The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [233]
But, fortunately for us, the only person who was as yet aware of the movements of Mr. Clarence Darrow was Marcus; and late on Tuesday afternoon, he returned from Chicago in advance of the mysterious midwestern lawyer. After exchanging warm greetings with the rest of our group at the depot, Marcus handed me his suitcase (which El Niño immediately grabbed, refusing to allow me to carry it), and then we all started walking up Bath Street toward the court house. We’d been ordered to bring the detective sergeant to said building just as soon as his train got in, being as even though Mr. Picton had many pressing matters to attend to in his office (the trial was slated to open on the following Tuesday, August 3rd), he said there was nothing more important than learning about the background and tactics of the hired legal gun who was being brought in from so far away to face him. I figured that Marcus could’ve done with a hot bath and a good meal, after his long journey, but orders were orders. Besides, the discoveries that Marcus had made about Mr. Darrow were such that he himself was very anxious to share them with the rest of us. Because of this, the Doctor had cut his day with Clara Hatch short (he was still working with her as hard as ever) and joined us at the train station, ready to give Marcus his own version of the third degree: a version what included a box of the Doctor’s best custom-rolled smokes instead of bright lights, and a flask of Mr. Picton’s excellent whiskey in place of brass knuckles.
Once settled into the big old leather chair in Mr. Picton’s office, whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Marcus began his report.
“The vital statistics were easy enough to lay hands on, or at least most of them were,” he said, taking a drink from the flask, setting it aside, and pulling out a small notebook. “He’s either thirty-nine or forty—I couldn’t get the exact date of birth. Parents: a Unitarian minister who gave up the pulpit to become a furniture maker, and a New England suffragist. He seems to take after the father, for the most part—the old man never lost the crusading spirit. Darrow himself has had a lifelong fascination with Darwin, Spencer, Thomas Huxley—considers himself quite a rationalist. Oh, and he knows about your work, too, Dr. Kreizler.”
“Does he?” the Doctor asked, surprised. “And how did you find that out?”
“I asked him,” Marcus answered simply. “Got in to see him yesterday evening—told him I was a publisher from New York who wanted him to defend an anarchist who’s up for building bombs in New York. The last part of the story’s true, too—you remember Jochen Dietrich, Lucius? That idiot downtown who kept blowing up tenements because he couldn’t get his timing devices to work?”
“Oh, yes,” Lucius said, recalling the name. “The Seventh Precinct boys picked him up just before we left town, didn’t they?”
“That’s right,” Marcus answered, slowly running one of his big hands through his thick black hair and then rubbing his tired brown eyes. “Anyway, one of the Chicago cops I talked to said that Darrow’s got a soft spot for anarchists—fancies himself to be a bit of one, intellectually. So he agreed to see me.” Marcus shook his head and took a big drag off of his cigarette. “He’s a strange sort of character—not at all what you’d expect from a man who’s made a pretty decent living off the corporate payroll. He seems to have a careless attitude toward his appearance—clothes are slightly rumpled, hair’s cut rough and hangs in his face. But there’s something very self-conscious about it all—calculated, even. It’s like he’s trying to play the homespun hero, the plain prairie lawyer. His style of speaking’s the same: he’s got the outward manner of the lonely cynic, but he makes sure you can hear the heart of an idealistic romantic, too. Just how much of it’s genuine, or which parts, I certainly couldn’t tell you.” Marcus flipped a page in his notebook. “There’s some other minor details: he’s a baseball fanatic and an agnostic—”
“Well, of course he’s an agnostic,” Mr. Picton said. “He’s a defense