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.”
    “Just go. Go on, go, get outa here.”
    He left. His first plan was to find someone who
knew
him—the menagerie manager, even one of the hack drivers—someone who could vouch for his character and explain that he’d been in the building because he lived and worked there. But as he walked away from the Palace of Justice, it began to dawn on him: They were going to make an example of him, guilty or not. They hadn’t even questioned him, after all. Probably they knew quite well he was innocent but had chosen to hold him since they had no other suspect. Crimes like arson just couldn’t be left unsolved in New York—they were too political, too terrifying to the people of the wall-to-wall wooden-frame city. Just the month before, he’d followed the show trial of an incendiary in
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated.
The man had been tried, convicted and hanged in a public spectacle. The main illustration in the issue that covered the hanging was a collage of several scenes: a sparking match and can of oil; the charred frame of the house that had burned; the bodies of the victims laid out at the morgue; a gaggle of urchins and ne’er-do-wells vying for a view of the gallows; and, in the center medallion, a vile-looking character dangling by his neck. If he didn’t find some way to clear himself, he feared that could be him.
    But then he had it: If all they really wanted was a hanging, perhaps he could save himself by finding the actual arsonist. Just so long as it hadn’t been an accident. But the more he thought about it, the more he knew it hadn’t been: the direction the heat had been moving, the dying embers in the stove, the cold, the empty coal bin. Candles weren’t allowed in that part of the building at all, and lanterns were awfully safe. Were there any accidents, he wondered, or did every fire have an arsonist behind it—this one and the one that had destroyed his uncle’s farm in Fürth alike? No, he thought, and then again yes. There had to be a cause; there had to be a guilty party somewhere.
    And then, as he walked, another notion came into his head: The officer had said, “We got your address.” But where he’d lived was gone. They only thought they had his address. He’d filled out the stable address of Barnum’s in pencil on the back of his paper of naturalization, which they’d gotten from his pocket. But he’d not be sleeping there again. He was homeless, but for the moment that meant he was free. He didn’t have anywhere to be, and there was nowhere anyone could find him.
    He walked and walked, until he realized he smelled smoke. Then he came to a halt. The smell was strong—acrid and meaty—and the streets even there, around the corner from the building, were thickly paved with cinders and ice. Opportunistic children—a lucky few in ice skates, most glad just to have shoes—laughed, slid and sprawled across it, running for their lives to the sidewalk when the occasional carriage rumbled past. He asked himself what he was doing going back to the museum, the way a criminal returns to the scene or a man on the run stops foolishly by his old dwelling. Was it habit? Was there any way he could investigate? Did he just want to see the destruction, the remains? He wasn’t sure. He was full of curiosity, nostalgia, disbelief. But yes, he thought, it did seem the only place to go if he wanted to figure out what happened.
    He pressed ahead, around the curve. The wreckage was beautiful, in a way. In places, nothing remained but blackened posts and beams, whittled by the flames to delicate proportions and decked out in shimmering ice stalactites that tapered like the fingers of his uncle’s beard. Where the walls still stood, they were coated with thick, even layers of ice that gleamed in the sun.
    That was when the hot-corn girl saw him. She’d been peering up at a singed canvas banner fringed with icicles. You could still make out the word CURIOSITIES. Then she turned and saw him. It was