'Oh, no,' said Brill, looking at the entryway to the breakfast room. Freud was on his way in, but not by himself. He was accompanied by another man, whom I had met in New Haven at the psychoanalytic congress there a few months ago. It was Ernest Jones, Freud's British follower.
Jones had come to New York to join our party for the week. He would then travel up to Clark with us on Saturday. About forty, Jones was as short as Brill but a little stouter, with an exceedingly white face, dark well-oiled hair, almost no chin, and a tight, thin-lipped smile more suggestive of self-satisfaction than amiability. He had the peculiar habit of looking away from a person while addressing him. Freud, who was joking with Jones as they approached our table, was plainly delighted to see him. Neither Ferenczi nor Brill appeared to share this sentiment.
'Sandor Ferenczi,' said Jones. 'What a surprise, old fellow. But you weren't invited, were you? By Hall, I mean, to give a paper at Clark?'
'No,' answered Ferenczi, 'but — '
'And Abraham Brill,' Jones went on, casting his eyes about the room as if expecting to find others he knew. 'How are we getting on? Still only three patients?'
'Four,' said Brill.
'Well, count yourself lucky, old man,' replied Jones. 'I am so crawling with patients in Toronto I don't have a minute to put pen to paper. No, all I have in the pipeline is my handwriting piece for Neurology, a little thing for Insanity, and the lecture I gave at New Haven, which Prince wants to publish. What about you, Brill, anything coming out?'
Jones's remarks had produced an atmosphere less than convivial. Brill assumed an expression of feigned disappointment. 'Only Freud's hysteria book, I'm afraid,' he said.
Jones's lips worked, but nothing came out.
'Yes, only my translation of Freud,' Brill went on. 'My German was rustier than I would ever have believed, but it's done.'
Relief filled Jones's countenance. 'Freud doesn't need translating into German, you sod,' he said, laughing out loud. 'Freud writes in German. He needs an English translator.'
'I am the English translator,' said Brill.
Jones looked dumbfounded. To Freud he said, 'You — you don't — you're letting Brill translate you?' And to Brill, 'But is your English quite up to it, old man? You are an immigrant, after all.'
'Ernest,' said Freud, 'you are displaying jealousy.'
'Me?' answered Jones. 'Jealous of Brill? How could I. be?'
At that moment, a boy carrying a silver platter called out Brill's name. The platter had an envelope on it. With a self-important air, Brill tipped the boy a dime. 'I've always wanted to receive a telegram in a hotel,' he said cheerily. 'I nearly sent one to myself yesterday, just to see how it felt.'
When, however, Brill pulled the message from its envelope, his features froze. Ferenczi seized the missive from his hands and showed it to us. The telegram read:
THEN THE LORD RAINED UPON SODOM BRIMSTONE AND FIRE
STOP AND LO THE SMOKE OF THE COUNTRY WENT UP AS
THE SMOKE OF A FURNACE STOP BUT HIS WIFE LOOKED
BACK FROM BEHIND HIM AND SHE BECAME A PILLAR OF
SALT STOP BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE STOP
'Again,' Brill whispered.
'I say,' Jones responded, 'there's no reason to look as if one had seen a ghost. It is plainly from some religious fanatic. America is full of them.'
'How did they know I would be here?' Brill replied, unreassured.
Mayor George McClellan lived on the Row, in one of the stately Greek Revival townhouses lining Washington Square North. Leaving his house early Wednesday morning, McClellan was startled to see Coroner Hugel rushing toward him from the park across the street. The two gentlemen met between the Corinthian columns framing the mayor's front door.
'Hugel,' said McClellan, 'what are you doing here? Good Lord, man, you look like you haven't slept in days.'
'I had to be sure of finding you,' exclaimed the winded coroner.
'Banwell did it.'
'What?'
'George Banwell killed the Riverford girl,' said Hugel.
'Don't be ridiculous,' replied the mayor. 'I've known Banwell for twenty years.'
'From the moment I entered her apartment,' said Hugel, 'he tried to obstruct the investigation. He threatened to have me removed from the case. He tried to prevent the autopsy.'
'He knows the girl's father, for God's sake.'
'Why should that prevent an autopsy?'
'Most men, Hugel, would not relish the sight of their daughter's corpse sawed open.'
If the mayor intended a hint concerning Hugel's sensibilities, the coroner did not take it. 'He fits the description of the murderer in every respect. He lived in her building; he was a friend of the family, to whom she would have opened her door; and he had her entire apartment cleared out before Littlemore could search it.'
'You had already searched it,' the mayor rejoined.
'Not at all,' said Hugel. 'I only inspected the bedroom. Littlemore was to search the rest of the apartment.'
'Did Banwell know Littlemore was coming? Did you tell him?'
'No,' the coroner grumbled. 'But how do you explain his terror at the sight of Miss Acton on the street yesterday?' He relayed to the mayor the account of the previous day's events reported to him by Littlemore. 'Banwell was trying to flee because he thought she would identify him as her attacker.'
'Nonsense' was the mayor's response. 'He met me in the hotel directly afterward. Are you aware that the Banwells and Actons are the closest of friends? Harcourt and Mildred Acton are at George's summer cottage now.'
'You mean he knows the Actons?' Hugel demanded. 'Why, that proves it! He is the only one who knew both victims.'
The mayor regarded the coroner dispassionately. 'What's that on your jacket, Hugel? It looks like egg.'
'It is egg.' Hugel wiped at his lapel with a yellowed handkerchief. 'Those hooligans on the other side of your park threw it at me. We must arrest Banwell at once.'
The mayor shook his head. The south side of Washington Square was not genteel, and McClellan had not been able to rid the southwest corner of the park of a gang of boys for whom proximity to the mayor's house must have been an additional inducement to their prankstering. McClellan strode past the coroner to the horse-drawn carriage awaiting him. 'I'm surprised at you, Hugel. Speculation piled on top of speculation.'
'It will not be speculation when you have another murder on your hands.'
'George Banwell did not kill Miss Riverford,' said the mayor.
'How do you know?'
'I know,' answered McClellan definitively. 'I won't hear another word of this ludicrous slander. Now go home. You are not fit to be in your office in this state. Get some rest. That's an order.'
The building Littlemore found at 782 Eighth Avenue — where Chong Sing supposedly lived in apartment 4C — was a five-story tenement, dirty, grimy, with fragrant shanks of red-roasted pork and dripping carcasses of duck hanging in the second-floor windows, behind which was a Chinese restaurant. Below the restaurant, at street level, was a dingy bicycle shop, the proprietor of which was white. All the other people in and around the building — the old women bustling in and out the front door, the man smoking a long pipe on the stoop, the faces peering out the upper-story windows — were Chinese.
When the detective began mounting the third flight of unlit stairs, a small man in a long tunic appeared out of the shadows, blocking his way. This man had a wispy beard, a queue hanging down his back, and teeth the color of fresh rust. Littlemore stopped. 'You go wrong way,' the Chinese said, without introduction. 'Restaurant back there.
