The Death Instinct (17 page)

    'I, Mr Brighton?' said Mrs Meloney. 'I believe you had just made reference to Mr Harding.'

    'Oh, yes - I'm going to Washington to meet with Harding. Why don't you ladies accompany me? I have my own train, you know. Quite comfortable. You and Miss Rousseau will find many eleemosynary organizations in the capital - fertile soil for your Fund.'

    'We'd be delighted, wouldn't we, dear?' Mrs Meloney asked Colette.

    'Look at Samuels,' said Brighton, vexed. 'He wants me, as usual. Will you excuse me, ladies?'

    'What a prepossessing man,' declared Mrs Meloney as Brighton went to his secretary, who draped a coat over his employer's shoulders and whispered in his ear. Most of the women in attendance remained in the church, trading information about which radium products they liked best. 'He has his eye on you, my dear,' Mrs Meloney added.

    'On me?' said Colette. 'No - on you, surely, Mrs Meloney.'

    'Tush - what am I? An old lady. Look at the watch he gave you. It's diamond. Have you any idea what such a thing is worth?'

    'I can't keep it,' confided Colette.

    'Why on earth not?' the excitable Mrs Meloney replied.

    'It's very wrong to use radium on a watch face, Mrs Meloney. And please, you mustn't encourage these women to use radium cosmetics.'

    'Don't tell me you're a radio-skeptic, dear. My husband is a radio-skeptic of the worst sort, but I assure you my Radior night cream has taken a decade off my face. I can see it, even if he can't.'

    'It's the cost,' said Colette. 'Companies like Radior have made radium unaffordable to scientists.'

    'Tush - my night cream is only ninety-nine cents.'

    'Of course, Mrs Meloney, but because so many women pay that ninety-nine cents, a gram of radium now costs over a hundred thousand dollars.'

    'I'm afraid you scientists rarely have a firm grasp of economics, dear. The cost of radium determines the price of my Radior night cream, not the reverse.'

    'No, Mrs Meloney. Think of all the people buying radium cosmetics and radium watches. The more those products are sold, the less radium there is in the world, and the more precious it becomes.'

    'You're making my head spin, Miss Rousseau. All I know is that our Fund is off to a flying start. Let's concentrate on that, shall we?'

    'I can't tell you how important this is,' said Colette. 'There's so litde radium. Companies like Mr Brighton's consume over ninety percent of it. They leave next to nothing for science and medicine. What they do leave is too expensive to afford. Thousands of people dying from cancer today will never be treated with radium simply because of the cost. These companies are killing people - literally killing people. I tried to explain that to Mr Brighton when we visited his plant, but I don't think he was listening.'

    'I certainly hope not,' said Mrs Meloney. 'He'll withdraw his donation. Can't you be a little nicer to the dear man? Why, I daresay he'd fund the entire gram of radium himself if you would just be kind to him.'

    A jovial Mr Brighton returned to bid them adieu, bowing this way and that. 'Samuels says I must be off. Don't forget, Miss Rousseau: you've promised me Washington.' He extended his elbow to the older woman. 'Will you escort me to the door, Mrs Meloney?'

    'Why, Mr Brighton - people will think we've just been married,' said Mrs Meloney.

    'Very well,' said Brighton, 'then both you ladies must escort me.'

    Colette tried to decline this invitation, but Mrs Meloney wouldn't hear of it. Descending from the chancel by a short flight of steps, the three made their way down the central aisle of the nave, at the far end of which Brighton's assistant, Samuels, was handing out products to a small crowd of appreciative, departing ladies.

    'You uttered the nefarious name of Radior,' Brighton explained to Mrs Meloney. 'I couldn't let the competition be advertised without a response. We've just started our own line of eye shade. Luminous, of course - as you can see.'

    A number of ladies had tried on the shadow and mascara they had received, creating paired circles of phosphorescence that turned the dark portal of the church into a kind of grotto from which nocturnal birds or beasts seemed to peer out. Mrs Meloney apologized to Brighton: she'd had no idea that his company had entered the cosmetics line; she would be sure to mention it in the next issue of The Delineator. She and Mr Brighton were so engrossed in their affable chat, and Colette so provoked by it, that they didn't notice the solitary figure ahead of them, kneeling among the shadowed pews, head down as if in prayer.

    'Mrs Meloney - I left my elements by the lectern,' said Colette. 'I should go back for them.'

    'Don't be rude, dear,' replied the older woman, pulling firmly on Brighton's arm, who in turn pulled Colette.

    The kneeling figure began to stir as they approached. A hood covered its head.

    'Yes, don't desert me, Miss Rousseau,' said Brighton. 'I'll have Samuels collect your things.'

    Colette didn't answer. Her tongue had gone dry. The hooded figure had stepped into the aisle, blocking their advance. It was a woman. Wispy red hair emerged from the hood. One bony hand rested on a scarf around her neck - hiding something that seemed to bulge out from beneath it.

    'Can we help you, dear?' asked Mrs Meloney.

    Colette knew she ought to say something, to cry out in warning. But she found herself transfixed. The gaunt creature's eyes seemed to call out to her. They seemed to take in the connection between her and Mr Brighton and Mrs Meloney - the linking of their arms, their apparent unity - and to condemn it. A hand rose up toward Colette, beckoning her. Colette felt herself surrendering. For reasons opaque to her - perhaps it was simply that she was in a church; perhaps it was the accumulated effect of the harrowing incidents of the last two days, breaking down her resistance - Colette felt she had to meet the creature's outstretched hand with kindness, not horror. Whatever the reason, Colette reached out to the shrouded woman. Their fingers made contact.

    The touch was repulsive, damp, communicating illness or contagion as if the creature had emerged from a fouled pool and would soon return there. The hooded figure clenched her fingers around Colette's and took a step backward, pulling Colette with her.

    'Stop that at once,' said Mrs Meloney, as if addressing children with bad manners.

    'Yes, stop that at once,' said Brighton. The hooded girl turned her eyes on him and pointed an outstretched hand at his face. He fell back, letting Colette go. 'Samuels?' said Brighton weakly.

    The shrouded woman drew Colette another step back, always keeping one bony, blue-veined hand on the scarf around her neck. Colette didn't resist. It was the wristwatch - the gift from Brighton, now only a few inches from the hooded girl's face - that broke the spell.

    In the greenish luminosity of the watch dial, Colette saw eyes that struck her momentarily as sweet, like a doe's. Then the eyes changed. They seemed to become aware of the glinting diamonds at Colette's wrist, and they filled with fire. With sharp nails, the creature began clawing at the watch and its diamond-studded band, scratching Colette's skin, drawing blood. Colette tried vainly to wrest her hand away.

    'It's a thief cried Mrs Meloney.

    In a fury, the red-haired woman scraped at Colette's flesh and spoke for the first time: 'Give me - give me-

    Colette's breath caught in her throat: the woman's voice was guttural, like a man's, only lower in pitch than any man's voice Colette had ever heard. In her thrashing, the woman's scarf fell away from her chin. A pair of thin, colorless lips was the first thing to appear. Then the scarf fell farther down, and Mrs Meloney screamed at the sight, just as Betty Littlemore had.

    'My God,' said Colette.

    The hooded figure, fixated on the diamond watch, drew from her cloak a shaft of glinting metal - a knife. Colette was now pinioned. Mr Brighton had retreated, but the bold Mrs Meloney had taken his place, evidently believing that she could best render aid to Colette by seizing her free arm and refusing to let go. The redheaded woman, wild-eyed, raised her knife. Colette, with one wrist seized by her assailant, the other by her would-be protector, was helpless.

    Mrs Meloney cried out: 'She's going to cut off her arm! Someone help!'

    A shot rang out. A bullet ripped into the crucifix behind the pulpit, tearing a shoulder of carved wood off the savior. The hooded woman spun around, holding her knife high above her head. There came another shot, then another. The woman's flashing eyes went still. The knife slipped from her hand. An unnaturally deep groan came from her lips, and blood appeared at the corner of her mouth. Her body collapsed into Colette's arms.

    The French girl felt a fleshy, sickening contact as the woman's throat pressed against her own. Shuddering, Colette let the body fall to the

    floor. In the church vestibule, Brighton's amanuensis, Samuels, stood with a smoking gun in his hand.

    For a long moment, no one moved. Then, from behind Mrs Meloney,

    Arnold Brighton poked his head out. 'Oh, well done, Samuels,' he said. 'Well done.'

    'Mr Brighton,' said Mrs Meloney reprovingly.

    'Yes, Mrs Meloney?'

    'You hid behind me.'

    'Oh, no, I wasn't hiding,' said Brighton. 'Everyone knew where I was. I was taking cover. Most satisfactory cover, I might add. Most ample cover.'

    'You held me, Mr Brighton, when the shots were fired. I tried to run, but you held me fast.'

    'You mean - oh, I see what you mean. I benefitted from you without compensating you. How can I repay you? Would a thousand dollars be appropriate? Five thousand?'

    'My word,' said Mrs Meloney.

    'Samuels, don't just stand there,' said Brighton. 'Clean up. One can't leave a dead body on the floor of a church. Could we pay the trash men to take her, do you suppose?'

    'She's still alive,' said Colette, kneeling by the fallen woman.

    'She is?' asked Brighton, looking as if he might need to take cover behind Mrs Meloney again.

    'Police!' shouted Detective Littlemore, bursting through the front door of the church. 'Drop your weapons!'

    The woman's body lay crumpled on the cold stone floor, a dark stain of blood spreading out below it. Younger and Littlemore had arrived just in time to hear cries of 'murder' from ladies fleeing the church. As Mrs Meloney explained to the detective how the mad woman had attacked Colette, and how Mr Samuels had saved them,' Younger sought a pulse in the fallen woman's wrist. He found one, very faint.

    Colette knelt next to him. 'Look at her neck,' she said.

    Matted, unhealthy red hair masked the woman's face. Grimly but gingerly, Younger pushed the hair away. He saw vacant eyes, a pretty

    nose and thin, parted lips. The fraying scarf had regained its place over her neck. Younger pulled it away.

    The woman had no chin at all. Where a chin should have been, and where a throat should have been, there was instead an engorged bulbous mass, almost as large as the woman's own head, attached to her neck. It had wrinkles, dimples, lumps, indentations, and many, many veins.

    'What in the love of Pete is that?' asked Littlemore.

Chapter Nine

    A year before the attack on Wall Street, the President of the United States, sitting on his toilet in the White House, suffered a massive cerebral thrombosis - a clot in the artery feeding his brain. Within moments, the once-visionary Woodrow Wilson became a half-blind invalid, unable to move the left side of his body, including the left side of his mouth.

    Wilson's stroke was kept from the public, from his Cabinet, even from his Vice President. It was difficult to say who was supposed to run the country after Wilson s collapse. Indeed it was difficult to say who was running the country. Was it Secretary of State Robert Lansing, who secretly convened the Cabinet in the President's absence? Or was it Wilson's wife, Edith, who counted among her ancestors both Plantagenets and Pocahontas, and who alone had access to the presidential sick room, emerging therefrom with orders that Wilson had supposedly dictated? Or perhaps it was Attorney General Palmer, who secured ever more funds for his Bureau of Investigation, and who imprisoned tens of thousands all over the country as suspected enemies of the nation.

    Throughout 1920, the country lurched along in this strange, headless condition. In January, Prohibition took effect. In March, the Senate rejected the League of Nations and, with it, Wilson's vision of America joining an international community of peaceful states and taking center stage in world affairs. Wilson had never persuaded his practical countrymen why America would want to entangle itself in Europe's intrigues and ancient enmities. What, after all, had the United States gained from the last war, in which more than 100,000 American young men had perished to save English and French skins?

    Uncertain of their direction, deprived of drink, Americans in 1920 were waiting - for a storm to break the gathering tension, for a new president to be elected in November, for their economy to recover. Americans believed they had brought peace to the world. Surely they were entitled to worry about their own problems now.

    There was, however, no peace in the world. In the summer of 1920, great armies still ravaged the earth. In August, a Soviet army marched triumphantly into Poland and even entered Warsaw, its sights set on Germany and beyond. Lenin had reason to be ambitious. Armed communists had seized power in Munich and declared Bavaria a Soviet Republic. The same occurred in Hungary. Right next door to the United States, revolutionaries in Mexico overthrew the American- supported regime, promising to reclaim that nation's gigantic petroleum deposits from the companies - in particular the United States companies - that owned them.

    But most Americans in 1920 neither knew nor cared. Most had had their fill of the world. Most - but not all.

    On Saturday morning, September 18, two days after the bombing, one day after Colette's lecture in Saint Thomas Church, Younger and Littlemore met at a subway station a couple of blocks from Bellevue Hospital.

    Any way to identify the girl?' asked Younger as they set off for the hospital.

    'Two-Heads?' said Littlemore. 'We'll probably know in a day or two. With girls, somebody usually comes in to report them missing. Unless she's a hooker, in which case nobody reports her.'

    'I have a feeling this one isn't a hooker,' said Younger.

    The two men looked at each other.

    'Did you check her teeth?' asked Younger.

    'To see if she lost a molar? Yeah - I had the same idea. But nope. No missing teeth.'

    'Why Colette?'

    'You mean why are these things happening to her? That's the question all right. But like I said - don't assume everything's connected.'

    'What are you assuming - freak coincidence?'

    'I'm not assuming anything. I never assume. If I had to guess, I'd say somebody thinks the Miss is somebody she isn't. Maybe a whole lot of people think she's somebody she isn't.'

    Bellevue was a publicly funded hospital, required to take all patients delivered to its door, and the catastrophe on Wall Street had added fresh strains upon its already overtaxed resources. Every corridor was an obstacle course of patients slumped over on chairs or stretched out on gurneys. On the third floor, Younger and Littlemore found the woman from the church in a ward she shared with more than a dozen other female patients. She was breathing but unconscious, veins pulsing on the engorged mass bulging out of her neck. A nurse told them the girl had not regained consciousness since being admitted. One bed away, a hospital physician was administering an injection to another patient. Littlemore asked him if he thought the redheaded woman was going to live.

    'I wouldn't know,' said the physician helpfully.

    'Who would?' asked Littlemore.

    'I would,' said the physician. 'I attend on this ward. But I've had no time to examine her.'

    'Mind if I examine her?' asked Younger.

    'You're a doctor?' asked the doctor.

    'He's a Harvard doctor,' said Littlemore.

    'I'd like to get a look at what's inside that neoplasm on her neck,' said Younger. 'Do you have an X-ray machine?'

    'Of course we have one,' said the doctor, 'but only the hospital's radiology staff is permitted to use it.'

    'Okay,' said Littlemore. 'Where can we find the radiology staff?'

    'I'm the hospital's radiology staff,' said the doctor.

    Littlemore folded his arms. 'And when could you do an X-ray?'

    'In two weeks,' said the doctor. 'I perform X-rays on the first Monday of every month.'

    'Two weeks?' repeated Littlemore. 'She could be dead in two weeks.'

    'So could five hundred other patients in this hospital,' snapped the doctor. 'I'll have to ask you to excuse me. I'm very busy.'

    After the physician had left, Littlemore said, 'Maybe I shouldn't have told him you were a Harvard doctor. I don't know why people resent what they ought to admire. What the heck is that thing on her neck?'

    'I don't know, but we might find out pretty soon.' Younger pointed to a thin, bluish vertical fissure that was developing on the distended mass. The fissure ran from the girl's chin to her sternum. 'Whatever's inside may be trying to get out.'

    'Great,' said Littlemore.

    'It could be a teratoma.'

    'What's that?'

    'Encapsulated hair or teeth, usually,' said Younger.

    'Teeth - like a molar?' asked Littlemore.

    'Maybe. Or a twin.'

    'What?'

    'A twin that was never born,' said Younger. 'Not alive. There's never been a case of a live one.'

    'First we see a woman with no head on Wall Street, and now we got one with two. That's what I call - wait a minute. She was a redhead too.'

    'The woman with no head? Was a redhead?' asked Younger.

    'Her head was. We walked right past it. And I'm pretty sure she was wearing a dress like this girl's. I'll go to the morgue. Maybe she was missing a molar.'

    That same morning, newspapers all over the country reported that Edwin Fischer, the man who knew in advance about the Wall Street bombing, was in custody in Hamilton, Ontario, having been adjudged insane by a panel of Canadian magistrates. Fischer had been taken before the Canadian judges by his own brother-in-law, who had read about the now-famous postcards and motored from New York to Toronto in the company of two agents of the United States Department of Justice.

    Younger had a look around Bellevue Hospital after the detective left. It wasn't difficult for a doctor to pose as a personage of authority in a large, overcrowded hospital. At any rate it wasn't difficult for Younger, who had learned in the war how to command obedience from subordinates through the simple artifice of acting as if it went without saying that one's orders would be followed.

    He found the roentgen equipment on the second floor. It was as he'd hoped: a modern unit, driven by transformer, not induction, and equipped with Coolidge tubes. The milliamperage was clearly marked. He knew he could operate it.

    At police headquarters, Officer Roederheusen knocked on Littlemore's door. 'I've got the mailman, Captain,' said Roederheusen. 'The one who picks up at Cedar and Broadway.'

    'What are you waiting for?' asked Littlemore. 'Bring him in.'

    'Urn, sir, do you think I could have a nickname?'

    'A nickname? What for?'

    'Stanky has a nickname. And my name's kind of hard for you, sir.'

    'Okay. Not a bad idea. I'll call you Spanky.'

    'Spanky?'

    'As opposed to Stanky. Now bring me that mailman.'

    'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

    Roederheusen returned in a moment, mailman in tow. Littlemore offered the man a seat, a doughnut, and coffee. The postman, who accepted all these offerings, coughed and sniffled.

    'So you're the one who found the circulars,' said Littlemore. 'Did you get a look at the men who mailed them?'

    The man shook his head, mouth full.

    'Okay, here's what I want to know - when did you first see the circulars? Did you see them when you opened the mailbox or only later, when you got back to the post office?'

    The postman blew his nose into a paper napkin. 'Don't know what you're talking about. The box was empty.'

    'Empty?' repeated Littlemore. 'The mailbox at Cedar and Broadway? Day of the bombing? Eleven fifty-eight pickup?'

    'The eleven fifty-eight? I never made the eleven fifty-eight. Hung my bag up after morning rounds. Too sick. Lucky thing, huh?'

    'Did somebody cover for you?'

    'Cover for me?' The man laughed into his napkin. 'Fat chance. What's this all about, anyway?'

    Littlemore sent the postman away.

    Eighty miles away, in a laboratory at Yale University, a human-like creature in a helmet and what looked like an undersea diver's suit was also working on Saturday. The creature was titrating fumaric acid into six tubes of thorium in an attempt to isolate ionium. When this delicate, wearisome task was not quite complete, the creature lumbered out of the laboratory and into the sunshine of a campus courtyard, causing a child to run crying to his perambulating nanny.

    The creature took off its gloves and removed its slit-visored helmet. Out shook the long sable hair of Colette Rousseau. She sat on a bench, the brightness of the sun blinding her after the double darkness of the laboratory and her helmet.

    Colette and Luc had returned to New Haven early Saturday morning so that she could resume her laboratory duties, from which she had taken two days off. Her experiments were designed to test the existence of ionium, a putative new element that Professor Bertram Boltwood claimed to have discovered - the 'parent of radium,' he called it. Madame Curie did not believe in ionium, judging it to be only a manifestation of thorium. Accordingly, Colette did not believe in ionium either. She had already established that ionium could not be separated from thorium with any of the ordinary precipitants, such as sodium thiosulfate or meta-nitro-benzoic acid. Today she was trying fumaric acid. But her hands had begun to shake within her heavy lead-lined gloves, and she'd had to stop.

    She gathered her hair into a long braid, threw it behind one shoulder of her radiation suit, and, using both hands, reached to the nape of her neck. She drew out the chain and locket that always hung at her chest. Turning an ingeniously crafted bezel first one way, then the other, Colette opened the two halves of the locket. Into the palm of her hand fell a thin, tarnished metal oval - like an oblong coin - with two tiny holes punched through it.

    One side of this metal oval was bare. Turning it over, Colette let eyes linger on a series of machine-etched letters and numbers: Hans Gruber, Braunau am Inn, 20. 4. 89., 2. Ers. Masch. Gew. K., 3.A.K. Nr. 1128.

    Although it was a Saturday, Littlemore saw lights in the Commissioner's office. The detective knocked and entered.

    'Captain Littlemore -just the man I wanted to see,' said Commissioner Enright from an armchair by a large window, looking up from a report he'd been reading. Enright was revered by his men. He was the only Police Commissioner in the history of New York City to have risen to that position from the rank and file. 'I've been in touch with the Canadians. They're happy to extradite. Send someone to Ontario to collect this Edwin Fischer.'

    'Already on their way, Mr Enright,' said Littlemore.

    'That's the spirit. You met with Director Flynn of the Bureau yesterday. What were your impressions?'

    'Big Bill's not giving us a thing, Commissioner,' said Littlemore. 'Fischer, for example. Flynn knew Fischer was in custody Wouldn't say where, wouldn't say how he knew. After we turned over all our evidence to them.'

    Enright shook his head ruefully. 'It's no more than I expected. That's why I chose you as liaison officer. They have greater resources than we, Littlemore, but not greater brainpower. Keep a step ahead of him. Keep us in it. Flynn found the circulars. Let the next find be ours.' 'I don't like the circulars, sir,' said Littlemore. 'You don't "like" them?'