The meal soon came to an end, and—it being Sunday and all the places what Dr. Kreizler had mentioned as possible sources of information being closed—everyone agreed to go home, take care of what few details they could, and try to get some rest. As we left the Café Lafayette the Isaacsons hailed a hansom, while the Doctor offered to drop Mr. Moore and Miss Howard off. Then it was back to Seventeenth Street and, for me, into the carriage house, to take care of the calash and put a little balm on the spot on Frederick’s haunch where he’d been struck by Ding Dong.
The blow hadn’t left much of a mark, but I could tell as I applied the balm that it still stung Frederick a bit, and I made some calming noises and fed him a bit of sugar as I rubbed the medicine in. It made me all the madder to think that a man I’d always counted as one of the worst I knew—and, since visiting Kat the night before, had come to hate even more—had caused Frederick such pain and confusion, and as I worked on the animal’s haunch I quietly assured him that I’d see that the wound was taken back out of Ding Dong’s hide, one day. With interest, too …
Caught up in these bitter thoughts, I barely noticed Cyrus slipping into the carriage house. He came over and stroked Frederick’s neck, looking straight into the gelding’s eyes and giving him some words of sympathy. Then he spoke to me:
“He okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, holding up Frederick’s left hind leg and scraping some hard mud out of his shoe. “Not much of a welt. Scared him worse than anything.”
“He’s a tough old boy,” Cyrus said, patting the horse’s snout lightly. Then he came round and stood by me. I got the feeling he had something on his mind.
“Miss Howard didn’t hear. What Ding Dong said about Kat, I mean.”
My heart jumped a little, but I kept on scraping. “No?”
“She was too far away. And she had her hands full.” Cyrus crouched down beside me. In a quick glance I saw some inquisitiveness in his broad face, but more sympathy. “I heard it, though.”
“Oh,” was all I could answer.
“You want to talk about it, Stevie?”
I tried to summon up a light, dismissive kind of a laugh, but came up far short. “Not much to say. She’s gone to be his girl.” I almost choked on the words. “I told her—you know, about the idea of her working here. But you were right. She’s got other plans …”
Cyrus just made a small sound that said he got the picture. Then he put a hand on my shoulder. “You need anything?”
“Nah,” I said, still staring at the horse’s hoof. “I’ll be okay. Just gotta finish up out here, that’s all.”
“Well… there isn’t any reason for the Doctor to know this part of the story. Doesn’t have anything to do with the case that I can tell.”
“Right.” I finally managed to give my friend another quick look. “Thanks, Cyrus.”
He just nodded, stood up, and left the carriage house slowly.
I stayed at my work for several more minutes, the caked mud in Frederick’s shoe coming away quicker as it mixed with my silent tears.
CHAPTER 19
It’s a peculiar thing, how you can go to bed one night convinced of a fact and wake up the next morning to find yourself faced with its opposite…
When I drifted off soon after sunset on that Sunday evening, I was dead certain that I would never see Kat again: even if my heart could have stood visiting her at the Dusters’ joint, things had so fallen out with Ding Dong during our jaunt to Bethune Street as to make even an attempt at such a visit worth my life. The realization that the door on my strange relationship with her seemed to have suddenly swung shut alternately angered and saddened me all through Sunday afternoon and evening. So black and blue did my mood become, in fact, that the Doctor—preoccupied as he was with the case-felt the need to visit me in my room and ask whether I was feeling all right. I didn’t tell him the true story, and he, of course, sensed that I was holding something back; out he didn’t press it, just told me to get some extra sleep and see how things looked in the morning.
I woke at just past 8:30 on Monday to find the Doctor and Cyrus getting ready to head up to the Museum of Natural History. Mrs. Leshko was, not for the first time, late, and Cyrus was seeing to the preparation of coffee, a task what he could accomplish with far happier results than could our Russian cook. The three of us sat in the kitchen and had big mugs of a fine South American brew, the Doctor trying to cheer me up by reading aloud the details of a lead story in the Times that concerned new developments in the “mystery of the headless body.” It seemed that the lower torso of the still unidentified corpse (wrapped in the same red oilcloth what Cyrus and I had seen at the Cunard pier) had washed up at the watery edge of the woods near Undercliff Avenue, all the way on the north side of Manhattan. The police—whose theory of a crazed anatomist or medical student had been dismissed even by the coroner they themselves had engaged, after the man had found about a dozen stab wounds and a couple of .32-caliber bullet holes in various parts of the body—had changed their theory, and were now trying to drum up panic and excitement by saying the body belonged to one of two lunatics who’d escaped from the State Asylum at King’s Park, Long Island, a couple of weeks earlier. This story, we all knew, was as likely to prove true as the first; but whatever the real identity of the unfortunate soul whose body’d been distributed all over town, the attention that the case continued to receive could only help us to go about our work more easily.
The Doctor and Cyrus headed off at a little before nine, and though a visit to the Museum of Natural History would ordinarily have been my sort of fare, the morning was a cool, grey one, and my spirits were such that I found the idea of staying home alone somewhat comforting. And, of course, it was advisable that someone stick around and try to determine what in the world had become of Mrs. Leshko. So I walked the pair of them out to the calash and saw them off, pausing to glance up at the misty sky before heading back to the house.
I’d just gotten the door open when a voice whispered tome:
“Stevie!”
It was coming from beyond some hedges on the east side of the Doctor’s small front yard. Carefully closing the front door again, I crept over to the hedge, looked up and over it, and found—
Kat. She was crouched down low and huddling by the side of the building next door, her clothes looking very wrinkled, her hair undone, and her face a picture of exhaustion. I couldn’t’ve been more surprised if she’d been a ghost or one of those mythical sirens, so resigned had I become during the last twelve hours to never seeing her again.
“Kat?” I said, keeping my own voice low. Then I rushed around the hedge to her. “What the hell’re you doing? How long you been here?”
“Since about four,” she said, glancing up and down the block, more so she wouldn’t have to look me in the eye than because she was trying to locate anything. “I think.” Her eyes turned watery, she began to sniffle hard and painfully; and when she wiped at her nose with a filthy old handkerchief, it came away bloody.
“But why?”
She shrugged miserably. “Had to get out of there—he was like a maniac last night. In fact, I ain’t so sure he ain’t a maniac, sometimes…”
“Ding Dong?” I said, to which she nodded. My eyes fell to the ground. “It’s my fault, ain’t it….”
She shook her head quickly, the tears thickening in those blue eyes that still refused to look into mine: “That wasn’t it. Wasn’t most of it, anyway …” She finally sobbed once. “Stevie, he’s got three other regular girls—three! And I’m the oldest! He never told me that!”
I had no idea what to say; the information didn’t surprise me, of course, but I wasn’t about to tell her so. “So,” I tried, “did—did you two have an argument or something?”
“We had a fight, is what we had!” she said. “I told him I don’t play second fiddle to no twelve-year-old piece of trash—” She slammed her fist against the side of her forehead. “But now all my things are down there …”
I smiled a little. “All your things? Kat, you got two dresses, one coat, and a shawl—”
“And my papa’s old wallet!” she protested. “The one with my mother’s picture in it—that’s there, too!”
I gave her a straight look. “But that ain’t what’s makin’ this hard, right?” I touched her elbow, trying to get her to look at me. “He won’t give you any burny, will he?”
“Bastard!” she grunted, sobbing again. “He knows how much I need it now, he swore he’d never cut me off!” She finally glanced once into my eyes, real pathetically, then threw herself against me hard. “Stevie, I’m just about going out of my skull, I’m hurtin’ for it so bad.”
I put my arms around her shivering shoulders. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get inside—a little strong coffee’ll take some of the edge off of it.”
I got her up and half carried her to the front door of the Doctor’s house, where she paused once fearfully.
“They’re—all gone, right?” she said, looking up at the parlor windows. “I waited for ’em to go, I don’t want you gettin’ into no trouble—”
“They’re gone,” I said as reassuringly as I knew how. “But there wouldn’t be any trouble, anyway. The Doctor ain’t that way.”
She let out a doubtful little noise as we went inside.
I guided her to the kitchen and a mug of Cyrus’s coffee. Her eyes got wider as she began drinking it and taking the house in; and I’ll confess that, seeing the look in those eyes, my notion of bringing her to work for the Doctor resurfaced in my thoughts. So I took her on up to the parlor, to let her get the full effect of the place. Strengthened by the strong coffee, she began to move around more bravely and even smiled, amazed at all the wondrous and beautiful things the Doctor owned—and even more amazed that I lived in such a place.
“He must work you to the bone,” she said, opening the silver cigarette case on the marble mantel.
“It ain’t the work that’s tough,” I said, sitting in the Doctor’s chair like I was lord of the house. “He makes me study.”
“Study?” Kat said, her face filling with near disgust. “What the hell for?”
I shrugged. “Says if I ever want to live in a house like this, that’s what’s gonna get me there.”
“Who’s he kiddin’?” she answered. “I bet it wasn’t studyin’ that got him here.”
I just shrugged again, not wanting to admit that the Doctor came from money.
“I can see why you like it so much, though,” Kat went on, looking around. “Beats hell out of Hudson Street, that’s for sure.”
At the sound of those words a thought suddenly occurred to me, a thought that maybe should’ve jumped into my head as soon as I saw Kat, if only worrying about her hadn’t, as usual, scrambled my mind up so much.
“Kat,” I said slowly, considering the thing, “how long you been spending time at the Dusters’ joint?”
She sat down in the big easy chair across from me, holding her arms into her like she was cold and then shrugging as she sipped at her coffee. “Dunno—maybe a month or so. First met Ding Dong about then, anyways.”
“You know pretty much who comes in and outta there, then, I guess, right?”
She shrugged again. “The regulars, sure. But you know that place, Stevie, they got swells from all over town slummin’ every night. Half the city’s been through there at some point or other.”
“But the regulars—you would recognize them?”
“Probably. Why do you wanna know?” She got up and moved over to me. “What’s that look on your face, Stevie? You’re actin’ so odd all of a sudden.”
I just stared at the carpet for a few seconds, then grabbed her hand. “Come on with me.”
Making for the staircase, I half dragged Kat up to the Doctor’s office. The drapes were still drawn in the dark-paneled room, and it was hard to make anything out clearly. I tripped a couple of times on my way to the window, and when I gave the drapery cord a good tug I saw that it was still more piles of books what had waylaid me: the study was an even bigger mess than it’d been the previous week.
Kat glanced around, frowning and wiping at her nose. “This room don’t do much for me,” she said, mystified and put off. “What’s he want with so many damned books, anyway?”
I didn’t answer; I was too busy going through papers on the Doctor’s desk, looking for something, hoping that the detective sergeants had left at least one copy—
I found it lying underneath a thick book by Dr. Krafft-Ebing: one of the photographed copies of the sketch that Miss Beaux had done of Nurse Hunter.
Moving it closer to the light that came in through the sheer white curtains that still covered the windows, I signaled to Kat that she should join me.
“You ever seen this lady?” I asked, showing her the picture.
Her face filled with recognition right away. “Sure,” she said.
“That’s Libby.”
“Libby?”
“Libby Hatch. One of Goo Goo’s molls,” she went on, referring to Goo Goo Knox, the leader of the Dusters. Kat’s face twisted up in that way it did when she didn’t understand something, like her nose’d been attached to a drill bit. “What the hell’s your doctor pal doin’ with a picture of Libby? A good one, too.”
“Libby Hatch,” I said quietly, looking out the window for a few seconds—enough time to realize that, as Miss Howard had said the day before, this whole thing was a lot more complicated than it’d originally looked.
Again I grabbed Kat’s hand. “Come on!”
She flew along behind me like a rag doll as I ran back for the door, then spun round again and headed back to the desk, slapping open a leather-bound book of addresses and telephone numbers what the Doctor kept on it. “Stevie!” Kat said. “Do you think you could quit yanking me around like that? I ain’t exactly feeling athletic, you know!”
“Sorry,” I said, opening the book to the “I” section with one hand, finding a number, and then charging back to the door with Kat still in tow.
“Ow!” she cried. “Stevie, are you listening to me at all?”
I didn’t answer as we shot back down to the kitchen, then through to the pantry. Finally letting go of Kat’s hand, I grabbed hold of the telephone’s receiver and mouthpiece. In a couple of seconds I had an operator on the line, and I gave her the number of the detective sergeants’ house, or rather, their parents’ house, what was located down on Second Street between First and Second Avenues, next to the old Marble Cemetery and not far from two or three synagogues.
The ‘phone on the other end rang, and a woman’s voice answered, yelling into the thing the way people who still considered it a fantastic invention were like to do.
“Hallo?” the woman said, through a thick accent. “Who ist da?”
“Yes,” I answered, “I’d like to speak to one of the detective sergeants, please.”
Kat took a step back, looking worried. “Stevie—you ain’t callin’ the cops on me?” As usual, her first calculation was that anything what happened had something to do with her.
“Relax,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s—business.” I liked the feeling of being able to tell her that. “Go get yourself some more coffee. We got an icebox, too, if you want—”
I stopped when I realized that the woman on the ‘phone was yelling at me. “Detective sergeant—vat vun? Lucius or Marcus?”
“Hunh? Oh. Either, it don’t—it doesn’t matter.”
“Marcus iss not here! Headqvarters! I get Lucius! Who ist—whom ist calling?”
“Just tell him it’s Stevie.”
“Stevie?” she repeated, not sounding too impressed. “Stevie who? Stevie vat?”
I was getting a little impatient. “Doctor Stevie!” I said, raising a small laugh out of Kat, who’d gone to investigate the food in the new icebox.
“Business,” she said, giving me a cunning little sideways glance. “Sure …”
“Oh, ah, Doctor Stevie!” the woman o
n the line said, satisfied. “Only just ein moment, please!”
She set the ‘phone down with a crash that echoed into my ear and made me pull my receiver away. “Jesus Christ!” I said, hoping my eardrum wasn’t busted. “Whole damned family’s nuts …”
In a few seconds the ‘phone on the other end rattled around again, and I heard Detective Sergeant Lucius speaking, though not into it. “No, Mama, Stevie isn’t a doctor,” he just—please, Mama, go!” There were some unidentifiable protests from the woman, then Lucius again: “Mama! Go!” He took a deep breath and spoke into the phone. “Stevie?”
“Right here.”
“I’m sorry about that. She still doesn’t really understand this thing, and I don’t know that she ever will. What’s going on?”
” I got some news, and I think it’ll save you and Detective Sergeant Marcus some work. Can you collect him and get over here?”
“I can come,” Lucius answered. “I’ve been doing the chemical analysis of the sample I took from the tip of that stick, but I just finished. It is strychnine, by the way. But Marcus is poking around down at headquarters, then going on to the Doctor’s Institute. Why?”
“I think you’d better tell him to come up,” I said. “What I’ve found, it—I think it’s important.”
“Where’s the Doctor?”
“Him and Cyrus went to the museum already. They shouldn’t be too long, though. Can you make it?”
“I’ll get a cab now, and try to intercept Marcus at the Institute.” He yelled away from the telephone again: “No, Mama, that’s the chemicals you’re smelling, there’s nothing to clean—” His voice came back to me. “I’ve got to go before my mother sets herself on fire. See you in half an hour.” The line clicked, and I hung the receiver up.