City for Ransom

“Not exactly, but yes.”

“What?” Jane’s confusion was clear even through her makeup.”

“I catch his cab most days out to the school, and . . . he’s made it his business to flirt.”

“I hope you have enough sense to not encourage it. A cabby!”

“He’s apprenticing as a photographer and is trying to get me to sit for him.”

“Don’t fall for it!” Jane bristled. “Get rid of him. Get your mind off the vote, photographic modeling, boys, and onto your studies!”

“You’re so romantic, Mother.”

Evening at the Tewes residence

“It’s him! Inspector Ransom,” Gabby called out to Jane.

Just the other side of their sheer drapes paced the pipe-chewing Ransom.

“Now behave, young woman. Use civility but stall him.”

“You talk of civility,” Gabby replied, stealing a glance at the infamous Inspector she secretly admired, “while lying to a police official?”

200

ROBERT W. WALKER

He looked the size of a Montana grizzly she’d seen depicted in Harper’s Illustrated Weekly. Ominous and threatening and alluring at once, always striking just the right pose—in tune with his reputation. Her friend Lucy had once, in passing, said of the notorious detective that he doled out his own unique brand of justice before any judge or jury got the case. Said Ransom gained full confessions more than any other inspector in the city, the county, and perhaps the country by employing horrible instruments of torture like the widow-maker, the thumb screw, the rack, the spiked cage, the firebrand, and jagged broken bottles fused to chains, while ordinary coppers used only nightsticks and saps. According to rumors repeated by Lucy—“Occurs in a secret place ’long the river, close ’nough when a prisoner expires, his body’s tossed out a window into the dirty waters to float far from any interrogation, and no one the wiser.” Such talk had begun with Millie Thebold saying, “No one speaks of it, but this is Ransom’s city . . .”

“Meaning?” Gabby had asked, taking the bait.

“Meaning,” replied Lucy, “nothing happens without getting back to him in one fashion or another.”

Millie chimed in again. “Police talk! Means Chicago is Ransom’s city, like Paris, France, is Vjdoc’s city or was ’fore he died.” She then held up a dime novel, the title reading The Adventures of Inspector Vjdoc.”

Gabby opened the door, smiling wide. “Welcome once again to our humble home, Inspector. You look quite dashing tonight.”

The sounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition competed with horse hooves over the cobblestones as cabs came and went, bringing people to and from the gay lights and activity of the fair this warm summer’s eve. Ransom had been feeling awkward, unsure what they might talk about, he and the lovely Miss Jane, until he finally blurted out a comment. “I CITY FOR RANSOM

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am often too serious, too involved in my work, with not enough time to relax much less visit a place like this.”

“I’d’ve never guessed,” she teased.

He felt comforted that she could so easily joke with him.

“What about yourself?”

“What of me?” she countered.

“I never see you about. Is it workworkwork with you as well? When do you smile . . . I mean have fun . . . have a laugh, an afternoon in the park?”

“Me? Smile? I can smile even when screaming inside!”

“Then perhaps you ought to have been in the theater?”

“I meant only that I can sing when I wanna cry, and cry when happy.”

“Anything else I should know about you, Miss Jane?”

How much did he know? Had Dr. Fenger given her up?

What else but cloddish, male curiosity prompted these questions?

“If I may ask,” he added.

“I fight for my every belief . . . stand against injustice when I see it.”

“You sound a resolute woman, Miss Jane.”

They’d arrived at the Ferris wheel, and he purchased a ticket for each of them. Climbing into the enclosed gondola, designed like a train car berth, she replied, “Resolute?

Hmmm. Well, when I see a perfectly good solution going unused, yes, I can be resolute.”

“And I sense in you a caring, giving person just in seeing how you treat Dr. Tewes’s daughter—almost as your own.”

“I’d go without shoes if it’d help Gabby get through medical school. I love her unconditionally, and I cry when that child excels, and I cheer when she succeeds.”

This seemed at odds to him with what Gabby had imparted of her relationship with her aunt. “Then you have no children of your own?”

“I do not, but I’m happiest on hearing of a new birth or a new marriage in the family.”

“But you are not married?”

202

ROBERT W. WALKER

“No . . . I am not, sir.”

The gondola swept upward with them in it, creating an exhilarating, whirring breeze all about. It was a feeling of flight that neither had ever experienced.

“And what else can I learn of you tonight?”

She looked deeply into his eyes. “Well, I’m just a normal woman. My heart breaks when a family member or friend dies, yet I feel strong in the face of death—as I know certainly that death is no end.”

“Must be comforting, your certainty.” Ransom thought of Merielle’s awful end, still like a festering wound in his chest.

“I know of a certainty that a hug and a kiss can heal a wound,” she countered, “or a broken heart.”

“Is that so?” She reads minds, too, he thought.

“And I believe the heart of a woman can change this world, and is in fact what makes this world work.”

“Bully then for you, madam.”

“I know a woman can do more than give birth.”

“And what more is that, if I may play devil’s advocate—the vote?”

The wheel had brought them full circle and was up and away again. Her hair lifted in the wind.

“It is long, long overdue for women to have the right to vote in this country, sir, and the suffrage movement will one day triumph. Imagine it, men systematically withholding the rights of women because of their misunderstanding us, assuming tears a weakness of the heart, assuming emotion a faintness of character, making it a crime to have feelings, and to label emotion as somehow damaging.” “Please, I didn’t mean to start us on the wrong foot. I’m on your side.”

“Really? A rare fellow indeed.”

“I think it a just and fair cause.”

She nodded, a smile softening her features. “All true. Did you feel the same way about the labor movement when you had to stand against the protestors and agitators and anarchists?”

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“Haymarket got completely out of control. A lot of unanswered questions still.”

“The explosion, you mean?”