The Alienist

me to walk home alone—you’ve got the gun, remember. Goodbye, John. See you tonight.”

“Tonight,” I said with a nod. “Good work, Lucius!”

The shorter Isaacson turned, rolling one hand perfunctorily. “Oh. Yes, thanks, John. You, too. And Sara, and —well, I’ll see you later.”

They strolled away down the street, chattering and arguing until they were out of sight.

The ground-floor door of the Institute opened again and Kreizler emerged, putting on his jacket. He looked even worse than Lucius: his face was pale and there were enormous circles under his eyes. It seemed to take him a moment to identify me.

“Ah, Moore,” he finally said. “I didn’t expect you. Though I am, of course, pleased.” Then, to Cyrus: “We’re finished, Cyrus. You know what to do?”

“Yes, sir. The driver with the van should be here in just a few minutes.”

“He’ll take care not to be seen?” Kreizler asked.

“He’s a very reliable man, Doctor,” Cyrus replied.

“Good. Then you can ride with him as far as Seventeenth Street. I’ll drop Moore off at Washington Square.”

Kreizler and I climbed into his rig and roused the slumbering Stevie, who turned the horse Frederick around and urged him gently forward. I didn’t press Laszlo for information, knowing that he would provide it when he’d had a few minutes to collect himself.

“Lucius told you that we found nothing?” he finally asked as we moved at an easy pace back up Broadway.

“Yes,” I answered.

“No evidence of either congenital abnormality or physical trauma,” Laszlo went on quietly. “Nor of any of the other physical peculiarities that might indicate mental disease or defect. In every way, a perfectly normal, healthy brain.” Kreizler leaned back, letting his head rest against the calash’s folded cover.

“You’re not disappointed, are you?” I asked, a bit confused by his tone. “After all, it proves that you were right—he wasn’t crazy.”

“It indicates that I was right,” Kreizler answered evenly. “We know so little about the brain, Moore…” He sighed, but then tried to rouse himself. “However, yes, to the best of our present psychological and medical knowledge, John Beecham was not insane.”

“Well,” I said, reluctantly recognizing that it was going to be difficult for Kreizler to take any satisfaction from the achievement. “Sane or not, he’s no longer a danger. And that matters more than anything.”

Laszlo turned to me as Stevie took a left turn onto Prince Street in order to avoid the intersection of Houston and Broadway. “You really didn’t feel much pity for him by the end, did you, Moore?” Laszlo asked.

“Ah,” I noised uncomfortably. “To be honest, I felt more than I wanted to. You certainly seemed shaken up by his death.”

“Not so very much by his death,” Kreizler answered, producing his silver cigarette case. “By his life. The evil stupidity that created him. And the fact that he died before we could truly study him. The entire thing seems so wretchedly futile…”

“If you wanted him alive,” I asked, as Laszlo lit a cigarette, “then why did you say that you were hoping Connor would follow us? You must have known he’d try to kill Beecham.”

“Connor,” Laszlo said, coughing a bit. “There, I must confess, is something I don’t regret about this night.”

“Well”—I tried to be judicious—“I mean, he’s dead, after all. And he did save our lives.”

“Nothing of the kind,” Kreizler replied. “McManus would have stepped in before Beecham could have done any real harm—he was watching the entire time.”

“What? Then why did he wait so long? I lost a tooth, for God’s sake!”

“Yes,” Kreizler answered uneasily, touching the small incision on his face, “he did make rather a close thing of it. But I’d told him not to interfere until he was certain the danger was mortal, because I wanted to observe as much of Beecham’s behavior as I could. As for Connor, all I was hoping for from his appearance was that we’d apprehend him. That, or…”

There was a terrible finality and loneliness in Laszlo’s voice as he said this, and I knew that I’d better change the subject if I wanted to keep him talking:

“I saw Kelly tonight. I take it you went to him because you had no other option.” Kreizler nodded, still staring off with bitterness in his black eyes. “He told me why he agreed to help you. Or rather, he hinted at it. He thinks you’re quite a danger to the status quo in this society.”

Laszlo grunted. “Perhaps he and Mr. Comstock should compare notes. Although if I’m a danger to society, such men as they will be the death of it. Particularly Comstock.”

We took a right turn on MacDougal Street, wending our way past small, dark restaurants and Italian cafes toward Washington Square. “Laszlo,” I said, after he’d grown silent again, “what did you mean when you told Beecham that you might be able to arrange a less severe fate for him? You wouldn’t have argued that he was mad, just to keep him alive for study?”

“No,” Kreizler answered. “But I intended to remove him from immediate danger, and then to plead for a life sentence rather than the electrical chair or the gallows. It had occurred to me some time ago that his observation of our efforts, his letter, even his murder of the boy Joseph, all indicated a desire to communicate with us. And when he began to answer my questions tonight, I knew that I’d found something I’d never really come across before—a man who murdered apparent strangers and was willing to talk about his crimes.” Kreizler sighed again and held up his hands weakly. “We’ve lost a tremendous opportunity. Such men will seldom do that, you see— discuss their behavior. They’re reluctant to admit their deeds after capture, and even if they do, they won’t discuss the intimate details. They don’t seem to know how. Look at Beecham’s last words—he’d never been able to say just what it was that made him kill. But I believe I could have helped him find words for it, in time.”

I studied my friend carefully. “You know that they wouldn’t have let you.” Kreizler shrugged obstinately, unwilling to concede the point. “With the political dimension this thing was assuming?” I went on. “He’d have had one of the fastest trials in recent memory, and been strung up in a matter of weeks.”

“Perhaps,” Kreizler said. “We’ll never know, now. Ah, Moore—there are so many things that we’ll never know, now…”

“Will you at least allow yourself credit for finding the man? That’s a fairly amazing feat on its own, damn it all.”

Laszlo shrugged again. “Is it? I wonder. How long would he have stayed hidden from us, John?”

“How long? Well, a good long time, I suppose—hell, he’d been at it for years.”

“Yes,” Kreizler answered, “but how much longer? The crisis was inevitable—he couldn’t go forever without society being aware of him. He wanted that, wanted it desperately. If the average person were to describe John Beecham in light of his murders, he’d say he was a social outcast, but nothing could be more superficial, or more untrue. Beecham could never have turned his back on human society, nor society on him, and why? Because he was—perversely, perhaps, but utterly—tied to that society. He was its offspring, its sick conscience—a living reminder of all the hidden crimes we commit when we close ranks to live among each other. He craved human society, craved the chance to show people what their ‘society’ had done to him. And the odd thing is, society craved him, too.”

“Craved him?” I said, as we passed along the quiet perimeter of Washington Square Park. “How do you mean? They’d have shot him through with electricity if they’d had the chance.”

“Yes, but not before holding him up to the world,” Kreizler answered. “We revel in men like Beecham, Moore—they are the easy repositories of all that is dark in our very social world. But the things that helped make Beecham what he was? Those, we tolerate. Those, we even enjoy…”

As Kreizler’s gaze drifted away again, the calash rolled to a slow stop outside my grandmother’s house. The sky was only beginning to glow in the east, but there was already a light on in the upper floors of Number 19 Washington Square. As Kreizler turned his head to take in the streets around him, he caught sight of that light, and it brought the first small smile of the morning to his face.

“How has your grandmother felt about your involvement in a murder case. Moore?” he asked. “She always took a lively interest in the macabre.”