New York - The Novel

powerful, he’d gone to the commodore and asked him what he thought.
    “How many ships?” the commodore had asked.
    “A couple, maybe.”
    “All right.” Vanderbilt had favored him with a curt nod.
    “You asked his permission?” Hetty had said in disgust.
    “Better than being run out of business.”
    Yet while the commodore was abroad, these two men, both employed by Vanderbilt, were planning to steal a piece of his empire.
    You had to admire the audacity of the plan. Instead of running his goods across Panama, the commodore had opened up a cut-price route across Nicaragua, and taken a thousand sailing miles off the journey.
    “But the government of Nicaragua ain’t too strong,” the two men told Master. “What if we could finance a revolution there? Put in our own man as president, who’ll give us an exclusive contract to run goods across the place, and leave Vanderbilt out?”
    “You really think it could be done?”
    “Yes, and for no great outlay. Do you want in?”
    “Gentlemen,” said Master with a laugh, “I’m not afraid to topple the government of Nicaragua, but annoying Cornelius Vanderbilt? That frightens me. Please don’t include me in your plans.”
    He was still chuckling about the two rogues an hour later, when he went uptown to meet his wife.

    Hetty Master stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fortieth, with the great fortress of the distribution reservoir behind her. Half the world was passing by the place that day, so you might have expected her to be taking some notice of them. Or you might have thought, at least, that she’d be looking out for her faithful husband who was coming to meet her.
    But she wasn’t. She was reading. Just standing there like a statue, under her parasol, and reading.
    If she’d taken any notice of the scene around her, she might have reflected that close by, nearly eight decades ago, poor George Washington had beaten his troops with the flat of his sword, to try to stop them running away from the redcoats. Or she’d surely have recalled that this was where Frank proposed to her. But she didn’t. She just read her book.
    Of course, she’d always loved to read. Back in the days when she and Frank were courting, the great Charles Dickens had come over from London to begin his triumphal tour of America. People had turned out in thousands, and she’d dragged Frank to no less than three events to see her favorite author, and listen to him read. “I love his characters and stories,” she’d told Frank, “and his plea for social justice is beyond all praise.” Certainly, his tales of London’s poor folk found a ready echo in New York. But it wasn’t Charles Dickens that she was reading today.
    It was something more dangerous.
    Frank didn’t see her at first. But then there were so many other things to catch the eye. The tallest was the Latting Observatory, a conical latticework of wood and iron that rose three hundred and fifty feet to a viewing platform high over Forty-second Street. You could go up the first two stages of the tower in a wonderful new machine they were calling an elevator. Master was eager to try that. But the Observatory was still a sideshow to the main event—which lay just behind the reservoir, its upper parts clearly visible as Frank approached.
    The Crystal Palace.
    Two years ago, when the British had staged their Great Exhibition in a huge crystal palace of glass and iron in the middle of London, six million people had come to see this world’s fair of culture and industrial design. The palace in Hyde Park, like a vast greenhouse, was over six hundred yards long, and covered nearly seven acres. So New York had decided to have one of their own. And though the Crystal Palace at Fortieth Street might not match the vast scale to be found in the capital of the British Empire, it was still a mighty handsome building, with a splendid dome, ahundred and twenty-three feet high. It had just opened the day before, and Frank Master couldn’t wait to see what was inside it.
    Then he saw his wife. And inwardly groaned. She was reading that damn book again.
    “Put the book aside now,” he said gently, as he took her arm, “and let’s see the exhibition.”
    The main entrance on Sixth was splendid. With its ornate classical portico and dome, it looked like a Venetian cathedral, made of glass. The French and British flags flew to left and right, and a huge Stars and Stripes over the center.
    Frank knew most of the organizers,