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No Plagiarism!L7JwHAZ6aWikTaGXiVohposted on PENANA "I have your report, Watson," Roosevelt said, picking up the document from his desk. "Along with the coroner's. It won't surprise you to learn that he gave us no additional insights."
Watson nodded in distasteful familiarity. "Any butcher or patent-medicine salesman can be appointed a coroner, Mr. Roosevelt. It's almost as easy as becoming an asylum superintendent."
"Indeed. At any rate, your report seems to indicate...."
"It does not indicated all that I have discovered," Watson interrupted carefully. "Indeed, it does not cover some of the most vital points."
"Eh?" Teddy looked up in shock, the pince-nez he wore in the office falling from his nose. "Wha--what are you saying?"
"Many eyes see reports at headquarters, Commissioner." Watson was doing his best to be diplomatic, which in his case was a genuine effort. "I did not wish to take the chance of certain details becoming....public. Not just yet."
Teddy paused, his eyes narrowing pensively. "You write," he eventually said quietly, "of horrible errors."
Watson stood and walked to the window, pulling the shade aside just a crack. "To begin with, Roosevelt, you must promise me that persons such as"----he said the rank with genuine disgust----"Detective Sergeant McElroy will not be told any of this. The man has spent this morning propagating false information to the press---information that may well end up costing more lives."
Teddy's ordinarily furrowed brow became positively creased. "By thunder! If that's true, Doctor, I'll have the man's..."
Watson held up a hand. "Just promise me that, Mr. Roosevelt."
"You have my word. But at least tell me what McElroy said."
"He has given several reporters the impression," Watson answered, beginning to pace the floor of the office, "that this man De Sarro was responsible for the Fonzerelli killing."
"Do you think otherwise?"
"Unquestionably. De Sarro's thoughts and actions are entirely too unpremeditated and unsystematic for this. Though he is completely devoid of emotional restraint, and has no aversion to violence."
"Would you consider him a...." For Roosevelt the language was somewhat unfamiliar. "A psychopath?" Watson cocked an eyebrow. "I have seen some of your recent writings," Teddy went on, looking a bit self-conscious. "Though I can't say how much I've really understood."
Watson nodded with a little, enigmatic smile. "Is De Sarro a psychopath, you ask. There is constitutional psychopathic inferiority, undoubtedly. But as to the implications of declaring him a psychopath---if you've read even some of the literature, Roosevelt, you know that it all depends on whose opinions we accept."
Roosevelt nodded in return and rubbed his chin with one of his tough hands. I did not know then, but I would learn in the coming weeks, that one of the greatest single points of contention between Watson and may of his colleagues---a battle t hat had been fought primarily in the pages of the American Journal of Insanity, a quarterly published by the national alliance of asylum superintendents---was the issue of what constituted a true homicidal maniac. Men and women whose savagely violent acts betrayed odd patterns of moral thought, but whose intellectual capacities were acknowledged to be healthy, had recently been included within the broad classification of "psychopathic personalities" by the German psychologist Emil Kraepelin. The classification had been generally accepted throughout the profession; the contested question was, were such psychopaths mentally diseased? Most doctors answered in the affirmative, and although they couldn't yet exactly identify the full nature and causes of the disease, they thought such discoveries just a matter of time. Watson, in contrast, thought that psychopaths were produced by extreme childhood environments and experiences and were unafflicted by any real pathology. Judged in context, the actions of such patients could be understood and even predicted (unlike those of the truly insane). This was clearly the diagnosis he had reached in regards to Iron De Sarro.
"Then you will declare him competent to stand trial?" Roosevelt asked.
"Yes." Watson's face darkened perceptibly, and he stared at his hands as he folded them together. "And, more importantly, I'll wager that long before that trial begins we shall have proof that he is not connected to the Fonzerelli case. Grim proof."
I was finding it difficult to stay silent. "And what is that proof?" I asked.
Watson's hands fell to his sides as he returned to the window. "More bodies, I fear. Especially if an attempt is made to tie De Sarro to Fonzerelli. Yes." Watson's voice became distracted. "He'd be angered by having his thunder stolen that way...."
"Who would?"
But John didn't seem to hear me. "Do either of you remember," he continued, in the same distant tone, "an interesting case of some three years ago, also involving slain children? Roosevelt, I'm afraid it was at the height of your struggles in Washington, so you may not have heard. And Randall, I think you were at the time involved in a rather heated battle with the Washington Post, which wanted Roosevelt's head on a silver platter."
"The Post," I sighed in disgust. "The Post was in the muck up to its eyes with every illegal government appointee...."
"Yes, yes," Watson answered, holding up the weakened left arm to head me off. "There is no question that yours was the honorable position. The loyal one, too, although your editors seemed to be less enthusiastic in their support."
"They came 'round in the end," I said, puffing up the chest a bit. "Not that it saved my job," I added, slacking again.
"Now, now. No self-recrimination, Randall. But as I was saying, three years ago a water tower above a large tenement on Suffolk Street north of Delancey was hit by a lightning bolt. The tower was the highest structure in the neighborhood, and the event was perfectly explicable, if slightly odd. When the building's tenants and the fire department reached the roof, however, some were inclined to treat it as a providential event---for the tower contained the corpses of two children. A brother and sister. Their throats had been cut. It so happened that I knew the family. They were Jews from East London. The children were quite beautiful---delicate features, enormous brown eyes---and also quite troublesome. An embarrassment to the family. They stole, lied, attacked other children----ungovernable. In fact, there was very little remorse in the neighborhood over their deaths. The bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition when they were found. The boy's had fallen off an interior platform upon which they were originally placed, and into the water. It was badly bloated. The girl's was somewhat more intact for having stayed dry, but any clues that might have been gathered from it were destroyed by another incompetent coroner. I never saw anything more than the official reports, but I did note one curious detail from those." He pointed with his left hand to his face. "The eyes were missing."
A strong shiver went through me as I recalled not just the Fonzerelli boy but the two other murders that Roosevelt had mentioned of the previous night. Glancing Roosevelt's way, I noticed that he had made a similar connection: while his body was quite still, his eyes were alive with apprehension. But we both tried to fight the feeling off, as Roosevelt declared, "That's not uncommon. Especially if the corpses were exposed for an extensive time period. And if the throats were cut, there would have been plenty of blood to attract scavengers."
"Maybe," Watson said with a judicious nod as he went on pacing. "But the water tower was enclosed, with the exact purpose of keeping scavengers and vermin out."
"Really?" Teddy puzzled with it. "Did anyone bother to report those facts?"
"Someone did," Watson answered. "In the World, I think."
"Let's not forget," I protested, "that there is no water tower or building in existence that can keep certain animals out. Rats, for instance."
"True," Randall," Watson said. "And in the absence of further details, I had little choice but to accept that explanation. Why even New York City rats, upon discovering a pair of bodies, should so carefully gnaw out just the eyes was a disturbing mystery that I tried to ignore and which stayed unaddressed. Until last night." Watson took to pacing the floor once again. "As soon as I saw the condition of the Fonzerelli boy, I made an examination of the ocular orbits of the skull. Working by torchlight was not ideal, but I found what I was looking for. On the malar bone as well as the supraorbital ridge were a series of narrow grooves, and on the greater wing of the sphenoid---at the cavities' base---numerous tiny indentations. All of them consistent with the cutting edge and point of a knife, of the kind most frequently favored by hunters, I'd say. My guess would be that if we exhumed the bodies of the two 1893 victims---and I will request such action---we would find the same thing. In other words, gentlemen, the eyes were removed by the hand of a man."
My dread was growing, and I fumbled for an argument. "But what about what Sergeant McElroy said..."
"Waterhouse." Watson's voice was definitive. "If we are to continue this discussion we really must dispense with the opinions of such men as Sergeant McElroy."
Roosevelt shifted in his chair apprehensively; I could see in his face that he had run out of ways to avoid bringing Watson fully up to date.. "I feel I must tell you, Doctor," he announced, gripping the arms of his chair, "that we have had four more murders in the last three months that might also fit the....pattern you're describing.
The statement stopped Watson dead in his tracks. "What?" he said, urgently but quietly. "Where the deuce did you find the bodies?"
"I'm not exactly sure," Teddy answered.
"Were they prostitutes?"
"I believe so, yes."
"You believe so? Records, Roosevelt, I must see the records! Didn't anyone in this so-called department ever think to make a connection? Didn't you?"
And the records were sent for. From them we discovered that the bodies of the other two boys, both of whom had indeed been prostitutes, had also been found within what the coroners guessed were hours after their deaths. As Roosevelt had said the night before, there was somewhat less mutilation involved than in the Fonzerelli murder; that seemed, however, a difference of quantity rather than quality, for the similarities among the cases far outweighed any slight differences. The first boy, a 12-year-old African immigrant with no known name other than "Jumbo," had been chained to the stern of an Ellis Island ferry; and the second, a 10-year-old named Nate Brewster, had been found dangling by his feet from the Brooklyn Bridge. Both were nearly naked, according to the reports; both had their throats slashed, along with various other bodily lacerations; and, again, both were missing their eyes. As Watson finished reading the accounts, he mumbled that last fact to himself several times, lost in cogitation.
"I believe I know what you're suggesting, Watson," Teddy figured aloud: he never liked to be left behind in any intellectual discussion, even one that took place on what was, for him, very alien territory. "A murderer committed just this sort of outrage three years ago. It was reported. And now another such man, who at some point read the story, has been inspired to imitation." He was satisfied with his own extrapolation. "Is that so, Doctor? It wouldn't be the first time stories in certain of our newspapers have had that effect."
Watson, however, just sat tapping a forefinger against his pursed lips, with a look that clearly stated that the whole affair was far more complicated than even he had guessed.
I searched for some way to reach a different conclusion. "What about the rest of it?" I asked. "The---the missing organs and the cut-away flesh of the....well, the rest of it. T here was none of that in earlier cases."
"No," Watson slowly answered. "But I think there is an explanation for that difference, none that need concern us now. The eyes are the link, the key, the way in---I would stake my reputation upon that...." His voice trailed off again.
"All right," I said, throwing up my hands. "So someone murdered those two children three years ago, and now we've got a mimicking lunatic who also likes to mutilate corpses on our hands. What are we supposed to do about it?"
"Almost nothing in what you have just said, Randall," Watson replied evenly, "is accurate. I am not at all positive he is a lunatic. Nor am I inclined to believe that he enjoys what he does, in the sense that you understand or intend that statement. But more importantly---and I fear that here I must disappoint you, too, Roosevelt----I am as sure as I can be that this is not an imitator but the same man!"
And there it was---the statement that Roosevelt and I had feared had emanated from Watson's mouth. I'd been a police reporter for quite a while, ever since my unceremonious removal from my beloved Washington beat as a result of my previously mentioned defense of Roosevelt during his battle with the patronage system in the Civil Service. I'd even covered some celebrated murder cases abroad. I, therefore, knew that murderers like the one Watson described did indeed exist; but that never made it any easier to hear that one was on the loose. And for Roosevelt---who, though a born warrior, understood few of the intimate details of criminal behavior---it was an even harder notion to accept.
"But----three years!" Teddy said, aghast. "Surely, Watson, if such a man did exist, he could not have eluded the law for so long!"
"It's no great job to elude that which is not pursuing," Watson answered. "And even if the police had taken an interest, they would have been powerless, for they could not have begun to understand the murderer's motivation."
"And you do?" Roosevelt's words were nearly hopeful.
"Not entirely. I have the first few pieces---and we must find the rest. For it is only when we truly comprehend what drives him that we will even have a ghost of a chance of solving this case."
"But what could motivate a man to do such things?" Roosevelt said in an uncomfortable confusion. "After all, the Fonzerelli boy had no money. We're investigating the family, but they all seem to have been in their home throughout the night. Unless it was a personal quarrel with someone else, then..."
"I doubt if there was any quarrel involved," Watson replied. "In fact, the boy may never have seen his killer prior to last night."
"You're suggesting that whoever is killing these children doesn't even know them?"
"Possibly. It is not knowing them that is vital to him---it is what they represent."
"What is that?" I asked.
"That---is what we do not yet know."
Roosevelt continued to test carefully: "What evidence have you to support such a theory?"
"None of the kind you mean. I have but a lifetime of studying similar figures. And the intuition it has bestowed upon me."
"But...." As Roosevelt stood to take his turn pacing the floor, Watson grew more relaxed, the hard part of his work done. Teddy pounded one fist into an open hand insistently. "Listen, Watson, it's true that I grew up, as did we all, in a privileged household. But I have made it my business since taking this job to acquaint myself with the underworld of this city, and I have seen many things. No one needs to tell me that depravity and inhumanity have assumed dimensions in New York unheard of anywhere in the world. But what unnamable nightmare, even here, could drive a man to this?"
"Do not," Watson answered slowly, trying very hard to be clear, "look for causes in this city. Nor in recent circumstances, nor in recent events. The monster you seek was born long ago. Perhaps in his infancy---certainly in childhood. And not necessarily here."
Teddy was momentarily unable to answer, his face an open display of conflicting feelings. The conversation disturbed him deeply, in the same way that similar discussions had disturbed him deeply, in the same way that similar discussions had disturbed him ever since his first meeting with Watson. Yet he had known the talk would soon come to this; known it, even counted on it, I started to see, since the moment he asked me to bring John to his office. For there was satisfaction in his aspect, too, the realization that what seemed a forbidding, unchartable ocean to every detective in his department was, to the experienced Watson, full of currents and courses. Watson's theories clearly offered a way of solving what Teddy had been assured was an unsolvable mystery, and thus extending justice to one (or, as it now seemed, more than one) whose death would never have been scrutinized by anyone else in the Police Department. None of which explained why I was there.
"Randall," Teddy said abruptly, without looking at me. "Coulston, and De Sarro. have been here."
"I know. Sherlock and I ran into them in the staircase."
"What?!" Teddy fixed the pince-nez to his nose. "Was there any trouble?"
"Well, it wasn't what I'd call pleasant," I answered.
"Thank God," Teddy said in relief. "De Sarro," he went on, "has threatened to create great trouble among the immigrant communities if I try to connect Coulston or him to this case. He says that he cane whip up all kinds of agitation around the notion that the Police Department allows poor children to be murdered with impunity."
Watson nodded. "It wouldn't be difficult. Especially since there's an element of truth in that." Roosevelt looked sharply at Watson for a moment, but then softened, knowing he was correct. "Tell me, Waterhouse," Watson asked, "what's is your opinion of Coulston? Is there any chance he is involved?"
"Heber?" I sat back, stretched out my legs, and weighed it. "He is, unquestionably, one of the worst men in this city. Most of the gangsters who run things now have some kind of human spark in them somewhere, albeit a hidden spark. Even Goliath Flore has his cats and birds. But Heber---for all I can tell, nothing touches him. Cruelty is really and truly his only sport, the only thing that gives him any pleasure. And if I hadn't seen that corpse, if this were merely a hypothetical question about a dead boy who worked out of Paresis Hall, I wouldn't hesitate to name him a suspect. What would be his motive? He would have had a few, the most likely being to keep the other boys in line, to make sure that they pay their full cut to him. But there's only one problem with that---style. Hebert is a stiletto man, if you know what I mean. He kills quietly, neatly, and a lot of the people he's supposed to have killed have never been found. He's all flash in his clothing, but not in his work. So, as much as I would like to, I can't say that I see him involved in this. It's just not his style."
I glanced up to find Watson giving me a very puzzled look. "Randall, that is the most intelligent thing I've ever heard you say," he finally announced. "And to think that you wondered why you'd been brought along." He turned to Teddy. "Roosevelt, I shall need Randall as my assistant. His knowledge of this city's criminal activities, and of the locales in which those activities take place, will make him invaluable."
"Assistant?" I echoed. But they were back to ignoring me. Teddy's teeth and narrowing eyes showed that he was quite absorbed in, and pleased with, Watson's remark.
"Then you wish to participate in the investigation," he said. "I felt you would."
"Take part in the investigation?" I said, dumbfounded. "Roosevelt, have you lost your Dutch mind? An alienist? A psychologist? You've already made an enemy of every senior officer on the force, and half the Board of Commissioners, to boot. They're taking odds in half the gambling hells in town that you'll be fired by the 4th of July! If word gets out that you've brought someone like Watson in---why, you'd be better off hiring an African witch doctor!"
Watson chuckled. "Which is approximately how most of our elite citizenry sees me. Randall's right, Roosevelt. The project will have to be undertaken in absolute secrecy."
Roosevelt nodded. "I'm aware of the realities of the situation, gentlemen, trust me. Secrecy will be the rule."
"Then there is," Watson continued, making another careful attempt at diplomacy, "the matter of terms..."
"If you mean salary," Roosevelt said, "since you will be acting in an advisory capacity, naturally...."
"Salary is not what I had in mind. Neither is advisory capacity. Good Heavens, Roosevelt, the detectives on your force were not even able to divine the clue regarding the removal of the eyes---3 murders in 3 months, and the most vital aspect is attributed to rats! Who can say what other blunders they've committed? As for connecting this to the cases of 3 years ago, assuming there is a connection, I suspect we'd all die old men in our beds before they'd achieve it, whether they were 'advised' or not. No, it won't do to work with them. What I have in mind is an---auxiliary effort."
Roosevelt, ever the pragmatist, was willing to listen. "Go on," he said."
"Give me 2 or 3 good young detectives with a sound appreciation of modern methods---men who have no stake in the old order of business in the department, who were never loyal to Byrnes." (Thomas F. Byrnes was a famous crime-fighter of the late 19th century by supervising the newly created detective division of the New York Police Department. He had amassed a large fortune during his tenure---and who had retired, not coincidentally, when Roosevelt was appointed to the board.) "We will set up an office outside of headquarters, though not too far away. Assign someone you trust as a liaison----again, someone new, someone young. Give us all the intelligence you can without revealing the operation." John sat back, aware of the thoroughly unprecedented nature of his proposal. "Give us all of this, and I think we might even have a chance."8964 copyright protection179PENANAsb1svi6Svq 維尼
Roosevelt braced himself against his desk and rocked silently on his chair, watching Watson. "It would mean my job," he said, without what might have been called proper concern, "if it were found out. I wonder if you truly realize, Doctor, how very much your work frightens and angers the very people who run this city---both its politics and its business. Waterhouse's comment about the African witch doctor is not a joke, I fear."8964 copyright protection179PENANAxv2V4EuUqg 維尼
"I promise you, I did not take it as such. Now, if you are sincere in your wish to stop what is happening"---Watson's plea was deeply in earnest---"then you have to agree."8964 copyright protection179PENANACAVwikFdtV 維尼
I was still somewhat shocked by what I was hearing and thought that this would surely be the moment when Roosevelt would stop flirting with the idea and quash it. Instead, he slammed another fist into an open hand. "By thunder, Doctor, I know of two detectives who would suit your purpose right down to earth! But tell me---where would you begin?"8964 copyright protection179PENANAXwiQpTLTQW 維尼
"For the answer to that," Watson replied, pointing over to me, "I must thank Waterhouse. It was something he sent me long ago that sparked the idea."8964 copyright protection179PENANA6OpR7VoBvo 維尼
"And just what did I send you?" For a moment egotism made me put aside my trepidation at this dangerous proposal.8964 copyright protection179PENANAg55wsGe3EP 維尼
Watson approached the window and raised the shade altogether so that he could look outside. "You will recall, Randall, that some years earlier you found yourself in London during the Ripper killings."8964 copyright protection179PENANADEllEnSt1Q 維尼
"Oh, how could I forget that?" I answered with a grunt. It had not been one of my pleasanter holidays: three months in London in 1888 when a bloodthirsty ghoul had taken to accosting random prostitutes in the Whitechapel district and disemboweling them. 8964 copyright protection179PENANAhNLscBHfD8 維尼
"I asked you for information, as well as local press reports. You were very decently obliged and included in one pouch statements made by the younger L. Forbes Winslow."8964 copyright protection179PENANAREoO1EaXOU 維尼
I raked my memory of the time. L. Forbes Winslow, whose similarly named father had been an eminent British alienist and an early influence on Watson. He had set himself up as an asylum superintendent during the 1880s by trading on his father's achievements. The younger Winslow was an egotistical bore, in my opinion, but when the Jack the Ripper killings started he was sufficiently well known to be able to inject himself into the investigation; indeed, he'd claimed that his participation had caused the (still unsolved, even now) murders to come to an end.8964 copyright protection179PENANAPpAhfQFYZr 維尼
"Don't tell me Winslow's pointed the way for you," I said, astonished.8964 copyright protection179PENANA227Iv0szae 維尼
"Inadvertently, yes. In one of his foolish treatises on the Ripper he discussed one particular suspect in the case, saying that if he had created an "imaginary man"---that was how he put it---to fit the known traits of the killer, he could not have devised a better one. Of course, the suspect he favored was proved innocent. But the expression lodged itself in my head." Watson turned back to us. "We know nothing of the person we seek, and we are not likely ever to find witnesses who possess more knowledge than we do. Circumstantial evidence will be sparse, at best----he has been at work for years, after all, and has had more than enough time to perfect the technique. What we have to do---the only thing we can do---is to paint an imaginary picture of the kind of person who might commit such acts. Had we such a picture, the significance of what little evidence we collected would be dramatically magnified. We might reduce the haystack in which our needle hides to something more like----a pile of straw if you'd like."8964 copyright protection179PENANA7t0NiuGpyz 維尼
"I do not like, thank you," I said. My nervousness was only growing. This was just the kind of dialogue that would fire Roosevelt's mind, and Watson knew it. Action, plans, a campaign---it nearly wasn't fair to ask Teddy to make a sensible decision when faced with that kind of emotional enticement. I stood up and stretched my arms into what I hoped was a preemptive stance. "Listen, you two," I started, but Watson amply touched my arm, gave me one of those looks of his---so authoritative it was downright vexing---and said:8964 copyright protection179PENANAhbs2HDHTJZ 維尼
"Do sit down for a moment, Waterhouse." I could do nothing but follow the instruction, despite my discomfort. "There is one more thing you both should know. I have said that under the terms that I am outlining we might have a chance of success---we would surely have nothing more. Our quarry's years of practice have not been in vain. The bodies of the two children in the water tower were discovered, remember, only by the most fortunate of accidents. We know nothing about him----assuming, of course, that it is a 'him.' Cases of women murdering their own children---drastically extreme variants of puerperal mania, or what is not called postpartum psychosis---are not uncommon. We have one central cause for optimism."8964 copyright protection179PENANAI9PbzIDMeb 維尼
Teddy looked up brightly. "The Fonzerelli boy?" He was learning fast!8964 copyright protection179PENANAUvu6QTl3wz 維尼
Watson nodded. "More accurately, the Fonzerelli boy's body. Its location, and those of these other two. The killer could have gone on hiding his victims forever---God only knows how many he's killed in the last three years. Yet now he's given us an open statement of his activities----not unlike the letters, Waterhouse, that the Ripper wrote to various London officials during his killings. Some buried, atrophied, but not yet dead part of our killer is growing tired of the bloodshed. And in these three bodies, we may read, as clearly as if it were words, his warped cry that we find him. And find him quickly---for the timetable by which he kills is a strict one, I suspect. That timetable, too, we must learn to decode."8964 copyright protection179PENANAr94RV9c9ar 維尼
"Can you do so quickly, Doctor?" Teddy asked. "An investigation like the one you're describing could not go on indefinitely, as you know. We must have results!"8964 copyright protection179PENANARdDaxXo8JS 維尼
Watson shrugged, seemingly unaffected by Roosevelt's urgent tone. "I have given you my honest opinion. We would have a fighting chance, nothing more---or less." Watson put a hand on Teddy's desk. "Well, Roosevelt?"8964 copyright protection179PENANAhrqYHnV9j6 維尼
If it seems strange that I voiced no further dissent, I have just this to say: Watson's explanation that his present course of action had been inspired by a document I had sent him years ago, coming as it did on the heels of our shared reminiscences about Harvard and Teddy's mounting enthusiasm for this plan, had suddenly made it plain to me that what was happening in that office was only partly a result of Mario Fonzerelli's death. Its full range of cases seemed to stretch further back, to our childhoods and subsequent lives, both individual and shared. Rarely have I felt so strongly the truth of Watson's belief that the answers one gives to life's vital questions are never truly spontaneous; they are the embodiment of years of contextual experience, of the building of patterns in each of our lives that eventually grow to dominate our behavior. Was Teddy---whose credo of active response to all challenges had guided him through physical sickness in youth and political and personal trials in adulthood---truly free to refuse Watson's offer? And if he accepted it, was I then free to say no to these two friends, with whom I had lived through many escapades and who were now telling me that my extracurricular activities and knowledge---so often dismissed as useless by almost everyone I knew---would prove vital in catching a sadistic killer? Professor James would have said that, yes, any human being is free, at any time, to pursue or refuse anything; and maybe, objectively, that is so. But as Watson loved to say (and Professor James ultimately had a hard time refuting), you cannot objectify the subjective, you cannot generalize the specific. What man, or a man, might have chosen was arguable; Teddy and I were the men who were there.8964 copyright protection179PENANAXbzqSVxSWC 維尼
So---on that dismal March morning Watson and I became detectives, as all 3 of us knew we must. That certainty was based, as I say, on thorough awareness of one another's characters and pasts; yet there was one person in New York at that threshold moment who had correctly guessed at our deliberations and their conclusion without ever having been so much as introduced to us. Just in retrospect can I see that that person had taken a careful interest in our activities that morning; and that he chose the moment of Watson's and my departure from Police Headquarters to deliver an ambiguous yet unsettling message.8964 copyright protection179PENANAAaOumwEP7H 維尼
Hustling through a new onslaught of heavy rain delivered by an increasingly savage sky, Watson and I got back into his calash, where I became immediately aware of a peculiar stench, one very unlike the usual odors of horse waste and garbage that predominated on the streets of our city.8964 copyright protection179PENANAHr4nhfE8ax 維尼
"Watson," I said, wrinkling my nose as he sat beside me, "has someone been...."8964 copyright protection179PENANALAvaqQLRvo 維尼
I stopped when I turned to see Watson's black eyes fixed on a remote corner of the carriage floor. Following his gaze I caught sight of a balled-up, heavily stained white rag, which I poked with my umbrella.8964 copyright protection179PENANAVjWN9xtznE 維尼
"Well," I grunted, perplexed. "This sounds like something in your department, Watson. 'The Relationship of Hygiene and Diet to the Formation of Infantile Neural..."8964 copyright protection179PENANArxMeFAZW6o 維尼
With shocking abruptness Watson grabbed my umbrella from my hand, stabbed its tip through the bit of paper, and then flung both items out the window.8964 copyright protection179PENANAolqiwIeZUb 維尼
"What in----Watson!" I leaped out of the carriage, retrieved the umbrella, separated it from the offensive slip of paper, and then got back into the calash. "I'll thank you to understand that that umbrella wasn't cheap!"8964 copyright protection179PENANAfgLYRWvnex 維尼
As I glanced at Watson I saw a trace of true apprehension in his features; but then he seemed to force the trace away, and when he spoke it was in a determinedly casual tone. "I am sorry, Waterhouse. But I happen to be familiar with that particular author. As poor a stylist as he is a thinker. And this is no time to be distracted---we have much work to do." He leaned forward and called out Herman's name, at which the big man's head appeared beneath the canopy of the carriage. "The Institute, and then on to lunch," said John. "And pick up some speed, if you can, Herman---we could use a little fresh air in here."8964 copyright protection179PENANASQwIQWKYqp 維尼
It was obvious, at that point, that the person who had left the befouled rag in the calash was not a child: for, based on the brief passage that I'd been able to read as well as on Watson's reaction, the monograph from which the sheet of paper had been torn was almost surely one of John's own works. Thinking that one of Watson's many critics---either in the Police Department or from the public at large---was responsible for the act, I didn't delve any deeper into it; but in the weeks to come, the full significance of the incident would become horribly clear.8964 copyright protection179PENANAaCR0WmHqo6 維尼
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