The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

AS THE COACH MADE its way down Broadway, Constance sat back in the small compartment. The leather of the seat was worn and cracked, and with every jolt she could feel the lumpy springs of the cushion dig into her.

She estimated she'd arrived about two and a half hours ago. That would make it early afternoon. Good: where they were going, the earlier in the day, the less dangerous it might be.

She had made it safely to this time and place. In half an hour, maybe less, she'd be reunited with Mary and spiriting her away from a miserable existence of overwork and ultimate death. At the thought of death, Constance became aware of her pounding heart. She almost couldn't process all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours—and if she allowed herself to dwell on it, the thoughts would quickly overwhelm her. She had to concentrate on one thing only: rescuing her sister. As the coach made a brief jog along Fourteenth Street before heading southeast once more, she closed her eyes and, with long practice, let the sounds and sensations around her grow dim, purging herself of all unnecessary thoughts. When she opened her eyes again, the cab had just crossed East Houston Street, and Fourth Avenue had become the Bowery. Putting two fingers to her wrist, she felt her pulse: sixty-four.

That would suffice.

Now once again she let in the external world. The landscape had changed dramatically from the upscale neighborhood of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Here there were more wagons than cabs, with battered wheels and goods covered in stained oilcloths. The pedestrians that thronged both sidewalk and street wore vests and jackets of coarser material. There were few women visible. Every man, no matter how disheveled, wore some kind of hat or cap. The broad pavers of Fifth Avenue had given way to cobblestones.

She felt the cab begin to slow. A moment later, there was a rap on the door in the compartment's roof.

She reached up and opened it. "Yes?"

The head of Murphy, the cabbie, appeared above the trap door. He had pulled the flaps of his cap down around his ears. "Begging your pardon, missus, but I'd rather not be taking her directly through the Points."

"Of course. Please pull over a moment."

While the cab waited, she consulted the city map she'd purchased. "I would suggest turning west on Canal, then south on Center."

"And then…left on Worth?"

"Exactly. Can you manage it?"

"I'll pull in at the corner."

"Very good. And Mr. Murphy?"

"Yes, mum?"

"If there's any trouble, you don't need to return us to the hotel. Union Square will do. I would not want you getting involved in anything that might cause…difficulties for yourself. I just need to get my friend safely away from that place."

"Begging your pardon, mum, but if she's confined in the workhouse, there must be a reason."

"She had the bad luck to be out after dark and was swept up in a raid by police looking for streetwalkers."

"They may not be in a bloody great rush to release her." It seemed the closer he came to becoming a partner in crime, the more familiar—or at least pragmatic—the coachman became.

"I'll persuade them the same way I persuaded you. Two raps when we arrive, please." And Constance closed the trap door.

As the cab started up and she sat back once again, Constance knew her voice had been steady. However, inside she felt anything but calm. With each clop of its hooves, the nag was bringing her deeper into her own distant memory. And as their surroundings grew increasingly dirty and impoverished, Constance was assaulted by smells she'd long forgotten: the scent of penny pies and sheep's trotters and steamed oysters; the odor of printer's dye being readied for inking the next day's broadsides; acrid coal smoke. And the sounds: the call of the street vendors shouting "Buy! What'll you buy?"; the singing of children playing hopscotch or skipping long rope, blithely ignorant of their poverty:

And then—as the cab turned down Center toward Worth—came another change, for the worse. Constance felt as if she had just parted the forbidden veil of Isis and passed into the unnatural world beyond. The air now grew thick with greasy fumes from the illegal tanneries that infested the area. The singing of children, the cries of merchants, vanished. As a premature dusk descended from the thickening atmosphere, Constance began to make out new sounds: whimpers of despair and pain; grunts and curses; the cackling and screeching of streetwalkers; the sickening sound of brickbats hitting flesh. These, too, came back as memories, but memories she had long suppressed.

The carriage turned a corner, then came to a lurching stop. Two raps, and the trap door opened slightly. "Let me just put the blinders on Rascal, mum," said Murphy, his voice tight.

Constance readied herself, sliding one hand into the pocket that contained both money and stiletto. A moment later, there was a rattling sound, then the door to the carriage opened and Murphy extended one hand to help her out. In the other hand he held a long wooden cudgel, with a spine of metal, that he had partially drawn out of one coat pocket.

"No fears, mum," he said. "It's just me ugly stick." But his attempt at a lighthearted tone failed, and his eyes were constantly in motion. Constance noted his posture was that of a man ready to repel a threat at a moment's notice. No doubt he was wishing he'd stayed uptown. But it was just as obvious that, having escorted a lady to such a place, he would not abandon her.

With this thought, Constance moved forward one step, another—and then, raising her eyes to look ahead, stopped with an involuntary gasp.

THEY HAD STEPPED OUT at a corner. Ahead, at the far end of the block, lay a confusing intersection of muddy streets. Four of its five approaches were dense with buildings of decaying brick, their upper stories leaning perilously over the sidewalks below. The fifth held a small square, with nothing more than a well handle for public water, surrounded by a fetid pig wallow into which all manner of garbage and filth had been tossed. A few ancient wooden structures from the previous century were visible here and there—squat and in ruinous condition. Chickens and pigs wandered unchecked, pecking and rooting. Windows everywhere were broken; some mended with waxed paper, others boarded over, still others open to the elements. No signage protruded above the blackened shopfronts: what commerce had once been eked out here had long since been given over to grogshops, tippling houses, and dens of prostitution. Men lolled in doorways, drinking, expectorating gobs of phlegm or yellow ropes of chewing tobacco; women, too, were on the street, sprawled drunken and senseless or calling out to potential customers, lifting a skirt or exposing a breast to advertise their wares. A group of young boys played in the gutter with a paper boat folded from a piece of newspaper.

This was the Five Points—the worst crossroads in the worst slum in all of New York. To Constance the spectacle was doubly traumatizing, because she recognized it in the most personal of ways. Nearly a century and a half before, she herself had scurried along these same streets and seen these same sights as a little girl, hungry, freezing, dressed in rags.

"Mum," she heard the coachman say, while giving her elbow the slightest pressure. "We'd best be about it." He turned to the boys nearby, took a silver dollar from his pocket and flipped it, then slipped it back in, leaving them staring with longing. "That's for you if me horse and carriage are here when we get back."

Once again, Constance pushed down hard on the whirlwind of memories this sight stirred so violently. She had to be strong, for Mary's sake—later, in safety, she could deal with the emotional aftermath.

Murphy guided her forward. She went along, ignoring the muck and filth that spilled over the curbside and onto the sidewalk, eyes fixed ahead, shutting out the hoots and lecherous catcalls, along with the curses of other women who—seeing the fine cut of her clothes and the clear complexion of her skin—took her for unfair competition. She refused to glance down the dark and narrow lanes that led back from the street—crooked alleyways calf-deep in mud, sky obscured by clotheslines, lined by men in bowler hats guarding the hidden entrances to underground dens. These alleys exhaled smells of their own, much harder to shut out because of their vileness: sepsis; rotting meat; sewage.

She stumbled on a cobble and felt the steadying hand of Murphy on her elbow. They were halfway down the block now, and the ancient structure of the House of Industry rose up on their left, its soot-streaked façade cracked, its windows barred.

Mary was inside. Mary. Constance began to say the name over and over to herself, like a mantra.

She glanced across the street at another large structure in better condition than its neighbors. This had once been the site of the Old Brewery, the most notorious tenement building in New York, so large and airless that most of its interior spaces had no windows. Its entrances had been given nicknames—the Den of Thieves, Murderers' Alley, Sudden Death. But a ladies' missionary society had it torn down and replaced it with the Five Points Mission, dedicated to helping indigent women and children. Constance knew the building well; many times, as a young orphan, she had begged bread from its kitchen entrance off Baxter Street. Mary was supposed to be quartered and fed in the Mission. But corrupt interests had transferred her and so many others across the street to the House of Industry instead, to get the benefit of cheap labor. She spent all her time locked within the House of Industry, working sixteen-hour days in crowded, lice-infested quarters.

Steeling herself with this thought, she glanced over at Murphy, who nodded in readiness. Raising his hand to the worn brass doorknob, he turned it to no avail.

"Oi!" he said. "Locked." He started to knock, but Constance stayed his hand.

She pulled a hairpin from her bonnet, bent toward the lock, and inserted it. Within a few moments, a click sounded. She stepped back again from the scuffed and dented knob.

"Lord blind me!" the coachman said.

"Surprise is important. Would you agree?"

Murphy nodded.

"In that case: after you."

The coachman grasped the knob again, holding his cudgel firm in the other hand. Then in one swift move he opened the door, stepped inside, and Constance followed. He closed it behind her.

Constance glanced around quickly. The entry room was bisected by a hinged wooden counter, which could be lifted for passage through, much in the manner of a bank. Doors to the left and right led into other, larger rooms, with high ceilings of pressed tin. She could smell the tang of urine and lye in the air. Chicken feathers and oyster shells were piled in the corners.

A man sat behind the divider, visible only from his chest up. He wore a worn coat and a white shirt with a filthy collar, unbuttoned at his neck. A pair of crepe armbands adorned his arms just above the elbows, and his fingernails were black with accumulated grime.

He pushed an ink-stained cap back from his forehead and looked from one to the other. "What's this? Who are you lot, then?"

"We're here for Mary Greene," Constance said, stepping forward.

"Are you now?" said the man, seemingly unfazed by her prosperous appearance and ability to bypass the lock. "And what might your business be with her?"

"My business is no concern of yours. I wish to see her—now."

"Oh, indeed? You 'wish to see her.' What do you think this is—a zoo?"

"It smells like one," said Murphy.

Quickly as possible. Quickly as possible. Constance reached into her pocket. "Let me explain. You are in a position to make yourself a good deal of money for very little work. Go find Mary Greene. Bring her here. And in return you'll receive twenty dollars." She showed him the money.

The man's eyes widened in his soot-smeared face. "Nellie Greene, is it? By God, you should have told me this involved an exchange of currency. Give me the money, and I'll go get her." And he reached over the desktop.

Constance returned the money to her pocket. "It's Mary. Not Nellie."

Murphy moved toward the clerk-cum-jailer. "Money later," he said, brandishing the cudgel.

"No, no, my friend," said the man, holding out his hand with a coaxing motion. "Now."

"Give us the girl," Murphy said in a threatening tone.

A silence ensued. Finally, the man behind the counter replied: "I wouldn't give you the steam off my piss."

"Bloody gombeen!" Murphy cried as he lunged to the counter and grabbed the man's shirt in his fist, literally pulling him up and over. But the man, shouting at the top of his lungs, had gotten his hands on a butcher's knife from beneath the desk and went to slash at Murphy.

Taking advantage of the brawl, Constance ducked into the room on the left. It must have originally been a chapel, but now the windows were barred, and instead of pews there was row upon row of cots, straw scattered across the floor among them. It was brutally cold. The mattresses were so thin she could see the outline of the metal grilles beneath. Rags and bits of clothing lay beneath the beds, worn and dirty. Where plaster had fallen from the walls, the exposed laths had been patched with newsprint and oiled paper.

Almost mad with the need to find her sister, she ran to the next room, full of dirty clothes and scullery equipment, and into the next, where a clacking, humming sound filled the air. There, in a vast, dim space, were two rows of girls and women. They sat on what looked like milking stools, and were dressed in dirty, one-piece shifts. Before each of them was a foot-pedal-operated mechanical loom.