The Alienist - Caleb Carr [79]
“What’s that?” Theodore turned to Kreizler with an almost injured look. “Martial? That was not my meaning, Doctor—not my meaning at all! I would be loath indeed to call this the work of a soldier.”
Laszlo smiled a bit, devilishly aware that Theodore (who was still years away from his exploits on San Juan Hill) viewed the military arts with the same boyish reverence he had since childhood. “Perhaps,” Kreizler needled further. “But a cool head for carefully planned violence? Isn’t that what we endeavor to instill in soldiers?” Theodore cleared his throat loudly and stomped away from Kreizler, whose smile only broadened. “Make a note of it, Detective Sergeant Isaacson,” Laszlo called out. “A military background of some kind is definitely indicated!”
Theodore spun around once more, eyes wide; but he only managed to bellow “By thunder, sir!” before Cyrus burst out of the staircase, as alarmed as I could remember ever having seen him.
“Doctor!” he shouted. “I think we’d better get moving!” Cyrus raised one of his big arms to point north, and all our eyes followed the indication.
At the edges of Battery Park, near the several points of entry, crowds were gathering: not the kind of well-dressed, politely behaved throngs that occupied the area during the day, but milling pockets of shabbily dressed men and women on whom the mark of poverty was plain even from a distance. Some carried torches and several were accompanied by children, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this unusual early morning foray. As yet there were no overt signs of threat, but it had all the makings of a mob.
CHAPTER 15
* * *
Sara came and stood by me. “John—who are they?”
“Offhand,” I answered, feeling a different and a more vital sense of concern than I had at any point during that night, “I’d say that the morning edition of the Post has reached the streets.”
“What do you suppose they want?” Lucius asked, his head sweating more than ever despite the cold.
“They want an explanation, I expect,” Kreizler answered. “But how did they know to come here?”
“There was a cop from the Twenty-seventh Precinct,” Cyrus said, still very anxious, for it had been a mob much like the one we now faced that had tortured and killed his parents. “He was down there with two other men, explaining something to them. Then those two fellas went into the crowd and started talking it up pretty good, about how it’s only poor foreign kids that’re getting killed. Seems most of those people out there come from over on the East Side.”
“The officer was, no doubt, Roundsman Barclay,” Theodore said, his face full of that particular anger that was inspired by treacherous subordinates. “He’s the man who was here earlier.”
“There goes Miller!” Marcus said suddenly, at which I looked down to see the watchman fleeing without his hat toward the Bedloe’s Island ferry station. “Fortunately I kept his keys,” Marcus added. “He didn’t look like a man who’d be around long.”
Just then the noise of the largest group of people, who were straight ahead of us and quite visible through the branches of the park’s still-bare trees, began to grow louder, reaching a crescendo with a couple of venomous yells. We heard a clatter of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels, and then Kreizler’s calash appeared, barreling down the main path of the park toward the castle. Stevie held his horsewhip high and drove Frederick hard, around the front walls of the fort to the pair of large doors in the rear.
“Good man, Stevie,” I murmured, turning to the others. “That’ll be our best way out—through the back doors and up the river side of the park!”
“I suggest we get to it,” Marcus said. “They’re moving.”
With another series of shouts, the crowd at the main entrance came into the park, at which the groups to their right and left also began to surge forward. It now became clear that there were still more people streaming into the area from surrounding streets—the mob would soon number in the many hundreds. Someone had done an expert job of inflammation.
“The devil!” Theodore grunted