New York City is never uglier than at daybreak, and it never smells worse than during the month of August: both of these facts were more than demonstrated that morning as we sloshed and bumped our way into the Franklin Street ferry terminal. Sure, in the distance we could see all the sights what gave suckers from out of town such a jolt-the Western Union Building, the towers of Printing House Square, the steeple of Trinity Church-but none of it made up for the stench of rotting garbage and filthy water what infested the waterfront, or for the sight of those miserable, dirty blocks what lay beyond the ferry station. Of course, the mood what my companion and I were in when we arrived didn’t help our impression of the city any; after a night as horrifying-and sleepless-as ours’d been, there wasn’t much of a way any town could’ve looked good. The only thing I could be grateful for was that the mission we were on left little or no time for letting the miserable feeling of being back among the dirt and dangers of the metropolis get to us: as soon as we were ashore, we began to run the mile or so to our destination, never once thinking about taking a hansom.

The first order of business, pretty obviously, was to try to get some kind of an idea of what was going on inside the Dusters’ place. At that early hour of the morning the joint would likely be pretty dead (though you never could be sure, given that the Dusters were all burny fiends, and such people, when they do sleep, tend to do so at odd hours), so I thought our smartest move was to get ourselves hidden someplace where we could keep an eye on the comings and goings around the building. This would be easiest to do from a rooftop across Hudson Street: there wouldn’t be many street corners or such where we could lurk in broad daylight without getting spotted by some member of the gang. Working our way up through the warehouses, trade stores, and boarding-houses of Hudson Street, then past little St. Luke’s Chapel (the same route, I noted, what Cyrus, the detective sergeants and I’d driven the first night of the case), we eventually reached the heart of Duster country, making sure to cut over west of Hudson Street itself as we approached the gang’s headquarters. Coming back around on Horatio Street, El Niño and I picked a likely building on the west side of Hudson that would give us a good view of what was happening in and around the gang’s filthy but fashionable dive; then we got into the building’s backyard by way of an old loading alley. I picked the lock of the back door, and in a few minutes we’d made it up onto the rooftop, where we quickly moved over to crouch down behind the little wall what rose up at the front of the thing.

It wasn’t yet eight o’clock, and the only signs of life at the Dusters’ were a few slummers leaving the place. These well-dressed types were obviously wound up on burny and hadn’t yet gotten their fill of rolling around in the muck of the gang’s violent, earthy life: but the big Duster who was pushing them out made it pretty clear that the “hosts” themselves’d had enough of entertaining such people and wanted some rest. This was good news for us, as it provided some time to figure how we were going to get a message inside to Kat and find out if Libby Hatch was in fact in the place. Obviously, I couldn’t go in and start asking questions; and if El Niño tried there was always the chance that Libby would catch sight of him provided she was there. The quickest way to attend to the problem seemed to be for me to head down to Frankie’s joint and find Kat’s pal Betty: she could enter the Dusters’ without much trouble and get the lay of things. El Niño, in the meantime, would stay on the rooftop, and if Libby Hatch appeared and tried to make good her escape, he’d set himself to following, making a move against her only if he could be sure of getting Ana Linares away safely.

So it was back down onto the street for me, where I hailed the first hansom what came into sight. The driver of the rig was just starting his day after retrieving his horse from a stable a couple of blocks away, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get him to drive to Frankie’s place on Worth Street for any amount of money. It wasn’t a neighborhood what cabbies operated in, unless they were looking to get robbed and probably killed; so I directed the mug to the nearest destination I could think of what I figured he’d be willing to take on: old Boss Tweed’s court house just north of City Hall. The court house wasn’t but a few blocks from Frankie’s (though those few might as well have been fifty, considering the change in scenery what took over as you traveled them), but I’d managed to time my trip just so’s it collided with the morning rush: I gave the cabbie every tip I knew about taking side streets and staying off the main routes, but it still took a frustrating amount of time to get downtown.

Morning was never a happy time to find yourself entering a joint like Frankie’s, and that day was no exception. It being summer, there were kids lying “asleep”-or, to put it plain, hammered unconscious by the foul brew what Frankie served up at his bar-all over the street outside; and them what were awake were busy throwing up into the gutter and moaning like they were ready to die. Stepping over bodies and every kind of human waste as I made my way down into the dive, I was at least relieved to hear that all was quiet in the dog-and-rat pit; in fact, there wasn’t a soul awake inside the joint except the bartender, a tough-looking Italian kid of about fifteen with a very nasty scar along the side of his face, one what seemed to glow angrily even in the darkness of that black, dirty hole.

I asked him if Frankie was around, only to be told that “the boss” was asleep in one of the back rooms-with, as my luck would have it, Betty. I told the barkeep I needed to have a few words with Betty, to which the kid just shook his head, saying that Frankie’d left word he didn’t want anybody disturbing either of them. Knowing I couldn’t let this stand in my way, I started to carefully let my eyes drift around the room, studying the kids and trying to figure out if one of them was carrying a sap of some kind. There was one boy toward the back of the room-he couldn’t’ve been more than ten-who had a telltale leather handle hanging out of his pants pocket; and being as he was lying with his head on a table in a pool of his own vomit, I didn’t figure as he’d give me much of a hard time about borrowing his weapon. So I just made straight for the little doorway what led to the “bedrooms” in the back, with the bartender moving fast behind me and starting to curse. But I got to the sleeping kid’s sap before the bartender got to me, and in about three seconds my pursuer had a nice lump on his head to go with the scar on his face, and was lying on the floor.

A quick check of the back rooms revealed that Frankie and Betty were out cold in one of the last little pens, and I got the girl up and dragged her out to the bar, where I managed to find some water to splash on her face. She produced a three-inch knife pretty quick, at that, having no idea what in the hell was going on; and it was only quick wits and quicker reflexes what prevented me from getting the blade in my gut. Once she saw it was me she put the knife away, though her mood didn’t improve much; but when I told her what the situation was regarding Kat she tried hard to get herself pulled together, and then agreed to come with me and be part of our plan-after, of course, I offered her a few bucks. Friendship was friendship, for a girl like that, but money was also money, and if there was a chance to combine the two, well, there wasn’t anybody what would’ve criticized her for it.

Walking as quick as Betty could manage, we got back over to the Tweed court house, hailed another hansom, and headed back up to Hudson Street: “Hudson Street Hospital,” was what I told the driver, again to make him feel more secure about the ride. The hospital was close to the Dusters’ joint, and by the time we reached the little medical facility Betty had managed to get herself more alert by blowing some burny what she had in her ratty little bag. I didn’t even try to lecture her or stop her-my lookout was Kat, just then-but it wasn’t ever what you’d call a heartening thing to see a girl so young beating her body up with that vicious white powder, especially in the morning. Still, it helped her face the idea of going into the Dusters’ with a little more courage, so that by the time I left her and raced back up onto the rooftop where El Niño was still positioned, I had good reason to think that the plan would be successful.