The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [223]
At that moment we all turned at the sound of a knock on the outer office door. It was quickly followed by the voice of the guard from downstairs: “Mr. Picton? Mr. Picton, sir?”
“It’s all right, Henry!” Mr. Picton shouted. “Come in!”
The big guard opened the outer door slowly, then cautiously made his way inside, slouching over slightly in what looked to me like some kind of automatic deference at being in one of the offices. He was holding an envelope.
“This just came for you, sir,” he said, handing the item over as Mr. Picton crossed the room to receive it. “From the Western Union office. I told ’em to bill the D.A.’s account.”
“Well—that was quick thinking, Henry,” Mr. Picton said, as he started to open the envelope. The guard frowned, not knowing whether Mr. Picton was serious or mocking him. But the shorter man’s next comment made his attitude pretty clear: “Do you know everyone, Henry?” he said, looking up into the guard’s pasty, small-eyed face and then indicating the rest of us. “Or shall I make introductions?”
The man scowled down at Mr. Picton. “No, sir,” he said glumly. Then he turned the dumb, injured look on the rest of us. “I guess I know ’em all right, sir.”
“Well, then,” Mr. Picton said, “if you’re waiting for a tip, I can only remind you that’s it’s against county policy. Good evening, Henry.”
Not knowing how to respond to that, the guard simply nodded and then lumbered moodily back out the door.
“Idiot,” Mr. Picton mumbled once he’d gone. “To think that someone with a mind might actually make use of all the food and oxygen it takes to keep that sort of—” He stopped as he got the envelope open. “Well! News from Marcus.” Scanning the thing quickly, Mr. Picton shrugged and then handed it to the Doctor, crossing back to his desk. “Though precious little! He seems to have learned the name of the lawyer Vanderbilt’s engaged. He’s trying to assemble a case record on the man, and talk to some people who have dealt with him. There’s a possibility that he can get an interview with the fellow himself, too.”
“All that could be helpful,” Lucius commented with a shrug.
“What’s his name, Rupert?” Miss Howard asked. “Do you recognize it?”
Mr. Picton was gazing out his window, pulling at his hair again. “Hmm? Oh! Darrow. Clarence Darrow. I can’t quite place it—but there is something …”
“I’ve no knowledge of him, certainly,” the Doctor said simply, dropping the telegram onto the desk.
Mr. Picton kept struggling, then threw up his hands. “Nor, it appears, do I,” he said, his face twisting unhappily. Then it straightened out. “Or do I? There was something—wait a minute!” Bolting across the room, he gathered a Stack of law journals what were piled on the floor up into his arms, then threw them onto his desk. “Somewhere, there’s something…” Going through the journals in his usual style—which meant hurling them around the room so that the rest of us had to occasionally duck to keep from taking one of them in the mouth—Mr. Picton eventually grabbed the particular number he’d been looking for. “Ah-ha!” he said, collapsing into his chair. “Yes, here it is! A piece that mentions Clarence Darrow—who is, in fact, on the payroll of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, though it’s only a part-time retainer. But he used to be their corporation counsel, and that’s no doubt where Vanderbilt first heard of him.”
“But I still don’t understand,” the Doctor said. “Why hire a corporate attorney for a criminal case?”
“Well,” Mr. Picton answered, holding up a finger, “there are some interesting details that may provide an answer. You remember the Pullman strike, back in ’94?” There were general mumblings in the affirmative, as we all thought back to the infamous time when the American Railway Union had struck against the Pullman Car Company in Chicago. The battles what’d taken place during the action had been so infamous and so bloody that even I’d heard them mentioned,