Trying to keep warm in the slight chill, Sam had watched the sailor carefully and thought of his jacket. It wasn’t the wool peacoat itself but the postcard hidden inside his pocket that mattered. It wouldn’t seem like much to anyone else—just a worn drawing of majestic, snow-capped mountains and tall trees. No helpful postmark accompanied it. On the back were three words scrawled in Russian. That postcard was the only thing Sam had brought with him from his father’s house in Chicago when he ran away, taking refuge in a traveling circus heading east. In the six months since he’d arrived in New York, he’d barely been able to survive. But fortunes could change quickly. The papers were full of stories of self-made men, like Henry Ford and Jake Marlowe. Sam, too, would make his fortune, and then he’d find the place in the postcard. He’d find her.
Evie, her uncle, and the Teutonic giant had obviously left for good, so Sam flicked open his Swiss Army knife and easily picked the lock on the museum’s door. For an egghead, that professor was pretty dumb about safeguarding his treasures. Street light pressed against the museum’s stained-glass windows. It gave the gloom inside a warm amber glow. Sam waited for his eyes to adjust, then slipped through the quiet old mansion looking for his jacket. This whole affair could’ve been avoided if he’d used his skill on Evie O’Neill back at Penn Station. But for some reason, he’d wanted her to see him. He’d wanted to talk to her. And when the time came, he’d wanted to kiss her as much as he’d wanted her money. That had been his undoing. Now here he was in the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies, searching in the dim light for his jacket.
It had been so much simpler with the sailor. The man had idled on the corner, confused about whether to go forward or turn right or left, and in that moment, Sam had read the poor chump perfectly. When the sailor had finally crossed the street, Sam had come from the other direction. Don’t see me, he’d thought, and even when someone looked in his direction, it was with a hazy, unfocused glance. Sam moved seamlessly through the crowd and lifted the sailor’s wallet from his pants pocket with ease, then walked away without being noticed.
Where was his jacket? Sam chanced turning on a desk lamp. The light fell onto a stack of newspaper clippings a good two inches thick. He riffled through the stories, dismissing them with a smirk. Ghost stories. Spooky tales invented by folks who were afraid of living. Or who wanted attention. He knew the type. Then Sam’s smirk faded as his eyes fell on a small article from a Kansas paper that told of a fifteen-year-old girl who fell ill with the sleeping sickness. Just before she died, she repeated a phrase that baffled her family. It was only the same two words, over and over: Project Buffalo.
Sam returned the article to the stack with suddenly shaking hands. If this Professor Fitzgerald knew something about it, then he needed to find a way to stick close to him, maybe by staying cozy with his niece, which sounded like a pretty swell proposition. Unless she killed him in a fit of pique. She certainly seemed like the sort of doll who could do it. Sam smiled at the thought; he liked a challenge. And that one was definitely a challenge. All he needed was a way in.
He spied it hanging on the wall in the collections room: CEREMONIAL MASONIC KNIGHTS TEMPLAR DAGGER AND SCABBARD OWNED BY CORNELIUS T. RATHBONE, D. 1855. That ought to do it, Sam thought, tucking it into his shirt. He left the museum as he’d found it. By this time tomorrow, he’d have his jacket, and maybe a little reward money, too.