The Alienist - Caleb Carr [257]
At that I stormed off, or tried my best to, anyway; but I’d only gotten half the distance to the corner when I heard Kelly’s voice again:
“Say. Moore.” I turned around, and saw him still grinning. “It sounds like you people had a hell of a time.” Putting his snuffbox back in his vest, he cocked his head playfully. “I’m not saying I know anything about it, of course. But ask yourself this when you get a free minute—of all the people who were up there tonight, who do you think is really the most dangerous to the boys uptown?”
I stood there, staring dumbly at Kelly and then at the ground, trying to make sense out of his question. After half a minute, an answer started to form in my overworked brain, and my jaw dropped open a little bit. I glanced back up with a grin and was about to state my reply—but Kelly was nowhere to be seen. I had an idea to go inside after him, but quickly abandoned it: there was no point. I knew what he meant, and understood what he’d done. Paul Kelly, gangland chief, inveterate gambler, and amateur philosopher and social critic, was playing a hunch; and though none of us would likely live long enough to see the ultimate outcome of the game, I suspected that his hunch was correct.
Strangely encouraged, I turned back around and jumped into a hansom that was sitting outside Kelly’s place, fairly well screaming at the driver to take me down to East Broadway in a hurry. As my driver whipped his horse down Lafayette Place and then east on Worth Street I began to chuckle and even hum a bit. “The final riddle,” I sang, echoing Marcus’s words from earlier in the evening: I wanted to be there when they solved it.
My cab pulled up at the Kreizler Institute at just past four-thirty and parked behind Laszlo’s calash. The only sound on the street was that of a baby crying, coming from an open window in one of the tenements opposite Kreizler’s two buildings. As I paid off my cabbie and stepped to the street, I caught sight of Marcus, who was sitting on the iron steps of the Institute, smoking a cigarette and running a hand through his hair. He acknowledged me with a nervous wave, and then I went over to peer inside the calash. Stevie was lying on the seat smoking, and when he looked over and saw me he saluted with his cigarette.
“Mr. Moore,” he said amiably. “Not bad, these what the detective sergeant smokes. You oughta try one.”
“Thanks,” I said, turning around. “I think I will. Where’s Cyrus?”
“Inside,” the boy replied, lying back down. “Making ’em some coffee. They been at it for hours.” He took a deep pull on the cigarette and then held it to the sky. “You know, Mr. Moore, you wouldn’t figure a stinkhole like this city to have so many stars over it. Seems like the smell’d be enough to drive ’em away…”
I smiled and walked away from the calash. “True enough, Stevie,” I said, looking beyond Marcus to the ground-floor windows of the Institute: They were brightly lit.
I sat down next to the taller Isaacson. “You’re not inside?”
He shook his head quickly, blowing smoke out of his long, handsome nose. “I was. Thought I’d be able to stand it, but—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, accepting a cigarette from him and lighting it. “I’m not going in.”
The front door of the Institute opened a crack, and I turned around to see Cyrus poking his head out. “Mr. Moore, sir?” he said. “Would you care for a cup of coffee?”
“If it’s your coffee, Cyrus,” I answered, “most certainly.”
He tilted his head and shrugged slightly. “I’m not guaranteeing anything,” he said. “I haven’t tried my hand since I got knocked on the head.”
“I’ll take a chance,” I answered. “How are they doing in there?”
“Getting on toward the end, I believe,” Cyrus answered. “Getting on toward the end…”
But it was another three quarters of an hour before there was any sign of things being wrapped up in Kreizler’s operating theater. During that time Marcus and I smoked, drank coffee, and tried, in some roundabout way, to accustom ourselves to the conclusion of our quest and the coming disbandment of our team. Whatever answers Kreizler and Lucius