Then something unexpected took place. He had assumed he would be a pariah because of his divorce, which was not proscribed in Boston society, but was not regarded favorably Instead, his social reputation soared. Whether due to his respectable position at Harvard, or the notoriety attaching to his supposed affair in New York, or, most likely, the inheritance that fell into his lap from his mother's Schermerhorn relatives, Younger became a prize commodity in both Boston and New York. At first he refused all invitations. But after two years playing the reclusive scientist, he began to go out. To his surprise, he enjoyed it.
He lent his arm to coveted young women at society events. He kissed their fingers and danced with them as if he were courting. But he never was; the society girls bored him. He preferred actresses, and in New York he was infamously seen with them. Over these years, there were only three women he slept with — and even those he could stand only for short stretches of time. A moment arrived when he was simultaneously the most eligible and most hated man in two cities. Even the actresses generally ended up enraged. Every year, he expected society to revolt against him and put him under a ban. But somehow the number of mothers believing that their daughter might be the one to land him only increased. In 1917, at a party in the Waldorf celebrating the coming out of the pretty Miss Denby, the debutante's charming mother pressed him so assiduously to dance with her daughter that he made a conscious show of partnering with every girl other than Miss Denby. He drank to such excess that he didn't remember leaving the ball and woke the next morning in a hotel room with an unknown female beside him. It turned out to be Mrs Denby.
A few weeks later, the United States declared war. He enlisted at once.
When Younger got back to his townhouse, the afternoon mail had come, and with it a letter from Colette. He opened it still standing in his hallway:
25-9-1920
Dearest Stratham,
I can't do what you ask. I realize now that everything that's happened in America has been a sign telling me to go back to Europe. God must want me to. Vows are sacred. I have to honour mine, no matter how rash or wrong I was to make it. Maybe I will see when I'm there that he is not the one. But God puts these feelings in our hearts: of that I'm sure. I beg you to understand — and to come with me. I need you.
Yours,
Colette
He didn't understand. Why say she 'needed' him when she so obviously didn't? If it was money she needed, he wished she would simply ask him for it outright.
Rummaging through his mail, Younger found a statement from his bank. With a cold eye, he observed that his balance, once a thing of six figures — that was before he'd bought his house — had shrunk to four, and the first of those four was a one. Ever since Younger had come into his inheritance, he had turned over his professor's salary and, later, his soldier's wages to one or another insufferable Bostonian charity. He had lived without thought of money. The bequest having fallen into his lap, he had determined never to let it become an anchor.
He knew he would give it to Colette — the money for her passage — fool though that would make him. All she had to do was ask. He threw on some evening clothes, and went out. At the Post Office, he dropped off the following scribbled reply:
September 25, 1920
Since it's God's will, go with Him.
— Stratham
Littlemore, arriving home late and frustrated Saturday night, found his wife in a state of distress. Her mother, a robust little woman who spoke only Italian, was next to her. 'They came for Joey,' Betty exclaimed, referring to her younger brother.
'Who did?' asked Littlemore.
'You — the police,' answered Betty.
It turned out that policemen had paid a visit to Betty's mother's apartment on the Lower East Side looking for Joey, a dockworker who still lived with his mother. Mrs Longobardi told the police he was out, which was true. They entered and ransacked the apartment, seizing newspapers, magazines, and letters from relatives in Italy.
'They say they're going to arrest him,' Betty concluded. 'Arrest him and deport him.'
'What kind of policemen?' asked Littlemore.' What were they wearing?'
Betty translated this question. The policemen, Mrs Longobardi answered, were wearing dark jackets and ties.
'Flynn,' said Littlemore.
On Sunday morning, Younger didn't wake rested. In fact he didn't wake at all, because he had never gone to sleep. When he got back to his house, unshaven, tie askew, it was well after dawn. Making himself coffee, he decided it was high time he got back to work.
He hadn't written a scientific paper since 1917. He hadn't even contacted Harvard about resuming his professorship. But he did have notes from the experiments he had conducted during the war; there was a paper on the medical use of maggots he wanted to write; and he did have an old set of patients who would probably be delighted to make him their doctor once again. It was time to return to his senses.
He went to his study and began organizing his papers and his finances.
At dusk he jerked awake — having fallen asleep at his desk — heart pounding with a dream whose final image he could still see. Colette had come straight back to America after her Austrian voyage. She had cabled him: she didn't care for Hans Gruber after all; it was he, Younger, whom she loved. He waited for her in Boston Harbor. She came running down from the ship, but when she reached him she froze, her green eyes shrinking from him in horror. He limped to a mirror. In it he saw what she had seen. During her five weeks' absence, he had aged fifty years.
Skipping church and canceling his usual weekly visit to his father in Staten Island, Littlemore returned on Sunday to the police garage. He climbed inside the kidnappers' car and went through it minutely again, even though the vehicle had already been fully searched and inventoried by other policemen. He was rewarded with exactly one discovery. Wedged deep in a crevice between seat back and seat cushion, Littlemore found a scrap of Western Union paper. It was not a telegram, but a receipt, showing only that some message had been sent somewhere by some customer.
With a few weeks at his disposal, and a dozen men pounding the pavement, such a receipt might conceivably have been tracked to its originating office. But Littlemore didn't have the men, he didn't have the time, and sending a telegram obviously didn't count as evidence of a crime.
The telephone rang in Younger's house on Sunday evening. He answered it, cursing himself for hoping it was Colette. It wasn't.
'What are you doing in Boston?' asked Littlemore s voice.
'I live here,' answered Younger.
'I left you messages all weekend at the Commodore. You didn't tell me you were going to Boston.'
'You told me not to tell you if I left town.'
'Oh yeah — good point,' said Littlemore. The detective described the unfortunate turn of events. 'Drobac gets out of prison tomorrow afternoon. I'm sorry, Doc. And I'm worried. Seems like Drobac's lawyer knew all kinds of things about Colette, including that she was up in New Haven. How would he know that? I think they've got somebody tailing the Miss. Or maybe somebody she knows in New Haven reports to these guys, whoever they are. I'll tell you what: after Drobac gets out, I don't know where is safe for her. I think the Miss and her brother should go into hiding.'
Younger rang off, grabbed his coat and hat, and left to make arrangements. When he'd finished, he sent a wire for immediate delivery to Colette:
YOU AND LUC MUST LEAVE AT ONCE STOP DROBAC BEING
RELEASED FROM JAIL TOMORROW STOP GENUINE DANGER
STOP HE KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE STOP I HAVE BOOKED
YOU A CABIN ON THESS WELSHMAN LEAVING NEW YORK
HARBOR FIVE-THIRTY PM MONDAY FOR HAMBURG STOP
LITTLEMORE WILL BE THERE WITH TICKETS STOP TELL NO
ONE REPEAT NO ONE
Because it was a Sunday night, Younger was obliged to pay a king's ransom to get this telegram sent and to have it hand-delivered upon transmission. Unfortunately, Western Union's hastily hired delivery boy in New Hav
en couldn't distinguish among Yale University's dormitories, and the telegram was slipped under the door of the wrong residence.
Colette, returning to her room Sunday night after working late at the laboratory, found the door unlocked. This dismayed her. She had told Luc over and over to keep the door locked; he didn't listen to anything she said anymore. Colette stepped into the silent darkness of her dormitory room. It shouldn't have been so dark — or silent. Could Luc already be asleep? He never went to bed until she made him.
The air felt damp, heavy, pregnant. She fumbled to turn on a lamp, but couldn't find the switch. Then she heard dripping — as if it were raining, but inside. The sound came from her bedroom.
'Luc?' she called out. No answer came. She felt her way to the bedroom, found a light, switched it on.
The room was empty. The boy's narrow bed was undisturbed. On the ceiling, drops of water were forming and falling into a puddle on the floor.
One flight above lived a graduate student in divinity and his kind wife, who had often taken Luc and watched him when Colette was at work. In fact Luc had a standing invitation from these neighbors to come up to their kitchen for milk and cookies any time he wanted — an invitation he'd taken advantage of more than once. The leak was surely coming from their apartment. Luc must be up there as well, Colette thought.
She went out into the unlit common stairwell of the dormitory building and, groping in the darkness, found the handrail and climbed the steps. A light showed beneath her friends' door. She knocked; the door swung open. The small apartment was bright, silent, and still. The living-room window was open, its curtain fluttering. Colette called out the names of her friends; there was no answer.
Colette's heart began to beat faster. The divinity student and his wife shouldn't have been out; they were always home at night. Colette went to the kitchen, which was empty, but the icebox door was open, which was wrong; one always shut one's icebox door. Then she heard the sound of water running. A door from the kitchen led to the bathroom. Colette looked down: from the bottom of that door, water was seeping out onto the kitchen floor. Colette opened the bathroom door.
No one was there. The bath was running, unattended. The tub was full; water overflowed onto the tile floor. Colette didn't shut off the tap. Instead, for no reason she could have explained, she ran back to the living room, pulled open the window curtain, and looked down into the courtyard outside. Luc was there.
He was standing under a tree near a lamppost, a glass of milk in one hand, a cookie in the other, staring at a female figure who was on her knees, looking into his eyes, her wispy hair tinged red in the lamplight. The girl's lined face was strained and taut. She could almost have been pretty, if the eyes hadn't been so frightful — eyes that had seen something unspeakable or were contemplating something unspeakable. She unbuttoned her dress and pulled it open, showing the boy her throat and her naked chest. Though her face was as taut as a madwoman's, her throat and chest were unmarred, white, soft — almost radiant. The glass slipped from Luc's hands. It fell to the grass, and so didn't break, but for a moment a circle of white milk glistened in the darkness at his feet. The figure stretched out her arms as if beckoning him to her.
Colette cried out from the upstairs window. She ran into the hallway and down the stairs. When she heaved open the heavy front door, other voices in the courtyard were crying an alarm too — but they were calling out to her, not to Luc. The girl under the tree had disappeared.
The other voices belonged to Colette's upstairs neighbors — the divinity student and his wife — who breathlessly declared that they had in their possession a telegram that Colette must read at once. They had been home when an undergraduate came knocking with a message from Western Union erroneously delivered to him. The moment the couple read the urgent wire, they ran off to Colette's laboratory, telling Luc to stay behind and wait; they had rushed so precipitously that the divinity student had left his bathtub running. But when they reached the laboratory, Colette had already left.
After Colette had taken Luc back to their room, after she had read the message, after the neighbors had retired upstairs, she looked at her brother. 'Did she touch you?' asked Colette.
The boy shook his head. He pointed to his neck and made signs with his hands, which Colette understood.
'Yes, I saw it too,' she answered. 'The aura.'
Detective Littlemore returned to the law library early Monday morning. It took him several hours, but he finally found what he was looking for. Armed with this knowledge, he set off for the Astor Hotel, where
Chief Flynn had set up his command post. Littlemore picked up a couple of hot dogs on the way.
Inside the Astor, ignoring the protests of a secretary, Littlemore ambled directly up to Flynn's closed door, outside which his two familiar deputies were standing guard. One of them rubbed his jaw on seeing the detective.
'Big Bill around?' Littlemore asked them. Receiving no answer, Littlemore said, 'I'll just knock, if you don't mind.'
Both deputies placed their hands on Littlemore's chest. 'We mind,' said the one who had been to the detective's house.
'No problem,' said Littlemore, taking a bite of his hot dog. 'I'll come back in a few hours. Got to go to court anyway. Make out an arrest warrant. Say, you know those soldiers Big Bill stationed outside the Treasury Building? Reason I ask is the Posse Comitatus Act. You don't want a dog, do you? I got two.'
The deputies stared at Littlemore.
'See, the Posse Comitatus Act,' continued the detective, 'that's a federal law, and it says that anyone who orders any part of the United States army to deploy on US soil for law enforcement purposes — well, he's breaking the law. Anyone except the President, that is. So do me a favor. Tell Big Bill that Captain Littlemore of the New York Police Department's coming back at five o'clock with a gang of reporters and a warrant for his arrest. And tell him that the reporters are going to want to know what he's hiding inside the Treasury.'
On the fifth floor of the massive, gray, chateau-inspired jail known as the Tombs, the order was given at two-thirty Monday afternoon to unlock a temporary detention cell. The flesh around Drobac's eyes remained swollen and bruised. His mouth was wired shut, and a circular metal apparatus was clamped around his jaw and cheeks.
A well-dressed lawyer, highly satisfied with the proceedings, entered the cell the moment it was unlocked, accompanied by the murderer's surgeon. They each reached for one of the prisoner's arms to assist him from his cot. Drobac shrugged off their hands and rose on his own.
Littlemore stood a long way off, at the other end of a long corridor, chewing his toothpick, a barred door separating him from the cells. Several guards and officers milled about near him, including Roederheusen and Stankiewicz. Younger, having come down from Boston that morning, was there as well.
'You sure you want to see this?' Littlemore asked him.
Younger nodded.
At the end of the corridor, Drobac emerged from his cell, walking slowly, unaided, his wired chin held ostentatiously high. Lawyer and surgeon followed behind, chatting with each other.
'In that case I'll need your gun, Doc,' said Littlemore in a low voice.
'What gun?' answered Younger just as quietly.
'Right now,' said Littlemore.
Younger didn't move. Slanted light fell on Drobac and his coterie as they approached.
'Boys,' said Littlemore, raising his voice very slightly, 'restrain Dr Younger.'
Roederheusen and Stankiewicz stepped up behind Younger and seized his arms.
Littlemore reached into Younger's jacket, drew out a revolver, and handed it to a prison guard for safekeeping. 'Sorry, Doc. Cuff him.'
Arriving at the barred door, Drobac saw Younger being handcuffed. Their eyes met. If a man can smile with his jaw wired shut, Drobac smiled.
'Open the gate,' ordered Littlemore.
'Don't let him go,' said Younger, hands locked behind his back and arms still in the grasp of Stankiewicz and Roederheusen.<
br />
'Open it,' Littlemore repeated.
A guard opened the barred gate. Drobac's lawyer spoke: 'Thank you, Captain. I'm glad my little conversation with the Mayor was so effective, but I shudder to think of all the other impoverished men in here unconstitutionally. Do you enjoy breaking the law, Captain? Sign the release, please.'
A clerk handed Littlemore a clipboard. 'If your client's so poor,' asked the detective, 'who's footing your bill, Mr-?'
'Gleason,' replied the lawyer. 'I charge nothing for a case like this, Captain. It's pro bono publico.'
'Sure it is,' said Littlemore.
'Don't let him out,' said Younger.
'No choice,' said Littlemore, signing the release. 'The law.'
Mr Gleason accepted his copy of the release with relish. He addressed Younger: 'So you're the one who beat my client within an inch of his life. We're pressing charges, you know.'
Younger didn't reply.
'How agonizing it must be,' Gleason continued, 'to stand there believing the fantastic delusions you do. That my client is a highly trained killer. That he's going to pursue the pretty French girl no matter where she runs, from New Haven to Hamburg to the farthest ends of the earth. That one night he'll find her, slip into her bedroom, and cut her throat.'
Younger's straining at his handcuffs only caused Roederheusen and Stankiewicz to hold him more firmly. 'Not if I find him first,' he said.
'You heard that, Captain!' crowed Gleason. 'He threatened my client. I demand that you revoke his bail. He belongs behind bars. I'll have your badge, Captain, if you don't.'
'Get out,' said Littlemore.
'Very well — if you insist,' replied the lawyer. He turned to Younger again: 'My client was in jail ten days. You'll be there twenty years.'
Younger was silenced by these words. Not, however, by the threat; it was the phrase ten days that caught his attention. 'Littlemore,' he said as Gleason guided Drobac toward the stairwell that led to freedom. 'Have him take off his shirt.'
The Death Instinct Page 21
