"Stop it! Both of you. How can you think I-"

"Hush, Mollie. This is a negotiation and I am far more experienced than you in such matters."

"Joshua, I will not-"

"Listen to your aunt, Mollie. Hush." This with a small and surrept.i.tious pat on her bottom.

Eileen pretended not to notice. "Shall we go back to the fire, Mr. Turner? And will you have a touch more brandy?"

Josh and Eileen returned to their seats. Mollie stayed where she was, unsure if she was more astounded by the conversation or that extraordinarily intimate touch.

Josh held out his snifter. Eileen splashed in a generous portion of dark gold brandy. Josh murmured his thanks.

"Now," Eileen said, "you must tell me how you propose to support my niece if this marriage takes place."

"I manage property, Mrs. Brannigan."

"Your own?"

"Much of it, yes, though some belongs to my parents. During the war when prices were depressed my father purchased six lots on Sixty-Third Street between Third and Fourth Avenues. We intend to build on them and sell the houses."

"And do you," Eileen asked, "have Croton water and gas lines as far north as East Sixty-Third Street?"

"We have. The city put them in when they paved the streets and avenues."

"Then given running water and light, housing so far uptown is a possibility. And building it an undertaking that requires clever management," Eileen said. "But who will want to live so far from the town?"

"No one yet," Josh admitted. "Nor on the property my mother purchased in the downturn. It's even further north. Truly in the uncivilized wilds."

"Ah yes, the remarkable Mrs. Devrey Turner," Eileen said.

Mollie had figured out hours ago that Eileen knew all about Josh. She had no doubt that was down to Rosie O'Toole, but it was too late now to fret about that. She took a few steps toward the fire. "Auntie Eileen-"

"Do come and sit down, Mollie. And do please hush."

"Yes, Mollie," Josh said. "Please hush."

He was twinkling at her.

Mollie sat down.

"Where, Mr. Turner, is your very clever mother's property?"

"She owns, Mrs. Brannigan, all the lots from Eighty-Seventh to Ninety-Fifth Street along the east side of Fourth Avenue."

"A shanty town," Eileen said. "Even less likely to appeal to people looking for housing than your father's property in the East Sixties."

"I agree with you," Josh said. "But that will not always be the case."

Eileen nodded. "Possibly so. But for now you are a gentleman bearing the legacy of a very unfortunate wartime injury, who claims to be 'managing' property in a part of town where no respectable person would consider being seen. Please tell me how this equips you to provide a living for my niece."

"My family was extremely kind when I returned from the war, Mrs. Brannigan. Admittedly, calling me manager of their property was more a promise for the future than a source of present income, but my brother's company made me a loan that enabled me to begin acquiring property of my own. Mostly brownstones deserted by the gentry. They are now rooming houses. Like your Miss Hamilton's," with a nod to Mollie. "The rents provide me a decent income. And the loan from Devrey's has been paid back."

"But," Eileen said, "your rooming houses are an a.s.set with little room for expansion. One can charge only so much rent for any room. Even in New York City. What about the future, Mr. Turner?"

"I have plans, Mrs. Brannigan."

"Do tell, Mr. Turner."

"We are running out of housing room on our island. I am going to change that by building flats." He turned to Mollie. "That's why I took you to Eighteenth Street. I wanted to explain-"

"French flats," Eileen said. "That's what you plan to build? On the lots belonging to your mother and father?"

Josh shook his head. "The French flats are like my idea, but they are not my model. Nor is the new place Hunt's building over on Broadway. And while I'm not quite sure exactly where I'm going to build, I expect at least my mother's lots to be many decades away from being suitable for what I have in mind. And it will still be some years before the city catches up to our holdings in the East Sixties. Where, however, is a more easily solved problem than how." He leaned forward and began moving the remains of their supper about the table to ill.u.s.trate his point. "I can pile these plates and cups and saucers on each other easily at first." He made a stack of a cup topped with a dish and then a winegla.s.s, then picked up another dish and held it above the gla.s.s's rim. "But if I try to go too high it will all fall down." He replaced the plate on the table, avoiding any jeopardy to Eileen's crockery.

Mollie was so intrigued by the discussion she forgot the humiliating reason for it: that she was being haggled over like a piece of merchandise at a Macy's sale. (Not, of course, that Macy's permitted haggling, fixed prices having been the engine that fueled the remarkable rise of all the department stores of the Ladies' Mile.) "But," she said, "that's because you chose to put a narrow cup at the base of your stack. If you built it on a dish or a soup bowl, it could go higher."

"In principle, yes. A broader base allows you to build a higher structure. But to achieve such a thing in a building rather than a tower of dishes, you have to keep making the walls thicker. Granite is an improvement on bricks. That's why we can do so much more with newer granite and cast-iron buildings. But a wider and therefore stronger granite base dramatically cuts down on usable s.p.a.ce within the building, particularly on the lower floors which command the highest prices."

"And do you have a solution for this conundrum, Mr. Turner?"

"Not yet," he admitted, "but I'm working on it." Ebenezer Tickle it said on the card Trent Clifford had given him. It was in his breast pocket now. Picking up the card along with his money clip and his keys and his pocket handkerchief had become a regular part of Josh's morning routine. Ebenezer Tickle. At an address on Dey Street downtown. Figure out how to do it and I'll back you. A man who had stood on a riverbank shooting at desperate, unarmed men as if they were clay pigeons. "It's not a simple matter, Mrs. Brannigan. I don't wish to lie to you. Not simple at all. But I intend to solve it."

"Am I correct, Mr. Turner, in thinking that the solution is likely to involve a considerable sum of money?"

"That's part of it, yes."

"My niece," Eileen said, "comes with a hundred-thousand-dollar dowry."

"No! Auntie Eileen, you've gone too far. I won't have it."

"The rate increase," Eileen said, addressing her niece but acting as if she hadn't heard a word of Mollie's protest, "over four years brought it to sixty-something. I'm rounding up."

"Rounding!-you are practically doubling. Auntie Eileen, this is just like the Merkel affair. I told you then, I am not a horse to be bargained for at an auction."

Josh reached for her hand. "I have no idea who Merkel is, but you can't think I believe you to be a horse or anything else to be bargained for. Surely you've known for months I want to marry you. I don't think there's another woman anywhere to whom I could speak with such frankness, let alone one so adorable and-" He broke off, as if remembering that he and Mollie were not alone, and looked at her aunt. "Thank you, Mrs. Brannigan, but I don't require a dowry. Only Mollie's answer." Then, turning to her once more, "Will you marry me, Mollie Brannigan?"

Eileen held up her hand. "Wait a moment before you answer, Mollie. Mr. Turner, that is a very gallant statement, and I can on occasion be as charmed by romance as any woman, but it's not good business to turn down an offer of one hundred thousand dollars. The pair of you will have a desperate time of it in future if you're no more sensible than that. On that evidence I would strongly advise you to refuse, Mollie."

"I didn't say I wouldn't take the money, Mrs. Brannigan." Josh still held Mollie's hand. "Only that I would not accept it as a dowry. Mollie is beyond price, you and I both realize that, and I'm bound to add that however large a sum a hundred thousand sounds, it won't be enough for what I have in mind. It will certainly help, however. And I'd be pleased to know that when the time is right I can count on you investing that sum in my endeavors."

"At a favorable rate of interest, no doubt," Eileen said.

"Very favorable. And perhaps delayed for a period. So let's say an interest-free loan during construction,"-Eileen started to respond, but Josh wasn't finished-"and to remain interest-free for the first three years after completion."

"A loan of a hundred thousand dollars," Eileen said. "Unsecured, no doubt."

Josh nodded.

"And interest-free for a period of years."

"Exactly," Josh said.

Eileen smiled. "Done, Mr. Turner. At least from my perspective."

"Then it's up to Mollie." He had kept hold of her hand. Now at last he turned back to her. "What about it? Will you marry me, sweet Mollie Brannigan?"

So here it was.

After all the years, after she had schooled herself to accept spinsterhood as her fate, a man had appeared who wanted to marry her. And not just any man. Someone who frequently made her laugh, who made her heart beat faster each time she saw him, a man whose touch was making her feel quite warm in ways to which she was entirely unaccustomed. Mollie gathered herself, waited a few seconds, aware of how momentous her next words must be. Then, finally and firmly, said, "Yes, Joshua Turner, I will."

5.

EBENEZER TICKLE WAS a dwarf.

Josh had seen General Tom Thumb in Barnum's museum; barely three feet tall and dressed up like Napoleon, or Cupid, or the commander of a Highland regiment. Unlike Thumb, Tickle was not a miniaturized man as he might be conceived by someone making a drawing. The man facing Josh had an ordinary-size head and torso, with powerful though short arms, a barrel chest, and hams like oaks. It was the shortness of his legs that dictated his height.

The address on Dey Street had turned out to be a small room cut out of a corner of a coal cellar. With the door shut the only light came from an old-fashioned whale-oil lamp that cast flickering shadows on the raw brick walls and the spa.r.s.e furnishings. There was a cot, a small table, and two wooden chairs. Josh sat on one and Tickle on the other-both legs stuck out straight in front of him-smoking a corncob pipe. The pungent smell of his tobacco hung over the place like a pall. "'Bout these flats of yours, Mr. Turner. There's no question what's needed."

"It's a question to me, Mr. Tickle."

"Steel," Tickle said.

Josh brought his eyebrows together over the bridge of his nose. "Steel?"

"Yup." Tickle was tamping more tobacco into his pipe meanwhile. "You want to build a building as goes up a fair number of floors and doesn't have to give up half its s.p.a.ce to b.l.o.o.d.y great stone walls and tree trunk beams, you need steel. Plenty as know that. I ain't telling you anything worth much on the open market."

"Sounds as if you're describing an ancient castle, not a modern building, Mr. Tickle. Not too many tree trunk beams around these days. We use cast iron."

"Ain't safe above seven, maybe eight floors," Tickle said. "Leastways, not safe enough. Not unless you put a b.l.o.o.d.y great iron pillar every ten or so feet. Sometimes not even then."

"True," Josh said. There had been half a dozen bridge collapses over the last quarter century. And any number of building cave-ins. A few years back someone got the idea of building an elevated railway along Greenwich Street. Take the Babel of traffic up over everyone's heads. Except on the first attempt the iron framework hadn't proved strong enough for the task and they had to build it a second time. "I take it steel is stronger than cast iron."

Tickle had just taken a long pull on his pipe and his snort made smoke pour out of his nose and mouth. "Ten times as strong. Maybe twenty." He reached over and opened the drawer of the table and produced a piece of metal. It was gunmetal gray in color, some six inches long and four inches wide and an inch thick. "Steel," Tickle said. "Strongest building material in the world. And the thinnest. Make yourself a framework of that, clothe it up with brick or granite outside and plaster in. You can pile on as many stories as suits your fancy. Steel framing it's called. Everyone's known about it for maybe two hundred years."

"Then why," Josh asked, "has it not been done?"

This time Tickle took a few moments before he answered, using the pause to sc.r.a.pe the embers out of the bowl of his pipe and begin the process of refilling it with fresh tobacco. "You a scientific sort of man, Mr. Turner?" he asked finally.

"Not really, no."

"Well then, I'll try to tell it simple. Iron for casting, pig iron, it's got more 'n two percent carbon mixed in. Steel's got less. You make steel by taking most of the carbon out of iron. Find a way to do it without taking all the time and trouble it used to took, you got yourself something special."

"Am I to a.s.sume, Mr. Tickle, that you're a man who knows his way around the foundry floor?"

Tickle nodded. "Foreman over at Novelty," he said. "They say the little people got a calling for the foundry trade. You probably heard that."

Josh allowed as he had, and that he knew of Novelty Iron Works.

"Besides me, nine of my kind works there. Mind you, that's ten out of two thousand, and I'm the only one as is a foreman. I can't say for sure it's a calling, Mr. Turner, but I can tell you working iron's as hard a job as a man can do, whatever his height." Tickle clamped his pipe in his teeth and drew back the shirt sleeve of first one arm then the other. Both were knotted with muscles and crisscrossed with the reddened welts of burn scars. "Thing I do know, it's a ways better than being a dressed-up doll in Barnum's freak show."

Josh didn't comment on that. "I seem to remember," he said instead, "that Novelty was the last of the ironworks to be unionized."

"That's so. Happened a few years back during the war. Before my time that was, but the North needed iron if they was going to win. Foundry workers had some cards to play and they played 'em."

"And you, Mr. Tickle, are you a member of the Iron and Metal Workers League?"

"I am. Proud of it as well."

"Yet you're not with your brothers today," Josh said. "It's my understanding they're marching down Broadway as we speak. Demanding an eight-hour workday. Do you not believe in their cause?"

"I do, Mr. Turner. But they can march to h.e.l.l and back and it won't make a difference. They're not going to get the same day's pay for two hours' less work. Not if every laboring man in the city joins together to demand it. The bosses say the eight-hour-day's Communism, say it'll put an end to any kind of economic progress here in America. Mayor's in thick with the bosses. Says he's never going to let no eight-hour-day Communism come over here. His Honor's going to send in the police with their clubs. A man like me, I don't figure to do very well in that sort of thing."

Josh could not argue with that truth and he did not try. "We were discussing steel, Mr. Tickle."

"So we were, Mr. Turner. It's stronger, thinner, a h.e.l.l's sight easier to work with. Nothing new in that, like I said. Thing is, it's never been easy to make steel. Open hearth mostly, though I heard tell of other ways over in Europe. Way we do it here, furnace needs to be a hundred tons at least. Furnace that size eats fuel faster 'n a dog eats his dinner. Takes a huge amount of charcoal. You'd have to cut down every tree between here and China to get as much as you'd need to make any sizeable amount of steel that way. Course," c.o.c.king his oversize head and examining his visitor, "there's some easier methods nowadays."

"And what methods are those, Mr. Tickle?"

"Depends who you ask. The way it's mostly told, man named Bessemer over in England invented a process to force out the carbon with a blast of air. You still has to melt the iron and that takes a fair bit of fuel, but you can use coal you dig out of the ground. Don't need charcoal made from wood. And air's free, Mr. Turner. Means the whole thing becomes a sight more practical than it was before."

Limited land here in New York, but unlimited air. That's what he'd told Trent Clifford. "Then I don't see the problem, Mr. Tickle."

"Like I said, Bessemer holds the patent. Won't say how his process is done unless you put your hand in your pocket and pay him for a license. Ain't too many else as knows how to do it apart from him. A few, but not too many."

Josh's eyes were starting to tear in the smoky atmosphere, but he didn't wipe them. Narrowed them instead. And sat back and considered Ebenezer Tickle with great attention. "I think you're going to tell me you know how Bessemer's process works. Am I correct, Mr. Tickle?"

"You are, Mr. Turner." Tickle jumped off his chair and headed for the door in the back wall. He walked with the waddling stride common to men made as he was, but he got where he was going soon enough. The rear door opened on a trash-strewn square of s.p.a.ce hardly big enough to turn around in, but it admitted a wave of relatively fresh, warm June air, and that helped some with the tobacco fumes.

The dwarf returned to his visitor and hoisted himself back into the chair beside the table. The maneuver was performed too quickly for Josh to see exactly how it was done. He's learned ways to cope with his situation, Josh thought. As have I.

"Better?" Tickle asked, gesturing toward the open door. And when Josh nodded, "I was talking about Mr. Bessemer over in England and his patent . . . Weren't his idea to start out with."

"It was yours? Is that what you're saying?"

"Nope." Tickle shook his head. "Never said that. Never would. Man named William Kelly. Came from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but did his steelmaking in Eddyville, Kentucky. West part, right where I was born. Kelly's the one thought up using air to blow the carbon out of iron and figured how to do it. Got himself a patent and everything."

"Let me guess. You worked for Kelly when he was in Kentucky."

"Him and his brother," Tickle said. "Right from the first day."