The Striker (Isaac Bell 6)

“Why didn’t you?”

Bell shrugged. “Honestly, I was afraid of getting fired.”

“So why are you visiting him in jail?”

“I thought he got a bad deal.”

“Visiting him in jail will get you fired just as fast as joining the union. What’s up with y

ou, Mr. Bell?”

Bell had an ear for expressions and recognized “What’s up?” as English or Australian. Perhaps she had lived abroad. Perhaps she read novels. “While I explain ‘what’s up,’” he answered with a smile, “would you do me the honor of joining me for tea? I believe they serve it in the company store.”

“I would not spend one penny in a Gleason company store. Or any other company store.”

“I don’t know of any other establishment where I could offer you tea.”

“That is the point, Mr. Bell, isn’t it? The company store has a monopoly. The workers have no choice but to pay the owners’ exorbitant prices or do without. They’re paid in scrip instead of real money, which they can spend only at the company store. They’re no better off than serfs.”

“Or sharecroppers,” said Bell.

“Slaves.”

“It sounds as if your brother is not the only unionist in your family.”

“You’re right about that.” The faintest hint of a smile warmed her eyes as they roamed over the features of the handsome young man before her. “Except that Jim’s beliefs are too mild for my taste.”

“Are you sure you won’t make a company store exception for one cup of tea?”

“Positively sure,” Mary Higgins fired back. She glanced up and down the row of shabby barracks, lodging houses, and shanties that lined the dirt street and fixed on a saloon with a lantern in its one small window. “There are other ways. Come with me.”

Bell appraised the crowd around the jail, which was growing larger, then followed her across the street. She walked fast. She was tall and her skirts swayed, he noticed, as if her legs were long. As she stepped up to the wooden sidewalk, her skirt parted, revealing low boots laced around shapely ankles. A dance hall gal’s figure, he thought, with a schoolmarm’s stern gaze.

As she led Bell in the door the owner rushed up, crying, “No ladies allowed in here.”

Mary Higgins unleashed another faint smile, looked the barkeep straight in the eye, and said, “Somewhere behind your bar is your office and in it a pot of hot coffee. I wonder if this gentleman and I might buy a cup we could drink at your desk.”

The barkeep’s mouth popped open. “How did you know?”

“My father owned such an establishment once. He always said if you drink what you sell you’ll end up in the poorhouse.”

“He knew his business,” said the owner. “Come this way.”

Mary Higgins swept ahead, skirts swirling the sawdust strewn upon the floor. In his office, the barkeep apologized, “I have no milk.”

“Not necessary,” she said with a glance at Isaac Bell, who concurred with a silent nod that black coffee would be perfectly fine.

“I’ll leave you two… alone. Presuming,” he added gruffly, “we all understand that my office is not a trysting place.”

He saw a sudden dangerous glint in the young coal miner’s eye and quickly apologized, “I did not mean to imply—”

“Thank you,” Mary Higgins dismissed him.

She sat behind the rough-plank desk and indicated Bell should pull up the barrel that served as a side chair. “Mr. Bell, you are a mystery.”

“How is that, Miss Higgins?”

“You’re dressed like a coal miner. You speak like a Fifth Avenue swell trying to sound like a coal miner. And you are failing, woefully, to hide the mannerisms of the privileged. Who are you and what do you want?”