With no windows, time stopped. She was vaguely aware of Sigmund bringing food and a pot of coffee which she consumed between books. Sometime during the night, she fell asleep, on a couch she was sure belonged to her mother covered by a quilt that was draped across the back, which had been lovingly folded by somebody.
She woke the next morning when Sigmund brought breakfast down the spiral staircase, the smell of coffee woke her. She noticed the dirty dishes from the night before had been removed. Someone had taken care of her during her night of her studies.
“Do you have any plans for the day Mistress?” Sigmund asked while pouring coffee.
“We’ve no new leads, and I find this whole workroom utterly fascinating, I don’t know what we should do about Missy’s disappearance.”
“We may not be able to find anything to help. Why don’t you stay down here and continue searching and learning? I won’t disturb you until the post arrives. Have you found the maps?” Sigmund said placing the silver coffee pot on the silver tray, the contained her breakfast.
“Maps? I haven’t found any maps.”
“I doubt you’ll find information there concerning your parents or Miss Whitaker, but I always found them fascinating. I found it like exploring while never leaving the house,” he walked over to a massive cabinet with skinny drawers. He pulled one open showing her an ancient hand-drawn map of Baja and Alto California. “I believe this is an original copy of the first Spanish map from the explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. I’ve no idea how your parents got their hands on this. We might not want to learn how they got it. I believe it to be over four hundred years old.”
“Thank you, Sigmund, I hadn’t found these.” She put the Spanish map back and started going through the different charts looking for anything that might be relevant. Sigmund left her, again silently ascending the stairs, and locking her behind the door.
The map storage gave her a new area to explore, she had just found the item that might help in their search for Missy. She located a ten-year-old map of the San Francisco sewer system. She was thinking about a way it could help when she discerned the click of the secret door open. She expected Sigmund to come walking down the steps, but instead, he called down to her, most strange.
“Mistress the morning post has arrived, I think you need to come up here. There’s been a most dire development that will need our attention as soon as possible,” Helena didn’t like the sound of that, it was the first time she’d ever known Sigmund to sound scared. She put the map down for later and did her best to run up the circular staircase.
Plague:
Helena quietly closed the doors behind her, wishing to keep her secret library, a secret. She could hear Sigmund and another man speaking in hushed tones in the lounge right down the stairs from her parents’ portrait, the same room she had received Minnie in and learned about Missy’s disappearance.
As she walked in, she saw Lane, Sigmund, and a man she’d never met before. “Sigmund began the introduction as soon as Helena was far enough in the room.
“Mistress Helena, this man is Mister Brubaker, he is our real estate agent, our building locator. He arrived with the morning post. Mister Brubaker why don’t you inform Mistress Brandywine what you told me.”
Helena found it strange Sigmund hadn’t offered everybody to sit, but she really needed to listen to Mister Brubaker’s tale.
“You see it’s like this Miss, Mistress, I was looking for a building, a building that Sigmund here asked me to find for you, a location for the Chinese Girl’s School. I was downtown looking for a favorable neighborhood when a bunch of men showed up. And they started throwing barricades blocking off every road leading towards Chinatown, and the Coast. They are keeping all the Chinamen and anyone they deemed undesirable from leaving the area. Any high-class people who came to the barricades they would let them out, I bet by now they’ve got the whole area sealed up. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I knew I needed to return here as fast as possible, so I could inform Mister Sigmund, and you Mistress what I witnessed.”
“Sigmund what could this mean?” Helena asked, her immediate concern for the Chinese Girl’s School which was probably cut off by the barricades.
“Thank you, Mister Brubaker, that will be all,” once Sigmund ensured the area outside the door was empty, he pulled out the morning Call newspaper. Headlines stating clear what had happened in huge bold print one single word all in capital letters ‘PLAGUE!’ Helena took the paper from Sigmund’s hands sinking into the chair next to her.
She scanned the article below the headline as quickly as possible. It read that a passenger liner recently left Honolulu loaded with Cantonese immigrants it landed two days ago. Another ship departed two days later trying to catch the first. The day after the first vessel left plague broke out within the Chinese community in Honolulu. The first ship arrived, and everyone unloaded, the second ship docked last night. They attempted to find everyone off the first craft, they didn’t. The first body turned up last night, three more had been discovered before the paper printed.
“Who is this Committee of Vigilance? It says there is a meeting tonight at the Pioneer Statue for anyone concerned about the direction the city is headed,” Helena looked up at Lane and Sigmund trying to get an answer.
Lane said, “They are a self-appointed group of vigilantes, expect the meeting to be held with pitchforks and torches. If something happens in the city that they don’t like they will take it upon themselves to punish as they deem fit.”
“They have been responsible for creating as much chaos as they
