CHAPTER 6

As we ate supper in amongst the iron trellises and overhanging greenery of the Café Lafayette’s outdoor terrace on Ninth Street and University Place, the Isaacsons told us what they believed they’d learned from their interview with Señora Linares. The theory put their talent for drawing unexpected conclusions from what seemed like a confused jumble of facts on ample display-and, as usual, kept the rest of us shaking our heads in amazement.

The blow that the señora’d taken across the back of the head, the detective sergeants said, presented us with two choices as to her attacker: either a good sap man, a specialist who’d had a lot of experience rendering people unconscious, or someone of much more limited strength who’d landed a lucky shot that didn’t do any really severe damage. There were real problems with the first idea: if the attack had been the work of an expert, he’d have to’ve been about the same height as the señora, given the angle and location of the hit, and he’d have to’ve put his sap away in favor of a much harder and more risky weapon, such as a piece of pipe. Even more important, though, was the fact that he’d risked being spotted in what was a very public and popular location-right outside the Metropolitan Museum -at an extremely risky time of day.

Given these considerations, the detective sergeants were prepared to dismiss the idea that the Linares baby had been taken by a professional kidnapper, whether someone working for hire or in business for himself. Such characters just wouldn’t take the risk of whacking somebody on the head with an unpadded piece of pipe, and they certainly liked to make their moves in more isolated spots than the Egyptian obelisk in Central Park. That left us with the notion of an amateur, one probably working without a plan-and it was very possible, maybe even likely, that said amateur was a woman. The fact that the señora herself had referred to her attacker as “him” didn’t count for anything: she’d admitted that she’d never gotten a look at the person, and, coming from an upper-class diplomatic family, she’d just assumed that no woman would be capable of such an act. But the blow itself was consistent with a woman of average strength who was about the señora’s size-and the description that she herself had given of the woman on the train matched these specifications.

What about that description, anyway? Mr. Moore wanted to know. What made the detective sergeants so ready to accept what she said? Wasn’t it an awfully detailed story for someone with one good eye who’d just caught a quick glimpse of her missing child-and was in a sudden state of shock as a result-to come up with? Not at all, Lucius answered; in fact, the señora’s description had lacked certain details that what he called “pathological liars” (which, I knew from the Doctor’s work, meant people who were so far gone that they actually believed the lies they told) would’ve included. For instance, she could say generally what kind of clothes the woman was wearing but not what color; she could give a vague idea of the woman’s size but nothing more; and she couldn’t even remember if the woman’d had a hat on. And there were other, more subtle reasons to think that she’d been telling the truth at just that point-“physiological reasons,” Lucius termed them.

Apparently, some bright bulbs in the detecting world had recently been floating the idea that people undergo physical changes when they lie. Some of the possible symptoms, these types said, were a quickening of the pulse rate and respiration, increased perspiration and muscle tension, and a few other, less obvious alterations. Now, there was no actual medical or what Lucius called “clinical” support for any of this; but all the same, Marcus had, as I’d noticed, kept one finger on the señora’s wrist while they were discussing the mysterious woman on the train. At the same time, he’d kept a steady eye on his watch. They’d been talking about some very upsetting subjects, but there’d been no change in Señora Linares’s pulse rate at any time, not even when she looked at the photograph of her daughter. Like so many of the Isaacsons’ techniques and conclusions, that one wouldn’t have meant anything in a court of law, but it gave them further reason to buy what she was saying.

All this was enough to quiet Mr. Moore’s doubts about the señora-but the more important issue continued to be whether or not Dr. Kreizler would be willing to get involved in the case. I took a lot more grilling on this score, along with Cyrus, after he got back from the Astoria, and I’ll confess that the both of us grew a little defensive after a while. Whatever our own fascination with the case, our first loyalty was to the Doctor, and the Linares business was quickly growing into something much deeper and more challenging than a night’s diversion. Neither Cyrus nor I was sure that the Doctor was in any shape to go getting involved with a venture what was so demanding. It was true, as Mr. Moore pointed out, that given the court order, our friend and employer would have some time on his hands; but it was also true that the man was in sore need of rest and healing. Miss Howard respectfully observed that the Doctor always seemed to find the most peace and solace in some kind of work; but Cyrus answered that he was at a lower point than any of us had ever witnessed before and that sooner or later every person has to stop and take a breather. There was just no way to call it in advance, and by meal’s end we’d come back to the same conclusion I’d voiced to the others as we’d left Number 808: the Doctor’s reaction to the idea was going to be determined by how hard he took his departure from the Institute. Cyrus and I promised that one or the other of us would phone Mr. Moore at the Times as soon as the Doctor was back home. Then we all went our respective ways, each bearing the queer feeling that the actions we took in the next day or two could have ripples what would reach far beyond the confines of Manhattan, an island that suddenly seemed, somehow, smaller.

I managed to squeeze in a few hours’ sleep when we got home, though it wasn’t of a quality what could really be called restful. I was up at eight sharp-realizing, as I launched out of bed, that it was the first official day of summer-and found that the last of the rain clouds had disappeared and a fresh breeze was blowing in from the northwest. I got into some clothes and managed to comb my long hair into something that resembled order, then headed down to the Doctor’s narrow little carriage house next door to give Frederick, our always reliable black gelding, a few oats and a morning brushdown in preparation for his day’s labors. Heading back into the house, I concluded from the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen that our latest housekeeper, Mrs. Leshko-a woman who couldn’t boil water quietly-had arrived. I contented myself with a quick cup of her bitter coffee, then got onto the calash and under way.

I took my usual route- Second Avenue downtown to Forsyth Street, then left onto East Broadway-but I didn’t push Frederick, knowing he’d worked hard the night before. It was a route that took me past many of the dance halls, dives, gambling hells, and saloons of the Lower East Side, the sight of which only made it harder to understand how in the world things had so fallen out as to make this trip necessary in the first place. Oh, the specific reason was apparent enough: a twelve-year-old boy at Dr. Kreizler’s Institute, Paulie McPherson, had woken up in the middle of the night a couple of weeks back, wandered out of his dormitory and into a washroom, and there hung himself from an old gas fixture with a length of drapery cord. The boy was a small-time thief with a record so short none of my old pals in Crazy Butch’s gang would have owned up to it; he’d been nailed, if you can believe it, trying to pick a fly (that is, plainclothed) cop’s pocket. Because of his inexperience, the judge had given him the option of spending a few years in the Kreizler Institute, after the Doctor’d examined the kid and made the offer. Now, Paulie was small time, but he was no chump-he knew what the alternatives were, and he’d accepted right away.