“I think it will be the most interesting on the list,” she replied. “Not particularly fun, but interesting.”
“Have you ever been in a jail before?”
She laughed a little. “Never.”
“They are neither interesting nor fun.”
The thought of stepping back into a jail was enough to make his entire body break out into a sweat even though he was freezing as he hugged himself on the sidewalk. He probably shouldn’t have darted outside without a coat, but he needed to catch her.
“Let me go with you,” he said impulsively.
“To the jail?” He nodded, and she asked why on earth he would want to go.
Luke was ready with an answer. “Because the people at the jail aren’t going to be rowdy men playing tennis, they’ll be rowdy criminals who haven’t seen a woman in ages.”
“Luke, you’ll catch your death of cold out here. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”
He shook his head. “Promise me you’ll let me take you to the jail. You shouldn’t go alone.” He blew into his cupped hands and hopped in place, anything to keep his blood moving.
“Yes.”
He grinned. Even with the chill, he wished he could linger more, but a three-course lunch was about to be set out, and he needed to be there.
“Until Wednesday, then,” he said, loving the sparkle in her eyes. “I’ll meet you at the Michigan Avenue streetcar stop at one o’clock.”
He darted back to the boardinghouse and sprang up the steps, already counting down the hours until he could see Marianne again. She was like an itch he couldn’t scratch, and he just wanted to be with her, even if it meant he had to walk back into a jail.
But first he had to survive lunch with the Poison Squad.
Lunch.
That innocuous word had never sounded so ominous before, but Luke sensed the tension the moment he entered the dining room. It was a spacious room with plain walls, two windows facing the street, and two large tables. Such a mundane room for an extraordinary experiment. The overturned chairs from the impromptu tennis match had been put to rights by the time Luke entered.
Dr. Wiley assigned each man to a seat. Everyone already knew that one table would be the control group, which would be served untainted food. The other table would get a meal laced with a hefty dose of preservatives, but no one knew which table would get the adulterated food. The first round of the experiment would last for two weeks, then the control group would get the toxic hash and the first group would earn a reprieve.
Luke was seated between Big Rollins and a loud-mouthed Italian named Nicolo. That was good, because he liked the tall blond giant, and they were going to be stuck together for months to come.
“Here we are,” Nurse Hollister said cheerfully as she rolled a stainless-steel cart into the room. The nurse would be on hand for every meal, helping serve the food and wait on the tables, but also to keep an eye out in case anyone fell ill.
Dr. Wiley stood in the corner, a balding man with widely spaced eyes who peered at them intently, almost like an owl. “It’s important that you eat everything on your plate,” he said. “Each serving has been weighed and measured. I certainly hope you find it tasty.”
Was it possible for poison to be tasty? Luke might be about to find out. The tomato soup looked perfectly ordinary in the plain white bowl that was set before him. The first course came with a slice of bread and a pat of butter.
Luke bowed his head and silently prayed. Lord, thank you for this food. I know what it is to be hungry, so I’m grateful for whatever is before me, even if it’s tainted. I pray that this experiment will be successful and make the world a better place. I pray it will help make me worthy in your eyes.
He straightened, picked up his spoon, and dove in. The first spoonful of soup tasted fine. So did the second. He glanced around the room. No one else was eating. They were all just watching him, waiting for his reaction.
“What are you namby-pamby weaklings waiting for?” he taunted.
The challenge jolted the men into action, and most of them immediately picked up their spoons and began to work on the soup. Little Rollins hesitated until heckling from his brother goaded him into eating.
Luke analyzed the taste of his next bite carefully. There was a tang. But all tomato soup tasted tangy, didn’t it? He didn’t mind taking a hit of poison, but today would be a bad time to be ill, because he had a meeting with his sister, Caroline, after lunch. She was already worrying herself into a tizzy over him, and he didn’t want to get sick right off the bat. His stomach felt a little queasy as he finished the soup and pushed the bowl away, but maybe it was just his imagination.
A quick glance around the table showed other looks of uncertainty, but the men at the other table looked the same. They were all ill at ease, and surely the chemical preservatives wouldn’t affect anyone so quickly. It was probably just nerves getting to him.
The main course was a slice of roasted turkey breast, green beans, and rice in some sort of sauce.
“I’ll bet the chemicals are in the sauce on the rice,” Big Rollins whispered to him, and Luke had to agree. It would be too hard to infuse it into the turkey or the green beans.
“Please finish your meal,” Dr. Wiley stated from his stool in the corner. “The study can only be valid if each man consumes the exact same meals each day.”
“I don’t like rice,” Nicolo said in his thickly accented voice. “Americans don’t know how to make rice.”
“I’m not a big fan of rice either,” Princeton said.
“All of you have already stated you have no food allergies, so please finish everything on the plate,” Dr. Wiley admonished.
Everyone reluctantly dove in.
Luke finished quickly because his appointment with Caroline loomed. She wanted his insight on the latest proposal from the McMillan Commission, an ambitious plan to transform the heart of Washington with a huge open park. A group of congressmen, city planners, and opinion makers had been formed to advance the plan, and Caroline was serving on the commission. Few people were as well versed in Washington society as Caroline Delacroix, and she had been selected to help sway public opinion to support the plan. Lunch concluded without incident, and he headed out to meet her.
It was a bleak winter day with barren trees and a leaden gray sky, but Caroline looked splendid as Luke joined her near the proposed park. Her sapphire velvet cloak matched the blue of her eyes, and her blond hair was perfectly styled beneath the cloak’s wide hood. She held on to his arm as they carefully stepped across the mushy land surrounding the tidal basin.
“This is where the proposed memorial to President Lincoln will be built,” she said, gesturing to acres of swampy ground. “We’ll need to install a drainage system and build up the land. Someday we’ll clear these trees away, and you’ll have a clear view all the way from Lincoln’s memorial to the Capitol.”
“It’s going to be a tough sell to Congress,” he said. Half a dozen buildings would need to be torn down, and they would have to reroute the B&P Railroad tracks. There was also a thickly wooded arboretum with meandering trails and ponds that were popular with residents. The McMillan Plan would clear it all away. Two miles of land would be planted with grass, rivalling the great parks in the capitals of Europe.