The Alienist by Caleb Carr Page A

come unbunched and I was able to make out a bit of the printing on it.
    “Well,” I grunted, perplexed. “This sounds like something in
your
department, Kreizler. ‘The Relationship of Hygiene and Diet to the Formation of Infantile Neural—’”
    With shocking abruptness Kreizler grabbed my umbrella from my hand, stabbed its tip through the bit of paper, and then flung both items out the window.
    “What in—Kreizler!” I jumped out of the carriage, retrieved the umbrella, separated it from the offensive piece of paper, and then got back into the calash. “That umbrella wasn’t cheap, I’ll have you know!”
    As I glanced at Kreizler I saw a trace of real 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, Moore. But I happen to be familiar with that author. As poor a stylist as he is a thinker. And this is no time to be sidetracked—we’ve much to do.” He leaned forward and called out Cyrus’s name, at which the big man’s head appeared under the canopy of the carriage. “The Institute, and then on to lunch,” Laszlo said. “And pick up some speed, if you can, Cyrus—we could use a bit of fresh air in here.”
    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 Kreizler’s reaction, the monograph from which the sheet of paper had been torn was almost certainly one of Laszlo’s own works. Thinking that one of Kreizler’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 harrowingly clear.

CHAPTER 7
----
    W e were anxious to begin marshalling our forces for the investigation, and the delays we experienced, though brief, were frustrating. When Theodore got wind of the speculative interest in Kreizler’s visit to headquarters displayed by reporters and police officers, he realized that he’d made a mistake by holding the meeting there, and told us he needed a couple of days to get things calmed down. Kreizler and I used the time to make arrangements regarding our “civilian” occupations. I had to convince my editors to grant me a leave of absence, a goal made somewhat easier by a timely telephone call from Roosevelt, who explained that I was wanted on vital police business. Nonetheless, I was only allowed out of the editorial offices of the
Times
at Thirty-second and Broadway when I pledged that if the investigation resulted in a story that was fit to print, I would not take it to another paper or magazine, regardless of how much money I was offered. I assured my sour-faced taskmasters that they wouldn’t want the story anyway, and then breezed down Broadway on a typical March morning in New York: twenty-nine degrees at eleven A.M ., with winds of fifty miles an hour cutting through the streets. I was scheduled to meet Kreizler at his Institute, and I had thought to walk, so great was my sense of release at not being answerable to my editors for an indefinite period. But real New York cold—the kind that freezes horse urine in little rivulets on the surface of the streets—will conquer the best of spirits eventually. Outside the Fifth Avenue Hotel I decided to get a cab, pausing only to watch Boss Platt emerge from a carriage and vanish inside, his stiff, unnatural movements doing nothing to reassure the onlooker that he was, in fact, alive.
    Kreizler’s leave of absence, I speculated inside the cab, would not be so simple a matter as mine. The two dozen or so children at his Institute depended on his presence and his counsel, having come to him from homes (or streets) where they were either habitually ignored, regularly chastised, or actively beaten. Indeed, I had not initially seen how he proposed to take