Time and Again (31 page)

A thought broke the surface of my mind like a log breaking loose from the bottom of a lake, and floating slowly up to the top:
Julia.
Well, what about her? I walked north on Fifth; it was almost warm out now, a lot of blue sky showing through the gray. There was no problem about Julia; I'd settled that in my mind last night, and it was a decision I wasn't going to change. Yet a feeling of nameless worry persisted.

I'd used over half my film but when I reached Forty-second Street I had to have a photo of the Croton Reservoir. There was a set of rust flecked iron rungs set into the stone wall at the corner of Fifth and Forty-second, and while I doubted that it was allowed, I climbed to the top; after the bridge it was nothing. Up on top, standing at the corner looking south, I took the shot below; the reservoir there on the right, more brownstones on the left, exactly like those I mentioned, further south. I think this view gives an even better idea of how narrow Fifth is. Was. Notice the sidewalks; they're of cut stone, not concrete.

For a dozen seconds I stood there on the Croton Reservoir staring down at the carriage stopped at the curb in the lower left of the photo I'd just taken, but I wasn't really looking at it. There
was
something I was neglecting, and it
was
about Julia. But nothing happened in my mind, and when a woman came out of the house — the mansion, really — to enter the waiting carriage below me, the liveried driver hopping down to open the door for her, I sighed, slung my camera over my shoulder, and climbed carefully down.

At Forty-fourth Street I took this. I feel certain that Ye Olde Willow Cottage was a relic of colonial times. Inside Tyson's, entire carcasses were hanging, though in too much shadow to show on my film.

In the fashionable Fifties the crowds were heavier, but I got a shot of William K. Vanderbilt's mansion — that's it in the center, looking brand-new, and built of dazzling white limestone.

I walked clear up to the Seventies, alongside Central Park, before turning back; I was in the area of small truck farms again, still largely unbuilt upon, and I knew from yesterday's sleigh ride that there was nothing much ahead but more and more open country.

For variety on the way back, I walked over a block to Madison Avenue, turned south to walk back, and at Seventy-first Street I stopped and took the following, once again because — I'm not sure why this interested me so — I felt sure the farmhouse was a colonial relic still in use on Manhattan Island. That's the Museum of Natural History off there across Central Park, very clearly visible from here at the corner of Seventy-first Street and Madison Avenue of a strangely rural New York City.

I had one plate left, and I used it down in the Forties, back in the built-up city again, and, for me anyway, it's the best of all. Madison was a far quieter street than Fifth, but like Fifth it had been promptly cleared of yesterday's snow, and every single stoop and inch of sidewalk — all these houses had servants, I'm certain — was long since shoveled and swept clean.

It was so quiet I could hear my own footsteps, and in the afternoon warmth of this brief late January thaw, feeling the clear sunny air on my face — the sky almost entirely blue now — I strolled along that peaceful, residential long-ago Madison Avenue momentarily as happy as I've ever been. At Forty-first Street a set of stone pillars flanking the stairs to a brownstone was flat on the tops, and I set Felix's camera on one of them. Taking my time then, focusing carefully, I took a picture that for me captures the quality I've tried to describe, of peace and tranquillity and better times. Here it is: Forty-first Street and Madison Avenue, an utterly different place and world in the latter twentieth century. But I like it this way. I took my picture and walked on, and I can still hear the
clip-clop
behind me of the horse-drawn car you can see in the middle distance, and the footsteps on that cut-stone walk of the long-skirted woman under the umbrella a block away. In those moments, the moments of this picture, I was in the one place in all the world that I wanted to be.

And then, like a computer finally producing the right card, my mind said,
How? How will you make Julia break her engagement? How can you explain what you know about Jake?
And there was no answer. I began walking faster as though that would help, down toward Gramercy Park and Julia. But I slowed again. It was an easy decision last night, but now: What in the
hell
could I say to her?
Don't ask any questions, but… Julia, just take my word for this, but you can't marry… Please don't ask me to explain, but
…

In the parlor at 19 Gramercy Park before dinner — the day ending, a winter chill coming back into the air with the beginning darkness — I sat with Byron and Felix, trading sections of Felix's
Evening Sun;
Felix was delighted that I'd used his camera, flatly refused to accept payment for the plates I'd used, and said he'd develop and print them after supper. Maud Torrence came down, and finally Jake; Aunt Ada and Julia were setting the table in the dining room, and Julia twice caught me staring at her as I sat wondering how I could possibly do what I had to do.

I began to get mad. Looking over at Jake who was sitting by the big nickel-plated stove reading his paper, or trying to — he kept glancing up as though it were hard to sit still, frowning, and twice he wet his lips — I knew I would not,
would not,
let him marry Julia. And I didn't know how to stop it.

At the table during dinner he was almost directly across from me, and I wanted to needle him, wanted to get
at
him; I couldn't help it. Maud Torrence was talking about a Professor Peirce who had just read a paper before the New York Academy of Sciences on the advantages of establishing national and international time zones. Listening, I discovered there was no standardization of times anywhere in the country or world; any little town was free to pick its own time and often did, so that the time in towns a few miles apart might vary; eleven minutes maybe, or seventeen, or thirty-one. Railroad stations had clocks showing the times in different places, and Byron remarked that railroad timetables on long east-west trips were almost impossible to write because there were some seventy-odd different times used in the places the trains went through. Professor Peirce suggested time zones to be called Atlantic Time, Mississippi Time, Rocky Mountain Time, and Pacific Time, and I considered making a prediction but I was more interested in Jake.

And when Maud finished I said, truthfully, "I was up at the Central Park today, and" — a lie — "I was talking to a man who said he thought he'd seen Inspector Byrnes ride through a little earlier. He sounded as though he'd seen" — I almost said a
celebrity
but suddenly doubted that the word existed yet — "an important personage. Who
is
this Inspector Byrnes?"

It worked just fine: Jake's mouth clamped so tightly shut that his mustache and beard merged, and his eyes turned hard as he flicked a glance at me. As usual when you try something mean and succeed there wasn't really much triumph in it. I felt a little low and unworthy, not pleased with myself, yet with a little room left for a kind of sneaky gladness. Because the topic sprang to life; at least three people had answered simultaneously, and it was obvious that the name "Inspector Byrnes" had a powerful magic.

"That man!" Aunt Ada said, her eyes flashing with disapproval. Maud was murmuring something I couldn't hear except for the word "disgraceful." And Byron had said, "Well, I'll tell you," and he did. "He may not follow the letter of the law all the time" — Byron had put down knife and fork both, leaning over the tabletop, he was so interested in his own words — "but you can't kick about that; he gets results! He's got the pickpockets on the run!
And
the bank robbers. Isn't that right, Jake?"

Jake had gotten out a cigar, and though he didn't light it at the table, he sat chewing it, rolling it in his mouth, not even pretending to eat anymore. He didn't answer Byron, just nodded shortly.

"He invented the third degree," Felix told me, anxious to exhibit his knowledge.

"That's hardly to his credit!" said Aunt Ada.

Maud said anxiously, "It means beating people, doesn't it?"

Julia hadn't said anything, and I glanced at her to find that she was watching me, her eyes curious, speculative. It occurred to me that she might have realized something of what I was doing in bringing up Byrnes. I just grinned at her, not denying it, if that's what she was thinking.

"Oh, no," Byron answered Maud. "At least that's not all it means. I don't expect he minds knocking a man about a little when he knows he's guilty. As why shouldn't he? I don't think we need have any niminy-piminy fancies against that. Would you have him let a criminal go scot-free, to society's peril, for want of a little persuasion? The man's not vealy; he's the most experienced policeman in the city! He's unscrupulous, true, and often acts beyond his authority and legal powers. And it's a known fact that he accepts — if not money, stocks or bonds — inside information from the Wall Street millionaires he's befriended. He's said to be rich as a result. But we should think of him as like a good first sergeant; if he runs the company properly, you mustn't inquire too closely into his methods. And if he receives a few perquisites not found in regulations, it's only right and proper, else why should he take the trouble? He's far more than a crude bully, and if I'd seen him pass in his carriage, as did your acquaintance in the park, Mr. Morley, I'd have touched my hat brim. His famous 'third degree' is usually more than merely beating a confession out of some ruffian; have you heard how he solved the Unger murder case?"