Time and Again

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 "hoff-witted"] 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 had permanent 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 more blocks, then we swung right, onto Bleecker. Three short blocks down Bleecker, then left onto — 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 co

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.