The Last Days of Night

The building is rapidly burning, with smoldering planks of wood falling in the hallway and stairs breaking under men’s feet as the building’s other occupants try to flee. A burning plank falls, blocking Paul’s path out. He has no choice but to shut the door and try to find a way out a window. Tesla is in shock, barely registering that there’s a fire. Throwing one of Tesla’s devices, Paul breaks a window. He tries to get a dissociated Tesla to move, and the ceiling caves in.

Paul survives the fire but is in and out of consciousness for weeks at Bellevue Hospital, heavily dosed on morphine. His ribs, nose, and left femur are broken. An unknown good Samaritan had dragged him from the burning building, but no one had seen Tesla escape. There were no bodies in the rubble. Tesla’s disappearance is a mystery.

A detective comes to speak with Paul a third time. Paul doesn’t remember speaking to him the first two times due to morphine, which disturbs him. He feels that he’s going to have to work harder to improve his mental capacities. The detective brings the commissioner of police, Fitz Porter, to speak to Paul. Before he joined the police department, Porter led the Union V Corps during the Civil War. This prompts Paul to reflect on his father’s mixed emotions during the war:

Since Erastus Cravath was both a committed pacifist and a passionate advocate for Negro rights, the war placed him on uncertain footing. To what depravities should the side of righteousness sink in furtherance of its noble goals? How many men could the Union slaughter and sacrifice in order to free the slaves? (136)

Porter says they haven’t found Tesla yet. They had thought the fire started in Tesla’s lab, but now they know someone lit it intentionally on the roof. When Paul doesn’t look surprised, the detectives ask if he knows of anyone who would want to do harm to Tesla. Paul only thinks of Edison but doesn’t reply. They tell him his powerful friend, Thomas Edison, has asked the mayor to make this arson case their top priority. The detectives are to report their findings to Edison. 

Agnes warmly visits Paul in the hospital, taking him outside in his wheelchair. She asks how he’s enjoying his morphine, casually mentioning one of her fellow performers using it to ease her throat after shows. Paul says he’s thankfully not on morphine anymore, just a mild dose of cocaine in the morning.

After chatting about her case (neither have heard from Foster yet), Agnes asks Paul if the fire was intentional. He says the fire was an accident most likely caused by one of Tesla’s machines. To Agnes’s surprise, he asks if she’s seen Tesla. She hasn’t, and neither has White. Everyone thinks he’s dead.

Westinghouse visits Paul a few days later. They discuss Batchelor as the suspected arsonist. Uncharacteristically and abruptly, Westinghouse apologizes to Paul for leading him onto the battlefield and that Paul’s the only one to sustain war wounds. Paul tries to ease Westinghouse’s guilt. They need to find Tesla but don’t trust the police or a famous detective agency Edison may have already reached.

Paul reveals to Westinghouse that the arsonist was likely trying to kill Tesla, finding him after following Paul to his lab. Tesla has so few people in the United States, there is only one other man they think of to help find him: Serrell. Paul’s ego is hurt when he’s reminded that Carter and Hughes have taken the reins on his case in his absence. 

Paul visits Serrell the day he’s discharged from the hospital with a cane. Serrell is cold to Paul when he arrives. He thinks Paul has conspired to kill Tesla over the $2.50 royalty error in their contract. His further evidence is that Paul was the only other person besides Serrell himself to know where Tesla’s laboratory was, and Paul was present during the fire.

Paul maintains his innocence, saying he wishes to find Tesla. Serrell says that Edison would already have killed Tesla if that’s what he wanted.

Paul leaves, forgetting his cane and angrily proclaiming that Edison (and Serrell, if he turns out to be Edison’s knowing accomplice) will not frame him for murder.

In his search for Tesla, Paul goes to every person and every laboratory with which the scientist may have visited. Still, no one has seen or heard from him.

As for the Huntington case, Foster has reached out to Fannie directly, warning her not to involve lawyers, as that will make it harder to resolve. Paul is at a bit of a loss on how to proceed but assures Fannie that he’s working on it. He feels guilty for not helping her.

The Westinghouse case is not going well, either. The judge in the countersuit against Edison ruled that Edison’s light bulb is different enough to not violate the Sawyer and Man patents purchased by Westinghouse. As Paul was still in the hospital, Carter and Hughes are appealing the ruling, but with little hope.

Paul goes back to his office for the first time since the fire. He wonders at how young he felt when he began working there a mere year ago, and how much older he feels now.

Carter and Hughes are meeting with a new client when Paul arrives. He is Charles Coffin, president of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company in Massachusetts. They intend to amass a team of players to help enact Westinghouse’s new business plan, the creation of a network of current. In this, Paul’s partners have been subcontracting out installation and manufacturing of generators to smaller companies around the country, including Coffin’s. Paul agrees that it’s a good plan and good way to save costs rather than shipping workers and materials of Westinghouse’s all over the country.

A few days later, Paul receives a personal note from Agnes, requesting he come to her dressing room at the Metropolitan Opera House so she can show him something.

This chapter explores New York’s high society culture and the uneasy balance between fashion and money.

The Met was founded in 1883 by the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Morgans. It was a response to the Academy of Music, which had sold all its boxes to elite New York families with old money and never included anyone new. The Met became a huge success, welcoming New York society’s new money, and the Academy closed soon after.

Paul reflects on the relationship between power and popularity in America, wondering, “What’s the use of being rich if not a soul admires you for it?” (152). He notices Edison’s electric lights adorning the halls of the opera house. The theater manager guides Paul through the auditorium. Its emptiness promises New York society’s backstabbing, social climbing, old family feuds, and dramas to be played out during future shows’ intermissions: “Empty in the quiet morning, the house seemed pregnant with the promise of the night’s warfare” (152).

Paul arrives at Agnes’s dressing room. Edison’s bulbs illuminate her colorful silk costumes more vividly than Paul has ever seen. Sitting on her daybed, rocking, and mumbling to himself, is Tesla.

According to Agnes, who Paul still doesn’t know if he can trust, Tesla appeared at the Met that morning to find her. He is still in the clothes Paul last saw him in the day of the fire, but he is filthy. Paul fears that whatever had enabled Tesla to communicate with the outside world is gone; he doesn’t seem to register what anyone is saying to him, lost in his own world.

The only other people who know Tesla is there is the theater manager and Fannie, according to Agnes. Paul has no choice but to trust her. He reveals that the fire wasn’t an accident, and he suspects Edison is trying to kill Tesla. Agnes is not surprised at this information, and suggests Tesla come stay at her house, where she and Fanny can nurse him. Paul is required to suddenly place even more trust in her. Fanny rounds out Paul’s plan:

And then, once he’s regained his senses—such as they are—you’ll get him to rejoin Westinghouse and create the device you need. The public will purchase Westinghouse’s systems rather than Edison’s. And then you will, I believe, be the lead litigator for the largest and most influential company in America. You and Westinghouse can buy the Boston Ideals if Mr. Foster threatens me again (157).

Paul is impressed and afraid of Agnes but knows if she’d wanted to sell him out to Edison, she already could. Paul and Agnes decide to dress Tesla in different clothes and leave separately. Paul agrees to come check on him after her performance.