by Kat Ross
Moran surveyed the open manhole and the amusement in his eyes deepened. “Sent you down there, did they? I’d have thought you had your fill of tight spots, Miss Pell.”
It was a reminder of our encounter in another tunnel the previous summer – a desultory jab not intended to draw blood but simply to irritate. I said nothing, aiming to deprive him of the satisfaction.
But Moran wasn’t so easily put off. His lips curled in a wolfish smile. “Seems a waste of talent.” He fished in his trouser pocket and took out a silver case. Moran popped the catch and offered me an engraved card with gilt script. “If you ever become dissatisfied with your current employment—”
“I would rather plumb the depths of the lowest outhouse in the Five Points than associate with you,” I replied sweetly.
Moran grinned and returned the card to his pocket. He took his time eyeballing me one last time from head to toe. “Well then, best of luck, Miss Pell. I hope you find whatever you’re after. Perhaps a moonlight dip in the Hudson would do you some good.” His boys burst out laughing.
“I have the authority to arrest you if you don’t move along,” I lied, taking half a step forward. “Ten, nine, eight—”
Moran held his hands up in surrender. His boys laughed harder, though their leader managed to keep a straight face. “No need for drastic measures. We were just on our way.” He made a show of sniffing the air. “Smells like a pigsty around here anyway.”
The loud laughter finally drew John’s attention. He turned from his conversation with Detective Brach and saw Moran. John’s face darkened and he broke off in mid-sentence, striding towards us with his hands balled into fists. Moran didn’t even glance in John’s direction, but he smoothly pivoted on his heel and sauntered around the corner of Thirtieth Street with his smirking bodyguards.
“What did he say to you?” John demanded roughly, his gaze fixed on the point where Moran had vanished.
I shrugged. “Nothing of interest. Juvenile taunts to impress his lackeys.”
“Odd that he turned up just now.” John frowned. “Coincidence?”
“I don’t know, but it’s a stretch to imagine he’s involved. I could almost see him doing something like that for fun, but I doubt he’d know anything about golems. The Morans are Irish.”
John nodded, though he still looked troubled. “You’d better tell Myrtle.”
“S’pose so,” I said with a sigh.
“Does she know you’ve been working the mud man case?” John asked shrewdly.
I shook my head and he chortled. “You’ll have to explain it now.”
I shot him a dark look and made no reply.
Myrtle Fearing Pell was my elder sister, patron saint and tormenter in equal measure. A renowned consulting detective, she enjoyed the luxury of taking only those cases that caught her interest. She disdained run-of-the-mill crimes, preferring not simply the sensational but those that challenged her prodigious intellect.
And James Moran was the bane of Myrtle’s existence.
But I didn’t want to think about either of them right now. What I wanted was a mug of hot tea, a bath and some clean clothes. “I’ll never get home like this,” I said ruefully. “I doubt they’ll even let me onto the elevated!”
Detective Brach overheard and took pity. “I’ll give you both a ride home,” he offered. “Mallory requisitioned a patrol wagon in case you managed to catch the beast.”
The manhole cover slammed down with a loud clang as we climbed up to the bench of the wagon, which Brach had wisely covered with a blanket. He shook the reins and we rolled down Sixth Avenue, passing the New York Herald Building at Thirty-Fourth Street and then the Ladies’ Mile of elegant department stores. Once we left the Tenderloin the traffic grew thinner and Detective Brach walked us through the encounter with the mud man again, patiently drawing out all the details. To my surprise, he agreed with John’s theory and offered to make an appointment for us the following day at the Eldridge Street Synagogue, where he knew one of the rabbis.
“I’d accompany you, but I have a feeling I’ll be wanted at Mulberry Street on the other case,” he said.
“Can’t you tell us anything?” I wheedled. “You know we’ll find out eventually.”
Julius Brach shot me a sidelong glance. “It’s related to the Cherney kid.”
“Ah.”
Now my interest was definitely piqued, though this wasn’t good news. Daniel Cherney was a graduate student at Columbia’s engineering college whose peculiar demise had been of interest to the S.P.R. Unfortunately, another pair of agents had landed that assignment, whilst John and I were given the mud man.
“In what way?” I asked.
Brach’s soulful eyebrows twitched. “There’s been a second death.”
I hoped he might elaborate but then we turned the corner of Fifth Avenue and the carriage drew to a halt in front of my parents’ townhouse at 40 West Tenth Street.
“Good night, Miss Pell,” he said gravely. “The department thanks you for your aid.”
I gave him a wry smile. “Always a pleasure, detective.”
“I’ll come around in the morning,” John said, stifling a yawn. “Let’s say tennish.”
I waved a hand and they trundled east toward the Weston home on Gramercy Park. Mrs. Rivers was up and nursing a glass of sherry when I entered the foyer. A stout woman in her late fifties, she was more of a second mother than a housekeeper. She set the glass aside and peered at me with concern on her kind face. A moment later her nose wrinkled in disgust.
“It got me,” I said.
“Oh, Harrison. Straight to the garden! I’ll fetch a bucket.”
She practically shoved me through the kitchen door and wouldn’t let me back inside until I’d doused myself several times. I had no objection and was only glad it was August rather than January. This task completed, I shed the foul garments in a heap and sank gratefully into the steaming bath Mrs. Rivers had drawn in the upstairs washroom.
It was past two by the time I changed into a clean shift. My parents were traveling abroad and Myrtle wasn’t home either, though this wasn’t unusual. My sister kept odd hours. She consulted with various police forces on particularly baffling crimes, as well as taking the occasional assignment from the Pinkerton detective agency. Myrtle could be single-minded when working a case and often disappeared for days at a time.
I thought again of my encounter with James Moran and wondered if it had been pure chance. Would he summon a golem for his own amusement?
Or simply to torture me?
But how could he know I’d be assigned to the case? No, I was sinking into paranoia. If, as Myrtle claimed, James Moran was the spider lurking at the heart of New York’s criminal web, he surely had better things to do with his time. And although he despised my sister, as far as I knew he bore me no special ill will. In fact, he had saved my life once.
He had done it for his own reasons — a Good Samaritan James Moran was not — and since then he’d barely acknowledged my existence. I’d seen him one or twice at Columbia’s campus on Madison Avenue when I went to meet John for lunch, but our paths rarely crossed.
These thoughts spun around in my head as I fell into a troubled sleep, dreaming of a shadowy presence that stalked me through narrow alleys. I rose the next morning determined to close the mud man case as soon as possible — if only so I never had to go down into those sewers again.
2
A light rain fell as John and I climbed the steps of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a grand house of worship that had opened two years before amidst the tenements, workshops and factories of lower Manhattan. On Sabbath days, it would be bursting at the seams with Jewish immigrants, many newly arrived from Eastern Europe, but on this misty Sunday morning the place was relatively quiet.
John paused before the enormous front doors, each engraved with the Star of David.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked, shaking raindrops from his Homburg hat. He wore a grey wool overcoat and looked
neat, if a bit bloodshot.
“That depends on what Brach already told him. We’ll have to play it by ear.” I sighed. “We need something concrete to bring to Kaylock. He’s expecting results and we’ve had this case for nearly a month.”
John pulled a face. “Kaylock’s not the most patient fellow, is he?”
“No, that is not the word I would choose to describe him. Cantankerous, ill-tempered, scathing—”
“All far more apt,” John agreed. “But don’t worry, Harry. Last night was a real breakthrough. I’m sure we’re on the right track now. I can feel it in my bones.”
I nodded, though in the light of day it all seemed far-fetched. The logical part of my mind wanted to blame the wavering lanterns, the wild shadows on the tunnel walls and my own overheated imagination.
But I could still smell that awful stench, hear the drone of the flies.
And over the last year, I’d seen evidence of another world that existed beyond the edges of the candlelight, where fey things walked and the dead could not be trusted to stay quietly in their graves.
I stifled a yawn with the back of my hand, having gulped a quick cup of coffee before dashing out with no time to eat breakfast. Lack of sleep was one of the hazards of the job. Ghosts and ghouls keep late hours, especially that bleak stretch between two and four o’clock in the morning when the forces of darkness hold the greatest sway.
The doors of the synagogue were unlocked and we entered a vast chamber with a soaring barrel-vaulted ceiling. Marble sinks in the vestibule offered congregants a place to wash the grime of the streets from their hands before entering. For many, the taps of running water would be an almost unimaginable luxury.
I stood still for a moment, admiring the magnificent rose window, brass fixtures and hand-painted walls with celestial motifs of the heavens.
“It is beautiful, yes? The style is Moorish Revival, a tribute to the great temples of Berlin and Prague.”
We turned to find a man in his early sixties with a bushy salt-and-pepper beard and pleasant, scholarly face. He wore a black coat and wide-brimmed hat, tipped back on his head.
“Very beautiful,” I replied with a smile. “Are you Rabbi Mezritch?”
“I am. And you must be the ones Julius told me about.” Rabbi Yaakov Levi Mezritch spoke with a thick Russian accent, but he seemed fluent in English. “Julius said two of his colleagues would be coming.” He looked at us with some puzzlement. “I had expected policemen.”
“We’re with the Society for Psychical Research,” I replied, showing him my credentials and making formal introductions. “We work closely with Detective Brach on cases of an unusual nature.” I paused, feeling awkward. “I’d hoped he might have explained some of it.”
Rabbi Mezritch shook his head. “He gave me no details. Only sent a brief note requesting my help. I will give it, if it is in my power to do so.” He gestured toward a flight of stairs leading to the upper level of the synagogue. “Come, we can speak privately.”
He led us to a small study lined with shelves of books, many quite old-looking. Rabbi Mezritch sat behind his desk and gestured at two chairs. “Tell me what has brought you here. Julius said it was urgent.”
“We’re not at liberty to discuss all the details,” I said carefully.
“It’s a criminal matter,” John added. “But perhaps you can answer some general questions.”
“A criminal matter?” The rabbi looked alarmed. “I hope none of my congregation is under suspicion.”
I understood his trepidation. New York City was a far cry from the American South, where I’d heard rumors of rampant hostility toward Jewish people. The community here numbered in the tens of thousands and was well-established. But a new wave of emigration was fanning the flames of prejudice and some hotels in the North openly refused to serve Jews. Rabbi Mezritch was right to be worried – another reason we needed to dispose of the golem as soon as possible.
“It’s nothing like that,” John said reassuringly. “The police have no suspects. As Miss Pell said, we simply want your expertise.”
The rabbi gave a wary nod. “Go on. What is your question?”
John took out his dog-eared notebook and pencil. I gave him a smile that said, Be my guest.
“How would one make a golem?” he asked seriously, the nib of his pencil poised over the paper.
Rabbi Mezritch regarded him without expression. “A golem.”
“Yes. A clay man. The animated kind. What would that entail?”
The rabbi smiled faintly. He seemed relieved. “Well, it’s not a simple matter. According to the stories, you must be touched by God, have a divine experience. This is all folklore.”
“What are the origins?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
He clasped his hands together on the desk and leaned forward. I had the feeling he enjoyed telling a good story. “Well, in the Talmud, Adam began as a golem, a simple creature made of dust. God gave him life. So it takes a very special person to make a golem. Someone who has experienced some type of . . . .” Rabbi Mezritch paused to search for the right words. “Let us say, ecstatic revelation.”
John scribbled madly in the notebook. “Is there a specific ritual?”
“Naturally. One must invoke the name of God in a shem. Letters from the Hebrew alphabet are written on a piece of paper and placed in the mouth or forehead of the golem.” He chose a book from the shelf and paged through it. “Ah, here we are. Elijah of Chelm, around the middle of the sixteenth century, was the first person credited with making such a creature. But over time it grew violent and the rabbi feared it might destroy the world.”
That sounded familiar. “Are they all monsters?” I asked.
Rabbi Mezritch pondered this question. “Not always. Or they do not begin that way. In the case of Rabbi Loew — that is the most famous story — he made the golem to protect the Jews of Prague against the pogroms. Some versions of the legend claim that Rabbi Loew also used him as a servant. On the Sabbath, the day of rest, he removed the shem to keep God’s law.
“But one Sabbath, Rabbi Loew forgot to take the shem and left for the synagogue. The golem could not expend his energy on productive work and became enraged, destroying everything within his reach. Rabbi Loew was summoned and managed to retrieve the shem. The golem returned to dust. After this terrible experience, he vowed never to make another.”
“But that’s how they’re stopped?” John asked. “By removing the shem?”
“So the stories say.”
I frowned. It had been dark in the tunnel, but I didn’t recall seeing any symbols on the creature’s head. It looked rough and shapeless. “So the shem is on the forehead?”
“Or inside the mouth,” Rabbi Mezritch said.
John looked up from his notebook. “Harry!” he exclaimed. “I think I saw something when it struck the wall. A bit of parchment poking out from between its teeth . . . .”
I glared at him and he trailed off, giving a weak shrug.
The rabbi looked startled. “You have seen the golem yourselves? It is real?”
I nodded. There was no point in dissembling now.
“Where?” he asked softly.
“In the sewers,” I said. “Uptown in the Tenderloin.”
Rabbi Mezritch frowned. “It is running loose?”
“Unfortunately. And this one was most definitely not resting on the Sabbath. It’s been attacking people, though no one has been seriously hurt yet. I don’t suppose you’ve heard rumors? Anything that might help?”
He shook his head. “Not a whisper.”
“Let’s go back to the whole touched by God bit,” John said in a businesslike tone. “What does that mean exactly?”
The rabbi thought for a moment. “Well, according to the old legends, one who devotes himself to tireless study of the Scripture may discover the means to endow an artificial being with life. But there is an inherent flaw. Just as man by his very nature can never equal his Creator, man’s creation
will also be imperfect — a mechanical imitation of a living being with no will, thoughts or feelings of its own, existing only to carry out the will of its master.”
I was tempted to point out that God’s own creations were frequently flawed as well, but held my tongue. “So you’re saying someone is controlling this thing?”
“I fear it must be so. And it would be a person well-versed in mysticism.” Rabbi Mezritch heaved a deep sigh. “This is very serious. Are the victims Jewish?”
“No, not a single one. And it doesn’t seem to be carrying out any particular task. It hides in the sewers and surfaces periodically to frighten people walking the streets above. Then it returns to the tunnels.”
“If word gets out, it could be very bad,” he said solemnly.
“We’re aware of that.” I paused. “Mr. Weston and I encountered the golem last night. It was large and strong, but it didn’t harm us, not badly at any rate. But it did seem angry, Rabbi. And I’m afraid that eventually it will hurt someone, perhaps even kill them, if we don’t stop it. Is there anything else that might be useful?”
He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I’ve told you all I know. I can make some discreet inquiries among the other rabbis. See if they’ve heard anything.”
John closed his notebook and returned it to his pocket. “If someone is directing the golem’s actions, is there any way to tell who it is from the shem?”
Rabbi Mezritch held out his palms in a helpless gesture. “I don’t see how. It is not their name written on the shem, but the name of God.” He hesitated. “What you describe sounds like it could be a rogue golem. One who was abandoned or neglected by its creator.”
I slowly nodded, recalling the way the golem had seemed to stare at John in particular, and its sudden rage when he spoke. Could it be searching for its master?
“Well, thank you for your time, Rabbi Mezritch,” I said, leaving my card on the desk. “Please contact us if you hear anything at all that could be relevant.”
We left the synagogue and walked a few short blocks south to Pearl Street, named after the massive oyster beds that had once thrived in New York Harbor. The offices of the Society for Psychical Research sat across from Mr. Edison’s experimental power station, which consisted of an adjoining pair of four-story brick structures with three tall smokestacks. The whirring dynamos inside made very little noise and provided electricity to customers in the immediate vicinity, including our employer.