Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [98]
Colette stopped. She turned, burst out of the crowd, and ran back to him. “I’m such a fool,” she said. “I’m not going.”
“Get on board,” said Younger. “You’ll regret it—you’ll resent it—the rest of your life if you don’t.”
The ship spoke in an earsplitting blast. Seagulls took flight. The call for all passengers went out.
Colette buried her cheek on his chest.
“Go on,” said Younger. “It won’t be so hard. You can cry on my shoulder in Vienna when we get there.”
She looked at him; he looked back. “You don’t mean it,” she said.
“Why shouldn’t I come?” he asked. “You’re in love with me, not Heinrich.”
She didn’t deny it.
Younger went on: “If I let you go by yourself, you might actually marry this convict. Don’t think I’m coming for your sake, though. It’s Heinrich I’m worried about. You don’t do a man any favors by marrying him when you’re in love with someone else. You’d be killing him, slowly but surely. Besides”—he removed from his jacket another ticket for passage on the George Washington—“my bags are already on board.”
Colette’s whole body seemed to exhale with relief, and she smiled her most irresistible smile. As the ship steamed out to open sea, the three uncorked a bottle of champagne. Even Luc was allowed to try a little.
PART III
TWELVE
THE UNITED STATES should have been all fanfare and barnstorm in the autumn of 1920, all marching bands and whistle-stop. Americans were electing a new president, and the excitement always appurtenant to that event should have been redoubled in 1920 because women for the first time had the right to vote. One of the major candidates—the Republican, Senator Warren G. Harding—might even have been nominated with the fairer sex in mind.
Harding’s appeal to women was not a matter of speculation. It was established fact. He had a loyal wife of sixty-one, a longtime mistress of forty-seven, another mistress of thirty, and a flame of twenty-four still head over heels in love. “It’s a good thing I’m not a woman,” Harding liked to quip. “I can never say no.” Harding’s record of political accomplishment may have been thin, but with silver hair and dashing smile, with dark eyebrows, commanding eyes, and a strong chin, he was undoubtedly a presidential-looking man.
Yet the steam had gone out of the campaign locomotive. Unease hung too palpably wherever crowds gathered. Arrests and deportations went on, yet the terrorist attack remained unsolved. Men in power—rich men, governors, and senators—demanded remobilization. Newspapers demanded war. The cloud of smoke and flaming dust that blotted the sun from Wall Street on September sixteenth had not dissipated. Its pall had spread over the entire nation.
On September 27, the day Younger and Colette left for Europe, papers around the country reported that the Soviet dictator, V. I. Lenin, had infiltrated the United States with clandestine agents to foment labor unrest, terror, and revolution. In Boston the cab drivers struck, and there was a run on the banks. In Alabama, soldiers with machine guns prevented a miners’ strike. The third most popular presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, was an unabashed socialist, but at least he was in prison, having dared in 1918 to question the necessity of the war. Through it all, Prohibition parched the workingman’s throat, and the still-resounding echoes of September sixteenth made people hurry as they walked out of doors in the great cities. The country was holding its breath—and didn’t even know what for.
On Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, the Littlemores were enjoying a late-evening quarrel. It had begun in their kitchen and ended up in the street. The outdoor venue was more favorable to Mr. Littlemore; inside, it had become increasingly difficult for him to duck the objects thrown in his direction—not very heavy ones, mostly, and not very accurately—by Mrs. Littlemore.
Betty had not shared her husband’s excitement at the prospect of moving to Washington, D.C., where Littlemore had agreed to take a job with the Treasury