This outlook was reinforced when the aborigine reported that he had, in fact, laid eyes on Libby Hatch: she’d appeared very briefly just after I left, to flag down a passing milk wagon. She hadn’t looked any too pleased about being up and attending to what were pretty obviously baby Ana’s needs at that early hour, but the fact that she’d headed back inside seemed to indicate that, at least for the moment, she wasn’t contemplating any drastic move. Not that there was any real reason for her to yet: she knew that it would take time for the Doctor and the others to catch up with her, and that even when they did they’d have to relate what’d happened to the cops and then convince somebody at headquarters on Mulberry Street to raid the Dusters’ headquarters: not the kind of thing any cop or squad of cops in their right minds were likely to undertake without one hell of a lot of persuading. But just knowing where the woman and the baby were was cause for some satisfaction.

Less encouraging was the fact that Betty came back out of the Dusters’ in just fifteen minutes, looking confused, disappointed-and not a little concerned. I whistled to her from our high perch, then directed her to meet me around the corner, at the mouth of the trucking alley. There she told me a story what was peculiar, to say the least: Libby Hatch had arrived at the Dusters’ at just past three that morning, and had immediately locked herself away in Goo Goo Knox’s chamber with Ana Linares. Kat, true to her word to Mr. Moore, had right away gone upstairs, and talked her way into Knox’s room by asking Goo Goo if she could be any help with the baby. But Libby’d remembered only too well that Kat was a friend of mine, and she’d flown into a rage, saying that Kat was a spy whose real purpose was to steal Ana away and bring the law after her. Now, Goo Goo would ordinarily have solved this problem by having Kat taken over to the river, killed, and thrown in; but at that point Ding Dong-as much, I figured, out of a desire to save face in the gang as out of any true concern for Kat-had stepped in, saying that nobody was going to do away with one of his girls without his say-so. Knox and Ding Dong had then gotten into a hell of a scrape, one what’d apparently been very entertaining to all those slummers we’d seen. At first Kat’d joined in the fight, trying to defend Ding Dong; but after about half an hour Libby herself, with that unpredictability what we’d all come to know so well (and what usually didn’t indicate anything good), had put a stop to the battle by saying that she’d be satisfied if Kat would just get out of the joint. This Kat’d done, removing herself exactly as far as the nearest corner. I figured this meant that Kat’d intended to keep right on watching things from outside the place, so’s she’d be able to tell whichever of our party came back to the city first (she’d have been able to figure out that we wouldn’t be far behind Libby) where our adversary’d got to, if she’d left the building, and whether or not she still had the baby with her.

But then, for some reason what nobody inside the dive could figure, Kat’d suddenly disappeared, not long before El Niño and I’d arrived on the scene. Betty’d tried to find out if anybody had any idea where she might’ve gone; she even went so far as to have a conversation with Ding Dong, who, while nursing his bruises and cuts, said he didn’t much know nor care where “the little hellcat” was. Kat’s sudden disappearance was the most disturbing part of the story, being as, though she was at least safely out of Libby Hatch’s direct reach, there was every chance Knox’d found out that she was lurking around and had dispatched somebody to take care of her. On top of that, if Kat’d been safe, there were only a few joints where she probably would’ve gone, and Frankie’s was at the top of that very short list. Obviously, she hadn’t turned up there. On the other hand, it was August, and though the hot, heavy sky had been threatening a thunderstorm all morning, it hadn’t broken yet-Kat could’ve been hiding out in any of the city’s parks or the dozens of other outdoor havens what were available to kids on the run during the warm months. So, since things were quiet inside the Dusters’ for the time being, I decided to assume that Kat was okay and lying low somewhere: I’d make a quick round of some of the more obvious hiding spots downtown, and then check with those acquaintances of mine-including Hickie the Hun-who might’ve already seen her, or could reasonably be expected to catch sight of her during the day.

I gave Betty the telephone number of the Doctor’s house before letting her go back to Frankie’s, and made her promise to call and keep calling if Kat should turn up. Then I went back up onto the rooftop to tell El Niño what my plan was. I knew he’d want to stay right where he was and keep watching the Dusters’, just in case Libby did make a move, so I also gave him the Doctor’s telephone number, though I warned him that I wasn’t likely to show up at the house for at least another hour or two. But in the event that Libby did get out and get moving, I told him to stay close to her and to keep trying to report. Then, figuring that the aborigine was broke, I handed over half of the cash what Mr. Moore’d given me, and finally started out on my search.

The first and most nerve-racking part of this job was a quick trip over to the Hudson waterfront to see if anybody’d noticed a struggle going on that morning or if any bodies’d been spotted in the water. I talked to a few gangs of longshoremen as I worked my way down as far as the Cunard pier, but none of them’d heard of any trouble. I even ran into my old pal Nosy, who was, as usual, poking around in the midst of all the early morning debarking and unloading what was going on, and he likewise said he hadn’t seen Kat nor heard about any violence on the waterfront. This news, like the information I’d gotten from Betty, had the effect of both reassuring me and making me even more nervous about where Kat could’ve gone or what she might be doing. More than anything else, one question stuck in my head: Why had Libby Hatch been willing to let Kat walk away, instead of insisting that she share the fate what’d befallen the poor, dumb guard Henry, and maybe Mr. Picton, too? Of all Libby’s many complicated characteristics, mercy didn’t seem one what made an appearance all that often, especially not where her own safety and schemes were concerned. Why had she let Kat go?

Working my way downtown and through my old neighborhood, stopping in at half a dozen other kid dives what weren’t much different from Frankie’s, I continued to find no trace of Kat. Hickie was over at the Fulton Fish Market, cramming a morning swim in before the coming storm unloaded on the city, and he told me that he’d been working a string of houses on the West Side with a collection of our old pals the night before. They hadn’t made their way home ’til early in the morning, and they’d stopped off for a few pails of beer at a dive on Bleecker Street on their way. But he, too, hadn’t seen or heard anything of Kat, a fact what seemed to be cause for hope: if something had happened to her, word would’ve gotten around our circuit pretty fast. But where in the hell was the girl?

Another swing past Frankie’s (where the Italian kid I’d laid out was, thankfully, nowhere to be seen) finally gave me the beginnings of an answer: when Betty’d gotten back from giving me a hand at the Dusters’, she’d found Kat waiting for her. Kat had, it seemed, been feeling very poorly, which was why she’d left off watching the Dusters’ place: a severe pain in her stomach and gut had struck her, a mysterious ailment what neither she nor Betty could identify or ease. On hearing that I was back in town, Kat’d decided to head on up to the Doctor’s house and wait for me, since, as she’d told Betty, I could lay hands on some medicine what was especially useful for the kind of trouble she was in (meaning the Doctor’s supply of paregoric). Betty’d wanted to go with Kat, who was starting to vomit pretty violently by the time she left; but Frankie was still angry at her for leaving that morning, and so Kat’d had to set out on her own, and was probably at Seventeenth Street now.