All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred twenty-two)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

(part two hundred twenty-two)

The tour began with a refreshing paddle along forested shores. Passengers bound for Muskegon could treat the Chief as a ferry and ride without berths. Passengers boarding at Muskegon could get a cheap fare across the lake to Milwaukee. Mansion-gazing the draw in both cities, shopping and restaurants, as time allowed; then from Milwaukee making south. They were meant to pass Chicago by night.

“And what does that look like?” Élucide asked.

“The mouth of Hades, perhaps. It’s the factory furnaces, sparking and weltering, if I want the word. There is no appreciating them by day. And at an ordinary freight pier she was docked for some time, to answer Mr. Gremot.” Monaghan bent over Phelan’s strew of papers. “Insert here, now, that matter of ice.”

The captain had been saddled with the tasks of a manager, more in the way of a hotelier, as no one of rank was otherwise present…to mollify a disembarking passenger, or see to the stocking of a larder. He, a Mr. Webster, had telegraphed at Milwaukee, for the Seven Stars Line’s approval, and they had telegraphed back permission to have the ice merchants bill them.

Earnest money, as the icemen had not heard of the Seven Stars, from the captain’s pocket, and when the ship had got herself reversed from the Milwaukee pier and was well out on the lake, came word from the kitchen that the ice was used up, and was it out of the question there could be more? Hadn’t Mr. Webster been about arranging it?

He had; he was in a fury, but it was no use. The Chief slowed her pace and was able to drop a launch. The launch was too small to carry the load of ice, but was taken aboard a more modest excursion boat, privately owned, the Indian Falls.

All this the reason the Chief reached Chicago at so late an hour. “And here we have midnight, or some thirty minutes after, and the discovering of Mrs. Demrose.”

“Did,” asked Élucide’s father, “a passenger disembark at Milwaukee?”

“Ah, sir. A Doctor Krans, his wife, and their daughter. And of the crew, two gone missing. Thought failing to rejoin due to inebriation.”

Toms, the ship’s doctor, had no unusually suspicious mind. His use of the apparatus, his camera and light, was for slips and falls being a calling to some—and if he had not furnished a sling, or wrapped a head in bandages, he wanted proof from the outset.

But the ointment had come to bother him; when able to leave the body under watch of an officer, he had gone back.

“This corridor, gangway, what have you, between the cabins, is carpeted, sir. Now, Phelan. You may hand me Demrose.”

What had been the last meeting between yourself and your wife?

It would have been the luncheon. Noon. Not the very dot, but midday fairly sharp was generally the time.

That is, the daily habit.

234

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred twenty-three)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)