The Alienist by Caleb Carr Page B

up another vocation, even temporarily, so great was the need for his steadying hand at the Institute; but then he told me that he still planned to spend two mornings and one night per week there, at which times he would leave our investigation in my hands. It was not the kind of responsibility I’d anticipated, and I was surprised when the notion left me feeling eager rather than anxious.
    Shortly after my cab passed through Chatham Square and turned onto East Broadway, I disembarked at Numbers 185–187: the Kreizler Institute. Stepping onto the sidewalk, I saw that Laszlo’s calash was also at the curb, and I glanced up at the windows of the Institute, half-expecting to see him looking out for me but finding no face.
    Kreizler had bought the Institute’s two four-story, red-brick and black-trim buildings with his own money in 1885, and then had their interiors remodeled so that they became one unit. The subsequent upkeep of the place was covered by the fee he charged his wealthier clients, as well as by the considerable income he took in from his work as an expert legal witness. The children’s rooms were on the top floor of the Institute, and class and recreational halls occupied the third. On the second floor were Kreizler’s consulting and examination rooms, as well as his psychological laboratory, where he performed tests on the children’s powers of perception, reaction, association, memory, and all the other psychic functions that so fascinated the alienist community. The ground floor was reserved for his rather forbidding operational theater, where he performed the occasional brain dissection and post-mortem. My cab had pulled up near the black iron stairs that led to the main entrance, at Number 185, and Cyrus Montrose was at the top of them, his head housed in a bowler, his huge frame enveloped in an even more sizable greatcoat, and his wide nostrils breathing cool fire.
    “Afternoon, Cyrus,” I said with a difficult smile as I climbed the stairs, vainly hoping that I didn’t sound as uneasy as I always felt when caught in his shark’s stare. “Is Dr. Kreizler here?”
    “That’s his carriage, Mr. Moore,” Cyrus answered, in a pleasant enough voice that still managed to make me sound like one of the bigger idiots in the city. But I just grinned resolutely on.
    “I expect you’ve heard that the doctor and I will be working together for a while?”
    Cyrus nodded with what, if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn was a wry smile. “I’ve heard, sir.”
    “Well!” I brushed my jacket back and slapped at my vest. “I guess I’ll go find him. Afternoon, Cyrus!”
    I got no answer from the man as I entered, not that I deserved one; there was no reason for both of us to behave like morons.
    The Institute’s small vestibule and front hall—white with dark wood wainscoting—were full of the usual fathers, mothers, and children, all crowded onto two long, low benches and waiting to see Kreizler. Almost every morning in the late winter and early spring, Laszlo personally conducted interviews to determine who would be admitted to the Institute the following fall. The applicants ranged from the wealthiest northeastern families to the poorest of immigrants and rural laborers, but they all had one thing in common: a troubled or troublesome child whose behavior was in some way extreme and inexplicable. This was all very serious, of course, but that didn’t change the fact that the Institute was, on such mornings, a bit of a zoo. As you walked down the hallway you were likely to be tripped, spat at, cursed, and otherwise maltreated, particularly by those children whose only mental deficiency was that they’d been overindulged, and whose parents clearly could and should have saved themselves the trip to Kreizler’s office.
    As I moved to the door of Kreizler’s consulting room, I locked gazes with one such prospective troublemaker, a fat little boy with malevolent eyes. A dark, heavily lined woman