TWENTY-SEVEN

Mr. Fitzgibbons is very fond of you,” Ida commented as we rode in a carriage towards the hospital.

“He is an old friend,” I said, trying to explain. “I’ve known him for almost as long as I’ve been in the city. He was of great help to me several times.” It was all too complicated to explain on a short ride, so I didn’t try. “How is Mary doing?”

“She refuses to worry. She tends Miss Erickson, although there is little hope that she will ever wake up.” Ida shook her head. “I fear she will die. And, when that happens, her father will insist that Mary be arrested.”

“But she was with us just before we found out that Charlotte was attacked…we left her talking to Mr. Chin. Surely there was not time enough for her to attack Charlotte. They must know that.”

“The father is unreasonable in his grief, and Mary wishes to leave Mr. Chin out of the discussion. She fears it would look bad for both him and her, if people thought they were alone together.”

“Were they?”

“Only at the table where we saw them as we left.”

“Is there no chance Charlotte will revive enough to identify her attacker?” I asked.

“Very little. Here we are.”

I paid the driver and we got out of the hot summer sun and into the cool shadows of the brick building as quickly as we could. I glanced at the huge portraits as we passed through the foyer. How would Charlotte’s mother feel, if she could see her daughter lying helplessly in a hospital bed? Would she be glad that at least it was at this hospital, which she had helped to build and had supported for so long?

Ida led me to a stairway and up two flights. Hospital staff appeared to know her. We tiptoed past a nurses’ station. Beyond it, I could just see a waiting room where Dr. Erickson sat slumped in a chair. Nearby, Laura Appleby sat knitting. At the door to Charlotte’s room stood a uniformed policeman. He grimaced at us but waved us by and Ida ushered me in.

It was cool and shaded in the room. Sheer curtains let in a breeze but filtered the light. It was on a side of the building that was mercifully cast in shadow. Charlotte lay on the white sheets, her head bandaged and her leg set with splints. There were bandages on her arms as well, and a sort of barrier of pillows near her ribs. She moaned a bit and I heard a murmur as Mary Stone bent over her and moved the cushioning by her ribs a little. I saw she had a cup in her hand with a bit of steam drifting up from it. She held it to Charlotte’s mouth, coaxing a sip now and then. Hearing our entry, she carefully removed the cup, wiped the lips of the unconscious girl and set the cup on a side table. “No change,” she said in answer to Ida’s questioning look.

We set up three chairs near the window, as far from the bed as possible so we could talk.

“It’s very bad, isn’t it?” I asked. I hadn’t seen Charlotte since we were at Hip Lung’s apartment. She had been a bloody mess there, but now I was shocked at how lifeless she looked lying on the bed. Her occasional moans sounded like they came from an animal, not a human being.

Mary brushed a hand across her own forehead. “She was very badly injured. Her broken bones could mend, given time. But there is no way to know whether or not her brain will heal.”

“What were you giving her to drink?” I asked.

“Chinese herbs. It’s a strong concoction. It may not help, but there seems little hope, so it’s unlikely to hurt her in any way.”

“Don’t let her father see you doing that,” Ida warned.

“I cannot fail to try anything that might help,” Mary told her. “Besides, he is in despair. It’s not as it was before with him. He won’t leave, but most of the time he just sits and stares. Mrs. Appleby has made him her charge. She sits with him.”

I exchanged a glance with Ida. “We saw them. But he insisted the herbs given to his wife brought on her death. You must be careful he doesn’t accuse you of poisoning his daughter. He’s not rational,” I told her.

She sighed. “The herbs cannot hurt. They may soothe her enough that she might rest and her body may have time to heal itself. It’s the most we can hope for.”

“But you take a terrible chance,” Ida told her.

“My husband had the herbs analyzed and they said there was nothing unusual or poisonous in them,” I said. The two young doctors looked at me in surprise. “The young herbalist gave me a sample of the herbs that his father had forbidden him to give to Charlotte. Stephen took it to his laboratory and some of his students analyzed it.” When they continued to look at me in silence I went on. “I thought there might be an opiate or something in it. I just wanted to make sure.”

They exchanged a few words in Chinese. Ida looked upset, but Mary turned to me. “What Young Lo gave you would not have been his father’s mixture. What I have is. I obtained it from Old Lo before he died. But he would not have given it to Young Lo. It is the type of secret recipe only passed on to family members.”

“But Young Lo is his son,” I protested.

“Paper son,” Ida said. I looked at her, confused. “You have heard of a ‘paper son,’ haven’t you?”

“Yes, I have. But I thought the young man at the herb shop really was Old Lo’s son.”

“No,” Mary told me. “Old Lo took in another paper son every few months. In the three years we’ve known him there have been many ‘sons.’ But this kind of special secret recipe for medicine is something that is passed down only within a real family. Old Lo may have sons back in China who learned it, but he wouldn’t teach it to one who was only passing through, like the young man there now.”

“But he’s running the shop. Didn’t he inherit it?”

Ida explained. “They all want to keep the immigration authorities out of their community, so even though they all know he is only a paper son they would not say so openly. Yet the shop belongs to Old Lo and his real family. Eventually, the shop will be sold and the money will be sent back to his relatives in China.”

I looked across at the young woman lying in the bed. “Then why did he give me those herbs and say they were what Charlotte wanted? And what is in the real herbs she gave to her mother?”

“Probably he just wanted to make you and the policeman go away,” Mary told me. “He’s probably afraid he’ll be exposed as a paper son and deported. I suppose he thought if he gave you something he knew was harmless, and you found out what was in it, you would stop asking. As for what is in the real herbal medicine, I, too, would like to know that. It has worked for me on some critical patients. I believe there is an opiate among other things. But I don’t know all the ingredients.”

“You’re sure it won’t harm her?” I asked, looking over at the bed.

“Does she look like there is much that will hurt her now?” Ida snapped. It was true. She was so lost in a deep sleep there seemed little that could disturb her.

At that moment the door flew open and Dr. Erickson staggered in. His tall form was doubled over, as if from a pain in his abdomen. His clothes were stained and in disarray, his beard ragged. His eyes were sunken in his large forehead. He reached the foot of the bed and clutched the railing, staring down at his daughter.

“Isaac, come away. Let her rest.” A soft voice spoke from the doorway. Laura Appleby stood there quietly, all her attention on the man who stood shuddering at the end of the bed.

Ida, Mary, and I rose quietly but held our breath, willing the man not to break out into one of his rampages. His breath came in harsh rasps. We heard him mumbling. I slid a little closer to see if I could hear what he was saying.

“Charlotte, Charlotte. No, no, no. Not you, too. You cannot leave me, too.” He repeated it over and over again, softly. It was heartbreaking to hear, and all of us women were at a loss as to how to comfort him. We were also apprehensive that any move to help him might only lead to an outbreak. Then he began weeping in a whiny, gulping way.

Laura Appleby slid across to catch him just as he began to crumple towards the floor. Mary and Ida pushed a chair under him, and brought forward one for Mrs. Appleby. The guard on the door poked his head in, but she waved him away. Erickson laid his head on her shoulder and wept.

“It’s my fault,” he said. His voice was muffled by her dress. She pushed him away and held him by the shoulders to look at him.

“It’s not, Isaac. It’s not your fault.”

But I wondered if he was trying to confess. Had he lost his temper so badly that, when he saw his daughter come out of the herb shop, he followed her and beat her? Perhaps he had not intended to hurt her the way he had, but that temper of his might have gotten away from him.

“I did,” he murmured, sinking away from her. “I did it. It was my fault. I drove her away. But I was so angry when Katherine left me. I couldn’t bear the pain. How could she leave me?”

“She didn’t leave you, Isaac. You know that. She was taken from you…by disease. It was not her desire to leave you, she had no choice.”

He sobbed into his hands. “I only wanted to keep her.” He looked at the figure in the bed. “I wanted her to stay. I couldn’t lose her like I lost her mother.” His hand reached out and clawed at the blanket at the foot of the bed.

“Of course you did.” Laura put an arm around his shoulder and pulled him to her. “She knew that, really. She knew all your rages were about losing Katherine. She loved Katherine, too, you know. We all did. You weren’t the only one to lose her.”

“I can’t lose Charlotte, too,” he moaned. “I can’t lose her, too.” He sniveled and flinched, as if something had hit a nerve in him. He looked at the lifeless body of his daughter, and then his eye moved to the table. He saw the cup. Suddenly, he stood up and staggered over to the table. He took up the cup, smelled it, looked around. He spotted Mary. Ida moved protectively in front of her. But Dr. Erickson just looked back and forth between the liquid in the cup and Mary. Laura Appleby sighed but she stood still, not making a move towards him. Finally, he spoke in a cracked voice. “Will it help?” he asked. “Will it help her?” He was beseeching Mary.

She took a step forward, gently pushing past Ida. “There is no way to know. It might at least give her some peace, so her body can try to heal. That’s all it can do.” She looked down at the girl on the bed. “There is nothing to do but wait.”

Dr. Erickson stared at her, as if mesmerized, but to my relief there was no outburst from him. Mary and Laura pulled over a chair, close to the head of the bed, and settled him in it. Then Laura found another for herself, which she placed by his side so that she could keep an eye on him. Mary returned to the chair she had occupied in the corner.

I looked at Ida, feeling my racing heart returning to a more normal beat. The man by the bed looked defeated. I no longer feared he would attack Mary and I found it hard to believe he might have attacked his daughter. Laura and Mary seemed to have him well in hand, so Ida and I slipped out the door, into the corridor.

I sat in the waiting room, to think about what I had learned. It seemed unlikely the herbs had poisoned anyone. Except Old Lo. Something had poisoned him. Or had he been ill? And, if someone had attacked Charlotte—but it had nothing to do with the herbs she had gotten for her mother—why had she been attacked? Or did it still have to do with the herbs from the store? And what did all of this have to do with the rumors of an assassination attempt on Viceroy Li? Or did they have nothing to do with it? Could it really be Mary’s unsuccessful romance with Chin that had caused her to be accused of murder? Was it really Mary who was in danger? From whom?

I thought hard about the strange world of Chinatown, hidden among the saloons and brothels of Clark Street, and all that I had seen there—Wong’s Confucian altar, the Moy family dining area and their huge dry goods store, the sinister-looking laboratory where Grubbé experimented with Crookes tubes glowing in the dark, the King Yen Lo restaurant with the strange smells in the air and the mixture of Western and Chinese ornaments hanging from the ceiling. It seemed to me that I had stumbled on a secret place where there may have been smiles on all of the faces, but they covered sinister intentions. Most of the time I had listened to a language I could not interpret, like seeing the world through gauze curtains. Was it even possible to discern the patterns? My mind wheeled with images from the last few days.

In the end, I thought I could discern a pattern. But, if I was right, there was no way to prove it, or at least none I could see. I saw great danger ahead, but was it fair for the whole community to suffer insult for the suspicions I had? It was not a choice I could make alone.

On my way home I needed to keep my promise to Fitz. I would stop at Hull House to convince those fearless reformers to attend the Double Seventh Festival. And I would take my husband and son to the celebration, joining others from the university. I would not be part of the insult to Hip Lung and his community.

But first I had to see Whitbread, to tell him of my suspicions.