of women) who might have helped foster such rage. We could not succeed without that.
Sara nodded wearily at the thought of this new responsibility, and I knew I’d better get her away from Kreizler, who was exhausting enough even on a full night’s sleep. I opened the front door and guided her out into the elevator, and as we descended to the ground the only audible sound was the quiet, strangely comforting hum of the device’s engine echoing in the dark shaftway.
On the first floor we ran into the Isaacsons, whose return had been delayed not by the mob at Castle Garden (which had dissipated fairly soon after our departure) but by Theodore, who had insisted that they accompany him to one of his favorite Bowery haunts for a victory breakfast of steak and beer. The two detective sergeants looked just as exhausted as Sara and I, and since they had to go up and report before they’d be allowed any sleep, we didn’t talk much. Marcus and I made a quick plan to meet the following afternoon and venture over to the Golden Rule Pleasure Club, and then it was into the elevator for them and out to find a cab on largely deserted Broadway for Sara and myself.
There weren’t many hacks braving the early morning cold, though what few there were had mercifully congregated outside the St. Denis Hotel across the street. I helped Sara into a hansom, but before giving the driver her destination she looked up at the still-lit windows of the sixth floor of Number 808.
“He never seems to stop,” she said quietly. “It’s almost as if—as if he has a personal stake in it.”
“Well,” I answered, yawning broadly, “a lot of his professional ideas could be validated by the result.”
“No,” Sara said, still quietly. “Something else—something more…”
Following her gaze up to our headquarters, I decided to express a concern of my own: “I wish I knew what was going on with Mary.”
Sara smiled. “You never were the most romantically perceptive man, John.”
“Meaning?” I asked, genuinely baffled.
“Meaning,” Sara answered, somewhat indulgently, “that she’s in love with him.” As I stood there agape, she tapped on the roof of the hansom. “Gramercy Park, driver. Goodbye, John.”
Sara was still smiling as the cab pulled around and headed up Broadway. A couple of the other hacks asked me if I also needed a rig, but after that last bit of intelligence I could only shake my head blankly. Maybe the walk —or, as it was, stumble—home would help me make some sense of it, I thought; but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The implications of Sara’s statement, and the look on her face as she delivered it, were all too bizarre to be made sense of in a few weary minutes. All the walk did was exhaust me further, and by the time I hit the sheets in my grandmother’s house I was far too weak in body and disturbed in spirit to even remove my muddy clothes.
CHAPTER 16
An altogether unpleasant mood took hold of me during my sleep, and I woke at noon to find that my temper had shortened to a lamentable extent. This black outlook deepened when a messenger boy appeared with a note from Laszlo, written that morning. Apparently a Mrs. Edward Hulse of Long Island had been arrested during the night after trying to kill her own children with a carving knife. Though the woman had been released into her husband’s custody, Kreizler had been asked to assess her mental condition, and had invited Sara along. There was no thought of establishing a connection between Mrs. Hulse and our case, Laszlo explained; rather, Sara’s interest (which, sure enough, had been revitalized by several hours’ sleep) was in assembling details of character for the imaginary women that Laszlo had asked her to create as a way of further understanding our imaginary man. None of this was cause for annoyance on my part; it was more the way Kreizler phrased it all, as if he and Sara were off for a pleasant, stimulating day in the country together. As I crumpled the note up, I acidly wished them a lovely time; and I believe I spat in a sink afterwards.
A telephone call from Marcus Isaacson set our meeting for five o’clock, at the El station at Third Avenue and Fourth Street. I then dressed and surveyed the possibilities for my own afternoon—they appeared few and bleak. Emerging from my room, I discovered that my grandmother was giving a luncheon; the party consisted of one of her dim-witted nieces, the niece’s equally engaging husband (who was a partner in my father’s investment firm), and one of my second cousins. All three guests were full of questions about my father, questions that I, having been out of touch with him for many months, had no way of answering. They also made a few polite inquiries about my mother (who I did know was at that moment traveling in Europe with a companion), and politely dodged the subject of my former fiancee, Julia Pratt, whom they were acquainted with socially. The entire conversation was punctuated by insincere smiles and chuckles, and its general effect was to make me thoroughly morose.
The truth is, it had been many years since I’d been able to speak pleasantly with most members of my family, for reasons that, while powerful, were not difficult to explain. Right after I got out of Harvard, my younger brother —whose passage into adulthood had been even more troubled than my own—had fallen off a Boston boat and drowned. A lengthy autopsy revealed what I could have told anyone if they’d asked: that my brother had been a habitual user of alcohol and morphine. (During his last years he’d become a regular drinking companion of Roosevelt’s younger brother, Elliot, whose life was also ended by dipsomania some years later.) The funeral that followed was full of respectful but perfectly nonsensical tributes, all of which avoided the subject of my brother’s adult battle with terrible bouts of melancholy. There were many causes of his unhappiness, but at heart I believe now, as I believed then, that it was essentially the result of growing up in a household, and a world, where emotional expression of any kind was at best frowned on and at worst strangled. Unfortunately, I stated this opinion during the funeral, and was nearly forced into an asylum as a result. Relations between myself and my family had never quite recovered. Only my grandmother, who had doted on my brother, displayed any understanding of my behavior or any willingness to allow me into her home and her life. The rest of them regarded me as at least mentally impaired, and perhaps downright dangerous.
For all these reasons, the arrival of my relatives on Washington Square that day was a sort of crowning blow, and my disposition could not have been worse as I walked out the front door of the house into the chilly day. Realizing that I had absolutely no idea where I was going, I sat down on the steps, hungry and cold—and suddenly aware that I was jealous. The realization was so surprising that my tired eyes popped fully open. Somehow my unconscious mind had drawn some unpleasant conclusions from the pieces of information that I had received the night before: if Mary Palmer was in fact in love with Kreizler, and she saw Sara as a threat, and both Kreizler and Sara were aware of it, and Kreizler didn’t want Mary around as a result, but had no trouble spending swimming little spring afternoons with Sara—well, it was all fairly clear. Sara was obviously entranced by the mysterious alienist; and the iconoclastic Kreizler, who’d only had one romance in his life that I knew of, was taken with Sara’s fiercely independent ways. Not that it was a romantic sort of jealousy that had crept into me; I had only considered an amorous link with Sara once, years ago, and then just for a few drunken hours. No, I was more injured at the thought of being excluded. On such a morning (or afternoon) a jaunt to Long Island with friends would definitely have been beneficial.
I spent several minutes debating whether or not I should call on an actress with whom I’d passed many days (and still more nights) since the end of the Julia Pratt business; and then, for no reason that I could divine, my thoughts turned to Mary Palmer. Bad as I felt, she must have been feeling worse, if what Sara had said to me was true. Why not make a quick trip up to Stuyvesant Park, I mused, and give the girl an afternoon out? Kreizler might not approve; but Kreizler was off having a pleasant day with a splendid girl, and his complaints were therefore invalid. (Thus did spite work its inevitable way into my thoughts.) Yes, as I walked by the new arch at the north end of Washington Square Park, the idea only grew more appealing—but where exactly to take the girl?
On Broadway I corralled several paperboys, and relieved them of some of their wares. The previous night’s events at Castle Garden received much attention on the front pages. Apparently there was growing concern over the mood in the immigrant neighborhoods. A citizens’ committee was being formed to go to City Hall and express concern about both the murders and, more emphatically, the possible effect of those crimes on civic order. All of which meant little or nothing to me at that particular moment—I quickly turned to the entertainment pages. The pickings seemed slim, until I caught a notice for Koster and Bial’s theater on Twenty-third Street. In addition to
