Cold, cutting March rain came with the morning. I rose early to find out that Esther, mercifully, prepared me a breakfast of strong coffee, toast, and fruit (which she, drawing on the experience of a family full of inebriates, believed essential for anyone who imbibed often). I settled into my grandmother's glass-enclosed nook, overlooking her still-dormant rose garden in the rear yard, and decided to digest the morning edition of the Times before trying to telephone the Watson Institute. With the rain pattering on the copper roof and glass walls around me, I inhaled the fragrance of the few plants and flowers that my grandmother kept alive year-round and took in the paper, trying to re-establish contact with a world that, in light of the previous evening's events, seemed suddenly and disturbingly removed.
SPAIN IS FULL OF WRATH, I learned; the question of American support for the nationalist rebels in Cuba (the U.S. Congress was considering granting them full belligerent status, thereby recognizing their cause) was continuing to cause the vicious, crumbling regime in Madrid much duress. Boss Tom Platt, the town's cadaverous old Republican mastermind, was assailed by the editors of the Times for trying to prostitute the imminent reorganization of the city in a Greater New York---one that would include Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan---to his own nefarious purposes. The approaching Democratic and Republican conventions both promised to center around the question of whether or not America's solid old gold standard should be smeared by the introduction of silver-based currency. 311 black Americans had taken ship for Liberia, and the Italians were rioting because their troops had been badly defeated by Abyssinian tribesmen on the other side of that dark continent.
Momentous as all this undoubtedly was, it held no interest for a man in my mood. Thus turned I to lighter matters. There were bicycling elephants at Proctor's Theater; a troupe of Hindu fakirs at Hubert's 14th St. Museum; Max Alvary was a brilliant Tristan at the Academy of Music; and Lillian Russell was The Goddess of Truth at Abbey's. Eleanora Duse was "no Bernhardt" in Camille, and Otis Skinner in Hamlet shared her penchant for weeping too easily too often. The Prisoner of Zenda was in its fourth week at the Lyceum---I'd seen it twice and thought for a moment about going again that night. What a grand escape from the worries of the usual day (not to mention the gruesome sights of an extraordinary night): castles with watery moates, swordfights, a diverting mystery, and stunning, swooning women.
Yet even as I thought about the play, my eyes wandered to other items. A man on 9th Street who had once slit his brother's throat in a drunken rage drank again and shot his mother; there were still no clues in the particularly brutal murder of Finley Rosul at the Institution for the Improved Instruction of the Deaf and Mute; a man named Spano Whiteman, who had killed his wife and mother-in-law and then attempted to take his own life by cutting his throat, had recovered from the wound but was now trying to starve himself. The authorities had convinced Whiteman to eat by showing him the dreadful force-feeding apparatus that would otherwise be used to keep him alive for the hangman.....
I tossed the paper aside. Taking in a final heavy gulp of sweet black coffee, and then a slice of peace shipped from Georgia, I redoubled my resolve to get to the Lyceum box office. I had just started back for my room to dress when the telephone let out with a loud brrrrrinnnnnggggg, and I heard my grandmother in her morning room exclaim "Oh, my God!" in alarm and anger. The telephone bell did that to her, yet she never entertained any suggestion that it be removed, or at least muffled.
Esther appeared from the kitchen, her soft, middle-aged features speckled with soap bubbles. "It's the telephone, sir," she said, wiping her hands on her apron. "I believe it is Dr. Watson calling you."
Pulling my Chinese robe tighter, I headed for the little wooden box near the kitchen and took up the heavy black receiver, putting it to my ear as I placed my other hand on the anchored mouthpiece. "Yes?" I said. "Is that you, John?"
"Ah, so you're awake, Waterhouse," I heard him say. "Good." The sound was faint, but the manner was, as usual, energetic. The words bore the lilt of a British accent: Watson had emigrated to the United States as a child, when his British father, a wealthy publisher and 1848 Republican, and Irish mother had fled London to begin a somewhat celebrated life as fashionable immigrants. "What time does Roosevelt wish us?" he asked, without any thought that Teddy might have refused this suggestion.
"Before lunch!" I said, raising my voice as if in an effort to overcome the faintness of Watson's voice.
"Why the deuce are you shouting?" Watson said. "Before lunch, eh? Smashing. Then we've time. Have you seen the paper? The bit on this man Beckman?"
"I have not."
"Then, by all means, read it while you're dressing."
I glanced at my robe. "How did you know that I.....?"
"They have the blighter at Bellevue. I'm supposed to assess him, anyway, and we can ask a few additional questions, to determine if he's connected to our business. Then on to Mulberry Street, a brief stop at the Institute, and lunch at Dino's---squab, I should think, or the pigeon crepinettes. Millam's poivrade sauce with truffles is exquisite."
"But...."
"Herman and I will go directly from my house. You'll have to take a hansom, I fear. The appointment's for 9:30---try not to be late, will you, Randall? We can't afford to waste even half a minute in this affair.
And then he was gone. I returned to the nook, picked up the Times again, and leafed through it. The aforementioned article was on page 8:
Herman Beckman had been drinking in the tenement apartment of his neighbor, Oscar Sampson, the previous night. The latter's 5-year-old daughter had entered the room, and Jackson proceeded to make some comments that Sampson found unsuitable for the ears of a young girl. The father protested; Jackson pulled a gun and shot the girl in the head, killing her, and then fled. He had been apprehended, several hours later, wandering aimlessly---near the East River. I dropped the paper again, momentarily struck by a premonitory feeling that the events of the night before atop the bridge tower had been but a mere overture.
Back in the hallway, I ran headlong into my grandmother, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, her gray and black dress unimpeachably near, and her gray eyes, which I had inherited, glaring. "Randall!" she said in surprise as if ten other men were staying in her house. "Who in the world was on the telephone?"
"Dr. Watson, Grandmother," I said, bounding up the stairs.
"Dr. Watson!" she called after me. "Well, dear! I've had about enough of that gentleman for one day!" As I shut the door of my bedroom and commenced dressing, I could still hear her: "If you ask me, he's awfully peculiar!" And I don't put much stock in him being a doctor, either. That Peck man was a doctor, too!" She stayed in that vein while I washed, shaved, and brushed my teeth with Pepsodent. It was her way; and for all that it was annoying, to a man who, without recent memory, had lost what he was sure was his only chance at domestic bliss, it was still better than a lonely apartment in a building full of other men who had resigned themselves to solitary lives.
Snatching a gray cap and a black umbrella as I dashed out the front door, I made for 6th Avenue at a brisk pace. The rain was falling much harder now, and a particularly stiff wind had begun blowing. When I reached the avenue the force of a ir suddenly changed directions as it swept under the tracks of the New York Elevated Railroad line, which ran above either side of the street just inside the sidewalks. The shift blasted my umbrella inside out, along with those of several other members of the throng that was hustling under the tracks; and the combined effect of the rising wind, heavy rain, and the cold was to make the usually bustling rush out seem like total pandemonium. Making for a cab as I struggled with my cumbersome, useless umbrella, I was cut off by a merry young couple who maneuvered me out of their way with no great finesse and clambered quickly into my hansom. I swore loudly against their progeny and shook the dead umbrella at them, prompting the woman to scream in fright and the man to fix an anxious eye upon me and tell me I was insane---all of which, considering my destination, gave me a good laugh and made the wet wait for another hansom much easier. When one came around the corner of Washington Place I did not wait for it to stop, but leaped in, shut the doors about my legs, and hollered to the driver to get me to the Insane Pavilion at Bellevue: not the kind of order any cabbie wants to hear, I'm sure. The look of dismay upon his face as we drove off gave me another little laugh so that by the time we hit 14th Street I didn't even mind the feel of wet tweed against my legs.
With the perversity of the usual New York City cabman, my driver---his raincoat collar turned up and his top hat encased in a thin rubber sheath---decided to battle his way through the shopping district along 6th Avenue above 14th Street before turning east. We had slowly passed most of the big department stores---O'Neill's, Adams & Company, Simson-Crawford---before I rapped on the roof of the cab with my fist and assured my man that I did need to get to Bellevue this morning. With a rude jerk, we spun right at 23rd and then plowed through the thoroughly unregulated intersection of that street with 5th Avenue and Broadway. Passing the squat bulk of the 5th Avenue Hotel, where Boss Platt made his headquarters and was likely putting the finishing touches to his Greater New York scheme at that very moment, we turned up along the eastern edge of Madison Square Park to 26th, then changed directions in front of the Italianate arcades and towers of Madison Square Garden to head east once again. The square, solemn, red-brick buildings of Bellevue appeared on the horizon, and in just a few more minutes we crossed 5th Avenue and pulled up behind a big black ambulance on the 26th Street side of the hospital grounds, near the entrance to the Insane Pavilion. I paid my cabbie his fee and headed inside.
It was a simple building, the Pavilion, long and rectangular. A small, uninviting vestibule greeted visitors and internees, and beyond this, through the first of many iron doors, was a wide corridor running down the middle of the building. 24 "rooms---cells, actually----opened off of the corridor, and separating these cells into two wards, male and female, were two more sliding, studded iron doors at the corridor's midway point. The Pavilion was used for observation and evaluation, primarily of persons who had committed violent crimes. Once their sanity (or lack thereof) had been established and official reports were received, the internees were shipped out to other, even less inviting institutions.
As soon as I was inside the vestibule I heard the usual shouts and howls---come coherent protests, some just wails of madness and despair---coming from the cells beyond. At the same instant, I spotted Watson; odd, how strongly the sight of him has always been associated, in my mind, with such sounds. As always, his suit and coat were black, and as often he was reading the music notices in the Times. His black eyes, so much like a big bird's, flitted about the paper as he shifted from one foot to the other in sudden, quick movements. He held the Times in his right hand, and his left arm, underdeveloped as a result of a childhood injury, was pulled in close to his body. The left hand sometimes rose to swipe at his neatly trimmed mustache and the little patch of beard under his lower lip. His black hair, cut far too long to meet the fashion of times, and swept back on his head, was moist, for he always went hatless; and this, along with the bobbing of his face at the pages before him, only increased the impression of some hungry, restless hawk determined to wring satisfaction from the troublesome world around him.
Standing next to Watson was the enormous Herman Jackson, John's valet, occasional driver, effective bodyguard, and alter ego. Like most of Watson's employees, Herman was a former patient, one who made me more than just a little nervous, despite his apparently controlled manner and appearance. That morning he was dressed in gray pants and a tightly buttoned brown jacket, and his broad, black features did not seem even to register my approach. But as I came closer he tapped Watson on the arm and pointed my way.
"Ah, Waterhouse," Watson said, taking a chained watch from his vest with his left hand and extending his right with a smile. "Jolly good!"
"John," I answered, shaking his hand. "Herman," I added, with a not that was barely returned.
Watson indicated his newspaper as he checked the time. "I'm somewhat irritated with your employers. Yesterday evening I saw a brilliant Pagliacci at the Metropolitan with Melba and Ancona---and all the Times can go on about is Alvary's Tristan." He paused to study my face. "You look tired, Randall."
"I can't imagine why. Tearing around in an uncovered carriage in the middle of the night is usually so restful. Would you mind telling me what I'm doing here?"
"One moment, please." Watson turned to an attendant in a dark blue uniform and box cap who lounged in a straight-backed wooden chair nearby. "Musk? We're ready."
"Yes, Doctor," the man answered, taking a gargantuan ring of big keys from his belt and starting for the doorway to the doorway to the main corridor. Watson and I fell in to follow, Herman remaining behind like a waxwork.
"Your read the article, didn't you, Waterhouse?" Watson asked, as the attendant unlocked and opened the doorway to the 1st ward. With the opening, the howls and shouts from the cells became nearly deafening and quite unnerving. There was little light in the windowless corridor, only that which a few overworked electric bulbs could offer. Some of the small observation windows in the imposing iron doors of the cells stood open.
"Yes," I answered at length, very uneasily. "And upon reading it I understood the the possible connection---but what in God's name do you need me for?"
Before Watson could answer, a woman's face suddenly appeared in the first door to our right. Her hair, though pined up, was messy, and the expression on her worn, broad features was one of violent outrage. That expression changed in an instant, however, when she saw who the visitor was. "Dr. Watson!" she said in a hoarse but passionate gasp.
At that the train of reaction was propelled into high speed: Watson's name spread down the corridor from cell to cell, inmate to inmate, through the walls and iron doors of the women's ward and on into the men's. I had seen this happen dozens of times before, in different institutions, but it was no less remarkable on each occasion: the words were like the flow of water over red hot coals, taking away crackling heat and leaving only a steaming whisper, a momentary but nevertheless effective remission from deep-burning fire.
The cause of this singular phenomenon was simple. Watson was known throughout the patient, criminal, medical, and legal communities in New York to be the man whose testimony in court or at a sanity hearing could determine, more than that of any other alienist of the day, whether a given person was sent to prison, to the somewhat less horrifying confines of an asylum, or back out onto the streets. The moment he was spotted in a place like the Pavilion, therefore, the usual sounds of madness gave way to an eerie attempt at coherent communication on the part of the most of the inmates. Only the uninitiated or the hopelessly distressed would continue their ravings; and yet the effect of this sudden reduction in noise was not reassuring at all. Indeed, it was worse on the nerves, ironically, as one knew that the attempt at order was a strained one, and that the sounds of anguish would soon return---again, the way burning coals roast away the transitory suppression of a little splash of water.
Watson's reaction to the inmate's behavior was no less disconcerting, for one was left only to imagine what experiences in his life and career could have implanted in him the ability to walk through such a place and witness such desperate performances (all peppered by measure but passionate please of "Dr. Watson, please talk with me!" "Dr. Watson, please, I am not crazy like the others!") without submitting to fear, revulsion and despair. As he moved in measured strides down the long corridor, his brows drew together over his gleaming eyes, which shot quickly from side to side, cell to cell, with a look of sympathetic admonishment: as if these people were errant children. At not point did he permit himself to address any of the inmates, but this was not a cruel refusal; quite the opposite, for to speak to anybody would only have raised that unfortunate souls hopes, maybe unrealistically, while dashing those of the other supplicants. Any patients present who had been in madhouses or prisons before, or who had been under observation for an extended period at Bellevue, knew that this was Watson's practice; and they made their most emphatic please with their eyes, aware that it was the only organ of sight that Watson would acknowledge them.
We passed through the sliding iron doors that led into the men's ward, and followed the attendant named Musk to the last cell on the left. He stood to the side and opened the little observation window in the heavily banded door. "Mis-ter Beckman!" he called. "Visitors for you. Official business, so behave."
Watson stood before the window looking inward, and I watched him over his shoulder. Inside the small, bare-walled cell a man sat on a rough cot, under which lay a dented steel chamber pot. Heavy bars covered the one small window, and ivy obscured the little external light that tried to enter. A metal pitcher of water and a tray bearing a bit of bred and an oatmeal-encrusted bowl lay on the floor near the man, whose head was in his hands. He wore merely an undershirt and woolen pants without a belt or suspenders (suicide being the worry). Heavy shackles were clamped around his wrists and ankles. When he lifted his face, a few seconds after Musk's call, he revealed a pair of red eyes that reminded me of some of my worst mornings; and his deeply lined, whiskered face bore an expression of detached resignation.
"Mr. Backman," Watson said, watching the man carefully. "Are you sober?"
"Who wouldn't be?" the man slowly answered, his words distinct, "after a night in this place?"
Watson closed the small iron gate that covered the window and turned to Musk. "Has he been medicated?"
Musk shrugged uncomfortably. "He was raving when they brought him in, Dr. Watson. Seemed more than just drunk, the superintendent said, so they stuck him full of chloral."
Watson sighted in deep irritation. Chloral hydrate was one of the banes of his existence, a bitter-tasting, neutrally colored, somewhat caustic compound that slowed the rate of the heart and thus made the subject singularly calm....or, if used as it was in many saloons, almost comatose and an easy target for robbery or kidnapping. The body of the medical community, however, insisted that chloral did not cause addiction (Watson violently disagreed with them); and at twenty-five cents per dose, it was a cheap, convenient alternative to wrestling a patient into chains or a leather harness. It was therefore used with abandon, especially on mentally disturbed or simply violent subjects; but in the quarter-century since its introduction, its use had spread to the general public, who were free, in those days, to buy not just chloral, but morphine, opium, cannabis indica, or any other such substance at any drugstore. Many thousands of people had destroyed their lives by freely submitting to chloral's power to "release one from worry and care, and bring on a healthy sleep" (as one canny manufacturer put it. Death by overdose had become commonplace; more and more suicides were connected to chloral use; and yet the doctors of the day continued blithely to insist on its safety and utility.
"How many grains?" Watson asked, exchanging weariness for annoyance---he was aware that administration of the drug was neither Musk's job nor his fault.
They began with twenty," the attendant answered sheepishly. "i told them, sir, I told them you were scheduled for the evaluation and that you'd be angry, but they wouldn't listen."
"That," Watson answered quietly, "is just I would expect of those fools." Which made the three of us---and what we knew was that on hearing of Watson's slated appearance and likely objections, the Pavilion's superintendent had almost certainly doubled the dose of chloral and significantly decreased Beckman's ability to participate in the kind of assessment Watson liked to make, which involved many probing questions and was ideally conducted on a subject free of the effects of drugs or alcohol. Such was the general feeling amongst his colleagues, especially those of the older generation, towards Watson.
"Well," John announced, after pondering the question for a few moments. "There's nothing to do---we are here, Waterhouse, and time presses." I thought immediately about the odd reference to "a timetable" in Watson's note to Roosevelt the night before; but I said nothing as he unbolted the door and tugged at its formidable weight. "Mr. Beckman," Watson announced, "we must talk."
For the next hour I sat through Watson's examination of this vague, disoriented man, who held as firmly as the chloral hydrate would permit to the notion that if he had truly erased most of young Juliet Sampson's head with his pistol---and we assured him that he had---then he must be insane, and should of course be committed to an asylum (or at most to the facility for mentally defective convicts at Mattewan) rather than to prison or the gallows. Watson took careful note of this attitude but for the moment did not discuss the case itself. Instead he ran through a long list of seemingly unconnected questions about Beckman's past, his family, friends , and childhood. The questions were deeply personal and in a normal setting would have seemed presumptuous and even offensive; and the fact that Beckman's reactions to Watson's inquiries were less violent than most men's was almost certainly due to his being drugged. But the absence of anger also indicated a lack of precision and forthrightness in the responses, and the interview seemed destined for a premature end.
But not even Beckman's chemically-induced calm could be maintained when Watson finally began to ask him about Juliet Sampson. Had Beckman harbored any unhealthy sexual feelings for the girl? Watson inquired, with a bluntness seldom heard in discussions of such subjects. Were there other children in his building or in his neighborhood toward whom he did harbor such feelings? Did he have a lady friend? Did he visit disorderly houses? Did he find himself sexually attracted to young boys? Why had he shot the girl and not stabbed her? Beckman was at first bewildered by all this, and appealed to the attendant, Musk, asking whether or not he must answer. Musk, with somewhat lascivious glee, made it plain that he must, and Beckman complied, for a time. But after half an hour of it he staggered to his feet, rattled his manacles, and swore that no man could force him to participate in such a dastardly inquisition. He declared defiantly that he would rather face the hangman; at which point Watson stood and stared right into Beckman's eye.
"I fear that in New York State, the electrical chair is increasingly usurping the gallows, Mr. Beckman," he said evenly. "Although I suspect that, based upon your answers to my questions, you will find that out for yourself. May God have mercy on your soul, sir."
As Watson strode towards the door, Musk quickly jerked it open. I took one fin al look at Beckman before following Watson out: the man's aspect had suddenly shifted from indignant to deeply fearful, but he was too weak now to do more than mumble pathetic protests as to what he was sure was his insanity and then fall back onto his cot.
Watson and I walked back down the Pavilion's main corridor as Musk rebooted the door to Beckman's cell. The quiet please of the other patients began anew, but we were soon through them. Once we were out and in the vestibule, the shouts and howls behind us gained in volume once more.
"I believe we can dismiss him, Randall," Watson said, quietly and wearily, as he pulled on a pair of gloves that Herman handed him. "Drugged though he may be, Beckman has revealed himself---violent, yes, and resentful of children. A drunkard, as well. But he is not mad, nor do I think him to be connected to the business at hand."
"Ah," I said, snatching up the opportunity, "now, about that...."
"They'll want him to be mad, naturally," Watson mused, not hearing me. "The doctors here, the newspapers, the judges, they'd like to think that only a madman would shoot a five-year-old girl in the head. It creates certain...difficulties, should we be forced to accept that our society can produce sane men who do such despicable things." He sighed once and took an umbrella from Herman. "Yes, that will be a long day or two in court, I would think..."
We exited the Pavilion, myself seeking refuge with Watson beneath his umbrella, and then climbed into the now-covered calash. I knew what was coming: a monologue that was a kind of catharsis for Watson, a restatement of some of his most basic professional principles, designed to relieve the enormous responsibility of helping send a man to his death. Watson was a confirmed opponent of the practice of executing criminals, even vicious murderers such as Beckman; but he did not allow this opposition to cloud his better judgment or his definition of true insanity, which was, by comparison with that of many of his colleagues, relatively narrow. As Herman jumped into the driver's seat of the calash and the carriage pulled away from Bellevue, Watson's diatribe began to cover subjects I'd heard him discuss many times before: how a broad definition of insanity might make society as a whole feel better but did nothing for mental science, serving to only lessen the chance that the truly mentally ill wold receive appropriate care and treatment. It was an insistent kind of speech---Watson seemed to be trying to push the image of Beckman in the electrical chair further and further away---and as it wound on, I realized that there was no hope of my gaining any hard information concerning just what in hell was going on and why I'd been called into whatever this was.
Glancing about the passing buildings in some frustration, I let my eyes come to rest upon Herman, momentarily thinking that, since he had to listen to this kind of thing more than anyone, I might wring some sympathy out of the man. I should have known better than that, damnit! Like Sammie Alcock, Herman had a hard life before coming to work for John and was now quite devoted to my friend. As a boy in New York Herman had seen his parents literally ripped to shreds during the draft riots of 1863, when angry hordes of white men and women, many of them recently arrived immigrants, expressed their unwillingness to fight for the causes of the Union and slave emancipation by laying hold of any Negroes they could find---including young children---and dismembering them, burning them alive, tarring-and-feathering them, whatever medieval tortures their Old World minds could devise. A talented musician with a splendid bass-baritone voice, Herman had been taken in by a pandering uncle after his parents' untimely death and trained to be a "professor," a piano player in a brothel that proffered young black women to white men of means. But his youthful nightmare had left him rather afraid to tolerate bigoted abuse from the house's customers. One night in 1887 he had come upon a drunken policeman taking his graft in trade, which the cop apparently thought included brutal blows from the back of his hand and taunts of "ape whore." Herman had calmly gone to the kitchen, fetched a large butcher knife, and dispatched the cop to that special Valhalla reserved for fallen members of the New York City Police Department.
Enter Watson once more. Expounding a theory he called "explosive association," he had revealed the genesis of Herman's actions to the judge in the case: during the few minutes involved in the killing, John said, Herman had returned in his mind to the night of his parents' death, and the well of anger that had been left untapped since that incident came gushing forth and engulfed the offending policeman. Herman was not insane, Watson announced; he had responded to the situation in the only way possible for a man with his background. The judge had been impressed by Watson's arguments, but given the public mood, he could hardly release Herman. Internment in the New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwells Island was recommended, but Watson stated that employment at his Institute would be far more likely to induce rehabilitation. The judge, anxious to be done with the case, agreed. The affair didn't do anything to mitigate Watson's public and professional reputation as a maverick, and it surely didn't make the average visitor to Watson's home anxious to be alone in the kitchen with Herman. But it did ensure the man's loyalty.
There was no letup in the driving rain as we moved at a trot down the Bowery, the only major street in New York that, to my knowledge, had never known the presence of a church. Saloons, concert halls, and flophouses flashed by, and when we passed Cooper Square I spotted the big electric sign and shaded windows of Sam Harvey's Paresis Hall, where Mario Fonzerilli had centered his pathetic operations. On we drove, through more slumlands whose sidewalk mayhem was only slightly moderated by the falling rain. It was not until we had turned onto Bleeker Street and were nearing Police Headquarters that Watson said flatly:
"You have seen the body for yourself."
"Seen the body?!" I said in some annoyance, though I was relieved to at last discuss the topic. "I am still seeing it when I close my eyes for more than a minute. What the hell was the idea of getting my whole house up and forcing me to go down there, to begin with? It's not as if I can report that sort of thing, you know that---you accomplished nothing but the agitation of my grandmother, and I would be ashamed of myself for that If I were you."
"Be that as it may, John, you needed to see just what it is we'll be dealing with."
"I am damned if I'm dealing with anything!" I protested again. "I'm just a reporter, remember, a reporter with a gruesome story that I'm forbidden to tell."
"You do yourself no injustice, Randall," Watson said. "You are a living encyclopedia of privileged information---although you may not think yourself such."
My voice rose: "John, what in hell..."
But once again, I could get no further. As we turned onto Mulberry Street I heard calling voices and looked up to see Will Peters and David Vlodder running towards the carriage.164Please respect copyright.PENANAjrvdvGF4Fd
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