Before he could reach her, a man stood up and moved a few seats over to sit next to her. Suspecting one of the mashers who preyed on women who sat alone in nickelodeons, Clay rushed to the seat next to him. He had guessed right. The man was already laying a hand on Mary’s leg. She slapped it away. The masher whispered, “Don’t play hard to get.”

Clay took the masher’s hand in his right, clamped his left over his mouth to muffle his scream, and broke his finger. “Leave quietly,” he whispered in his ear. “If I hear a peep out of you or ever see you again, I’ll break the other nine.”

The masher stumbled away, moaning, and Clay slipped into the seat he had vacated. Loud laughter and the coin piano allowed them to speak in low tones without fear of being overheard.

“I’ve lined up fifty barges and a couple of towboats.”

Nothing in her manner suggested whether she had noticed what he had done to the masher, and he could not tell whether that was because he had done it smoothly or because she didn’t care. Her reply was all business.

“Mr. Claggart, where did the money come from? Fifty barges and two towboats must cost a fortune.”

“Empty barges are going cheap at the moment. What with the operators fearing the strike will diminish production. Pittsburgh is awash in empties.”

“Fifty barges and the services of two steamboats still must cost money.”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s been a slew of bank and payroll robberies in the Chicago area, out toward Evanston and Cicero and all the way down to Hammond and Gary.”

“What do bank robberies have to do with the coal strike?”

“Not every bank robber is in it for personal gain,” Clay answered. “Some support worthy causes.”

The idea of labor radicals raising money by robbing banks had a ring of truth, he thought. And regardless of her scruples, if any, about robbing capitalist banks, they would be nothing compared to her scruples about financing her brilliant barge scheme with Judge James Congdon’s Wall Street money.

He glanced at her to see how the lie registered.

She was staring straight ahead at the show on the screen. The wife stalked into the restaurant. Crockery flew. Tables were overturned. The woman scorned procured a horsewhip from somewhere and flailed away, and the audience roared as she chased her husband and his girlfriend around the restaurant. Henry Clay feasted on Mary’s compelling profile, waiting, thinking, She’s got to laugh. She’s not made of stone.

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