Chapter Twenty-Two
As Nellie waited inconspicuously around the corner from the Lazarus home, coat pulled tight against the cool morning air, she thought about Emma’s sexual proclivities. It had little to do with the murder. The most likely path still led to Henry Hilton. But Emma’s lesbian activities unsettled her. It made her realize how little she really knew about Emma. From the time Emma was a young girl, men had been charmed by her intellect and wit, but Nellie had heard of no incidents of painters devoting their canvasses to her, or diplomats canceling trips abroad to be near her, as happened with Helena DeKay. Nellie had attributed this absence of such suitors to a fixation with Charles DeKay or an indifference to romantic affairs in general relative to far greater passions for poetry and social causes. But Emma obviously had appetites and longings like everyone else.
Nellie had known several women who were considered “spinsters” but who never lacked for female companionship. She herself had been approached by women on several occasions. But sex with another woman held no interest or curiosity for her. Then again, she had never been approached by the likes of Helena DeKay Gilder.
It must have been next to impossible for Emma to hide her sexual preferences. Constantly surrounded by family and admirers, she inhabited a world where gossip was currency. In her writings, Emma was formal and well-mannered, never delving into the private or the personal, and she conducted her life accordingly. Any liaisons on her part would have to be guardedly private to the extreme.
And yet she and Charles and Helena had kept up the charade for ten years. The visit to Dr. Barker for a contraceptive device had been a clever stroke to divert anyone from suspicion. Nevertheless, Nellie found it surprising that Helena would be Emma’s lover for so long. Helena, like Charles, had seemed too promiscuous and calculating to carry on an intimate ten-year partnership with anyone as substantial as Emma. Then again, Helena’s beauty was undeniable. She was breathtaking, and someone as appreciative of beauty as Emma may have found her simply irresistible.
Still, as Nellie reminded herself, this musing was pointless. It was Emma’s murder she was investigating, not her private life, and though one often had something to do with the other, it was Emma’s political activities and her generosity of spirit that had led to her demise. What was it that Hilton and Corbin were up to on Long Island? Emma had figured it out and wanted to make it known in the Century manuscript. Nellie was sure of it. Helena DeKay, supposedly Emma’s closest friend, had lied to her and done nothing with the manuscript. Breathtakingly attractive as she was, Nellie did not like this woman and would not to hesitate to embarrass her if the opportunity arose.
“Paper, miss?” A newspaper boy held a shoulder bag of copies of the Herald.
“No, thank you,” said Nellie.
“The election is only a few days away. Read about Mr. Cleveland getting cozy with the Brits.”
“I’m not one for politics. Sorry.”
The boy moved on. At that moment, the front door to the Lazarus home opened, and maidservant Sarah, bundled up in a dark ankle-length overcoat, descended the steps. It was a crisp autumn morning. Most of the trees had shed their leaves, and the bright October skies had given way to the gray of November. To Nellie’s good fortune, Sarah turned and walked down Fifth Avenue in her direction. Had she turned the other way, Nellie would have had to hail a carriage and circled round the block in order not to pass by the Lazarus home, something she hoped would not be necessary.
As Sarah started to cross Fifty-Seventh Street, Nellie called out in a loud whisper.
“Sarah!”
Sarah looked up and saw her, anxiety passing over her face. Nellie beckoned her to come over, out of the view of anyone in the home. Sarah did so, clearly uncomfortable.
“Miss Bly. How long have you been waiting?”
“Not long. I hired a boy to keep watch and tell me when you left the house. He said you went to the postal office every morning about this time.” She indicated the satchel in Sarah’s hand.
“I shouldn’t stay long,” Sarah said nervously.
“I know. I wanted to tell you that the pillow covering you gave me was very helpful. Miss Emma was indeed murdered.”
“I knew it.” Sarah’s lips pursed and eyes narrowed in anger.
“Sarah, I need to find out who did it. Can you make a list of all the people who visited Miss Lazarus during her illness, up until she died?” Although Nellie knew Hilton was behind the murder, she needed to know who’d actually given Emma the poison.
Based on what she had so far, the case against Charles was flimsy, and with such sensational accusations, the story could leave no room for unanswered questions.
“I’m not sure I can remember them all. There were so many.”
“Think hard. The killer was someone who visited her during that period. I will be here tomorrow morning at the same time. Give it to me then.”
Sarah nodded. She started to walk away.
“Sarah, did Miss Emma have any companions?”
“What kind of companions?”
“Private ones. Whom no one would know about.”
Sarah stiffened. “I wouldn’t know. And I wouldn’t say so if I did.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I thought it would be helpful. Thank you for your help, Sarah.”
Sarah, once again the image of an implacable maidservant, purposefully crossed the street.
On a whim, Nellie walked over to Madison Avenue and down eight blocks to Forty-Ninth Street. On the corner, behind a tall iron fence and two uniformed guards stationed on the street, was the mansion of Jay Gould. She approached one of the guards.
“Stay right there, please,” said one gruffly.
“I’m wondering if I might see Mr. Gould.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No—”
“Then you can’t see him.”
“Please tell him I’m here. My name is Nellie Bly.”
The guard opened a small iron door in the stone pillar to reveal a telephone, a wire running from the pillar to inside the house. The guard cranked the phone.
“Could you tell Mr. Gould that a Miss Bly is here to see him?”
The guard waited a moment. Unlike the sentries outside the newspaper offices, these guards didn’t flirt or make conversation. They were focused entirely on the task at hand, guarding the household. Gould could afford to have the best protection possible, and given the number of threats he faced on a daily basis, he demanded nothing less.
“Yes,” said the guard into the phone. “I’ll tell her.” He hung up the phone.
“Mr. Gould is leaving for his office. He would like you to ride with him.”
“Thank you.”
The guard returned to his post while she waited by the gate. Neither guard cast so much as a glance in her direction or a word of conversation with the other. They devoted all their attention to surveying the street for any threats or unwelcome activities. Jay Gould was a serious man indeed.
A few minutes later, a carriage emerged from inside the gate. It was black, larger than most, but otherwise resembled a thousand other carriages on the streets of New York, with one exception: two guards sat on either side of the driver, carrying rifles. The carriage stopped by her. One of the guards had quietly moved into place as the gate opened. Gould, with those coal-black, penetrating eyes, opened the carriage door.
“Miss Bly. I am riding to the office. You can join me if you like.”
“I would like that. Thank you.”
The driver tossed down a small step. The guard caught it, placed it by the door, and helped her into the carriage. The inside was comfortable but not posh. The seats were a cloth weave, not leather. Gould tapped his cane against the roof. The carriage proceeded down Fifth Avenue.
“You should have alerted me you would be calling,” said Gould. “Another five minutes and you would have missed me.”
“I assume you know my whereabouts at all times.”
Gould forced a mild smile. “My purpose before was simply to warn you, Miss Bly. And refute lies about Miss Lazarus. I have no need for further spying.”
“I was nearby and thought I would pay a visit. I need help.”
Gould wasn’t one for chit-chat. “Go on.”
“I am convinced that Miss Lazarus was murdered and that Judge Hilton was behind it, as you said. But I’m not sure why she was murdered.”
“Assigning her blame for all his financial shortcomings was not enough?”
“That explains why he would welcome her death, but not why he could not wait a few months for the cancer to take her life. Something pressing forced his hand.”
“You have a theory?”
“Right before she left for Europe, Miss Lazarus befriended a woman from the Montauk Indian tribe.”
That got his attention. “Maria Pharaoh?”
“That’s right,” said Nellie, surprised.
“Well. That would explain just about everything.” He said it to himself as much as to Nellie. “They mean to go ahead with it.”
Gould was way ahead of her. Even though she had more information, she struggled to catch up. “I know that Hilton and Corbin had cheated the Montauks out of their land—”
“Not only the Montauks,” interrupted Gould, “but all the Indians on Long Island. The Shinnecock, the Mattuck, the Quogue. Miss Pharaoh was making one final attempt to regain her land through the courts. No one gave her much of a chance, but they still had to go through certain steps. Miss Lazarus, on the other hand, could pose a serious problem to their plans. She must have offered to do all she could, even though she was bound for Europe.”
Nellie was dazzled that Gould knew so much about the situation.
“She wrote a story for the Century about it,” she said, “but it was never published. And they won’t let me see the manuscript.”
“Do you know what was in it?”
“No. But whatever it was accelerated her death.”
“Of course it did. Miss Lazarus was smart enough to deduce their plans,” he said admiringly. “Hilton and Corbin could brook no interference, even from someone as well-established as Miss Lazarus.”
“Interference with what? Their plan is obvious, isn’t it? New York is crowded. People will begin moving out of the city, and Hilton and Corbin bought up all the land. Eventually it will be extremely valuable.”
“But that will be years from now. You need to think bigger, Miss Bly. They could have purchased land anywhere on Long Island and created a residential area. It was Montauk Point they were after.”
“I don’t understand.”
He struggled to contain his impatience that he had to spell it out to her as if she were a child. “Corbin has a monopoly on all train travel on Long Island.”
“Yes—”
“His trains go all the way to Brooklyn and Queens. He owns the ferries to take passengers to Manhattan. And I suspect before long, he will get the city to finance a bridge so his trains can go all the way into Manhattan as well. In effect, he will have a monopoly on all rail traffic from the north and east into New York.”
“That’s worth a fortune.”
“No, Miss Bly. That is worth merely a great deal of money. What they have in mind is a real fortune. All ships arriving from Europe now dock at Battery Park and unload around the wharf at the East River. Everyone and everything coming from Europe arrives there. More passengers and cargo go through that area than all the other harbors in the country combined.”
“Yes. I know that—”
“Hilton and Corbin want to have all ships from Europe land one hundred miles farther east, at Montauk Point. The passengers and cargo would then disembark and go aboard their trains, race across Long Island, and arrive in Manhattan a day or so earlier than they do currently. Or they might connect with the Pennsylvania or the Southern Railway or the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which they also own, without having to go into Manhattan at all. Europe and England are our major suppliers of goods and our major outlet for everything this country produces. Their plan would transform the nation’s commerce and spell the end of New York City as a major landing point.”
“A million passengers a year arrive here!”
“Two million. Not to mention the tonnage of cargo. Plus rents from merchants and ship owners, plus the ability to set monopoly prices and control workers’ wages. That is an enormous amount of revenue, by anyone’s standards.”
Nellie struggled to grasp the full, astonishing extent of their plan.
“It would be costly to build a harbor,” Gould went on, “and I wasn’t sure if they were prepared to spend all that capital, but now we know the answer. For the plan to work, they had to secure Montauk Point. That is the integral piece. Anything farther west would lessen their time advantage and pose a navigational hazard.”
“Maria Pharaoh could have made a mess of things.”
“By herself, no. No court would have taken her seriously. But with Emma Lazarus, that would be a different story. Hilton must have learned about the manuscript and managed to suppress it, through the work of Charles DeKay, I suspect—”
It was remarkable how much he deduced.
“—and once she returned from Europe, he could not have her interfering in the trial.”
“When was the trial?”
“December of last year. One month after she died.”
Absolute control of the major arrival point from Europe. A monopoly on all rail traffic, for both passengers and cargo, to points north, west, and south of New York City. And total ownership of the surrounding land. The scope of the enterprise was almost beyond comprehension.
“Can they be stopped?” she asked in trepidation.
“I don’t see how.”
“What about the railroad commission?” The previous year, amid great fanfare, Congress had enacted the Interstate Commerce Act, to put an end to monopolies in the railroad industry.
Gould scoffed.
“The president appoints the commission members. Thanks to this nonsense with the Murchison letter, that will be Harrison. He will choose exactly whom Hilton says. And if any commission members should exercise independence, Congress will be sure to rein them in. No, Miss Bly, I’m afraid no one is going to stop them.”
“What about you?” she asked desperately.
“Me? I’m an old man. My wife is not well, and my children make my life difficult. The truth is, if Hilton and Corbin approach me to buy the Manhattan Elevated, I would be inclined to sell it to them.”
“But you can’t! You carry three million passengers a year!”
“At present. But once they begin diverting commerce through Long Island, the Manhattan Elevated will not be worth very much. I might as well take what I can get for it now.”
“But to let Judge Hilton get the best of you—”
“This is business, Miss Bly. There is no room for emotions.”
“Let me write the story first, Mr. Gould. Please. Mr. Pulitzer will publish it. Maybe that can stop them.”
“As you wish, Miss Bly. But I assure you it will make no difference.”