The Death Instinct

The manager, eyeing distastefully Younger's blood-spattered suit, removed the conical receiver from the front desk telephone and held it in suspense as if it were a weapon. 'On the contrary,' he said. 'I personally gave Dr Younger his key two hours ago, after receiving incontestable proofs of identity.' Into the receiver, he added primly to the hotel operator, 'Get me the police.'

'They're already here,' answered a voice behind Younger. Littlemore, having parked his car, now joined Younger at the front desk. He displayed his badge. 'Dr Younger's wallet's been stolen. You gave his key to an impostor.'

The manager regarded the disheveled and dust-covered Littlemore with undiminished suspicion. He scrutinized Littlemore's badge through his spectacles and, still holding the telephone receiver to his ear, declared his intention to speak with the police to 'confirm the detective's identity.'

Cigarette protruding dangerously close to his jungle of beard, Drobac rifled the contents of Colette's laboratory case. He found two flasks, a half-dozen rubber-stoppered test tubes filled with bright green and yellow powders, and several jagged-edged pieces of ore. These rocks, as large as sirloin steaks, were jet-black, but they glistened as if made of congealed oil, and they were marbled with rich veins of gleaming gold and silver. Drobac stuffed his pockets, leaving nothing behind.

'Any dental offices in the hotel?' Littlemore asked the manager while the latter waited for his telephone call to be answered.

'Certainly not,' said the manager. 'The lines are engaged, I'm afraid. Perhaps you'd like to take a seat?'

'I got a better idea,' said Littlemore, dangling a set of handcuffs over the counter. 'You hand over the key or I take you downtown for obstructing a police investigation. That way you can confirm my identity in person.'

The manager handed over the key.

Inside a plush elevator car, the detective and doctor ascended in silence. When the doors finally opened, Younger exited so precipitously he knocked the hat off a man who had been waiting for the car. Younger noticed the man's profuse beard and teeming mustache. But he didn't notice the peculiar way the man's dingy striped jacket tugged down at his shoulders — as if his pockets were loaded with shot.

Younger apologized, reaching for the hat on the carpet. Drobac got to it first.

'Going down,' said the elevator operator.

Whatever Younger hoped or feared to find in Colette's hotel room, he didn't find it. Instead, at the end of an endless corridor, he and Littlemore found — a hotel room. The bed was made. The cot was made. The suitcases were undisturbed. On a coffee table, sprays of burnt matchsticks fanned out in tidy semicircles: the boy's handiwork.

Only Colette's lead-lined laboratory case, lying open and empty in front of her closet, testified to a trespass. Cigarette odor hung in the stifled air.

'That's what they came for,' said Younger grimly. 'That case.'

'Nope,' said the detective, opening closets and checking behind curtains. 'They left the case.'

Younger looked at Littlemore with incredulity and vexation. He took a step toward the open laboratory box.

'Don't touch it, Doc,' the detective added, glancing into the bathroom. 'We'll want to dust it for prints. What was inside?'

'Rare elements,' said Younger. 'For a lecture she was supposed to give. The radium alone was worth ten thousand dollars.'

The detective whistled: 'Who knew?'

'Besides a professor in New Haven, I can think of only one person, and she's no kidnapper.'

Littlemore, checking under the bed, replied: 'The old lady you and Colette visited this morning?'

'That's right.'

With his magnifying glass and a tweezer, the detective began examining, on hands and knees, the carpet surrounding Colette's laboratory case. 'Wait a second. Wait a second.'

'What?' asked Younger.

Littlemore, having pried a bit of cigarette ash from the thick pile of the carpet, was rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. 'This is still warm,' he said. 'Somebody just left.'

Littlemore bolted back into the hall, heading for the elevators. Younger didn't follow. Instead he went to Colette's balcony door and stepped out into the night. Far below, in the light flooding out of the hotel's front doors, Younger saw the man he somehow knew he would see, standing by the curb in his striped suit.

Younger called out: 'You!'

No one heard. Younger was too high up, and the street noise was too great. A car skidded up next to the striped suit, its rear door opening from within. The sudden, swerving halt threw a small body — a little boys body — half out of the car. A moment later, the boy was snatched back inside by invisible hands.

'No,' said Younger. Then he called out at the top of his lungs: 'Stop that car!'

This time Drobac hesitated. He looked up, searching but not finding the source of the cry. No one else took notice. Younger shouted the same futile words again as the man climbed into the backseat, and again as the car sped down Park Avenue, its headlamps and taillamps going suddenly dark, disappearing into the night. Two drops of Younger's blood, flung from his hair as he cried out, drifted downward and broke on the sidewalk not far from where the man had stood.

By the time the echo of Younger's voice had died, Littlemore was back in the room, having heard the doctor's shouts.

'It was the man at the elevator,' said Younger.

'The guy with the hair,' replied Littlemore, 'and the bulging pockets? Are you sure?'

Younger looked at the detective. Then he slowly lifted the coffee table — the one with Luc's matches on it — off the floor and hurled it into a mirrored closet door. There was no satisfying explosion of glass. The mirror only cracked, as did the coffee table. Burnt match- sticks spun in the air, like maple seedpods spiraling down in autumn.

'Jesus, Doc,' said Littlemore.

'You saw something in his pockets,' Younger replied quietly. 'Why didn't you stop him?'

'For having something in his pockets?'

'If you had stationed a single man in front of the hotel,' said Younger, 'we could have caught him.'

'I doubt it,' said Littlemore. 'You know you're bleeding pretty good.'

'What do you mean you doubt it?'

'If I put a uniform outside the front door,' the detective explained, 'the guy doesn't use the front door. He goes out a side door. Or a back door. We would have needed six men minimum.'

'Then why didn't you bring six men?' asked Younger, advancing toward Littlemore.

'Easy, Doc.'

'Why didn't you?'

'You want to know why? Besides the fact that I had no reason to,

I couldn't have gotten six men if I had tried. I couldn't have gotten one. The force is a little busy tonight, in case you hadn't noticed. I'm not even supposed to be here.'

Instead of responding, Younger shoved Littlemore in the chest. 'Go back then.'

"What's the matter with you?' asked Littlemore.

'I'll tell you why you didn't stop him. You weren't paying any goddamned attention.'

'Me? Who waited four hours before noticing that his girlfriend had disappeared when she was supposed to be gone for half an hour?'

'Because you took her,' shouted Younger, taking a straight left jab at Littlemore's head. The detective ducked this blow, but Younger, who know how to fight, had thrown a punch designed to make Littlemore tin just that Younger followed it with a clean right, putting Littlemore on the carpet and taking a lamp down with him.

'Son of a gun,' said Littlemore from the floor, his lip bloody.

He sprang toward Younger, charging low and driving him backward all the way across the room. Younger's head snapped back against the wall. When they came to a standstill, Littlemore had his right fist raised and ready, but Younger was staring blankly over his shoulder.

'How many died today?' asked Younger. 'Thirty?'