The Transcontinental Balloon Company. Then he had regarded that faded sign with wry amusement. Now it beckoned to him with all the comfort and assurance of a smile on the face of an old friend.
Likely Rory wouldn’t even be there, but with luck he might manage to cross the street unseen, find a way inside the warehouse, seek shelter within its shadowy depths.
And the way his arm burned and his head reeled, luck was about all he had left.
At the area back of the warehouse, Rory watched the Seamus being prepared for the demonstration as soon as the man from the government arrived. It was the first time the pale blue balloon had ever been inflated, and the gas bag hissed, suspended a few feet above the rough dock boards, like a piece of the sky held captive, pulling against the rope’s hemp cords.
Tony and Pete rushed about attaching the gondola, slinging the sandbags over the basket’s side. Rory knew she ought to be helping, but lethargy seemed to have overtaken her, borne of the shock she had received earlier that morning.
She still clutched the edition of the New York World in her hands. On the El, she had read the article about Zeke over and over again until she could nearly recite the lurid details by heart. Stanley Addison had been knifed to death in a brothel, Zeke Morrison seen fleeing the scene.
It was all a nightmare, some hideous mistake. It had to be.
While Pete began hooking sacks of ballast onto the balloon, Tony stepped back, wiping the perspiration from his brow.
“Glad you didn’t strain yourself helping out, Rory,” he grumbled.
Rory shot him a look of reproach. “How do you expect me to calmly go about my business after seeing this?” She shook the paper under his nose.
Tony batted it aside. “There’s nothing much else you can do. You got any idea where Morrison is?”
“No.”
“Then how you gonna help him? We been over and over this, Rory, and I’m tired of talking about it.”
They had been having the same useless argument ever since leaving Grand Street. There was no way to make Tony understand. She just felt so blasted helpless and scared. God help her, she had never felt so scared for anyone in her life as she now was for Zeke.
“You gotta be sensible, Rory,” Tony chided. “You just have to forget about Morrison. Did you ever stop to think he might be guilty?”
“Of course not!” Her reply waxed a shade too vehement, perhaps because there had been one awful moment when she had wondered. She couldn’t help recalling Zeke’s angry phone conversation with Stanley Addison. Zeke did have quite a temper. In the heat of his rage, she could picture him slugging someone perhaps a little too hard, but never could she envision him sticking a knife between someone’s ribs.
Rory fingered the paper, the page creased and worn with her handling. “You just won’t listen to me, Tony. There’s something wrong about this whole thing. For instance, the World says the fight took place last night. How could it have? I am sure Zeke was at my flat at least until eleven o’clock.”
“There’s plenty of night left after eleven, Rory.”
“You’re asking me to believe Zeke got beat up by two street thugs, had that awful reunion with his sister, then sneaked out of my flat, looked up his friend Addison, took the man to a brothel and killed him?”
“So Morrison has a lot of stamina. Look, Rory, I don’t know what happened. All I know is what it says there in the paper.”
“Since when did you start believing everything you read, Bertelli?”
Tony swore, flinging his hands wide in a gesture of frustration. “I told you, Rory. I’m done arguing. I gotta go help Pete. Someone needs to worry about the fate of this company since you don’t seem to care anymore.”
He strode away, with Rory glaring after him. His remark stung, all the more so because he was right. Not when he said that she didn’t care— that wasn’t true. But for the first time in her life something took precedence over her balloons.
Ever since she had met Zeke, the man was never far from her mind, especially not now when he was in such terrible trouble. She wondered if she would ever see him again.
That last thought was so daunting, she thrust it away. Tony barked an order for her to fetch some more iron filings for the hydrogen generator, and she started to do so when she heard a footfall on the concrete floor of the warehouse.
Tony’s younger brother emerged through the double doors, slipping out onto the dock with a sheepish expression on his face. Angelo clearly expected a rebuke from Rory for being late and looked agreeably surprised when none was forthcoming. “Morning, Rory,” he said, glancing toward Pete and Tony and the balloon looming overhead. “Geez, looks like all of you have been busy.”
He stripped off his jacket. His dark eyes so like Tony’s gleamed with excitement. “Say, Rory, what’s all that hubbub out on the street? Coppers are prowling everywhere. I never saw O’Connell so stirred up since the time that street kid tossed a firecracker under his horse.”
“I don’t know what it’s about,” Rory said. She tensed with apprehension at the mention of O’Connell’s name. She wasbeing absurd. Simply because Zeke was a wanted man, she needn’t suppose every activity of the police was now connected with him.
Yet she couldn’t shake off the same vague fears that had troubled her last night. It still struck her as odd that O’Connell had identified Zeke so readily. Perhaps she ought to take a casual stroll on the street, just to see what was going on.
While Angelo rolled up his sleeves and prepared to help with the generator, Rory moved toward the warehouse.
