stood by the door. “And I’m late. Finish the broth, John. Mr. Jonas!” She disappeared out the door. “I’ll need the elevator!”
Seeing that I was, in fact, able to feed myself, Cyrus seemed to relax considerably, and pulled up one of the delicate, straight-backed chairs with the silver and green upholstery. “You’re looking much better, sir,” he said.
“I’m alive,” I answered. “And even more remarkably, I’m in New York. I was sure I’d wake up in South America, or on a privateering ship. Tell me, Cyrus—my last memory is of Stevie. Did he…?”
“Yes, sir,” Cyrus answered evenly. “Confidentially, he’s had his share of trouble sleeping since he saw the body on the bridge. He was out roaming the neighborhood that night, when he saw you walking down Broadway. He said you looked—kind of unsteady on your feet, sir, so he followed you. Just to be sure you’d be all right. When he saw you go into Paresis Hall, he figured he’d wait outside. Understandably. But then a policeman caught sight of him, and accused him of the usual activity for that spot. Stevie denied it, and told the cop he was waiting for you. The officer didn’t believe him, and so Stevie bolted into the Hall. He wasn’t trying to rescue you, he was just trying to escape—but the way things worked out, the one was the other. The cop didn’t arrest anybody, of course, but he made sure you got out with your skin.”
“I see. And how did I get to—say, where in the hell
“Number 808 Broadway, Mr. Moore. Top floor, which would be the sixth. The doctor engaged it as a base of operations for the investigation. Not so close to Mulberry Street as’ll be noticed, but a carriage can have you there in just a few minutes. Or, if traffic’s heavy, the trolley will do the same.”
“And what about all these—furnishings, or whatever they are?”
“The doctor and Miss Howard went looking for furniture yesterday, over in Brooklyn. At an office supplier’s. But the doctor said he couldn’t live with that sort of stuff for a day, much less an extended period of time. So they bought just the desks, and then went to an auction on Fifth Avenue. The furniture of the Marchese Luigi Carcano of Italy was being sold off. They bought quite a bit of it.”
“They certainly did,” I said, as two of the workmen reappeared bearing a large clock, two Chinese vases, and some green draperies.
“As soon as we had most of it, the doctor figured he’d move you from his house to here.”
“That would be the earthquake,” I said.
“Sir?”
“A dream I had. Why here?”
“Said we couldn’t waste any more time nursing you. He gave you a little more chloral, so you’d come out of it easy. Wanted you ready for work when you woke up.”
Then there were more noises outside the door. I heard Kreizler say, “Ah, is he? Good!” and then he burst in, trailed by Stevie Taggert and Lucius Isaacson. “Moore!” he called. “You’re awake at last, eh?” He strode over and grabbed my wrist, checking the pulse. “How do you feel?”
“Not as bad as I expected to.” Stevie had taken a seat on one of the windowsills and was playing with a fairly sizable jackknife. “I understand I’ve got you to thank for that, Stevie,” I called. He just smiled and looked out the window, his hair falling in front of his face. “That’s a debt I won’t forget.” The boy laughed a bit; he never seemed to know what to make of being appreciated.
“It’s a miracle that he happened to follow you, Moore,” Kreizler said, pulling at my eyelids and examining the orbs underneath. “By all rights you should be dead.”
“Thank you, Kreizler,” I said. “In that case I don’t suppose you’d like to know what I discovered.”
“And what might that be?” he answered, probing my mouth with some kind of instrument. “That the Santorelli boy was never seen leaving Paresis Hall? That he was believed still in his chamber, from which there is no secondary exit?”
The thought that I’d endured my ordeal for nothing was truly depressing. “How do you know that?”
“We thought it was delirious rambling at first,” Lucius Isaacson said, going to one of the desks and emptying the contents of a paper sack onto it. “But you kept repeating it, so Marcus and I went down to check the story out with your friend Sally. Very interesting—Marcus is out working on some possible explanations right now.”
Cyrus crossed the room to hand Lucius an envelope. “Commissioner Roosevelt sent this by runner, Detective Sergeant.”
Lucius quickly opened and perused the message. “Well, it’s official,” he said uncertainly. “My brother and I have been ‘temporarily detached from the Division of Detectives, for personal reasons.’ I only hope my mother doesn’t hear about it.”
“Excellent,” Kreizler said to him. “You’ll have access to the resources of headquarters without being required to appear there regularly—an admirable solution. Perhaps now you can spend a little time teaching John here some slightly more sophisticated methods of detection.” Laszlo laughed once, then lowered his voice as he checked my heart. “I don’t mean to belittle your effort, Moore. It was an important bit of work. But do try to remember that this affair is no joke, especially to many of the people we shall be interviewing. Traveling in pairs on such occasions will be more prudent.”
“You’re preaching to the converted,” I answered.
Kreizler poked and prodded me a bit more, then stood away. “How’s your jaw?”
I hadn’t thought of it, but when I put my hand to my mouth there was some tenderness. “That dwarf,” I said. “He hasn’t got much without the razor.”
“Good man!” Kreizler laughed, slapping my back lightly. “Now finish your broth and get dressed. We’ve got an assessment to do at Bellevue, and I want Jonas’s men to finish this place. Our first staff meeting will be at five o’clock.”
“Assessment?” I said, getting to my feet and expecting to swoon again. But the broth really had restored me. “Who?” I asked, noticing that I was wearing a nightshirt.
“Harris Markowitz, of 75 Forsyth Street,” Lucius answered, walking (I’m reluctant to say waddling, though it had that aspect) over to me with a few sheets of typewritten paper. “A haberdasher. A couple of days ago his wife came in to the Tenth Precinct claiming her husband had poisoned their two grandchildren—Samuel and Sophie Rieter, ages twelve and sixteen—by putting what she called ‘a powder’ in their milk.”
“Poison?” I said. “But our man’s not a poisoner.”
“Not that we know of,” Kreizler answered. “But his activities may be more varied than we think—although I don’t actually believe this man Markowitz is any more connected to our case than Henry Wolff was.”
“The children do, however, fit the apparent pattern among the victims,” Lucius said, tactfully but pointedly. And then to me: “The Rieter children were recent immigrants—their father and mother sent them over from Bohemia to stay with Mrs. Rieter’s parents and try to find domestic work.”
“Immigrants, true,” Kreizler answered. “And if this were three years ago I might be impressed. But our quarry’s recent taste for prostitutes seems too significant, as do the current mutilations, to allow us to concentrate solely on the immigrant connection. However, even if this Markowitz isn’t involved with our business, there are other reasons to investigate such cases. By eliminating them, we can gain a clearer picture of what the person we seek is
Cyrus had brought me some clothes, and I began to put them on. “But aren’t we going to raise suspicions by doing so many assessments of child-murderers?”
“We must rely on the Police Department’s lack of imagination,” Laszlo answered. “It’s not unusual for me to be seen doing such work. The explanation for your presence, Moore, will of course be reporting. By the time anyone at headquarters thinks to connect it all to the current string of murders, our work will, I hope, be done.” He turned to Lucius. “Now, then, Detective Sergeant, you might just review the details of the case for our adventurous friend, here.”
“Well, Markowitz was clever enough,” Lucius answered, almost as if he admired the man. “He used a large amount of opium, all residual bodily traces of which, as you may know, vanish within hours of death. He put it in two glasses of milk, which were fed to the grandchildren at bedtime. When they’d slipped into a comatose state, Markowitz turned on the gas jet in their room. The police arrived the next morning, the place stank of gas, and the detective in charge drew the obvious conclusion. His hypothesis seemed confirmed when the coroner—actually a fairly capable man, in this case—had the contents of the stomachs checked and nothing out of the ordinary turned up. But when the wife kept insisting that the poisoning had in fact taken place, an idea occurred to me. I went down to the flat and located the bedclothes that the children had slept on. It was likely that at least one of the victims
