And then, like a computer finally producing the right card, my mind said, How? How will you make Julia break her engagement? How can you explain what you know about Jake? And there was no answer. I began walking faster as though that would help, down toward Gramercy Park and Julia. But I slowed again. It was an easy decision last night, but now: What in the hell could I say to her? Don't ask any questions, but… Julia, just take my word for this, but you can't marry… Please don't ask me to explain, but…

In the parlor at 19 Gramercy Park before dinner — the day ending, a winter chill coming back into the air with the beginning darkness — I sat with Byron and Felix, trading sections of Felix's Evening Sun; Felix was delighted that I'd used his camera, flatly refused to accept payment for the plates I'd used, and said he'd develop and print them after supper. Maud Torrence came down, and finally Jake; Aunt Ada and Julia were setting the table in the dining room, and Julia twice caught me staring at her as I sat wondering how I could possibly do what I had to do.

I began to get mad. Looking over at Jake who was sitting by the big nickel-plated stove reading his paper, or trying to — he kept glancing up as though it were hard to sit still, frowning, and twice he wet his lips — I knew I would not, would not, let him marry Julia. And I didn't know how to stop it.

At the table during dinner he was almost directly across from me, and I wanted to needle him, wanted to get at him; I couldn't help it. Maud Torrence was talking about a Professor Peirce who had just read a paper before the New York Academy of Sciences on the advantages of establishing national and international time zones. Listening, I discovered there was no standardization of times anywhere in the country or world; any little town was free to pick its own time and often did, so that the time in towns a few miles apart might vary; eleven minutes maybe, or seventeen, or thirty-one. Railroad stations had clocks showing the times in different places, and Byron remarked that railroad timetables on long east-west trips were almost impossible to write because there were some seventy-odd different times used in the places the trains went through. Professor Peirce suggested time zones to be called Atlantic Time, Mississippi Time, Rocky Mountain Time, and Pacific Time, and I considered making a prediction but I was more interested in Jake.

And when Maud finished I said, truthfully, "I was up at the Central Park today, and" — a lie — "I was talking to a man who said he thought he'd seen Inspector Byrnes ride through a little earlier. He sounded as though he'd seen" — I almost said a celebrity but suddenly doubted that the word existed yet — "an important personage. Who is this Inspector Byrnes?"

It worked just fine: Jake's mouth clamped so tightly shut that his mustache and beard merged, and his eyes turned hard as he flicked a glance at me. As usual when you try something mean and succeed there wasn't really much triumph in it. I felt a little low and unworthy, not pleased with myself, yet with a little room left for a kind of sneaky gladness. Because the topic sprang to life; at least three people had answered simultaneously, and it was obvious that the name "Inspector Byrnes" had a powerful magic.

"That man!" Aunt Ada said, her eyes flashing with disapproval. Maud was murmuring something I couldn't hear except for the word "disgraceful." And Byron had said, "Well, I'll tell you," and he did. "He may not follow the letter of the law all the time" — Byron had put down knife and fork both, leaning over the tabletop, he was so interested in his own words — "but you can't kick about that; he gets results! He's got the pickpockets on the run! And the bank robbers. Isn't that right, Jake?"

Jake had gotten out a cigar, and though he didn't light it at the table, he sat chewing it, rolling it in his mouth, not even pretending to eat anymore. He didn't answer Byron, just nodded shortly.

"He invented the third degree," Felix told me, anxious to exhibit his knowledge.

"That's hardly to his credit!" said Aunt Ada.

Maud said anxiously, "It means beating people, doesn't it?"

Julia hadn't said anything, and I glanced at her to find that she was watching me, her eyes curious, speculative. It occurred to me that she might have realized something of what I was doing in bringing up Byrnes. I just grinned at her, not denying it, if that's what she was thinking.

"Oh, no," Byron answered Maud. "At least that's not all it means. I don't expect he minds knocking a man about a little when he knows he's guilty. As why shouldn't he? I don't think we need have any niminy-piminy fancies against that. Would you have him let a criminal go scot-free, to society's peril, for want of a little persuasion? The man's not vealy; he's the most experienced policeman in the city! He's unscrupulous, true, and often acts beyond his authority and legal powers. And it's a known fact that he accepts — if not money, stocks or bonds — inside information from the Wall Street millionaires he's befriended. He's said to be rich as a result. But we should think of him as like a good first sergeant; if he runs the company properly, you mustn't inquire too closely into his methods. And if he receives a few perquisites not found in regulations, it's only right and proper, else why should he take the trouble? He's far more than a crude bully, and if I'd seen him pass in his carriage, as did your acquaintance in the park, Mr. Morley, I'd have touched my hat brim. His famous 'third degree' is usually more than merely beating a confession out of some ruffian; have you heard how he solved the Unger murder case?"

"Yes!" said Felix with such anxiousness to tell the story that Byron smiled, and said, "Go ahead, Felix; you tell it."

"Well, sir, Byrnes tortured the suspect, actually tortured him" — Felix glanced around the table to see if he'd had an effect — "without placing so much as a finger upon him. For three days he kept him locked in a cell almost in complete darkness; the only light came from a window far down at the end of the corridor outside it. No one spoke to him. Nor did he even see a human face; food was slid under his cell door while he slept. He had nothing to do but pace his tiny gloomy cell or lie on the lounge which was its only furnishing. Just before dawn of the fourth day, the prisoner's spirit at lowest ebb" — Felix glanced around the table again; he had his audience's attention, all right — "Byrnes silently took his place at the barred door of the prisoner's cell. And now, for the first time, he lighted the lantern hanging from the ceiling just outside the cell door. The unaccustomed light shone upon the face of the sleeping wretch, and he awoke with a start. Byrnes stood motionless, staring at him, and they say that the coldness and menace of his gaze can burn holes through a man. Blinking in the light, the prisoner caught sight of those two cold eyes staring in at him, and sat up with a cry. And precisely as Byrnes had foreseen, he now caught sight, for the first time, of the lounge on which he had spent the greater part of three days and nights. It was spattered — stained in great smears — with dried gore! This was the lounge on which he had murdered his sleeping victim! With a great cry the prisoner sprang from it and fell to his knees before Byrnes, his hands clutching the bars of his cell, begging to be released, and confessing everything! Byrnes had a stenographer waiting with a notebook, and not till the prisoner had dictated and signed his complete confession was he led from the cell with the bloodstained couch into another. A month later, soon after his trial, he was hanged."