afternoon had passed quietly enough. Frank Master had seemed a little depressed when he returned from Wall Street, but after a nap he had brightened up again and busied himself with preparations for the trip he was making upriver to Albany the following day.

From Gramercy Park, Mary took a cab, which soon brought her down Fifth Avenue to her brother’s house. After spending some time with his family, she asked to see him alone.

“I need a favor, Sean,” she said.

“Tell me.”

She took out a letter. It was just a small note, in a sealed envelope. On the front was written the name of Donna Clipp, and her address. She handed it to her brother, and he looked at it.

“That’s Frank Master’s hand,” he remarked.

Mary smiled. In fact, the envelope, and the brief note inside, had been carefully written a few days ago by Hetty Master, who had plenty of examples of Frank’s writing to copy. But Sean didn’t need to know that.

“It has to be delivered tomorrow, about the middle of the morning, into the lady’s hand. I have to know for definite that she has it. Could you arrange that?”

“I’ve got a boy that can deliver it, certainly.”

“If he’s asked, the boy must say you gave it to him.”

“All right.”

“And most of all—I didn’t give it to you, Sean. You never got this until tomorrow morning. A gentleman you assumed to be Frank Master left it in a hurry with a servant at your door, with urgent instructions that it be delivered at once.”

“This is the favor?”

“That’s it. Just remember that it wasn’t me that gave it to you.”

Sean nodded. “Why?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“If you say so.”

“I’ll tell you this,” she said. “It’s for his own good.”

He slipped the letter into his breast pocket. “Consider it done.”

As Mary returned home later that evening, the cab driver told her: “There was a big circus parade downtown this evening. You’d think summer was starting already.”

The ferry was due to leave at four o’clock on Sunday afternoon. By five, it was still at the pier. The problem was the engine. The captain of the vessel apologized for the delay, but assured his passengers that it would be dealt with shortly.

Small comfort to Frank Master.

Where the devil was Donna Clipp? Not a sign of her. She was supposed to be there by three. Twenty minutes after that hour, he’d gone himself in a cab to her house. But she wasn’t there, and her landlady said she’d gone out more than an hour before, telling her she wouldn’t be back for a few days. He’d hurried back to the pier, but the ticket taker and the steward both assured him that no lady of her description had appeared while he was gone. It was almost four by then, so he’d gone aboard.

Had she had an accident? Possibly. But the alternative, he supposed, was more likely. She’d gone off elsewhere, left him in the lurch, and looking like a fool. Gone off, it could only be, with another man. A younger man, no doubt. He’d experienced a sickening feeling that he hadn’t known since he was a young man, before he’d met Hetty.

He’d gone into the saloon on the boat and had a brandy. He was feeling foolish, and lonely. Every so often he’d go to the door and look along the pier, in case she’d turned up. But there was no sign of her. Just the empty jetty, and a couple of men in oilskins, and an unlit lamp, swinging in the wind.

And the rain.

The rain made everything worse. Much worse. It had started quite early that morning, and despite the weather forecast, it had not cleared at all. A steady downpour churned the Hudson’s waters and drummed gloomily above the saloon, while from time to time men would appear from the engine room, report to the captain, and then disappear again.

“It might be an hour or two,” the captain told him, at six o’clock.

Frank had already, twice, asked him what was wrong. An oil leak, he was told, the first time. Then, a problem with the cylinder. The explanations made no sense. Normally, he’d have gone down there to see for himself—he was certainly as competent as the vessel’s engineer. But he was feeling too old and depressed, so he sat quietly and nursed his brandy. Most of the other passengers had retired to their cabins. Three or four sat together, chatting in the bar. But he didn’t feel like talking, and remained alone.

At seven o’clock, he wondered whether to give up and go home. If he’d just been waiting for Donna Clipp, he’d have done so. But there was the matter of Gabriel Love and the railroad. He still had to absent himself from town. So he tried to think only of the profit he was going to make on the Hudson Ohio Railroad, refilled his brandy glass, and stared grimly into it for another hour. At this very moment, he reminded himself, up in Boston, Cyrus MacDuff was being told about Gabriel Love’s raid on his railroad. At least, he thought, someone out there is having a worse evening than me. Very soon, he supposed, MacDuff would be trying to send him a wire. And he wouldn’t be able to find him. This damned boat was his hiding place for this adventure. He might be lonely, but he was invisible. That thought cheered him up a little.

At eight o’clock, the captain announced that they’d be leaving soon. Frank Master took one more, foolish look down the pier, then sat at a table and demanded a meat pie and a plate of vegetables. This, at least, was brought promptly.

At nine o’clock, the captain whispered to him that the problem was fixed, and that they just needed to test the engine. Rather rudely, Frank said, “Tell me when it’s done,” and waved him away. He heard the engine start, then stop. Just before ten, it started again. This time it did not stop. A few minutes later, the vessel nosed out into the river, and was swallowed by the great, dark downpour.

Donna Clipp had had enough. She would have left already, if it hadn’t been for the rain. As far as she was concerned that bastard Frank Master could go to hell in a handcart. It was past ten o’clock at night.

His note had been clear enough.

Dear Clipper,

There has been a change of plan. Wait for me at Henry’s Hotel in Brooklyn.

I’ll be there as soon as I can after three o’clock. We’re going to Long Island.

I can’t wait to see you.

F.M.

Typical, she thought. He can’t wait to see me, but he ain’t coming. Men were all the same—and she ought to know. She’d known a lot of men.

Some of them had had money. The older ones anyway—not much point in being with an older man, if they hadn’t got money. The question was, would they spend it?

And that was what she found so contemptible about most of them, really. They had plenty of money. They weren’t going to live that long. There was no way they could go through the money they already had, yet they still saved it. Habit, she supposed. Skinflints.

Oh, they’d spend a bit. Buy you a bottle of champagne, a fur coat, maybe. Presents, to keep you happy—or so they thought. Even pay your rent, if you were lucky. But give you what you really needed? They seemed to think that if you were poor, you must be stupid.

She’d heard of women who’d been set up for life by older men. Heard of it, but never met one. Not girls like her, anyway. And why? Because men didn’t care. They didn’t respect you. They took what they wanted, but if you asked for anything in return they called you a gold-digger, or worse.

That was rich people for you, in Donna Clipp’s opinion. Scum, really, when you thought about it. They might look good, but underneath, they were just scum. Worse than she was.

It was ten at night, pitch black and pouring with rain, and she was sitting in this stupid hotel on the wrong side of the Brooklyn Bridge, and not a smell of her so-called lover, the old fool.

Donna Clipp was a nice girl. She had thick blonde hair—natural blonde, too—and blue eyes that could laugh or give you a smoldering look, just as she pleased. She’d never walked the streets. Always had respectable jobs. She’d made dresses, and she’d sold them. She had an eye for fashion. She had some talent for acting and had tried to get theatrical jobs, but they usually told her she wasn’t tall enough. Her short, rather full figure certainly hadn’t been a problem in encounters of a closer kind, and she’d been kept, more or less, by various men. When she came to New York, she found respectable lodgings in Greenwich Village. Within a month, she’d met Frank Master. But though she’d been seeing him for some time now, she hadn’t much to show for it.

So she’d been wondering, for the last three weeks, what to do with him.

There was one other matter that had been weighing on her mind lately. A letter she’d received a couple of weeks ago, from a friend with whom she’d shared lodgings in Philadelphia. The letter had been cautiously worded, but she’d understood very well the message it contained.

Someone had been round asking questions about her. Her friend didn’t seem to know if it was the police, or possibly some person with a grudge. But it looked as if someone was on the trail of certain missing articles of value. The gold bracelet she was wearing, for instance.

She might claim that it had been given her as a gift. But was it really likely that a rich man would steal his own wife’s jewelry to give to his mistress? Would a jury believe that? She didn’t think so.

If he hadn’t brought her on a pretext into the house, and if she hadn’t seen all the lovely things his wife had, it wouldn’t have happened. She blamed him, in a way. But that wasn’t going to do her any good. If they were on to her in Philadelphia, would they find her in New York? They might. Not at once, but one day. She wasn’t sure what to do about that.

The simplest thing would be to get rid of the offending items—you couldn’t prove anything then. But they were valuable. She really needed Frank Master to come up with something before she did that.

So when he’d suggested the trip up the Hudson, in all the comfort of the finest steamer too, she’d thought that things might be looking up after all. She’d prepared herself carefully. And she’d been rather disappointed when his note, announcing the change of plan, had come on the very day of their departure. But the only thing to do was go along with it, and see what was on offer.

She’d put her bags in a cab, therefore, and set off from Greenwich Village to Brooklyn.

It was a pity that it had been raining. When the Brooklyn Bridge, with its mighty suspended span, had opened five years ago, it was counted as one of the wonders of the New World. Over a mile long, soaring a hundred and forty feet over the entrance to the East River, its two stupendous supporting towers with their pointed arches, and the great, graceful arc of its steel cables combined to evoke all the power and beauty of this new industrial, Gothic age.

Down its center went two sets of tracks for railcars. On each side, with views up or downstream, lay roadways for horses and carriages. And over the rail tracks, for pedestrians, stretched a seemingly endless walkway, suspended in the air, in an elegant rising curve, between the firmaments of the river below and heaven above.

If you took the outside lane in a cab, the view over the river was magnificent.

But not today. With the rain coming relentlessly down, she could see neither the water below, nor even the tower ahead. Instead, it was as if she’d entered the rain cloud itself, humid, insistent, depressing, sealing her off from every hope.

As the rest of the afternoon had passed, she’d assumed that Master had just been delayed. Early in the evening, she had wondered if something might have happened to him. By eight she’d concluded that the weather was so bad he’d called the whole thing off; but he might at least have sent a message to her, and a cab to take her home. She’d asked the waiter to bring her a pot of tea, and continued to wait, just in case he turned up. At nine, she’d ordered some hot soup. Now it was after ten, and she’d had enough. She didn’t care what had happened to him, she was going home. She asked the hotel porter to find her a cab.

But an hour passed, and there was no cab to be found.

It was gone midnight before Lily de Chantal decided to turn in for bed. She’d been rehearsing for her part the next day. Not that the role was difficult, but she wanted to be sure she performed it perfectly. And truth to tell, she was savoring it as well.

Revenge, even for someone with her kindly nature, was sweet.

Nine in the morning would be about right, she thought. If little Miss Clipp wasn’t back from the wild goose chase she’d been sent on already, she would be by then. Catch her first thing, before she had time to collect her wits.

“I can’t do it myself, my dear,” Hetty had said, “because if Frank ever found out, he’d hold it against me. But you could do it. A man can forgive his mistress more easily than his wife. Besides,” she’d added with a smile, “you owe me a favor, I think.”

So the tasks had been assigned. Hetty had written the note, Mary had arranged the delivery, and now she, Lily de Chantal, was going to send the little bitch packing.

Hetty had given her everything she needed, and Lily had rehearsed her speech precisely.

“I am afraid, Miss Clipp, that I have proof—absolute proof—that you stole jewelry from Mrs. Linford of Philadelphia. I even have witnesses who can perfectly describe seeing you wearing the items after the theft. You will go to jail, Miss Clipp. Unless, of course, you’d like to leave New York, today—and to leave without saying a word to Mr. Master. And if you make any attempt to contact him in the future, then we shall take all this evidence to the police.”

Donna Clipp would go fast enough after that. She’d have to.

The neatness of the plan had been summarized by Hetty, days before.

“I want Frank to think she’s jilted him. Failed to turn up for the ride upriver, then left before he comes back. That’ll hurt his pride, I’m afraid, but it’ll bring him back to his senses. He’ll be looking for comfort; he’ll be looking to us.”

“Us?”

“To you, to me, to the way things were. I think we’re too old to quibble about those details now, aren’t we?”

“You,” said Lily de Chantal, “are a remarkable woman, and he’s lucky to have you.”

“Thank you, my dear,” said Hetty. “I quite agree.”

Yes, thought Lily now, she’d be glad to dispatch little Miss Clipp on her way, for both of them.

So she was greatly astonished, twenty minutes later, when the doorman knocked upon the apartment door to ask if she wished to receive a visitor. And still more so to see behind him, soaked to the skin, the figure of Frank Master.

At one in the morning, at Henry’s Hotel, Brooklyn, there was a battle of wills. To the great annoyance of the manager, Donna Clipp had demanded a bedroom and refused to pay for it, on the grounds that it was the hotel’s fault that they hadn’t found her a cab.

“I could put you out of doors,” he had said.

“Try it,” she’d replied. “You never heard me scream.”

He did step out of doors, with a view to ejecting her, all the same. But when he got outside, he discovered something strange. The rain was turning to snow. And the temperature, so warm all week, was dropping like a stone. He was just turning to go back indoors again, when he heard a great growl and a moan from the direction of the river. And a second later, a howling gust of wind rushed down the street, slamming shutters, bending small trees, and almost rolling the manager off his feet as it smacked him with its icy blast. Holding onto the side of a doorway, he pulled himself back into the entrance and slammed the door behind him.

“Here.” He gave her a key. “Nobody can go out in this weather.” He pointed to the stairs. “Up there. Second on the left.”

But he didn’t offer to help the bitch with her bags.

Looking out of her window across Central Park, while Frank sat in a hot bathtub, Lily de Chantal watched the wind whip tornadoes of snowflakes across the empty spaces. In Gramercy Park, for some time, Hetty had gazed in puzzlement at the strange telegram that had come for Frank earlier in the evening, from Boston, asking him if he was selling a railroad. But now, hearing the strange howl and whistle of the wind, she pulled back the curtains and looked out in astonishment to see a maelstrom of snow, and hoped poor Frank was safe, out on the cold waters of the Hudson, on such a terrible night.

Where on earth, she wondered, could such a blizzard have come from?

It had come from the west. A great snowstorm with freezing wind, carried all the way across the continent from the Pacific on an icy airstream, at six hundred miles a day. But it took two to make this storm. Up from Georgia had come a huge, moist, warm front. Near the mouth of the Delaware River, some hundred and twenty miles below New York, the two had collided.

The temperature had fallen, pressure had plummeted, and suddenly the sea and the river had been whipped into a fury. Then, up the coast, had come a mighty blizzard. Soon after midnight, New York’s rain turned to snow, the temperature dived below freezing, and the wind began to gust at eighty miles an hour.

It went on all night. When dawn came—or should have come—the blizzard ignored it, smothered it, blotted it out. As the hours of morning passed, the whole north-eastern seaboard and every creature on it was swallowed up in the great, white hurricane.

There was nothing they wouldn’t do for you at the Dakota. But this went so far beyond the call of duty that Lily de Chantal was almost embarrassed. The porter’s boy didn’t mind, though; he seemed to relish the challenge, and the porter assured her: “This boy of mine could find his way to the North Pole and back, Miss de Chantal. Don’t worry about him.”

So she gave young Skip the note, and told him to be careful.

It was ten o’clock on Monday morning when Skip left the building. He was fourteen years old, small for his age, but wiry. He was wearing stout boots with a heavy tread, and his leggings were tied tightly with string around his ankles. He wore three sweaters and a short coat, which made it easier to move. He had a thick wool cap over his head, earmuffs, and a scarf wound round his face. Skip was happy.

As he left the safety of the big entrance yard, he’d already decided what to do. There was no point in trying to cross the park, which was like an arctic landscape, with the blizzard blowing as hard as ever. He didn’t even try to go down beside it. Instead, he walked west half a block and turned down Ninth Avenue. A few blocks south, and he’d be able to pick up the great diagonal of Broadway.

It wasn’t easy even to walk. The icy gusts almost blew him off his feet, the wind was so strong that the snow couldn’t settle in any normal pattern. In some places, it had driven the snow into drifts that were already above his head. In other places, where the wind had almost brushed it clean, he could see the ground.

The avenue was almost empty. People had tried to get to work—this was New York, after all—but most had been forced to give up. The El above him was silent, its tracks so solid with ice that, even had an engine tried to set out, its wheels would not have had enough grip to move.

After struggling down two blocks, however, Skip saw a welcome sight. A single carriage drawn by two patient horses had just turned into the avenue and was plowing its way slowly along. Skip didn’t hesitate for a moment. As the carriage passed, he nipped up beside the coachman. That individual was about to knock him off his cheeky perch and let him fall down into the roadway when a gruff voice from inside the carriage called out: “Let him be.”

“You’re lucky,” said the driver.

“Where’ve you come from?” asked Skip.

“Yonkers, Westchester County,” answered the coachman.

“That’s a long way,” said Skip.

“Been going since six this morning. I thought the horses would’ve died, but they kept at it. Big hearts.”

“Why not stay at home?”

“My gentleman in there has business in the city today. Says a blizzard ain’t goin’ to keep him from that.”

“It ain’t keeping me from mine either,” said Skip happily. That was the spirit of New York, the boy thought. He wouldn’t care to live anywhere else.

“No trains from Westchester?” he inquired.

“We crossed a bridge and saw one stuck fast in the snow. I reckon they all are, most likely.”

At Sixty-fifth Street, they picked up Broadway. When they reached the south-west corner of Central Park, the carriage started south down Eighth, and Skip jumped off. He wanted to follow the line of Broadway.

People had been shoveling for a while already, doing their best to keep a path open along one of the sidewalks. It was more like a trench. Skip noticed that the untidy masses of telegraph lines were all frozen. Soon he came to a point where they had been brought down entirely, into a great tangle of wire and ice that went on for several blocks. At Fifty-fifth Street he slipped and fell, but he was so bundled up that he wasn’t hurt. He laughed, and looked about to see if he could find another ride. There was nothing. No cabs, no carriages, hardly anyone even trying to walk. Some of the stores and offices seemed to be open, but no one was going out or coming in. He slipped and slid another two blocks and came to a saloon. He went inside. Here, there were a few men, wrapped up like himself, standing at the bar. He unwound his scarf.

“Drink, son?” offered the barman.

“No money,” said Skip, though it wasn’t true.

One of the men at the bar put a few coins down and motioned him to approach. There was a smell of whiskey and hot rum at the bar.

“On me, boy,” said the man. “Give him a car driver’s,” he instructed the barman, who nodded. “It’s just ale and red pepper,” he told Skip. “It’s what the coachmen take. It’ll keep you warm for a bit.”

Skip drank it slowly. He could feel the warmth in his stomach. After a while, he thanked his benefactor, and headed out into the street again, wrapping his scarf tightly round his face at the doorway. And it was as well that he did, for as soon as he stepped into Broadway, the snow whipped round his face as if it meant personally to attack him and rip his scarf away again. But steadying himself against a railing, he put his head down and staggered on.

And then, a few blocks further down, he got lucky again. For what should he see, but a brewer’s wagon. Behind his scarf, his mouth drew into a grin. Nothing ever stopped the brewers. When the supply of beer in New York came to a stop, you’d know the world had come to an end.

The wagon was big, and loaded with kegs of ale. It was lumbering slowly along like a great ship through an iceflow. It was pulled by no less than ten massive Normandy horses. Unseen by the driver, he hopped in the back. And was thus conveyed, in ponderous but cheerful style, all the way down to Twenty-eighth Street. From there, clinging onto railings or whatever support he could, he made his way through the blizzard to Gramercy Park.

Hetty Master was most astonished when Skip arrived with a note from Lily de Chantal, but she read it eagerly. The note wasn’t long. Frank’s boat had been forced to turn back the night before, she said. He’d arrived soaked, and seemed to have taken a chill. “But I have him safely tucked up in a bed, and I give him a little hot whiskey every hour. He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s in the city, though he won’t say why.” Hetty couldn’t help smiling; at least Frank was safe, and Lily would look after him. There was also a postscript.

It’s clear that our little friend never turned up at the boat. I wonder if she’s trapped in Brooklyn!

I’ll make sure to see her, as we agreed, before I let Frank out on the street again.

Hetty almost laughed. She hoped little Miss Clipp was freezing her toes off, wherever she was. In its curious way, the plan was still working.

In fact, at that moment, Donna Clipp was standing by the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. And she was getting angry.

She could have stayed at the hotel, of course, but they were getting pretty insistent that she pay. And anyway, she was bored. Donna Clipp didn’t like doing nothing. One of the other guests had offered to lend her a book. But Donna could never see the point of reading. That was boring too.

So she’d decided to go home. She’d taken the few valuables she had and stuffed them into her handbag. Then she’d demanded a length of rope and tied her suitcase with it in a series of intricate knots that it would have broken your fingernails to tackle. Then she’d made the manager give her a written receipt for it, and told him she’d collect it herself in a few days, and that if it wasn’t there, she’d fetch the police. Then she’d announced she was leaving. There was no transport of any kind. The whole of Brooklyn was staying indoors. But the manager did not try to stop her. He hoped the blizzard would freeze her to death, just as soon as she was well away from his hotel.

Donna Clipp had made her way to the Brooklyn Bridge, which wasn’t far. And though she looked like a walking snowman by the time she got there, she was still very much alive. There were railcars across the bridge, and once she was over, she’d manage to find a way across to her lodgings, somehow or other. At the bridge, however, she encountered a check.

“The bridge is closed,” the policeman told her.

The mighty structure was, indeed, totally deserted. Its huge span rose into the blizzard and disappeared in the whiteness. There were barriers across the roadway, and the railcars were sitting by their platforms, frozen solid. The policeman had wisely occupied the tollbooth, where pedestrians paid their penny to cross. He had a lamp in there to keep himself warm, and was unwilling even to open the little window to speak to her.

“Whaddaya mean, it’s closed?” she cried. “It’s a goddam bridge.”

“It’s closed. Too dangerous, lady,” he shouted back.

“I gotta get to Manhattan,” she protested.

“You can’t. There’s no ferry, and the bridge is closed. There’s no way to get there.”

“Then I’ll walk across.”

“Are you crazy, lady?” he exploded. “I just told you the bridge is closed. Especially to pedestrians.” He pointed to the path that led into the howling blizzard. “You’d never get across.”

“So how much is the toll? It says a penny. I’m not paying more than a penny.”

“You ain’t paying a penny,” the policeman bawled, “because I told you three times, the bridge is closed.”

“So you say.”

“I do say. Get out of here, lady.”

“I’ll stand here as long as I like. I ain’t breaking any law.”

“Jeezus,” cried the policeman. “Freeze to death where you are, then. But you ain’t crossing this bridge.”

Five minutes later, she was still there. In exasperation, the policeman turned his back to her. He stayed that way for a minute or two. When he turned round, she’d gone, thank God. He sighed, glanced up at the bridge, and shouted with fury.

She was up there on the walkway, a couple of hundred yards already, and about to disappear into the snowstorm. How the devil did she get past the booth? He opened the door, and the freezing storm smacked him in the face. He started after her, with a volley of oaths.

And then he stopped. Any minute now, he reckoned, the wind would like as not lift her up and blow her over the railings, then either drop her onto the tracks or, better yet, deposit her in the freezing waters of the East River below. He went back into the booth. “I never saw her,” he muttered.

Let the bitch die, if that’s what she wanted.

Donna Clipp moved steadily forward. The tollbooth was long out of sight, and she knew she must be reaching the apex of the long suspended walkway now. The wind was moaning. Every now and then, the moan turned to a howl, as though some vast, angry leviathan were thrashing about in the harbor and the East River below, some huge sea serpent intent upon claiming her as its prey. The snow had already stung her face until it was numb. She had forgotten that, in that high, empty exposure over the water, the cold would be worse, far worse, and she knew that if she didn’t find some shelter soon, she’d get frostbite. Perhaps she could die.

Donna Clipp didn’t want to die. That wasn’t in her plans at all, for a long time yet.

So there was nothing to do, but make her way through this terrible white tunnel in the sky, and get down the other side.

Progress was painfully slow. If she let go of the rail for even a moment, she could be blown off her feet and hurled down into the abyss. All she could do was keep a tight hold on the rail, and pull herself across, step by step. She knew she mustn’t stop. If she could just get to the other side. If she could just keep going.

She managed to reach the halfway point. From there, it was a long descent. She managed another hundred yards. Then another. Then, just ahead of her, she saw something that gave her a shock.

And she stopped.

The blizzard continued all that day. Some people called it the White Hurricane. But soon they had another name for it. Given the snowbound wastes that, rightly or wrongly, were associated with the territory, they called it the Dakota Blizzard.

If the city was impassable that day, a few strongholds tried at least to make a showing. Macy’s department store opened for a bit, but no customers came, and the poor lady clerks had to be sheltered there until the Dakota Blizzard was done, since they could not get home. Some banks tried to open, but decided to extend all their loans a few days, since nobody could reach them. The New York Stock Exchange opened, and even traded a few shares that Monday morning. But there were only a handful of men there, and soon after midday, they sensibly gave up.

Of the few shares traded, none concerned the Hudson Ohio Railroad. For Mr. Cyrus MacDuff was quite unable to give orders for any trades since the telegraph lines between Boston and New York were all down. Nor could that furious gentleman come to save his railroad in person, since every road was feet-deep in snow, the rail lines were all blocked, and the sea was so wild with the storm that ships along that coastline were sinking by the score.

As the Dakota Blizzard raged outside, inside the great apartment building of that name, Lily de Chantal continued to nurse Frank Master, who became a little feverish in the evening.

By Tuesday morning, he seemed to be a little better. But the city was cut off from the outside world, and the Dakota Blizzard was still raging.

During the afternoon, however, human ingenuity made one small but useful discovery. Some sharp fellows in Boston realized that there was a way to make telegraph contact with New York after all. They used the international cable and sent their messages, on a triangular route, via London.

On Wednesday morning, the storm began to diminish. The city remained at a standstill, but people were beginning to dig out. As the wind dropped, the freezing temperature rose, a little.

All the same, Hetty Master was most surprised when, at eleven o’clock that morning, her son Tom and another gentleman she did not know arrived at the house to see Frank.

“He’s away,” she said.

“I have to reach him, Mother,” said Tom. “It’s urgent. Can you please tell me where he is?”

“I don’t believe I can,” she answered, a little awkwardly. “Can’t it wait a day or two?”

“No,” said her son, “it can’t.”

“Could I speak to you alone?” she said.

It was quite a shock to Lily de Chantal when Tom Master and another gentleman arrived at the Dakota at noon. How they came to know that Frank was there, or what possible explanation they could have been given for his presence, she had no idea. They certainly didn’t seem to have the least interest in discussing such a matter. But they did, most emphatically, want to see Frank.

“He’s not very well,” she said. “He’s had a fever.”

“Sorry to hear it,” said Tom.

“I’ll ask if he will see you,” said Lily.

Frank Master, propped up in bed, gazed at his visitors. He couldn’t imagine how they’d found him, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now. Tom’s companion was a quiet, well-dressed man in his mid-thirties, who looked like a banker.

“This is Mr. Gorham Grey,” said Tom. “Of Drexel, Morgan.”

“Oh,” said Frank.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Master,” said Gorham Grey politely. “I should make clear that I am Mr. J. P. Morgan’s personal representative, and he has asked me to come to see you.”

“Oh,” said Frank, again.

“Knowing your son, I went to see him first, to ask him to make the introduction,” said Gorham Grey.

“Quite right,” said Tom.

“What’s it about?” asked Frank, nervously gripping the edge of the bed sheet.

“Mr. Morgan is desirous of buying a parcel of shares from you,” said Gorham Grey. “In the Hudson Ohio Railroad. You own ten percent of the outstanding stock, I believe.”

“Oh,” said Frank.

“I should explain very openly,” continued Gorham Grey, “that Mr. Morgan yesterday received an urgent telegraph from Mr. Cyrus MacDuff, who is presently in Boston and who, as you’ll be aware, is the largest shareholder in the Hudson Ohio. Mr. MacDuff was unable to reach you himself, as he is cut off in Boston. So he thought it wisest to entrust the whole business to Mr. Morgan, to handle as he sees fit.”

“Quite right,” said Tom.

“Put simply,” said Gorham Grey, “Mr. MacDuff believes that Mr. Gabriel Love is trying to steal his company away from him. Do you know Mr. Love?”

“Hardly at all,” said Frank, weakly.

“After a brief investigation, it appeared to us that the underlying issue is that Mr. Love owns shares in the Niagara line, and that MacDuff has been blocking Niagara’s access to the Hudson Ohio.”

“Really?” said Frank.

“The solution, therefore, seems to Mr. Morgan to be simple. He has informed Mr. MacDuff that he will only act in this matter if he, Mr. Morgan, is able to secure Mr. Love’s shares in the Niagara at a reasonable price, and if Mr. MacDuff gives him, Mr. Morgan, an assurance that the Niagara will be joined to the Hudson Ohio. To this, Mr. MacDuff has agreed, on condition that he, Mr. MacDuff, is able to secure an absolute majority shareholding of the Hudson Ohio. This means, sir, that we should like to purchase half of your ten percent from you.”

“Oh,” said Frank. “What about Gabriel Love?”

“I purchased his Niagara shares three hours ago,” said Gorham Grey. “He hoped, I think, to make more of a killing. But once I made clear that Mr. Morgan will not be buying anything unless he is satisfied as to all the arrangements, and that Mr. MacDuff will buy nothing without Mr. Morgan’s recommendation, we were able to reach an agreement. Mr. Love has sold at a good profit, so he’s better off than he was.”

“What’ll you pay for my shares?” asked Frank.

“The current market price for Hudson Ohio is sixty. Shall we say seventy?”

“I was hoping for one twenty,” said Frank.

“Love’s plan is busted,” said Mr. Gorham Grey, quietly.

“Ah,” said Frank.

There was a brief silence.

“Mr. Morgan thinks that the future Hudson-Ohio-Niagara will be a logical amalgamation, and profitable to all parties,” continued Gorham Grey. “Your remaining Hudson Ohio shares will undoubtedly increase in value. And though he has paid well over the present market price, Mr. Morgan expects in due course to see a fair profit from the Niagara shares he has bought. In short, everyone gets something. So long”—he gave Master a severe look—“as people are not too greedy.”

“I’ll sell,” said Frank, not without relief.

“Quite right,” said Tom.

The weather continued to improve for the rest of that day. On Thursday morning, Frank returned to the house on Gramercy Park, to be welcomed by Hetty as though nothing had happened at all.

It was three days later that Lily de Chantal came to see her. When they were alone, Lily gave her a strange look.

“I have news for you,” she said. “About Miss Clipp.”

“Oh?”

“I went to her lodgings, but she wasn’t there.”

“Still in Brooklyn?”

“I went to the hotel. She left on Monday morning. They still have her suitcase.”

“You don’t mean …?”

“They’ve been digging up quite a few bodies around the city, as you know. People caught in the blizzard, who froze to death.”

“I heard it’s close to fifty.”

“They found one up on the walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge. Had her bag. A notebook with her name in it, and other things. Nobody’s come forward looking for her, and the city authorities are busy enough as it is. They’ll bury most of the bodies tomorrow, I believe.”

“Should we do anything? I mean, we sent her to Brooklyn. It’s our fault.”

“Are you sure you want to?”

“No. But I feel terrible.”

“Really?” Lily smiled. “Ah, Hetty, you are too good for us all.”

So ended the great Dakota Blizzard. By the following week the trains were all running again, and New York was returning to normal.

On the following Wednesday, as a train was leaving that was bound all the way to Chicago, no one took particular notice when a neatly dressed lady, with dark hair and a new suitcase containing a new set of clothes, quietly boarded. Inside the car, she sat alone, with a book open on her lap. Her name was Prudence Grace.

When the train began to move, she gazed out of the window as the city slowly receded. And if anyone in the car had happened to glance in her direction as the last view of the city disappeared, they would have noticed her whisper something that might well have been a little prayer.

Then Donna Clipp sighed with satisfaction.

It had been a moment of inspiration when she’d found that body up on the Brooklyn Bridge. Dead as a doornail. Frostbitten and frozen to a block already. The woman hadn’t looked especially like her, but roughly the same age, brown hair, not too tall. Well worth a chance. It had only taken a moment or two to leave her bag with the dead woman and enough identification to give the body her name.

Then she’d forced herself on, down that long, terrible walkway, almost dead herself, but with a new and urgent reason for staying alive.

If the police ever caught up with her now, they’d find she was dead. She had a new name, a new identity. Now it was time to move on to a new city, far away. And a new life.

She was free, and it amused her. That’s why, as New York was lost to sight, she’d thought one last and final time of Frank Master and whispered: “Good-bye, you old fart.”