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By Root 1731 0

active response to all challenges had guided him through physical sickness in youth and political and personal trials in adulthood—truly free to refuse Kreizler’s offer? And if he accepted it, was I then free to say no to these two friends, with whom I had lived through many escapades and who were now telling me that my extracurricular activities and knowledge—so often dismissed as useless by almost everyone I knew—would prove vital in catching a brutal killer? Professor James would have said that, yes, any human being is free, at any time, to pursue or decline anything; and perhaps, objectively, that is true. But as Kreizler loved to say (and Professor James ultimately had a hard time refuting), you cannot objectify the subjective, you cannot generalize the specific. What man, or a man, might have chosen was arguable; Theodore and I were the men who were there.

So—on that dismal March morning Kreizler and I became detectives, as all three of us knew we must. That certainty was based, as I say, on thorough awareness of each other’s characters and pasts; yet there was one person in New York at that threshold moment who had correctly guessed at our deliberations and their conclusion without ever having been so much as introduced to us. Only in retrospect can I see that that person had taken a careful interest in our activities that morning; and that he chose the moment of Kreizler’s and my departure from Police Headquarters to deliver an ambiguous yet unsettling message.

Hustling through a new onslaught of heavy rain delivered by an increasingly forbidding sky, Laszlo and I got back into his calash, where I became immediately aware of a peculiar stench, one very unlike the usual odors of horse waste and garbage that predominated on the streets of the city.

“Kreizler,” I said, wrinkling my nose as he sat beside me, “has someone been—”

I stopped when I turned to see Laszlo’s black eyes fixed on a remote corner of the carriage floor. Following his gaze I caught sight of a balled-up, heavily stained white rag, which I poked at with my umbrella.

“Quite a distinct blend of aromas,” Kreizler murmured. “Human blood and excrement, unless I’m mistaken.”

I groaned and grabbed my nose with my left hand as I realized he was right. “Some local boy’s idea of funny,” I said, picking up the rag with the point of my umbrella. “Carriages, like top hats, make good targets.” As I flung the rag out the window it disgorged a ball of equally stained printed paper that fell to the carriage floor. I moaned again and tried unsuccessfully to spear the document with my umbrella. As I did the thing began to come unbunched and I was able to make out a bit of the printing on it.

“Well,” I grunted, perplexed. “This sounds like something in your department, Kreizler. ‘The Relationship of Hygiene and Diet to the Formation of Infantile Neural—’”

With shocking abruptness Kreizler grabbed my umbrella from my hand, stabbed its tip through the bit of paper, and then flung both items out the window.

“What in—Kreizler!” I jumped out of the carriage, retrieved the umbrella, separated it from the offensive piece of paper, and then got back into the calash. “That umbrella wasn’t cheap, I’ll have you know!”

As I glanced at Kreizler I saw a trace of real apprehension in his features; but then he seemed to force the trace away, and when he spoke it was in a determinedly casual tone. “I am sorry, Moore. But I happen to be familiar with that author. As poor a stylist as he is a thinker. And this is no time to be sidetracked—we’ve much to do.” He leaned forward and called out Cyrus’s name, at which the big man’s head appeared under the canopy of the carriage. “The Institute, and then on to lunch,” Laszlo said. “And pick up some speed, if you can, Cyrus—we could use a bit of fresh air in here.”

It was obvious, at that point, that the person who had left the befouled rag in the calash was not a child: for, based on the brief passage that I’d been able to read as well as on Kreizler’s reaction, the monograph from which the sheet of paper had been torn was almost certainly