Death in the Age of Steam (4 page)

While the kettle was heating, he chewed a day-old crust of bread and looked out one of the front windows. Below, at the intersection of Wellington and Bay Streets, the dust lay still and dry. It had not rained, a blessing if Theresa had no shelter. If what Crane said were true, and unless she had been found since they spoke, she had now been away from home three nights. The barking of a watchdog in the yard of the piano manufactory next door reminded Harris of a rumour that a rabid fox was at large in the Humber Valley. What if Theresa . . .?

Stop, he told himself. He was speculating to no purpose.

As soon as the water was steaming, he shaved and—though it was still early—began to dress for work. He had a branch to run with obligations to a staff of four, to thirty-six major borrowers, each of whom he knew personally, to 297 depositors most of whom he could at least recognize, to unnumbered purchasers of
specie and bills of exchange, and through head office to thirteen directors and upwards of thirteen hundred shareholders. He could not in conscience give every waking thought to Theresa. There would have to be a balance.

With barber's scissors he trimmed his side whiskers to just below his ear lobes. Beards and moustaches were becoming fashionable since the war, but not for bank cashiers. Harris's work clothes, mostly black, differed little from what he had worn to the funeral—a morning coat replacing the full-skirted frock coat. And for the office he usually put on a coloured waistcoat, a dark blue watered silk this morning. He tied a matching cravat in a loose bow around the high collar of his white shirt.

What shade, he wondered, was that riding habit she had worn? A muted, vegetable-based green or one of the vivid new chemical dyes?

His toilet made, he carried his coffee down the elliptically spiralling staircase and managed to answer the most pressing of yesterday's correspondence before his staff, all but Septimus Murdock, arrived at eight thirty. The accountant had been instructed to go straight to the docks to meet a shipment of money from head office.

Arrangements had been negotiated with Kingston in ciphered telegrams. Security from theft and punctuality of delivery were Harris's two overlapping concerns. He wanted the notes, coins and bullion in the vault well before the branch opened its doors to the public at ten. As the steamer chosen had been due this morning at seven, this requirement should have posed no problem.

And yet the two-horse, iron-plated van didn't pull up in front of the bank until ten past nine. The police constable engaged as a guard had been late, a winded Septimus Murdock explained as he lowered himself cautiously from his seat between the driver and his boy.

“But where
is
the constable?” asked Harris.

The burly accountant's chin quivered, as did the timid imperial that adorned it. Harris waited for him to speak.

“Isaac, he insisted on being locked inside with what he called the
loot
.”

Sure enough, when the padlock was removed from the heavy rear doors, a sharp-featured young man leaped out, pointing his single-shot Enfield carbine in all directions. Handled this way, the short rifle was a sufficient threat to the life of any individual bystander. For the purpose of fending off a raid, however, Harris would have preferred to see a double-barrelled shotgun. While the president of the Provincial Bank liked to repeat that there had never been a daytime bank robbery in North America, Harris knew it was just a matter of time. In tandem with Toronto's prosperity, its crime rate was on the rise.

Constable Devlin, whose school had been the city's docks and alleys, understood the situation perfectly. As a public servant, however, he was not at liberty to say what his understanding of the situation was. It was no part of his job to spread panic. Reaching inside his unbuttoned blue tunic to scratch his chest hair, he did explain—in a tone both knowing and aggrieved—that a shotgun was too heavy to carry about in this heat. Harris smelled no fresh whisky on the constable's breath and noted that at least one of his boots had been recently polished. This was by no means the dregs of the force.

Under Devlin's sporadically watchful eye, it took over an hour to get the money unloaded, counted, recounted and signed for. The bars of precious metal were few and quickly weighed, but the gold coins were the usual jumble of French five-francs, British sovereigns and American eagles, plus the new Canadian pounds and twenty-five-shilling pieces. The silver coins were even worse.

The bulk of the shipment consisted of new banknotes of all denominations. When van and constable had left, Septimus Murdock gave sixteen-year-old bank messenger Dick Ogilvie one of the crisp, clean bills to hold.

“Ever have as much as fifty dollars in your hands, Dicko?” he asked.

Ogilvie admitted this was the first time, but swore it would not be the last. One of the tellers laughed.

“But if this is fifty dollars,” said the boy, puzzlement clouding his freckled face, “why does it say, ‘The Provincial Bank of Canada, Kingston, promise to pay to bearer on demand twelve pounds, ten shillings currency at their office in Toronto'?”

Murdock snatched back the banknote. “Because, my young friend,” he scolded, “that's what fifty dollars is worth—as anyone working in a bank ought to know by now.”

Harris pointed out that they were already half an hour late in opening and that it was high time to get some of the new notes into circulation.

Later in the morning, he glanced out his office window and noticed Dick Ogilvie sweeping the back stoop while waiting for other commissions. Harris pulled up the sash and beckoned him over.

“Don't let people make you feel ashamed for asking questions,” said the cashier. “I ask a lot myself.”

The boy's curly brown hair would have looked very well if he had not tried to plaster it flat with water. “May I ask another then, sir?” he said.

He wanted to know why the bank could not let him keep the fifty-dollar note. It would cost them so little in ink and paper to print a replacement. Harris told him that the gentlemen who owned the bank were putting half a million pounds into it and that the government allowed them to print paper to a face value of no more than three times that amount.

Ogilvie's lips moved soundlessly as he did the arithmetic. “So once they've printed their six million dollars, they can't print any more?”

Harris nodded. “By the time you are cashier, the preponderance of north-south trade under the Reciprocity Treaty will have made pounds and shillings obsolete. We're just fortunate that the States uses yards and feet instead of metres or we should have two systems of linear measurement as well.”

“I should like to be cashier.” Ogilvie straightened his broadening shoulders inside his short black jacket. “Only when I'm older, I'm supposed to go into business with my dad.”

“What business is that, Dick?” Harris was surprised to find he did not know.

“Undertaking—he's quite prominent. He arranged the funeral you attended yesterday, sir. It's just that I can't see myself taking orders for caskets day in day out.”

“I suppose that's what your father was doing Sunday afternoon.” Harris recollected that
funeral arrangements
had been Crane's excuse for not riding with Theresa.

Again the boy looked puzzled. “Oh no, sir.”

Although Murdock had come into the office to announce a visitor, Harris was suddenly unwilling to let Ogilvie go.

“Did Mr. Crane not call on Sunday?” he asked.

“That was Saturday night.”

“You saw him then?” Harris was sure Crane had said Sunday. It was too soon to have forgotten.

“Not only that, Mr. Harris. He would not have been received on Sunday. My dad's very strict about the Sabbath.”

“To be sure.” Harris pulled the window down to within three inches of the sill and took, without really seeing it, the letter of introduction Murdock handed him.

The sight of the president's signature at the bottom of the page brought Harris back to the business at hand. The letter asked him to extend every courtesy to Mr. Joshua Newbiggins, whom he invited in without further delay.

The cashier's office was well-appointed for courteous reception. Oil copies of notable European paintings hung about in gilt frames. Two deeply upholstered armchairs and a matching ottoman faced the cashier's desk, beside which a cabinet held a bottle of vintage port and a box of tea.

Newbiggins drank neither, appearing to derive his principal stimulus from his own conversation. He was short, round, flashily dressed and talkative. He talked about the desirability of new industries now that Toronto was becoming a rail hub. At present an importer of Pennsylvania coal, he proposed setting up an iron works, for which he had already acquired a property on Front Street. Demolished the Georgian villa that had occupied it too.

Harris received his loan application and promised it the promptest possible consideration.

“I believe the president's letter mentioned that I am a substantial shareholder in this bank,” said Newbiggins, making no move to leave.

“Yes, indeed.”

“You realize, Mr. Harris, Kingston has become a backwater. Routing the Grand Trunk railroad three miles back of the port just nailed the lid on the coffin.”

“A hard blow to be sure,” said Harris, unable to see where this was leading.

Newbiggins sat back in his armchair and laced his ring-laden fingers over his stomach. “It can't be long before head office moves to Toronto,” he said. “You could be head cashier.”

Harris owned real estate himself, a few residential properties acquired before the current boom. Their value had already doubled and bid fair to do so again, while their sites better suited any sort of commercial venture than the site Newbiggins had picked out for himself. Harris had, in short, prospects beyond the bank. Meanwhile, he considered himself as well housed and as honourably employed as any man his age in the city. He smiled politely.

“In point of fact,” Newbiggins confided, “I plan to discuss the whole question with the officers of the bank in the next few days. It would be a great help to me if you could have your accountant show me the records of your recent loans.”

“You had best discuss that with the president, sir. He's kept fully informed.”

“My eye might pick up some significant details that his would miss. I know it's somewhat irregular, Mr. Harris, but I should be working very much in your interest.”

The spacious office felt suffocatingly close. Through the barely opened window slid smells of dust and horse manure. Up and down Bay Street, carters on their way to and from the docks called to their weary teams.

“Let me be candid,” said Harris. His situation was unpleasant,
but not difficult. “To be appointed to my present position, I had to post a bond. I have the strongest possible interest in transactions that are regular.”

Happily Newbiggins did not persist. His patent leather boots squeaked cheerily as he got up and adjusted his boldly checked jacket.

In the course of the leave-taking, it occurred to Harris that the little man had said
railroad
instead of
railway
. “How do you find life in Canada, Mr. Newbiggins?” he asked affably.

“Very much to my taste. People here aren't as tall as in New York, but they have almost as much culture. Why, the very first week I was in the country, I was able to hear Miss Jenny Lind sing down at the St. Lawrence Hall. What drama she put into Bellini's
Sonnambula!
Were you there?”

Harris nodded. He had been there with Theresa—four years ago, perhaps five, or even six. Time with her had been taken so much for granted. Somehow he assumed Theresa would wait for his elevation to cashier, assumed he had asked her to. He never actually had.

Miss Lind's singing should have swept him into a declaration. If only he had let it! He recalled the soprano's heart-piercing sweetness rather than, like Newbiggins, individual selections. The only detail of the evening to come back to him was that of Theresa at his side—eyes closed, lips parted as she soared with the Swedish nightingale—holding her bracelet of silver medallions to keep it from rattling.

Harris remained anchored to his desk through the noon hour, interrupting work only for a taste of cold pigeon pie and a glance at the day's papers. In addition to Sheridan's funeral, the disappearance of his daughter was at last being reported. Police were said to be investigating. Harris thought he would stop by the chief's office after four to see what headway was being made.

When Harris and Murdock deposited the ledgers in the vault at closing time, the cashier asked his accountant to be particularly on guard in future against any attempt at unauthorized inspection of them.

Earlier in the afternoon, as every Wednesday afternoon, those of the bank's directors resident in Toronto had met to decide who might borrow from the branch. Harris's duty was simply to present the applications. The Toronto directors murmured approval of Newbiggins's guarantors and granted him his loan—despite doubts as to whether, during its term, construction of Conquest Iron Works could even begin. On his way downtown after work, Harris walked past the Front Street site. As he had suspected, it lay between a church and the villa of an influential alderman. A more promising source of dandelions than of stoves and rails!

East of Yonge Street, Harris approached the busiest part of the Esplanade. There the principal docks and markets clustered, not to mention the principal beggars and eccentrics. At the entrance to the new south St. Lawrence Market, which to spare the public purse was also made to serve as City Hall, sat a vacant-eyed individual with a placard reading, “Veteran of
Waterloo.” Harris bent over and placed a sixpence in the hat by his side. The man
might
have lost his legs forty-two years ago to a French cannon ball, or more recently in a Toronto construction accident. The exposed pink stumps were real enough.