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stone thrown into the pool as the causative factor in the mayor’s death. He gave some thought to this lunatic named Prendergast: likely alone and lonely, living apart, a Grendel creature holed up in some urban cave. The man was perhaps bedazzled by the cityscape, the cold streets, and finally the fantastically huge Grecian edifices created for the fair. He’d likely become both enchanted by it all and mad as hell by it all. As it all may well have combined to give him a false faith—the kind of obsession of an Ahab. An obsession that had convinced Prendergast that he deserved a seat at the table alongside Benjamin Harrison, Wild Bill Cody, Little Egypt, and Mayor Carter Harrison.
    Perhaps like so many thousands, the city itself had whispered promises in his ear, convincing Prendergast to never again take no for an answer, and that he should not be disenfranchised or alienated, not by man nor machine— and politics in Chicago was indeed a machine .
    Alastair became instantly angry with himself for rationalizing the assassin’s monstrous act. To shake it off, he relit his pipe, and he uselessly shouted for the mob that’d gathered at the mayor’s house to break up and move along. He may as well have been asking the trees lining Ashland Avenue to move along.
    The grand fair had brought greatness to the city, had brought refinery, had even brought world renown, establishing Chicago as a contender for trade and commerce around the world, able to compete with London, Paris, Moscow, and all across the globe. chicago bedevils new york as an upstart city had been a recent wishful Tribune headline, the subtitle: jobs galore here. The grand fair had gotten Chicago a big head of steam and pride up.
    However, the same fair had now ended in colossal tragedy and shame.
    How would the murder of the mayor play in the national press? What would it say about Chicago? That it remained a rough and tumble pioneer city and no safe place for women and children?
    Ransom told his own troubled mind that he didn’t even want to get into how the damnable fair had changed people he knew personally, how it had changed their politics and their perceptions of the world. Sure, he could accept the fact that he was no longer at ease with his city, and he could make adjustments as required, but others could not, while still others only wanted what they considered their “share” of the spoils. And make no mistake about it, Chicago crawling from the muck and mire of a mosquito-infested backwoods hovel to a world leader was a war, a war of economics and geography. And God help the poor sots who got in the way of progress, development, land speculation, growth, and the making of money hand over fist. Beneath the sheen and gilded exterior of the city, another world existed—a world as grim and poverty-stricken as Calcutta, Shanghai, or portions of New Orleans and New York from which men like Prendergast sought to save themselves, a world ignored by the rich and powerful. Perhaps one day poverty and illiteracy would be a thing of the past. Ransom certainly hoped so.
    The chief architect of the fair, Daniel H. Burnham, had become famous for the beautiful structures he’d built to grace the lakefront, and for his now famous quote, repeated on the lips of every Chicago businessman: “Make no little plans…as they have no magic.”

CHAPTER 4
    As Alastair watched Dr. Tewes— Jane Francis —go off to mesmerize the grieving son, widow, and close-knit friends and family in another show of magic, he stooped to pick up one of the World’s Fair brochures off the dead man’s lawn. The pamphlets dotted the streets nowadays like leaves after a storm. This one was blood-splattered. Perhaps thrown into the mayor’s face moments before Prendergast pulled the trigger. Ransom even imagined the mayor clutching it as his last act in this life.
    The little brochure, handed to everyone at the fair entrances,