Just then, a brougham carriage came roaring back in the direction of the hotel. Tom tried to signal for help, but it careened wildly past at a breakneck speed, far faster than the legal limit of a slow trot. It passed too rapidly for Tom to see anything but the driver's hat and to observe that there were no passengers to be seen. But the cabman that Tom was holding stretched his hand out at the sight of the vehicle.
“Stay calm, fellow,” Tom said.
Bracing his legs to carry his load farther up the road, Tom found the driver of a truck watering his two blanketed horses at a hitching post.
“This man needs help immediately. Take him to the hospital,” instructed Tom, laying his burden down gently. Then Tom began untying one of the truckman's horses, saying, “I need to borrow her.”
The confused truckman was too startled to object, and Tom climbed up onto the horse without a saddle and kicked her into a launching gallop.
Tom was soon in the immediate wake of the speeding carriage that had passed them. When he was even with the rear of the carriage, Tom breathed in deeply and leaped off the horse, grabbing the back of the chaise. With one hand hanging from the top of the chaise, Tom swung around, unlatched the door, and threw himself inside. The chaise was not empty. There was Dickens on the floor.
The Chief was sprawled out, out of view of the window. His head rested on a pillow-the stolen hotel pillow from Parker's!
This moment had been dreamed up all along.
There was Louisa Barton's carpetbag full of bundles of ragged manuscript pages. Tom took up the title page. A New Book of Job by Charles John Huffam Dickens was scrawled out in a cramped hand. Also in the bag were slippers, curlers, a mirror, pomatum, and rope.
“Chief, it's Tom Branagan. Are you hurt?” Tom whispered and shook him.
“Slow, slow please,” Dickens mumbled in reply.
Tom realized that Dickens was not bound or constrained physically. But Dickens's extreme torpor was the same that had come over him when in any fast conveyance.
Just then, the horses came to an abrupt halt, the carriage lifting in the air.
Dickens began to try to speak, but Tom signaled for quiet. The novelist was insensible and confused-plus Tom was not armed but knew Louisa Barton could be. If the kidnapper saw him there, she could become desperate.
The brougham carriage had two rows of seats facing each other and space beneath each of the rows for luggage. Hearing the driver step down from her seat, Tom slid to the floor and rolled beneath one of the seats into the luggage space. He grabbed Dickens's walking stick and pulled it against his body where it couldn't be seen.
“Here we are,” said Louisa theatrically, as she opened the door. Her abundant hair was half stuffed under the stolen driver's cap, which she now removed and threw aside. “Chief, you'll need to wake yourself now. You'll want to be spirited, spirited and energetic as always you are, to show what you're all about. This will beat the other readings for those groundlings hollow, hollow, hollow!”
With considerable strength, the woman dragged Dickens under her arms and out of the side door. Tom, meanwhile, rolled over to the other side of the carriage and popped that door open so he could observe them. They were in the massive shadow of Tremont Temple.
The assailant was walking Dickens gently toward the theater with one hand, carrying her pearl-handled switchblade in the other. She had on a pink sash and dazzling flame red gown, with dead geraniums dropping down from tousled hair.
Tom waited until they had entered the theater and then he went up the stairs to the main hall. He knew the building inside and out from the readings and knew that inside he'd have the best chance of separating Dickens from her long enough to get him free. He considered going for a policeman, but they'd surely be resistant to his story: particularly the part about the attacker being a woman from the upper classes of the city named Louisa Parr Barton.
Tom went through the side entrance where he had previously guarded against people trying to sneak into the readings. Now it was Tom doing the sneaking. He silently climbed the stairs to the balcony, peering over the railings to survey the scene. Louisa had placed Dickens, who had revived but was still in a state of confusion, on the platform in front of the podium. She sat at his feet on the platform with her wide gown flowing around her, like the ghostly image of a schoolgirl. The blade dangled in her hand.
Her intention was clear as it was bizarre: Dickens was to do a reading of her manuscript. Poor Chief. The lines on his face looked like they had deepened since he had arrived in America; without George's lighting and Henry's choice of a fashionable hat, straggly hair hung from his bald head down over his cheeks. He was a shadow of himself.
Dickens fumbled through her manuscript pages, and began to read. “They slain the servants with the edge of their swords-I only have escaped to tell the vulgar people that God is upon our city.” Louisa appeared to be enraptured with her words coming from her idol's mouth.
Tom raised himself just above the iron railings. He caught Dickens's eye and Dickens, without betraying Tom's presence, nodded. Dickens raised his voice and began to read her strange and discordant text louder, allowing Tom to descend the stairs and make his way along the side of the auditorium unheard.
But he reached a point where he could go no farther without risking detection. Dickens, recognizing Tom's dilemma, thrust aside the woman's pages and began to speak in an earthy growl. “Let it be! There's enough light for wot I've got to do…”
It was Bill Sikes and the murder scene from Oliver Twist! Dickens's teeth were clenched with fury, completely transforming into the savage killer-he looked right at Louisa Barton. He held his hand down to her as though he would seize her by the wrist.
She trembled with a thrill of fear. Her face flushed a fiery red.
“You were watched to-night, you she-devil. Every word you said was heard!”
The dramatic performance mesmerized Louisa, and Tom successfully crept to the side of the platform unseen. He could see her hand clenched the knife so tightly her knuckles were turning white. Tom could take her by surprise by coming through the dressing room onto the platform, but if he had to struggle, he feared Dickens's proximity to her weapon.
As he debated his best chance, Louisa seemed to sense something wrong. Her head whipped around.
“Why, you!” she screamed violently, as though infused with Bill Sikes's venom. She caught him with her hypnotic glare and cut the air with her blade. “You can't be here!”
Before Tom could move, she jumped up and put her knife to the soft flesh of Dickens's throat. “Keep reading!” she commanded him.
“Every word you said was heard…” Dickens tremulously repeated Sikes's warning.
“Yes, that's it-keep going,” she said to Dickens, and then to Tom, said, “Now you leave!”
Tom, eyes locked on the switchblade, backed away through the middle aisle. “I'm going, Mrs. Barton,” Tom said. “You see, I'm going.”
Then a different idea came over him, and he dropped into a seat with a loud thump. Tom dug himself into the cushion and reclined.
She looked back from Dickens to Tom but then, as though deciding she never wanted to leave the writer's side again, she said, “You're spiteful because we were never friends. Fine, stay! You wouldn't understand what you're about to see!”
Tom put his boots up onto the chair in front of him. “I think I do.”
Then understanding dawned and her mouth opened wide. “That's why, you're sitting-that seat's mine!”
Tom was sinking deep into the seat from which she had watched the Christmas Eve reading, where she had carved a string of words about Dickens. Unloosed with rage, she ran through the aisle toward him, her knife held out.