The Death Instinct

'These dreadful cataracts,' Madame Curie went on. 'My surgery is next month. The doctors promise me a complete recovery. Let me look at you close up – why, you're lovelier than ever.'

Colette introduced Younger and explained to Madame Curie that he wished to ask her a few questions, if she could spare the time.

'Dr Stratham Younger,' said Madame Curie, shaking his hand. 'I know that name. Were you one of the soldiers who took training with us last year?'

'No, Madame, but I treated many with your X-ray units in France. America owes you an unrepayable debt.'

'I remember now,' she said. 'You were the one who initiated the entire program. I saw your name in the correspondence. I can't thank you enough. Your army kept us afloat last year when we had no other funding.'

Colette looked at Younger in surprise.

'The benefit was ours,' replied Younger. 'Your mobile radiological apparatus is far superior to anything we have. Which I only knew because Miss Rousseau was kind enough to volunteer her services to our men.'

'You never told me you worked with Americans,' Madame Curie said to Colette. 'We all have our secrets, don't we? Let me make some tea. How do you find America, my child?'

'Anything is possible there,' answered Colette. 'For good or bad – that's how one feels. You should see their radium refinery. Black smoke pours from the chimneys. Trucks roll up one after the other, depositing ore brought by train from mines in Colorado, two thousand miles away. The factory runs day and night – using your isolation process, Madame. They work with an ore called carnotite, not pitchblende. They say there is enough carnotite in America to make nine hundred grams of radium.'

Madame Curie went still for a long moment. 'Nine hundred grams,' she said at last. 'What I might do with ten. Forgive me. I'm not bitter. But you know that Pierre and I could have patented our discoveries long ago, when no one on earth had ever heard of radium or dreamt of radioactivity. Everyone told us to take out patents on our isolation processes, but we refused. That's not what science is for. Radium belongs to all mankind. Still, had we behaved a little more selfishly, I would not be without radium today, and with just a little radium we could do such things – cure so many – save the infant who might have grown up to be the next Newton. I have none left at all now. Only radon vapor. We have so many experiments waiting to be performed. Patients by the dozen whom we turn away.'

No one spoke.

'And how is the irrepressible Mrs Meloney?' Madame Curie asked Colette, resuming her energetic and cheerful tone. 'She is certainly one of your anything-is-possible Americans. Is there any chance she'll raise enough money to buy a gram of radium for us?'

'I'm afraid the fund is still short, Madame,' said Colette sadly. 'Very short.'

'Well, I never believed it would happen,' replied Madame Curie. 'She has a good heart, Mrs Meloney, but she is not very scientific in her thinking. Don't worry. If there is no American gram of radium for us, I won't be unhappy. I won't have to travel across the ocean and make a lot of speeches. You know how I hate that sort of thing. I'm much too tired for it. But what can I do for you, Dr Younger?'

'I had hoped,' said Younger, 'with your permission, Madame, that I might make a drawing for you. I took some radiographs of a young woman's neck not long ago. The X-rays made a pattern I had never seen before. I can draw it, though, and I was hoping you might be able to tell me if it means anything to you.'

'Madame is not a roentgenologist, Stratham,' Colette chided him. 'She works with radium, not X-rays.'

'It's quite all right,' replied Madame Curie. 'Let him make us his drawing. I'm curious.'

Younger was given pen and paper; he proceeded to draw. He filled a page with the strange, undulating, cross-hatched shadow pattern that he had seen after X-raying the McDonald girl. When he had finished, Madame Curie held the sheet of paper close to her eyes, then far away, then close again. 'The X-rays,' she said, 'didn't pass through the woman's neck.'

'Exactly,' replied Younger. 'Something blocked them.'

'Or rather interfered with them,' replied Madame Curie. 'You're sure what you saw were X-rays of a person – not an object of some kind?'

'I took them myself. The young woman had a growth on her neck and jaw. Granular. Larger than any such growth I'd ever seen.'

'I know this pattern. Quite well.'

'It's radium, isn't it?' asked Younger.

'Radium?' repeated Colette.

'Without question,' said Madame Curie.

'But how-?' asked Colette.

'Radium is roentgenopaque – impervious to X-rays,' explained Madame Curie. 'What's more, the gamma rays emitted by radium atoms have physical properties virtually identical to X-rays. As a result, the two sets of waves interfere with one another. When an object containing radium is X-rayed, what we see is an interference pattern – this pattern.'

'What would happen,' asked Younger, 'to a person who had radium inside her body for an extended period of time?'

Madame Curie set the drawing down. 'You must understand one thing about radium,' she said, 'how little we comprehend it. Nature kept it hidden for so very long. Within the atoms of radium, there is a cauldron of forces we can't see, a source of almost immeasurable power. Somehow the release of these atomic forces has profound effects on living things. On inanimate lead, radioactivity has hardly any impact at all. On a piece of lifeless paper, the same. But on the living, the effect is profound, unpredictable. Administered properly, it holds unprecedented medical potential. I myself discovered the radium treatment for cancer; in France, when we insert a needle of radium into a cancerous tumor, it is referred to as Curietherapy.'

'In America too, Madame,' said Colette.

'Some think that radioactivity may be the long-sought fountain of youth,' Madame Curie went on. 'Unquestionably it has curative power. But radium is also one of the most dangerous elements on earth. Its radiation seems to interact in some unknown fashion with the molecular structure of life itself. It is a fearsome poison. If a person were to ingest it in any quantity, the case would be hopeless. There is absolutely no means of destroying the substance once it enters the human body.'

Outside the Radium Institute, Colette said, 'But how could Miss McDonald have radium inside her?'

'On September sixteenth,' answered Younger, 'where were you before you met Littlemore and me – before we all went down to Wall Street?'

'I had just visited the radium clinic,' said Colette, 'at the Post-Graduate Hospital.'

'Where they use Curietherapy,' he said. 'You were telling Littlemore and me about it that morning. I knew the McDonald girl didn't have syphilis.'

'What are you saying?'

'She has cancer. A cancer of the neck or jaw.'

'Wait – you think she was a patient at the radium clinic?'

'Let's say Miss McDonald had cancer. If her doctors knew what they were doing, they would have sent her to the Post-Graduate Hospital for treatment; it's the best radium clinic in the city. But something might have gone wrong there. Maybe they botched the treatment and couldn't find the needle of radium they put inside her. Didn't I read about the Post-Graduate Hospital losing ten thousand dollars' worth of radium not long ago? Maybe they lost it inside that girl's neck. After a few weeks, she'd be in agony. She goes back to the clinic and begs them for help. They deny any wrongdoing; they refuse to admit their mistake. Suddenly she sees you. Somehow she gets it into her head that you can help her. She decides to follow you.'

'How could I help her?'

'I don't know, but what other explanation is there?'

A thought occurred to Colette: 'But Amelia left us the note at our hotel the night before – for the kidnapping ring, according to you. You're saying Miss McDonald had no connection to Amelia?'

'I don't know. But someone has to remove the radium from Miss McDonald's neck. God knows what it will do to her. I'll wire Littlemore.'