The Alienist - Caleb Carr [138]
On that day I happened to be watching as Lucius strolled through the room, carrying a batch of the asylum letters and case files. He caught sight of something, then suddenly spun on his heels, dropped the pile of papers, and stared at Kreizler’s desk. His eyes went quite wide for a moment, and his forehead almost instantly began to perspire; but as he took out a handkerchief and began to mop the sweat away, his voice remained steady.
“Doctor—” he said to Laszlo, who was standing by the door talking with Sara. “This note from the superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s—have you looked at it?”
“Only once,” Kreizler answered, crossing over to where Lucius stood. “It didn’t seem to offer very much.”
“Yes, that was what I thought.” Lucius picked up the letter. “The description’s awfully vague—the reference to ‘some sort of facial tic,’ for instance, might cover a lot of ground.”
Kreizler studied Lucius. “But, Detective Sergeant…?”
“But—” Lucius grappled with his thought. “Well, it’s the postmark, Doctor: Washington. St. Elizabeth’s is the federal government’s principal asylum for the insane, isn’t it?”
Kreizler paused for a moment; and then his black eyes jumped in their quick, electric way. “That’s right,” he said, quietly yet urgently. “But since they never mentioned the man’s background, I didn’t—” He knocked a fist against his forehead. “Fool!”
Laszlo made a dash for the telephone, and Lucius followed. “Given the legal situation in the capital,” Lucius said, “it would hardly represent an unusual case.”
“You’ve a mastery of understatement, Detective Sergeant,” Kreizler said. “There are several such cases every year, in the capital!”
Sara was walking toward them, drawn by the excitement. “Lucius? What is it, what’s struck you?”
“The postmark,” Lucius said again, slapping at the letter. “There’s a very troublesome little codicil to the Washington laws that deal with insanity and the involuntary commitment of patients to asylums. If the patient hasn’t actually been adjudicated insane in the District of Columbia but is confined to a Washington institution, he can apply for a writ of habeas corpus—and he stands an almost one hundred percent chance of being released.”
“Why’s that so troublesome?” I asked.
“Because,” Lucius said, as Kreizler attempted to get a telephone line through to Washington, “so many mental patients in that city, especially at St. Elizabeth’s, have been sent there from other parts of the country.”
“Oh?” Now it was Marcus’s turn to draw near. “Why’s that?”
Lucius took a deep breath, his own excitement mounting. “Because St. Elizabeth’s is the receiving hospital for soldiers and sailors who’ve been judged unfit for military duty. Unfit—because of mental illness.”
The slow, drifting way in which Sara, Marcus, and I had been approaching Lucius and Kreizler now became something of a stampede. “It didn’t occur to us at first,” Lucius explained, shying away from our advance, “because there’s no mention of the man’s background in the letter. Only descriptions of his appearance and his symptoms—delusions of persecution and persistent cruelty. But if he did, in fact, see military service and was sent to St. Elizabeth’s—well, there’s a chance, a slim but real chance that it’s—” Lucius paused, seemingly afraid to say the word: “him.”
The idea seemed a sound one; but our mood of hopefulness was fairly well dashed by Kreizler’s ’phone call. After being kept waiting for quite a while, he did finally manage to get the superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s on the line, but the man treated Laszlo’s request for further information with the utmost contempt. Apparently, he knew all about the notorious Dr. Kreizler and felt the way many asylum superintendents did about my friend. Kreizler asked if there wasn’t some other member of the hospital staff who could look into the matter, to which the superintendent replied that his staff was severely overworked and had already