With that we all started back into the passageway, leaving the Doctor behind for a few seconds to give him just a little more time to mentally memorize the strange hideaway what had been Libby Hatch’s obsession, and what was now, being as she was dead, the only remaining blueprint he had to the workings of her tangled mind.
Back upstairs, we found that Mr. Roosevelt and Lieutenant Kimball had come into the house, along with Marcus. The rest of the navy boys were gathered around the steps outside, and a couple of them were carrying a folding stretcher what they must’ve fetched from one of the torpedo boats. Strapped to the stretcher was Libby Hatch’s body, draped in a bedsheet. The general mood of the bunch seemed to have changed from celebration to concern: apparently a couple of sailors had seen a few Dusters making moves what indicated that the gang was in fact preparing a new attack. So we got out onto the sidewalk quickly, the sailors forming a circle around Lucius, who still had the baby, and the men what were carrying the stretcher. Then, at double time, we began to trot back toward the river.
As we went, I fell in beside Cyrus. His clothes were a little rearranged, but otherwise he looked hale, hearty-and very satisfied. “Ain’t many people what come away from locking horns with Ding Dong looking as healthy as you do, Cyrus,” I said, smiling up to him.
He shrugged, though he couldn’t help but grin a bit, himself. “That’s because there aren’t many people who get him in a fair fight,” he answered.
“So I’m guessing you came out on top?”
Glancing up ahead to the construction site of the Bell Laboratories, what was now on our left, Cyrus answered, “I’ll let you be the judge of that.”
He nodded in the direction of a big pile of bricks: propped up against them was Ding Dong, his face a patchwork of bruises and his arms and legs sticking out at what you might call angles.
“Jesus,” I breathed, whistling low. “Is he alive?”
“Oh, he’s alive, all right,” Cyrus answered. “Though in the morning he may wish he wasn’t.” I nodded grimly at that, feeling some deep sense of justice; and as we trotted on toward the river, Cyrus looked down at me meaningfully. “You know I always thought she was trouble, Stevie,” he said. “I won’t deny that now. But she did right by you, by us, and by the baby, in the end-so I guess I was wrong.”
I gave him a look what I hoped was as full of thanks as I felt, “You weren’t wrong,” I said. “Trouble she was. But she was other things, too.”
Cyrus nodded. “That’s so…”
The general mood of our little army improved considerably once we got back across West Street and started to move, at the same double-time pace, south on the waterfront. As the huge black outline of the White Star Line pier began to grow bigger, you could start to feel the cloud of the anxiousness lifting from over us; but it was up to Mr. Roosevelt to give the official signal that it was okay to breathe easier.
“Well, then, Doctor!” he boomed as we trotted past Perry Street. “It would seem that we’ve enjoyed a victory!”
“I shall reserve final judgment until we are safely cast off,” the Doctor answered cautiously, still watching the streets around us. “But the preliminary results are encouraging.”
Mr. Roosevelt roared with laughter. “By God, Kreizler, if I ever met a man more apt to see the dark side of a situation, I’m not aware of it! True, we didn’t take that infernal scoundrel Knox into custody-but we delivered a message that those swine won’t soon forget, and at the cost of only a few bruises to our own men! Enjoy the moment, Doctor-savor it!”
“Our casualties were no greater than bruises?” the Doctor asked, still not ready to give in to celebrating.
“Well, all right, two men’s arms were broken,” Mr. Roosevelt conceded. “And another suffered a fractured jaw. But I assure you, the culprits were paid back with interest. So I’ll have none of your melancholy, my friend, none at all! You must learn to enjoy your triumphs!”
The Doctor did smile at that, though I think it was as much out of amusement at his old friend’s incorrigible attitude as any real joy over what had just taken place at Number 39 Bethune Street. Oh, he was happy we’d rescued little Ana, I didn’t doubt that; but the final secrets of why all the horrors we’d experienced had been necessary in the first place were now lying forever hidden on the stretcher what the two sailors next to Detective Sergeant Lucius were carrying. Legally prevented, for the time being, from using the operating theater at his Institute, the Doctor had no place to perform a postmortem on Libby Hatch’s brain, to see if it’d been abnormal in some way; and even if he hadn’t been so restricted, the detective sergeants couldn’t exactly deliver a body with a dissected head to their superiors. Coming on top of Libby’s death, these considerations would, I knew, always prevent the Doctor from seeing our experience as “a triumph,” just as Kat’s death would always make the memory of the adventure especially bittersweet for me.
We got to the torpedo boats without any trouble, and got Libby Hatch’s body stowed aboard the closest of them. The Isaacsons planned to accompany said boat to a police pier down by the Battery, where they’d be able to close the case what their department had been so unwilling to open in the first place. Miss Howard, in the meantime, would take Ana Linares in the lead boat with the rest of us, first back to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and from there on to the Doctor’s house. Once safely home, Miss Howard would telephone the señora, who, since that afternoon, had been waiting for a message at the French consulate, where she’d gone to hide from her husband.
Her head now completely clear, Miss Howard got into the lead torpedo boat without any trouble, and waited for Lucius to bring Ana down the ladder to her; but, not unpredictably, Mr. Roosevelt stepped in to do the honors.
“You get back to your boat, Detective Sergeant,” he said, taking the baby. “I’ve had quite a lot of experience with such little bundles as this one, and you may rest assured that I shall get her safely aboard!” Cradling Ana in one arm, Mr. Roosevelt then made his way nimbly down the long ladder from the pier to our boat. He moved with much greater ease, considering his cargo, than any of us could have done; and I remembered, watching him, that he had five young kids of his own, who he must have toted around in similar if not identical situations many times.
Once he’d gotten aboard and was handing the baby over to Miss Howard, Mr. Roosevelt took a moment to actually look at Ana’s appealing little features. “Why,” he said, in a soft way what wasn’t at all like his usual manner, “what an extraordinary face. Look at her eyes, Doctor!”
“Yes,” the Doctor said, as he jumped down from the ladder into the boat. “I’ve seen them, Roosevelt. A beautiful child.”
Letting one of his big fingers play around little Ana’s face, Mr. Roosevelt offhandedly asked, “Whose is she?”
Mr. Moore, Miss Howard, the Doctor, Cyrus, and I all froze; but fortunately Mr. Roosevelt was too preoccupied to notice.
“Whose?” the Doctor repeated smoothly, as our boat’s engines rumbled to life and our crew began to cast off. “Does it matter, Roosevelt?”
“Matter?” Mr. Roosevelt answered with a shrug. “I don’t know that it matters, but after what we’ve been through, I should like to meet the parents.” He grinned wide as Ana reached out to grasp hold of his finger. “And tell them how lucky they are to have engaged you all.”
“Her parents,” Miss Howard said, coolly and quickly, “are consular officials. French consular officials. Unfortunately, they plan to return home as soon as they’re reunited with the child. Understandably.”
“Ah. Yes.” Mr. Roosevelt nodded, looking serious for a moment. “That is understandable, I suppose-quite understandable. But I hope you’ll emphasize to them, Sara, that this sort of incident is hardly typical of our nation.”