The Angel Of Darkness

CHAPTER 19

It’s a peculiar thing, how you can go to bed one night convinced of a fact and wake up the next morning to find yourself faced with its opposite…

When I drifted off soon after sunset on that Sunday evening, I was dead certain that I would never see Kat again: even if my heart could have stood visiting her at the Dusters’ joint, things had so fallen out with Ding Dong during our jaunt to Bethune Street as to make even an attempt at such a visit worth my life. The realization that the door on my strange relationship with her seemed to have suddenly swung shut alternately angered and saddened me all through Sunday afternoon and evening. So black and blue did my mood become, in fact, that the Doctor-preoccupied as he was with the case-felt the need to visit me in my room and ask whether I was feeling all right. I didn’t tell him the true story, and he, of course, sensed that I was holding something back; but he didn’t press it, just told me to get some extra sleep and see how things looked in the morning.

I woke at just past 8:30 on Monday to find the Doctor and Cyrus getting ready to head up to the Museum of Natural History. Mrs. Leshko was, not for the first time, late, and Cyrus was seeing to the preparation of coffee, a task what he could accomplish with far happier results than could our Russian cook. The three of us sat in the kitchen and had big mugs of a fine South American brew, the Doctor trying to cheer me up by reading aloud the details of a lead story in the Times that concerned new developments in the “mystery of the headless body.” It seemed that the lower torso of the still unidentified corpse (wrapped in the same red oilcloth what Cyrus and I had seen at the Cunard pier) had washed up at the watery edge of the woods near Undercliff Avenue, all the way on the north side of Manhattan. The police-whose theory of a crazed anatomist or medical student had been dismissed even by the coroner they themselves had engaged, after the man had found about a dozen stab wounds and a couple of.32-caliber bullet holes in various parts of the body-had changed their theory, and were now trying to drum up panic and excitement by saying the body belonged to one of two lunatics who’d escaped from the State Asylum at King’s Park, Long Island, a couple of weeks earlier. This story, we all knew, was as likely to prove true as the first; but whatever the real identity of the unfortunate soul whose body’d been distributed all over town, the attention that the case continued to receive could only help us to go about our work more easily.

The Doctor and Cyrus headed off at a little before nine, and though a visit to the Museum of Natural History would ordinarily have been my sort of fare, the morning was a cool, gray one, and my spirits were such that I found the idea of staying home alone somewhat comforting. And, of course, it was advisable that someone stick around and try to determine what in the world had become of Mrs. Leshko. So I walked the pair of them out to the calash and saw them off, pausing to glance up at the misty sky before heading back to the house.

I’d just gotten the door open when a voice whispered to me:

“Stevie!”

It was coming from beyond some hedges on the east side of the Doctor’s small front yard. Carefully closing the front door again, I crept over to the hedge, looked up and over it, and found-

Kat. She was crouched down low and huddling by the side of the building next door, her clothes looking very wrinkled, her hair undone, and her face a picture of exhaustion. I couldn’t’ve been more surprised if she’d been a ghost or one of those mythical sirens, so resigned had I become during the last twelve hours to never seeing her again.

“Kat?” I said, keeping my own voice low. Then I rushed around the hedge to her. “What the hell’re you doing? How long you been here?”

“Since about four,” she said, glancing up and down the block, more so she wouldn’t have to look me in the eye than because she was trying to locate anything. “I think.” Her eyes turned watery, she began to sniffle hard and painfully; and when she wiped at her nose with a filthy old handkerchief, it came away bloody.

“But why?”

She shrugged miserably. “Had to get out of there-he was like a maniac last night. In fact, I ain’t so sure he ain’t a maniac, sometimes…”

“Ding Dong?” I said, to which she nodded. My eyes fell to the ground. “It’s my fault, ain’t it…”

She shook her head quickly, the tears thickening in those blue eyes that still refused to look into mine. “That wasn’t it. Wasn’t most of it, anyway…” She finally sobbed once. “Stevie, he’s got three other regular girls-three! And I’m the oldest! He never told me that!”

I had no idea what to say; the information didn’t surprise me, of course, but I wasn’t about to tell her so. “So,” I tried, “did-did you two have an argument or something?”

“We had a fight, is what we had!” she said. “I told him I don’t play second fiddle to no twelve-year-old piece of trash-” She slammed her fist against the side of her forehead. “But now all my things are down there…”

I smiled a little. “All your things? Kat, you got two dresses, one coat, and a shawl-”

“And my papa’s old wallet!” she protested. “The one with my mother’s picture in it-that’s there, too!”

I gave her a straight look. “But that ain’t what’s makin’ this hard, right?” I touched her elbow, trying to get her to look at me. “He won’t give you any burny, will he?”

“Bastard!” she grunted, sobbing again. “He knows how much I need it now, he swore he’d never cut me off!” She finally glanced once into my eyes, real pathetically, then threw herself against me hard. “Stevie, I’m just about going out of my skull, I’m hurtin’ for it so bad.”

I put my arms around her shivering shoulders. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get inside-a little strong coffee’ll take some of the edge off of it.”

I got her up and half carried her to the front door of the Doctor’s house, where she paused once fearfully.

“They’re-all gone, right?” she said, looking up at the parlor windows. “I waited for ’em to go, I don’t want you gettin’ into no trouble-”

“They’re gone,” I said as reassuringly as I knew how. “But there wouldn’t be any trouble, anyway. The Doctor ain’t that way.”

She let out a doubtful little noise as we went inside.

I guided her to the kitchen and a mug of Cyrus’s coffee. Her eyes got wider as she began drinking it and taking the house in; and I’ll confess that, seeing the look in those eyes, my notion of bringing her to work for the Doctor resurfaced in my thoughts. So I took her on up to the parlor, to let her get the full effect of the place. Strengthened by the strong coffee, she began to move around more bravely and even smiled, amazed at all the wondrous and beautiful things the Doctor owned-and even more amazed that I lived in such a place.

“He must work you to the bone,” she said, opening the silver cigarette case on the marble mantel.

“It ain’t the work that’s tough,” I said, sitting in the Doctor’s chair like I was lord of the house. “He makes me study.”

“Study?”Kat said, her face filling with near disgust. “What the hell for?”

I shrugged. “Says if I ever want to live in a house like this, that’s what’s gonna get me there.”

“Who’s he kiddin’?” she answered. “I bet it wasn’t studyin’ that got him here.”

I just shrugged again, not wanting to admit that the Doctor came from money.

“I can see why you like it so much, though,” Kat went on, looking around. “Beats hell out of Hudson Street, that’s for sure.”

At the sound of those words a thought suddenly occurred to me, a thought that maybe should’ve jumped into my head as soon as I saw Kat, if only worrying about her hadn’t, as usual, scrambled my mind up so much.

“Kat,” I said slowly, considering the thing, “how long you been spending time at the Dusters’ joint?”

She sat down in the big easy chair across from me, holding her arms into her like she was cold and then shrugging as she sipped at her coffee. “Dunno-maybe a month or so. First met Ding Dong about then, anyways.”

“You know pretty much who comes in and outta there, then, I guess, right?”

She shrugged again. “The regulars, sure. But you know that place, Stevie, they got swells from all over town slummin’ every night. Half the city’s been through there at some point or other.”

“But the regulars-you would recognize them?”

“Probably. Why do you wanna know?” She got up and moved over to me. “What’s that look on your face, Stevie? You’re actin’ so odd all of a sudden.”

I just stared at the carpet for a few seconds, then grabbed her hand. “Come on with me.”

Making for the staircase, I half dragged Kat up to the Doctor’s office. The drapes were still drawn in the dark-paneled room, and it was hard to make anything out clearly. I tripped a couple of times on my way to the window, and when I gave the drapery cord a good tug I saw that it was still more piles of books what had waylaid me: the study was an even bigger mess than it’d been the previous week.

Kat glanced around, frowning and wiping at her nose. “This room don’t do much for me,” she said, mystified and put off. “What’s he want with so many damned books, anyway?”

I didn’t answer; I was too busy going through papers on the Doctor’s desk, looking for something, hoping that the detective sergeants had left at least one copy-

I found it lying underneath a thick book by Dr. Krafft-Ebing: one of the photographed copies of the sketch that Miss Beaux had done of Nurse Hunter.

Moving it closer to the light that came in through the sheer white curtains that still covered the windows, I signaled to Kat that she should join me.

“You ever seen this lady?” I asked, showing her the picture.

Her face filled with recognition right away. “Sure,” she said. “That’s Libby.”

“Libby?”

“Libby Hatch. One of Goo Goo’s molls,” she went on, referring to Goo Goo Knox, the leader of the Dusters. Kat’s face twisted up in that way it did when she didn’t understand something, like her nose’d been attached to a drill bit. “What the hell’s your doctor pal doin’ with a picture of Libby? A good one, too.”

“Libby Hatch,” I said quietly, looking out the window for a few seconds-enough time to realize that, as Miss Howard had said the day before, this whole thing was a lot more complicated than it’d originally looked.

Again I grabbed Kat’s hand. “Come on!”

She flew along behind me like a rag doll as I ran back for the door, then spun round again and headed back to the desk, slapping open a leather-bound book of addresses and telephone numbers what the Doctor kept on it. “Stevie!” Kat said. “Do you think you could quit yanking me around like that? I ain’t exactly feeling athletic, you know!”

“Sorry,” I said, opening the book to the “I” section with one hand, finding a number, and then charging back to the door with Kat still in tow.

“Ow!” she cried. “Stevie, are you listening to me at all?”

I didn’t answer as we shot back down to the kitchen, then through to the pantry. Finally letting go of Kat’s hand, I grabbed hold of the telephone’s receiver and mouthpiece. In a couple of seconds I had an operator on the line, and I gave her the number of the detective sergeants’ house, or rather, their parents’ house, what was located down on Second Street between First and Second Avenues, next to the old Marble Cemetery and not far from two or three synagogues.

The phone on the other end rang, and a woman’s voice answered, yelling into the thing the way people who still considered it a fantastic invention were like to do.

“Hallo?” the woman said, through a thick accent. “Who ist da?”

“Yes,” I answered, “I’d like to speak to one of the detective sergeants, please.”

Kat took a step back, looking worried. “Stevie-you ain’t callin’ the cops on me?” As usual, her first calculation was that anything what happened had something to do with her.

“Relax,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s-business.” I liked the feeling of being able to tell her that. “Go get yourself some more coffee. We got an icebox, too, if you want-”

I stopped when I realized that the woman on the phone was yelling at me. “Detective sergeant-vat vun? Lucius or Marcus?”

“Hunh? Oh. Either, it don’t-it doesn’t matter.”

“Marcus iss not here! Headqvarters! I get Lucius! Who ist-whom ist calling?”

“Just tell him it’s Stevie.”

“Stevie?” she repeated, not sounding too impressed. “Stevie who? Stevie vat?”

I was getting a little impatient. “Doctor Stevie!” I said, raising a small laugh out of Kat, who’d gone to investigate the food in the new icebox.

“Business,” she said, giving me a cunning little sideways glance. “Sure…”

“Oh, ah, Doctor Stevie!” the woman on the line said, satisfied. “Only just ein moment, please!”

She set the phone down with a crash that echoed into my ear and made me pull my receiver away. “Jesus Christ!” I said, hoping my eardrum wasn’t busted. “Whole damned family’s nuts…”

In a few seconds the phone on the other end rattled around again, and I heard Detective Sergeant Lucius speaking, though not into it. “No, Mama, Stevie isn’t a doctor, he just-please, Mama, go!” There were some unidentifiable protests from the woman, then Lucius again: “Mama! Go!”He took a deep breath and spoke into the phone. “Stevie?”

“Right here.”

“I’m sorry about that. She still doesn’t really understand this thing, and I don’t know that she ever will. What’s going on?”

“I got some news, and I think it’ll save you and Detective Sergeant Marcus some work. Can you collect him and get over here?”

“I can come,” Lucius answered. “I’ve been doing the chemical analysis of the sample I took from the tip of that stick, but I just finished. It is strychnine, by the way. But Marcus is poking around down at headquarters, then going on to the Doctor’s Institute. Why?”

“I think you’d better tell him to come up,” I said. “What I’ve found, it-I think it’s important.”

“Where’s the Doctor?”

“Him and Cyrus went to the museum already. They shouldn’t be too long, though. Can you make it?”

“I’ll get a cab now, and try to intercept Marcus at the Institute.” He yelled away from the telephone again: “No, Mama, that’s the chemicals you’re smelling, there’s nothing to clean-” His voice came back to me. “I’ve got to go before my mother sets herself on fire. See you in half an hour.” The line clicked, and I hung the receiver up.

Wandering back into the kitchen, I found Kat had scared up some eggs and a few herring and was getting ready to fry them in a big skillet. “So,” she said with a smile. “How’s ‘business’?”

I was too amazed by what she was doing to hear the question. “Kat-you can cook?”

“Don’t gimme that kinda air,” she answered playfully. “You think me and Papa had servants, Mr. Stuyvesant Park? I cooked for him all the time. Eggs and herring, now that’s a breakfast.” She tried to crack an egg into the pan, but her hand shook badly; and as it did, she lost her smile and took a deep breath. “Say-Stevie,” she said quietly, again without looking at me. “Does your doctor friend have-well, you know, does he see any patients here?”

“Unh-unh,” I said, shaking my head and knowing full well what she meant by the question. “None of that, Kat.”

“It’s just-” Her hand shook again, and her eyes filled with those sickly, desperate tears. “I don’t know if I can crack the eggs…”

My mind seemed to grab hold of a thought, something the Doctor’d said when I’d been at the Institute and he’d dealt with a kid who was in even worse shape than Kat: something about what a cold cutoff of drugs could do to the human body. I knew that in fact he might have some cocaine stashed in the small examination room he maintained toward the front of the house on the ground floor, but I wasn’t going to let Kat have it. When she suddenly let out a little cry, though, then grabbed at her gut and sat down quick on a chair, I figured I’d better do something; so I ran to the examination room and opened a little glass case what held a series of bottles. Looking them over quick, I came across some paregoric tincture. I knew that people gave it to colicky babies, and such being the case I figured it couldn’t do Kat any harm. I ran back out into the hall and then to her, crouching down.

“Here,” I said, handing her the bottle. “Try some of this.”

She kept one hand on her stomach and moaned as she took a deep pull off the bottle. Then she held the thing away from her and stuck her tongue out. “Ugh! What the hell is that?”

“Just something to calm your gut down.”

“I need burny!” she answered, with a little stamp of her foot.

“Kat, there ain’t any here. Just try to stay calm. Take another shot of this-” I held the bottle to her head as she shook it, trying to avoid the foul-tasting medicine; but after another swig, her nerves did seem to calm down some. “Better?” I asked.

She nodded slowly. “Kinda. Whoo…” She finally took her hand away from her stomach, got a deep breath into her lungs, and stood up. “Yeah. That is better.”

“Maybe some food now, hunh?” I walked her to the stove. “I still ain’t so sure I buy this cooking business outta you…”

Kat was able to laugh a little at that; and when she picked up another egg, her hands were steady. “You wait, boy,” she said, cracking the little brown shell on the lip of the skillet with practiced skill. “You’re gonna wish you had this breakfast every day.” She winced once, then turned to the table. “Gimme a little more of that stuff, will you? Tastes awful, but it helps.”

As she labored over the eggs and herring Kat took not one but several more shots of the paregoric, and her mood brightened considerably. The next half an hour or so was one of the happiest times I can remember spending with her, just making breakfast and eating in the kitchen like two ordinary types, chatting, laughing, forgetting, for the time being, what had driven her to the Doctor’s house. She began to talk about the day when she’d have a big, beautiful house of her own, and though I didn’t believe that whoring would ever lead her to such a place, I didn’t say anything to interfere with the daydream, so chipper and healthy did it make her seem.

In fact, I was a little sorry when the front door bell finally rang at a little past ten o’clock. I had just set to washing our dishes and Kat had lit up a smoke, still romancing away about her future and even joking, at one point, about how she’d hire me to work in her house. I’d never thought of that idea before, me and Kat under one roof as adults, not even in my own moments of dreaming; nor could I conjure it up that morning, so outside the realm of possibility did it seem. Her imagination, I suppose, was a lot better than mine; had to’ve been, when I think about it.

Drying my hands on a kitchen towel, I started running for the front door, Kat joking about my being her butler and telling me to send whoever it was away, as she was not “receiving” that morning. She straightened right up, though, when I came into the kitchen with the two detective sergeants-she still wasn’t completely sure that their visit didn’t have anything to do with her. I introduced them to Kat, and together the four of us went on up to the parlor, where they all sat down. For my part, I ran further on to the Doctor’s study to fetch the picture of Nurse Hunter. When I brought it back down, I found the Isaacsons arguing-in their usual testy, childish way-over the exact ratio of chemicals that was supposed to be used in the test what Lucius had conducted that morning. Kat was sitting on the edge of the same easy chair she’d been in before, glancing over at the two men and wondering, I’m certain, what in the world kind of cops behaved in such a way.

“Here we go,” I said, taking the picture to Kat as she stood up. “Kat, tell the detective sergeants who this woman is.”

She just stared around at the three of us for a second, then mumbled to me, “But I already told you.”

“Yeah,” I whispered back, “but tell them. Don’t worry, it ain’t gonna get you in any trouble.”

“I heard that before,” Kat answered. Then she spoke aloud: “Her name’s Libby Hatch. She’s-well, her and Goo Goo-”

“Goo Goo Knox?” Marcus asked. “Chief of the Hudson Dusters?”

“That’s right,” Kat said. “She’s his girl. Well, she’s one of ’em, anyway. They all got plenty, the sons of-” Kat caught herself and cut her fuming short. “But she’s his favorite right now.”

“Libby Hatch?”Lucius said, taking the picture. “You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure-I got eyes, ain’t I?”

Lucius gave Kat a careful squint. “You wouldn’t happen to know where this ‘Libby Hatch’ lives, would you?”

Kat nodded quickly. “Right around the corner from the Dusters’ headquarters. Bethune Street. She’s married to some old geezer, but he’s half dead, anyway, so she has to look out for herself. Goo Goo’s got their house under the gang’s protection-anybody gets caught even casing the place, they’ll end up in the river. And they won’t be swimmin’, if you take my meaning.”

Lucius was about to say more, but then Marcus held up a finger. “Miss Devlin? I’m sorry-would you excuse the three of us for a moment?”

“Sure,” Kat said, looking ever more confused and then turning to me. “Stevie, maybe I could go downstairs, have a little more of that medicine?”

“Yeah, sure, Kat,” I said. “It’s right where we left it.”

She tried to smile at the detective sergeants. “Just a little stomach complaint. I’ll be right back.”

Lucius and Marcus watched her go, Lucius looking very excited about the news we’d received. He was about to express that excitement when Marcus stepped in again. “Stevie, how do we know that this girl can be trusted?”

The question took me a little off guard. “How-well… because. She’s a friend of mine. I’ve known her for-well, for a long time. Why shouldn’t you be able to trust her?”

Marcus looked me straight in the eye. “Because she’s a prostitute and a cocaine fiend.”

My pride got ruffled for just an instant; but it was clear from Marcus’s look that he didn’t mean to cause any injury, he just wanted to be sure that we weren’t, in fact, getting taken. I looked to the floor as I answered, “Neither of them things makes her a liar, Detective Sergeant. I’ll answer for Kat.”

“The cocaine fiend I understand,” Lucius said to his brother, looking puzzled. “The indications are fairly clear. But why do you assume she’s a prostitute, Marcus?”

“A girl that age? Living at the Dusters’? It’s not a mission house, Lucius, for God’s sake.”

“Hmm,” Lucius said grimly. “True. But she does know where the Hunter woman lives. And what could she possibly gain from telling us all this? I say we believe her-not least because it could make all our lives a lot easier.”

“How so?” Marcus asked.

But it was me that Lucius spoke to next: “Stevie, do you think this girl might do us a-favor?”

I shook my head. “A favor, probably not. We-I got her into a little hot water yesterday. Anyway, Kat’s life hasn’t made her one for favors. But if there was something in it for her-then yeah, I think we might ask her.” I looked at them both earnestly. “But only if it ain’t dangerous.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Lucius answered eagerly.

“What are you cooking up, Lucius?” Marcus asked.

But at that moment Kat came running up the stairs and back into the room. “Stevie, there’s people coming into the house!”

“Don’t worry,” I said, going to the stairway. “Probably just the housekeeper. I been wondering when she’d turn up.”

“No, it’s a couple of men,” Kat answered quickly, following me. “Stevie, it’s your doctor! I shouldn’t be here, he’ll take it outta your hide!”

Looking down the stairs, I saw that the new arrivals were, in fact, the Doctor and Cyrus. Putting a quick hand on Kat’s arm, I squeezed it gently. “Don’t worry,” I said, half amused by her fear. “I told you, it’ll be fine, he ain’t that way.”

“But we been eatin’ his food, and the medicine-”

“Calm down,” I said, as the Doctor started up the stairs at a jaunt. “Go inside. It’ll be fine, I’m telling you.”

Kat nodded reluctant agreement but didn’t move; and as the Doctor reached the top of the stairs she drew back behind my shoulder, her eyes going big as she took in his long, dark hair, his black eyes, and the clothes that matched those eyes, even in summer. I smiled; I’d flat-out forgotten how imposing-even scary-he could look when you first met him.

“Stevie!” the Doctor said, seeming satisfied. “We have returned, though rather more quickly than I’d hoped. Apparently this area of anthropology is just developing-it took half of Boas’s staff, in addition to several students from Columbia, to analyze the arrow, and their explanation was only partial. The weapon does, indeed, originate in the islands of the southwestern Pacific, though there remains some confusion over-” He stopped suddenly when he made out Kat’s little form hiding behind me. “Well.” The Doctor smiled genuinely, but slowed his approach. “I didn’t know you had company, Stevie. My apologies for bursting in so rudely.”

Cyrus came lumbering up the stairs, calling out to me, “Stevie? You feeling all right? There’s a half-empty bottle of paregoric on the kitchen-” Then he, too, caught sight of Kat. “Oh,” he said, scrutinizing her. He smiled just a bit and bowed his head. “Hello, Kat,” he said, courteously but not exactly warmly.

“Mr. Montrose,” Kat noised from behind me, without moving.

The detective sergeants came out of the parlor, and the Doctor looked past me and Kat to them. “Ah! The detective sergeants as well-good. This will save some time.” He turned the careful smile my way again. “Stevie? Am I not to be introduced?”

“Oh,” I said. “No. I mean, yes. I mean-”

Kat jumped out from behind me ever so briefly and extended a hand, looking like she thought the Doctor might bite it off. “Katharine Devlin, sir,” she said. The Doctor had just touched the hand when Kat snatched it back and got behind me again. “Stevie didn’t invite me, sir. I just come of my own.”

“Friends of Stevie’s are always welcome,” the Doctor answered simply. “Though I think we’ll all be much more comfortable in the parlor, don’t you?”

I could feel Kat’s small breasts rising and falling quickly as she pressed herself against my back. “I think I should go,” she said anxiously.

But I held her back. “Kat, it’s o-kay,” I insisted again. “Come on, I want you to tell the Doctor what you told the rest of us. And the detective sergeant’s got something he wants to ask you.”

Very reluctantly, Kat moved with our group back into the parlor, though she never came out from behind me as we went. Her blue eyes stayed fixed on the Doctor: she’d convinced herself a long time ago that he wasn’t on the level, and his kind attitude was only making her more edgy and suspicious. The Doctor went to the mantel and got himself a smoke, offering one to Marcus, then lit up and sat in his chair.

“Please,” he said, indicating an old (or, I should say, antique) French settee what was near me and Kat. “Won’t you sit down?” He seemed almost as amused by her attitude as I was, but he very decently kept that amusement to himself.

She just nodded once, then sat and fairly broke my arm and neck as she yanked my shirt hard and forced me onto the settee beside her. Shoving up against my side, she let her panicky stare leave the Doctor only long enough to see what the detective sergeants were up to.

“Miss Devlin has brought us some very useful information,” Lucius said, handing the photograph to the Doctor. “It seems that she has some acquaintance with Elspeth Hunter.”

The Doctor’s politeness suddenly grew mixed with excitement, in a way what made his eyes glow hot-which only caused Kat to grow even more nervous when he looked back at her. “Really, Miss Devlin? You know the woman?”

“I don’t know what he’s talkin’ about,” she answered, giving Lucius a quick jerk of her head. “But if you mean Libby Hatch, then yeah, I know her.”

“Kat spends some of her time at the Dusters’ place,” I added, not wanting her to have to explain it. “She says they know Nurse Hunter as ‘Libby Hatch’ and that she’s one of Goo Goo Knox’s girls.”

“Goo Goo-?” the Doctor said, confused. “Ah, yes! Knox, the strongman of the Dusters. I must say, one can only speculate as to the amount of cocaine that the members of that gang must abuse in order to invent these absurd names.”

Kat gave out with a sudden sound that I thought might be alarm, but when I turned to her I found that she was smiling and that the noise had been something like a laugh. For the first time, she looked as though she might be buying that the Doctor was okay.

The Doctor laughed along with her, very encouragingly. “So, Miss Devlin,” he said (and I could see that Kat liked being referred to that way), “you say that the woman in this picture is on romantic terms with Knox?”

“She’s his special moll just at the moment,” Kat answered.

“Indeed?” the Doctor replied.

“And,” Lucius added pointedly, “Knox has her home under his personal protection.”

“Does he really?” The Doctor looked to Kat again. “For any particular reason that you can think of, Miss Devlin?”

Kat shrugged, and loosened her grip on my arm a bit. “He’s a wild one, is that Goo Goo-and from what I seen, so’s Libby. They spend a lot of time upstairs in his room. I hear it gets a little crazy sometimes. I also hear that she-well, she-dances for him.”

“ ‘Dances’?” the Doctor echoed, a bit confused.

Glancing out the window in some embarrassment, Kat nodded. “You know, sir-dances. He’ll have the band come up, and play outside his door. And she-dances.”

It finally dawned on the Doctor that Kat was talking about something what was known in those days by a number of different terms, but which we now refer to by what it is: the striptease. “I see,” the Doctor said quietly. “Do excuse my ignorance, Miss Devlin. I don’t mean to be thickheaded.”

“Oh, no, sir,” she answered, very respectfully. “Ain’t no reason why you should know. Anyway, like I say, at the moment she’s the one of his girls that can really keep up with him-even more than the younger ones. She works at it, does that Libby.”

“Libby,” the Doctor repeated softly, bouncing the knuckle of his forefinger against his mouth as he weighed it. “Libby…” He turned to the detective sergeants. “An alias?”

Marcus considered it with a little shrug. “ ‘Libby’ could be a diminutive version of ‘Elspeth’-it’s likely she had or has one, as ‘Elspeth’ is fairly archaic.”

“Hatch could be her maiden name,” Lucius added. “She’s using it in situations where she doesn’t want to be identified. You’re not going to get many nursing jobs if it gets around that you’re-dancing for Goo Goo Knox. But there’s a more important consideration here, Doctor.” Lucius approached him, glancing briefly at Kat. “There are two things we need to do at this juncture, forensically. We need to prove that the child is in Nurse Hunter’s home, and we need to demonstrate that Nurse Hunter was in fact responsible for the attack in Central Park.” He gave Kat another look and a very friendly smile. “I believe that Miss Devlin can help us with both things.”

Kat turned to me, speaking quietly. “Stevie…. you said there wasn’t gonna be no trouble…”

“There ain’t, Kat,” I answered quickly. “Not for you.”

“Then what’s all this about a kid, and an ‘attack’?”

“ ‘All this’ is nothing in which you need fear you will be implicated, Miss Devlin,” the Doctor tossed in from his chair. “The detective sergeants are investigating a case. We are providing them with some help. Our motives are that simple.”

Grunting a little as she turned back to the Doctor, Kat took on a defiant look. “I don’t want to get mixed up in any police investigation,” she said. “Especially not if it’s got to do with Goo Goo. He’d as soon beat somebody half to death as look at ’em, even when he ain’t blowin’ the burny.”

“There might,” Marcus said, what you could call delicately, “be a rather substantial consideration involved, Miss Devlin.”

Kat squinted at him. “You mean-like money?” Marcus nodded. “Money don’t do you much good in the hospital. And not when you’re at the bottom of the river, neither.”

“And if it were enough money to ensure that you never had to return to Hudson Street again?” the Doctor asked.

Kat’s face went blank. “How could that be? If I cross the Dusters, even just one tiny bit, there won’t be a place in this city I can hide.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Are you so attached to life in this city? Perhaps you have family in some other part of the country?”

“And I assure you, we wouldn’t be asking you to do anything dangerous,” Lucius said.

“Everything’s dangerous, when you’re dealing with that bunch,” Kat answered quickly. Then she eyed the Doctor again. “I got an aunt. Lives in San Francisco -she’s an opera singer.”

“Really?” the Doctor said enthusiastically. “They have a most promising company. Is she a soprano? A mezzo?”

“An opera singer, is what she is,” Kat answered, not knowing what in the world the Doctor was talking about, and looking it. “She sent me a letter once, after my papa died, saying she could get me work as a singer, too. I can sing-Stevie’s heard me.”

Kat turned to me, expecting some support. I just nodded hard and said, “Oh, yeah, she can sing, all right,” even though I’d never thought that much of her voice. But I got a tin ear, and always have had; so I can’t say, maybe she could sing.

“Well, then,” the Doctor said, “one ticket to San Francisco-by rail or by sea, whichever you choose-and, say, a few hundred dollars to-acclimate yourself.” I’d never seen Kat’s eyes grow so big. “All in exchange for-” The Doctor suddenly stopped and turned to Lucius in confusion. “Detective Sergeant, what the devil is all that in exchange for?”

Lucius turned to Kat again, maintaining his smile. “A garment with buttons,” was all he said.

Kat stared at him, her mouth hanging open. “A garment? You mean, like clothes?”

“Clothes might do,” Lucius answered. “An outer garment would be best, though. Something she would be sure to wear in her own house, as well as at the Dusters’. And on the street, too, if possible. A coat or jacket of some kind would really be ideal.”

“I get it,” Marcus said, slapping his forehead. “Of course!”

Kat looked at the pair of them like they were even crazier than she’d first thought. “A coat or jacket,” she said.

“With buttons,” Lucius answered, nodding.

“With buttons,” Kat said, nodding along. “Any particular kind of buttons?”

“Large ones would be best. The larger the better.”

“And flat, if possible,” Marcus added.

“Yes,” Lucius agreed. “Exactly.”

Kat stared at them for a few seconds, then opened her mouth to speak. Unable to find words right away, she turned to me, then back to them; and the blue eyes narrowed as her mouth curled into a slight smile. “Let me see if I’m gettin’ this. You want me to lift one of Libby Hatch’s jackets or coats. One with big, flat buttons. And for that, you’ll give me a ticket to San Francisco and a few hundred bucks to set myself up?”

“That,” the Doctor said, himself looking a bit uneasily at the Isaacsons, “is apparently what we are offering.”

Kat turned to me again. “They serious, Stevie?”

“Generally,” I answered with a smile. The thought of Kat leaving town didn’t set me up much, that was true; but the idea of her getting away from Ding Dong, the Dusters, and all that went with that life outweighed any other consideration. “Come on, Kat,” I urged. “Lifting a coat? You could do it in your sleep.”

She slapped my leg hard. “Ain’t no reason to tell the world that, Stevie Taggert,” she scolded quietly. Then she looked back to the others and stood up. “All right, boys-uh, gentlemen. You got yourselves a deal. It may take me a day or two-”

“The sooner the better,” Dr. Kreizler answered, standing and extending a hand. “But a day or two should be fine.”

Kat shook his hand, much less skittishly this time, then smiled wide. “Well!” she said. “I’d best get about it, then!” Turning to me, she took on a bit of a coy air, playacting like she had in the kitchen. “Stevie-will you-” She stopped, realizing she didn’t know the words.

“Show you out,” I finished for her. “Yeah, sure.”

The Doctor pulled out a few dollars and handed them to me. “See her to a hansom on the corner, Stevie.” He bowed to Kat. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Devlin. And I look forward to the successful conclusion of our business together.” He glanced at Lucius once more. “Whatever that business may turn out to be…”

I took Kat’s arm, and we headed out of the house.

Once on the sidewalk and moving toward Second Avenue, she began to jump around like a four-year-old. “Stevie!” she near screamed. “I’m goin’ to California! Can you believe it? Can you imagine it? Me, in San Francisco!”

“You really got an aunt’s an opera singer?” I asked, as she came close to strangling me by throwing her arms around my neck.

“Well, practically,” Kat answered. “She works in the opera house, anyways. And she’ll be a singer someday, she told me.”

“Unh-hunh,” I said, not completely convinced. “She ain’t no floozy, is she, Kat?”

“No, she ain’t no floozy, thank you, Stevie,” Kat answered. “And I ain’t gonna be either-not no more! My life’s gonna change, Stevie, change-and alls I gotta do is steal a jacket from Libby Hatch! Steal a jacket from a woman what has trouble keepin’ her clothes on, from all I can tell!”

We’d reached the corner-directly across the avenue from the New York Lying-in Hospital, I noted-and as I hailed a hansom, Kat’s face screwed up one more time. “Whatta you suppose they want such a thing for, Stevie? The Doctor and them two fellas? They’s strange birds, those two, for cops.”

“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly realizing that in fact I didn’t know. “But I’m gonna go find out.” I turned to her as she opened the little door of the hansom. “You’ll be okay, Kat? I mean, about Ding Dong and all?”

“Him?”she answered. “He’ll be lucky if he even sees me before I pull this off. Let him have his little twelve-year-olds-I’m goin’ to California!”

“You’d better write to your aunt first,” I advised. “Make sure she’s still there, and that it’s all okay.”

“I already thought of that,” Kat answered, stepping off the curb. “I’m gonna do it tonight.” She paused before boarding the hansom to give me a hug. “Thanks, Stevie,” she whispered into my ear. “You’re a friend, and that’s the truth.” Pulling back, she glanced at the Doctor’s house once more. “And you was right about your boss-he’s a decent soul, sure enough. Though he looks like one of the Devil’s own, that I will say!”

I wanted badly to kiss her, but she hopped into the cab, waving the few dollars I’d passed along to her up at the driver. “ Hudson Street, cabbie-and take your blasted time, I wanna enjoy the ride!”

The cabbie cracked his whip, Kat gave me a little wave, and then she turned around to take in the avenue. She looked for all the world like she owned the city-and that made me smile.

I turned and ran back to the house as the cab disappeared, wanting to know what in the world the detective sergeants had been talking about.