As Mabel returned with the tray, she said, ‘‘Miss Mooney, that is such a lovely sateen!’’ She cast an admiring glance at me and my Langtry dress. I murmured my thanks and she added, ‘‘If you ever wish to sell it, I have a friend who loves that shade of green. Tell me, are you Irish too? I was a Keenan before I married Jake.’’
‘‘Yes, I’m Irish. And your husband is German?’’
‘‘He speaks it, and that’s very helpful these days with all the unrest. Do you know how many German immigrants are in Chicago? Four hundred thousand! Poor Jake has a great deal to do.’’ I could see the tenseness around her eyes. ‘‘Besides the usual problems with gambling and unsavory women, he says those dreadful German anarchists are trying to take over the labor organizations, and turn the workers against all the decent people.’’
‘‘Oh, he should know better than that,’’ Johanna said. ‘‘The German workers Mutti knows are decent people too. Of course when Pinkerton men shoot striking workers some of them talk about defending themselves. But it’s all talk.’’
Mabel frowned. ‘‘Still, I worry about Jakey. He’s given some special assignments, because he’s a favorite of Captain Schaack.’’
‘‘What kind of assignments?’’
‘‘He won’t say, but- Come look,’’ said Mabel abruptly, taking something from under the leg of the stove. We followed her into a velvet-draped bedroom. She pulled a box from under the bed and unlocked it. ‘‘You mustn’t tell because he doesn’t think I know where the key is. But can that be what it seems?’’
In the box, sitting among gloves and watches on layers of lace and velvet, was a round iron object. Emerging from one side was a thick cord perhaps five inches long. Johanna peered at it and gasped, ‘‘Oh, Mabel, how thrilling! It looks just like the pictures in the Tribune, when they wrote about how the anarchists make bombs!’’
Mabel shuddered. ‘‘It’s horrid! I’ve hardly slept since I saw it there.’’
‘‘But how splendid that Jake has found an anarchist! He’ll be a great hero,’’ Johanna declared.
‘‘You look on the bright side.’’ Mabel locked the box and slid it back under the bed. ‘‘Johanna, you’ll be an excellent policeman’s wife.’’
Johanna blushed pink as a rosebud. ‘‘Oh, Mabel, don’t tease!’’
Mabel smiled at me, explaining, ‘‘Officer Degan is sweet on Johanna. I expect wedding bells any day.’’
‘‘What good news, Johanna!’’ I exclaimed in my most sincere tones, although I have never been enthusiastic about marriage to anyone, not even for a thousand a year. ‘‘This Officer Degan must be a good man.’’
‘‘Oh, yes, Matt is a dear fellow!’’ Johanna said earnestly. ‘‘And he has promised to escort me to the park Monday, when we both have free time.’’
Mabel clapped her hands. ‘‘Oh, Johanna! This puts me in mind of the days when Jakey was courting me! Such a happy time!’’
Well, I couldn’t imagine being pleased by the attentions of a fellow like Detective Loewenstein, who hid bombs under his bed and tried to arrest perfectly innocent young ladies. But in the past I too have had moments of being blinded to the truth by a manly shoulder or a twinkling eye, and Mabel was right, it was a happy time. So for a few moments we all three praised the qualities of Johanna’s Matt and Mabel’s Jakey and my dear departed Slick, and wondered if Matt would be asking for Johanna’s hand Monday.
After this pleasant half hour, Johanna and I awakened Peebles the porter and continued to Johanna’s more modest home. ‘‘Mutti’’ was tall and of sturdy physique like her daughter, and she seemed pleased to have a paying visitor. The little bed in Johanna’s room was narrow but clean and warmed with a featherbed, and I would have had no complaints exceptfor one thing. I had quietly checked the contents of the pocket I’d sewn into my bustle, because a couple of handsome gentlemen’s hunting watches had found their way into it as we jostled through the throngs of opera patrons this evening. But as I removed my Langtry dress I gasped.
‘‘What is it, Bridget?’’ Johanna, already in her white nightdress, was brushing out her long blond hair.
I took a deep breath, as I confirmed that nothing had caught in the lacy sleeve of the dress. ‘‘A trifle. Part of my Langtry costume is missing.’’
‘‘Oh, dear!’’ Johanna turned from the little mirror over her table and looked at me with consternation. ‘‘What is it?’’
‘‘A trifle,’’ I repeated, keeping the despair from my voice. After all, Johanna was possibly guiltless- though I remembered her slipping her arm through mine as we walked toward the Grand Opera. ‘‘I suppose the clasp broke and I dropped it along the way. Just a bracelet with a dozen paste jewels.’’
Well-seven paste jewels. The other five had been my little niece’s future.
Next morning, as soon as Johanna left our chamber to assist her mother, I did a thorough but fruitless search of her vanity table and clothing-although I couldn’t truly believe that Johanna had it. For all her skill as a juggler, she didn’t seem clever enough to remove a bracelet from under the sleeve of a young lady as alert and knowledgeable as I. I donned a simple walking dress and went in to a hearty breakfast. Afterward I thanked her mother, told Johanna I would see her at the theatre, and set off to retrace my steps.
I did not have high hopes of finding my bracelet. Johanna had not been the only one who had been near me the night before. The porter, Peebles, had bumped my arm as he lifted my trunk into his barrow and numerous people had brushed by on the crowded streets. As I walked I tried to remember the details of our journey the night before. Here was a corner where I’d paused to look back at Peebles and my trunk; here Johanna had met a German relative of her mother’s on the street; here was Mabel Loewenstein’s home. I paused; could I have dropped it on that Turkey carpet? It was too early to call on her, but later I would.
I continued down the street and across the drawbridge. If the hasp had broken there the bracelet might have fallen through the steel grid into the busy Chicago River below, which teemed with scows and shouting rivermen. But when I reached Clark Street and remembered the jostling throngs outside the Grand Opera, I had to admit that even a young lady as clever as I might have missed a master pickpocket if distracted, and hang it, I had been distracted. I’d been conversing with Johanna, and watching for gentlemen with hunting watches, and making certain that Peebles, in his yellow checked cap, was following with my trunk.
Peebles, who had nudged my arm. He could so easily have taken my bracelet.
It was time to hunt for Peebles.
It was not easy.
Though I watched for him every day, Peebles did not appear near the theatre where I had first found him, nor around the train stations. Johanna was no help, being all atwitter about her upcoming Monday walk in the park with the peerless Officer Degan. Toward the end of the week Kohl and Middleton asked us all, even the slobbering hero dogs, to play for a week at their second theatre, a mile west on Madison, and Sunday was spent moving and rehearsing in the new space.
On Monday I wished Johanna a happy day with Officer Degan and returned to question the porters at the railroad station. At last I found a spiky-haired fellow who knew Peebles. ‘‘He’s not really one of us, mum, he’s a machinist. Worked for McCormick Reaper, see, but got locked out back in February along with the other union men,’’ he explained. ‘‘To put bread on the table he works as a porter when he can get the use of a barrow.’’
‘‘Do you know where he lives?’’
My informant shrugged. ‘‘Moves from one relative to another. If you want to find him, try looking at the McCormick works.’’
‘‘But you said he’d been locked out.’’