Off to Chicago

Francis Smalling, Smalling Apple Farm, Sangamon County, Illinois

May 10^th 1866

 

“I’ll be back for harvest. I promise.” I said more resolutely than I knew for certain. Johnny Reb had already struck twice during harvest time, and I fully understood the inherent deceit in my statement. Hank and the men had been given small pay rises, and I knew they could take care of any manual work on the farm. We’d raised the two laborers to $15 per week, and foreman David Grantham to $25. I felt certain that we now paid over the average and that would keep the men happy. David had worked for us since before father left for the war, he had proved more than dependable. He was almost family.

Mamma gave me a hug, although there seemed little life in it, she hadn’t even argued against my decision. The hardest one to convince had been Margaret. I had to give her instruction in the use of her new Smith and Wesson. I had acquired it second hand from Matheson’s, and although the finish was already worn, it proved just as accurate as my own.

We took a day and went through the finances of the business. I took Margaret into town, and although she smiled outwardly at the people who greeted us, her pale demeanor told me of her inner turmoil. I introduced her to the bank manager, the blacksmith, and bought more ammunition at the general store.

On the morning of my departure, Margaret made me swear with my hand on the bible, a devout promise to write once a week. The letter would contain all pertinent facts about my life, my education, my adventures, and of course, details of our sister’s case.

Considering the amount of equipment I wanted to take with me, I packed relatively light. To my two saddlebags, which contained just two changes of clothes, I’d added a waterproof cape which I tied as a bedroll behind my saddle. Behind the bedroll sat a wooden box, tied to saddle and under horse. Inside the box, I had fashioned a selection of tools which I thought I’d need; my best microscope, and a few knives and tweezers for dissecting and slicing. All packed tightly in rubber, all waterproof, all insanely valuable to me.

At the door, as the sun rose, I embraced my sister once more, her grip tighter than any time before, her lips close to my ear, her breath panting in waves into my heart.

“Now you come back to me, Francis Edward Smalling.” She said softly. “And you write, just like you promised. Or I swear, I’ll come and hunt you down myself.”

She relaxed her embrace slowly and let me go. “I will, Margaret, on all counts.”

I gave her my best smile, and as I could feel tears begin to collect behind my eyelids, I turned smartly and walked to the end of the garden, clipping the white gate closed after me.

I mounted, and settled myself in the saddle before I looked up again. Mamma had joined sister at the doorway, and although she didn’t raise her waving hand like Margaret, I knew that she mouthed ‘goodbye son’.

I rode down the avenue to the main road with such a fear of never coming back, I almost turned the horse round. Almost.

The road to Chicago seemed a million miles from my sheltered life in Sangamon County.

I set off on the north road, making for Bloomington, Pontiac, then Joliet, all stops suggested by Chapman.

Three days of riding took me further from my home than I’d ever been before, but it also brought home the new level of danger I’d thrown myself into. At the Pontiac stables, my box was stolen; my instruments gone, but most important of all, my microscope. The one valuable item I’d decided to bring with me, the one instrument I’d intended to use to bring a new kind of detective work to Paul Chapman.

As I rode north, I decided I’d work from a different direction, and thought of a series of lenses that would fall from a slot in my hat, ending directly over my right eye. A larger lens, in the shape of a magnifying glass, would be held by hand, giving me both the same magnification of my original microscope, and the flexibility of use; no more large boxes inviting the attention of thieving hands on the road.

I’d look a bit silly with the lenses on my hat, but, then, I didn’t care that much; I already used the band of my hat to carry my pocket watch.

By the time I reached the outskirts of Chicago, the knot in my gut had increased considerably. I recalled the address; ‘Just off the corner of Wells and Evergreen’. The surrounding area became more and more urbanized as I rode. Country gave way to settlement, then settlement to industrialization.

As I neared the correct area of Chicago, I crossed the railroad lines for the first time. I looked along the double tracks to either side of me, and marveled at the wavy straight lines of track. I had indeed moved away from the country. Once clear of the tracks I looked back from a distance as to not spook the horse, and deliberately stayed put to watch a train go by. That shrieking smoking dragon brought such emotion to me, I swear I cried. The Iron Horse was the embodiment of science, brought to the public forum ready for economic use. I felt privileged to have witnessed it.

I made my way steadily north until I reached the signed area of Chicago called the North East Side.

The Pinkerton building looked imposing enough; three stories of brownstone building with a small nondescript sign; Pinkerton National Detective Agency. A single eye stared out from the sign, with the motto; We Never Sleep.

“Stone,” I said out loud as I approached, comparing it to the buildings in Springfield which were all constructed of wood, then rode round to the back, where I had been told the stables were situated.

Once I had dismounted, a genial man called Jennings led me upstairs to the main building. “Mister Chapman?” he called into a huge office. There must have been thirty desks, all placed in orderly rows, some sat singly, some pushed together in pairs. Only two were occupied, both men looking up in our direction at the sound of Jennings’ voice.

“Here!” Paul Chapman stood quickly with a loud scrape of chair legs on wooden floor, and crossed to us, weaving his hips past desk corners. “How did your trip go?” He asked as he shook my hand.

“Fine,” I answered easily. “The hotels were just as you’d described them.”

Chapman dismissed Jennings. “This is the new guy!” he announced as he walked. “Francis Smalling, my new partner.”

The man raised his hand in salute, and I did likewise.

The title of partner gave me cause to think, Paul and I were in a partnership against the infamous ‘Johnny Reb’.

“This is where you work, Francis.” Paul indicated I sit down at the desk facing his. “Mister Pinkerton will see us shortly, and you’ll address him as Mister Pinkerton, until he allows you to do otherwise.”

“Got it,” I nodded.

“And despite being over here for over twenty years, his Scottish accent’s still a bit strong, so listen carefully to begin with. You’ll soon get used to it.”

I tried to calm my nerves, looking round the large office, but to be honest it proved difficult. The other man in the room was engrossed in his own case, and it felt difficult to believe that I actually sat in Chicago, in the Pinkerton building. From outside, through the open windows, considering the quiet of the farm, the noise was off-putting. All this, and less than a month had passed since my sister’s murder.

“I’ll introduce you to the bank along the road,” Chapman broke into my musings, and I nodded. “Get you set up with an account. You’ll need somewhere to put your wages.” Everything that happened to me seemed to remind me of the sudden change in my life. “I rent a room in an apartment just ten minutes’ walk from here, and there are always vacancies. Not that I’m there a lot, it’s just a place to base myself from.”

I looked at the maps and papers on Chapman’s desk, spilling over the divide onto mine. “It’s all a bit hard to take in.”

He gave me such a knowing look, I couldn’t fail to see the flash of memories in his eyes. I gave him a few moments to collect his thoughts.

“I was a sergeant in the 15^th Infantry, out of Ohio, when I first met Allan Pinkerton; Shiloh, 1862. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and told me to report to Major Haldane in the rear echelon.” He looked at a point above my head as he spoke. “I’ll never know why he chose me, and he’s never said. I went from frontline jockey to spy and spy-runner in the blink of an eye. I reckon although we came through many scrapes, Pinkerton’s training kept me alive.”

I could hear his love and devotion to his boss etched in his words. I only could hope for such dedication. “When do we go to Harvard?” I asked. I yearned to see the laboratories and the library.

“Soon enough,” He replied. “We have a few months for such things before we head to Wisconsin for the harvest time.”

I nodded, deep in my guilt at my lie my family. It made sense that we should be in the area when Johnny Reb struck again, in our reasoning we never doubted that he wouldn’t. He had begun a pattern, which we assumed would only be broken when finally caught.

A door to one side opened and I looked up at the intrusion. A middle-aged woman dressed in black moved quietly towards us.

“Mister Pinkerton will see you now.” Although she spoke softly, her words were clipped and sharp.

“Missus Bainbridge,” Chapman began, “this is Francis Smalling.”

I stood, but she made no move to shake my hand. She bowed her head slightly. “Mister Smalling.”

I nodded. “Pleased to meet you,” I watched her move away, almost as if she floated on air below her dark skirts.

Following Chapman we walked to Pinkerton’s office.

I expected taller, something out of a James Fenimore Cooper novel, but Pinkerton was much less distinctive than I’d envisaged him. Balding, it seemed as if every hair on his face had fallen, taken refuge under his chin, and fastened itself there in a thick triangular beard.

“Come in laddie,” He rose to meet us. “Come in.” Even those few words were laced with a thick Scottish brogue.

His handshake felt rough, yet very firm, and I smiled as much as I could against his penetrating stare, feeling rather nervous.

But the rough exterior hid a sharp wit and agile mind. We spoke of the Johnny Reb case, of Harvard, and of his aspirations of his detective agency. Then he surprised me by a glimpse into his inner musings; he was actually a visionary, fully seeing a personal telegraph in each house one day, one managed by the user to deliver personal messages. He talked of a national database for all criminal activity in the country; one searchable by any detective, in any location. In a short meeting, Allan Pinkerton had proved both farsighted and innovative, and that surprised me; I had expected the ordinary, and had been pleasantly shocked.

The next few days were spent in mundane tasks, crucial to my continued service, yet they frustrated me; the bank account, the money in my pocket, familiarizing myself with the internal workings of the office, Missus Bainbridge’s duties.

The most surprising moment actually surprised me; the closing of my room door at my digs, leaving me alone inside. My whirlwind week had taken me from my family home to my own room, and it held a certain coldness to it. As I stood in the small apartment, the walls seemed to close in on me.

I shook my head and got busy. When I’d unpacked the few novels and journals I’d brought to read, it did make it more personal, my refuge from the outside world. I determined to buy some maps or scientific drawings to fix to the bare walls to bring some energy to the drab paintwork.

Then, just as I’d come to terms with my new home, Chapman announced that we were to travel to Cambridge. To Harvard.

That proved to be the beginning of another adventure. Accustomed to traveling by horse, I felt a little like a fish out of water, my small suitcase in hand. Standing on the platform of the hectic Chicago station, hundreds of people moved around me, I thought my head would burst. Ticket inspectors, emotional goodbyes, and waiting passengers filled the platform, and boys running messages scurried between them.

I walked along the platform to the engine, and stood and marveled. The smell of the burning wood from the furnaces of the trains filled the air. I could almost feel the steam pressure of the boilers, and the strain on the rivets and welds that held them together.

Everything we did seemed new to me; even the simplest things, getting on the train, getting our seats, sitting in a cabin of total strangers so close you should have been friends.

I know that I should have engaged Chapman in more conversation on that trip, but I had to constantly excuse myself, just to look out the window in wonder. As we sped across the country, we passed stations by the dozen, each one different in some way, each busy with loading and unloading. I marveled at the organization required to keep the whole ensemble moving so smoothly.

But the best part was between stations. When the engine built up a speed so breakneck, I wondered if we should lift off the rails and simply fly to Cambridge, Boston and Harvard.

I wondered how I would write this to Margaret, then realized with a huge pang of guilt that a week had already passed, and I had not put pen to paper.

At the next large station, where we were scheduled to stop for an hour, I found a stationer nearby and once I had re-boarded the train, I began my first letter.

 

 

Paul Chapman, Chicago Railroad, Chicago, Illinois

June 5^th 1866

 

It was like looking at a wild deer, his eyes were sometimes as a child’s, full of wonder, flitting like a butterfly past items of instant interest. In the station in Chicago he seemed to take him every detail his gaze lingering on the most unusual aspects, I could see him cataloguing each case study for future use.

Francis Smalling, brought up on a farm in Illinois, had been released from the wild and he seemed determined to utilize every sense available to him.

Whilst everyone else busied themselves with farewells and boarding the train, Francis walked to its front and gazed for ages at the locomotive. I could see him talk to the driver, and could imagine the questions that Francis fired at him, boiler capacity and pressure, maximum and normal speeds, what kind of wood burnt best.

When he eventually boarded the train and took his seat beside me, he seemed eager to get the journey started. When the train gave its initial lurch, I swear he gasped. Having made such a journey several times before, I tried to recall my first wonder, but fell short, my memory stymied. In many ways I envied Francis his childish innocence.

We travelled slowly south out of Chicago and within an hour we had crossed the border into Indiana. We would remain on this train until Homewood Pennsylvania, the Eastern limit of the Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad. From there we would travel with the Pennsylvania Railroad all the way to New York. Almost four whole days of travel, speeding across country, would reduce our journey by almost 2 weeks. After that, a short train ride through New York state, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, would see us in Harvard by the first days of June.

At Plymouth Indiana the timetable stated we had to stop for an hour, and I saw Francis almost squirm on his seat. “What’s wrong?” I asked, giving him a nudge.

He looked at me with a worried look on his face. “Do you think I’ll have time to get some writing paper?”

I frowned slightly. “You could take some from my notebook.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s for writing to sister Margaret. I want something a bit fancier than that.”

I looked around. “Well, we’re here for an hour, there’s people out on the platform stretching their legs. Why not take a quick look around, but make sure you’re back in time. I don’t know when the next train is.”

He gave me a thankful grin, and quickly left the carriage.

I could tell that even at this early stage, Francis Smalling would prove an interesting case study from me. At times he had the confidence that only youth can provide, at others, like getting off the train in a strange station, he almost looked like a frightened rabbit. I watched for his return, but I needn’t have bothered. To his credit he was back in the carriage within 35 minutes, with plenty of time to spare. He even brought sandwiches with him.

“I couldn’t resist,” He announced with a smile.

After we’d resumed our journey he spent the next two hours alternating between looking out the window and writing slowly on his new stationery set. He seemed to choose his words painstakingly carefully and often stared out of the window his eyes unfocused, the softly chewed end of the pencil in his mouth, until he found the perfect word, then his head would return to his writing.

As the train stopped at stations, peddlers would climb aboard offering sandwiches and bottled drinks and by the time the sun began to set behind us, we were on the Indiana border with over two hundred miles behind us.

“So how fast does she go then, Francis?” I asked, knowing that he would have the answer.

He looked back into the carriage, “The engineer said that it could go up to around 80 miles per hour, but unless they were making up time for the timetable the fastest speed we would achieve would be fifty.”

I decided to test him further. “So what would the average speed be?”

“How long is the journey?”

“About 1000 miles,” I answered.

“And we’ll cover the full distance in how long according to the timetable?”

“Give or take four days.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “8.3 repeating, eight and a third miles per hour.” He replied deliberately.

“It just shows you how the figure comes down when you take in all the stops.” I said, settling myself back in my seat to try to sleep. I tilted my hat down over my eyes, and let Francis look at the darkening scenery.

With mountains and plains behind us, we soon passed slowly into New York. Even from a distance, the downtown part of the city rose in front of us.

With myself showing the way, I quickly led Francis past the lines of beggars at the station arch, and off down the street to my usual hotel. With some luck, two rooms were vacant, and I planned a lavish celebration.

“Tonight we dine on the very best restaurant New York has to offer.” I said as we met in the foyer after taking our bags to our rooms.

“I’m kinda tired,” Francis said, stretching as if to convey the concept to me.

But I shook my head, “I know what you’re going through, Francis. Believe me, I know the way to fix it.”

He gave a shrug, and followed me to Monsieur Francois, an establishment well known to me.

Holding my hand up against possible objections, I ordered German beer, and stuffed mushrooms. “I don’t care if you don’t drink, Francis, you’re drinking tonight, you’ll thank me.”

To my surprise he smiled at me. “I do make apple cider, you know.”

“I don’t get the connection.”

He looked quickly at the tables on either side, then leant closer. “I’m a bit of a dabbler in science; I’ve made alcohol before.”

Then it dawned; although he had the face of an innocent, in some ways Francis Smalling was as much of an ‘old hand’ as some adults I knew.

The beers arrived at our table, the thick tumblers glistening with condensation. “German beer,” I said across the table. “It’s good stuff, and strong too.”

I watched him taste, pronounce it good, and we began to drink. Within a few beers, the weariness of the train journey had passed into history.

The long and the short of it? We both slept until noon had passed us by, and awoke much refreshed from our first bed in four days.

I knew the train journey to Harvard lay ahead, but made no effort to catch the earliest train.

It allowed Francis to send his first letter home, costing him a dollar at the Wells Fargo office near our hotel.

After a day’s rest, we continued on to Cambridge, dropped our bags at the hotel nearest the campus, and practically had to drag Francis into the University library. He’d gone back to startled kid again, and his feet dragged as he walked the University grounds.

He insisted on being shown the laboratories first, and on immediate entry, I got challenged as to my identity by a man who seemed to be one of the professors.

“I am Paul Chapman of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.” I said “I have credentials that allow me access to any art of the University.”

“I am Professor James Wattles,” the man began, but had no time to complete his introduction.

“Professor of science,” Francis took over. “He shook his hand, and introduced himself. Instantly he was all ‘bell jar’ this and ‘coil’ that. Their conversation made little sense to me, so I found a seat, and watched their interaction. Quickly gone was the challenge of the professor; he looked so animated now that I swear he’d fallen head over heels in love.

Francis had certainly won him over in seconds, and they started walking from one area to the next, their arms gesticulating wildly, their conversation both hurried and animated.

I swear they talked each other’s ears off for an hour before Francis approached me. “Where’s the library? I have to check something.”

As I turned to leave, I could tell by his waving that the professor wanted to see me, so I just gave Francis directions and watched him quickly disappear.

“Who is that young man?” The professor asked, a far different man from the one who had challenged my authority more than an hour previously.

“He is the newest detective on the payroll of Pinkertons.” I said with growing pride.

“Oh, my. He’s wasting his time.” The man looked quite flustered. “His knowledge is quite astounding, I swear he’s actually far more than the science dabbler he professes to be.”

“Oh yes?”

“We spoke quite exhaustively on various subjects, and his knowledge and scientific acumen are probably above mine, and I don’t say that often.”

“But you suspect him of being more than a dabbler?” I pushed.

“Oh goodness, yes,” The professor quickly countered. “I’d say in some of the subjects he’s actually a pioneer.”

“A what?” I asked, looking at the doorway Francis had just exited.

“Oh he’s quite the forerunner in both electricity and magnetism. If he’s telling the truth about his ‘experiments’ in his own laboratory, then he’s at the cutting edge of the science; I mean not everyone writes directly to Maxwell.”

I stood quite impressed. “So you’d have no problem with him studying here?”

“In Harvard?”

“Yes, our investigations are of a seasonal basis, and I expect he’ll be free for most of the winter.”

The man clapped his hands together. “Oh, we’d be delighted to have him here. He may even be persuaded to give a lecture or two.”

I had to give my head a shake at that point; Professor Wattles had indicated that Francis Smalling, at seventeen, was an equal of a professor at Harvard.