The Death Instinct

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?'

'Flynn's story doesn't wash. There's no way the bombers got from Wall Street to that mailbox by 11:58. Plus the flyers don't read right. They don't even mention a bombing. If I'm the Wall Street bomber and I want to tell everybody I did it, I'm going to say so. Mr Enright, I'm not even sure the circulars were picked up from a mailbox at all. I just got done with the mailman who would have made the pickup. He went home sick that morning.'

'What are you suggesting, Littlemore?'

'Nothing, sir. All I know is that Flynn s doing everything he can to connect our bombing to the ones from 1918 and 1919. He even said the Chicago Post Office was bombed on the third Thursday of September, so that September 16 was the exact anniversary.' 'Yes, I read that in the Times,' said Enright.

'The Chicago bomb went off on September 4, 1918, Mr Enright. I don't know if that was a Thursday, but it definitely wasn't the third Thursday. I just think we should keep looking.'

'Certainly we should keep looking,' said Enright. 'That's why we're going to speak with Mr Fischer. But I should tell you that on this point I quite agree with General Palmer: the bombing on Wall Street was the work of Bolshevik anarchists. Who else would have done such a thing? The Great War did not end in 1918. It was a mistake to withdraw our troops from Russia; we've allowed them to bring the war to our soil. Wilson is useless, but things will change after the election. Harding will take the war to Lenin's doorstep where it belongs. That's all, Captain.'

Younger returned to Bellevue early the next morning. The hospital was much quieter now: it was no less crowded with patients, but because it was Sunday, fewer medical personnel were on hand, and very little treatment was being given or received.

In a bathroom on the second floor, Younger put a white coat over his suit and tie. Striding down the hall, he entered the room where the X-ray machine was kept, wheeled it out, guided it into an elevator, and came out onto a third-floor corridor, where he called out commandingly for a nurse to assist him. A nurse came running at once.

The unconscious redheaded girl lay in the same room in the same condition — alive but comatose. With the nurse's help, Younger laid the girl's body on the wooden X-ray couch, stomach-down, turning her head to one side. Her profile was uncannily angelic save for the monstrosity protruding from her chin and throat, which looked even more distended and unnatural in the electric light of the hospital room than it had in the darkness of the church. Younger prodded the mass with two gloved fingers, which provoked in him a peculiar, highly nonmedical sensation of disgust. The interior of the growth was soft but granular.

Radiographing an unconscious person was considerably easier, Younger discovered, than a conscious one. There was no difficulty with the subject moving during irradiation. The X-ray tube, clamped inside a box running on casters beneath the table, was easily brought directly below the girl's cheek. Protecting himself with a lead panel, Younger turned on the radiation and adjusted the diaphragm until only the growth fluoresced on the test screen over the girl's head. Then he replaced the test screen with an unexposed photographic plate. He let the radiation course through the girl's body for exactly eight seconds and repeated this process several times, from different angles, using a new plate each time.

The same morning, the Littlemore clan was tumbling out of their Fourteenth Street apartment house on their way to church. The children had been scrubbed and soaped until they shone like sprightly mirrors. Littlemore had their toddler, Lily, on his shoulders. Lily always received special treatment; none of the other children objected, because of her condition.

Betty's mother, a half foot shorter than Betty herself, had joined them as she always did on Sunday mornings, wearing her church hat and keeping an emphatic distance from her son-in-law. In deference to Betty's stronger religious feelings, Littlemore had consented to attend Catholic church on Sundays and to raise his children in that faith, but he never got used to all the crossing. Or the kneeling. Or the confessing. He would bow his head, but he just couldn't cross himself. As a result, Betty's mother displayed her piety every Sunday by pretending she didn't know her son-in-law.

One little Littlemore called out to his father that there was mail. He handed Littlemore a small, square, engraved envelope. Littlemore, removing Lily from his shoulders, explained to his son that whatever the envelope was, it wasn't mail, because the mail didn't come on Sundays.

'Is it a bomb?' asked the boy with genuine curiosity.

'No, it's not a bomb, for Pete's sake,' said Littlemore, trying to sound as if the suggestion were absurd. He exchanged a glance with Betty. 'Bombs are bigger.'

The envelope contained a printed card inviting Littlemore to the Bankers and Brokers Club at seven o'clock that evening. The invitation was from Thomas Lamont.

The detective and his family had not progressed half a block when a chunky man in a dark suit crossed the street and tapped Littlemore on his shoulder. It was one of Director Flynn's deputies.

'I got a message for you,' said the deputy.

'Oh yeah?' said Littlemore. 'Spill it.'

'Chief knows you been questioning United States letter carriers.'

'So?'

'He don't like you questioning United States letter carriers.'

'Is that right? Well, I got a message for Big Bill,' replied Littlemore.

'You tell him the word is mailman. Just mailman. Going to church today?'

'Think you're pretty smart, don't you?' said Flynn s man. He looked at Littlemore s children and then at their mother in her church dress. 'Nice family. Chief knows all about your family. Eye-talian, ain't they?'

Littlemore walked up close to the man. 'You wouldn't be trying to threaten me, would you?'

'We was just wondering why the son of an Irishman would marry an Eye-talian.'

'Nice investigating,' said Littlemore. 'My father isn't Irish.'

'Oh yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'Then how come he drinks like one?' The deputy, a much larger man than Littlemore, laughed richly at his jest, producing the sounds har har har. 'I heard your Pa hasn't been sober since they kicked him off the force.'

Littlemore laughed good-naturedly, shook his head, and turned away. 'Okay, you win round one,' he said before spinning around and leveling the deputy with one punch to his midsection followed by another to his rotund face. The deputy tried to get up, but fell in a stupor back to the sidewalk. 'You might want to work on round two next time.'

Littlemore and his family proceeded to church.

After developing and fixing the exposed plates, Younger thought he must have badly mistaken the machine's milliamperage. There was no image on the plates at all — only a white amorphous cloud, flecked with a seething shadow pattern of a kind Younger had never seen before. On the other hand, the top of the girl's sternum appeared with clarity, suggesting that the film hadn't been overexposed. It was as if the X-rays had simply been unable to pass through whatever was growing inside the girl's neck.

Younger took another set of films. This time he varied the length of irradiation, using both shorter and longer intervals. When the new set of pictures was developed, the results were either useless or identical to the first.

In principle, the fact that a part of the human body was roentgenopaque — impervious to X-rays — wasn't startling. Bones, for example, are roentgenopaque. Nor would it have been unthinkable for the engorgement protruding from the girl's jaw to be composed of solid bone. In advanced rheumatoid arthritis, for example, osseous processes could grow in all sorts of grotesque shapes and at many different places in the afflicted person's body. A bone growth inside the girl's chin and neck would have produced a perfectly white image on Younger's plates.

There were three problems with this theory. First, a bone growth would have shown sharp definition in shape, not the borderless amoeba of white that appeared on this girl's radiograms. Second, bone would not have produced the shadowy, foaming pattern inside the formless white — a pattern that seemed to shift ever so slightly on every plate, as if whatever produced it were constantly altering its position. Finally, Younger had felt the mass with his fingers, pressing on either side of the thin blue fissure. Whatever was inside wasn't bone. It was too pliable — and too evasive, shifting as if to avoid his touch.

Younger considered, swallowing drily, the possibility that something was alive — something impervious to X-rays — inside the girl's neck.

The Bankers and Brokers Club occupied a fine Greco-Roman townhouse downtown. At a quarter past seven that evening, on the fourth floor of the club, Littlemore found Thomas Lamont seated alone in the corner of an otherwise crowded, comfortably appointed room, apparently devoted to whist and cigars. The occupants were all men. Littlemore was surprised at the atmosphere — not the cigar smoke, but the conviviality and enjoyment. Business was apparently still good, notwithstanding the bombing.

Lamont, by contrast, was fidgety. He looked as if he wished he were elsewhere. 'A drink, Captain?' he asked. 'Quite legal, you know. Private club.'

'I'm fine,' said Littlemore.

'Ah, on duty, of course,' said Lamont, waving a waiter away'. I thought about what you said on Friday. Are you really sure the criminals were attacking my firm?'

'I never said I was sure, Mr Lamont,' said Littlemore. 'I said that if I were you, I'd want to find out.'

'You asked me if the firm had enemies. There is a man who came to mind after you left. But it cannot get out that I named him. Is that understood?'

Littlemore nodded. The hush of Lamont's voice, coupled with the general noise of card-playing, assured that no one would overhear them. Thick smoke curled around the armchairs and wafted into the coffered ceiling.

'He's a banking man,' Lamont went on, almost whispering. 'A foreigner. Before the war, he was the second wealthiest financier in New York — second to J. P. Morgan, Sr, that is. How he hated Morgan for it. Now he's fallen down, and he blames us for his misfortune. It's ludicrous. He's German, a personal friend of the Kaiser's. His house funded the Kaiser's armies. Naturally his lines of credit dried up when our country declared war against his. What did he expect? But he seems to believe there's a conspiracy even now to deny him funds and that we are its masterminds. He threatened me.'

Lamont looked positively fearful.

'What kind of threat?' asked Littlemore.

'It was at our Democratic campaign dinner. No, it was our Republican dinner — for Harding. We do them both, of course. At any rate, he drew me aside and told me to "watch out" — I'm quoting him, Captain — to "watch out" because "there are those who don't like it when one of the houses combines with the others to deny men capital.'"

'You say he funded the German army?'

'Unquestionably,' said Lamont. 'Clandestine, of course. You won't find his name on any documents. If you ask him, he'll tell you he loves this country. But he feels no loyalty to us. I doubt he is loyal to any country, even his own. It's in their nature, you know. A Bolshevik, in fact.'

'Wait a minute,' replied Littlemore. 'You're saying the guy's a banker, a friend of the Kaiser-'

'Why, the Kaiser knighted the man. He received the German Cross of the Red Eagle.'

'And a Bolshevik?' asked Littlemore.

'He's a Jew,' Lamont explained.

Roars of laughter erupted across the room. A butler approached.

'Oh, a Jew,' said Littlemore. 'Now I get it. What's his name?'

The butler bent toward Lamont and said, 'The gentleman is back, sir.'

'For heaven's sake, tell him I'm not here,' answered Lamont in obvious annoyance.

'I'm afraid he knows you're here, sir,' said the butler.

'Well, tell him to go away. I don't come to my club to do business. Tell him he must see me at my office.' To Littlemore, he added: 'The new financial agent for Mexico. Won't take no for an answer.'

'The man's name, Mr Lamont,' said Littlemore.

'Senor Pesqueira, I believe. Why?'

'Not him. The man who threatened you.'

'Oh. Speyer. Mr James Speyer.'

'Do you know where I can find him?'

'That's why I asked you here. You may be able to converse with Mr Speyer tonight.'

'He's a member?' asked Littlemore.

'At the Bankers and Brokers?' returned Lamont, incredulous. 'Certainly not. Mr Speyer likes to dine at Delmonico's, which is open to the public. I'm told he's there tonight. It may be your last chance.'

'Why?'

'They say he means to leave the country tomorrow.'

In New Haven, Connecticut, Colette and Luc Rousseau had also attended church that Sunday, near the stately mansions of Hillhouse Avenue. On their way home, they walked around an old cemetery as overstuffed clouds hung thoughtlessly against a gaudy blue sky. Colette tried to hold her brother's hand, but he wouldn't have it.

After the sun had set, back in their small dormitory room, Colette wrote a letter:

19-9-1920

Dear Stratham:

As I write these words Luc is pretending to be you, swinging an imaginary baseball bat. Then he pretends to be that terrible man, jumping around with his hair on fire.

I don't think he minded being kidnapped. He wasn't afraid at all. In fact he is angry because I want to leave America. I would say he isn't speaking to me, if one could say such a thing of a boy who doesn't talk.

Have you found out who that girl was or examined her neck? I have the strangest feeling whenever I think about her. I wish she had just taken that awful watch and run away.

Stratham, you will not believe me when I tell you how much I don't want to go away. I told the girl who lives upstairs about my trip to New York: one bombing, one kidnapping, one knife throwing, one madwoman in a church. She said she would have died from fright. She said I must want to get out of the country as soon as I can. I don't. I want to stay.

But I made a vow, and I have to go. I know you will not like to hear it, but I've never felt about anyone the way I feel about Hans. Seeing him again is more important than anything in the world for me, even if I only see him once more. I'm sorry. But perhaps you won't care at all; I never know with you.

If you do care, I want to ask you something very foolish — a favor I hardly dare set down, given everything you've already done for me. I am the most ungrateful girl who ever lived. Please come with me to Vienna. That's the favor I ask. I truly expect to see Hans once and never again. Whatever happens, I will wish in my heart that you were there with me. Please say you'll come.

With all my affection, Colette

The air at Delmonico s was even thicker with smoke, but less crowded and much more subdued. In the main salon overlooking Fifth Avenue, Littlemore noticed that the usual profusion of diamond earrings and glittering crystal was not in evidence. The bombing remained the chief topic of conversation, but the stunned and speechless horror of September 16 was giving way, among some, to vitriol and rage.

'You know what we should do?' asked one man at a table for four. 'Shoot the Italians one by one until they tell us who did it.'

'Not all of them, Henry, surely.'

'Why not?' retorted Henry. 'If they bomb us, we kill them. Simple as that. That's the only way to stop a terrorist. Hit him where it hurts.'

'Why do they hate us so much?' asked a woman next to Henry.

'Who cares?'

'Deport them, I say,' declared the other man. 'Deport all the Italians, and there's the end of this ghastly bombing. They contribute nothing to society in any event.'

'What about the Delmonicos?' asked the other woman. 'Don't they contribute?'

'Deport all Italians except the Delmonicos!' cried the man, raising a glass in a mock toast.

'No, my steak is overcooked — Delmonico must go too!' cried Henry. The table broke out in laughter. The diners were evidently unaware that the Delmonicos no longer owned Delmonico's.

The headwaiter approached Littlemore. Asking for Mr James Speyer, the detective was led to an interior garden, where stained-glass windows ran from floor to ceiling. At a corner table a man sat alone — a man of about sixty, with hair still mostly black and the doleful eyes of a basset hound. The detective approached the table.

'Name's Littlemore,' said Littlemore. 'New York Police Department. Mind if I sit down?'

'Ah,' said Speyer. 'Finally a face to put on the law. Why would I mind? No man likes to dine alone.' Speyer's accent was distinctly German; before him were the plates and glasses of a fully consumed meal. He went on: 'You know what you've done? You've destroyed this establishment.'

Mr Speyer was evidently inebriated.

'I have a joke with the waiter,' he went on. 'I ask if they have any terrapin. I would never eat it, but I ask. He says no, the terrapin's eighty-sixed; you can't cook terrapin without wine. So I order the porterhouse Bordelaise. He says the Bordelaise is eighty-sixed, because that's illegal as well. We go on and on. Finally I ask him what he does have. He says try an eighty-six.'

Littlemore said nothing.

'An eighty-six — the plain grilled rib-eye,' explained Speyer. 'The one they always used to run out of. Now it's the only thing you can get. Because everything else is Prohibited.'

'We don't make the laws, mister,' said Littlemore. 'I'd like to ask you a couple of questions.'

'Very well,' said Speyer. 'But not here. If you must, let's go to my car.'

Speyer paid his bill and led the detective out onto Forty-fourth Street. A silver four-seater was parked outside. 'Nice, isn't she?' said Speyer. He opened a rear door; the driver started the engine. 'After you, Officer.'

Littlemore climbed inside. The chauffeur, meeting the detective's eyes in the rearview mirror, turned round and asked him who he was.

'It's all right,' said the detective. 'I'm with Mr Speyer.'

'Speyer? Who's that?' asked the driver.

The door that Speyer had graciously opened for the detective was still ajar.

'You're kidding me,' said Littlemore to no one in particular. The detective got out of the vehicle. There was no sign of James Speyer. Disgusted with himself, Littlemore went back into the restaurant and called his men Stankiewicz and Roederheusen.

On Monday morning, September 20, Edwin Fischer arrived at Grand Central Terminal on a train from Canada, in the custody of two New York City policemen. Reporters from every newspaper in the city were waiting for them, together with a considerable crowd.

The good-looking, tow-headed Fischer did not disappoint. He replied to questions with dauntless good cheer, while admonishing his greeters that he had been forbidden to discuss the bombing. Evidently overheated, Fischer removed his cream-colored suit jacket, folded it neatly, and handed it to a nonplussed policeman — revealing a second jacket below the first, this one navy blue.

'How come the two jackets, Fischer?' one reporter called out. 'Cold up in Canada?'

'I always wear two,' Fischer replied brightly, displaying the waistline of a navy blue pair of pants below his outer pair of cream trousers. 'Two full suits, everywhere I go.'

The newsmen exchanged knowing winks: everyone had heard that Fischer was a lunatic. One of them asked why he wore two suits. Fischer explained that as an American, he liked to sport casual attire, while as a member of the French consular establishment, he had to be prepared for greater formality. With a sparkle in his eye, he then exhibited a third outfit below the first two, which appeared to consist of cotton whites suitable for an outdoor gambol. Asked the reason, he responded that shortly after the last time he won the Open, a pushy fellow had challenged him to a game, which he'd had to decline for lack of appropriate costume. After that, he decided always to be ready for a match.

'The Open?' someone asked. 'What Open was that, Ed?'

'Why, the United States Open, of course,' said Fischer.

Titters greeted this assertion. 'You won the US Open, did you, Eddie?' someone called out.

'Oh, yes,' said Fischer with a broad smile. He had excellent teeth. 'Many times.'

Laughter circulated more broadly.

'How many?'

'Lost count after three,' he answered happily.

'Get going,' said one of the policemen, shoving the cream-colored suit jacket back into Fischer's arms.

From Grand Central, Fischer was taken to police headquarters for questioning by Commissioner Enright, Chief Inspector Lahey, and Assistant District Attorney Talley. Captains from the bomb squad and from Homicide, including Littlemore, sat in an array of hard chairs along a wall. Fischer had sociable words for everyone. With the District Attorney, he was especially effusive, asking after not only Talley's own health but that of Mrs Talley as well.

'You know each other?' Commissioner Enright asked.

'We're old friends,' replied Fischer. 'Isn't that right, Talley?'

'I've never met the man, Commissioner,' Talley replied to Enright.

'Listen to that,' said Fischer, smiling broadly and clapping Talley on the back. 'Always the jokester.'

Commissioner Enright shook his head and ordered the interrogation to commence. 'Mr Fischer,' he said, 'tell us how you knew there would be a bombing on Wall Street on the sixteenth of September.'

'Why, I didn't know, did I?' answered Fischer. 'I only knew it would come after the closing bell on the fifteenth.'

'But how? How did you know that?'

'I got it out of the air.'

'The air?'

'Yes — from a voice,' explained Fischer informatively. 'Out of the air.'

'Whose voice?' asked Inspector Lahey.

'I don't know. Perhaps it was a fellow member of the Secret Service. I'm an agent, you know. Undercover.'

'Wait a second,' said District Attorney Talley. 'Did we meet at the Metropolitan awards dinner a few years ago?'

'Did we meet? repeated Fischer. 'We sat next to each other the whole evening. You were the life of the party.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake,' said Enright. 'Please continue.'

'Who's your contact at the Secret Service?' asked Lahey.

'You're asking for his name?' replied Fischer.

'Yes — his name.'

Fischer threw Talley a look implying that Inspector Lahey was either a little ignorant or a little addle-brained, but that it would be impolite to say so: 'Goodness, Inspector. He doesn't tell me his name. What sort of Secret Serviceman would that be?'

'How did you know about the bombing?' asked Talley yet again.

Fischer sighed: 'I got it out of the air.'

'By wireless?' asked Lahey.

'You mean radio? I shouldn't think so. I'm very close to God, you know. Some people resent that.'

After two and a half hours, Commissioner Enright brought the interrogation to an end, no further results having been produced. Fischer was committed to an asylum.

Littlemore collared District Attorney Talley before the latter left police headquarters and asked him whether it was legal for United States army troops to be stationed on a Manhattan street.

'Why not?' replied Talley.

'I never saw infantry in the city before,' said Littlemore. 'I thought they had to call out the National Guard or something — you know, with the Governor's consent.'

'Beats me,' said Talley. 'That'd be federal law. Why don't you ask Flynn's men? They'd probably know.'

Littlemore returned to his office and paced, irritated. Then he cranked up his telephone. 'Rosie,' he said to the operator, 'get me the Metropolitan Tennis Association.'

As Littlemore rung off, Officer Stankiewicz poked his head through the door, holding a sheaf of papers. 'Final casualty list, Cap,' said Stankiewicz. 'Want to see it before it goes out?'

Littlemore leafed through the unevenly typed document, which gave for every man, woman, and child killed or wounded on September 16 a name, address, age, and place of employment, if any. Page after page, hundreds and hundreds of names. Littlemore closed his eyes — and opened them at a knock on his door. Officer Roederheusen poked his head through.

'I found Speyer's ship, sir,' said Roederheusen, unshaven and red- eyed. 'There's a James Speyer booked on the Imperator, leaving tomorrow for Germany at nine-thirty in the morning. I saw the manifest myself.'

'Nice work, Spanky.'

Stankiewicz looked quizzically at Roederheusen.

'I'm Spanky now,' explained Roederheusen proudly.

Littlemore rubbed his eyes and handed the casualty list back to Stankiewicz, whom he waved out of his office. 'What's Speyer been up to?' he asked Roederheusen.

'Nothing, sir,' said Roederheusen. 'He didn't go out all night. This morning at eight he went to work. He's been there all day.'

'Who's on him now?' Littlemore went to his door and shouted, 'Hey, Stanky. Get back in here. Give me that list again.'

The phone rang.

'Two beat officers, sir,' Roederheusen replied as Stankiewicz reentered the office. 'Should I call them off?'

Littlemore answered the telephone. Rosie, the operator, informed him through the telephone that the vice president of the Metropolitan Tennis Association was on the line.

'Put him through.' Littlemore motioned to Stankiewicz to hand him the list. To Roederheusen, he said, 'No. Make sure somebody keeps an eye on Speyer all day. If he makes a move, I want to know.

If he doesn't, you meet me at his house at five tomorrow morning. Yeah, five. Now go home and get some sleep.' Littlemore cradled the receiver between chin and shoulder as he returned to the page of the casualty list devoted to government officers. 'Where's the Treasury guy, Stanky? There was a Treasury guard who died.'

'Hello?' said a man's crackling voice through the receiver.

'If he ain't on that list, Cap, he ain't dead,' said Stankiewicz.

'Hold the line,' said Littlemore into the telephone. 'Know what, Stanky? Don't argue with me today. Go check the handwritten list.'

'The, um, handwritten list?'

'Hello?' said the telephone.

'Hold the line,' Littlemore repeated. To Stankiewicz, he said, 'What do I have to do, spell it for you? You and Spanky made filing cards for all the casualties. I told you to make me a list from those cards. You wrote me the list. I saw it. Then I told you to have the handwritten list typed up. This is the typed list. I'm asking you to go back and check the handwritten list. Okay? The Treasury guy's name began with R; I saw it on his badge. Maybe you missed some others too.'

'Is anybody there?' said the telephone.

'Um, the handwritten list is gone, sir,' said Stankiewicz.

'Hold the god-busted line, will you?' Littlemore yelled into the receiver. He looked at Stankiewicz: 'What do you mean "gone"?'

Stankiewicz didn't answer.

'Okay, Stanky, you threw away the handwritten list. Nice work. How about the filing cards? Don't tell me you threw those away?'

'I don't think so, sir.'

'You better not have. Or you'll be back on patrol next week. Go through every card. This time make sure you get everybody.'

Alone in his office, Littlemore identified himself to the vice president of the Metropolitan Tennis Association and asked whether an Edwin Fischer had ever won the United States Open.

'Edwin Fischer? replied the crackling voice. 'The gentleman in all the newspapers?'

'That's the one,' said Littlemore.

'Did he ever win the United States Open?'

'I asked you first,' replied Littlemore.

'Certainly,' said the vice president.

'How many times?' asked Littlemore.

'How many times?'

'Okay, I'll bite,' said the detective. 'More than three.'

'Oh, yes, it was at least four — mixed doubles. A record, I believe. He was number nine in the country back then. Still has one the best overheads in the game. How on earth did he know about the bombing?'

Littlemore hung up. A messenger entered his office and handed the detective a package containing a written report and an envelope. Inside the envelope was a small white tooth, broken cleanly into two pieces.

Littlemore met Younger in a diner that afternoon, reporting to him over acidic coffee that the redhead at Bellevue Hospital was still unconscious.

'She should have woken up,' said Younger. 'She wasn't shot in the head. There's no injury to her skull.'

'What about her voice?' asked Littlemore. 'Colette says she sounded like a man.'

'The growth on her neck must be impinging on her vocal cords. I took X-rays of her yesterday.'

'How'd you do that?' asked Littlemore.

Younger didn't answer that question: 'The X-rays didn't go through. In fact I've never seen anything like it. I'm going to New Haven tomorrow to see what Colette thinks of the films.'

'New Haven?' answered Littlemore. 'You can't leave the state, Doc. You're on bail for a major felony, remember?'

Younger nodded, apparently unimpressed by the argument. 'This is serious,' added Littlemore. 'They can put you away for jumping bail.'

'I'll keep that in mind.'

'Let me put it this way. If you go, I don't want to know about it. And whatever you do, you got to show up for your court date in a couple of months.'

'Why?'

'Because I posted the bail bond, for Pete's sake. If you don't show, they're going to seize my bank account and everything I own to pay the bond. Plus I'll probably get fired, since a law officer isn't supposed to bail his pal out of the joint in the first place — and especially not if the pal ends up on the lam. Okay? When did you stop caring about the law anyway?'

'If you're about to die in a storm,' answered Younger, 'and you see a barn where you could save yourself, do you stay outside and die or do you break in, even though it's against the law?'

'Of course you break in,' said Littlemore, 'if you're in the middle of nowhere.'

'Everywhere s the middle of nowhere.'

'No wonder the Miss wants to go back to Europe. You're so cheerful. Well, I got some news for you. The headless girl from Wall Street? They never identified her. She disappeared from the morgue body, head, and all.'

'Why am I not surprised to hear that?' asked Younger.

'The one good thing is that they had already done the autopsy. Guess what: she was missing a molar. Couple of molars, actually. It's not proof, but I'd say we found your Amelia. Found her and lost her, that is. Something else too. Look what my dental guys found.' The detective took out his magnifying glass and, in a handkerchief, two tiny halves of a tooth, which he set down on the table. He let Younger examine them through the magnifying glass. 'That's the tooth Amelia left for the Miss at your hotel. See the holes?'

Pockmarking the internal enamel — the inner surface of the tooth, exposed where it had been broken in two — were dozens of almost microscopic vesicles or pores.

'Caries?' said Younger.

'What's that?' replied Littlemore.

'Tooth decay.'

'Nope. The dental guys said it can't be normal decay because the outside of the tooth is too perfect. No discoloration even. It's like the tooth was being eaten away from within.'

Colette's letter arrived in Younger's hotel room the following morning. He read it lying in bed. The letter provoked in him a wave of contradictory feelings. He both wanted to go with Colette to Vienna and found himself contemptible for having that desire.

What kind of man would accompany a girl halfway across the world to find her long-lost lover? He pictured himself smiling as he was introduced to Hans Gruber. The image filled him with disgust. What exactly was he supposed to do in Vienna? And why exactly did she want him there?

It occurred to him at last that she did not want him there: that her reason for inviting him was simply that she needed money to pay for the trip. The realization made him stare at the ceiling for a long time. Surely not. Surely Colette would never stoop to using him for his money. Would she?

He wondered how, without his help, she intended to pay for the voyage. And he saw, of course, that she had no means.