Beyond All Dreams (20 page)

The floor of the House was crowded, but rather than return to his normal seat, the sergeant at arms directed Luke to a seat in the front of the room. Walking across the blue-and-gold carpet, Luke met the eyes of twelve of his compatriots who had already been rounded up to sit before the Speaker's rostrum like truant children, their expressions a blend of resignation and annoyance. The raked semicircle of chairs behind him was almost full, packed with men whispering and muttering behind their hands. No doubt by now the tale of what was happening had swept through the chamber with the speed of light.

“What can we expect?” Luke asked the nearest of his allies. “A tar and feathering?”

“Jones doesn't have a quorum yet,” the congressman said. “We can still hope he won't be able to find enough of us.”

Luke glared up at the rostrum, raised on three tiers to the Speaker of the House at the top. Behind Speaker Jones, a huge American flag hung on the wall, loaning the Speaker an aura of distinction. Cornelius Jones looked as thin and desiccated as a praying mantis as he scanned the crowd assembled before him, not even bothering to conceal his gloating.

Three more arrested congressmen were escorted into the chambers. Luke swung around to scrutinize the hundreds of people in the chairs behind him, mentally tallying the numbers. There still weren't enough members present for a quorum. Unless the Capitol police succeeded in producing four more of the wayward congressmen, the Speaker couldn't proceed to a vote on the new tariff. He glanced at the clock. Ten more minutes until the House would be called to order. There was still a slim chance the Speaker couldn't round up enough of them to hold the vote. There was talk of someday outlawing this clever technique for a minority of congressmen to scuttle a bill they disliked, but for now it was still legal, and Luke's only hope for delaying the tariff.

The door to the chamber opened again. Luke held his breath. Two members of the Capitol police stepped inside, followed by the slow, lopsided gait of Caesar Trammel. A murmur of disapproval rippled through the House. No one wanted to see the old warrior humiliated like this. Caesar kept his head high as he joined the others in the pit of the House floor.

“What do our numbers look like?” Caesar asked. He took the empty seat beside Luke.

Then four more arrested congressmen filed into the chambers. They were sunk.

“Jones has his numbers,” Luke said in a grim voice.

The sergeant at arms moved to the floor of the House, carrying the ceremonial mace, a stylized ebony staff topped by a silver eagle. He proceeded to bang the staff on the floor, calling the House to order.

It took some time to settle the crowd, but Speaker Jones relished the moment as he surveyed the hundreds of men seated in a semicircle around the rostrum.

“Now then,” the Speaker began, “the first order of business is to ascertain why our honorable colleagues failed to appear at the appointed hour. Wasn't the time publicized in all the appropriate places?”

General stamping of feet and voices of approval rose from the assembled crowd. It seemed the majority of the House was ready to enjoy the ritualized humiliation.

“Representative Simmons,” said the Speaker, “please inform the House why you failed to appear at the designated time.” It appeared that each man who dared to defy the Speaker was going to be singled out for a personal reprimand.

A few seats down from Luke, a congressman stood, his face flushed and his voice weak. “I overslept,” he said.

“Overslept?” The Speaker shook his head. “At two o'clock in the afternoon?”

“Yes, sir. I overslept.”

The next three men questioned by the Speaker also claimed to have overslept. Luke shifted in his chair. A little creativity wouldn't be amiss at this point—anything to draw attention away from the overwhelming disgrace that was about to pour down on them all.

Caesar Trammel seemed to understand. When the Speaker demanded Caesar account for his actions, the old man rose on his single leg, making sure to wobble in a commendable imitation of frailty.

“I was consulting with my physician,” he answered. “War wounds.”

“And you could not schedule this urgent appointment with your physician at a more appropriate time?” Speaker Jones pressed.

“Not if I wanted to get it in before the tariff is put in place,” Caesar said. “I'll be too poor to pay the doctor's bill if this vote is passed.”

The comment was greeted by a roar of laughter, and Caesar took his seat. There was simply nothing left to add. Speaker Jones banged his gavel.

The Speaker then turned to Luke. “And what accounts for your lack of punctuality this afternoon, Mr. Callahan? Did you oversleep as well?”

Caesar had done admirable work in pricking a hole in the Speaker's balloon, and Luke intended to do the same. He stood and said, “I was at the library.”

“The library?” Speaker Jones said incredulously.

“Yes. The gold-plated, grossly overdecorated palace you voted for time and again. It turns out there's a very fetching librarian on the third floor.” Hoots of laughter filled the room. This was exactly what was needed to ruin the Speaker's triumph. “I found myself enthralled and incapable of paying attention to mundane issue like votes for the destruction of the American economy. My apologies.”

Speaker Jones smiled tightly. “Indeed. And does this enthralling librarian have a name?”

Luke froze. Silence descended on the chambers, broken only by the stenographer who tapped out a transcript of every word spoken. The stenographer looked up at Luke, waiting.

Soon everyone was looking at him. His mouth went dry. Anna was really going to hate him for this.

“Miss Anna O'Brien,” someone from the back row hollered. “She was at the Fisheries meeting last month.”

Speaker Jones appeared satisfied. “Well, now that you've torn yourself free of the enthralling clutches of Miss O'Brien, I look forward to your participation in the coming vote. Mr. Higgins, please explain your absence this afternoon.”

The inquisition dragged on, and Luke knew all hope of defeating the tariff had been lost. Jones had his quorum, the vote would proceed, and the tariff would pass. Luke's reputation and the industries of Maine had just taken another hit.

After Luke's arrest, Anna sat dumbfounded at her desk, feeling useless and afraid. Her heart had been pounding like a freight train ever since he'd been marched out of the map room. She wasn't built for this kind of stress. That was why she'd become a librarian, so she could live a quiet life surrounded by books and maps and not worry about political enemies coming out of the woodwork to arrest you or demote you or turn you into a national laughingstock.

Rather than let her anxiety fester, she found a law dictionary and tried to piece together what kind of mischief Luke had gotten himself into.

“Miss O'Brien?” Standing in the doorway was a bald man with the widest mustache she'd ever seen. He held a camera before him.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if I could get a photograph. No, no . . . you needn't get up. You looked very becoming poring over that book. This will only take a moment.”

She supposed it would be all right. Photographers had been swarming all over the new library yesterday as they moved in,
but they hadn't photographed the map room yet. She glanced around. Most of the books had been put away, though the map tubes were still in a messy heap along the back wall.

“I'll just stash these tubes out of sight, shall I?”

“No need,” the man said. He had been fastening his camera to a tripod, but stopped to gesture her back to the center table. “Quickly now. Just a simple photograph of you next to that open book. Standing would be better. Just place your hand on the edge . . . yes, perfect.”

He went back to adjusting the camera, looking down through the viewfinder. “Hold still, and . . . perfect! Exactly what I needed. Thank you, Miss O'Brien.”

Before he could leave, another man pushed into the room, this one holding a notebook. “Are you Anna O'Brien? The map librarian?”

“Yes, can I help you?” It was rare to have such urgent needs for cartographic assistance, but more men followed.

“Would you like to comment on Representative Callahan's arrest? Were you here to witness the event?”

“Are you a reporter?” she asked. Good heavens, there seemed to be so many of them . . . four, plus the photographer. All these strangers crowding into the room set her teeth on edge. A wiry man with bushy red hair stepped farther into the room.

“Mr. Callahan had very flattering things to say about you, miss. He said he'd been too entranced to leave your side—”

“No,
enthralled
was the word he used,” another reporter chimed in.

“Enthralled! Even better.” The redheaded man scribbled in his notebook while others began filling the room. One of them stood over her desk, lifting her blotter and examining her belongings.

“Those are my things,” she sputtered. “My personal things . . .”

She wanted to drag the man back from her desk, but she was distracted by another photographer, who was pushing a century-old globe aside in order to set up a tripod in the corner.

“Quit touching that globe! It has hand-painted panels imported from London—”

“Tell us, have you known Mr. Callahan long?” one of the men asked. “He seemed quite taken with you and was unstinting in his admiration.”

The man plundering her desk looked up, awaiting her answer. All the others had their pencils at the ready. Her throat closed up, and she didn't even know if she could breathe. What on earth had Luke done?

“How about it, ma'am?” one called out. “How does a humble librarian bring a congressman to his knees?”

Her panic began to dissolve, replaced by anger as she replied between clenched teeth, “Apparently, all it takes is finding a little data on the mollusk harvest and he goes all aquiver.”

“A spirited girl! How refreshing. And how did you first come into contact with Representative Callahan?”

This was a disaster. Mr. Spofford was the only person authorized to speak to reporters, so she needed to be careful. She skirted around the table, moving quickly so that the other photographer couldn't get a picture of her.

“What's all this about?” a surly voice cut through the din of the reporters clustered in the map room. Never had Anna been so grateful to see a security guard in her life. She sagged against the cool plaster wall in relief. The guard hustled the men out of the room, and then Anna closed the door behind them, still not sure exactly what Luke had done.

But she knew it wasn't good.

Anna was horrified to find reporters loitering on the stoop of O'Grady's Boardinghouse when she returned at the end of the day. They had to be reporters. Who else traveled with photographers and carried little notepads?

She pivoted and slinked away in the opposite direction. The circulation war between the Pulitzer and Hearst newspapers had taken journalism straight into the gutter, always on the hunt for shamed women, torrid love affairs, or grisly murders. She could only pray they wouldn't pounce on the little seed of Luke's infatuation and blow it up into an all-consuming love affair.

She could lose her job over this. She'd worked so hard to get here, and what library would hire a woman whose name had been smeared in the newspapers? It wouldn't matter what was true, only what those awful men wrote about her. She'd even posed for a photograph!

Neville would help her. He had a clear head at times like these, and surely he'd protect her. A blister rubbed on the side of her heel, worsening with each step until it was screaming for relief by the time she mounted the short flight of stairs leading up to Neville's boardinghouse. She knocked and braced herself to face the most ill-tempered landlady in the city.

“Oh, it's you,” Mrs. Norquist said after she yanked the door open. The landlady was a strong-jawed woman who reminded Anna of the Statue of Liberty, only with a hostile stare. She might be an attractive woman if she could ever summon a smile instead of a scowl.