“Why not?” Mr. Moore asked. “You think they’re above kidnapping, Stevie?”

I felt a little out of my place, saying anything more, and glanced at the Doctor for reassurance; but he was only staring hard at the surface of the table. “Well,” I answered uncertainly. “No, not above it, exactly… just-well-too stupid, really. Or too crazy.”

Lucius nodded a couple of times. “Stevie has a point. Organization and plotting aren’t the Dusters’ strong points. That’s why the other gangs leave them alone: because they don’t control any operations that conflict with anyone else’s or that another group would want to take over. They’re blowers and thugs-they don’t go planning kidnappings and blackmail.”

The Doctor spoke firmly without looking up. “The child is in that woman’s house. I would stake everything on it.”

Mr. Moore hissed. “Kreizler, you were there-she let us go through the whole damned joint.”

“And?” Miss Howard asked.

“And, the only other person who lives there is her husband. He’s got to be fifteen years older than her, and he’s a semi-invalid. Wounded in the Civil War when he was young, apparently, and never really recovered.”

“He recovered,” the Doctor said, a bit testily. “Or at least his wounds did. What the war left him with was an addiction to opiates.”

Marcus looked puzzled. “But he’s bedridden. And his wife said that he-”

“That woman couldn’t utter a true word if her life depended on it,” the Doctor shot back. “As for his being bedridden, had I been jabbed as full of morphine as he has, I should be bedridden, too. Didn’t you note the marks on his arms and the odor in the bedroom?”

“Yes,” Lucius said, getting an annoyed glance from his brother for his trouble. “Well, it was all perfectly plain, Marcus-the man’s been jabbing morphine for years.”

“With, I don’t doubt, the help of his wife,” Dr. Kreizler added. “The good Nurse Hunter.”

“What about her?” Miss Howard asked. “What was she like when you got inside? Because I have to say, she played you all like so many piano keys when you were on the steps.”

The others looked embarrassed at that, but the Doctor lost his scowl and laughed once. “True, Sara! I knew it was happening, yet even I couldn’t stop it initially.”

“So how does she manage it?” Miss Howard pressed. “What was her style, once she had you in her lair?”

“Well-I’ll just tell you this-” Mr. Moore set both the wine list and his menu aside, ready to order his food and drink but looking, despite his outwardly certain tone and manner, a trifle unsure of what he was about to say. “I know you hate it when men clean their language up in your presence, Sara, so I’ll put it to you straight: I couldn’t tell whether that woman wanted to fuck me or kill me.”

At that Lucius spat some water he’d been sipping clear across to the exterior wall of the restaurant, where it hit the bricks above a table that was, fortunately, empty. Everyone broke into deep laughter, and when the waiter came it proved no easy job for him to get coherent orders out of our group. Eventually the waiter started laughing, too, without knowing why, and when he went back to the kitchen he was still going.

“My God, John,” Miss Howard said, trying to calm herself. “I know I asked you all to be candid around me, but-”

“Ah, now,” the Doctor said, defending Mr. Moore. “You can’t have it both ways, my dear Sara. Either you receive it straight from John’s shoulder, or you don’t.” The still chuckling Doctor put a hand on Mr. Moore’s back. “Your talents really are wasted at the Times, Moore. A statement as colorful and unprintable as it is accurate. Elspeth Hunter is an unending string of seeming paradoxes-some of them, unquestionably, possessing deadly dimensions.”

Marcus dried some amused tears out of his eyes with his napkin and said, “And you really believe that the child is in the house, Doctor? Even though we searched it thoroughly, with the Hunter woman’s blessing?”

“I should not like to use a word like ‘blessing’ in connection with that creature, Marcus,” the Doctor said, as some white wine for the adults and a bottle of Hires root beer for me arrived at the table. “And remember, we searched only as much of the house as was visible to the naked eye.”

Marcus looked even more perplexed. “Meaning what?”

But the Doctor directed his next question to Lucius. “Detective Sergeant-if one suspected that Number 39 Bethune Street had recently been-structurally modified, in some way that we do not know and could not have seen… how might one confirm or eliminate the suspicion?”

Lucius shrugged, taking a sip of wine as Mr. Moore poured it. “Even if she intended, ultimately, to use the space for criminal purposes, she’d have to’ve gotten a building permit, if it was anything structural. Otherwise she’d have had inspectors all over her, and been shut down. So you’d go downtown and check the records. It’s not complicated.”

Mr. Moore chuckled once. “What are you thinking, Kreizler? That the woman’s built some secret room in the house, and is keeping the baby squirreled away in it?”

The Doctor ignored this, and kept on talking to Lucius. “But would the records be specific? About the work done, I mean.”

“Fairly. They’d give some kind of an indication, at least. Why, Doctor?”

At that Dr. Kreizler turned to the still smiling Mr. Moore, whose face suddenly went straight as he fixed his eyes with stubborn determination on an enormous silver platter of oysters that had been set in the middle of the table. “Don’t even try it, Kreizler,” he said. “I’ve done my legwork. I’m not tracking down some harebrained idea that you got out of installment fiction-”

“Never fear, Moore,” the Doctor answered. “You shall have Sara for company.” Miss Howard, who’d just picked up one of the oysters, didn’t look too pleased about that, but she just sighed in resignation. “Besides,” the Doctor continued, “I very much doubt that either of you would enjoy the other assignment that must be undertaken-nor do you possess the necessary emblems of office to complete it.”

Lucius had just slurped down an oyster, and as I reached up to grab one for myself I saw him looking suddenly worried. “Uh-oh,” he noised.

The Doctor nodded. “Another-how did you phrase it, Marcus? Another ‘rousting,’ I’m afraid. We must know why the Hudson Dusters take so keen an interest in the activities in and around Number 39 Bethune Street. I would suggest patrolling their neighborhood for the next few nights, and harassing one or two of the less threatening members of their gang. You needn’t employ our old friend Inspector Byrnes’s third-degree tactics, although the threat of such treatment might-”

“We get the picture, Doctor,” Marcus answered. “Shouldn’t be too difficult.” He turned to his brother. “But don’t forget your revolver, Lucius.”

“As if I would,” Lucius answered uncomfortably. “What about you, Doctor? Where will you be, doing further psychological research?”

“If I thought it would help, yes,” the Doctor answered, downing an oyster and then taking a sip of wine. “And there may in fact be one or two women on Blackwells Island whom it will be useful for me to visit in that context. But there is another mystery that concerns me more immediately.” He turned to Cyrus, then looked down to the floor, trying to locate me. “Stevie, come up here for a moment.” I followed the order, slurping the last of the sweet, salty juice from an oyster shell as I stood by Cyrus. “Where is the stick? The one that you say this Ding Dong found lodged in his stricken gang member?”

I’d clear forgotten about the thing and quickly held up a finger; then I vaulted the iron rail of the terrace, ran to the calash, and checked under the driver’s seat. Luckily for me, the stick was still there. I grabbed it, jumped back over the railing, and handed the strange though simple object to the Doctor.