Time and Again

"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."