The Alienist - Caleb Carr [158]
Sitting on a settee on one side of the fireplace was Bishop Henry Potter, and in a matching piece of furniture on the fireplace’s other flank was Archbishop Michael Corrigan. Behind each man stood a priest: Potter’s man tall and thin, with spectacles, and Corrigan’s short, rotund, and sporting large white sideburns. Before the fireplace stood a man I recognized as Anthony Comstock, the notorious censor of the U.S. Post Office. Comstock had spent twenty years using his congressionally mandated (and constitutionally quite questionable) powers to persecute zealously anyone who dealt in contraceptive devices, pregnancy abortions, ribald literature and photographs, and anything else that met his rather expansive definition of “obscene.” Comstock’s was a hard, mean face, not surprisingly; yet it wasn’t as disconcerting as that of the man who stood next to him. Ex-Inspector Thomas Byrnes had a pair of high, bushy eyebrows that arched over penetrating, all-encompassing eyes; yet at the same time, his enormous, drooping mustache made an accurate reading of his mood and thoughts disturbingly difficult. As we came further into the chamber Byrnes turned to us, and the eyebrows arched enigmatically; then he tilted his head toward an enormous walnut desk that sat in the center of the room. My eyes followed his indication.
Sitting at the desk, going over a few papers and scribbling an occasional note, was a man whose power was greater than that of any financier the world has ever known; a man whose otherwise handsome features were counterbalanced by a nose that had been cracked, swollen, and deformed by acne rosacea. You had to be very careful, however, not to stare at that nose openly—you were likely to pay for your morbid fascination in more ways than you could imagine.
“Ah,” said Mr. John Pierpont Morgan, looking up from his papers and then standing. “Come in, gentlemen, and let’s get this business settled.”
The fons et origo of all reality, whether from the absolute or the practical point of view, is thus subjective, is ourselves. As bare logical thinkers, without emotional reaction, we give reality to whatever objects we think of, for they are really phenomena, or objects of our passing thought, if nothing more. But, as thinkers with emotional reaction, we give what seems to us a still higher degree of reality to whatever things we select and emphasize and turn to WITH A WILL.
William James,
The Principles of Psychology
Don Giovanni, you invited me to sup with you: I have come.
Da Ponte,
from Mozart’s Don Giovanni
CHAPTER 30
* * *
I stepped with trepidation toward a pair of luxuriantly upholstered easy chairs that sat near Morgan’s desk and across from the fireplace. Kreizler, however, stood rigidly still, answering the financier’s hard stare with one of his own.
“Before I sit in your house, Mr. Morgan,” Laszlo said, “may I ask if it is your general custom to compel attendance with firearms?”
Morgan’s large head snapped around to scowl at Byrnes, who only shrugged in a very unconcerned way. The ex-cop’s gray eyes twinkled a bit, as if to say: When you lie down with dogs, Mr. Morgan…
Morgan’s head began a slow, slightly disgusted shake. “Neither my custom nor my instructions, Dr. Kreizler,” he said, holding out an arm to the easy chairs. “I hope you will accept my apologies. This affair seems to have brought out strong emotions in all who have knowledge of it.”
Kreizler grunted quietly, only partially satisfied, and then we both sat down. Morgan also returned to his seat, and brief introductions were made (save of the two priests behind the settees, whose names I never did learn). After that Morgan gave the slightest of nods to Anthony Comstock, who moved his unimposing little figure into the center of the room. The voice that emerged from that frame proved as thoroughly unpleasant as was the face.
“Doctor. Mr. Moore. Let us be frank. We know of your investigation, and for a variety of reasons we want it stopped.