The Death Instinct Read Free Page A

Different kinds of cat fur. So right away I know you both went some place this morning with a lot of cats. But the Miss also has two long, gray hairs on her shoulder - human hair. So I'm figuring the cats belonged to an old lady, and you two paid a call on her this morning, and the lady must be the hugging kind, because that's how-'
        'All right, all right,' said Younger.
        In front of the Morgan Bank, the horse-drawn wagon came to a halt. The bells of Trinity Church began to boom, and the streets began to fill with thousands of office workers released from confinement for their precious hour of lunch.
        'Anyway,' Littlemore resumed, 'I'd say the strong odds are that Amelia was looking for somebody else, and the clerk mixed it up.'
        Horns began honking angrily behind the parked horse cart, the pilot of which had disappeared. On the steps of the Treasury, a redheaded woman stood alone, head wrapped in a kerchief, surveying the crowd with a keen but composed gaze.
        'Sounds like she might be in some trouble though,' Littlemore went on. 'Mind if I keep the tooth?'
        'Please,' said Colette.
        Littlemore dropped the cotton wad into his breast pocket. On Wall Street, behind the horse-drawn wagon, a stout cab driver exited his vehicle, arms upraised in righteous appeal.
        'Amazing,' said Younger, 'how nothing's changed here. Europe returned to the Dark Ages, but in America time went on holiday.'
        The bells of Trinity Church continued to peal. A hundred and fifty feet in front of Younger, the cab driver heard an odd noise coming from the burlap-covered wagon, and a cold light came to the eyes of the redheaded woman on the steps of the Treasury. She had seen Colette; she descended the stairs. People unconsciously made way for her.
        'I'd say the opposite,' replied Littlemore. 'Everything's different. The whole city's on edge.'
        'Why?' asked Colette.
        Younger no longer heard them. He was suddenly in France, not New York, trying to save the life of a one-armed soldier in a trench filled knee-high with freezing water, as the piercing, rising, fatal cry of incoming shells filled the air.
        'You know,' said Littlemore, 'no jobs, everybody's broke, people getting evicted, strikes, riots - then they throw in Prohibition.'
        Younger looked at Colette and Littlemore; they didn't hear the shriek of artillery. No one heard it.
        'Prohibition,' repeated Littlemore. 'That's got to be the worst thing anybody ever did to this country.'
        In front of the Morgan Bank, a curious taxi driver drew back one corner of moth-eaten burlap. The redheaded woman, who had just strode past him, stopped, puzzled. The pupils of her pale blue irises dilated as she looked back at the cab driver, who whispered, 'Lord have mercy.'
        'Down,' said Younger as he pulled an uncomprehending Littlemore and Colette to their knees.
        Wall Street exploded.

Chapter Two
        
        Younger, a man who had witnessed the bombardment at Chateau-Thierry, had never heard a detonation like it. It was literally deafening: immediately after the concussion, there was no sound in the world.
        A blue-black cloud of iron and smoke, ominous and pulsing, filled the plaza. Nothing else was visible. There was no way to know what had happened to the human beings within.
        From this heavy cloud burst an automobile - a taxicab. Not, however, on the street. The vehicle was airborne.
        Younger, from his knees, saw the cab shoot from the cloud of smoke like a shell from a howitzer - and freeze, impossibly, in midair. For a single instant, in perfect silence, the vehicle was suspended twenty feet above the earth, immobile. Then its flight resumed, but slowly now, impossibly slowly, as if the explosion had drained not only sound from the world but speed as well. Everything Younger saw, he saw moving at a fraction of its true velocity. Overhead, the