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“Thank you. Oh, thank you,” Mabel cried.
Hope. Persuasion. Appealing to the good. It had worked in this moment. She hoped the policeman’s faith was not misplaced. She had to stop Arthur from making a terrible mistake.
Quickly, Mabel slipped down the stairs. As she came around the corner, she stopped short at the sight of four Pinkerton agents huddled together, smoking. One of them was Brown Hat, the man who’d been following them the past several weeks. Mabel hid in the shadows beneath the stairs and waited.
“You think he’s on the level?” one of the Pinkertons asked.
Brown Hat hooked his thumbs underneath his jacket lapels. “That gutter rat? I wouldn’t trust Arthur Brown farther than I could spit.”
“He’s been your informant for a while, though. If not for him, we wouldn’t’ve been able to catch those anarchists downtown. We arrested that bookstore owner, Jenkins, today.”
Arthur?
Arthur was a stool pigeon?
Mabel’s knees buckled, and she grabbed hold of the stair railing for support.
Brown Hat tossed his cigarette to the ground and wiggled it dead with the toe of his shoe. “And then he blew up Marlowe’s mine. That wasn’t part of the plan. He was supposed to deliver the Secret Six to us, but he didn’t show up for our meeting last night. Once a traitor, always a traitor. I’m betting he’s here somewhere. We’re gonna turn this place out looking for him.”
Mabel pressed herself against the wall as the agents’ feet thundered past her head and up the staircase. It was all lies. She’d loved him. She’d thought…
Bile scratched up her throat, and she gagged against its hot truth. She didn’t know whether to run back to the others and tell them they were walking into a trap or chase after the man in the brown hat and demand to know everything. If she did, he’d arrest her on the spot.
No. There was only one person who had the answers she needed.
Mabel made her way to the basement. Her tears had dried. Her earlier panic had become an icy numbness thick in her chest. She found the small room directly under the stage and quietly let herself inside. Arthur had his back to her. He was crouched over the bomb at his feet.
“Arthur,” she said coldly.
He leaped up, eyes wide. “Mabel! What are you doing here?”
“I know all about it. About you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know that you’re a double agent working with the Pinkertons. You’re a spy for them. All this time, you’ve been lying to us. To me.” Mabel’s voice broke on the word. The tears were coming. She sniffed them back. “You didn’t want to help workers. You wanted to bring down the movement.”
Arthur’s expression went slack for a moment, but he didn’t deny it. Mabel had half been waiting for him to tell her how wrong she was, but she could see now that she was right, and she both hated and respected Arthur for not lying to her just now.
“They were going to execute my brother. They let me out of jail and told me they’d commute his sentence if I worked for them. But that was before what happened at the mine. Those children burned to death in their tents. Women shot by machine guns. It was before I fell in love with you. You changed me, Mabel. I had been half-dead, but you made me believe in the cause again. You made me want to be a good man.”
A bitter “ha” escaped from deep in Mabel’s throat. “I’m supposed to believe that?”
“You don’t have to, but it’s the truth, Mabel, I swear.”
“Your word doesn’t mean anything,” Mabel shot back. “I suppose indicting the Roses’ daughter as a member of the Secret Six was supposed to be the feather in your cap.”
“They were going to use you to blackmail your parents into cooperating. But I told them you were innocent!”
Tears blurred Mabel’s vision. “Gloria’s right—I’m such a fool.”
“Mabel, I promise you, I love you. I want to marry you.”
Arthur moved toward Mabel. She pushed him away hard even as she wanted to hold him. “Don’t.”
“How can I prove I love you?”
“If you truly love me, you’ll destroy that bomb.”
