CHAPTER 14
As we rolled off of Fifth Avenue and into Central Park, bearing right to head onto the Metropolitan Museum ’s carriage path, I understood for the first time just how insane, daring, or desperate the woman we believed had snatched the Linares baby must’ve been. The construction site for the museum’s new Fifth Avenue wing took up the full stretch of ground between Eighty-first and Eighty-third Streets, and beyond it to the west, inside the park, the square red brick mass of the museum’s three older wings occupied another city block or so of territory. The Metropolitan was what the Doctor and his architectural friends always called “a mongrel of styles”-Gothic and Renaissance revivals in the first three wings, what they called “Beaux Arts” in the new Fifth Avenue hall-but, different as the various sections were in their color and concept, even the first was not that much older than the one currently being built. All of which, so far as we were concerned, meant that there’d been precious little time for any trees or shrubbery to grow in this part of the park, and a lot of what had been planted or had sprung up had been ripped away by the never-ending process of construction. So when the detective sergeants said the crime had been committed in broad daylight and in a very open public spot, they meant just that. The only object what rose to any great height was the Egyptian obelisk what sat beyond the front (soon to be the side) entrance of the museum, and Señora Linares had been struck just as she got there: like I say, the abduction had been either a very gutsy, despairing, or crazy act, depending on how you elected to see it.
The ride uptown had been as quick as I could make it, and on the way the Doctor tried to relate some information from the front page of the Times, telling me as I drove that the Cuban rebels had massacred a party of Havana stagecoach riders while, in a separate engagement, the Cuban government was claiming to’ve killed one of the main rebel leaders. (The first report turned out to be true, the second wishful thinking.) But it was tough for us to keep our minds on any subject other than the business at hand, and as I kept urging Frederick forward past the churches of upper Fifth Avenue, where the wealthy families of Mansion Row were just leaving early services, I threw a panic into some people who figured Sunday morning would be a safe time to stroll absent-mindedly across the boulevard. I got some angry shouts and even a few curses from those ladies and gents for splashing horse dung and piss on their Sunday best, and I threw some feisty words back; but nothing stopped our forward motion, and we pulled up to the steps of the Metropolitan at just before eleven.
Ordinarily, the Doctor would have wanted to walk over and check what progress had been made on the new wing: the original architect, Mr. Richard Morris Hunt, who’d died a couple of years earlier, had been another old friend of his, as was Mr. Hunt’s son, who’d taken over the direction of the work. But, things being what they were on this day, the Doctor just jumped out of the calash and charged up the museum’s steps, passing between a large pair of iron lamp fixtures and through the square granite doorway. Cyrus followed him, leaving me with the question of what to do with the carriage. Spotting another driver nearby, I offered him four bits to watch our rig for what I said would only be a few minutes. It was above the going price for such a service-which was one that I sometimes performed myself for other drivers-and the man was glad to get the money. Then I took to the steps, glancing up at the red brick walls, the gray granite archways, and the high, peaked roof of the building, feeling the way I always did when we came to this place: like I was entering some sort of temple, whose services and rituals had once seemed as strange to me as a towel-headed Hindoo’s, but what I was coming to understand better and better the longer I lived under the Doctor’s roof.
The galleries just inside the entrance to the museum were full of what, for me, were the most boring objects in the place: sculptures, old (or, I should say, ancient) pottery and glass, and Egyptian artifacts. The Doctor figured that, given the señora’s description of the woman who’d snatched her baby, it was in the latter hall that we’d find our friends; and so we did. Mr. Moore and Miss Howard were near one carved and painted face of an Egyptian woman, holding up Miss Beaux’s sketch for a comparison and nodding, apparently agreeing that the eyes were a good match. But as they did so, Mr. Moore for some reason kept bursting into a tired, giddy kind of laughter. The detective sergeants, for their part, were going over a small stack of papers excitedly but with serious purpose. There weren’t many other people in the place at that hour, and when we approached our bunch they all lit up like it was six or seven holidays boiled down to one.
“It’s as positive an identification as I’ve ever seen anyone make,” Lucius said as he moved over to meet us, trying to keep his voice under control but seeming ready to burst out of his sweaty clothes.
“Amazing,” Marcus added. “From a sketch! Doctor, if we could ever get this idea accepted by the department, it would change the entire process of identification and pursuit.”
Miss Howard and Mr. Moore rushed over next. “Well, Doctor,” Miss Howard began, “it took a few days, but-”
“You won’t believe it!” Mr. Moore said, chuckling in that strange way again. “It’s too rich, Laszlo, you’re never going to believe it, I tell you!”
The Doctor was shaking his head impatiently. “I won’t if none of you tells me what the devil ‘it’ is! Kindly get some sort of a grip on yourself, Moore -and one of you, please, go on.”
Mr. Moore just lurched away, holding his head in a kind of exhausted wonder and trying to stifle further laughter. It was up to Marcus to reveal what they’d discovered: “Suppose I were to tell you, Doctor, that last year-at the very same time that we were investigating the Beecham case together-the woman we’re now looking for was working just down the street from your own house?”
I could feel my own jaw drop, and saw the Doctor’s and Cyrus’s do the same. But it was also plain that, though shocked by it, we all knew what Marcus was talking about:
“You mean-the hospital?” the Doctor murmured, staring off at an Egyptian mummy case without seeing it. “The Lying-in Hospital?”
Lucius smiled wide. “The New York Lying-in Hospital. Whose principal benefactor was and is-”
“Morgan,” the Doctor mumbled on. “Pierpont Morgan.”
“Which means,” Miss Howard added, “that even as you and John were being-entertained in Mr. Morgan’s house, this woman was, effectively, being paid by him to tend to mothers and newborns.” She glanced over at Mr. Moore with a smile what indicated doubts about his current mental condition. “That’s what’s got him so tickled, you see-that and sheer fatigue. He’s been that way ever since we found out, and I’m not entirely sure how to snap him out of it.”
Mr. Moore’s amusement was thoroughly understandable. It might have been heightened by the relief of locating our quarry, but its main source was definitely the discovery that the woman in question had once been in the employ (even if indirectly) of the great financier who had played a crucial, and at times troublesome, part in our investigation of the Beecham murders. The thing had a kind of poetic-and, yes, amusing-justice to it. You see, during that investigation Mr. Moore and the Doctor had been kidnapped and taken to J. Pierpont Morgan’s house for a showdown over the effect that the case was having on the city; and while the result of that meeting had been a useful one for our cause, it’d left the pair of them with something less than the warmest feelings for the country’s most powerful businessman, banker-and philanthropist.