Page 66 of By Any Means

Laurie gave him a look that seemed too approving to be sincere. “Well, see? Your brother’s alive, and I’m glad for it, but workingmen have been unjustly arrested and murdered. I want to know why. You know who’s looking real culpable right now?” He pointed to the baize door. “That dangerous piece of shit. What does he want, possibly badly enough to kill for it?”

Chary bit his lip. It was plausible. Raberding did have a history of… violence, if not murder.

“He wants August,” he said. Laurie had the decency to not look victorious. “And Wright Glass. A monopoly on New York glass. I can’t tell which came first, but they’re indivisible now.”

Laurie nodded. “I thought so. Your brother, and his company, and his ideas. Power, status, capital. He wants enough of all of those things to live openly, to be untouchable. Enough to stick shut the mouths of police, of society. But he wants it for himself. Nobody else. Please believe me, Chary. I’d never work for a man like that.”

Chary took a shaky breath. Give the man a chance. Mrs. Simon was the best of people, wasn’t she? Or was she as easily charmed as Chary had been?

“S-say I believe you. He didn’t hire you, and you didn’t tell him a thing; he just magically knows August is alive and precisely where he’s been—immediately after you yourself arrived. What then? Why is he here now?”

“God, you like an adverb,” Laurie said fondly. “I don’t know how he knows; that’s true. Maybe it’s partially my fault for poking around and asking questions, after all. But I imagine he came here to flush him out once and for all back to New York.” He nodded to the jar. “August and whatever he’s been doing meanwhile. He knows something.”

“I assumed he’d merely want to see him first thing. A chance to reconcile. Even I wasn’t sure August would refuse to see him until he did.” Thank goodness he did.

“Mm. Confirm this for me: your brother faked his death and disappeared from New York society to get out of whatever he’d had with Raberding. You helped him do it, because you love him. Yeah?”

Chary waited a pulse too long.

Laurie said softly, “Do I have it right? Because it had to have been pretty damn bad.”

God help him, but he believed that softness and care. He believed Laurie Tulley. He did trust him.

“August hasn’t spoken to me much”—at all—“about the extent, but I think… yes. Yes, it was.”

“Well, then. Raberding doesn’t want reconciliation. That’s two-sided. Voluntary. He wants August to have no option left but to come back to him. And now he’s going to throw everything he can at him to accomplish that.”

“What’s ‘everything’?” Chary echoed.

Laurie ticked off fingers. “Reporters, the police, the gangs, detectives, the societies against vice”—he ran out of right-hand fingers—“hell, Tammany Hall; I don’t know. But you and I both know he’s got resources. I’d bet he’s as Rockefellian as it gets, even with lovers: competition should crawl to a safe buyout in his waiting arms. If they refuse, squash them until they’re underground. By the way, Chary, you’re the competition in this analogy. Without you, August has no one but him.”

“Oh, Lord.” More theories. “You think he tried to have me killed? That was the impetus?”

“I think it’s reasonable to assume he might try. How’d he react to your face?”

“Without comment. He had no reaction at all. It would be impolite.” Laurie snorted. “He’s never liked me, anyway⁠—”

“But he didn’t seem shocked.”

“He knew already; it’s a scandal. All those reporters—there are snippets in the Gazette, the Sun, the Herald, the World—and photographs⁠—”

He was interrupted by the perpetual, rolling sound of a combustion engine; an automobile of some kind had pulled up to the carriage bay.

They both went to the kitchen window. Tjofabier Raberding took hat and coat and walking stick from Mrs. Leonard, and slid into the back of a covered, all-black horseless carriage.

“Good lord,” Chary said. “He’s leaving without saying goodbye. But he didn’t drive here, surely?”

“From Bangor, I’d bet. Left the auto in Berryfield so he didn’t look hasty, but he needs it now ’cause he’s in a hurry.” Laurie cursed. “Yeah, he flushed him, goddammit. The cop was right. August should’ve stayed.”

Cop? “Who?”

Laurie faced Chary. “We gotta get to Gotham as soon as possible. We have to find your brother before Raberding or his goons do.” He eyed the remainder of galette longingly for a moment before pushing through the baize door.

Chary followed, mystified. “How do we do that? Another automobile? Power of flight? I have neither. It’s a half-a-day carriage to Bangor. The next passenger train from Berryfield is at seven o’clock tonight.”

“Mrs. Leonard!” Laurie bellowed for the housekeeper, striding through the hall. “There’s freight trains that pass by the Columbia station. You know it? Columbia freight, by the barrens? It’s where I got off in March. We’ll wagon there and jump on a car until we hit Bangor. We can go back to your first-class box, and Raberding won’t have more than an hour on us when he hits Grand Central. Might even beat him. Train’s faster than an auto.”

“A freight train? Jump? Onto a boxcar?” Chary’s voice rose with every syllable. “How do you— People lose toes—and—and then some! I am injured already!”