He couldn’t get over how green everything was, or the way the endless forest seemed to roll to the horizon in every direction. People must live here, but he couldn’t see any sign of them beyond the occasional distant road or church steeple. How could there be so much empty space in the world? And this was just one small corner of New York State, which was just one small corner of the United States! It was hard to understand why people got so upset about immigrants. It looked to Sacha like you could move all of Italy, Ireland, and Russia put together into the Hudson River valley and no one would even notice the difference.
But of course it wasn’t lack of space that made so many Americans hate immigrants the way they did. And even the beautiful scenery couldn’t keep Sacha from brooding over the dybbuk. What would Inquisitor Wolf do if Sacha told him about it? Would he help? Could he help? Or would the Inquisitors just arrest every Kessler in sight and let a jury of “real” Americans sort the guilty from the innocent?
Lily woke up just as they passed Sing Sing prison and started asking Wolf a bunch of ridiculous questions: Could his Inquisitor’s badge get him in there? (It could.) How many criminals had he personally sent there? (Too many.) And had any of them been put to death in Thomas Edison’s electric chair? (If they had, he wasn’t saying.)
Sacha looked up at the grim gray walls with their jagged crowns of barbed wire and shuddered. If Wolf’s investigation took an unlucky turn, it was all too possible that his grandfather could end up in this awful place. A wave of breathless panic swept over him. His chest felt like it was being squeezed by iron bands. He prayed Wolf wouldn’t look at him.
Luckily Wolf was too busy answering Lily’s endless questions to even notice Sacha. And by the time they passed beyond the prison and chugged into Ossining’s regular commuter station, Sacha had more or less recovered.
The three of them climbed off the train, stretching stiff legs and backs, and set off up the steep hill that rose from the river to the town. From what Sacha could see, Ossining was more like a park than a place for people to live. Spreading trees shaded acre after acre of soft green grass. And the gingerbread-swathed houses dotted here and there upon the greensward looked barely substantial enough to keep the weather out.
The Worley house was as elegant and gracious as any of the other homes on its quiet street — or at least it would have been if the lawn hadn’t been littered with furniture, books, cooking implements, piles of bedding, and pretty much everything else that ought to have been inside the house.
At first Sacha thought the Worleys must have failed to pay their rent and been kicked to the curb by their landlords. He’d certainly seen that happen enough times on Hester Street to know what it looked like. But he couldn’t believe that sort of thing went on in this neighborhood. And even if it had, he would have expected to see the children of the family sitting on top of the piles of furniture to protect them from petty thieves while their parents ran around frantically trying to find a new and cheaper place to rent.
Instead of children, the Worleys’ yard was full of hard-eyed men who were all stalking around inspecting the furniture as if they were trying to decide how much to pay for it. And sure enough, Wolf had no sooner set foot on the front walkway than a sweaty little man with piggy eyes thrust a price sheet into his hands and told him to look sharp because the auction was going to start in eight minutes.
“What auction?” Wolf asked.
“The creditors’ sale!”
“So Mr. Worley has declared bankruptcy?”
“Mr. Worley hasn’t declared anything. He jumped off a bridge last week. It’s his widow who’s bankrupt.”
“And … er … where is she now?”
“Gone to the devil, for all I care!”
“Did she leave a forwarding address?”
“Nope, and I don’t need one either.” The man spat in disgust. “This auction won’t cover all Worley’s standing debts, let alone leave something to send along to the missus.”
“Do you happen to know how we could contact her?”
“No,” the auctioneer said churlishly. “And I don’t have time to find out for you, either.” But then he relented — perhaps because he felt bad, or perhaps because he hoped there might be a reward involved. “You could ask Mrs. Worley’s maid. She’s still hanging around for some reason, though I don’t know who she thinks is ever gonna pay her.”
They found the maid in the kitchen, blowing her nose into a handkerchief that had already seen plenty of use that day. Wolf sat down across the kitchen table from the girl, smiling far more charmingly than Sacha would ever have thought he could. Within moments, he was drinking a cup of tea and patiently listening to Mary Mulvaney’s entire life story (starting in Ballyseede Castle parish, Tralee, County Kerry), followed by Mrs. Worley’s entire life story (starting on Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia), followed by the sad saga of Mr. Worley’s bankruptcy and suicide.
As far as Sacha could make out — the maid kept bursting into tears in the middle of sentences, which made it hard to keep track of things — Mr. and Mrs. Worley had enjoyed a nice normal life right up until two weeks after he filed the patent application for his Soul Catcher. But then a smooth-talking lawyer had shown up in a long black motorcar and paid him an unspeakable amount of money for all the rights to his invention. And from the moment he took the money, he was cursed to misery and misfortune.
Every investment he made crashed as soon as he bought into it. Crops failed. Bridges collapsed. Ships sank. Respectable businesses floundered under the weight of unspeakable scandals. Soon he had lost not only the money from the lawyer but his entire life savings as well.
“It’s them Wall Street Wizards what done him in!” Mary Mulvaney wailed. “It oughtn’t to be legal, what they do! The stock market’s just a cheat and a scandal, and it’ll ruin any honest man who puts his faith in it!”
“So why did Mr. Worley put his faith in it?”
“Because of them! Before they got their claws into him, he was as sensible a man as you could ever ask to work for. Well, except for the inventing. But he only did that in his spare time, and he always provided for his family decentlike. And such a loving husband. In the end, I don’t think he killed hisself over the money at all. I think he just couldn’t live with what he’d done to Ms. Worley.”
“It must have been a terrible shock to her,” Wolf sympathized.
“I can hardly stand to think of it. She’s always been that nice to me. I would’ve given anything I had to help her, but what could I do?”
“Well, I’m sure your being here is a great help to her,” Wolf said kindly.
The girl sighed. “She couldn’t bear to see the auctioneers going through her things, so I stayed behind to close up the house and, and—” Sobs threatened to overcome her again.
“I understand Mrs. Worley isn’t here right now?”
“She left for the city last week.” More sobs. “She wouldn’t let me go with her ’cause she can’t afford to pay me no more, but … but I can’t bear to think of her alone in that awful place!” Mary buried her head in her sodden handkerchief.
Sacha felt a sharp stab of sympathy. It was obvious that she was a nice girl who’d had a hard life, even by Hester Street standards. And it was just as obvious that there had been real affection between her and the Worleys, the kind of attachment that went far beyond doing a job and collecting her wages. They must have been genuinely kind people to have earned such loyalty.
He felt an odd rush of heat that flushed his cheeks and set his heart thumping. It took him a moment to recognize the feeling as anger. He couldn’t imagine why he would be so angry about something that had happened to people he didn’t even know. But he was. And even though it wouldn’t bring back Mrs. Worley’s husband, Sacha suddenly wanted very much to punish the men who had driven him to kill himself.