Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012

She heard the door at the other end of the car slide open. The marshal twisted toward the aisle to glance over his shoulder.

While his attention was elsewhere, she looked him over. He was an attractive man, square-shouldered and lean at the waist. His profile under the thick ginger hair, clipped short along the sides and combed straight on top, showed a strong brow and firm jaw. She noticed too, though it was silly to do so, that he smelled of bay rum aftershave. When he turned back, his eyes widened from a squint. She looked away, but not before she caught his pleasure at having found himself examined.

“It wasn’t the porter,” he said. “If you’re waiting for one.”

She shook her head to show she wasn’t.

“If you’re thinking of whiling away some time inside the terminal, you ought to walk through the train. Leave it where the platform’s enclosed. Even a mild November night in Chicago is enough to make someone from Washington weep. But perhaps you grew up in a raw climate? Where is it you go home to now?”

Had he searched her coat pockets and seen her tickets?

“Oh, I don’t mind the cold,” she said. Mrs. Kingston would have raised her brows and pinched her lips to show she found the question impertinent. But Ella’s features weren’t trained to it.

“And so Georgetown’s on break already, then? Earlier than usual, isn’t it?”

“The flu.” She was on comfortable footing here, at least. “The mayor outlawed public meetings, and so the schools have closed.”

“Ah yes, of course,” he said. “But if they keep you longer into the summer to compensate, you may dislike the heat and mosquitoes. Or do you go home to worse?”

“It was wise of them to do it, I think.”

If he was here to find her, he’d know her destination from her ticket. So why did he keep asking where she lived? In case someone came to meet her train and take her on by car?

Beyond the marshal and across the aisle, windows framed a sky shingled with wet clouds. The last traces of daylight were fading over acres of ground covered in curved and crossing tracks. In the distance, a canal was overspread with a rust-streaked railroad bridge. She watched a train flash across it while others moved slowly alongside the narrow waterway. She struggled to say something about it, or to find another innocuous topic, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Your history classes?” The marshal shifted so his knees touched her coat on the seat between them. She saw that his pale blue eyes were made intense by dark rings around the iris. “Have they influenced your view of this war?” His brows were raised attentively, as if he were sincerely interested in her answer.

Ella felt herself go cold. The Sedition Act made criticizing the war a crime punishable by $10,000 and twenty years in prison. Enforcement was literal and Draconian. She’d read about a filmmaker sentenced to ten years at hard labor for a harsh portrayal of the British in his movie about the Revolutionary War. They were our allies now, and it was sedition to defame them (or the President) in any context. It wasn’t possible, these days, to be careful enough.

“I agree with you,” she said. “Sometimes peace has to be won.”

“And your professors concur?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t they?”

“I understand that some at Georgetown, Harvard and Yale too, draw supposed contrasts between our laws and our Constitution.”

“Really?” This turn of conversation seemed very bad to her. Sounding her out about the war and now the Sedition Act?

“They talk of starting a civil liberties league. To challenge the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Anarchist Exclusion Act.” He watched her unblinkingly. “Deportations under the Immigration Act.”

“I didn’t know that.”

She couldn’t make sense of this. She felt sure he was looking for her in particular — why else would he keep bringing up R Street? She’d supposed it had to do with the stolen jewels. But he’d have no reason to care about the politics of a thief, would he?

She heard the blood roar in her ears. Had she done something to make a marshal suspect her of sedition? Every alien knew someone who’d been dragged onto a boat. If the government bothered with hearings at all, they were closed-door, one immigration officer and no translator.

She was glad the marshal was speaking again. She couldn’t have constructed a coherent sentence.

“Civil liberties,” he said. “I don’t begrudge lawyers and courts their roles. But except in extreme cases, I say leave the law to those who write it.” He paused for her reply. When none came, he added, “And if they overstep, then vote for different men. Better that than putting it in the pockets of appointees with grudges and personal stakes. Or do you take the opposite view?”