When we left our story, it was two days before Christmas 1862.
Our heroine, Jancy Hall had been traveling the streets of Washington DC where she found hr lover, Tonio de Aldo' signaling her that he was moving ahead to wreak his revenge. But unknown to them, there was another carriage headed toward the same destination.
* * * *
At the same time that Jancy was rendezvousing with her Tonio, another carriage, a long, dark carriage with its shades drawn tight was riding past the large homes of H- Street. It continued along the northwest quarter of the city until it hit the bright lights coming from the larger mansions, a sure indication that the New Year was approaching and that the social season was in full swing.
December 1862. The weather dark and bitter cold. A half hour's drive brought Jancy up a winding road and down a graveled driveway, between an avenue of gnarled dark cedars to a beautiful white-columned mansion. All was ready for an evening of music, merriment, and the supernatural-ready for the first of thirteen chapters in the life of Jancy Hall as it extended...Beyond the Blue and the Gray.
Through the muddy streets, past the boarding houses and livery stables, Chester and the Professor rode to where a few impressive, warm-wooded mansions stood, harboring snobbery and social distinctions as frosty as the weather and as cold as the marble back on Capitol Hill. For the socially elite, the war had not shut down party-giving, as was evident by the number of guests being welcomed at the front door.
A hurried survey of the mansion was in order for Chester and the Professor, but the sight of an oncoming carriage delayed their plans. The long dark coach with its windows shielded rolled to a stop, and a big puffy man dressed as a naval commander emerged as its only passenger. He was immediately identified by the Professor as Commodore Whitehead, a man as phony as his uniform but as high ranking as any when it comes to power-and its abuse.
From the distance they watched the Commodore move past the other guests to be greeted by Major Raithburn, a hard-faced military man serving as a commanding officer in the Signal Corps. The Major had a major nose and a major mean streak and, according to the Professor, also had the distinction of being chosen by his West Point classmates as the one most likely to stab someone in an alley. A large spray of festive balloons did little to soften the Major's iron graciousness as he stood proudly on the threshold of his mansion.
Moving in a separate path from the Professor, Chester came upon somebody hiding in the bushes. Peering through the branches, he couldn't miss Jancy's marble-white complexion and jet-black hair as she went streaking toward Tonio, her handsome magician. His stiff, formal appearance reminded Chester of when the man appeared on stage, how he would casually raise the four panels of the box that surrounded Jancy, then ever so calmly lower them to show that she had disappeared.
Now in the shrubbery, Jancy seemed to be wrapping herself around Tonio as if he were the back panel of that box, twisting herself around him as she did on the pegs of that flap, the one lowered first, the one the audience couldn't see.
As Tonio reached for the trellis, he exercised his broken English. "I try a new experience." Jancy took his hand from the tangled mass of ivy to prolong their goodbye. "Good luck, darling." Re-armed with his smile, Tonio started off again. "Luck. Yes, luck. I like luck very much. Very much!" Chester popped out of the bushes and was greeted by Tonio's huge smile and a bear hug as the magician told him how magnificent it was to see him again.
Chester struggled to squeeze his small frame free to get in a few words of his own. "Perhaps one of you can tell me why the two of you are here?" Jancy was quick to answer. "Tonio is here to pay a debt."
As if he were Jancy's protector, Chester turned to Tonio. "Whose debt?" "My mother's debt. I am an Italian." "What does that have to do with it?" "Me also an Indian." Chester smiled. "Half Indian, half Italian. You could scalp someone with a kitchen knife."
Tonio found Chester extremely funny and flashed his smile full of gleaming teeth. Teeth whiter than his shirt, Chester thought. In fact, everything about Tonio outshined Chester. The magician stood well over six feet in a faultlessly tailored suit, a good half-foot taller than Chester with his baggy tweeds. And the magician had all that damn black Indian hair swirling around his damn Italian bronzed features. It all completely out-shadowed Chester's chalky face, choirboy good looks, and receding hairline. Tonio's lumberjack shoulders bulged out over his whittled waist as he climbed his way up the long tendrils of ivy that wreathed around the trellis leading up to the chimney stacks.
Jancy was quick to call out again. "Do you love me?" "If you think so, then certainly yes!" But if you think no, then certainly no!"
Now with Tonio nearly out of sight, Chester had another question for Jancy. "Does he really think we understand him?" Jancy straightened Chester's tie as she pretended to scold him. "Don't be cruel, Chester. Tonio needs me to stiffen his determination." Chester shot her a look. "I'm sure you've been stiffening more than his determination."
"Chester, I do not have time for your nasty wit. You are always saying things that hurt me the most. I am merely trying to help Tonio."
"Help him! Is that what you call it? You've seized him, you've captured him, you've joined him in a life of revenge, and just now you've helped deposit him on the roof! You call that helping?"
Sounds of advancing footsteps sent Jancy away from Chester and toward a side door, leaving Chester with one last question. "If you took away Tonio's dashing ways and his good looks, what would you have?" Jancy laughed. "You?" She said while scurrying into the mansion.
Chester called out after her again. "It's only Professor Jordan. I did what you asked me to do and made sure he got here to attend your performance."
It was too late. She had vanished into a side door. As Chester turned, the Professor materialized with a few questions of his own about what he had overheard: namely, what was the nature of Tonio's revenge and why did Jancy desire their presence this evening? Chester had no answers. He was afraid that Jancy had heaped all of her enormous expectations of life onto Tonio. It's going to take more than her perky breasts and cute bottom to get her out of this one.
Turning to the Professor, he asked, "How could she do this?' "My dear boy, there is a certain madness in being madly in love. "If the Professor only knew," thought Chester.
The back of the mansion sat in a half moon of leafy trees, and as the two men passed a couple of giant oaks, Chester noticed an old friend, a sharp-eyed black man, named Stanford. He was one of the house servants, but at the moment he was busy hoisting a keg of kerosene up the side of the house. "I's fixing the roof," the man said with a wink. Adding kerosene to the presence of a magician on the roof not being a prescription for repair, the Professor winked back and told Chester that it seemed more fuel was being added to the promise of an interesting evening.
The two men left, moving along the many windows. Most of the rooms inside the mansion appeared unoccupied and bleak, with high ceilings and paneled walls adding to the coldness of their dark interiors. Behind the building, Chester and the Professor saw a door recessed at the base of a shaft which protruded vertically down the wall. To one side of it, the unusually long, dark carriage of Commodore Whitehead had found its hitching place. Adjoining the mansion was a large stable area. There the Professor made a discovery-a signal corps wagon containing strips of leather with lines that matched the black wavy lines on the insulation he'd found at the spot where the military's telegraph lines had been tapped.
The area was fenced off, and several of the servants' children were taking advantage of the area's privacy to play at war. Upon entering the gate, Chester stepped into a line of quicklime, a bag of which the children had taken from the garden shed and spread over the ground to serve as a checkpoint in their effort to stop the advancement of the enemy.
On seeing Chester's gray outer coat, one of the children yelled out. "I knew these hills was lousy with Rebs!" Another of the youngsters saw that Chester had crossed their checkpoint with its telltale white substance. The quicklime showed on his boots and trouser cuffs. The little Yankee soldier cried out,"Damn it. He's a spy!"
The Professor hurried to Chester's aid, rushing him away from the thrust of a wooden sword to the other side of the mansion. Slowly the two men moved to where the lights and music marked the center of activity-a ballroom of immense size with a sea of wealthy guests celebrating Christmas. A seven-piece ensemble was playing with spirit as the couples squared off with each other under the blaze of seven gigantic crystal chandeliers.
The strains of the quadrille brought the host, Major Raithburn, stalking to the dance floor in his military erectness. Passing Jancy, he slipped her a folded sheet of yellow tissue. Then, as all six-foot-seven of the Major went striding like a crane among the richly gowned ladies, Jancy quickly threaded her way along the fringe of the great room into the central hall that led to a deserted library.
Alone, she unfolded the yellow tissue paper and, after a quick study, stuffed it inside the low bosom of her velvet dress. Then she adjusted her neckline, flattened the voluminous folds about her hips, and returned to the crowded drawing room.
From outside the window, looking in, Chester asked, "What do you make of all those maneuvers?"
Leading Chester away from the window, the Professor answered with a parable. "My dear boy, there was a strange case where a dog who was chained to a post at the telegraph office had the uncanny ability to bark before each telegram arrived. I solved the mystery by showing that the animal was being forewarned, that he barked because he was being shocked by the incoming electrical current. It is obvious that Jancy, too, has been pre-alerted by a shocking flow of information, hers apparently coming from a wire tapped by Major Raithburn. The presence of those yellow tissues, however, brings another element into play."
An approaching sound put the two men on their guard, and they slipped quickly into one of the back doors of the mansion.