The Phantom Of Manhattan Part 8

It was an evening that will remain in the hearts and minds of any who were there. I swear I saw the normally fiercely disciplined Maestro Campanini almost in tears as Mme de Chagny, alone on the stage and lit only by candle lamps in the darkened hospital ward, brought the opera to a close with 'O cruel war'.

There were thirty-seven standing ovations and curtain-calls, and that was before I had to leave to find out what had happened to Master Melrose and his throat linctus. Alas, he had left in tears.

While the rest of the company was superb and the orchestra under Signor Campanini nothing less than one would expect, the night must belong to the young lady from Paris. Her beauty and charm already have the entire staff at the Waldorf-Astoria literally at her feet and now the unalloyed magic of that voice has conquered every opera-lover who had the good fortune to be at the Manhattan last night.

What a tragedy that she must depart so soon. She will sing for us for another five evenings and must then depart for Europe to fulfil previous engagements at Covent Garden before Christmas. Her place will be taken early next month by Nellie Melba, Oscar Hammerstein's second triumph over his cross-town rivals. She too is a legend in her lifetime, and she too will be singing her New York debut, but she must look to her laurels, for no-one who was present last night will ever forget La Divina.

And what of the Metropolitan? Among the great dynasts whose wealth backs the Met I think I noted, mixed with their delight at the new masterpiece, some sharp glances to each other as if to ask: what now? Clearly, despite its smaller auditorium, the Manhattan has finer front-of-house facilities, a huge stage, the very latest technology and deeply impressive sets. If Mr Hammerstein can continue to offer us the quality we saw last night the Met will have to dig deep to match him.

15.

THE REPORT OF AMY FONTAINE.

SOCIETY COLUMN, NEW YORK WORLD NEW YORK WORLD, 4 DECEMBER 1906.

WELL, THERE ARE PARTIES AND THERE ARE PARTIES, but surely the one held last night at the new Manhattan Opera House following the triumphal rendition of The Angel of s.h.i.+loh The Angel of s.h.i.+loh must rank as the party of this decade. must rank as the party of this decade.

Attending as I do on behalf of World World readers nearly a thousand social events a year, I can still truly say I have never seen so many celebrated Americans under one roof. readers nearly a thousand social events a year, I can still truly say I have never seen so many celebrated Americans under one roof.

When the last and final curtain came down after ovations and curtain-calls too numerous to count, the glittering audience began to drift towards the great West 34th Street portico where a jam of carriages awaited them. These were the unfortunates not coming to the party itself. Those in the audience with invitations tarried until the curtain went up again, then walked up the hastily erected ramp over the orchestra pit and up to the stage. Others who had not been able to make the performance came in through the stage door.

Our host for the evening was tobacco magnate Mr Oscar Hammerstein, who has designed, built and owns the Manhattan Opera House. He took centre stage and personally welcomed each guest coming from the auditorium. Among them were surely every name even remotely a.s.sociated with New York, prominent among them the World World's proprietor Mr Joseph Pulitzer.

The stage itself formed a magnificent backdrop to the party, for Mr Hammerstein had retained the Southern mansion that features in the opera, so that we were gathering under its very walls. Round the perimeter, stage-hands had quickly placed a range of genuine antique tables which groaned with food and drink, with a lively bar and six tenders to ensure no-one went thirsty.

Mayor George McClellan was quickly there, mingling with Rockefellers and Vanderbilts as the crowd swelled and swelled. The whole party was in honour of the young prima donna Vicomtesse Christine de Chagny who had just established such a magnificent triumph on that very stage, and the most notable people of New York could hardly wait to meet her. At the start she was resting in her dressing-room, bombarded with messages of congratulation, bouquets of flowers so numerous that they had to be sent down to the Bellevue Hospital at her personal request, and invitations to the greatest houses in the city.

Moving through the growing crowd I sought out people whose exploits might fascinate readers of the New York World New York World and came across two young actors, D. W. Griffith and Mr Douglas Fairbanks, in earnest conversation. Mr Griffith, fresh from playing in Boston, informed me that he was toying with the notion of leaving New England for a sunny village outside Los Angeles, where he was interested in a (crazy-sounding) new form of entertainment called biographs. Apparently these involve moving images on a strip of celluloid. I heard Mr Fairbanks laughingly tell his fellow thespian that when he became a star on Broadway he might follow him to Hollywood, but only if anything ever became of the biographs. At this point a tall marine emerged from the portico of the mansion and announced in a loud voice: 'Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States.' and came across two young actors, D. W. Griffith and Mr Douglas Fairbanks, in earnest conversation. Mr Griffith, fresh from playing in Boston, informed me that he was toying with the notion of leaving New England for a sunny village outside Los Angeles, where he was interested in a (crazy-sounding) new form of entertainment called biographs. Apparently these involve moving images on a strip of celluloid. I heard Mr Fairbanks laughingly tell his fellow thespian that when he became a star on Broadway he might follow him to Hollywood, but only if anything ever became of the biographs. At this point a tall marine emerged from the portico of the mansion and announced in a loud voice: 'Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States.'

I could hardly believe my ears, but it was true, and in seconds there he was, President Teddy Roosevelt, eyegla.s.ses perched on his nose, beaming his cheery grin and moving through the crowd shaking hands with everyone. Nor had he come alone, for he has a deserved reputation for surrounding himself with the most colourful characters from our society. Within minutes I found my poor hand gripped in the giant fist of former heavyweight champion of the world Bob Fitzsimmons, while standing a few yards away were another former champion, Sailor Tom Sharkey, and the reigning champ, Canadian Tommy Burns. I felt a midget among these towering men.

At that moment there appeared in the doorway of the mansion the star herself. She descended to a rapturous round of applause led by the President, who advanced to be introduced by Mr Hammerstein. With old-world gallantry Mr Roosevelt took her hand and kissed it, to a cheer from the a.s.sembled throng. Then he greeted chief tenor Signor Gonci and the rest of the cast as Mr Hammerstein introduced them.

With the formalities over our roguish Chief Executive took the lovely young French aristocrat on his arm and escorted her round the room to introduce her to those he knew. She was especially delighted to meet Colonel Bill Cody, Buffalo Bill himself, whose Wild West Show is entrancing crowds across the river in Brooklyn. With him was none other than Sitting Bull, whom I had never seen before. Like many of us I recall as a small girl hearing with horror what the Sioux had done to our poor boys at the Little Big Horn, and yet here was this gentle old man, looking as old as the Black Hills themselves, giving the open-handed sign of peace to our President and his French guest.

Moving closer to the presidential entourage I heard Teddy Roosevelt introduce Mme de Chagny to his niece's new husband and soon found a chance to have a few words with this startlingly handsome young man. He is just down from Harvard and studying at the Columbia Law School in New York. Of course, I asked him if he contemplated a career in politics like his famous uncle by marriage and he conceded that he might one day. So perhaps we will hear of Franklin Delano Roosevelt again.

With the party livening up, the food and drink circulating merrily, I noted that a piano had been positioned in one corner with a young man at the keyboard producing light-hearted music of our era in contrast to the more serious cla.s.sical arias of the opera. He turned out to be a young Russian immigrant, still with a strong accent, who told me he had composed some of the airs he was playing himself and wished to become an established composer. Well, good luck, Irving Berlin.

In the early part of the festivities there seemed to be one person missing whom many would have liked to meet and congratulate - the unknown understudy who had taken over the role of the hospitalized David Melrose as the tragic Captain Regan. At first one thought his absence could be explained by the difficulty of removing the considerable make-up that covered most of his face. The rest of the cast was circulating freely, a pageant of dark blue and gold Union uniforms with the dove-grey coats of the Confederate soldiers. But even those who had been playing the 'wounded' soldiers of the hospital scenes had speedily removed their bandages and thrown away their rough crutches. And still the mysterious tenor was missing.

His appearance, when he came, was in the main doorway of the plantation house, atop the double stairway leading down to the stage where we were all enjoying the party. And what a brief appearance it was! Is this extraordinarily talented singer really that shy? Many of those below the portico missed him completely. But there was one who did not.

As he came through the doorway I saw that he had still retained his heavy make-up, the bandage that covered most of his face in the opera, allowing only his eyes to show, and a line of the jaw. He had his hand on the shoulder of the young treble who had so entranced us with his singing, Pierre, the son of Mme de Chagny. He seemed to be whispering in the boy's ear and the child was nodding in understanding.

Mme de Chagny saw them at once and it seemed to me a shadow of fear pa.s.sed over her face. Her eyes locked on those behind the mask, she went very pale, noticed her son beside the tenor in the Union blue and her hand flew to her mouth. Then she was running up the staircase towards the strange apparition, while the music played on and the crowd roared in conversation and laughter.

I saw the two speak intently to each other for several moments. Mme de Chagny took the tenor's hand off her son's shoulder and gestured to the boy to run down the stairs, which he did, no doubt seeking a well-deserved soda-pop. Only then did the diva suddenly laugh and smile, as if in relief. Was he complimenting her on the performance of a lifetime or did she seem to fear for the boy?

Finally I noticed him pa.s.s her a message, a slip of paper which she palmed and put inside her bodice. Then he was gone, back through the mansion door, and the prima donna descended the stairwell alone to rejoin the party. I do not think anyone else noticed this most strange incident.

It was well after midnight when the revellers, tired but extremely happy, departed for their carriages, their hotels and their homes. I, of course, hurried back to the offices of the New York World New York World to ensure that you, my dear readers, would be the first to know what happened last night at the Manhattan Opera House. to ensure that you, my dear readers, would be the first to know what happened last night at the Manhattan Opera House.

16.

THE TUTORIAL OF PROF. CHARLES BLOOM.

FACULTY OF JOURNALISM, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, MARCH 1947.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, YOUNG AMERICANS STRIVING one day to be great journalists, since we have never met before let me introduce myself. My name is Charles Bloom. I have been a working journalist, mainly in this city, for almost fifty years.

I began around the turn of the century as a copy-boy in the offices of the old New York American New York American and by 1903 had persuaded the paper to raise me to the lofty status, or so it seemed to me, of general reporter on the City Desk, covering all the newsworthy events of this city on a daily basis. and by 1903 had persuaded the paper to raise me to the lofty status, or so it seemed to me, of general reporter on the City Desk, covering all the newsworthy events of this city on a daily basis.

Over the years I have witnessed and covered many, many news stories; some heroic, some momentous, some which changed the course of our and the world's history, some simply tragic. I was there to cover the lonely departure of Charles Lindbergh from a mist-shrouded field when he set off across the Atlantic and I was there to welcome back a global hero. I covered the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the news of his death two years ago. I never went to Europe in the First World War but saw off the Doughboys when they left this harbour for the fields of Flanders.

I moved from the American American, where I had intimately known a colleague called Damon Runyon, to the Herald Tribune Herald Tribune and finally the and finally the Times Times.

I have covered murders and suicides, Mafia gang wars and mayoral elections, wars and the treaties that ended them, visiting celebrities and the denizens of Skid Row. I have lived with the high and the mighty, the poor and the dest.i.tute, covered the doings of the great and the good and those of the mean and the vicious. And all in this one single city which never dies and never sleeps.

During the last war, though a bit long in the tooth, I arranged to be sent to Europe, flew with our B17s over Germany - which I have to tell you scared the h.e.l.l out of me - witnessed the German surrender almost two years ago and as my final a.s.signment covered the Potsdam Conference in the summer of '45. There I met the British leader Winston Churchill, to be voted out of office right in mid-conference and replaced by their new premier Clement Attlee; and our own President Truman, of course, and even Marshal Stalin, a man who I fear will soon cease to be our friend and become very much our enemy.

On my return I was due for retirement, elected to go before I was pushed, and received a kind offer from the princ.i.p.al of this faculty to join as a visiting professor and try to impart to you some of the things I have learned the hard way.

If anyone were to ask me what qualities make a good journalist, I would say there are four. First, you should always try not simply to see, to witness and to report, but to understand. Try to understand the people you are meeting, the events you are seeing. There is an old saying: to understand everything is to forgive everything. Man cannot understand everything because he is flawed, but he can try. So we seek to report back what really happened to those who were not there but wish to know. For in future time history will record that we were the witnesses; that we saw more of it than the politicians, civil servants, bankers, financiers, tyc.o.o.ns and generals. Because they were locked in their separate worlds, but we were everywhere. And if we witnessed badly, without understanding what we were seeing and hearing, we will only notate a series of facts and figures, giving as great credence to the lies we are always being told as to the truth and thus creating a false picture.

Secondly, never stop learning. There is no end to the process. Be like a squirrel. Store pieces of information and insight that come your way; you never know when that tiny piece of intelligence will be the clinching explanation to a jigsaw of the otherwise unexplainable.

Thirdly, you have to develop a 'nose' for a story. Meaning a kind of sixth sense, an awareness that something is not quite right, that there is something odd going on and no-one else can see it. If you never develop this nose, you will perhaps be competent and conscientious, a credit to the job. But stories will pa.s.s you by unsuspected; you will attend the official briefings and be told what the powers that be want you to know. You will report faithfully what they said, false or true. You will take your salary cheque and go home, a good job well done. But you will not, without the nose, ever stroll into the bar on an adrenalin high knowing that you have just blown apart the biggest scandal of the year because you noticed something odd in a chance remark, a column of doctored figures, an unjustified acquittal, a suddenly dropped charge and all your colleagues failed to spot it. There is in our job nothing quite like that adrenalin high; it is like winning a Grand Prix, to know that you have just filed a major exclusive and blown the competing media to h.e.l.l.

We journalists are never destined to be loved. Like cops, this is something we just have to accept if we want to take up our strange career. But, though they may not like us, the high and the mighty need us.

The movie star may push us aside as he stalks to his limousine, but if the Press fails to mention him or his movies, fails to print his picture or monitor his comings and goings for a couple of months, his agent is soon screaming for attention.

The politician may denounce us when he is in power, but try ignoring him totally when he is running for election or has some self-praising triumph to announce and he will plead for some coverage.

It pleases the high and the mighty to look down on the Press but, boy, do they need us. For they live on and off the publicity that only we can give them. The sports stars want their performances to be reported, as the sports fans want to know. The society hostesses direct us to the tradesman's entrance but if we ignore their charity b.a.l.l.s and their social conquests they are distraught.

Journalism is a form of power. Badly used, power is a tryanny; well and carefully used it is a requirement without which no society can survive and prosper. But that brings us to rule four: it is not our job ever to join the Establishment, to pretend that we have, by close juxtaposition, actually joined the high and the mighty. Our job in a democracy is to probe, to uncover, to check, to expose, to unveil, to question, to interrogate. Our job is to disbelieve, until that which we are being told can be proved to be true. Because we have power, we are besieged by the mountebanks, the phoneys, the charlatans, the snake-oil salesmen - in finance, commerce, industry, s...o...b..z, and above all politics.

Your masters must be Truth and the reader, no-one else. Never fawn, never cower, never be bullied into submission and never forget that the reader with his dime has as much right to your effort and your respect, as much right to hear the truth as the Senate. Remain therefore sceptical in the face of power and privilege and you will do us all credit.

And now, because the hour is late and you are no doubt tired of study, I will fill what remains of this period by telling a story. A story about a story. And no, it is not a story in which I was the triumphant hero, but just the opposite. It was a story that I failed to see unravelling all around me because I was young and brash and I failed to understand what I was really witnessing.

It was also a story, the only one in my life, that I never wrote up. I never filed it though the archives do retain the basic outlines that were released eventually to the Press by the Police Department. But I was there; I saw it all, I ought to have known but I failed to spot it. That was partly why I never filed it. But also partly because there are somethings that happen to people which, if exposed to the world, will destroy them. Some deserve it and I have met them: n.a.z.i generals, Mafia bosses, corrupt labour chiefs and venal politicians. But most people do not deserve to be destroyed and the lives of some are already so tragic that exposure of their misery would only double their pain. All this for a few column inches to wrap tomorrow's fish? Maybe, but even though I then worked for Randolph Hearst's yellow press and would have been fired if the editor had ever found out, what I saw was too sad for me to file and I let it go. Now, forty years on, it matters not much any more.

It was in the winter of 1906. I was twenty-four, a New York street kid proud to be a reporter on the American American and loving it. When I look back at what I was I stand amazed at my own impudence. I was brash, full of myself but understood very little. and loving it. When I look back at what I was I stand amazed at my own impudence. I was brash, full of myself but understood very little.

That December the city was playing host to one of the most famous opera singers in the world, a certain Christine de Chagny. She had come to star in the opening week of a new opera house, the Manhattan Opera, which went out of business three years later. She was thirty-two, beautiful and very charming. She had brought her twelve-year-old son, Pierre, along with a maid and the boy's tutor, an Irish priest called Father Joseph Kilfoyle. Plus two male secretaries. She arrived without her husband six days before her inaugural appearance at the opera house on 3 December and her husband joined her on a later s.h.i.+p on the 2nd, having been detained by the affairs of his estates in Normandy.

I know nothing of opera, but her appearance caused a major stir because no singer of her eminence had till then crossed the Atlantic to star in New York. She was the toast of the town. By a combination of luck and good old-fas.h.i.+oned chutzpah I had managed to persuade her to allow me to be her guide to New York and its various sights and spectacles. It was a dream of an a.s.signment. She was so hounded by the Press that her host, the opera impresario Oscar Hammerstein, had forbidden all access to her before the gala opening. Yet here was I, with access to her suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, able to file daily bulletins on her itinerary and engagements. Thanks to this my career on the American American City Desk was taking off in leaps and bounds. City Desk was taking off in leaps and bounds.

Yet there was something mysterious and strange going on all around us and I failed to spot it. The 'something' involved a bizarre and elusive figure who seemed to appear and disappear at will and who clearly was playing some kind of role behind the scenes.

First there had been a letter, brought personally by the hand of a lawyer from Paris, France. By a complete coincidence I had helped deliver that letter to the headquarters of one of the richest and most powerful corporations in New York. There, in the boardroom, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the man behind the corporation, the one to whom the letter was addressed. He was staring straight at me from a spyhole in the wall, a terrifying face covered in a mask. I thought little more about it, and no-one believed me anyway.

Within four weeks the prima donna scheduled for the inaugural gala of the Manhattan Opera had been cancelled and the French diva invited over at an astronomical fee. From Paris, France. Rumours also started that Oscar Hammerstein had a secret and even richer backer, an invisible financier/partner who had ordered him to make the change. I should have suspected the connection, but did not.

On the day the lady arrived at the quayside on the Hudson, the strange phantom appeared again. This time I did not see him, but a colleague did. The description was identical: a lone figure in a mask, standing atop a warehouse watching the prima donna from Paris arrive in New York. Again I failed to see the connection. Later it was obvious that he had sent for her, overruling Hammerstein. But why? I found out eventually but by then it was too late.

As I said, I met the lady, she seemed to like me and allowed me into her suite for an exclusive interview. There her son unwrapped an anonymous present, a musical box in the form of a monkey. When Mme de Chagny heard the tune it played she looked as if she had been struck by lightning. She whispered, '"Masquerade". Twelve years ago. He must be here,' and still for me the light refused to go on.

She was desperate to trace the source of the monkey-doll, and I figured it must have come from a toyshop at Coney Island. Two days later we all went there, with me acting as guide to the party. Again, something very strange happened and once again no alarm bells rang.

The party consisted of me, the prima donna, her son Pierre and his tutor, Father Joe Kilfoyle.

Because I had no interest in the toys, I handed Mme de Chagny and her son over to the care of the Funmaster, who was in overall charge of the fair. I did not bother to enter the toyshop myself. I should have done, for I learned later that the man showing the child and his mother around was none other than a most sinister figure calling himself Malta, whom I had seen weeks earlier while delivering the letter from Paris, but then he had gone by the name of Darius. Later I learned from the Funmaster, who was present throughout, that this man had offered his services as an expert on toys, but in truth spent his time quietly interrogating the boy about his parentage.

Anyway, I walked by the sea's edge with the Catholic priest while the boy and his mother examined the toys inside the shop. It seems there were racks of these monkey toys, but not one played the strange tune I had heard the first one play in her suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Then she went off with the Funmaster to examine a place called the Hall of Mirrors. Again, I did not go in. Anyway, I was not invited. Finally I returned to the funfair to see if the party was ready to leave and return to Manhattan.

I saw the Irish priest escorting the boy back to the coach we had hired at the train station and noticed but only vaguely that another coach was almost beside it. That was odd because the place was deserted.

I was halfway between the gate and the Hall of Mirrors when a figure appeared, racing towards me in what seemed like a panic. It was Darius. He was the Chief Executive Officer of the corporation whose real boss seemed to be the mysterious man in the mask. I thought he was running at me, but he raced straight past me as if I were not there. He was coming from the Hall of Mirrors. As he pa.s.sed me he shouted something, not to me but as if to the sea wind. I could not understand it. It was not in English, but having a good ear for sounds if not always their meaning, I took my pencil and scribbled down what I thought I had heard.

Later, much later and too late, I returned to Coney Island and spoke again with the Funmaster who showed me a journal he kept in which he had noted down all that occurred inside the Hall of Mirrors while I was walking on the beach. If only I had seen that pa.s.sage I could have understood what was happening around me and done something to prevent what came later. But I did not see inside the Funmaster's journal, and I did not understand three words in Latin.

Now, it may seem strange to you young people but in those days dress was pretty formal. Young men were expected to wear dark suits at all times, often with weskit, plus stiff starched white collars and cuffs. The trouble was, that posed a laundry bill that young men on meagre salaries could not afford. So many of us wore detachable white celluloid collars and cuffs, which could be taken off at night and wiped clean with a damp cloth. This enabled a s.h.i.+rt to be worn for several days, but always exposing a clean collar and cuffs. With my notebook in my jacket pocket, I wrote down the words shouted by the man I knew as Darius on my left cuff.

He seemed half crazy as he ran past me, quite different from the ice-cold executive I had met in the boardroom. His black eyes were wide open and staring, his face still white as a skull, his jet-black hair flying in the wind as he ran. I turned to follow his progress and saw him reach the funfair's gate. There he met the Irish priest, who had shut the boy Pierre in the coach and was coming back to look for his employer.

Darius stopped on seeing the priest and the two of them stared at each other for several seconds. Even across thirty yards of November wind I could sense the tension. They were like two pit bulls meeting the day before the fight. Then Darius broke away, ran for his own coach and drove off.

Father Kilfoyle came up the path looking grim and thoughtful. Mme de Chagny emerged from the Hall of Mirrors pale and shaken. I was in the midst of one h.e.l.l of a drama and could not understand what I was witnessing. We drove back to the El-train station and then by railcar to Manhattan in silence, except the boy who chattered happily to me about the toyshop.

My last clue came three days later. The inaugural gala was a triumph, a new opera whose name escapes me but then I never did turn into an opera buff. Apparently, Mme de Chagny sang like an angel from heaven and left half the audience in tears. Later there was a h.e.l.l of a party right on the stage. President Teddy Roosevelt was there with all the mega-rich of New York society; there were boxers, Irving Berlin, Buffalo Bill - yes, young lady, I really met him - and all paying court to the young opera star.

The opera had been set in the American Civil War and the princ.i.p.al set was the front of a magnificent Virginian plantation house with a front door raised up and steps leading down each side to the stage level. Halfway through the celebration party a man appeared in the doorway.

I recognized him at once, or thought I did. He was dressed in the uniform of his part, that of a wounded captain of the Union forces but one who had been so badly wounded in the head that most of his face was covered by a mask. It was he who had sung a pa.s.sionate duet with Mme de Chagny in the final act, when he gave her back their betrothal ring. Strangely, considering the opera was over, he still wore his mask. Then I finally realized why. This was was the Phantom, the elusive figure who seemed to own so much of New York, who had helped create the Manhattan Opera House with his money and had brought the French aristocrat over the Atlantic to sing. But why? This I did not learn until later, and too late. the Phantom, the elusive figure who seemed to own so much of New York, who had helped create the Manhattan Opera House with his money and had brought the French aristocrat over the Atlantic to sing. But why? This I did not learn until later, and too late.

I was talking with Vicomte de Chagny at the time, a charming man incredibly proud of his wife's success and delighted that he had just met our President. Over his shoulder I saw the prima donna go up the staircase to the portico and talk with the figure I had then begun to think of as the Phantom. I knew it was him again. It could be no-one else, and he seemed to have some kind of a hold over her. I had not yet worked out that they had known each other, twelve years earlier, in Paris, and much more besides.

Before they parted, he palmed her a small note on folded paper, which she slipped inside her bodice. Then he was gone again, as always; there one second and disappeared the next.

There was a social-diary columnist from a rival paper, the New York World New York World, a Pulitzer rag, and she wrote the next day that she had seen the incident but thought no-one else had. She was wrong. I did. But more. I kept an eye on the lady for the rest of the evening and sure enough, after a while she turned away from the gathering, opened the note and read it. When she had done she glanced around, screwed the paper into a ball and threw it into one of the trash cans placed to receive old bottles and dirty napkins. A few moments later I retrieved it. And, just in case you young people might be interested, I have it here today.

That night I simply stuffed it into my pocket. It lay for a week on the dressing-table in my small apartment and later I kept it as the only memento I will ever have of the events that took place before my eyes. It says: 'Let me see the boy just once. Let me say one last farewell. Please. The day you sail away. Dawn. Battery Park. Erik.'

Then and only then did I put some of it together. The secret admirer before her marriage, twelve years earlier in Paris. The unrequited love who had emigrated to America and become rich and powerful enough to arrange for her to come and star in his own opera house. Touching stuff, but more for your romantic lady novelist than a hard-bitten reporter on the streets of New York, for such I thought myself to be. But why was he masked? Why not come and meet her like everyone else? To these questions I still had no answers. Nor did I seek any, and that was my mistake.

Anyway, the lady sang for six nights. Each time she brought the house down. December 8th was her last performance. Another prima donna, Nellie Melba, the world's only rival to the French aristocrat, was due to sail in on the 12th. Mme de Chagny, her husband, son and accompanying party, would board the RMS City of Paris City of Paris, bound for Southampton, England, to take over at Covent Garden. Their departure was scheduled for 10 December and for all the friends.h.i.+p she had shown me I determined to be there on the Hudson to see her off. By this time I was virtually accepted by all her entourage as one of the family. In the private send-off in her stateroom I would get my last exclusive for the New York American New York American. Then I would go back to covering the doings of murderers, the bulls and the bosses of Tammany Hall.

The night of the 9th I slept badly. I do not know why, but you will all understand there are such nights, and after a certain time you know there is no point in trying to get to sleep again. Better to get up and have done with it. This I did at 5 a.m. I washed and shaved, then dressed in my best dark suit. I fixed my stiff collar with back stud and front stud and knotted my tie. Without thinking, I picked two stiff white plastic cuffs from the half-dozen on the dressing-table and slipped them on. As I was awake so early I thought I might as well go across to the Waldorf-Astoria and join the de Chagny party for breakfast. To save a cab fare I walked, arriving at ten before seven. It was still dark, but in the breakfast-room Father Kilfoyle was sitting alone with a coffee. He greeted me cheerily and beckoned me over.

'Ah, Mr Bloom,' he said, 'so, we must be leaving your fine city. Come to see us off, have you? Well, good for you. But some hot porridge and toast will set you up for the day. Waiter ...' Soon the vicomte himself joined us and he and the priest exchanged a few words in French. I could not follow them, but asked if the vicomtesse and Pierre would be joining us. Father Kilfoyle indicated the vicomte and told me Madame had gone to Pierre's room to get him ready, which was apparently what he had just learned, but in French. I thought I knew better, but said nothing. It was a private matter and nothing to do with me if the lady wished to slip away to say farewell to her strange sponsor. I expected that at about eight o'clock she would come rattling up to the doors in a hansom cab and greet us with her usual winning smile and charming manners.

So we sat, the three of us, and to make conversation I asked the priest if he had enjoyed New York. 'Very much,' he said, a fine city, and full of his compatriots. 'And Coney Island?' I asked. At this he became grim. 'A strange place,' he said at last, 'with some strange people on it.' 'The Funmaster?' I asked him. 'Him ... and others,' he said.

'Still the innocent abroad,' I blundered on. 'Oh, you mean Darius,' I said. At once he spun round upon me, his blue eyes boring like gimlets. 'How do you know him?' he asked. 'I met him once before,' I replied. 'Tell me where and when,' he said, and it was more like an order than a request. But the affair of the letter seemed harmless enough so I explained what had happened between me and the Parisian lawyer Dufour, and of our visit to the penthouse suite at the top of the city's highest tower. It simply never occurred to me that Father Kilfoyle, apart from being the boy's tutor, was also the father confessor to both vicomte and vicomtesse.

Sometime during this the Vicomte de Chagny, evidently bored by his lack of understanding of English, had excused himself and gone back upstairs. I continued with my narrative, explaining that I had been surprised when Darius ran past me in the funfair, looking distraught, shouted three incomprehensible words, had his brief eyeball confrontation with Father Kilfoyle and had then driven off. The priest listened in frowning silence, then asked: 'Do you remember what he said?' I explained it was in a foreign language, but that I had jotted down what I thought I had heard on, of all places, my left plastic cuff.

At this point Monsieur de Chagny came back. He seemed worried, and spoke rapidly in French to Father Kilfoyle who translated for me. 'They are not there. Mother and son are not to be found.' Of course, I knew why, and tried to be rea.s.suring by saying, 'Don't worry. They have gone out to a meeting.'

The priest stared at me hard, forgetting to ask how I knew, but simply repeated the word: meeting? 'Just to say goodbye to an old friend, a Mr Erik,' I added, still trying to be helpful. The Irishman kept staring at me and then seemed to recall what we had been talking about before the vicomte returned to us. He reached across, grabbed my left forearm, pulled it towards him and turned it over.

And there they were, the three words in pencil. For ten days that cuff had lain among others on my dressing-table and that morning I had by chance grabbed it again and slipped it over my wrist. Father Kilfoyle gave the cuff one glance and let out a single word that I never knew Catholic priests were aware of, let alone used. But he he did. Then he was up, dragging me out of the chair by the throat, shouting into my face, 'Where in G.o.d's name did she go?' 'Battery Park,' I croaked. did. Then he was up, dragging me out of the chair by the throat, shouting into my face, 'Where in G.o.d's name did she go?' 'Battery Park,' I croaked.

He was off, racing to the lobby, with me and the hapless vicomte running along behind him. Through the main doors he went, and found a brougham under the marquee with a top-hatted gentleman about to climb in. The poor man was seized by the jacket and hurled aside as the man in the ca.s.sock leapt inside, shouting to the coachman, 'Battery Park. Drive like the devil himself.' I was just in time to jump in after, and hauled the poor Frenchman after me as the carriage hit the road.

All through the drive Father Kilfoyle was hunched in his seat in the corner, hands clasping the cross on the chain round his neck. He was furiously murmuring, 'Holy Mary, Mother of G.o.d, grant that we may be in time.' At one point he paused and I leaned across, pointing to the pencil marks on my cuff. 'What do they mean?' I asked. He seemed to take some time to focus on my face.

'DELENDA EST FILIUS,' he replied, repeating the words I had written down. 'They mean: THE SON MUST BE DESTROYED.' I leaned back, feeling sick.

It was not the prima donna who was in danger from the crazed man who had run past me at Coney Island, but her son. But still there was a mystery. Why would Darius, obsessed though he might be at the thought of inheriting his master's fortune, want to kill the harmless son of the French couple? The carriage raced on down an almost empty Broadway and over to the east, beyond Brooklyn, the dawn began to pink the sky. We arrived at the main gate on State Street and the priest was out and running into the park.

Now Battery Park then was not as it is now. Today vagrants and derelicts adorn the gra.s.s lawns. Then it was a quiet and placid place with a network of paths and walkways spreading out from Castle Clinton, and among them recesses and arbours with stone benches, in any one of which we might find the people we were looking for.

Outside the gate of the park I noticed three separate carriages. One was a closed brougham in the livery of the Waldorf-Astoria itself, clearly the one that had brought the vicomtesse and her son. The coachman sat on his box, huddled against the cold. The second was another of equal size, but unmarked; nevertheless, of a style and state of repair that would be owned by a wealthy man or corporation.

Parked some distance further on was a small carriage, the self-drive calash that I had seen ten days earlier outside the funfair. Clearly Darius had arrived too, and there was no time to waste. We all ran full tilt through the park's gateway.

Inside the park we split up, running in different directions the better to cover more ground. It was still dusky among the trees and hedges and hard to make out human forms as opposed to the many bushes. But after several minutes running hither and thither I heard voices, one manly, deep and musical, the other that of the beautiful opera singer. I wondered whether to turn away to find the others or to approach. In fact I crept quietly nearer, until I was behind a block of privet hedge fringing a clearing among the trees.

I should have run forwards at once, made my presence known and shouted a warning. But the boy was not there. For one optimistic moment I thought the vicomtesse might still have left him at the hotel after all. So I paused to listen. The two stood at each side of the clearing but their low voices carried easily to where I crouched behind the hedge.