Steam City Pirates by Jim Musgrave

their deaths would all be on our hands.
    I had to get out of this dower mood, and I was happy to be visiting my darling. She was the one woman who had been able to teach me how to love again—both in the spiritual and physical senses—and I would be forever grateful to her for that.
    After the competition with Hester Jane “The Grabber” Haskins, Becky had won the support of the liberals in New York City. Although Haskins kept her dives and brothels in the Tenderloin District, Rebecca Charming was given exclusive territorial control over the more exclusive and up-scale Theater District at Union Square near Broadway. The rents were still high for her, but she made up for it with the wealth and reputations of her clientele, many of whom were important city dignitaries in both the academic and professional worlds.
    I had changed into my detective clothing: white shirt, black coat and vest, and wool army overcoat, at my apartment on 42 nd Street. I also had my trusted Bowie knife strapped to the outside of my calf, and my Colt pistol inserted within a snug leather holster inside my coat. The crowd on the avenues was a welcome sight after having spent two days in the wilds of Pennsylvania. I much preferred the civilized uproar of New York City to the noisy roosters and children at the Lowe farm.
    Becky was sitting inside her parlor when I turned the key and opened the door to her large apartment in the Plaza District. She was sitting at her secretary table doing her ladies’ books. Rebecca Charming Jones kept meticulous records of each one of her girl’s rendezvous with her gentleman callers. She tabulated the costs of medical care as well as the rental of hotel rooms, if needed, and she put all of this into ledger statements. These were copied into individual statements which she then gave to each of her employees.
    I also noted that Becky was wearing one of her humorous dresses. She was in an all-black dress reminiscent of England’s Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria wore widow's mourning clothes, which were black in color after the death of her husband Albert in 1861 at the age of 42. She had mourned her husband's death for almost 10 years and she said that for the rest of her sovereignty she would wear black. I knew my Becky was wearing this dress as an inside joke, so I decided to play along. The bottom of her dress, however, was cut short to reveal fishnet stockings.
    “Your majesty!” I said, taking my porkpie hat from my head and bowing, waving the cap across my chest. “I do hope you can accept an audience with such a lowly rogue as I. I know it is quite late, and my white stallion is quite agitated outside.”
    Becky turned around, saw me standing there, and she stood up. She ran over to me and put her arms around my neck. “Quite so! My good Sir Galahad, you have come at last. The Irish are in need of discipline, so I shall send you down posthaste to quell their riotously famished stomachs!”
    I laughed and sat down at the end of her weekly color-changing French divan. This week it was blue. She moved from her desk to sit down next to me. Her green eyes were their usual sparkling pools of joy, and her curly-blonde tresses fondled the black collar of her dress in a most attractive way.
    “I visited Professor Thaddeus Lowe in Valley Forge. He was in charge of the Army Balloon Corps during the war. I suppose you’ve heard about Seth’s vision?” I wanted to get right into our new case. In fact, I was thinking about perhaps installing teletype machines at each of our abodes. One here, one at my apartment, one at Bessie’s mansion, one at Walter McKenzie’s dockside offices in Hoboken, New Jersey. We needed to seriously consider improving our lines of communications.
    “No. What did he see?” Becky leaned forward in expectation.
    “That’s strange. Bessie never told you?” I was wondering how she had not heard from Bessie about Seth’s report from the future. I was gone two days, and yet she had not been