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Quickly as possible. Quickly as possible.Constance reached into her pocket. “Let me explain. You are in a position to make yourself a good deal of money for very little work. Go find Mary Greene. Bring her here. And in return you’ll receive twenty dollars.” She showed him the money.
The man’s eyes widened in his soot-smeared face. “Nellie Greene, is it? By God, you should have told me this involved an exchange of currency. Give me the money, and I’ll go get her.” And he reached over the desktop.
Constance returned the money to her pocket. “It’s Mary. Not Nellie.”
Murphy moved toward the clerk-cum-jailer. “Money later,” he said, brandishing the cudgel.
“No, no, my friend,” said the man, holding out his hand with a coaxing motion. “Now.”
“Give us the girl,” Murphy said in a threatening tone.
A silence ensued. Finally, the man behind the counter replied: “I wouldn’t give you the steam off my piss.”
“Bloody gombeen!” Murphy cried as he lunged to the counter and grabbed the man’s shirt in his fist, literally pulling him up and over. But the man, shouting at the top of his lungs, had gotten his hands on a butcher’s knife from beneath the desk and went to slash at Murphy.
Taking advantage of the brawl, Constance ducked into the room on the left. It must have originally been a chapel, but now the windows were barred, and instead of pews there was row upon row of cots, straw scattered across the floor among them. It was brutally cold. The mattresses were so thin she could see the outline of the metal grilles beneath. Rags and bits of clothing lay beneath the beds, worn and dirty. Where plaster had fallen from the walls, the exposed laths had been patched with newsprint and oiled paper.
Almost mad with the need to find her sister, she ran to the next room, full of dirty clothes and scullery equipment, and into the next, where a clacking, humming sound filled the air. There, in a vast, dim space, were two rows of girls and women. They sat on what looked like milking stools, and were dressed in dirty, one-piece shifts. Before each of them was a foot-pedal-operated mechanical loom.
Slowly, the hum subsided. One after another, they stopped their work and looked silently in her direction.
As Constance approached, desperately searching the faces for her sister, a uniformed man came striding over from the far end of the room, a truncheon in his belt, his hobnail boots loud on the wooden floor. “What’s this? Who are you?”
Constance skipped back and exited, running toward the entrance, pulling out her stiletto as she ran. When she entered, she found that Murphy had the attendant in a hammerlock, the knife on the floor, the man begging and whining.
At that moment, the door at the far end of the entryway banged open and a woman strode in.
“Cease and desist!” she cried as she came storming over, her voice cutting the air.
She was tall and thin, almost skeletal, and wore a long brown dress with buttons that ran from her waist to her neck. Her eyes were sharp and intelligent, and she had such an air of chill authority that the two men ceased to struggle.
“What is the meaning of this disturbance?” she said, looking at the three occupants of the room in turn, fixing on Constance.
Constance felt the sharp gaze freeze her blood. “We’re here for Mary Greene,” she said, still gripping the stiletto. “And we’ll be leaving with her—one way or another.”
The woman gave a mirthless laugh. “There is no need for dramatics, young lady.” She turned back to the two men, who had released each other and were standing, disheveled and panting. “Royds,” she snapped, “get about your business.”
As the man skulked away, giving them a final leer over his shoulder, the woman went to a nearby shelf and drew from it a large ledger book, put it on the counter, flipped the pages until she found one marked with a ribbon, then smoothed it down. “As I thought. She was taken from here yesterday.”
“Taken?”
“To the sanatorium. The doctor found her ill and condescended to favor her with special attention.” The woman paused. “What is your interest in the matter?”
“She is a friend of the family,” Constance said.
“Then you should be grateful. Very few of our residents are lucky enough to come under the care of Dr. Leng.”
“Dr. Leng,” Constance repeated. For a moment, it felt like the floor was burning away beneath her and she was about to fall into the earth.
“Yes. His arrival here last summer was the greatest blessing. Already, five of our young ladies have been sent to recover at his private sanatorium.”
Constance could hardly speak. The woman continued to look at her dubiously, one eyebrow raised.
“Where…is this sanatorium?” Constance asked.
“It would be above my station to question the doctor. I am sure it is a fine place.” The woman spoke primly, yet with a voice of iron. “For the safety of its patients, the location is kept strictly private.”
Moving as if in a nightmare, Constance pulled the book toward her. The page had roughly a dozen entries—several new arrivals, one released with time served, another dead from typhus and removed by hearse…and two others markedTRANSFERRED TO SANATORIUM FOR CLOSEROBSERVATION. The most recent entry was for Mary. She had been signed out on Monday, November 26. Yesterday. And beside the entry, written in ink that had not yet completely lost its gloss, was a signature:E.LENG.