“An idle machine makes no money,” the foreman said, following their gaze. “We hire children small so they can squeeze in and out while the machine keeps producing.”
“And if those children don’t get out of the machinery’s way in time?” Arkwright asked.
“See one or two accidents an’ the others’ll move quicker, won’t they? I can tell you think me hard, but better they do an honest day’s work than run the streets.” He shrugged. “Sure, some few might get caught in the gears, but they could just as easily get run over by a beer wagon or snatched up by some thieving Jenny to pick pockets or house break. Wind up at the end of a noose or deported t’ a penal colony. What else they going to do if not work here?”
“Perhaps,” Arkwright suggested, “if they could learn to read and figure sums they might better their lot?”
His friend’s simple comment made Lucien see Grace’s work with the school in a whole new light.
The comment clearly went over Crimmins’s head. “Then who would work the machines? These folk are like the horses that pull the plow. It’s what God made ’em for.”
Had there been a time Lucien had accepted that was so? The thought turned his stomach now. No doubt, his father had certainly believed it, never more so than when he’d ordered Simon to level the village of Everdene so the view from the Harcourt manor house would be ‘a pleasing prospect.’
He turned his attention back to the foreman. “How long have you worked here, Mr. Crimmins?”
“Six years, I’m proud to say. Foreman for three.”
“I have an interest in a man who was once employed here. Darragh Nolan. I believe he was fired from his position two years ago. Do you remember him?”
The foreman’s brow furrowed. “Aye. Fired him myself a’ Lord Pinchbeck’s order. Got into fisticuffs with one of our strappers. We’ve no tolerance for troublemakers. Have to make them an example to the rest, like Lord Pinchbeck an’ Mr. Freyne say.”
“Have you heard any news of him since?”
“Don’t know where he went. Only know that he did.”
Lucien drew a coin from his waistcoat pocket and turned it over between his long fingers, the silver winking in the candlelight. “You’re certain?”
The foreman swallowed as if his throat had gone dry, his eyes fixed on the coin. “Someone did claim to see him sometime last spring.”
“Give me names.”
“Don’t have ’em. Just somethin’ I heard in passin’. Didn’t believe it. Boatloads of Irish pouring in causin’ trouble. Who can tell one from the other?”
“I will pay handsomely for information that leads me to Darragh Nolan.” Lucien handed the man the coin, then one of his cards.
“His wife and son work here. I could?—”
“I’ve already questioned them, so no need for you to.”
The man canted his head, shrewd eyes narrowing. “What’s a man like ye want with Nolan, yer lordship?”
“That is for me to know. But understand this, I do not suffer fools. Deceive me and you will learn why people fear the Harcourts.”
The man swallowed hard, his gaze darting away. Lucien and Arkwright strode toward the door of the building, workers staring as they passed.
Lucien never expectedto find himself rapping at the door of Mrs. Watson’s Boarding House for Men, but here he was, ready to beg a favor of a man who hated him. He pictured Tom O’Malley’s face in the rushlight of the Nolan tenement, his eyes grim as the pistol he’d carried.
Steeling himself for a rocky reception, Lucien waited until the establishment’s proprietress opened the door. Stout and stringently clean she had the look of a formidable mother, the kind that could keep a dozen sons sitting on a church pew without fidgeting at all.
Lucien could hear a voice from the other room, someone reading aloud perhaps? As Mrs. Watson paused before what looked to be a modest parlor, he glimpsed men of various ageslounging on worn settees, sitting backwards on spindly chairs or stretched out on the floor before the fire. Every eye was fixed on Tom O’Malley, an open book in his hands as he brought characters’ voices to life. It was a tone Lucien recognized well from his time in parliament—compelling, hard to resist, one that could raise spirits or dash them, spur men into action. Mrs. Watson clapped and the reading stopped abruptly, heads swiveling toward the open door.
“Got a visitor for Mr. O’Malley,” the proprietress said. “That Lord Everdene wots in the dailies.” Everyone in the room craned their necks to stare, and Lucien felt a chill at what he saw on their faces.
The glare O’Malley shot past Mrs. Watson to where Lucien stood could have burned a hole in solid steel. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“I need to speak with you on a matter of importance. Alone.”
The other men’s gaze shifted to O’Malley, darkening with suspicion. Even Mrs. Watson regarded him as if he might carry some contagion.
