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: "............