The Death Instinct

'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.

Chapter Ten

At the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighty-seventh Street, a stone's throw from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stood a grand mansion in the classical style. On Tuesday morning before the sun had risen, Littlemore instructed Roederheusen to cover the back of that mansion while he approached the front door.

There was no activity in the house. Fifth Avenue was quiet at five in the morning; a lone omnibus clattered down the street. One block north, a limousine idled on the park side of the avenue. Littlemore wondered whether it was Speyer's car, waiting to take him to the harbor.

Littlemore rang the front bell — and rang again and again, when no one answered. At last he heard footsteps on stairs. A light went on in the foyer.

'What is it? Who's there?' called a man's voice from behind the door, with the same German accent Littlemore had heard at Delmonico's.

In his best cockney accent, which was fair, Littlemore said, 'Is there a Mr Speyer in the house? Sailing today on the Imperator? Message for him from the Captain.' The Imperator was a British ship, its crew English.

'The Captain?' asked Speyer, opening the door.

'Yeah,' said Littlemore, pushing through and entering the foyer. 'The Police Captain you played for a sap on Sunday.'

Speyer, in a burgundy satin bathrobe, belted at the waist, fell back a step. 'I wronged you, Officer. I ask your forgiveness.'

'Turn around,' said Littlemore.

Speyer complied, saying, 'I ask you to forgive me.'

Littlemore jangled his handcuffs behind Speyer. 'Give me one good reason not to haul you downtown for absconding from a police officer.'

'I broke faith with you. Please forgive me.'

'Stow the forgiveness thing, will you?' said Littlemore, handcuffing Speyer.

'Sorry,' said Speyer. 'I was required to ask three times today. How much do you want? I'll give you whatever you want.'

'Now you're bribing me? That's five more years in the pen.'

'I beg your pardon. I assumed you were shaking me down.'

'Shaking you down. Pretty good English for a German. What did you do that I'd be shaking you down for?'

'I'm not German,' said Speyer, pronouncing the G in German with a hard Ch. 'I was born in this city. I'm as American as you are.'

'Sure you are,' said the detective. 'That's why you bankrolled the German army after we declared war.'

'Not me — my relatives, who live in Frankfurt. I had nothing to do with it.'

'Then why did your pal the Kaiser make you a knight of the Red Eagle?'

'That was in 1912,' protested Speyer. 'And if that makes a man a traitor, you should have arrested J. P. Morgan. He received the Eagle too.'

For the first time, Littlemore was caught off guard: 'Morgan?'

'Yes. He won it the year before I did.'

'If you're such a patriot,' said the detective, 'why are you skipping out of the country?'

'Skipping out? I'm going to Hamburg to have some very important contracts signed. I'll be home the eighth of October.'

'Show me those contracts,' said Littlemore. 'And your return ticket.'