singers, gymnastic comedians, and a Russian clown, Koster and Bial were offering a program of short projected films, the first ever in New York, according to the notice. It seemed the right fare, and the theater was certainly convenient to Kreizler’s house. I grabbed the first cab I saw.
Mary was alone in the house on Seventeenth Street when I arrived, and in as depressed a mood as I’d expected to find her. She was also, at first, very resistant to the idea of venturing out. She looked away from me and shook her head vigorously, pointing around the rooms as if to indicate that her housekeeping chores were too extensive for her to even consider such an idea. But I had been inspired by the notion of cheering someone up: I described the bill at Koster and Bial’s with rare zest and to her wary glances replied that the outing would be nothing more than an expression of thanks for the excellent early morning breakfast. Reassured and obviously excited, she soon gave in and fetched her coat, as well as a small black hat. Not a sound escaped her as we went out of the house, but she smiled in a very pleased and grateful way.
For an idea that had grown out of such questionable feelings, this turned out to be a remarkably good one. We got into our seats at Koster and Bial’s, a very average theater of only moderate capacity, just as a music hall comedy team from London was winding up its performance. We were in time for the Russian clowns, whose silent antics Mary quite enjoyed. The comedic gymnasts, who threw barbs and jokes at each other while executing some truly remarkable physical feats, were also good, though I could have lived without the French singers and a rather strange dancer who followed them. The audience was large but good-natured, and Mary seemed to enjoy watching them almost as much as the acts.
There were no wandering eyes, however, when a glittering white screen descended across the proscenium and the house went completely black. Light flashed from somewhere behind us, and then there was near-panic in the first few rows when we were all faced with the image of a wall of blue seawater seemingly crashing into the theater. Naturally, none of us was familiar with the phenomenon of projected images, an experience that in this case had been heightened by the hand-tinting of the black-and-white film. After order had been restored in the theater and the first offering, “Sea Waves,” had come to an end, we were treated to eleven other brief subjects, including a pair of “Burlesque Boxers,” and some less amusing pictures of the German kaiser reviewing his troops. Sitting there in that nondescript theater one hardly had the sense that one was witnessing the advent of a new form of communication and entertainment that would, in the hands of such modern masters as D. W. Griffith, drastically change not only New York City but the world; I was far more concerned with the fact that those flickering, tinted images brought Mary Palmer and me closer together for a brief time, relieving the loneliness that was for me transitory and for her a permanent aspect of existence.
It wasn’t until we were back out on the street that my mental repose was turned to restless inquisitiveness by the training I’d struggled through during the last several weeks. As I watched my very pleased, very attractive companion enjoying the cold, bright afternoon, I wondered: How could this girl have killed her father? I fully appreciated that there were few things so reprehensible as a man violating his own daughter; but there were other girls who’d endured the experience without chaining the guilty party to a bed and roasting him alive. What had pushed Mary to the act? The beginnings of an explanation, I soon realized, were quite easy to detect even years after the fact. As Mary watched the dogs and pigeons in Madison Square Park, or when her blue eyes were captured by such glittering treasures as the enormous golden statue of naked Diana atop the square spire of Madison Square Garden, her lips moved as if to give expression to her pleasure—and then her jaws clamped closed, her face displaying a fear of what incoherent, humiliating noises might emerge should she try to speak. I remembered that Mary had been considered idiotic in her youth; and most children are anything but kind to idiots. In addition, her mother had considered her fit for nothing more than charwork. Thus by the time her father’s sexual advances began, Mary must already have been so frustrated and tormented that she was near ready to explode. Removal of any one of these disadvantages and wretched experiences might have changed the outcome of her life; together, they wove a fatal pattern.
Perhaps life had been very similar for our killer, I posited as Mary and I entered Madison Square Garden in order to have a cup of tea in the arcade restaurant on the roof. By now I had realized that a companion’s extensive chatter only made Mary feel more keenly her inability to participate verbally, so I began to communicate through smiles and gestures, privately pursuing what seemed a fertile line of psychological reasoning as I did so. With Mary sipping her tea and craning her neck in order to gather all the sights that were available from the excellent vantage point of the Garden’s roof arcade, I remembered what Kreizler had said the night before: that violence, for our murderer, had been the childhood starting point. In all likelihood that meant beatings administered by adults—such would fit with Laszlo’s theory that there were both self-protective and vengeful instincts at work in the man. But thousands of young boys suffered such torment. What had pushed this one, like Mary, over a seemingly indefinable but very real line into violence? Had he, too, suffered from some crippling impairment or deformity that during his youth made him an object of derision and scorn, not only on the part of adults, but of other children as well? And, having endured this, had he gone on to suffer (again like Mary) some sort of outrageous, degrading sexual assault?
It still seems odd that so lovely a girl as Mary Palmer should have inspired me to such grim cogitations; but odd or no, I felt I was onto something, and wanted to get Mary back to Kreizler’s place so that I could meet Marcus Isaacson on time and share my thoughts with him. I felt a bit bad about ending an outing that had brought Mary such apparent joy—by the time we reached Stuyvesant Park she was absolutely radiant—but she also had duties to attend to; and her mind was brought back to them in a rush, I could see, when she spotted Kreizler’s calash sitting outside the house on Seventeenth Street.
Stevie was brushing the horse Frederick down, while Kreizler was standing and smoking a cigarette on the small iron balcony that ran outside the French windows of the parlor on the second floor. Both Mary and I braced for trouble as we entered the small front yard; and we were both surprised when a very genuine smile came into Kreizler’s face. He took out his silver watch, checked the time, and spoke in a cheerful voice:
“You two must have had quite an afternoon—was Mr. Moore a satisfactory host, Mary?”
Mary smiled and nodded, then rushed to the front door. There she turned and, after removing the small black hat, said “Thank you” with a big smile and only a trace of difficulty. Then she disappeared inside, and I looked up at Kreizler.
“I believe we may yet get spring, John,” he said, indicating Stuyvesant Park with a wave of his cigarette. “Despite the cold, the trees are budding.”
“I thought you’d still be on Long Island,” I answered.
He shrugged. “There’s little for me to learn there. Sara, on the other hand, seemed quite fascinated by Mrs. Hulse’s attitude toward her children, so I left her. It may prove very useful for her, and she can take a train back tonight.” That seemed a bit strange, given the theories I’d cooked up earlier that day; but Kreizler’s manner was quite normal. “Will you come up for a drink, John?”
“I’ve got to meet Marcus at five—we’re going to explore the Golden Rule. Any interest?”
“A great deal of interest,” he answered. “But it will be better if I’m not seen in too many places associated with the case. I trust the pair of you to take copious mental notes. Remember—the keys will be in the details.”
“Speaking of that,” I said, “I’ve had some ideas that I think may be useful.”
“Excellent. We’ll discuss them at dinner. Telephone me at the Institute when you’ve finished. I’ve a few things to see to there.”
I nodded and turned to depart; but my perplexity was too strong to leave matters so unresolved.
“Laszlo?” I said uncertainly. “You’re not angry that I took Mary out this afternoon?”
He shrugged simply again. “You didn’t discuss the case with her?”
“No.”
“Then, on the contrary, I’m grateful. Mary isn’t exposed to enough people and new experiences. I’m sure it will have an excellent effect on her disposition.”
And that was that. I turned back around and headed through the gate, leaving behind the slight inkling into the behavior of my friends that I thought I’d achieved that morning. I got onto the Third Avenue El at Eighteenth Street and headed downtown, trying to keep my thoughts away from other people’s personal business and on the case. By the time we passed Cooper Square, I was actually succeeding; and when I met Marcus at Fourth Street, I was ready to pay close attention to his most recent theories on our murderer’s method, a recitation that took up most of our time during the march across town to the Golden Rule Pleasure Club.
