Prescott gave his secretary a confirming nod before entering his office. Stepping past Madelaine, Harriet couldn't avoid the woman's searing glare and imagined she heard a faint whistle of steam coming from her ears.
Inside the principal's private domain, Harriet was unnerved to see her boss had disappeared. A quick scan of the room revealed a strip of light beneath an interior door. Before she had time to guess the room's purpose, the sound of active plumbing confirmed the unthinkable—Prescott had a private lavatory.
She had been so focused during her interview that she remembered little of her surroundings aside from Prescott's massive carved desk and his high-back, tufted leather chair that he'd occupied as if it were a throne. The light streaming in from tall windows framed by thick burgundy drapes had caused her to squint throughout the meeting. Now, with time to appreciate the entire room, she noticed that Prescott had decorated one wall with plaques and photographs of himself with various political leaders, including Illinois Governor John Riley Tanner and Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison Junior. Harriet didn't recognize the many important-looking men posing with Prescott in ritzy private libraries, dining rooms, and gentlemen's clubs—places that were either off-limits to women or inaccessible to someone of Harriet's station.
Prescott returned to the room. Seeing Harriet examining a particular pair of photographs, he said, "That's me with the architect Daniel Burnham and Charles Hutchinson, president of the Art Institute. The other is of me and George Pullman, who sadly passed last year, and Marshall Field, whose name is surely familiar to you."
Harriet chose a nod over any remark. Those men inhabited a world as foreign and distant to her as the moon. Besides being bound by gravity and mortality, she couldn't imagine they had anything in common.
"Now then, Miss Morrow..." Prescott sat and adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles, ready for business. "As it happens, I have something for you."
"A case, sir?"
Prescott's brows shot up. "Case? Heaven's no. A meeting. A favor really."
Harriet hadn't expected to be assigned a task so soon.
But then, she had no idea what the first hours for an inexperienced junior operative might entail. Prescott began by telling her that his family residence was on Prairie Avenue, a street all of Chicago knew well, lined with stately mansions. She and her brother, as children, had made up stories about living fantastic lives within their walls—eating chocolate cake with silver forks, having their own rooms, and waking each morning to instantly hot water and
freshly squeezed juice.
The matter at hand concerned Prescott's next-door neighbor, an older widow named Pearl Bartlett, whom he described as "harmless, but a doddering old biddy biddy."
Twice in the past twelve months, Pearl Bartlett had requested his help to find out who had absconded with first her silver and then her jewelry. Although doubtful that anyone had burgled the woman's home, Prescott nevertheless had dispatched Mr. Somer, his most junior operative at the time. "A neighborly courtesy," Prescott called it. After interviewing Mrs. Bartlett on several occasions and conducting multiple searches of her three-story mansion, Mr. Somer had reported his findings to Prescott: the woman had misplaced the items in question. He had found the silver in the pantry and the jewelry in a bureau drawer hidden beneath her late husband's toupee. Mrs. Bartlett's latest claim was not that something else had gone missing but rather someone—specifically, her maid.
"Frankly, I wouldn't bother," Prescott said, reaching for a fountain pen and pad of paper. "The woman has proven herself to be entirely unreliable. But my wife..." He paused, apparently unable to speak and write at the same time. Scribbling finished, he looked up and handed Harriet a sheet of personalized stationery. "As I was saying, my wife is inexplicably fond of Pearl. She considers her something of an aunt. That's the address." He gestured toward the note she held in her hand.
