Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [14]
“No,” said Younger evenly. “I am Dr. Younger.”
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