The Illusion of Murder (39 page)

I bang myself on the forehead. “They set me up. The whole bunch of them. I
should
be shot for my stupidity.”

“Don’t say that too loud, darling. The captain might hear.”

PART VII

Day 68

E
AST ON AN
I
RON
H
ORSE

NELLIE ARRIVING IN SAN FRANCISCO

59

I arrive at the gateway to San Francisco Bay on January 21, 1890. A gray morning with wet chill air and choppy seas adds to a sense of gloom and doom that grips me as I stand on the deck of the tugboat and look back at the
Oceanic
as it slowly fades into a dark shadow in a bank of fog.

Frederick, Sarah, and Von Reich are among the passengers lining the deck to see me off or there just to get a look at the first sight of land in nearly five thousand miles. I’m sure the Wartons and the Aussie widow and assistant are on the crowded deck, too, if for no other reason than to make sure I have left.

Getting off the ship and onto the tug leaves me breathless with anxiety and anticipation and now that the umbilical cord has been cut, I feel a bit disconcerted, a sense of unease and I know the cause: unfinished business.

So many unanswered questions are still on the ship. Sarah and Frederick—two people I am fond of, yet unable to fully trust because I know they harbor secrets. I feel a warmth toward Frederick that surpasses friendship despite the lies and charades we both practice, though I am not fool enough to believe that he would ever trade the green jungles of Africa for the hard concrete ones of New York.

Now as the little tug is taking me away from the people I have gone more than halfway around the world with, people who might have the answers to my question, I cannot help but feel loss and despair.

Worse than my feeling of loss, is my feeling of inadequacy. I failed to expose an injustice. I never learned why Mr. Cleveland died in an Egyptian marketplace. He secreted to me a scarab with a key inside as he whispered a name—Amelia. Who is she? His lover?
Who?
Certainly she was not that actress in Hong Kong.

My sense of confidence has been trampled because a man dies in my arms and passes to me the hidden reason for his death, and I have been unable to unravel it.

“Nellie, stop this!” I tell the ocean air. Sulking and moping won’t heal the wound and definitely won’t make me feel any better.

I wave good-bye one more time to the
Oceanic
, Frederick, Sarah, and all the rest, even though I know they won’t see my gesture. I have to accept the fact that I am forever separated from the mystery and must move on.

Now I have only one thing to do: finish the race in first place.

It’s no exaggeration of my feelings when I say I would rather die than suffer the humiliation of defeat at the hands of the woman from
Cosmopolitan
magazine, who shows she is without honor and common decency when she started a race against me without even telling me.

My estimation is that she has already set sail from a French port. It takes about the same time to cross the North American continent by rail as it does the Atlantic from Calais to New York by ship—if the railroad line over the Sierra Mountains is not buried in snow.

The news that it is shouldn’t have surprised me—it is January, the heart of winter.

The mountains becoming impassable because of winter storms is the reason her editor must have chosen the east-to-west route—she would have crossed the Sierras over two months ago.

Soon I will be at the train station, and from the telegraphic communications that the railroads use to relate status of their routes, I’ll know whether I have already lost. If by some miracle the rails are cleared, we will be neck and neck to the end and I shall have no peace until—unless—I cross the finish line
first
.

It is my fondest hope that my competitor is washed overboard in an Atlantic gale and finishes the race in Davy Jones’s locker.

Moving from the stern of the tug, I turn my back on the
Oceanic
and go to the bow, having this silly notion that by doing this I will pass through the channel called the Golden Gate a second or two quicker than if I had I been at the rear, fantasizing that these seconds will help me win the race.

Even though there are still thousands of miles to go, I have a wonderful sense of relief knowing I’m back in my own country where I don’t have to fear arrest or harm for having become entangled in the intrigues of men and nations. Best of all, I don’t have to constantly keep a watch over my shoulder for someone who wants to give me a shove overboard or put a knife between my shoulder blades.

With the key still hidden in my shoe, I still don’t know what it unlocks, why it was important to Mr. Cleveland, or why others so desperately want it. One conclusion I reached is what to do with it: I’ll turn it over to the British Embassy in Washington, after extracting a promise that they will assist me in contacting Mr. Cleveland’s Amelia. She can’t have the key because it would put her in danger.

This key has already left two men dead in the marketplace in Egypt and another on a magician’s stage in the middle of the ocean, and very nearly caused the loss of my own life, not once but twice.

If only I could rub the key like a jinnie’s lamp and have its secret revealed.

A man comes out of the pilot house and joins me at the bow.

“Welcome to San Francisco, Miss Bly. I’m Henry Stewart from the office of the Port of San Francisco. It’s my job this morning to get you to the Oakland train terminal as soon as possible.”

“That’s kind of you. Is there any news about the mountain passes? Are they still snowed in?”

“We won’t know until we reach the terminal, but that was the case two hours ago. You know, there is another route, down the central valley and across the southern desert.”

“Isn’t that much farther than over the mountains?”

“Yes, it would add quite a bit of time to your record.”

A ferry on its way from San Francisco toots its horn at us as we pass through the Golden Gate.

“The railroad ferry on its way to Sausalito,” Mr. Stewart says. “They say someday there will be a bridge across the Golden Gate channel, but that Frenchman who writes fantastic novels also says someday we’ll fly to the moon. I wouldn’t put my money on either ever happening. At two miles, the gap is too wide and the water too deep to support a bridge. It’s just physically impossible.”

That “Frenchman” is, of course, Jules Verne, and I am not one to doubt any of Monsieur Verne’s predictions.

As the tug steams close to a pier in San Francisco, I’m surprised to see a group of people waving and cheering my name.

“Welcome Nellie Bly! Welcome Nellie Bly!”

Smiling, I return their greeting. “How did they know I arrived?”

Mr. Stewart chuckles. “You’re the talk of the town, the talk of the whole country. When news came that you had left Yokohama, everybody got excited.”

Unlike the Atlantic and Indian oceans, no cable spanned the Pacific, so the news that the
Oceanic
had left Japan would have traveled opposite my route around the world, transmitted on undersea cables back from the Far East to India, Africa, Europe, and across the Atlantic to New York, then by telegraph wires strung across the continent to San Francisco.

The fact that a message can be sent as Morse code dots and dashes nearly around the globe over a piece of copper wire is a scientific miracle that makes me believe that almost anything Jules Verne can dream up, people will someday be able to accomplish.

“If it’s okay with you, we’ll get closer to the Frisco piers as we wrap around the peninsula to Oakland on the other side of the bay,” Mr. Stewart explains. “The people of San Francisco want to get a glimpse of you and it’ll only add a few minutes to your trip.”

“That’s fine,” I say, dreading the loss of the minutes. “I regret that I don’t have time to see your beautiful city and thank everyone for their support.”

“Actually, since some of the most famous parts of the city are built on hills facing the bay, you’ll see a great deal right from this tug.” He points at a streetcar crawling up a hill. “That’s a cable car. Do you know how they came about?”

I shake my head no.

“A man named Hallidie saw horses being whipped while they struggled on the wet cobblestones to pull a horse-car up a steep hill. The horses slipped and were dragged to their death as the horse-car rolled back down the hill. He decided enough of that and invented a way to pull the cars with an underground cable.”

“Thank God for Mr. Hallidie.”

As Mr. Stewart chats about the city’s colorful history, I continue to wave at the people who stand on the piers and cheer me on. The sun has come out and some of the gloom and doom I felt leaving the ship has evaporated, but the anxiety is still with me.

People are hailing me as the conquering hero, as if my journey around the globe is for all Americans, helping to bond us with so much of the world that knows so little about us—but the race is not won yet and the cheers of success could easily turn into the stings of defeat.

*   *   *

N
O BRIDGE HAS BEEN BUILT TO LINK
San Francisco with the east side of the bay, either, so the transcontinental railroad ends at Oakland and passengers and goods are transferred by boat to San Francisco.

Mr. Stewart confers with men waiting at the pier as soon as we dock and returns with a smile. “The train has also been waiting for your arrival in readiness to start the moment you board it. Everyone wants to make sure you win your race.”

“The pass over the mountains?”

“Still blocked, but I understand other arrangements have been made.”

“Still blocked” sticks in my head as I’m escorted to a train that has only one passenger car. I’m staggered when I’m told that it’s a special train just for me.

The
Miss Nellie Bly Special
consists of the
San Lorenzo
, a handsome Pullman car, the engine called the
Queen
, one of the fastest on the Southern Pacific line, the tender car that carries coal and wood to keep the steam engine going, and a caboose.

“What time do you want to reach New York, Miss Bly?” Mr. Bissell, general passenger agent of the Atlantic and Pacific system, asks me.

“No later than Saturday evening.”

“Very well, we will put you there on time,” he says quietly. “At least the first leg, the
Queen
will carry you to Chicago.”

“How will you get me there on time if the pass is still closed?”

“We are taking a route that Mr. Pulitzer chose,” he says, “which I must say is quite clever. Instead of going directly east to Chicago, we’re sending you hundreds of miles south and then across the southwest deserts through Arizona and New Mexico before turning north to the Windy City. It’s five hundred miles longer, but it has less snow and rail traffic.”

As I board, the conductor, porter, engineer, and fireman introduce themselves.

“I’ll keep the throttle wide open,” the engineer proudly states.

“And I will keep the boiler red hot,” the fireman says.

I’m so tickled by their enthusiasm, I feel like I should also contribute. “If you tire of shoveling coal,” I tell the fireman, “I’ll help you shovel until the
Queen
is flying.”

Changing my mode of conveyance from steamship to steam locomotive makes me reflect upon how dependent I’ve been for the past couple of months on the strong arms of men shoveling coal into boilers and how fortunate I’ve been so far that the engines themselves did not fail me.

Crossing my fingers, I pray my luck will continue

While we are doing some fine running the first day, the horn blasts and there’s a bump as if we strike something. Brakes screech, we come to a stop and go out to see what has occurred. My first thought is there’ll be a delay.