A hand fell on his shoulder. “We should leave,” Rupert said. “They’re coming,” Daniel heard clanging bells in the distance and nodded. Someone had called the police, and he didn’t want to be there when they arrived. With Police Commissioner Simons’s involvement, he needed to get to the press before the police and allow the Globe to report on the tangled web of corruption they had uncovered.
The Oyster Knifers melted into the shadows from whence they’d come, drifting back into the Eagle Head or slipping away down side streets. Some Bayard Toughs stayed to assist Daniel, should help be needed, but most dispersed, satisfied at the outcome of the fight. Several nodded to Daniel as they casually made their way into the evening, and Daniel nodded back.
Rupert handed Daniel his coat, and he realized Genevieve must be freezing. The wind had picked up even more, and the snow was swirling around them. He draped his jacket around Genevieve’s shoulders and frowned at its thinness.
“We have to get her home,” he instructed Asher, who was waiting nearby.
“Clive …” Genevieve swallowed, and Daniel followed her glance toward the back of the building. “Daniel, he fell …” She gestured, and he quickly dispatched Paddy and Billy to investigate.
“And I don’t want to go home,” she continued.
“Genevieve, you can’t stay here—”
“We should go to the Globe,” she said. “Right away. Daniel, Tommy is still out there.”
The sirens were growing louder. Ernest’s body was already covered by a quarter inch of snow.
“Let’s go,” he said. Paddy and Billy returned, confirming Genevieve’s story with a single look. “Get out of here, boys,” Daniel directed, glancing at the ever-darkening sky. “I think this storm is gearing up to be something rather memorable. I don’t want any of you caught in it.”
Daniel and Asher led Genevieve toward a carriage they had waiting around the corner, trailed by Rupert, while Paddy and Billy disappeared into the swirling white mists. Daniel glanced over his shoulder once, shuddering slightly at the scene. The square was eerily empty, save for the lumpen shape of Ernest Clark’s dead body, the bright red of his blood gradually becoming muted and pale under the accumulating snow.
The next twenty-four hours, Genevieve would later reflect, were simultaneously the oddest and the most satisfying she had ever spent in her life.
Luckily, the Globe’s offices were only a few blocks farther downtown from Five Points, and it was quickly decided in the carriage that Rupert should not accompany Genevieve and Daniel to see her editor. Asher dropped them in front of the building on Park Row and assured them he would go only a few blocks more, taking himself, Rupert, and the horses to a boarding house nearby where they could hole up until the storm passed.
Gale-force winds whipped Genevieve’s skirts and the flying snow sideways, and she and Daniel struggled their way across the sidewalk and into the building, clutching one another for support, once inside finding it nearly deserted.
Nearly, but not entirely.
“Miss Stewart.” A confused-looking Arthur emerged from his office at the sound of the elevator doors opening. It was a miracle the building still had power. “I told everyone to go home.” He blinked at what must have been an outrageous sight: Genevieve, bedraggled, exhausted, and bloodstained, accompanied by Daniel, splattered in blood, hatless, a dark bruise blossoming around his left eye.
“What has happened? Sit, sit.” Arthur urged them toward some desk chairs while looking worriedly out the window at the blowing gusts. “I daresay you’ll be here all day, perhaps even all night, at this point.”
He would prove to be correct. They were able to dispatch a telegram to Genevieve’s family and Daniel’s household, letting them know of their whereabouts, right before the lines succumbed to the winds and the weight of the heavy March snow. The power followed soon thereafter, and Arthur fired up a coal stove he had fitted specially into the corner of his office and made them all strong coffee. As they drank, warming themselves before the stove, Arthur produced some muffins from a cupboard.
The muffins toasted, filling the empty, darkening space with a cozy fragrance, as Genevieve spun her tale. She felt a bit like Scheherazade, enchanting Arthur with partial fact, partial fiction. Daniel remained mostly silent but interjected the occasional comment.
“Ernest Clark?” Arthur sputtered, nearly dropping his muffin. “The financier? And Clive Huxton? Together they are Robin Hood, you say?”
Across Arthur’s office, she saw shock, relief, and gratitude sweep across Daniel’s face, before he resumed a more neutral expression.
“They are. This is why Clive tried to frame Mr. McCaffrey, you see. To protect himself.”
Daniel shook his head at her, infinitesimally. She dipped her head a tiny bit in acknowledgment of his unspoken thanks. Truth be told, she hadn’t been sure whether she would tell the truth about Rupert being Robin Hood or not until she’d begun speaking.
But Ernest Clark was dead, and Clive was dead. They had committed murder, even if it was at Tommy’s behest; let them take the blame for the thefts as well. Enough damage had been done; let the living forge on as best they could.
Arthur removed his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt. “Most extraordinary.”
“We believe the thefts started as just thefts,” Daniel said, picking up her thread. “A way to thumb their nose at the rich. But once Ernest became involved with the Huffingtons’ building scheme, he was able to use the thefts to cover up his additional crimes, such as keeping Reginald Cotswold quiet.”
“Ernest killed Mr. Cotswold, as he discovered the mayoral committee on housing reform was working to actually profit from the construction of slums rather than improve them,” Genevieve said softly, sadness returning anew at Reginald’s senseless death.
Arthur peered at them, seeming to take all this in. He passed Daniel another muffin and scratched his face, looking out the window again. “This storm is making for the oddest bedfellows,” he
