The Death Instinct (16 page)

    The two men walked halfway down that alley, the top-hatted gentleman pointing up to the second floors of the not-quite-abutting buildings. There, one story above the street, what looked strangely like garage doors in midair faced each other across the alley. Attorney General Palmer shook his head grimly, then informed the gentleman that he would be quitting New York the next day. The investigation of the bombing would remain in the hands of Bureau Director Flynn. Palmer himself would travel on to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, to visit with family.

    The Marie Curie Radium Fund held a special lecture presentation on September 17, 1920, in the Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue. The Fund was the brainchild of Mrs William B. Meloney, a well- upholstered lady of a certain age, well known in New York philanthropic and literary circles. Mrs Meloney was a working woman, a newspaper woman, who by virtue of her tireless reporting on Manhattan high society had eventually taken a place in it. Like many American women, Mrs Meloney had avidly followed - indeed she had reported on - the travails of the great Marie Curie of France.

    'How outrageous it is,' declared the bow-tied Mrs Meloney from the opulent but somber church chancel, 'that Madame Curie, the world's most eminent scientist, the discoverer of radium, should for mere want of money be prohibited from continuing her investigations - investigations that have already led to the radium cure for our cancers, the radium face and hand creams that eliminate our unsightly blemishes' - Mrs Meloney was, in addition to her other pursuits, editor of a leading woman's magazine - 'and the radium-infused waters that restore conjugal vitality to our husbands.'

    The audience, almost exclusively female, applauded warmly.

    Mrs Meloney congratulated her listeners for their fortitude in coming out only one day after the terrible tragedy on Wall Street. 'It has always been woman's lot,' she said, 'to persevere when man's violent passions overwhelm him. And persevere we must. The cost of a gram of radium is appalling - a hundred thousand dollars - but the sum must be raised. The honor of America's women has been pledged. I myself pledged it - to Madame Curie herself, at her home in Paris - and it is now the obligation of every one of us to contribute generously to the Fund, or make our husbands contribute.'

    As the ladies applauded once again, the front door of the church creaked noisily.

    'Thank heavens,' said Mrs Meloney, 'here is Miss Rousseau at last. We were growing concerned, my dear.'

    The audience of fashionable ladies swiveled. Colette walked up the cavernous central aisle in silence, a picture of self-consciousness, lugging with two hands the heavy case of sample ores and radioactive elements. She murmured an apology, but her faint voice failed to carry in the huge, dimly lit Gothic church, with its great columns and vaulted ceiling. Colette had expected a few women in a small lecture room, not two hundred in a place of worship, assembled before a pulpit with a larger-than-life-sized crucifixion on the enormous reredos behind it.

    'Over the last several weekends,' Mrs Meloney continued, 'along with Miss Rousseali - who studied with Madame Curie herself in Paris and who will shortly enlighten us on "The Wonders of Radium" - I have been making a tour of the largest factories in America where radium products are made. We have sought to impress upon the owners of these factories how much they owe to Madame Curie. Our efforts have not been in vain, as I will soon have the pleasure of announcing to you.'

    Here Mrs Meloney exchanged a knowing glance with a plump, impeccably dressed gentleman seated to her left, who gestured to the audience munificently. She then turned the pulpit over to Colette, who, smiling to cover her strenuous effort, hoisted the case of elements up the steps to the chancel.

    'Thank you, Mrs Meloney,' said Colette. The pallor of her cheeks was attributed by her audience to her foreign birth. 'It is my warm honor and my privilege to give whatever small assistance I can to the Marie Curie Radium Fund.'

    Colette paused, somehow expecting that her audience might applaud the name of Marie Curie. Instead there was a noticeable silence.

    'Well, I begin,' she resumed, trying to press flat onto the lectern the curling pages on which she had carefully written out her presentation. 'Twenty-four years ago, Henri Becquerel, a French scientist, placed a dish of uranium crystals next to a wrapped photographic plate in a closed drawer and left them there for over a week. Was he conducting an experiment? No - Monsieur Becquerel was only cleaning up his laboratory, and he forgot where he put his uranium!'

    Colette waited for laughter; none came.

    'But when he unwrapped the photographic plate, he found an image on it - which should have been impossible, because the plate had not been exposed to light. Thus was the mystery of atomic radiation discovered, quite by accident! Two years later, in 1898, Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, solved this mystery. Madame Curie proved that uranium's atoms emit invisible rays, and she coined a word for this phenomenon - radioactivity. Working in almost complete isolation, Madame Curie discovered two new elements previously unknown to man. The first she called polonium, after her native Poland; the second and by far the more powerful, she called radium. The potential energy of radium is so great it is almost impossible to describe with normal measures. You are familiar with horsepower? A single gram of radium contains an energy equivalent to that of eighty thousand million horses.'

    Colette paused again, expecting a gasp at so enormous a figure. The only sound was the rustling of women's skirts and gloves.

    'Such power,' Colette went on, speaking now a little too quickly, 'if released at once, would be enough to destroy every building in New York City in one terrible explosion. But science has found a way to harness radioactivity to save lives rather than destroy. Doctors today insert micrograms of radium, encased in tiny glass nodules, directly into a cancer patient's tumor. In weeks, the tumor is gone. All over the world today, because of radium, people are alive and well who would have died from cancer only a few years ago.' Here was a pronouncement the audience was in fact prepared to applaud, but this time, her nervousness growing, Colette failed to pause. 'Now I will demonstrate for you one of the extraordinary by-products of radioactivity: luminescence.'

    'Oh, my child,' said Mrs Meloney, 'you're going to experiment - in church? Do you think that appropriate?'

    'It will be only a small demonstration,' said Colette.

    'All right,' said Mrs Meloney. 'But let's not demonstrate very long, shall we?'

    Gathering two vials from her case, Colette stood awkwardly in the pulpit. The awkwardness lay in the absence of a table. Colette needed to combine the two compounds. Smiling nervously, Colette knelt to the floor and set her materials down. This allowed her to work with both hands; unfortunately it also made her invisible to her audience.

    Suddenly there was an outburst of clapping. Colette looked up, puzzled. The ladies' attention was fixed on the plump gentleman behind her, who, beaming jovially, had raised his fists high over his head. From each hand dangled a wristwatch, casting a greenish phosphorescent glow.

    'There's your luminescence, Miss Rousseau,' announced the gentleman. 'There's the magic of radium.'

    More applause.

    'Thank you, sir,' cried Mrs Meloney, 'you are a knight in shining armor. And thank you, Miss Rousseau, for that most educational lecture.'

    'But I -' began Colette, who had only just started.

    'And now, my friends,' continued Mrs Meloney, 'for the most gratifying portion of this evening's event. In Connecticut last week, I had the pleasure of meeting one of the titans of American industry, whose kindness and sense of public duty are every bit the equal of his eminence in commerce. He is one of this nation's leaders in oil, in mining, and in radium. Please join me in welcoming Mr Arnold Brighton.'

    The plump gentleman came up and bowed in all directions to a long ovation. He was completely bald except for a tuft of wiry brown hair above each ear, but fastidiously attired, with shiny trimmed fingernails and gold cufflinks that glittered as he raised his arms to quiet the ladies' applause.

    'Thank you, thank you - oh my, where did I put my speech?' Brighton patted his pockets with gleaming fingernails. 'Did I give it to you, Mrs Meloney?'

    'To me, Mr Brighton?'

    'Oh my. Is Samuels here? He would know where I put it. Well, my competitors always say I lose my head with the ladies. They won't employ women, you know, whereas my luminous dial factories are the largest employers of women in their states. My competitors can't understand how I could employ girls in a factory. My answer is simple. The female wage is lower than the male - significantly lower. Oh, I know what you're thinking. With so many men out of work, especially men who served in the war, don't they deserve the jobs? I beg to differ. Men have wives and children they're expected to support. That costs more. Whereas ninety percent of my girls are unmarried. That costs less. And look at their handiwork - look at these lovely watches. Applying radium paint to such tiny surfaces requires feminine dexterity and cleanliness. Mrs Meloney, will you permit a gentleman to offer you a gift? Or would Mr Meloney object?'

    Appreciatively scandalized laughter attended this remark.

    'For shame, Mr Brighton,' said Mrs Meloney, but she extended her ample arm coyly, allowing Brighton to secure to her wrist the larger of the two watches, in which violet gemstones were embedded. She held up her arm, displaying the object to the ladies of the audience, who clapped most cordially.

    'Mrs Meloney can now tell the time in the blackest hour of night,' said Brighton. 'If the police and firemen of this city had been wearing my watches, they would never have been hindered by the great smoke cloud of yesterday's explosion. They would have had a source of light, requiring no batteries, no fuel, no power source at all. That's the wonder of radium. Now for you, Miss Rousseau, we had to make a special item. Our usual products wouldn't fit the delicacy of your wrist. May I?'

    The watch Brighton offered to Colette was encircled with round- brilliant diamonds, refracting every color in the rainbow despite the dim illumination of the church. Uncomfortably, Colette lifted her hand. Brighton fastened his gift to her forearm, the green glow of the luminous watch face reflected in his polished fingernails. He expressed the hope that his present was to her liking. Colette didn't know what to say.

    'Your generosity leaves us speechless, Mr Brighton,' said Mrs Meloney. 'Pray continue.'

    'Continue?'

    'Your contribution, Mr Brighton.'

    'My contribution? Oh, my contribution, of course.' Brighton patted his pockets again and withdrew a bank draft from his vest - nearly knocking over the lectern in the process. After a lengthy preface, he declared it his great pleasure to present to the Marie Curie Radium

    Fund a check in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars. Gasps came from the audience, together with loud, sustained applause.

    Mrs Meloney thanked her benefactor profusely. She then opened the floor to questions, professing her certainty that many in the audience would have questions for Miss Rousseau.

    'Excuse me,' said a woman three pews back, 'but I've been using radium soap every day for the last year, and I still have warts on both my elbows. I'm very upset about it.'

    'Oh,' said Colette. 'I'm afraid I don't know much about radium's cosmetic uses.'

    Mrs Meloney came to Colette's assistance: 'Have you tried Radior night cream, my dear? It's done wonders for me.'

    Another hand went up. 'I have a question for Miss Rousseau. What is the proper dosage of radium water for a sixty-year-old man to restore his vitality?'

    'I'm sorry?' said Colette. 'His what?'

    'His vitality,' repeated the woman.

    Mrs Meloney whispered to Colette, whose livid cheeks reddened.

    Afterward, during refreshments, Mrs Meloney complimented Mr Brighton on his height. 'You are so very much bigger than one expects, Mr Brighton,' said the gray-haired Mrs Meloney coquettishly. It was true. From a distance, Brighton looked short, and his countenance suggested an absent-minded professor of mathematics. Up close, he proved much taller; one couldn't quite tell where the height came from. The effect was to make his clumsiness considerably more concerning. 'And your gift,' added Mrs Meloney, showing off her sapphire wristwatch, 'I have never received a present so entrancing.'

    'While I,' replied Brighton chivalrously, 'have never received so entrancing a visit to my factory as the one you and your assistant paid me two weeks ago.'

    'Heavens, Mr Brighton,' protested Mrs Meloney, 'what would my husband say?'

    'Why?' asked Brighton in some alarm. 'Did I do something wrong?'

    'Would that men always did such wrong,' Mrs Meloney reassured him. 'I must insist you attend our presentation ceremony, Mr Brighton, when we give Madame Curie her radium next May - if only we can raise the rest of the money. I intend to persuade the Mayor to preside.'

    'The Mayor?' said Brighton. 'Why not the President? I'll speak with Harding about it; he'll be in the White House by then. Miss Rousseau, have you seen our nation's capital? I'm going down - oh my, when am I going down? Where's my man Samuels? I can't remember a thing without him. There he is now, the dour fellow. What were you saying, Madam?'