“Maybe you should ask the man who’s been following me,” Mabel blurted.
“What do you mean? What did this man look like?” Arthur asked, coming toward her.
“Like a Pinkerton trying not to be seen. I have spent my whole life on the lookout for just that sort of thing, you know, and I can spot it.”
“Did he follow you here?” Luis asked.
Mabel shook her head. “I did my best to lose him. It’s why I was late.” Mabel told them everything that had happened. “And then I managed to lose him,” she said, sinking into a chair, all the earlier adrenaline washing away, leaving her feeling loose and sleepy.
Gloria rushed to the window, yanking up the blinds.
“Hey!” Arthur said. He lowered the blinds again. “We’ve gotta be careful now. If any of you think you’re being followed, take another route, like Mabel did, or buy a book from Mr. Jenkins downstairs for our ‘book club.’ You all remember the Palmer Raids. If we’re caught with radical publications, we could all be arrested. Aron could be deported to the Soviet Union, and Luis to Mexico.”
Arthur peeked out through two of the slats. “No one there now.”
He squatted at Mabel’s side, looking up at her. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Fine,” Mabel said, but she liked that Arthur had asked. Most people didn’t.
Satisfied, Arthur took a seat on the edge of the battered steamer trunk. “On to business, then. No one’s paying attention to the striking workers. The press has lost interest. They only want to talk about Marlowe’s Future of America Exhibition.”
Luis untied a handkerchief full of roasted nuts, offering them to all. “I hear management has hired local thugs as militiamen. They beat one of the miners last night and sent him to the hospital. Word is those militiamen are driving around the camp in trucks with Gatling guns mounted in the back to intimidate them.”
“And the radium and uranium they’re mining is making the men sick. They can scarcely breathe,” Gloria said.
“Why do you suppose Marlowe needs so much uranium?” Mabel asked, echoing Ling’s earlier question.
“He probably sells it,” Gloria said. “It’s just pure, old-fashioned greed.”
“Well, if everybody could see what’s happening in the camp, surely they’d be horrified; they’d have to do something to stop it,” Mabel said.
“People choose not to see,” Arthur said in his gentle way.
Mabel thought for a moment. “What if we made a newsreel? Marlowe makes them all the time to tout how great he is. But we could show people how sick his miners are and how bad the conditions are in the tent camp. If people could see it for themselves, they couldn’t ignore what’s really happening.”
Aron snorted. “Where are we going to get a movie camera? Who’s gonna pay for that? Vitagraph Studios? They have pictures to make with Clara Bow. They’re not going to bring trouble on themselves making newsreels for socialists about immigrant workers they don’t see as Americans—or even as people.”
“I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas,” Mabel snapped.
Aron chuckled and put up his hands. “Now, don’t get mad—”
“Too late. I’m already there,” Mabel said.
Gloria put out her cigarette and linked her arm through Mabel’s. “Hear, hear, Mabel. You boys act like you run the revolution. If you think we’re going to iron your shirts while you spout slogans, you’re all wet.”
“You’re putting words in my mouth,” Aron grumbled.
Mabel ignored him. “What if I could get us a camera?”
Gloria arched an eyebrow. “You have an uncle at Vitagraph?”
Mabel smiled. “Let’s just say that I know someone who has a talent for borrowing.”
“We need guns, not film,” Aron grumbled.
“Just like them?” Mabel shot back. She’d seen this argument unfold at countless meetings. There was always one organizer eager to escalate the fight. “My mother says the minute we pick up guns we become the enemy we’re fighting.”
Aron scoffed. “Your mother, your mother. Do you have your own thoughts?”
Mabel’s cheeks burned. “Yes. I’m having a thought about you just now.”
“Nobody’s picking up a gun. And we’re not here to fight with one another,” Arthur said, staring at Aron until he looked away.
“Sorry, Mabel,” Aron mumbled.
“Thank you,” Mabel said.
Arthur smiled at Mabel. “All right, then. Mabel Rose, you are officially the director of the Secret Six motion picture division. Now, let’s talk about the rally for Sacco and Vanzetti downtown tomorrow….”
They talked well past suppertime, and Mabel found herself growing more excited by the hour. It was so different from the museum. There, she felt out of place. She had no special powers like Evie and the others. Her place was firmly rooted in fighting the evils of this world, and there were plenty of them to fight. That’s what the Secret Six was about—changing the world for good. For fairness. For justice. That, she was realizing, was something she could do, something she had to do.
As the others trickled out, Mabel stayed behind. She was alive with a sense of purpose, and she didn’t want to put that excitement away just yet. She began gathering plates.
“You don’t have to clear the dishes, you know,” Arthur said as Mabel loaded the tiny, chipped sink with sudsy water.
“I know,” Mabel said, smiling. She removed her gold watch and laid it on the drainboard.
Arthur whistled. “That doesn’t look like a socialist’s watch.”
“It was a gift from my grandmother,” Mabel said, somewhat apologetically.
“Ah, yes. The famous Newells of the Social Register, one of New York’s oldest and wealthiest families.” Arthur shook his head and dried the clean plate Mabel had handed him. “Must be strange. Do you ever see your mother’s family?”
“At Christmas. And on my grandmother’s birthday.”
“I’ve always wondered: What’s it like with the very rich?”
What was it like? When Mabel visited Nana Newell, white-aproned servants moved in and out of the rooms silently with tiered plates of finger sandwiches and hot coffee in china cups. Everyone in the house called her Miss Mabel. Her confident mother seemed to shrink in that huge house. Often, the visits ended with Mabel’s grandmother silent, offended, and Mabel’s mother in angry tears. Mabel did love the house, though. She couldn’t help running a finger across the shining, monogrammed silver or admiring the well-polished grand piano. Mabel had always wanted to take lessons, but there hadn’t been money for it, and Mabel’s mother felt that such pastimes were too closely aligned with the idle rich. It was better, in her mother’s mind, for Mabel to have a solid education.
“She always serves petits fours,” Mabel said after a pause.
Arthur grinned. “Well, I suppose that’s something. Do you love your grandmother?”
“Well, I really love her petits fours.”
Arthur barked out a laugh, which made Mabel laugh, too.
“What about your family?” she asked.