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.'
They found an international cable office in the Place de la Concorde. Younger dashed off a telegram to Littlemore:
MCDONALD GIRL HAS NEEDLE OF RADIUM IN NECK STOP CHECK
WITH POST-GRADUATE HOSPITAL ON TWENTIETH STREET TO SEE
IF SHE WAS PATIENT THERE STOP THEY MAY KNOW WHERE IN
NECK RADIUM IS STOP RADIUM MUST BE REMOVED AT ONCE
REPEAT AT ONCE
'The radiation will burn her throat away,' said Younger as they waited on line for the telegraph operator. 'It could have reached her brain by now. That's probably why she can't regain consciousness.'
'There's no evidence that radium has any effect on the brain,' objected Colette. 'You always overstate radium's danger. Madame is exposed to more radiation than anyone, and she doesn't wear one of your diver's suits.'
'Madame Curie didn't seem particularly healthy to me. She's pale as a lamb. Fatigued. You told me her blood pressure is low.'
'She's a scientist. She stays inside all day.'
'Or else she's anemic,' said Younger. 'She probably has radiation in her bloodstream after all these years.'
'Next you'll say radium caused her cataracts.'
'How do you know it didn't?'
Younger sent the cable. Outside the office, Colette saw a hotel on the other side of the Place de la Concorde. 'Can we get rooms there?' she asked.
'The Crillon?' said Younger, flinching inwardly. 'Why not?'
At Marie Curie's invitation, they attended a crowded dinner party that evening: a celebration of Poland's newfound independence and miraculous victory against the Bolsheviks. The celebration was held in a small apartment — Younger never found out whom it belonged to — where the guests ate standing up. Toasts were raised, a great deal of
Polish was spoken, and an even greater quantity of flavored vodka was drunk.
Madame Curie took Colette under her wing the entire evening as if the girl were her daughter. Colette was still wearing the stylish dress, with its low-cut back, that she'd worn in Prague. It was true that she had nothing else to wear, but Younger nevertheless considered the dress too revealing. Plumed and pomaded Polish men flocked continuously around Madame Curie, doubtless moved by the opportunity to converse with one of the world's greatest scientists. The men bowed deeply when introduced to Colette; they twisted the ends of their moustaches; they kissed her hand. Invariably Colette averted her eyes, flashing a glance at Younger as if she knew he would be watching, which he was.
