chapter 20

I slept very late next day. When I finally came downstairs it was well past noon but I had breakfast anyway, reading the Times account of the fire, which covered the entire front page and part of the second. Every other boarder had long since gone, so I sat alone; Julia served me. Looking very pale, violet smudging under her eyes, she brought in coffee when I sat down, and we said good-morning, nothing more. I had pancakes, Aunt Ada cooking them; I could hear the rhythm of her spoon against the crockery bowl stirring up the batter as Julia stood pouring my coffee. When Julia brought in my first stack, she stood beside the table as I buttered them, I looked up at her, and she said, "He didn't lose a happy life, did he, Si?" I shook my head. "He was obsessed. Half insane with cravings he would never have satisfied. Nothing would ever have been enough for him, Julia. Once in a while there really is a man better off dead, and he's one." But Julia rejected that, shaking her head even before I'd finished. "These aren't matters for us to decide. If we'd stayed, if only we'd stayed—" I said, "Listen," and picked up my paper, which was opened to the second page. " 'Assistant Foreman James Heaney, of Hook and Ladder Company No. 1,' " I read aloud, " 'said that his truck reached Nassau-street about two minutes after the breaking out of the fire, and that he was never more astonished in his life. A powder magazine, he thought, could not have flashed up more quickly.' " I looked up at Julia, then back at my paper. " 'Captain Tynan said tonight that in all his experience on the Police force he never saw a fire burn with greater fierceness and intensity.' " I turned to the first page, ran my finger down a column, and read, " 'The following statement regarding the origin of the fire is made by Mr. E.O. Ball: "I was passing down the rear or Nassau-street stairs ... and when near the foot of the stairs flames burst up through the new elevator shaft from the basement. Nothing had occurred indicating an explosion up to that moment. The flames rushed up the shaft like a flash of lightning, and almost as quickly up the stairways in terrible torrents of fire, with dense black smoke, which almost instantly cut off all possibility of egress...." ' "She had a hand pressed to her chest. "It really says that? I haven't looked at the paper; I couldn't bear it." "Those are actual quotations, word for word, from The New York Times, February 1, 1882, anyone free to read it and checkup. The paper's full of them, Julia. 'Edward S. Moore of the Scottish American,' " I read, " 'says that... in less than one minute after the alarm of fire was given all means of escape by the Park-row side of the building was cut off.' And there's more of the same from 'John D. Cheever, of the New-York Belting and Packing Company'... 'Alfred E. Beach of the Scientific-American' ... and a guy named James Munson who looked out his office window in the Tribune Building, saw the World Building just as usual, then looked out again only five minutes later and saw the entire building aflame. Julia, let yourself alone. You didn't cause the fire, couldn't have stopped it, and couldn't possibly have helped Jake." I tossed the paper to the table, then pointed to a paragraph. "Don't miss this, by the way: It's a full account of Dr. Prime's escape along the Observer sign into Thompson's office in the Times Building. The man with him was named Stoddard." I'd helped Julia; I could see I had. What I'd read was true, and I saw the conviction and sad knowledge come into her eyes, finally, that nothing could have been changed. When I'd finished my pancakes, Julia brought in a second stack, and I read her a couple more items I'd found in the paper. Guiteau's relatives, a brief story said, were planning to refrigerate his body after the execution, and exhibit it, charging admission; I smiled but she didn't. A second item said the Harvard class of 1876 had collected money and had sent one of its members to help a classmate in Denver accused of murder, and Julia did smile a little. Sometime around midafternoon I was looking through a Harper's Weekly by a parlor window, when I saw a cop walk past in his tall felt helmet and long blue coat; there were sergeant's stripes on his sleeve. He turned in, rang our doorbell, and Aunt Ada answered it; Julia was upstairs somewhere. I heard the cop at the door, badly mispronouncing and slow with the syllables as though he were reading the name, say, "Miss Charbonneau? She live here?" Aunt Ada said yes, and called up the stairs to Julia. The cop said, "Morley, Simon Morley. He live here, too?" I was up by then, walking into the hall, paper in hand, before Aunt Ada could answer; the cop stood on the stoop, a small square of paper in his hand. "I'm Simon Morley." He nodded. "Come along, then." Julia was coming down the stairs, and he nodded toward her. "The both of you. Get your coats." Aunt Ada and I both said, "Why?" simultaneously. "You'll be told, all in good time." Something about the way he'd said all, and you'll, and along, told me he was Irish. I said, "Well, I'd like to know now. Are we under arrest?""You damn soon will be if you don't do what you're told!" His eyes were suddenly furious and vindictive, the way cops so often are if you question anything they do. Julia was patting her aunt's arm and murmuring something soothingly. I knew we weren't exactly in the heyday of civil rights, and for Julia's sake, not to say my own, I shut up. I got my coat and fur cap from the big mirrored stand in the hall, and Julia got her coat and bonnet from the closet under the stairs, assuring her aunt that we'd undoubtedly be home before long and that there was nothing to worry about. The carriage waiting at the curb was for us. I'd assumed we'd be walking, but the cop stepped past us, opened the carriage door, and gestured us in. Watching us, a man sat on a little folding jump scat facing the rear. I helped Julia into the wide scat opposite him. Then, stooping, I stepped in between her and the man in the jump seat, feeling the little jounce and sag of the carriage body under my weight. The cop on the walk slammed the carriage door as I sat down beside Julia, and as I looked out at him his arm flew up in salute to the man sitting opposite us; not very smartly but with plenty of respect. The reins snapped, the carriage started up, and the man nodded to the sergeant in calm response to the salute. Then he turned to look us over, and as I saw that formidable chilling face full on I suddenly knew who he was. I'd never set eyes on him before, but I knew, and suddenly I was badly scared. He was big, with heavy square shoulders: This is a picture I found of him, and it's a good likeness, though it doesn't show the bald spot at the crown or the look of those eyes in actuality; it's the eyes that were frightening. They were big, and gray, close together as you see, but alive with his own secret interest in us, moving over our faces and clothes, absolutely without interest in us as human beings. We were something to him, something important, but not as people. He had the largest mustache I've ever seen, completely covering his mouth. And if that enormous walrus mustache, lying there on his face as heavy and thick as though it were carved out of wood, either looks funny or sounds funny, believe me it was not. I stared back, fascinated, wondering if the mouth behind that mustache was so cruel it had to be hidden. He wore a black overcoat, unbuttoned now; a black braided suit with cloth-covered buttons; a single-breasted black vest with a heavy gold watch chain passed through a buttonhole; black shoes.
He wore a stiff wing collar and a big genuine-looking pearl stickpin—the one in the picture, I think. But it was the face that held me; it moved slightly as those strange gray eyes searched us, frisked us, examined our skins for scars, I could almost believe. I had to drop my eyes to get away from his, faking an interest in my own shoes, and the action made my face flush and made me feel guilty. This was Inspector of Police Thomas Byrnes of the New York Police Department, its most famous or notorious member by far; and if he had personally come to take us away, then this was no ordinary arrest and I felt a steady thrill of sharp fright. Trying, I suppose, to fight it off, to stand up to this man, I asked a question I meant to sound hard and assured. But it didn't come out that way; it sounded half humorous in intent as though I were ready to claim I was only kidding. I said, "Well? Aren't you going to warn us of our Constitutional rights?" Nothing changed in his face, but the gray eyes moved rapidly over mine, extracting whatever meaning there might be in this boldness. He saw there was none, and without expression he answered in a ludicrous mixture of half-illiterate speech and a strange broad "a" of what I suppose he took to be upper-class talk. "I'll warn you; keep your half-witted [only he pronounced it "hoffwitted"] remarks to yourself, or I'll show yiz the fat end of a sap." Strange talk from Inspector Byrnes but I didn't laugh, even inwardly. And then we rode in silence for a dozen blocks, down Third Avenue under the El, rattling and swaying over the cobbles, occasionally lurching or sluing a little sideways through patches of snow. Julia stared out the little round window beside her, angry, refusing to look at Byrnes. I sat, occasionally looking up at him but mostly at the floor or out at the street. The day was overcast and the stores we passed were lighted only feebly, the lights generally far back in the store, yellow and steady if the gas flame was mantled, reddish and flickering if not. A good many stores hadpermanent wooden awnings built out to posts at the edge of the walks, and once again as I had before, I tried to interest myself in the knowledge that because of this and the frequent hitching posts, Third Avenue in 1882 looked very like a set for a Western movie. But I wasn't interested at all. We passed Cooper Institute, looking just as I'd seen it last, as far as I could tell, then curved left where Third and Fourth merge into the Bowery. We jounced along a few blocks farther under the El; a train darkened the day even more as it clattered over us, and a little shower of sparks and red embers dropped from the engine, one of them striking the horse's rump and lodging there for a moment, turning gray, but the horse gave no sign of feeling it. "Anything to tell me?" Byrnes said suddenly and I nearly jumped, then shook my head, and so did Julia. A typical Byrnes trick, I thought—the long long silence, then the sudden question that would startle us into talking, if we'd known what he wanted us to talk about. But I was wrong; he was way ahead of me. He had a reason I don't think I could ever have anticipated. A couple blocks, then we swung right, onto Bleecker. Three short blocks down Bleecker,thenlefto(more) nto—I saw the painted glass sign around the panes of the streetlamp— Mulberry Street. Halfway down the block we stopped on the left, and I saw two great square lamps flanking the steps leading up into a four-story stone building; the panes of the lamps were green, and I knew this was a police building. The driver was on the walk opening the carriage door, Byrnes gestured, and Julia stepped out. The driver—in derby and tan overcoat, but a cop—was waiting, and as her foot touched the walk he took her arm, firmly. Byrnes motioned me out, and was right behind me, a hand tight around my wrist. Quickly up the steps, and as the plainclothes cop with Julia opened one of the big double doors, I read the gilt letters, heavily shaded in black, on the large plain fanlight over the doors: NEW-YORK POLICE HEADQUARTERS. Inside, walking very fast, down a wooden-floored hall past a uniformed very stout cop at a desk, I saw worn floors, stained and chipped porcelain cuspidors, dirty dark-green plaster walls, and I smelled the smell, whatever it's made up of, of this kind of much-used building. Moving just short of a run—why, why do cops habitually and meaninglessly act nastily, as though it were a kind of instinct?—we were hustled down a flight of stairs, and then into a dingy, low-ceilinged, brick-walled basement room. In it stood a small table; an ordinary wooden kitchen chair; a perforated gas pipe backed by a reflector and mounted on a stand, and connected to a gas outlet by a flexible tube snaking across the wood floor; and, on a wooden tripod, an enormous camera of reddish polished wood, brass, and black leather. Three plainclothes cops in shirt-sleeves followed us right in; one was bald, the other two wore their hair parted on the left like the inspector's, and two of them wore walrus mustaches, though smaller than his. At a gesture from Byrnes, Julia and I took off our coats and hats, and piled them on the table by the door. One of the men had walked immediately to the camera and begun fiddling with it. The other two stood waiting at the chair before the camera—to hold me down in it, I realized, if need be.
I had no chance of resisting successfully and I knew it, and yet it was the same Constitution now as in my time, and I had to say something. I said, "I want to know why I'm here. I want to know what I'm charged with. I want to consult an attorney. And I refuse to be photographed before I do." Byrnes nodded to the two cops. "You heard the gent; tell him why he's here." They grabbed both my arms, one on each side of me, one shot up his knee, kicking me right at the tailbone with tremendous force—Julia cried out—sending me stumbling across the room toward the chair; I'd have fallen if they hadn't had hold of me. They whirled me instantly around, twisting my arms in the shoulder sockets; then, each with a hand on a shoulder, they slammed me down into the chair so hard the wood groaned and the chair slid on the wood floor. My mouth was open in a soundless gasp, the pain forcing tears to my eyes. One of the men bent over to bring his mouth close to my ear, and his voice was gleeful with the pleasure of what he'd done and was doing. He said, "You're here, sir, because we want you here!" I turned fast, spitting the words into his face before he could draw back. "You stinking son of a bitch!" His hand shot forward to grip my throat and hold my head so I couldn't move out of the path of his other fist drawing back fast to strike, but Byrnes spoke quickly. "No, I don't want him marked." After a moment the fist dropped, the hand at my throat squeezed hard, then dropped. My rebellion hadn't helped, and I'd known it wouldn't. But I was willing to have made it. Beside me the two men stood ready for more resistance, their faces hoping I'd offer it, but once was enough. The man at the camera had a kitchen match in his hand, and now he lifted one leg and swiped the match across the tightened cloth of the seat of his pants; the match snapped into flame, and I smelled the sulphur. He turned a brass valve, gas hissed from his standing light, then he touched the match to the perforations, and it popped into flickering red flame. He turned the valve, lowering the gas, and the dozens of little tongues shrank to a steady blue, and the light from the shiny reflector behind it was hot on the skin and bright to the eyes, and I squeezed them nearly closed. "None of that!" A hand on my shoulder shook me, a lot harder than necessary so that my teeth clicked. "Open your eyes!" I forced them open, and the man at the camera was stooped under his black cloth. The camera bellows slid forward, stopped, moved slightly back; then I saw his hand squeeze a bulb. "Got him," he said, and then it was Julia's turn. I was glad to see that no one touched her when she sat down. I might have felt I had to do something if they'd been rough with her, and been beaten to the ground. The photographer squeezed the bulb, and when his head ducked out from under the black cloth, Byrnes's extended arm and forefinger were pointing at him. "Now," said Byrnes, and the man murmured a quick yessir, and actually trotted from the room with his plates. One of the other two men had his notebook out, and Byrnes glanced at me. "Twenty-eight to thirty," he said, and the man wrote quickly. "About five-ten, a hundred and fawty," Byrnes said,and the man's pencil flickered. Byrnes described me and my clothes, including hat and overcoat, then Julia and her clothes; and the man with the notebook hurried out. Byrnes beckoned to me, and I walked over. He said, "Give me your wallet," and I reached into my inside coat pocket for it, feeling I'd never see it again. With my other hand I brought out the little handful of change I had in my pants pocket, and contemptuously held both change and wallet out to Byrnes. "Keep the change!" he said, smiling at his own joke, and the plainclothesman snickered. Byrnes didn't touch my wallet; he shook his head, and said, "Count it first." I did: I had forty-three dollars. When I finished, Byrnes was scribbling in a little notebook, then he looked up. "How much?" I told him, he filled in the amount, tore out the little page, and gave it to me, a handwritten receipt for forty-three dollars, signed Thomas Byrnes, Inspector. "We're not petty thieves here," he said, then turned to Julia, and told her to count the money in her purse. He took the bills—she had nine dollars—gave her a receipt, handed the purse back, and Julia thanked him drily and asked why he'd taken our money. "You might try to escape," he said, shrugging. "But you wouldn't go nowhere much without money, would yez?" Back into the carriage then, Byrnes facing us again, watching, waiting. Over to Fifth Avenue, then we turned uptown. I said, "Where are we going?" "I think you can guess." "No, I can't." "Then wait and see." Our carriage rolled through Washington Square, looking then as now except that there was no arch; even a lot of the buildings were the same, especially along one side of the square, and for a moment it seemed impossible that in the next second or two I wouldn't see a car somewhere. Block after block then, trundling up Fifth behind the endless clop-clop-clop-clop of our horse. From time to time Julia's eyes met mine, and I'd try to smile reassuringly, and so did she. Then I'd look out the windows, trying to be interested in the people and buildings we passed, but the certainty that somehow we were in serious trouble wouldn't let go my attention. When finally we stopped, between Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Streets, I'd guessed where we were going—so had Julia, I could see when she glanced at me—but I couldn't possibly imagine why. There it stood across the sidewalk from our carriage door: Andrew Carmody's Fifth Avenue mansion looking almost exactly like the old Flood mansion still standing on San Francisco's Nob Hill, even to the magnificent stone-and-bronze fence around its patch of lawn. The carriage door was open, the driver gesturing us out, waiting to take Julia's elbow, Byrnes reaching for my wrist. On the wide front porch, the cop rang the bell, and we all stood waiting. Did Carmody think, when he'd seen Julia and me burst out of the boarded-up room beside Jake's office, that we'd somehow been part of the blackmail scheme? Was he going to accuse us of it now?
A maid opened the door; she wore a long black dress with sleeves to the wrists, an enormous white apron, and a complicated white lace cap. She was a girl, no more than fifteen, cheeks as red as though they'd just been scrubbed. "Please come in, gentlemen and miss; you are expected," she said so respectfully she seemed frightened. Neither Byrnes nor the cop said anything as they started us forward, and I smiled at the girl and thanked her, to show up what louts the cops were. Facing us across a wide hall as we stepped in was a pair of magnificent staircases of dark polished wood, curving in opposite directions. As I followed the maid my head was turning, trying in spite of what was happening to us to see all I could of the immense hall stretching off into the distance on each side of the stairs. I saw tremendous rugs on a tiled floor, walls ornate with molded plaster, globed light brackets, tables, chairs, flowers in vases. Through a vaulted doorway, down a short hall of polished parquet flooring, through another high doorway, and into a room as different from Aunt Ada's parlor as two rooms could ever be. It was four times as large, with french doors along one side, and its furnishings were entirely French, in the style, I think, of one of the Louis'—graceful, and so light and dainty they hardly seemed usable. The white woodwork and the backs of the two tall doors from the hall were heavy with gilt ornamentation. Framed paintings hung on the walls; white marble busts stood in arched niches. A white-and-gilt grand piano, or possibly a harpsichord, stood near the windows. It was a beautiful room, all soft colors, and standing in it as though it were a setting for her— posed before a small white-manteled fireplace—stood Mrs. Andrew Carmody in a long loose-sleeved pink dress, holding a folded fan of ivory. Her face was precisely as Julia and I had seen it last night in her box at the Charity Ball, as composed as though she had never in her life had a doubt. "Good afternoon, Inspector: Mr. Carmody has been told you are here and will be down in a moment." She smiled at Byrnes, as easily unconscious of the rest of us as though she actually didn't see us. "Good awfternoon, Modom Carmody. I trust he ain't suffering?" "His burns are painful, but ..." She moved a shoulder slightly, and smiled at him brilliantly in a way that said the conversation was over. Her fan spreading open as she lifted it, she moved it once or twice before her face, and to cover the truth that he hadn't been asked to sit down, Byrnes stepped over to a marble bust of Marie Antoinette, and bent forward to inspect it. Steps were sounding slowly down one of the entrance-hall staircases, then along the parqueted floor of the hall. They reached the open doorway and as I turned to look, the steps became soundless as the shockingly bandaged man slowly crossed the great rug toward a chaise longue. The white bandages crossed his forehead, covered both temples and cheeks, and wrapped snug around his throat. But the nose and the narrow strips of flesh between it and the bandage edges were so red and swollen, so terribly burned, that whatever film of horribly damaged skin was left seemed hardly enough to hold in check the blood that seemed ready to break through just behind it.
His hair was completely gone, burned off, the top of his head swollen and crusted. His eyes were inflamed, and he constantly blinked or momentarily squeezed them shut. One heavily bandaged arm hung in a black sling, and the finger ends protruding from it were swelled huge and split. At the chaise longue he lay back as though exhausted. He wore black pants faintly striped in white, and a dark-blue braided smoking jacket. A folding table beside the chaise held a glass, a pitcher, an open cardboard pillbox, and a fever thermometer. For a few moments he lay silent, eyes closed, then he opened them, said, "As—" and coughed heavily several times, wheezing deep in his chest. Then he tried again, keeping his voice so subdued in order not to start up the coughing again that it was nearly a whisper. "As you see, I have been burned; in the fire yesterday. I was fortunate to escape with my life." He drew a sudden deep breath, his hand rising quickly to his chest as though he were about to cough, but he swallowed twice and repressed it. For a moment or two he lay motionless, eyes closed. Then he opened them, glanced at Julia, glanced at me, then nodded several times to Byrnes. "Yes," he said, almost whispering it, "it is they. Thank you, Inspector. Please sit down." "Oh," Byrnes said as though he were standing only because he'd absent-mindedly forgotten to sit. He pulled a small chair to the chaise and sat down. "Now, sir, pray tell what has happened." We stood listening while he told Byrnes about the letter Pickering had sent, and the meeting in City Hall Park. "I didn't doubt he had documents; as a contractor I'd done honest work for City Hall for which there were undoubtedly records of payment. Not everything done for the city while Tweed was in power was dishonest." "Of cawss." "And yet his documents had slight value. I am engaged in certain delicate business negotiationsinvolvingmillions,which(a) could be upset by gossip and slander, however false. So I had the man followed. Pickering made no attempt to avoid this, and the gumshoe easily learned that he lived at 19 Gramercy Park. I had him ascertain the names of the other occupants, too. For all I knew, some of them might also be involved in this absurd scheme. Yesterday morning I met Pickering, who took me to his secret office in the old World Building; and I brought a thousand in currency, prepared to pay it merely to be rid of the man. If he'd insisted on one cent more, I'd have had you arrest him at his home." "Quate rate," said Byrnes, and it took me a moment to understand that he meant quite right. It was a pretty good story, I thought; altered about as I'd have done, I supposed, if I'd been in his shoes. Stopping occasionally to cough, he went on to say that Pickering reluctantly agreed to accept a thousand dollars, knowing he had no proof of crookedness; that Pickering had explained what the boarded-up doorway was about; and that while Pickering was pulling documents from his files in exchange for the thousand dollars, a fire broke out in the next-door elevator shaft, he had no idea how. To his absolute astonishment we—he pointed at us—had burst through the boarded-up doorway, I had sprung at Pickering and grappled with him, while Julia began stuffing the money in her clothes. He could hear the crackle of flames, see smoke rolling up the shaft, hearshouts of "Fire!" and hear people running; he had to run for his life. He began to cough heavily, and Mrs. Carmody, glaring at us, hurried over, and held the glass of water from his table while he sipped at it. I could only stare at him; then I turned to Julia as she turned to me, both of us mystified. Why Carmody wanted to involve us I couldn't begin to imagine—and then I thought I might have a hint, because the bandaged head was shaking angrily as he pushed the glass aside, pulling himself upright on the chaise. "I escaped down the Nassau-street stairs," he said in a harsh whisper that was the equivalent of a shout. "One of the very last to do so, I suspect. At the cost of burns about the face and head and of one hand and arm that my physician says"—his voice was bitter—"will disfigure me for life." His face would be distorted forever, he said, and permanently reddened; very little hair would ever again grow on his face or head. "And they are responsible!" he said, his finger shooting out at us, and I felt he almost believed it, and that certainly he blamed us for his terrible injuries and hated us. Obviously, he finished, we'd known about Pickering's scheme. As of course we had; at least I had. Of the people at Pickering's house, we were the only two who matched the descriptions and ages of the pair who'd burst into Pickering's office; that's why he'd had Byrnes bring us over for identification. He lay back in his chair. "And if Pickering is still missing, then they are responsible for his death. Except for their interference, he could have escaped with me." Byrnes turned to look at us. "Pickering is still missing." "Then there stand his murderers." I'd never faced such hate as came from the reddened eyes blazing at us from between the bandages. Was there any use in my protesting the truth: that he had started the fire; that he, not we, had struggled with Pickering; that Pickering's death was Carmody's fault? I wanted to yell it out, but in that case how could I account for our hiding next to Pickering's office? By telling Byrnes all about Danziger and the project? There was no explanation for our being there. Byrnes was looking at me. "Well?" he said. "Anything to tell me now?" And after a moment I shook my head. The doorbell rang. We heard steps toward the front door, the door opening, the maid's voice, then a man's. Footsteps approached along the hall; then the maid stopped at the doorway, and the cop we'd left at 19 Gramercy Park came walking in carrying his helmet under one arm. He actually bowed, head ducking humbly, then took a step backward, a finger rising to smooth his mustache. The bandaged head on the chaise nodded regally in return, and Mrs. Carmody graciously inclined her head. The little ceremony actually took several seconds, and if I hadn't known this before, I'd have known now that this was a place of wealth and power and that both these cops understood it. "Well?" Byrnes said then, and his voice indicated his standing in this room, far superior to that of the uniformed cop.
"Yes, sor." The sergeant unfastened the two brass buttons of his uniform coat just over his belt. He shoved a hand in; then with the instinctive feeling for drama that everyone of this time seemed to be born with, he walked over to the table beside Carmody's chaise longue. Not till he reached it did he pull out a thick paper-banded stack of greenbacks and slap them down on the table. "Found this, sor, in his room." He nodded at me. "The landlady showed me the room, and the money was in his carpetbag, hidden under some clothes." I was paralyzed, almost literally; I couldn't move or speak. Byrnes had crossed to the table, to lean over and examine the stack of greenbacks. "And is this your money, sir?" The bandaged head turned as though it hurt, and the inflamed blinking eyes looked down at the money. "Yes, the bills are marked. My bank will identify them, every one." And Byrnes picked up the packet, turned, and walked over to Julia and me, tucking the bills into an inside coat pocket. "Well?" He stopped before me almost cheerfully, and for the third time said, "Anything to tell me now?" "There's nothing to tell." I shrugged. "He's lying, and the money is a frame-up to support the lie." I didn't know whether the word "frame-up" was in use yet, but if not he understood me all the same, and nodded. "We never touched that money—" I stopped suddenly; I'd thought of something. "Have you examined it for fingerprints?" I said excitedly. "You'll find his, all right!" I pointed to the chaise longue. "But you won't find mine or Miss Charbonneau's!" "Won't find what?" "Our fingerprints!'' "I don't know what you're talking about." He didn't. I could see that he didn't. I didn't know when the use of fingerprints as identification was discovered, but obviously it was not yet. "Never mind. He's lying. That's all I have to say." "Well, that's possible," Byrnes answered. The sergeant walked over to him and whispered in his ear. Byrnes nodded, and the sergeant left. Byrnes looked at me speculatively for a moment, then rubbed his chin as though genuinely considering the possibility that I was telling the truth. "We have a chawge and a denial. If you two done it, nobody but Mr. Carmody seen you. Tell me this: Were you there at all? Hiding next to Pickering's office? For some innocent reason, perhawps?" He smiled invitingly. But I'd had time to understand that it was impossible to admit even being there. How could we explain it? If I admitted we were there but couldn't say why, Carmody's charge seemed true. I shook my head immediately. "No. The only connection between Pickering and us is that we lived in the same boardinghouse. We don't know anything about his blackmailing this man. Or whether it's even true that he was. I begin to suspect that maybe Mr. Carmody here killed Pickering. And left him to burn. He's afraid the truth will come out, and wants a scapegoat before questions startbeing asked. Since we lived where Pickering did, he hides the money in my bag or has someone else do it, and accuses us." Byrnes was nodding sympathetically. "Quate possible, if you wasn't in the World Building at all yesterday. And you say you wasn't?" I nodded, and Byrnes stepped to the doorway. "Sergeant!" he called down the hall. Footsteps sounded immediately on the parquet flooring of the hall; then the sergeant stopped in the doorway, his helmet still under his arm like a football. A man walked past him into the room, and I realized that I knew him but for a few seconds couldn't place him. He nodded politely to Mrs. Carmody, then glanced at the bandaged figure on the chaise, but looked quickly away. He stared closely at Julia and me for several seconds, then nodded to Byrnes. "Yes, it is they." He glanced at a pair of photographs in his hand, and I recognized them; they were copies of the police photographs of Julia and me taken earlier. "I recognized them from your photographs," he was saying, handing them to Byrnes. "As Dr. Prime told you, they escaped as he did; I helped them climb into my office." He looked at Julia and me again, his eyes genuinely troubled. "I am sorry if they are in trouble," he said, and it was an apology to us for the necessity of doing what he'd done. Byrnes thanked him, and J. Walter Thompson, into whose office we'd climbed from the burning World Building yesterday morning, nodded around the room and left. In spite of what he'd just had to do, he was a nice man and I almost wished I could call after him, and assure him that his little one-man business was going to succeed, and even grow. We were deeply in trouble now. Anything to tell me? Byrnes had asked in the carriage on the way to Police Headquarters, and several times afterward. And certainly if we'd been in the World Building fire at all, we had something to say to an inspector of police unless we were hiding something. He'd pointedly offered us the chance to speak, I was sure now, in the certainty that it would make any explanation we made after we'd been accused seem like an obvious lie. He'd pinned us nicely, and I knew that in spite of the absurd way he talked this was a dangerous man. "Congratulations, sir," he was saying, offering the credit to the bandaged man on the chaise. "Appears like you caught a pair of murderers." "Thanks to you. When I am somewhat recovered, and back on Wall Street, I should like to thank you again. In my office. You still retain your well-known interest in the Street, Inspector?" "Oh, yas, indeed." "Splendid; we all appreciate it. Not a pickpocket, not a troublemaker down there since you established the John Street deadline. I will let you go now, Inspector. I know you will be fully occupied in making entirely certain this pair does not escape justice. Once that is done ... come see me at my office." "Count on both those things, sir."I was hypnotized, listening to these two bargaining over us. And I was scared. But when I looked at Julia to smile reassuringly at her, it wasn't false; we were in trouble but I knew that for Carmody to prove anything against us in a courtroom, his word against ours, would be a lot different from persuading Inspector Byrnes. And in less than a minute I learned that Byrnes thought so, too, and I began to feel almost cheerful. We were hustled out of the house, the sergeant between us, one hand gripping an arm of each of us, Byrnes behind us. At the curb Byrnes stepped forward to open the carriage door. But then, a hand on the door handle, he stopped, and turned to look at us thoughtfully. He said, "In the cawtroom, he'd charge and you'd deny. There's the money found in your room and Thompson's identification. But there is the smell of Tweed Ring scandal around Carmody too, isn't there? And he did pay blackmail, howsomever small." For moment he silent, looking at us consideringly;thenheopenedthecarriagedoor."Jum(a) pin,Sergeant!"he(was) said, and the sergeant looked surprised but he let go our arms and did what he was told. Then Byrnes turned to us, his back to the sergeant, and spoke quietly; neither the sergeant nor the driver could hear him, I'm certain. "Constitutional rights, you say," he murmured as though the novel sound of the phrase intrigued him. "Well, all right; I think it's too soon to arrest you. I think we have to find more evidence." For a moment longer he stared at us, then seemed to reach a decision. "On your way," he said. "But you're not to leave the city, understand?" We looked at him, not entirely sure he meant what he seemed to be saying. "Be off with you!" he said almost kindly, smiling with a kind of fatherly affection for Julia, at least as well as that hard face could manage. It was no time to wait till he changed his mind, I thought, and I took Julia's arm, and we walked away, fast, south on Fifth in the opposite direction from the way the carriage was headed. A dozen steps, twenty steps, thirty, and he hadn't changed his mind and called after us. I couldn't resist looking back. He was still standing by the carriage watching us. "Sergeant!" he yelled suddenly, and yanked open the carriage door. Then he pointed after us: "Our prisoners are escaping!" I stopped, my hand on Julia's arm swinging her around with me, and we stood staring. My mind wouldn't translate what was happening into sense. Because the sergeant's helmeted head had appeared out the street-side window of the carriage, and he was pointing at us, his arm extended, his forefinger aiming. But it wasn't his finger at all, because I saw it flash, heard it roar, felt the zing of the bullet split the air near our heads. Our minds worked then; we were running for our lives, and we heard the explosion of the sergeant's revolver, the high-pitched zing, and I saw a chip fly out of the balustrade of the brownstone house just ahead. Again the astonishingly loud explosion of the big revolver, then we were at the street corner, and in the instant of hurling ourselves around it I had to look back once again: Byrnes was in the street, his hand on the sergeant's wrist forcing the gun straight upward; not to save us, I knew that, but because there were too many startled citizens now, stopped and staring, between us and the gun.
We were around the corner on Forty-seventh Street running hard, Julia with her skirt gathered up in one hand, people gaping. Across the street a man on the steps of the Windsor Hotel suddenly ran down and across the cobbles toward us, his hand raised in a "halt" gesture, saying something, I couldn't tell what. But I raised a fist, and he stopped at the curb and watched us tear past. It was a long crosstown block, an endless row of identical brownstones, and halfway down it Julia gasped, "I can't, I have to stop!" We slowed to a walk, and I looked behind. But though people were turned to stare after us, others leaning out of carriage windows or looking back from the drivers' seats of delivery wagons, no one was chasing us and there was no sign of Byrnes or the sergeant, I didn't know why. We reached Madison Avenue. A horsecar traveling south was just past the far corner, and we stepped out into the street, and I helped Julia up onto the rear platform as it moved past, then swung up after her. It was rolling along about as fast as we could have traveled on foot unless we'd run full speed without letup, which was impossible; and this was a lot less noticeable. I paid our fares, we sat down and stared out the window, getting our wind back and trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. But no one looked at us. People sat staring out their windows at the quiet street. I'd walked along here in the sun, with Felix's camera, day before yesterday. People coughed, yawned, and got on or off the car, crunching down the aisle through the ankle-deep straw that was supposed to keep your feet warm and didn't. At Forty-fourth Street and again at Forty-third, I looked down the short block to our left at Grand Central Station standing exactly where it was supposed to stand, and where I'd seen it countless times. Only now it was red brick and white stone, and only three stories high. Forty-second Street just ahead was busy, noisy; we could hear the endless clatter of iron-tired wheels over cobble paving, and two cops stood out in the street directing traffic. One was short, the other tall, but both had great protruding stomachs bellying the blue cloth of their long uniform coats. Our tracks curved east onto Forty-second Street, and the tall cop beside the tracks glanced toward our car, then took off his helmet and peered into it. We drew abreast of him, starting to take the curve, and when he was directly beside our window I leaned across Julia's lap to peer down into his helmet and see what he was looking at. I don't think I've ever been more astonished. There, jammed down into the deep crown of his felt helmet, lay my face looking up at me. Beside it lay Julia's—our police photographs again, mounted on heavy cardboard—and now I understood why Byrnes's photographer had actually run from the little basement room with his plates. From that moment on, fast he could work, photographs were being duplicated. And as we'djoggedblockafter(as) blocku(as) ptown in the carriage,(our) as we'd stood listening to Carmody, to Byrnes, to Thompson, these photos were being rushed to very possibly every cop on duty in the city—the warning to look for us already out while we were still in custody. Now in the instant of our passing, the cop on Forty-second Street looked up from the helmet in his hand. And I knew too late that for an hour or more he'd been checking our photographed images with the faces of all the pedestrians crossing before him and of the passengers in each car passing his post; there was probably a promotion for the man who got us. Our eyes met and, a footfrom mine, I saw his widen in startled recognition and—this astonished me—in sudden sharp fear. What he'd been told about how dangerous I was, I didn't know, but—we were a car length past him now—I heard the urgency in his voice as he turned and shouted at the other cop. He answered—I couldn't make out what he said—and they both began to run down the middle of the street after us. They were twenty yards behind, and they didn't gain—running heavily, flat-footedly, heads far back, each with a hand on his jiggling belly. It was a scene in every way precisely like many another I'd seen in old-time silent-movie comedies. They weren't shouting now; they needed all their breath to run. But the short one pulled out the long nightstick hanging from a loop of his wide leather belt, held it high over his head, brandishing it threateningly, and the resemblance to the Keystone Cops—they even wore mustaches—was complete. Except that there was nothing funny about them. They were absolutely real, and I knew that if they caught us, we could end up in Sing Sing prison. Neither driver nor conductor had seen them, though a couple of passengers had turned as Julia and I had, to stare back at them. At Grand Central Station just ahead the car would stop, I was sure, and they'd catch up with it in seconds. I was sliding from my seat toward the aisle, a hand on Julia's wrist; and looking as serene and innocent as I could manage, I walked on toward the front of the car, Julia right behind me. We passed the conductor, I smiled at him vaguely, then we stepped out onto the open front platform. Directly before Grand Central Station, high over the center of the street, stood the little wooden gabled building of an El station, stairs leading up to it from each side of Forty-second Street. It was a spur line apparently, leading to the main line of the Third Avenue El, I supposed, and I had only one vague plan, if it could be called even that. There were four flights of steps leading up to that station, two on each side of the street, and the station stood directly at the end of the spur-line track. Any one of the four flights could be reached through the station, and if we ran up one of those flights we had an exactly even chance—two cops, each coming up one flight of steps after us—of running down one of the other two flights and escaping them. It was all I could think of, and standing on the platform, I murmured, "Jump off and run when I do," and Julia smiled and nodded as though at a casual remark of mine. I was watching the driver, I saw his mittened hands draw back on the reins, felt my body lean slightly forward as the car began to slow; then I nudged Julia, and we jumped off and ran hard. Down the center of the street alongside the horse, then cutting before him, ducking between two wagons, one of them piled high with barrels, up onto the sidewalk, and then pounding up the stairs two at a time, Julia in the lead and running as fast as I was. People coming down paid us no particular attention, merely stepping aside to let us pass, and I realized that people running up or down these steps at Grand Central were no unusual sight. I heard shouts behind us, turned at the top of the flight, and saw the taller of the cops hit the first step—he was moving faster than I'd thought—then we ran on into the station. Inside we walked. I put on a smile as we approached the ticket booth, pulling two nickels from my pocket. Julia was tugging at my sleeve, I looked at her, she gestured with her chin, and as we stopped and stood waiting while the man in the booth leisurely tore two tickets from his roll, I looked out and saw aone-car train standing on the track, engine first with its front end nearly touching the station house here at the end of the single track. Inside the car an old man, his clasped hands and chin resting comfortably on the top of his cane, sat quietly waiting till it was time for the train to start. At the far end of the car the conductor sat staring out the window toward the other side of the street. It was momentarily tempting but as I took our tickets I shook my head at Julia. To be caught inside that car, a cop entering at each end, just couldn't be risked. We walked quickly out onto the platform, and passing the engine, I turned to look back toward the head of the stairs we'd come up, and saw the helmet rising into view, then the cop's face, and saw his head turn and catch sight of us. Then Julia and I ran along the platform toward the stairs at its opposite end, and as we passed the car, I heard the conductor slam the waist-high metal gate of its open platform. The tiny steam engine behind the car tootled, and I turned to see its miniature drive-shaft move; then the car was rolling past us and Julia moaned—we could have been on it! But it was too late now. Chuff-chuff, chuff-chuff—the engine, moving backward behind the car on this return run down the single track, was picking up speed, the conductor at the back of the car slamming the back-platform gate closed, and the second cop's helmet rose into sight at the head of the stairs we were racing toward. They'd outguessed us. I swung around, and the other cop, belly jouncing, a hand holding his helmet on, was running along the platform toward us not fifty feet away. I've never really been one of the people who think fast in an emergency. I think fast enough, that is, but usually what I think of is the wrong thing to do. This time, hardly thinking at all, I did precisely the right thing. Both cops running toward us now, I turned to Julia beside me. My arms, swinging in toward her waist like giant claws, gripped her, raised her high off her feet, and dropped her down on the other side of the waist-high gate on the rear platform of the car rolling past us. Then—the short cop grabbing at me, his hand raking down the back of my coat as I turned —I jumped into the open doorway of the engine cab as it passed, swung around fast, and the cop running at me ran his face right into the heel of my hand. He staggered, then stood staring after us as we rolled past the end of the station platform. Across the little engine cab from me, the engineer, leaning out his window to stare down the track ahead, had neither seen nor heard me jump on, over the rattle and rapid huff of his engine. Standing there in the engine's open doorway, I was completely oriented; I knew I was directly above the center of Forty-second Street, moving east just past Grand Central Station. The sketch— just below—is one I've made showing our train just after leaving Grand Central Station and the El platform. Third Avenue, toward which we are moving, is off to the right, and that's Forty-second Street below our train.
I looked up and saw only the gray and empty winter sky in the space I'd always before seen filled by the soaring needle-spired tower of the Chrysler Building. I glanced down, and where the base of the Chrysler Building belonged stood the round little red-brick-and-white-stone tower you see in my sketch, no more than a dozen feet taller than our tracks. And in that moment—the moment of my sketch—moving through this partly familiar yet utterly strange and now suddenly hostile city, I felt a rush of homesickness nearly overwhelm me; I had to close my eyes for a moment to fight it off. Within seconds we were slowing down, backing in between the twin arms of the station platform at the other end of the two-block spur line. It wasn't impossible that the two cops could hurry along Forty-second Street for those two blocks, even commandeering a carriage or wagon for all I knew, and I stood in the doorway of the engine cab staring ahead at the Third Avenue line, hoping a train we could transfer to would be just coming in. But there was none even in sight, and the moment the wooden floor of the station platform appeared beside me, I hopped off the engine —I don't think the engineer ever did see me—and let my own momentum carry me trotting forward to the slowing car just ahead. Julia was standing at the gate, the conductor right behind her. "That's against the law, you know!" he said angrily to me. I wasn't sure whether he meant lifting Julia over the gate or riding the engine, and I said I was sorry, and handed him our tickets. Then—I wanted to yell at him to open the gate but was afraid if I did that he'd be deliberately slower than ever—he got out his punch, carefully punched both tickets, handed them back to me, and I thanked him. And only then did he open the gate and let Julia off. Then we ran for the stairs. I think the two cops could have been there if they'd really tried, waiting for us to step down off the stairs onto the walk at Third and Forty-second. But they'd have had to move faster than they'd done in some years, and no one grabbed us. But across the street a cop walking his beat looked into a saloon over the tops of the two waist-high latticed doors of the entrance, then strolled to the curbat the corner, and stood, skillful as a professional entertainer, bouncing and twirling his club at the end of its thong. I had the feeling that he'd given far more time to club twirling than crook catching, and as we turned and walked south on Third Avenue, moving away from him as fast as we could without obviously hurrying, I was glad that this was his beat. Julia was looking at me questioningly, and I understood. Were our photographs in his helmet, too? I shrugged; if not, they would be soon. Every cop in the city would have them, to be passed on to the next shift, and with extra cops and probably plainclothesmen out, too. The reward Carmody had almost openly offered Byrnes would be big if we were caught and convicted, or "killed while escaping"; it wouldn't matter which. Because Byrnes was clever: Our "escape" and flight, of course, would be accepted as confession. The cop on the corner was half a block behind now and hadn't even glanced at us. But the next one could be different, and if he wasn't, then the one after that. We simply could not walk through the streets for block after block; we'd be caught within minutes. And any public transportation would be as bad. We had to get off the streets right now: into a hansom, it occurred to me longingly, where we could sit back and move unseen through the streets with time to think. But Byrnes knew the problems of people trying to hide; it takes money, and he had ours. "Julia, have you any friends who'd hide you for a few days, lend you some money?" "In Brooklyn, yes; we lived there up until two years ago. But the only friend here I could ask to do that lives at Lexington and Sixty-first, and—" "Too far, too far!" I got rattled. "Where are we, Julia, Forty-first? What's the nearest bridge? Maybe they aren't guarding them yet, and we can still—" "Si, there's only one bridge, Brooklyn, and it's way downtown." I nodded, glancing at store windows we passed, trying to see whether they reflected anyone following or about to challenge us. More than ever before, I was realizing that Manhattan is an island and not a very big one, either; you can walk its circumference in a day. "I don't want us to be trapped sitting on a ferry like a couple of pigeons. We need money, dammit! To hole up in a hotel where they can supply our meals. Suppose we telephoned your aunt—" I stopped. "Did what?" "Never mind." But she'd heard me. "I don't know anyone who has a telephone. Or who has even seen one." "I know, I know!" "We could send a messenger boy; there's an office near here." "But we'd have to wait there for the reply?""Yes." "When the boy came back, the cop that I'm certain must be watching the house would be right along with him. God, how I wish there were movies! Between us we probably have the price of a cheap one, and we could sit and wait till dark." "Movies?" I'd lose my mind if this kept up. I said, "We've got to separate, Julia. Till dark. They're looking for the pair of us; let's not make it easy for them. It'll be dark in forty minutes, an hour at most. And I'll try to sneak in and out of the house then; I've got money in my room. Meet me in a hour and a half at—where's the nearest good place from the house?—in Madison Square. Walk through it as though you're going somewhere, and I'll follow you out. If I'm not there, try again in half an hour. Then give me up, and"—I shrugged—"do your best. Okay?" Before she could answer I looked at the windows of a store we were passing; the entranceway passed between double display windows, one pane of each set at a 45-degree angle to the walk. It reflected the half block or so behind us and I saw a man running silently toward us. He was in plainclothes, wearing a derby and a long topcoat, but nothing could disguise the truth that he was a cop. He was running on his toes without a sound, and he was about the length of a football field behind. Without turning around I spoke quietly and very rapidly. "Julia. You must run. To the corner, and around it, and keep on. Do it now, now!" She didn't hesitate or waste time looking back, but gathered up her skirts and ran. I turned and walked straight out into the street. There I turned to face the sidewalk and stood waiting. And now the man running toward us had a choice to make between me or going after Julia, leaving me behind his back, and not sure what I'd do. He had to choose me, and he did it cleverly, running right past me as though going for Julia, as I thought he was for a moment. Then he whirled in a fast right-angle turn and came at me. But I'd picked a metal pillar of the El tracks to stand near, and I stepped over to it. For a moment or so we stood, both of us balanced on our toes, the pillar between us, trying to out-feint each other. Then he lunged, I shoved off hard from the post, and he was after me. But he could shoot and probably would if I began outracing him, and at this distance he wouldn't miss. Running on was pointless, and I did the only other thing left to do. I whirled and literally threw myself at his ankles in an action he may not ever have seen before—a football tackle, though this was from the front. I'd played a little football in high school before the players got too big for me. And now I hit his shins with my left shoulder, my arms wrapping tight around his knees in a tackle so illegal it would have drawn a hundred-yard penalty—and he went right on forward over my shoulders and down onto cobbles. I thought my shoulder was broken—the numbness reminded me of why I'd had to quit the game—but I was up right away and running in the opposite direction. I looked back; he was still lying on the street. Fifteen more running steps right down the middle of the street, wagon drivers turning to stare, then I looked back again. He was on his knees, turning to face me and pulling a big nickel-plated revolver from his back pocket. I stayed on the side of the line of pillars opposite him, and kept glancing over my shoulder in aseries of fast peeks. Using both hands, he was aiming carefully; he wanted me, all right. I slowed suddenly, then sprinted, trying to throw his aim off; he fired, and the bullet struck a pillar, making a surprisingly loud clang. People stood frozen on the walks, but none of them seemed to want to come out into the street. At the corner I turned and ran east in the direction opposite from Julia's, and the gun roared again, and I mentally examined myself and decided I hadn't been hit. I was around the corner now, out of his line of fire. He was far behind, probably just getting to his feet, and I knew I'd make it to Second Avenue if my wind held out. I had to walk the last dozen yards gasping, looking behind me, but he was nowhere in sight. At Second I turned south, knowing that—no radios, no patrol cars, hardly any phones—I was temporarily safe again. Four blocks down I walked into a saloon, ordered a stein of beer, took a couple of sips, then walked back through a dim hallway to the toilet, and killed six or seven minutes just standing there. I came back and had a couple more sips of beer; there were half a dozen men standing at the bar, paying me no attention. Then I walked to the free-lunch table and took a ham sandwich, with two hard-boiled eggs and a dill pickle, back to the bar, and ate them with the rest of my beer. And when I left I had two more hard-boiled eggs, and a thick cheese sandwich, which I'd sneaked into my overcoat pocket. I spent fifteen minutes standing in an alley in a locked doorway; occasionally, in case anyone was watching from an upper story somewhere, I hauled out my watch and looked at it, as though waiting for someone. Then I walked again, down Second. Twice a horsecar passed but I was keeping off them now; I wanted to be ready to move in any of four directions. At Thirty-seventh Street I saw a cop ahead, and turned off Second and went back to Third, then headed south again. Seven or eight blocks, and a cop came walking out of Twenty-ninth Street not ten yards ahead, looked toward me, said, "Hey!" and began to walk quickly in my direction. I stopped. He was far too close for me to run; I'd have been shot in the back. A few steps ahead and at the outer edge of the walk near the curb, a man and a woman had stopped, too. And now the cop, pulling off his helmet, stopped before them. As I walked past—my steps as quiet as I could make them—trying to shrink myself into invisibility, he took his photographs out of the helmet, and I saw that the couple was young and that the girl's dress, the hem visible under her coat, was the same color as Julia's though not the same shade and the man's overcoat was vaguely like mine. But they matched the description Byrnes had dictated, and as I turned onto Twenty-ninth Street I heard the cop order the man to turn his head, and I knew he was comparing his face to my photograph. As fast as I could without drawing attention, I walked over to Lexington Avenue. There a pair of lamplighters were moving down the street, touching each lamp into light, and before I reached Gramercy Park, at Twenty-first Street, it was dark. The fenced-in rectangle of Gramercy Park lay between me and Number 19. I stood in the shadows between two streetlamps, and through the bare branches and black iron bars of the fence I looked across its snow-covered grass and bushes to watch the house. The lower-floor windows— parlor, dining room, kitchen—were all lighted, and so were two of the upper windows. I'd seen someone, either Byron Doverman or Felix Grier, pass a front lower window, a newspaper in his hand. And now a light upstairs went out. Then, barely visible through the intervening shrubs,fencing, and trees, I saw the cop on the other side of the square. He was walking slowly past the house. He walked on to the corner of the square, then turned and walked back just as slowly, on past the house again to the opposite corner. He turned to walk back, and I hauled out my watch and timed him. It took just about a minute and a half to walk past the house once more, up to the corner again, and turn; and it took the same time to walk back. Six times, watch in hand, I watched him walk that beat, back and forth in the same path, and as regular as my watch he did it in a minute and a half each time. If I timed my movements with his, it would be perfectly possible to walk around the corner of the square toward the house, and then—behind his back as he walked slowly past the house—to silently cross the street, hurry up the steps, and with my own key unlock the front door and slip inside before he turned to walk back again. Up the stairs to my room, the rest of my money in my hand within seconds. Then down again, watch the cop through the door crack, then out and across the street behind his back once more. But I didn't move: Was it really going to be that easy to outwit Byrnes? The man had set a trap for me and Julia, overlooking nothing so far. Was this cop, so easy to sneak past, only what he seemed? I stood watching him, and again he walked his beat in precisely the same way, and then again. Maybe he was what he seemed—just a cop, not Byrnes himself; a human being doing a tiresome job and falling into a regular pattern. I moved a few yards along my fence, stood watching again, and suddenly I saw him. Entirely motionless—he must have been chilled through no matter how many layers of clothes he wore—a man sat on a bench inside the park facing Number 19. He was dressed in dark clothes, his coat collar up, and, motionless in the darkness there inside the park, he was almost invisible. There he sat, waiting for me or Julia to cleverly time our movements to the slow metronome of the cop's walk and cross the street as he watched. Then, the street door closing, a low whistle, and the cop strolling the sidewalk suddenly turning to run to the house. I actually backed away from the park for a step or two, then I turned and walked off. It was only a few blocks to Madison Square, and though I walked them warily I knew now that we were going to be caught. Unless I simply deserted Julia, which I wasn't going to do, Byrnes had us— bottled up, trapped. Without money for food, even holing up somewhere was useless. He had us as planned; as he'd known he would since even before he'd picked us up. Did he want us killed? While "avoiding detention"? Maybe; it would be a simple and very quick way to the meeting in Carmody's Wall Street office. Or did he want us caught? It probably didn't matter to him; our "escape" proved our guilt, or at least disproved any claim to innocence. For two powerful people like Byrnes and Andrew Carmody to actually convict us of a charge of murder after our attempted escape wouldn't be hard in an 1882 courtroom. And all I could do about it was stick with Julia; I had to do that and just hope against hope, I didn't even know for what. I saw her enter the square from Fifth Avenue, walking briskly, purposefully, along the curve of a path, her long-skirted silhouette sharp against the light from an overhead standard, then blurring in the shadows, sharpening again as she walked into the next cone of pale yellow light. I met her at the downtown end of the park, she smiled with relief when she saw me, and I took herarm, and we walked toward the other end as though we knew where we were going. As we walked I told her what had happened, that we still had no money, and for a moment she closed her eyes, and said, "Oh, God." "What's wrong?" "I'm so tired, Si; I simply cannot continue endlessly walking." Then she smiled, squeezing my arm under hers, and I smiled back; I had nothing to encourage her about. She'd stopped at a messenger-service office, she said, soon after she'd left me, and sent a handwritten note by messenger boy to her aunt. She was all right, it had said; she'd be away for a time; she'd explain when she returned; meanwhile her aunt wasn't to worry. "Of course she will," Julia said, "but at least she's heard from me, and it was the best I could do. I wish—" Under my arm, hers moved sharply, and I saw the cops, a pair of them, crossing Fifth toward the square, and we turned right around to walk just as purposefully back in the direction we'd come from, hoping they hadn't yet seen us through the trees and shrubs. It seemed useless yet we instinctively postponed being caught. As we approached the south end of the park and could see Twenty-third Street, I saw a cop standing on the walk ahead. His back was to us, he didn't see us, was probably thinking of anything but us. If we walked out of the park past him, though, he'd see us, and once more we turned on the path. Up ahead, still two-thirds the long length of the park away from us, the cops were walking along toward us, talking. We could turn east or west now, it didn't seem to matter which, and we took the first intersecting path we came to, west toward Fifth. Julia hurried along with me, but when she spoke I knew she was close to crying. She said, "Si, I have to stop, I have to. Let me just sit down on a bench here, and you go ahead. Come back later, Si, and if I'm still here—" But I was shaking my head, pulling her along by force, making her walk, nearly running. Something about this path, the look of the trees and placement of the benches here, had become suddenly familiar. I'd walked here before, and—yes. We rounded the bend of the path and there ahead it came into sight, a dark nearly formless bulk obscured by the thick screen of bare trees, but I recognized it. As we completed the curve it came suddenly clear, dimly silhouetted against the dark sky: the immense right arm of the Statue of Liberty, the tip of its great torch high over the trees. We climbed the winding stairs fast and silently, and then at last we sat down, out on the circular railed platform at the base of the great metal flame. The ornamental railing concealed us but we could look out through it, and for as long as a minute, I suppose, we just sat in silence looking down on the dark city, listening to the sound and watching the dim swaying lights of Fifth Avenue traffic. It was chill. We felt the cold of the metal through our clothes. But for the moment —just sitting, no longer having to walk—being here was enough. If it occurred to anyone to climb up and look for us here, as it might, there'd be no escape. Byrnes had run us, if not precisely to ground, at least into a cul-de-sac. But for the moment we just didn't care. In the faint light from the lamps of the square, I could see the dull, very slightly iridescent glow of the shaped copper againstwhich Julia's head rested and I could see that she was smiling tiredly. "How good," she murmured, "how good just not to have to move." She opened her eyes, saw me watching her, and smiling again to show she didn't really mean this, she said, "Now, if we only had something to eat." I remembered, grinned, and brought out the mashed sandwich and mashed eggs, their shells cracked to particles, and handed them to her. She didn't even bother asking where they'd come from, but just shook her head, marveling, and began eating the sandwich. She offered me some, but I told her I'd eaten, and where, and made her eat it all. We spent the night inside, sitting near the top of the curved staircase out of the little wind that came up. We sat huddled together on the third or fourth step from the top so that, eyes level with the floor of the platform, we could look out under the railing at the city. I sat half facing Julia, my arms around her, her head on my chest. It was cold in here, but out of the wind it was tolerable, and I enjoyed it. Julia slept right away, but for a time I sat holding her and staring out at the city; all I saw was darkness sprinkled with a few dim lights. They disappeared, one or two at a time; presently there were no lights at all, the city outside nearly silent, and then I slept, too. Twice we awakened, very stiff and cold, and stood up and stretched and flexed our fingers. The second time, careful to make very little sound, we went outside and walked around the circular platform half a dozen times, looking down onto the treetops and the silent lighted paths of the park, looking out over the low dark city. Inside again, huddled together for warmth, my arms around Julia once more, I knew I'd had all the sleep I was going to get for a while on a cold metal staircase. I was still tired but the sleep had helped. Presently Julia whispered, "Awake?" and as I nodded, the side of my jaw brushed her hair so that I knew she could feel it. "Me, too," she said. And then without planning it, without any thought at all before the quiet words began, I told Julia who I was and where I had come from; I felt that it was time, that it was her due. I told her about the project; about Rube, Dr. Danziger, Oscar Rossoff; about my life in that far-off time. My voice a steady murmur hardly audible beyond her ear, I talked about my preparations with Martin, my life at the Dakota, the first successful attempt, my arrival at her house. Twice she lifted her head to stare up at my face, searching it as well as she could in the barely relieved darkness, then lying back in my arms, and I wondered what she thought. I couldn't tell. I knew I was violating a fundamental rule of the project, and knew that no one in it could ever understand this. But I felt it was right. Finally I finished, and waited. I could feel her draw a deep breath, then she sighed, and said, "Thank you, Si. You're the most understanding man I've ever known. You've helped me through a long night; I haven't been so enthralled since I was a girl, and read Little Women. You should write that story down, and perhaps illustrate it. I'm certain Harper's would consider it. And now I think I can sleep again." "Good," I said, and sat grinning at myself in the darkness: a story made up and spun out to entertain her; what in the hell else was she supposed to think? And within a few minutes, four or five, I think, I was asleep, too, this time in the soundest sleep of all.
I woke up for good, knowing in the odd way you do that this was the last of the night, dawn not too far away now, and I was sorry. Uncomfortable as it had been, it had also been good, here with Julia. Now nothing lay ahead but a day we weren't going to get through. We'd be able to buy some sort of breakfast probably, then there was only more walking, all of yesterday's weariness back in our legs in an hour, until presently we were caught. Possibly, I thought, we ought to give ourselves up right away; at least we'd be warm then, and could stop running. There was no light, the first sun a long way off, yet the darkness was just faintly diluted. Looking out, I could see the ornate pattern of the railing, and I hadn't been able to do that before. All over again the strangeness of where we were struck me. I had to say it to myself; incredibly we were here, high up in the arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty. And then it occurred to me: Could it be made to happen? I considered it, and thought that maybe it could, and I carefully tightened my arms around Julia, pressing my cheek to the top of her head, holding her very close, making her as much a part of me as I was able. Then, in the technique Oscar Rossoff had taught me, I began to free my mind from the time I was in. For this, too, this great metal hand with its torch, was a part of both the New Yorks I had known, existing in each of them. And in my mind I allowed the twentieth century to come to life. Then I told myself where I was; where we were, Julia and I. And I felt it happen. My arms squeezed, holding Julia even tighter during that moment, so that she stirred and opened her eyes. She looked up at me blankly. "Where..." Then she glanced around her, realizing, said, "Oh," and smiled. I let her go, stood up stiffly, and she got up, too, and we walked out onto the platform. The darkness was going, a whiteness and lightness coming into the air, but we couldn't really see; we heard it instead. I was expecting it and recognized the sound first, glancing at Julia. I saw the look of bafflement come to her face, and she turned to me, frowning. "Waves?'' she said. "Si, I hear waves, I swear I do!" Then she sniffed the air. "And I can smell the sea." She was frightened. "Si, what—" I had my arm around her shoulders, saying softly, "Julia, we've escaped. The story I told you last night is true. It was the truth, Julia; I've brought you with me into my own time." She stared at my face, saw the truth in my eyes, and buried her face on my chest. "Oh, Si, I'm frightened! I can't look!" Ahead, the whole sky was light now, pinkening the horizon, the tiny whitecaps in the harbor far below suddenly just visible. "Yes, you can," I said, and took her chin, lifting her head, turning it toward the railing to the east. She looked out across it, saw the water and the harbor far below; then she turned to see the blue-green skin of verdigris, the patina of decades, on the giant copper torch and flame behind us, and began to tremble. Under my arm her shoulders actually shook with fright—yet she couldn't stop looking. Her head turned endlessly from side to side, seeing it all; and all that she said over and again every few seconds was "Oh, Si!" in a frightened, excited, ecstatic wail. Her face was dead-white, and her hand as she raised it to press tight against her cheek was trembling, but she'd begun to smile.
Far out, the first thin edge of sun suddenly touched the rim of the ocean, and now ships were visible. Then, the sun edging up over the horizon as we stared, I took Julia's arm, and we walked around our little railed circle. On the other side Julia stopped to stand stock-still, her breath suddenly caught motionless in her chest as she stared out across the harbor at the astonishing, soaring skyscrapers filling the tip of Manhattan Island, their tens of thousands of windows flashing orange in the dawn.