Fever Season (21 page)
David climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. His heart was pounding when he got to the top. It was more from excitement than from exercise. What if Benton Embree was his Uncle Danny? David knew that wasn't likely, but maybe the man would at least be able to tell him something.
He found the door to number 417 and went inside. A woman was working at a typewriter in the small front room. There was a door to a larger office behind her desk.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
David's throat was suddenly dry. He didn't want to sound like a shy little boy when he spoke, so he swallowed hard first. “I'd like to speak to Mr. Embree.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Uh, no.”
“I'm Mr. Embree's secretary, and I'm afraid he's very busy right now. But perhaps he'll have some time to see you this afternoon ⦠if you'll tell me what this is regarding.”
David had had a lot of time on the train to think about what he was going to say if he got to Seattle. He swallowed hard again and then started to explain. “My name's David Saifert, and I'm trying to find someone here in Seattle. A man named Embury ⦠or maybe Embree. I don't really know, but he's my uncle and I need to find him. I've come all the way from Montreal ⦔
He told her about the war and the Spanish Flu and how they had made him an orphan. He explained about his mother and her brother and showed the woman the photograph.
When he was done, the woman got up and opened the door to the larger office. As she went in, David heard her say, “Mr. Embree, there's a boy out here I think you should see,” before she closed the door behind her. A few minutes later she came out again and told David he could go in.
Benton Embree was a pleasant-looking man. To David he seemed old. He was probably in his mid-fifties, but his balding head made him look even older. Like so many wealthy men, he was a little chunky but not really fat.
“Hello, David,” Mr. Embree said, holding out his hand for David to shake. He then motioned toward the chair in front of his desk and David sat down. Mr. Embree took his seat behind the desk. “Miss Carter, my secretary, told me your story. It's quite remarkable that you've managed to get yourself all the way out here. Do you wish to hire me to help find your uncle? That's not really what I do.”
“No, sir. I only thought that maybe you'd know something about him or his family. That maybe you're related to them.”
“Tell me again why you think he's in Seattle?”
David explained about Danny's family moving west and then coming to Seattle when his father got sick.
Mr. Embree shook his head. “My wife and I moved to Seattle in 1898. Our son, Harold, was born the next year. We don't have any other family here, and I've never known anyone named Daniel Embree. I'm sorry.”
David nodded slowly.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“I don't think so.”
“What will you do now?”
“Well, sir, I have a list of eight families. I'm going to try to talk to them all. Maybe someone will know something.”
Mr. Embree stood. “May I see your list?”
David handed it to him.
“Some of these are a long way from here. How are you planning to get to them all?”
“On the streetcar.”
Mr. Embree sat down again and thought for a moment. “Hmm.” Then he smiled. “If you can be back here tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, I'll arrange for a driver to take you around to the rest of the addresses on your list. I'll also have Miss Carter type up a letter for each one of these families. If no one's at home, you can leave a letter for them. It will instruct them to contact this office if they have any information about your uncle.”
“Howdy, stranger,” Joe said to David when he saw him at the hotel on Saturday. “How's it been going the past couple of days?”
David told Joe about Mr. Embree. Of course, he'd been able to go back to the man's office on Friday morning, and with the car he was able to visit all seven addresses in just a few hours. There was no one home at three of his stops, so he left them the letters that Miss Carter had typed. He spoke to someone at each of the other four houses, but no one knew anything about his uncle.
“Mr. Embree said he'll telephone the hotel if anyone has any information. If something happens after we've left, he'll send a telegram to Mrs. Freedman at the Home.”
“Sounds like a nice man,” Joe said.
“Yeah.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
David shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. Just wait and see ⦠and help out more with the team.”
He had never really had a plan beyond talking to the families on the list. David had always figured one of them would know something about his Uncle Danny. Maybe one of them would somehow be him, only with a different first name for some reason. But Joe still felt it was much more likely that if David's uncle had a different name it would be a different last name.
“Go get that picture of your uncle and come with me,” Joe said. “I've got an idea.”
“What kind of idea?”
“You'll see.”
“Where are we going?”
“To talk with Royal Brougham.”
The office of the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
newspaper was across the street from the Georgian Hotel. Royal Brougham was at his desk on the third floor, typing up his preview story about game two.
“Hey, Joe, how are ya? I was just over at the hotel talking to Kennedy. He's counting on you guys to bounce back strong tonight. Can you do it?”
“Well, we're sure gonna try.”
“Come on,” the reporter teased. “Give me something more colourful than that! How are you boys really feeling? The Mets put quite a beating on you. What's the inside scoop?”
“Actually, I was hoping you might be able to do something for me.”
“Whatcha got in mind?”
“This boy,” Joe said, tilting his head in David's direction, “has a story you might be interested in.” He gave Royal a quick rundown of David's story.
“That's quite a tale,” the reporter said, “but I'm not really the one to tell it. You're in luck, though. We got a girl downstairs name of Madge Bailey. She's in on Saturdays to write the fine arts column for the Sunday edition. You know, what shows are opening at the galleries and what the local artists are up to. That kind of stuff. She's always looking for something a little meatier to write about. Bet she'd love to get her teeth into this.”
“Thanks, Royal. I owe you one.”
“And don't think I won't be coming to collect it!”
David followed Joe down to the second floor to look for Madge Bailey. There weren't very many women in the newsroom, so it wasn't hard to find her. As Royal had suspected, she was very interested in David's story.
“The flu epidemic was awful here, too,” Mrs. Bailey told them. “Just awful! It hit us much later than it did in the east, so we thought we knew what to do. Schools, churches, theatres ⦠they were all shut down. Everyone had to wear masks. But then the war ended and the flu seemed to stop back east. Not here, though. It just got worse and worse. November and December were the most terrible months of all. Schools didn't reopen until January, but things didn't really get back to normal until February. By then more than a thousand people had died, but finally now in March, thank goodness, there hasn't been a single death reported from influenza.”
Like everywhere else, people in Seattle didn't want to hear about the Spanish Flu now that it seemed to be gone for good, but Mrs. Bailey felt sure David's story would tug at her readers' hearts. She just needed to make sure she had some of the key details straight. “The man you're looking for is your mother's brother, correct?”
David nodded. “Yes, ma'am.”
“And when do you think he came to Seattle?”
This took them a little while to work out. David remembered his mother telling him she had met his father at their rooming house in the spring of 1901. If Danny's family had first moved west around the time his mother started working at the rooming house, that would have been about two years before, so they probably came to Seattle around 1901, as well.
“And your mother's name was â¦?”
“Maude.”
“And your uncle was Danny. What was their surname?”
David wasn't sure he understood.
“Well, your surname is Saifert, but your mother wasn't Maude Saifert when she was a girl, just like your uncle wasn't Danny Embury until he got adopted. Do you know what their family name was?”
David wasn't sure he'd ever heard his mother mention what her name had been before she got married. But then he remembered the stack of letters from his mother's dresser. They'd been addressed to her from before she got married. What had they said on them?
Maude Wilson, he suddenly remembered. “Their family name was Wilson.”
Mrs. Bailey smiled. “That's good. That will be an important detail.” Then she asked David even more questions about his mother and her brother when they were young. He wasn't able to give her all the answers, but he told her everything he could recall.
“Well, that should be everything I need. With any luck you'll see the story in tomorrow's paper.”
And indeed it was there in the Sunday edition:
ORPHANED BOY IN CANADIENS
CAMP NEEDS THE HELP OF
P-I
READERS
by MADGE BAILEY
As fans of sport in our city know, the Montreal Canadiens are here to battle our beloved Mets for the Stanley Cup. The Canadiens, famed wherever hockey is played as the Flying Frenchmen, are a battle-scarred team of veterans.
Yet in their camp they have with them a brave young boy only 14 years old. In those 14 years he has faced harder hits than any delivered in a hockey arena.
David Saifert lost his father in the Great War, one of many thousands of soldiers from our neighbors to the north who gave their lives in battle. His mother and sister lost their lives to the dreaded Spanish Flu.
David is in Seattle now searching for the only family he has left. An uncle he has never known. The brother of his mother, Maude, an orphan himself, who came to our city with his adoptive parents nearly 20 years ago. David carries a torn photo of his uncle taken when he was just a boy.
Born Danny Wilson, he became Danny Embury, or Embree, or perhaps some other spelling. He may well go by another name now. If you have any information about this man, please contact the
Post-Intelligencer
office.
“She did a nice job,” Joe said when he read it. “I think you've done all you can do now.”
It was time to concentrate on hockey.
Sunday's paper also carried the news of Saturday's second game in the Stanley Cup series. It wasn't just with the sports news. It appeared right on the front page:
LES CANADIENS TAKE SECOND
OF HOCKEY SERIES
Montreal Players Treat Fans to
Sensational Exhibition
by ROYAL BROUGHAM
Grande triomphe pour Les Canadiens!
Vive Montreal! The Flying Frenchmen administered a 4â2 spanking to the Seattle hockey team last night and evened up the race for the championship of the world.
Treating the packed Seattle Arena to a sensational exhibition of individual hockey, Newsy Lalonde of the visiting team scored all four of the Montreal goals himself. The eastern champions showed an entire reversal of form over their initial appearance by outskating and outchecking the Mets at every stage of the contest.
From the opening whistle the French team took the jump and the Seattle men could not fathom the stone-wall defense of their opponents. Quick to take advantage of an opening, Montreal was going at a whirlwind clip, while the home crew showed little of their dash from game one.
Les Canadiens played rough hockey last night. They got away with a lot of stuff, and the fans booed the visitors loud and often. Lalonde and his teammates hit hard and used their bodies to stop the rush of the Seattle forwards.
