Page 12 of The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

Cropper looked down at the vile, watery “stew” that lay in puddles on the floor, then at the half-stunned boy, struggling to sit up. “Always causing trouble, is he? Well, I’ll have a talk with that new warden at the penitentiary. I hear a cot’s freeing up there by the end of the week. We’ll see how much trouble he can stir up behind bars.”

“You can’t put him there!” Moseley said, aghast, outrage overcoming his better judgment. “He was only transferred from the Octagon last month. The penitentiary will be the death of him!”

“Paddy, back to your cooking,” Cropper said. Then he stepped closer to Moseley. “And you, wet nurse,” he said. “You mind your own damned business—unless you’d like me to talk to the head surgeon and get your wages docked for you. Can’t put him in the penitentiary? You just watch.”

Moseley opened his mouth to protest, then realized there was nothing he could say to change anything. He turned toward the boy sprawled on the floor.

“Be on your way!” Cropper said.

At this, Moseley held his ground. “I need to check him for injuries.”

“Is that a fact?” Cropper said, surprised at this rebellion in miniature. His eyes narrowed. “You been at the pipe again?” He grabbed a kerosene lamp, then held it close to Moseley, examining his eyes. Moseley squinted but did not look away. After a moment, Cropper hung the lamp back on its peg.

“Be quick about it,” he said, then turned and exited the kitchen.

Moseley knelt and helped the boy to a sitting position. Quickly and expertly, he felt the boy’s limbs and skull, checking for fractures or a concussion. Then he peered at the boy’s face. A nasty ecchymosis—black eye—was already forming. He gently palpated the orbit, then examined the eyeball itself. No serious damage—thankfully.

“You’ll be all right,” he said in a voice too low for the cook to hear. He grabbed an underdone, dough-heavy dinner roll off a nearby table, then another, and stuffed them into the boy’s pockets. “Get upstairs now. Try to keep your head raised overnight—it will help with the swelling.”

Moseley assisted the boy to his feet, watching until he had safely left the kitchen—he had remained remarkably quiet, even taciturn, throughout the confrontation. Then he took a roll for himself and began to make his own way out. He’d missed the ferry, but Otto wouldn’t mind his being late.

As he passed by the cook, Paddy cackled. “Wet nurse,” he repeated, leering. “That’s a good ’un.”

8

MOSELEY SAT IN HISusual shabby booth near the steps leading up from the St. Mark’s Place Rathskeller. To his left, where the wall met the ceiling beams, stood a window—the only window in the room—showing a pavement-level view of horses’ hooves and broken vegetable crates. The eatery was lit by flickering gaslight. To his right was the long bar, sticky from spilled beer, busy with customers at this time of the evening. Beyond were tables and booths of patrons—tradesmen, deckhands, soldiers, roustabouts—drinking, laughing, and talking loudly. The stuffy basement air was thick with the smell of cigar smoke and yeast.

Now Hilda, the wife of Otto—proprietor of the Rathskeller—approached to refill his glass of brandy and take away his empty plate. “Der Eintopf schmeckt sehr lecker, danke,” he told her. She shrugged at the compliment and walked away, as stout as a barrel of lager and at least twice as heavy.

Moseley didn’t make much money, but he had struck an arrangement with Otto to have a booth he could call his own and be served whatever the family was eating that evening. The Rathskeller was much warmer than his furnished room around the corner on Third Avenue, and Otto didn’t mind if he stayed in the booth, reading, until closing time. He’d chosen the booth closest to the stairs up to the street because—though the Rathskeller was a tranquil establishment by local standards—brawls nevertheless broke out with regularity.

The neighborhood was a two-mile walk from the ferry to Blackwell’s Island, but it suited his budget and was safer than the cheaper neighborhoods farther south. The wealthy had lived here earlier in the century, building palaces along Second Avenue and Albion Place, but now they had moved northward again, leaving behind row houses and “Old Law” tenements. Even though it was one of the more densely populated areas of the city, it was peaceful: a condition Moseley prized above all else, since there was no peace at his place of employment.

Moseley downed the second of the two brandies Otto served him each evening. The barely potable spirit seared his esophagus, but it was sufficient to stave off other, more insidious cravings. Instinctively he pulled out his tattered copy of theCorpus Hippocratus, to continue an article concerning urinary stone formation, but he couldn’t concentrate and eventually shoved it back into his coat pocket.

Wet nurse. That’s a good ’un.

He would never finish medical school; he would never be a doctor—and continuing the pretense of study was risible, fooling nobody but himself. Medicine didn’t even interest him particularly: his tastes were drawn more to the study of art and architecture. But here he was, hired as a surgeon’s associate but doing work barely suited to a carnival mentalist…with the meager salary to match. Already at thirty-five, his life was taking on a diurnal cycle of distressing regularity—one that would only hasten his acceleration toward old age.

This gloomy meditation was interrupted by somebody sliding into the other side of the booth. Moseley was used to this. His claim on the booth was contingent on how busy the beerhouse was, and tonight it was full to bursting: some ships had docked along the East River that day, and two dozen or more seamen were now packing the bar, drunk when they’d come in, filling the smoky air with raucous curses and shouts: “That’s mine, you geebag!” “Good God, the head on ya!”

Moseley looked over at the newcomer, mostly to make sure he didn’t appear dangerous. He was short, and despite the heavy pea coat he wore and the oversize cap cocked rakishly on his head, looked little more than a boy. The arrival stared back at Moseley with eyes unusual not only for their color, but their expression—secretive yet disinterested: the eyes of someone who already knows how the story ends. The youth raised his hand and touched the brim of his stained cap, and Moseley nodded in return. With this slight, fine-featured young man as a boothmate, it seemed his evening would remain as peaceful as the noisy surroundings permitted.

This assumption was proven premature a minute later, when the booth groaned under the weight of another arrival—an acquaintance, apparently, of the young man—who sat down and bid a gruff good evening to Moseley. Now, this was a different character altogether: as Black Irish as they came, with the ruddy skin and Cork accent to match. He was heavyset, but it didn’t require Moseley’s anatomical training to see that the bulk was made up of muscle rather than blubber.

Hilda came up and the heavyset man ordered a pint of their best; his young companion indicated silently he’d have the same. This was followed by a strange moment of stasis amid the riot of the beer hall, as the two new arrivals looked silently at Moseley and the medical practitioner considered whether—under the circumstances—he should go back to his row house earlier than planned. Then Hilda banged two steins on the table and the young man leaned forward to speak.

“I need your help,” he said. “And before I explain why, I’d like your promise that you’ll hear me out before you leave.”

Moseley was surprised, even alarmed, that they had sought him out. He had to strain to hear the words over the din, but he immediately realized this person was not only educated, but cultivated, speaking in a cool, elevated tone. He considered his options. The heavyset Irish fellow could stop him from departing if he chose. And if the truth be told, he was curious as to why these two fellows would go to such trouble to seek him out.

He nodded his agreement.

“Thank you,” came the reply. “I require your assistance in freeing someone from Blackwell’s Island. This person is a boy, incarcerated despite being innocent of any wrongdoing, and though I have no proof to offer, I can furnish one or two references as to his upstanding moral character—if necessary. You of all people must know how many innocents end up in that Gehenna, and how many supposedly brief terms become lengthy incarcerations—or sentences of death. This boy is as unmarked as the blank of a coin. But he is also impressionable, and before his sentence is finished, the confinement he’s subjected to will stamp him for life.”

Moseley listened in growing disbelief and suspicion. Could these be Pinkerton agents, running some kind of flimflammery? Perhaps they were in the employ of some wealthy person currently locked up on Blackwell’s—but that seemed improbable, because poverty was the essential requirement for imprisonment on the island. Wealthy inmates were kept in Manhattan’s House of Detention, better known as the Tombs—or, more frequently, acquitted in exchange for a suitable consideration.

“Why are you asking this of me?” he ventured.

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