'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
