The Spy

34

THIS CALLS FOR A DRINK,” SAID THE SPY.

Some special concoction in honor of Isaac Bell.

Just before the telephone line was disconnected when the 20th Century Limited left Grand Central, Katherine Dee had reported that John Scully had gone to that section of kingdom come set aside for Van Dorn detectives. He cradled the instrument and beckoned an observation-car steward.

“Does your bartender know how make a Yale cocktail?”

“He sure does, sir.”

“Does he have the Crême Yvette?” the spy asked sternly.

“Of course, sir.”

“Bring me one, then-oh, and bring these gentlemen what they would like, too,” he added, indicating a pair of pink-jowled Chicago businessmen who were glowering indignantly. “Sorry, gents. I hope I didn’t thwart any important last-minute telephone calls.”

The offer of a free drink was mollifying, and one admitted, “Just calling the office to tell them I’m on the train.”

His friend said, “Guess they’ll figure that out when you don’t skulk back in moping that you missed it.” Traveling men within earshot laughed and repeated the joke to others who hadn’t heard it.

“Look! There’s a fellow who almost did.”

“He must have jumped!”

“Or flew!”

The spy glanced toward the back of the car. A tall man in a white suit was gliding in from the rear vestibule.

“Maybe he’s got no ticket, figuring to ride the rails.”

“There goes the conductor-on him like a terrier.”

“Guard my cocktail,” said the spy. “I just remembered I have to dictate a letter.”

The 20th Century Limited supplied a stenographer, free of charge. He moved quickly to the man’s portable desk at the head of the observation car, pulled his collar up and his hat low, and sat with his back to the detective. “How soon will a letter I post leave the train?”

“Forty minutes. It will go off at Harmon when we exchange the electric engine for a steam locomotive.” He reached for an envelope engraved VIA 20TH CENTURY. “To whom shall I address it, sir?”

“K. C. Dee, Plaza Hotel, New York.”

“They’ll have it this evening.” The stenographer addressed the envelope, spread a sheet of 20th Century stationery, and poised his pen.

The train was accelerating up the cut that ran north out of the city. Stone walls cast shadows, darkening the windows, causing the glass to mirror the interior of the crowded car. The spy watched Isaac Bell’s pale reflection pass behind him. The conductor trailed solicitously, and it was clear that, ticket or no, Bell was a welcome passenger.

“Ready when you are, sir,” prompted the stenographer.

He waited for Bell and the conductor to pass through the vestibule to the next car.

“‘My dear K. C. Dee,’” he began. He had miscalculated Bell’s reaction to the killing of his fellow detective and underestimated how quickly Van Dorns moved when aroused. Fortunately, he had left Katherine Dee fully prepared to accelerate events. It was simply a matter of unleashing her early.

“Ready, sir?”

“It appears that our customer did not receive our last shipment,” he dictated. “New paragraph. It is imperative that you make a personal visit to Newport, Rhode Island, tonight to set things straight.”

ISAAC BELL HAD PRESENTED Scully’s ticket for upper berth number 5 in Pullman car 6 and asked to pay the extra fare for a stateroom. Informed that every available room was sold out, he had produced a railroad pass. It was signed by the president of a rival line, but competing titans accommodated one another’s personal whims.

“Of course, Mr. Bell. Fortunately, we do have a company suite empty.”

In the privacy of the rosewood-paneled stateroom, Bell tipped the conductor generously.

“With that special pass, you don’t need to tip for good service, Mr. Bell,” said train conductor William Dilber, his hand nonetheless closing like a rattrap around the gold pieces.

Isaac Bell did not need service. He needed an eager associate. He had less than eighteen hours before the 20th Century Limited reached Chicago to find out who killed Scully. No more passengers would board between New York and Chicago. Except Van Dorn detectives.

“Mr. Dilber, how many passengers is your train carrying?”

“One hundred twenty-seven.”

“One of them is a murderer.”

“A murderer,” the conductor echoed tranquilly. Bell was not surprised. As captain of a crack luxury express train, William Dilber was to remain unflappable in the face of derailments, disgruntled tycoons, and snowbound Pullmans.

“You’ll want to see the passenger list, Mr. Bell. Got it right here.”

He unfolded it from his immaculate blue tunic.

“Do you know many of the passengers?”

“Most. We get a lot of regulars. Most from Chicago. Businessmen back and forth to New York.”

“That will help. Could you point out those you don’t know?”

The conductor traced name by name with a clean, manicured fingernail. He was indeed familiar with most, for the 20th Century Limited was very much a rolling private club. The costly excess-fare express drew on the tiny minority of passengers who were extremely well off, and the train ran a proscribed route between New York and Chicago that was fully booked and rarely took on passengers at intermediate stations. Bell saw well-known names in business, politics, and industry, and some famous touring actors. He noted the names of those few Dilber didn’t know.

“I am particularly interested in foreigners.”

“We’ve got the usual handful. Here’s an Englishman.”

“Arnold Bennett. The writer?”

“I believe he is on a lecture tour. Traveling with these two Chinamen. Harold Wing and Louis Loh. They are missionary students, from an English seminary, I believe. Mr. Bennett made a point of telling me personally that he’s their protector in case anyone gives them trouble. I told him it was all the same to me as long as they pay their fare.”

“Did he say what’s he’s protecting them from?”

“Remember that murder last month in Philadelphia? The girl, and all that white-slaving talk in the papers? The police are shadowing Chinamen hot and heavy.”

Train conductor Dilber continued down the list. “I don’t know this German gentleman. Herr Shafer. His ticket was booked by the German Embassy.”

Bell, make a note.

“Here’s one I know,” the detective said. “Rosania-if he’s traveling under his own name. But he can’t be-a natty dresser of about forty?”

“That’s him. Snappy as a magazine ad.”

“What are you carrying in the express car?”

“The usual stocks and banknotes. Why do you ask?”

“The fellow is a regular wizard with nitroglycerine.”

“A train robber?” the conductor asked less unflappably.

Bell shook his head. “Not as a rule. Rosania generally favors mansions he can talk his way into to blow the jewelry safes after everyone goes to bed. Master of his craft. He can detonate an explosion in the library that they’ll never hear upstairs. But last I knew, he was at Sing Sing State Prison. Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with him and see what’s up.”

“I would appreciate that, sir. Now, this Australian. Something told me he was trouble-not that he did anything, but I overheard him discussing the sale of a gold mine and caught a tone of the bunco man in his palaver. I’ll watch him close in the club car if he joins any of the card games.”

“And here’s another I know,” Bell said. “Funny.” Bell pointed at the name.

“Herr Riker. Oh, yes.”

“You know him?”

“The diamond merchant. He’s a regular, every couple of months or so. Is he a friend of yours?”

“We met recently. Twice.”

“I believe he is traveling with his bodyguard. Yes, this fellow here. Plimpton. Big bruiser in a Pullman berth. Riker’s got his usual stateroom. I reckon there’s something locked up in the express car that’s Riker’s.” He followed down the list. “No mention of his ward.”

“What ward?”

“Lovely young lady. But, no, she’s not listed this trip. Pity.”

“What do you mean.”

“Nothing, sir. I just mean, one of those girls that isn’t hard on the eyes.”

“Riker seems young to have a ward.”

“She’s just a student-oh, I see what you mean. Don’t you doubt it, sir. I see every sort of couple you could imagine on the Limited. Riker and his ward are completely on the up-and-up. Always separate staterooms.”

“Adjoining?” asked Bell, who always booked two staterooms when he traveled with Marion.

“But it’s not what you think. You get an eye for this on the 20th Century, Mr. Bell. They’re not that sort of couple.”

Bell resolved to check on that. Research had made no mention of a ward.

“What is her name?”

“I only know her as Miss Riker. Maybe he adopted her.”

The train was flying at a clip of sixty miles to the hour, and mile-posts were flashing by the windows. But just as he and the conductor were finishing up the passenger list, forty minutes out of New York, Bell felt the engine ease off.

“Harmon,” the conductor explained, checking the time on his Waltham watch. “We’ll exchange the electric for a steamer and then we’ll fly, better than four miles in three minutes.”

“I’ll have a word with my old nitro acquaintance. Find out what he’s got planned for your express car.”

While they changed engines, Bell telegraphed Van Dorn, inquiring about the German, the Australian, the Chinese traveling with Arnold Bennett, and Herr Riker’s ward. He also sent a wire to Captain Falconer:

INFORM GUNNER’S DAUGHTER MURDERER DEAD.

A single glimmer of justice in a joyless day. The death of Yamamoto might comfort Dorothy Langner, but it was hardly a victory. The case, already thrown into turmoil by Scully’s murder, was completely unhinged by the death of the Japanese spy who had come so close to handing Bell his true quarry.

He climbed back aboard the 20th Century.

The high-wheeled Atlantic 4-4-2 steam locomotive swiftly gathered speed and raced northward along the banks of the Hudson River. Bell walked to the head of the train. The club car was fitted with comfortable lounge chairs. Men were smoking, drinking cocktails, and waiting for their turn with the barber and manicurist.

“Larry Rosania! Fancy meeting you here.”

The jewel thief looked up from a newspaper blazing headlines about the Great White Fleet approaching San Francisco. He peered over the tops of his gold wire-rimmed reading glasses and pretended not to recognize the tall, golden-haired detective in the white suit. His manner was polished, his voice patrician. “Have we been introduced, sir?”

Bell sat down uninvited. “Last I heard, my old pals Wally Kisley and Mack Fulton leased long-term lodgings for you at Sing Sing.”

At the mention of Bell’s friends, Rosania dropped the façade. “I was saddened to hear about their demise, Isaac. They were interesting characters and honest detectives in a world short of both.”

“Appreciate the thought. How’d you get out? Blow a hole in the prison wall?”

“Haven’t you heard? I got a pardon from the governor. Would you like to see it?”

“Very much so,” said Isaac Bell.

The suave safecracker pulled from his coat a finely tooled wallet. From it he drew an envelope embossed with gold leaf and from the envelope unfolded a sheet of vellum with the seal of the governor of New York State on top and Rosania’s name illuminated as if drawn by monks.

“Assuming for the moment that this is not a forgery, do you mind me asking what you did to get this?”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try.”

“When I was twelve years old, I helped a little old lady cross the street. Turned out she was the governor’s mother-before he was governor. She never forgot my kindness. I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Where are you headed, Larry?”

“Surely you’ve combed through the passenger list. You know perfectly well that I’m bound for San Francisco.”

“What do you intend to blow up there?”

“I’ve gone straight, Isaac. I don’t do safes anymore.”

“Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it well,” Bell observed. “This train doesn’t come cheap.”

“I’ll tell you the truth,” said Rosania. “You won’t believe this either, but I met a widow who believes that the sun and the moon rise and set on me. As she inherited more money than I could steal in a lifetime, I am not disabusing her of the thought.”

“Can I inform the train conductor that his express car is safe?”

“Safe as houses. Crime doesn’t pay enough. What about you, Isaac? Heading for Chicago headquarters?”

“Actually, I’m looking for someone,” said Bell. “And I’ll bet that even reformed jewel thieves are close observers of fellow passengers on luxury railroad trains. Have you noticed any foreigners I might be interested in?”

“Several. In fact, one right here in this car.”

Rosania nodded toward the back of the club car and lowered his voice. “There’s a German pretending to be a salesman. If he is, he’s the nastiest drummer I ever saw.”

“The stiff-necked one who looks like a Prussian officer?” Bell had noticed Shafer on his way into the club car. The German was about thirty years old, expensively dressed, and exuded a fiercely unfriendly chill.

“Would you buy anything from him?”

“Nothing I didn’t need. Anyone else?”

“Look out for the carney Australian selling a gold mine.”

“The conductor noticed him, too.”

“There’s no fooling a good train conductor.”

“He didn’t tip to you.”

“Told you, I’ve gone straight.”

“Oh, I forgot,” Bell grinned. Then he asked, “Do you know a gem importer named Erhard Riker?”

“Herr Riker, I never messed with.”

“Why not?”

“For the same reason I would never dream of blowing Joe Van Dorn’s safe. Riker’s got his own private protection service.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“From my former point of view, that was all I needed to know.”

Bell stood up. “Interesting seeing you, Larry.”

Rosania suddenly looked embarrassed. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I go by Laurence now. The widow likes calling me Laurence. Says it’s more refined.”

“How old is this widow?”

“Twenty-eight,” Rosania replied smugly.

“Congratulations.”

As Bell turned away, Rosania called, “Wait a minute.” Again he lowered his voice. “Did you see the Chinamen? There’s two of them on board.”

“What about them?”

“I wouldn’t trust them.”

“I understand they’re divinity students,” said Bell.

Laurence Rosania nodded sagely. “The preacher man is ‘The Invisible Man.’ When I worked the divinity student game, and the old ladies took me home to meet nieces and granddaughters, the gentlemen who owned the mansions looked through me like I was furniture.”

“Thanks for the help,” said Bell, fully intending when the train changed engines at Albany to send Sing Sing’s warden a telegram recommending a head count.

He walked back through the club car, eyeing the German. Skillful European tailoring mostly concealed a powerful frame. The man sat bolt upright, erect as a cavalry officer. “Afternoon,” Bell nodded.

Herr Shafer returned a cold, silent stare, and Bell recalled that Archie had told him that in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany citizens, both male and female, were required to surrender their train seats to military officers. Try that here, Bell thought, and you’ll earn a punch in the snoot. From men or women.

He continued toward the back of the train through six Pullman and stateroom cars to the observation car, where passengers were drinking cocktails as the setting sun reddened the sky across the Hudson River. The Chinese divinity students were dressed in identical ill-fitting black suits, each with a bulge indicating a bible near his heart. They sat with a bearded Englishman in tweed whom Bell assumed to be their protector, the journalist and novelist Arnold Bennett.

Bennett was a rugged-looking man with a stocky, powerful build. He appeared a bit younger than Bell had assumed him to be based on the articles he had read in Har per’s Weekly. He was holding forth to a rapt audience of Chicago businessmen on the pleasures of travel in the United States, and as Bell listened he got the distinct impression that the writer was practicing phrases for his next article.

“Could a man be prouder than to say, ‘This is the train of trains, and I have my stateroom on it.’”

A salesman with a booming voice like Dorothy Langner’s Ted Whitmark brayed, “Finest train in the world, bar none.”

“The Broadway Limited ain’t nothing to sneeze at,” remarked his companion.

“Old folks ride the Broadway Limited,” the salesman scoffed. “The 20th Century’s for up-and-up businessmen. That’s why Chicago fellows like it so.”

Arnold Bennett corralled the conversation again with practiced ease. “Your American comforts never cease to amaze. Do you know I can switch the electric fan in my bedchamber to three different speeds? I expect that it will provide through the night a continuous vaudeville entertainment.”

The Chicagoans laughed, slapped their thighs, and shouted to the steward for more drinks. The Chinese men smiled uncertainly, and Isaac Bell wondered how much English they understood. Were the slight young men frightened in the presence of large and boisterous Americans? Or merely shy?

When Bennett flourished a cigarette from his gold case, one student struck a match and the other positioned an ashtray. It looked to Bell like Harold Wing and Louis Loh filled dual roles as wards of the journalist and as manservants.

Approaching Albany, the train crossed the Hudson River on a high trestle bridge that looked down upon brightly lighted steam-boats. It halted in the yards. While the New York Central trainmen wheeled the engine away, then coupled on another and a dining car for the evening meal, Isaac Bell sent and collected telegrams. The fresh engine, an Atlantic 4-4-2 with drive wheels even taller than the last, was already rolling when he swung back aboard and locked himself in his stateroom.

In the short time since he had sent his wires from Harmon, Research had not learned anything about the German, the Australian, the Chinese traveling with Arnold Bennett, or Herr Riker’s ward. But the Van Dorns who had raced to Grand Central had started piecing together witnesses’ accounts of Scully’s murder. They had found no one who reported actually seeing the hatpin driven into John Scully’s brain. But it appeared that the killing had been coordinated with military precision.

This was now known: A Chinese delivery man bringing cigars to the departing trains reported seeing Scully rush up to the 20th Century platform. He seemed to be looking for someone.

Irish laborers hauling demolition debris said that Scully was talking to a pretty redhead. They were standing very closely as if they knew each other well.

The police officer hadn’t come along until the crowd had formed. But a traveler from upstate New York had seen a mob of college students surround Scully and the redhead, “Like he was inside a flying wedge.”

Then they hurried away and Scully was on the floor.

Where did they go?

Every which way, like melted ice.

What did they look like?

College boys.

“They set him up good,” Harry Warren had put it in his telegram to Bell. “Never knew what hit him.”

Bell, mourning his friend, doubted that. Even the best of men could be tricked, of course, but Scully had been sharp as tacks. John Scully would have known that he had been fooled. Too late to save himself, sadly. But Bell bet that he’d known. If only as he took his last breath.

Harry Warren went on to speculate whether the girl seen with Scully was the same redhead he had seen in the Hip Sing opium den where the detectives had inadvertently bumped into each other. The witnesses’ descriptions at Grand Central were too general to know. A pretty redheaded girl, one of a thousand in New York. Five thousand. Ten. But descriptions of her clothing did not jibe with the costume worn by the girl Harry had seen in the Chinatown gambling and drug parlor. Nor had she been wearing thick rouge and paint.

Bell took the spy’s taunting note from his pocket and read it again.

EYE FOR AN EYE, BELL.

YOU EARNED WEEKS SO WE WON’T COUNT HIM.

BUT YOU OWED ME FOR THE GERMAN.

The spy was boasting that both Weeks and the German had worked for his ring. Which struck Bell as reckless behavior in a line of business where discretion was survival and victories should be celebrated in the quietest manner. He could not imagine the cool Yamamoto or even the supercilious Abbington-Westlake writing such a note.

The spy also seemed deluded. Did he really believe that Isaac Bell and the entire Van Dorn Agency would ignore his attack? He was practically begging for a counterpunch.

Bell went to the dining car for the second seating.

The tables were arranged in place settings of four and two, and the custom was to be seated wherever there was room. He saw Bennett and his Chinese had an empty chair at their table for four. As earlier in the observation car, the witty writer was regaling nearby tables while his solemn charges sat quietly. The German, Shafer, was eating in stiff silence across from an American drummer who was failing miserably to make conversation. The Australian was at another table for two speaking earnestly with a table mate dressed as if he could afford to buy a gold mine. At another two, Laurence Rosania was deep in conversation with a younger man in an elegant suit.

Bell slipped the diner captain money. “I would like that empty seat at Mr. Bennett’s table.”

But as the captain led him toward the writer’s table, Bell heard another diner call out from a table he had just passed.

“Bell! Isaac Bell. I thought that was you.”

The gem merchant Erhard Riker rose from his table, brushing a napkin to his lips and extending his hand. “Another coincidence, sir? We seem to repeat them. Are you alone? Care to join me?”

The Chinese could wait. The passenger list showed them connecting through to San Francisco, whereas Riker was changing trains in the morning to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe’s California Limited.

They shook hands. Riker indicated the empty chair across from him. Bell sat.

“How’s our diamond hunt going?”

“I’m closing in on an emerald fit for a queen. Or even a goddess. It should be waiting for us when I get back to New York. We can only pray the lady will like it,” he added with a smile.

“Where are you headed?”

Riker looked around to ensure they weren’t overheard. “San Diego,” he whispered. “And you?”

“San Francisco. What’s in San Diego?”

Again Riker looked around again. “Pink tourmaline.” He smiled self-disparagingly. “Forgive my taciturnity. The enemy has spies everywhere.”

“Enemy? What enemy?”

“Tiffany and Company are attempting to corner the tourmaline supply in San Diego because Tz’u-hsi, Dowager Empress of China-an eccentric despot with all the wealth of China at her disposal-loves San Diego’s pink tourmaline. Uses it for carvings and buttons and the like. When she fell head over heels for pink tourmaline, she created a whole new market. Tiffany is attempting to seize it.” He lowered his voice further. Bell leaned closer to hear. “This has created splendid opportunities for an independent gem merchant who is able to snap up the best samples before they do. It’s dog-eat-dog in the gem line, Mr. Bell.” He added a wink to his smile, and Bell was not sure whether he was serious.

“I don’t know anything about the jewelry business.”

“Surely a detective comes across jewels, if only stolen ones.”

Bell looked at him sharply. “How did you know I was a detective?”

Riker shrugged. “When I agree to hunt for a significant gem, I first investigate whether the client can afford it or is merely wishing he can.”

“Detectives aren’t rich.”

“Those who inherit Boston banking fortunes are, Mr. Bell. Forgive me if I seemed to intrude on your privacy, but I think you can understand that gathering information about my customers is a necessary part of doing business. I have a small operation. I can’t afford to spend weeks hunting stones for a client who turns out to have eyes bigger than his stomach.”

“I understand,” said Bell. “I presume you understand why I don’t bandy it about?”

“Of course, sir. Your secrets are safe with me. Though I did wonder when I discovered who you are how a successful detective keeps out of the limelight.”

“By avoiding cameras and portraitists.”

“But it would seem that the more criminals you catch the more famous you will be.”

“Hopefully,” said Bell, “only among criminals behind bars.” Riker laughed. “Well said, sir. Come, here I am talking a blue streak. The waiter is hovering. We must order our dinner.”

Behind him, Bell heard Arnold Bennett announcing, “This is the first time I ever dined à la carte on any train. An excellent dinner, well and sympathetically served. The mutton was impeccable.”

“There’s an endorsement,” said Riker. “Perhaps you should have the mutton.”

“I’ve never met an Englishman who knew a thing about good food,” Bell replied, and asked the waiter, “Are we still in shad season?”

“Yes, sir! How would you like it cooked?”

“Grilled. And may I reserve some roe for breakfast?”

“It will be a different diner in the morning, sir. Hitched on at Elkhart. But I’ll leave some on ice with the Pullman conductor.”

“Make that two portions,” said Riker. “Shad tonight, shad roe in the morning. What do you say, Bell, shall we share a bottle of Rhine wine?”

After the waiter left them, Bell said, “Your English is remarkable. As if you have spoken it your entire life.”

Riker laughed. “They beat English into me at Eton. My father sent me to England for preparatory school. He felt it would help me get on in the business if I could mingle with more than just our German countrymen. But tell me something-speaking of fathers-how did you manage to stay out of your family’s banking business?”

Aware from the Van Dorn reports that Riker’s father had been killed during the Boer War, Bell answered obliquely in order to draw him out. “My father was, and still is, very much in charge.” He looked inquiringly at Riker, and the German said, “I envy you. I had no such choice. My father died in Africa when I was just finishing university. If I had not stepped in, the business would have fallen to pieces.”

“I gathered from the way that jeweler spoke that you’ve made quite a go of it.”

“My father taught me every trick in the book. And some more he invented himself. Plus, he was well liked in the factories and work-shops. His name still opens doors, particularly here in America, in Newark and New York. I would not be surprised to bump into one of his old comrades in San Diego.” He winked again. “In that event, Tiffany’s buyers will be lucky to get out of California with the gold fillings still in their teeth.”

THE SPY HAD COMPLETELY recovered from the initial shock of seeing Bell jump aboard the 20th Century Limited at Grand Central. Katherine Dee would soon be working her wiles in Newport while he would turn the detective’s unexpected presence on the train to advantage. He was accustomed to jousting with government agents-British, French, Russian, Japanese-as well as the various naval intelligence officers, including the Americans, and he had a low opinion of their abilities. But a private detective was a new wrinkle that he had come to realize belatedly deserved careful observation before he made a move.

He was glad he had ordered Detective John Scully killed. That shock would take a toll on Isaac Bell, although the tall detective hid it well, striding about the train like he owned it. Should he kill Bell, too? It seemed necessary. The question was, who would replace him? Bell’s friend Abbott was back from Europe. An aggressive adversary, too, from what he could gather, though not quite in Bell’s league. Would the formidable Joseph Van Dorn himself step in? Or stay above the fray? His was a nationwide agency with a diverse roster. God knows who they had waiting in the shadows.

On the other hand, he thought with a smile, it was unlikely even God knew everyone he had waiting in the shadows.

35

WE’RE STILL CHECKING ON THE CHINESE TRAVELING with Arnold Bennett. But it will take a while. Same for Shafer, the German. Research can’t find anything on him, but like you said, Mr. Bell, it seems odd that the embassy booked tickets for a salesman.”

The Van Dorn agent was reporting hurriedly in the privacy of Bell’s stateroom while the train stopped in Syracuse to take on a fresh engine and drop the dining car.

“Sing Sing confirmed Rosania’s story.”

Rosania had not taken it on the lam but had been released, as he claimed, by the governor. The self-dubbed Australian gold miner was actually a Canadian con man who usually worked the gold mine game on the western railroads, where he could show the mark worthless claims “salted” by blasting rock walls with shotgun pellets made of gold.

The locomotive whistle signaled Ahead.

“Gotta go!”

Bell said, “I want you to arrange a long-distance telephone connection with Mr. Van Dorn to our next stop at East Buffalo.”

Two hours later when they stopped to change engines in a brightly lighted, cacophonous rail yard in East Buffalo, a Van Dorn detective was waiting to take Bell to the yardmaster’s office. Bell queried him for the latest while the long-distance telephone operators completed the connections.

“Near as we can make out from all the witnesses, Scully was talking to a well-dressed redhead. A football comes flying though the air and hits him on the shoulder. College boys horsing around run up and surround him, apologizing. Someone yells their train is leaving, and they run for it. Scully’s lying on his back like he’s got a heart attack. Bunch of people crowd around to help. Cop comes along, shouts for a doctor. Then you come running up. Then a kid from the New York office. Then you ran after the Limited, and some woman sees the blood and screams, and then the cop is telling everybody to stay where they are. And pretty soon there’s a bunch of Van Dorns running around with notebooks.”

“Where’s the redhead?”

“No one knows.”

“Well-dressed, you say?”

“Stylish.”

“Says who? The cop?”

“Says a lady who’s a manager at Lord and Taylor, which is a very high-tone dry-goods store in New York City.”

“Not dressed like a floozy?”

“High-tone.”

Just when Bell thought he was going to have to run to catch his train, the telephone finally rang. The connection was thin, the wire noisy. “Van Dorn here. That you, Isaac? What do you have?”

“We have one report of a redhead wearing the sort of paint, clothes, and hat you’d expect in an opium den, and another of a redhead dressed like a lady, and both were seen with Scully.”

“Was Scully partial to redheads?”

“I don’t know,” said Bell. “All we ever discussed were lawbreakers and firearms. Did they find his gun?”

“Browning Vest Pocket still in the holster.”

Bell shook his head, dismayed that Scully had been thrown so off balance.

“What?” Van Dorn shouted. “I can’t hear you.”

“I still can’t imagine anyone catching Scully flat-footed.”

“That’s what comes from working alone.”

“Be that as it may-”

“What?”

“Be that as it may, the issue is the spy.”

“Is the spy on that train with you?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What?”

Bell said, “Tell them to hold on to John Scully’s gun for me.”

Joseph Van Dorn heard that clearly. He knew his detectives well. Now and then, he even thought he knew what made them tick. He said, “It will be waiting for you when you get back to New York.”

“I’ll report from Chicago.”

As the 20th Century Limited roared out of East Buffalo with five hundred twenty miles to go to make Chicago by morning, Bell went forward to the club car. He found it empty but for one draw poker game. The Canadian con man pretending to be an Australian gold miner was playing with some older businessmen. He did not look pleased that conductor Dilber was watching closely.

Bell walked to the back of the speeding train. Though it was after midnight, the observation car was crowded with men, talking and drinking. Arnold Bennett, attended by his solemn Chinese, was entertaining a crowd. Shafer the German salesman was deep in conversation with Erhard Riker. Bell got a drink and made himself conspicuous until Riker saw him and waved him over to join them. Riker introduced the German as Herr Shafer. To Bell he said, “What line did you say you were in, Mr. Bell?”

“Insurance,” he answered, nodding his thanks to Riker for not identifying him as a detective. He sat where he could observe Bennett’s Chinese as well.

“Of course,” Riker nodded back, smoothly continuing the ruse. “I should have remembered. So we’re all drummers, or commercial travelers as the English call us. All selling. I supply gems to American jewelers. And Mr. Shafer here represents a line of organs built in Leipzig. Am I right, sir?”

“Correct!” Shafer barked. “First, I sell. Then the company sends German workman with organs to assemble the pieces. They know best how to put together the best organs.”

“Church organs?” asked Bell.

“Churches, concert halls, stadiums, universities. German organs, you see, are the best organs in the world. Because German music is the best in the world. You see.”

“Do you play the organ?”

“No, no, no, no. I am a simple salesman.”

“How,” asked Isaac Bell, “did a cavalry officer become a salesman?”

“What? What cavalry officer?” Shafer glanced at Riker, then back at Bell, his expression hardening. “What do you mean, sir?”

“I couldn’t help but notice that your hands are calloused from the reins,” Bell answered mildly. “And you stand like a soldier. Doesn’t he, Riker?”

“And sits like one, too.”

“Ah?” A bright flush rose in Shafer’s neck and reddened his face. “Ja,” he said. “Of course. Yes, I was once a soldier, many years ago.” He paused and stared at his powerful hands. “Of course, I still ride whenever I find the time in this my new occupation as salesman. Excuse me, I will return.” He started to bolt away, paused and caught himself. “Shall I ask the steward for another round of drinks?”

“Yes,” said Riker, hiding a smile until Shafer had entered the f acilities.

“In retrospect,” he said, his smile broadening, “my father is beginning to seem a wiser and wiser man-as your Mark Twain noted about his. Father was right to school me in England. We Germans are not comfortable in the presence of other nationalities. We boast without considering the effect.”

“Is it common in Germany for Army officers to go into trade?” asked Bell.

“No. But who knows why he left the service? He is far too young to have retired, even on half pay. Perhaps he had to make a living.”

“Perhaps,” said Bell.

“It would appear,” smiled Riker, “that you are not on holiday. Or are detectives always on the case?”

“Cases tend to blur into each other,” said Bell, wondering whether Riker’s statement was a challenge or merely fellow train traveler’s comradery. “For example,” he said, watching closely for Riker’s reaction, “in the course of an unrelated investigation I learned when I boarded the train that you often travel with a young lady who is believed to be your ward.”

“Indeed,” said Riker. “You learned the truth.”

“You are young to have a ward.”

“I am. But just as I was unable to dodge taking responsibility for my father’s firm, so was I not excused from the obligation of caring for an orphan when tragedy struck her family. Happenstance will sneak up on even the most footloose man, Mr. Bell… when he least expects it. But I will tell you this: the events we don’t plan for are sometimes the best that ever happen to us. The girl brings light into my life where there was darkness.”

“Where is she now?”

“At school. She will graduate in June.” He pointed across the table at Bell. “I hope you can meet her. This summer she will sail with me to New York. As she was reared in a cloistered manner, I make every effort to broaden her horizons. Meeting a private detective would certainly fall into that territory.”

Bell nodded. “I look forward to it. What is her name?”

Riker seemed not to hear the question. Or, if he did, chose not to answer it. Instead, he said, “Equally broadening will be her opportunity to meet a woman who makes moving pictures. Mr. Bell, why do you look surprised? Of course, I know your fiancée makes moving pictures. I already told you, I don’t engage in business blindly. I know that you can afford the best, and I know that she will cast a clear eye on the best I have to offer. Together, you present quite a challenge. I only hope that I am up to it.”

Shafer returned. He had splashed water on his face. It had spotted his tie. But he was smiling. “You are very observant, Mr. Bell. I thought when I removed my uniform I had removed my past. Is that a habit of the insurance man, to notice such discrepancies?”

“When I sell you insurance, I am taking a chance on you,” Bell replied. “So I suppose I am always on the lookout for risk.”

“Is Herr Shafer a good bet?” asked Riker.

“Men of steady habits are always a good bet. Herr Shafer, I apologize if I seemed to pry.”

“I have nothing to hide!”

“Speaking of hiding,” Riker said, “the steward appears to be. How the hell does one get a drink around here?”

Bell nodded. A steward came running and took their orders.

Arnold Bennett announced to his Chinese companions, “Gentlemen, you look sleepy.”

“No, sir. We are very happy.”

“Expect little sleep on a train. Luxuries may abound-tailor’s shop, library, manicurist, even fresh and saltwater baths. But unlike in Europe where the best trains start with the stealthiness of a bad habit, I have never slept a full hour in any American sleeper, what with abrupt stops, sudden starts, hootings, and whizzings round sharp corners.”

Laughing Chicagoans protested that that was the price of speed and worth every penny.

Isaac Bell addressed his German companions-Erhard Riker, who seemed so English, even American, and Herr Shafer, who was as Teutonic as Wagnerian opera. “In the company of not one but two of the Kaiser’s subjects, I must ask about the talk of war in Europe.”

“Germany and England are competitors, not enemies,” Riker answered.

“Our nations are evenly balanced,” Shafer added quickly. “England has more battleships. We have by far the greater Army-the most modern and advanced, the strongest in the world.”

“Only in those parts of the world that your Army can march to,” Arnold Bennett called from the next table.

“What is that, sir?”

“Our American hosts’ Admiral Mahan put it most aptly: ‘The nation that rules the seas, rules the world.’ Your Army is worth spit in a bucket if it can’t get to where the fight is.”

Shafer turned purple. Veins bulged on his forehead.

Riker cautioned him with a gesture, and answered, “There is no fight. The talk of war is just talk.”

“Then why do you keep building more warships?” the English writer shot back.

“Why does England?” Riker retorted mildy.

The Chicagoans and the Chinese seminary students swiveled eyeballs between the Germans and the English like spectators at a tennis match. To Isaac Bell’s surprise, one of the silent Chinese answered before the writer could.

“England is an island. The English see no choice.”

“Thank you, Louis,” Arnold Bennett said. “I could not have put it better myself.”

Louis’s dark almond eyes grew wide, and he looked down as if embarrassed to have spoken up.

“By that logic,” said Riker, “Germany has no choice either. German industry and German trade demand a vast fleet of merchant ships to sail our goods across every sea. We must protect our fleet. But, frankly, it is my instinct that sensible businessmen will never go to war.”

Herr Shafer scoffed, “My countryman is gullible. Businessmen will have no say in it. Britain and Russia conspire to obstruct German growth. France will side with England, too. Thank Gott for the Imperial German Army and our Prussian officers.”

“Prussians?” shouted a Chicagoan. “Prussian officers made my grandfather emigrate to America.”

“Mine, too,” called another, red in the face. “Thank ‘Gott’ they took us out of that hellhole.”

“Socialists,” Shafer commented.

“Socialists? I’ll show you a Socialist.”

The Chicagoan’s friends restrained him.

Shafer took no notice. “We are besieged by England and England’s lackeys.”

Arnold Bennett leaped up, spread his legs in a burly stance, and said, “I don’t at all care for your tone, sir.”

Half the observation car was on their feet by now, gesticulating and shouting. Isaac Bell glanced at Riker who looked back, eyes alight with amusement. “I guess that answers your question, Mr. Bell. Good night, sir, I’m going to bed ahead of the riot.”

Before he could rise from his chair, Shafer shouted, “Besieged from without and undermined within by Socialists and Jews.”

Isaac Bell turned cold eyes on Shafer. The German drew back, mumbling, “Wait. When they finish us off, they’ll go after you.”

Isaac Bell drew a deep breath, reminded himself why he was on the train, and answered in a voice that carried through the car. “After Admiral Mahan demonstrated that sea powers rule the world, he said something to a bigot that I’ve always admired: ‘Jesus Christ was a Jew. That makes them good enough for me.’”

The shouting stopped. A man laughed. Another said, “Say, that’s a good one. ‘Good enough for me,’ ” and the car erupted in laughter.

Shafer clicked his heels. “Good night, gentlemen.”

Riker watched the cavalryman retreat toward the nearest steward and demand schnapps. “For a moment there,” he said quietly, “I thought you were going to floor Herr Shafer.”

Bell looked at the gem merchant. “You don’t miss much, Mr. Riker.”

“I told you. My father taught me every trick in the book. What got you so riled?”

“I will not abide hatred.”

Riker shrugged. “To answer your question-truthfully-Europe wants a war. Monarchists, democrats, merchants, soldiers, and sailors have been at peace too long to know what they’re in for.”

“That is too cynical for my taste,” said Isaac Bell.

Riker smiled blandly. “I’m not a cynic. I’m a realist.”

“What about those sensible businessmen you were talking about?’

“Some will see the profit in war. The rest will be ignored.”

THE SPY WATCHED Isaac Bell watching his “suspects”:

The detective cannot know whether I am here in this very car.

Or already asleep in my bed.

Or even on the train at all.

Nor can he know who on this train belongs to me.

Get some sleep, Mr. Bell. You’re going to need it. Bad news in the morning.

36

YOUR SHAD ROE AND SCRAMBLED EGGS, MR. BELL,” announced the diner steward with a broad smile that faded as he saw the expression on Bell’s face change from pleasurable anticipation to rage. Two hours from its destination, the 20th Century Limited had picked up Chicago morning newspapers left by an eastbound express. A crisp edition folded at each place setting greeted the passengers at breakfast.

EXPLOSION IN U.S. NAVY TORPEDO

STATION AT NEWPORT

TWO OFFICERS BLOWN TO ATOMS

NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, MAY 15TH.-An explosion that caused death and destruction occurred in the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport. It killed two naval officers and wrecked a production line.

Isaac Bell was stunned. Had he gone in the wrong direction?

“Good morning, Bell! You haven’t touched your roe. Has it turned?”

“Morning, Riker. No, it smells fine. Bad news in the paper.”

Riker opened his as he sat. “Good Lord. What caused it?”

“It doesn’t say. Excuse me.” Bell went back to his stateroom.

If not an accident but sabotage, then the spy’s reach was as broad as it was vicious. In the course of a single day his ring had executed a traitor in Washington, murdered a detective hot on his trail in New York, and blown up a heavily guarded naval station on the Rhode Island coast.

ISAAC BELL SET UP temporary headquarters in the back of the LaSalle Station luggage room within minutes of the 20th Century steaming into Chicago. Van Dorn detectives from the Palmer House head office had already blanketed the railroad station. They followed his suspects as they scattered.

Larry Rosania promptly vanished. A veteran Chicago detective was reporting embarrassedly when another rushed in. “Isaac! The Old Man says to telephone long-distance from the stationmaster’s private office. And make sure you’re alone.”

Bell did so.

Van Dorn asked, “Are you alone?”

“Yes, sir. Was either of the officers killed Ron Wheeler?”

“No.”

Bell breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“Wheeler snuck off to spend the night with a woman. If he hadn’t, he’d be dead, too. It was his people who were killed.”

“Thank the Lord he wasn’t. Captain Falconer says he’s irreplaceable.”

“Well, here is something else irreplaceable,” Van Dorn growled. Six hundred miles of copper telephone wire between Chicago and Washington did not diminish the sound of his anger. “This is not in the newspapers, and it won’t ever be-are you still alone there, Isaac?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Listen to me. The Navy has suffered a terrible loss. The explosion started a fire. The fire destroyed their entire arsenal of experimental electric torpedoes that had been imported from England. Wheeler’s people had apparently improved their range and accuracy vastly. More important-much more important-Wheeler’s people figured out a way to arm the warheads with dynamite. The Navy Secretary told me this morning. He is distraught. So much so, he is threatening to offer the President his resignation. Apparently the use of TNT would have given U.S. torpedoes ten times more power underwater.”

“Can we assume it was not an accident?”

“We have to,” Van Dorn answered flatly. “And even though the Navy is nominally in charge of guarding their own facility, they are extremely disappointed with Van Dorn Protection Services.”

Isaac Bell said nothing.

“I don’t have to explain the consequences of being a government entity’s target of blame, deserved or not,” Van Dorn continued. “And I am not entirely sure what you were doing in Chicago when the spy attacked in Newport.”

This did require an answer, and Bell said, “The Great White Fleet is about to make landfall at San Francisco. Scully was tracking the spy, or his agents, to San Francisco. Thanks to Scully, I very likely have him in my sights.”

“What do you suppose he intends to do?”

“I don’t know yet. But it must involve the fleet, and I am going to stop him before he does it.”

Van Dorn remained silent for a long minute. Bell said nothing. Finally the boss said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Isaac.”

“He will not pack his bags and go home after Newport. He will attack the fleet.”

Van Dorn said, “All right. I’ll alert Bronson in San Francisco.”

“I already have.”

He went back to the luggage room. Van Dorns reported that Herr Shafer and the Chinese traveling with Arnold Bennett had transferred to the Overland Limited to San Francisco, as their tickets had indicated. “Their train’s leaving, Isaac. If you’re going with ’em, you gotta go.”

“I’m going.”

TWO STRONG HORSES PULLED an ice wagon modified with carriage springs and pneumatic tires instead of hard rubber, which made its ride unusually smooth on the rough cobbled streets that slanted down to Newport’s waterfront. No one took note in the dim light of the thinly scattered gas lamps that the driver clutching the brake handle cut too slight and boyish a figure to heave hundred-pound blocks of ice onto a fishing dock. And if anyone thought it odd that the driver was singing to her horses,

“You can’t remember

what I can’t forget,”

in a soft soprano, they kept their opinions to themselves. The seamen of Newport had been smuggling rum, tobacco, slaves, and opium for three hundred years. If a girl wanted to entertain her horses while delivering ice to a boat in the dark, that was her business.

The boat was a rugged, broad-beamed, thirty-foot catboat with a stubby mast ahead of a low coach roof. With its gaff-rigged sail that was nearly square, and a centerboard instead of a fixed keel, it was faster than it looked and equally at home in shallow bays and off the coast. A gang of men in slickers and wool watch caps climbed out of the cabin.

While the girl stood watch with her hands buried in her pockets, the men drew the canvas off the ice wagon’s cargo, inclined a ramp of planks between the wagon and dock, and gently slid four seventeen-foot-long, cigar-shaped metal tubes down the ramp one by one. They shifted the ramp and slid all four into the boat, and lashed them securely to a cushioned bed of canvas sails.

When they were done, the wide wooden hull squatted low in the water. All but one of the men climbed into the wagon and drove away. The man who stayed raised the sail and untied the mooring lines.

The girl took the tiller and sailed the boat skillfully off the dock and into the night.

THAT SAME NIGHT-the westbound Overland Limited’s first night out of Chicago-reports waiting for Bell at Rock Island, Illinois, confirmed that the gem merchant Riker had indeed boarded the California Limited to San Diego. Still disliking coincidences, Bell wired Horace Bronson, head of the San Francisco office, asking him to assign James Dashwood, a young operative who had proven himself on the Wrecker case, to intercept the California Limited at Los Angeles. Dashwood should see whether Riker actually continued on to San Diego to purchase pink tourmaline gems or changed trains to San Francisco. Regardless, the young detective would trail Riker and observe his subsequent actions. Bell warned Bronson that Riker was traveling with a bodyguard named Plimpton, who would be watching his back.

Then he wired Research back in New York, asking for more information on the death of Riker’s father in South Africa and urging Grady Forrer to step up the hunt for information about his ward.

Laurence Rosania’s disappearance upon arrival had set off a frantic manhunt. But when Bell reached Des Moines, Iowa, the information was waiting that the retired thief-after giving his Van Dorn shadows the slip out of habit or professional pride-had been written up in the Chicago Tribune marriage announcements and was scheduled to steam toward a San Francisco honeymoon in his bride’s private car. So much for admonishing youth that crime did not pay, noted the Chicago Van Dorn headquarters.

Herr Shafer, Arnold Bennett, and Bennett’s Chinese companions had transferred to the Overland Limited to San Francisco, and it was with them that Bell continued on the journey west, hoping to pick up additional information from Research at the station stops along with what he could detect in their presence.

Then New York wired that Shafer was definitely a German spy.

“Herr Shafer” was an active cavalry officer, still serving as a major in the German Army. His real name was Cornelius Von Nyren. And Von Nyren was expert in land tactics and the use of quickly laid narrow-gauge railroads to supply an army’s front lines. Whatever he was spying on in America had nothing to do with Hull 44.

“Formidable on land,” Archie wrote. “But wouldn’t know a dreadnought from a birch-bark canoe.”

37

CHINESE TO THE BACK OF THE LINE!”

It was the second morning out of Chicago, the Overland Limited drawing near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and something was wrong with the dining car. The corridor in the Pullman behind it backed up with hungry people in line for a breakfast already an hour late.

“You heard me! Chinks, Mongolians, and Asiatics to the back!”

“Stay where you are,” Isaac Bell said to the divinity students.

Arnold Bennett was whirling to their defense. Bell stopped him. “I’ll deal with this.” At last a chance to get to know Arnold Bennett’s charges, Harold and Louis. He turned around and faced the bigot who had shouted. The cold anger in Bell’s blue eyes, and the unmistakable impression that it was barely contained, caused the man to back away.

“Don’t mind him,” the tall detective told the divinity students. “People get testy when they’re hungry. What’s your name, young fellow,” he asked, thrusting his hand out. “I’m Isaac Bell.”

“Harold, Misser Bell. Thank you.”

“Harold what?”

“Harold Wing.”

“And you?”

“Louis Loh.”

“L-e-w Lewis or L-o-u Louis?”

“L-o-u.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Little wonder that unpleasant chap is hungry,” growled Arnold Bennett, who was standing first in line. “The breakfasting accommodation of this particular unit of the Overland Limited was not designed on the same scale as its bedroom accommodation.”

Isaac Bell winked at Louis and Harold, who looked bewildered by Bennett’s densely circuitous English. “Mr. Arnold means that there are more sleeping berths in the Pullmans than chairs in the diner.”

The students nodded with vague smiles.

“They had better open that dining car,” Bennett muttered. “Before it’s put to the sack by ravening hordes.”

“Did you sleep well?” Bell asked Harold and Louis. “Are you getting used to the motion?”

“Very well, sir,” said Louis.

“Despite,” said Bennett, “my warning about jerky trains.”

The dining car finally opened for breakfast, and Bell sat with them. The Chinese were silent as sphinxes no matter what Bell said to draw them into conversation while the writer was happy to talk nonstop about everything he saw, read, or overheard. Wing took a small Bible from his coat and read quietly. Loh stared out the window at a land growing green in the spring and speckled with cattle.

ISAAC BELL LAY IN WAIT for Louis Loh in the corridor outside Arnold Bennett’s staterooms.

West of Rawlins, Wyoming, the Overland Limited was increasing speed across the high plateau. The locomotive fireman was pouring on the coal, and at eighty miles an hour the train swayed hard. When Bell saw the Chinese divinity student coming down the corridor, he let the careening train throw him against the smaller man.

“Sorry!”

He steadied himself by holding Loh’s lapel. “Did they issue your pocket pistol at the seminary?”

“What?”

“This bulge is not a Bible.”

The Chinese student appeared to shrivel with embarrassment. “Oh, no, sir. You are right. It is a gun. It is just that I am afraid. In the West, there is much hatred of Chinese. You saw at the breakfasting car. They think we’re all opium addicts or tong gangsters.”

“Do you know how to use that thing?”

They were standing inches apart, Bell leaning close, still holding his lapel, the youth unable to back away. Louis lowered his dark eyes. “Not really, sir. I guess just point it and pull the trigger-but it is the threat that is important. I would never shoot it.”

“May I see it, please?” Bell asked, extending his open hand.

Louis looked around, confirmed they were still alone, and gingerly drew the pistol from his pocket. Bell took it. “Top-quality firearm,” he said, surprised that the student had found himself a Colt Pocket Hammerless that looked fresh out of the box. “Where did you get it?”

“I bought it in New York City.”

“You bought a good one. Where in New York City?”

“A shop near the police headquarters. Downtown.”

Bell made sure the manual safety was on and handed it back. “You can get hurt waving a gun around you don’t know how to use. You might shoot yourself by mistake. Or someone will take it away and do it for you-and get off by claiming self-defense. I would rest easier if you would promise to put it in your suitcase and leave it there.”

“Yes, sir, Misser Bell.”

“If anyone else on the train gives you trouble, just come to me.”

“Please don’t tell Mr. Bennett. He wouldn’t understand.”

“Why not?”

“He is kind man. He has no idea how cruel people are.”

“Put it in your suitcase, and I won’t tell him a thing.”

Louis seized Bell’s hand in both of his. “Thank you, sir. Thank you for understanding.”

Bell’s face was a mask. “Go put it in your suitcase,” he repeated. The Chinese man hurried down the corridor and through the vestibule to the next car, where Bennett had his adjoining staterooms. Louis turned and waved another grateful thank-you. Bell nodded back as if thinking, What a pious young fellow.

In truth, he was speculating that the boyish-looking missionary students could be tong gangsters. And if that were so, he had to marvel at John Scully’s clairvoyance.

No other detective in the Van Dorn Agency could wander alone into Chinatown and two weeks later connect a pair of tong gangsters to the Hull 44 spy ring. He was tempted to clamp cuffs on Louis Loh and Harold Wing and lock them in the baggage car. Except he doubted that Louis and Harold were ringleaders if gangsters at all-and if they were henchmen, he could trail them to their boss.

That the spy recruited tong Chinese was typical of his international reach. It was hard to imagine someone like Abbington-Westlake even thinking about it. That the spy had tricked a famous English novelist into providing cover for his operatives indicated an imagination as intricate as it was diabolical.

“BET’S TO YOU, WHITMARK. In or out?”

Ted Whitmark knew full well that he should never stay in a hand of seven-card stud trying to fill an inside straight. The odds were ridiculous. He needed a four. There were only four fours in the deck, one heart, one diamond, one spade, one club. And the four of clubs had already been dealt to a hand across the table, and that man had bet when it fell, suggesting another four hidden in his hole cards. Four fours in a deck, one clearly missing, another likely. The odds were less than ridiculous, they were impossible.

But he had dropped a ton of money into the pot already and he had a feeling his luck was about to change. It had to. His losing streak had started weeks ago in New York, and it was tearing him down. He had lost more on the train to San Francisco, and since he had arrived he had lost nearly every night. One four gone. One or even two likely gone. Sometimes you had to take the bull by the horns and be brave.

“Bet’s to you, Whitmark. In or out?”

No more “Mr.” Whitmark, Ted noticed. Mr. had gone by the boards when he borrowed his third five thousand early in the evening. Sometimes you had to be brave.

“In.”

“It’s eight thousand.”

Whitmark shoved his chips in the pot. “Here’s three. And here’s my marker.”

“You sure?”

“Deal the cards.”

The man dealing looked across the table not at Ted Whitmark but at the scarred-face owner of the Barbary Coast casino who had been approving the loans. The owner frowned. For a moment, Whitmark felt saved. He could not call if he didn’t have the money. He would fold. He could go back to his hotel, sleep, and tomorrow work out a schedule to pay his losses from money the Navy would owe him after he delivered the goods to the Great White Fleet. Or Great White “Eat,” as one of his rivals had noted approvingly. Fourteen thousand sailors ate a lot of food.

The casino owner nodded.

“Deal the cards.”

The guy with the four caught another four. Whitmark got a nine of clubs, about as ugly a card as he had ever seen. Somebody bet. Somebody called. The fours raised the pot. Ted Whitmark folded.

“You mind showing me your last card after the hand?” he asked of the man to his left.

When it was over and three fours across the table had won, the man to Ted’s left, who had received the card Ted would have if he had stayed in, said, “It was a four. Bet you would have liked that,” he called across the table to the trip fours. You would have had four fours.”

“I would have liked it, too,” said Ted, and he stumbled to the bar. Before he could raise a glass, the man who owned the casino walked up and said, “I have a message for you from Tommy Thompson in New York.”

Ted shrank from the man’s cold gaze. “Don’t worry,” he mumbled. “I’ll pay you first, soon as I can.”

“Tommy says to pay me. I bought your marker.”

“On top of what I owe you? You’re taking a hell of chance.”

“You’ll pay. One way or another.”

“I make a lot of money. I’ll get it to you, soon.”

“It’s not money I need, Mr. Whitmark. I need a little help, and you’re the man to give it to me.”

“IF ME AND YOU was half as smart as we think we are we’d have tumbled to it a month ago!” John Scully’s words thundered through a dream about the Frye Boys.

Isaac Bell shot awake from his first full night’s sleep since he had left New York. The berth was tilted forward, and he did not have to look out his stateroom window to know that they had crested the Sierra Nevada and were beginning the descent to the Sacramento Valley. Five hours to San Francisco. He got up and dressed quickly.

Had he missed a bet?

“Days ago,” he muttered to himself.

He had not once questioned the novelist Arnold Bennett’s role as Harold’s and Louis’s protector. What if the opposite had occurred? What if the writer was also a British spy? Like Abbington-Westlake, hiding behind a scrim of upper-crust, above-it-all mannerisms and a witty tongue?

The train pulled into Sacramento. Bell bolted to the telegraph office and sent a wire to New York. Was Bennett the one who recruited the tong hatchet men and dressed them up as divinity students? Talk about hiding in plain sight. For all he knew, Bell realized, Arnold Bennett was the spy himself, the leader of the ring.

KATHERINE DEE cursed aloud.

Like a sailor, she laughed, giddy on little sleep and lots of dust. Cursing like a sailor. Wind and spray were playing hell with the cocaine she was sniffing from an ivory vial to stay awake on the final night of her voyage from Newport. She could not see the coast, but the thunder of the surf told her she had she veered too close.

She had sailed the heavily laden catboat down the southern coast of Long Island, timing her passage from Montauk Point to enter Fire Island Inlet at first light. She steered, unseen except by some fishermen, through the opening in the barrier beach. Once inside, out of the ocean swells, she followed a channel marked with stakes and watched for her landmark on the Long Island shore five miles across the bay. When she spotted it, she crossed the choppy waters of the Great South Bay steering for a white mansion with a red roof. Stakes marked the mouth of a newly dredged creek bulkheaded with creosoted wood.

The catboat glided up the glassy creek.

The boathouse was clad in new cedar shingles. The roof was tall, the opening high enough to accommodate the low mast. Katherine Dee lowered her sail and let the boat drift. She had timed it just right. It stopped close enough for her to toss a looped line around a piling. Pulling on the line, directing her strength with economy, she eased the heavily laden boat stern first into the shadows under the roof.

A man appeared through the back door that opened to the land.

“Where’s Jake?”

“He tried to kiss me,” she answered in a distant voice.

“Yeah?” he said, as if to say, You’re a girl, what do expect alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean? “So where is he?”

She looked him full in the face. “A shark jumped into the boat and ate him.”

He considered the way her smile stiffened her mouth, the iceberg grimness in her eyes, and the people she knew, and decided that Jake had gotten what he deserved, and he was not at all interested in how it had happened. He held up a wicker basket. “I brought you supper.”

“Thank you.”

“I brought enough for two. Not knowing that-”

“Good. I’m starving.”

She ate alone. Then she spread her sleeping bag on the canvas cushioning her cargo and slept secure in the thought that Brian O’Shay would be proud of her. The explosion at the torpedo factory had masked the theft of four experimental electric torpedoes that had been imported from England for research. Armed with TNT by the brilliant Ron Wheeler, they were ten times more powerful than the English had made them. And no one at the Newport Naval Torpedo Station realized that they had not been blown to smithereens.

38

THERE YOU ARE, BELL! JOLLY GOOD, WE DIDN’T MISS saying good-bye.”

Bell was surprised when he reboarded the train as it pulled out of Sacramento on the last ninety-mile leg to San Francisco that Arnold Bennett and the Chinese, who were ticketed through to San Francisco, had their bags packed and in the corridor.

“I thought you were going to San Francisco.”

“Changed our mind, inspired by all these orchards and berry fields.” The train was passing through strawberry fields crowded with fruit pickers in straw hats. “We’re hopping off early at Suisun City. Decided to catch a train to Napa Junction. An old school chum of mine is farming up St. Helena way-started a vineyard, actually, stomping grapes and all that. We’ll recover bucolically from the rigors of our travels-splendid as they were-before pressing on to San Francisco. I’ve a mind to cobble up an article for Harper’s on the subject while the boys enjoy some fresh air in the country before carrying the Word of God home to China.”

Bell thought fast, envisioning the long, sprawling bays of San Francisco enclosed from the Pacific Ocean by the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula. From Suisun City, the main line continued southwest seventeen miles to the Benicia Ferry that carried the train across the narrow Carquinez Strait to Port Costa. Then the final thirty-mile run beside San Pablo Bay to Oakland Mole, where a passenger ferry crossed San Francisco Bay to the city.

Twenty miles north of the city, up San Francisco Bay and across San Pablo Bay, was the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. It was the U.S. Navy’s Brooklyn Navy Yard of America’s West Coast, with a long history of building, repairing, and refitting warships and submarines. Napa Junction, connected to Suisan City by a local branch line to the west, was only five miles north of the shipyard.

Bennett and the Chinese would be a short train or electric trolley ride from Mare Island, where the Great White Fleet would put in from its voyage to refit, replenish food and water, and load fresh ammunition from the magazines.

“Isn’t that a coincidence?” said Isaac Bell.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m taking that very same train.”

“Where are your bags?”

“I travel light.”

The Overland Limited pulled into Suisun City ten minutes late. The train to Napa Junction was blowing its whistle. Bell snatched a handful of wires waiting for him at the telegraph office and hurried to board. It was a two-coach local, with a gaily striped awning sheltering its back platform. There were a half dozen passengers in the rear car, Arnold Bennett in their midst and starting to tell a story. He interrupted himself to indicate an empty seat. “Come let us talk you into tromping grapes with us at St. Helena.”

Bell waved the telegrams and headed back to the platform to scan them in private. “Join you in a minute. Orders from the front office.”

Bennett laughed jovially, calling over his shoulder, “But you already know they’re only instructing you to sell more insurance.”

The train was crossing salt marshes, and the cool, wet wind that swirled under the awning smelled of the sea. The wind rattled the emergency-brake handle that swung from a short rope rhythmically against the wall and buffeted the flimsy yellow telegraph paper.

Research had no word yet from Germany on the identity of the schoolgirl who was Riker’s ward-that it was taking so long was proof that Joe Van Dorn was right to expand field offices into Europe.

They had unearthed additional details about the death of Erhard Riker’s father in South Africa in 1902 during the Boer War. Smuts, the Transvaal leader, had led a sudden raid on the copper-mine railroad from Port Nolloth, where the senior Riker was searching for a rumored deposit of alluvial diamonds. He was taking refuge in a British railroad blockhouse when the Boers attacked with dynamite hand bombs.

The third wire was from James Dashwood.

RIKER ARRIVED LA.

NOW EN ROUTE TO SAN DIEGO.

BODYGUARD PLIMPTON SUSPICIOUS.

JD MISTOOK FOR TIFFANY JEWEL AGENT.

BODYGUARD PERSUADED JD ITINERANT TEMPERANCE SPEAKER.

Bell grinned. Dash had the makings of becoming a character. His grin faded abruptly. The last wire in the stack started with the warning initials YMK.

You must know-Archie Abbott warning that if Bell was not already aware, he should be.

YMK.

ARNOLD BENNETT AT HOME PARIS.

“What?” Bell said aloud. He glanced through the glass in the door, saw the man in tweed who claimed to be Arnold Bennett, and looked back at the telegram.

WRITER NOT-REPEAT NOT-ON OVERLAND LIMITED.

SF VD AGENTS MEETING TRAIN AT BENICIA FERRY.

WATCH STEP.

It was a stunning revelation, and Isaac Bell rejoiced.

At last he knew for sure who he was hunting. The man who claimed to be Arnold Bennett was in league with the Chinese, probably with their boss, who was likely the man who ordered the redhead to kill Scully when the detective uncovered the Chinatown connection.

At last he held the advantage. They did not know that Bell knew.

“Misser Bell?”

Bell looked up from his telegrams and down a gun barrel.

39

LOUIS, I THOUGHT WE AGREED THAT YOU WOULD KEEP that in your suitcase.”

Harold was behind Louis, drawing a weapon from his coat.

“You disappoint me, too, Harold. That is not a Bible. Not even a traditional tong hatchet but a firearm any self-respecting, modern American criminal thug would be proud to carry.”

Louis’s English was suddenly accentless, his manner superior.

“Step to the edge of the platform, Mr. Bell, and turn your back to us. Do not draw the pistol you conceal in your shoulder holster. Do not try for the derringer in your hat. Do not consider reaching for the knife in your boot.”

Bell glanced past them through the vestibule door. At the front of the coach, the false Arnold Bennett was holding forth with broad gestures that were having his desired effect of distracting the few people in the car. The wheels were clattering too loudly for Bell to hear their laughter.

“You’re unusually observant of sidearms for a divinity student, Louis. But have you considered that witnesses will hear you shoot me?”

“We’ll shoot you if you force us to. Then we will shoot the witnesses. I’m sure you’ve heard that we Asiatics and Mongolians have no regard for human life. Turn around!”

Bell looked over his shoulder. The railing was low. The roadbed was disappearing behind the train at fifty miles an hour, a blur of steel rails, iron spikes, stone ballast, and wooden ties. When he turned, they would crack his skull with a gun barrel or plunge a knife in his back and dump him over the railing.

He opened his hand.

The telegrams scattered, twisting and twirling in the buffeting slipstream, and flew in Louis’s face like demented finches.

Bell thrust his arms straight up, grabbed the edge of the roof awning, tucked his knees, and kicked a boot at Harold’s head. Harold jumped left where Bell wanted him to, clearing a path to the red wooden handle of the train’s emergency brake.

Any doubt that they were not divinity students vanished when Bell’s hand was an inch from the emergency brake. Louis smashed his gun against Bell’s wrist, slamming it away from the brake pull. Unable to bring the train to a crashing halt, Bell ignored the searing pain in his right wrist and punched with his left. It landed with satisfying force, hard enough on Louis’s forehead to buckle his knees.

But Harold had recovered. Concentrating his strength and weight like a highly trained fighter, the short, wiry Chinese wielded his gun like a steel club. The barrel smashed into Bell’s hat. The thick felt crown and the spring steel band within absorbed some of the blow, but momentum was against him. He saw the awning spin overhead, then the sky, and then he was tumbling over the side rail and falling toward the tracks. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. He saw the railroad ties, the wheels, the truck they carried, and the platform steps. He seized the top step with both hands. His boots hit the ties. For an awful split second he was trying to run backward at fifty miles an hour. Squeezing hard on the steel step, knowing that if his hands slipped he was through, he curled his arms as if doing a chin-up and hauled his feet onto the bottom stop.

Harold’s pistol descended in a blur. It seemed to fill the sky. Bell reached past the gun to seize Harold’s wrist and yanked with all his might. The tong gangster catapulted over him, flew through the air, and smashed into a telegraph pole, his body bent backward around it like a horseshoe.

Clinging to the steps, Bell reached for his own pistol. Before he could pull it, he felt Louis’s automatic pressed to his head. “Your turn!”

40

BELL BRACED HIS FEET TO JUMP AND CAST A LIGHTNING-SWIFT glance over the ground racing past. From his precarious perch on the steps he could see farther ahead than Louis. Beside the train was a steep ballast embankment, an endless row of telegraph poles, and a clump of thick trees as deadly as the poles. But far ahead spread an open field dotted with sheep. A barbed-wire fence ran along the track to keep livestock off the rails. He had to clear the fence if he had any hope at all of surviving the jump. But first he needed a five-second reprieve to get to the field.

He shouted into the roaring wind and clattering wheels, “I will track you down, Louis.”

“If you live, I will cock my ears for the clump of crutches.”

“I will never give up,” Bell said, buying another second. Almost to the grassy field. The slope was steeper than it appeared from the distance.

“Last chance, Bell. Jump!”

Bell bought one more second with “Never!”

He launched in a desperate dive to clear the fence. Too low. He missed a telegraph pole by feet and a fence post by inches. But the top strand of barbed wire was leaping at his face. The speeding train’s slipstream slammed into him. The blast of air lifted his flying body over the wire. He hit the grass face-first like a base runner stealing second, and he tried to tuck arms and legs into a tight ball. He rolled, powerless to avoid any rock or boulder in his path. In the blur of motion there was suddenly something solid right in front of him, and he had no choice but to slam into it.

The shock jolted every fiber in his body. Pain and darkness clamped around his head. He was vaguely aware that his arms and legs had untucked and were flopping like a scarecrow’s as he continued rolling on the grass. He hadn’t the strength to gather them in again. The darkness deepened. After a while he had the vague impression that he had stopped moving. He heard a drum beat. The ground shook under him. Then the darkness closed in completely, and he lay absolutely still.

At some point the drums ceased. At another, he became aware that the darkness had lifted. His eyes were open, staring at a hazy sky. In his mind he saw a spinning field filled with sheep. His head hurt. The sun had moved an hour’s worth to the west. And when he sat up and looked around, he saw a flock of real sheep-unshorn woollies grazing peacefully, all but one a hundred yards away that was struggling to stand.

Bell rubbed his head, then he felt for broken bones and found none. He rose unsteadily and walked toward the sheep to see if he had injured it so badly that he would have to shoot it to put it out of its misery. But, as if inspired by his success, it managed to stand on all fours and limp painfully toward the flock. “Sorry, pardner,” said Bell. “Didn’t aim to run into you, but I’m glad I did.”

He went looking for his hat.

When he heard a train coming, he climbed up the embankment and planted himself in the middle of the tracks. He stood there, swaying on his feet, until the train stopped with the tip of its engine pilot pressing between his knees. A red-faced engineer stomped to the front of his locomotive and yelled, “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Van Dorn agent,” Bell answered. “On my way to Napa Junction.”

“You think that makes you own the railroad?”

Bell unbuttoned the inner breast pocket of his grass-stained coat and presented the most compelling of the several railroad passes he carried. “In a manner of speaking, I do.” He staggered to the ladder that led to the cab and climbed aboard.

At Napa Junction, the stationmaster reported, “The English clergyman and his Chinese missionary took the train north to St. Helena.”

“When’s your train to St. Helena.?”

“Northbound leaves at three-oh-three.’”

“Wait.” Bell steadied himself on the counter. “What did you say?” Another field of round sheep was spinning in his head. “Clergyman?”

“Reverend J. L. Skelton.”

“Not a writer? A journalist?”

“When’s the last time you saw a newspaperman wearing one of them white collars?”

“And he went north?” Away from Mare Island.

“North.”

“Did he take the Chinese student with him?”

“I told you. He bought two tickets to Mount Helen.”

“Did you see them both board?”

“Saw them board. Saw the train leave the station. And I can report that it didn’t come back.”

“When’s your next train south?”

“Train to Vallejo just left.”

Bell looked around. “What are those tracks?” An electric catenary wire was supported over them. “Interurban?”

“Napa-Vallejo and Benicia Railroad,” the stationmaster answered, adding with a disdainful sniff, “the trolley.”

“When’s the next trolley to Vallejo?”

“No idea. I don’t talk to the competition.”

Bell gave the stationmaster his card and ten dollars. “If that reverend comes through here again, wire me care of the commandant of Mare Island.”

The stationmaster pocketed half a week’s salary, and said, “I suppose I’ve never seen you if the reverend asks?”

Bell gave him another ten dollars. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

He was waiting at the Interurban tracks, head spinning, when a red, four-seat Stanley Steamer with yellow wheels glided by silently. It looked brand-new but for mud spattered on its brass headlamps.

“Hey!”

Bell ran after it. The driver stopped. When he peeled back his goggles, he looked like a schoolboy playing hooky. Bell guessed that he had “borrowed” his father’s car.

“I’ll bet you twenty bucks that thing can’t do a mile a minute.”

“You’ll lose.”

“It’s six miles to Vallejo. I’ll bet you twenty bucks you can’t get there in six minutes.”

Bell was losing the bet until, two miles from Vallejo, they came squealing around a bend in the road, and the driver stomped on his brakes. The road was blocked by a gang of men who had dug a trench across it to lay a culvert pipe. “Hey!” yelled the driver. “How in heck are we supposed to get to Vallejo?”

The foreman, seated in the shade of an umbrella, pointed at a cutoff they had just passed. “Over the hill.”

The driver looked at Bell. “That’s no fair. I can’t do sixty over a hill.”

“We’ll work out a handicap,” said Bell. “I think you’re going to win this race.”

The driver poured on the steam, and the Stanley climbed briskly for several hundred feet. They tore across a short plateau and climbed another hundred. At the crest, Bell saw a breathtaking vista. The town of Vallejo lay below, its grid pattern of streets, houses, and shops stopping at the blue waters of San Pablo Bay. To the right, Mare Island was marked by tall steel radio towers like those Bell had seen at the Washington Navy Yard. Ships lay alongside the island. In the distance, he saw columns of black smoke rising behind Point San Pablo, which divided San Francisco Bay from San Pablo Bay.

“Stop your auto,” said Bell.

“I’m losing time.”

Bell handed him twenty dollars. “You already won.”

A line of white battleships rounded the headland and steamed into view. He knew their silhouettes from the Henry Reutendahl paintings reproduced for months in Collier’s. The flagship, the three-funnel Connecticut, led the column, followed by Alabama, with two smoke funnels side by side, then the smaller Kersage, with two tall in-line funnels and stacked forward turrets, and Virginia taking up the rear.

“Wow!” exclaimed the kid at the wheel. “Say, where are they going? They’re supposed to anchor at the city.”

“Down there,” said Bell. “Mare Island for maintenance and supplies.”

THE KID DROPPED HIM on a street of tailors’ shops that catered to Navy officers.

“How much to replace my suit of clothes?”

“Those are mighty fine duds, mister. Fifty dollars if you want it fast.”

“A hundred,” said Bell, “if every man in your shop drops everything and it’s done for me in two hours.”

“Done! And we’ll get your hat cleaned free of charge.”

“I would like to use your washroom. And then I believe I would like to sit in a chair where I can close my eyes.”

In the mirror over the sink he saw a slight dilation of his pupils that told him he might have suffered a minor concussion. If that was all. “Thank you, Mr. Sheep.”

He washed his face, sat in a chair, and slept. An hour later he awakened to the rumbling of a seemingly endless line of wagons and trucks heading for Mare Island Pier. Every fourth truck had T. WHITMARK stenciled on the side. Ted was doing well feeding the sailors.

The tailor was as good as his word. Two hours after arriving in Vallejo, Isaac Bell stepped off the ferry Pinafore onto the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. U.S. Marines snapped to attention at the gate. Bell showed the pass Joseph Van Dorn had procured from the Navy Secretary.

“Take me to the commandant.”

The commandant had a message for Bell from the Napa Junction railroad station.

“MY HOSTS USUALLY HOLD the reception after I preach,” said the visiting English clergyman, Reverend J. L. Skelton.

“We do things differently on Mare Island,” said the commandant. “This way, sir, to your receiving line.”

Gripping the clergyman’s elbow, the commandant marched him through a chapel lit by brilliant Tiffany stained-glass windows and flung open the door to the Navy chaplain’s office. Behind a sturdy desk, Isaac Bell rose to his full height, immaculate in white.

Skelton turned pale. “Now, wait, everyone, gentlemen, this is not what you imagine.”

“You were a fake writer on the train,” said Bell. “Now you’re a fake preacher.”

“No, I am truly of the clergy. Well, was… Defrocked, you know. Misunderstanding, church funds… a young lady… Well, you can imagine.”

“Why did you impersonate Arnold Bennett?”

“It presented an opportunity I could not afford to pass up.”

“Opportunity?”

Skelton nodded eagerly. “I was at the end of my rope. Parties in England had caught up with me in New York. I had to get out of town. The job was tailor-made.”

“Who,” asked Bell, “gave you the job?”

“Why, Louis Loh, of course. And poor Harold, who I gather is no longer among us.”

“Where is Louis Loh?”

“I’m not entirely sure.”

“You’d better be sure,” roared the commandant. “Or I’ll have it beaten out of you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Bell said. “I’m sure-”

“Pipe down, sir,” roared the commandant, cutting him off as they had agreed ahead of time. “This is my shipyard. I’ll treat criminals any way I want. Now, where is this Chinaman? Quickly, before I call a bosun.”

“Mr. Bell is right. That won’t be necessary. This is all a huge misunderstanding, and-”

“Where is the Chinaman?”

“When I last saw him, he was dressed like a Japanese fruit picker.”

“Fruit picker? What do you mean?”

“Like the fruit pickers we saw from the train at Vaca. You saw them, Bell. There’s vast communities of Japanese employed picking fruit. Berries and all…”

Bell glanced at the commandant, who nodded that it was true.

“What was he wearing?” Bell asked.

“Straw hat, checkered shirt, dungarees.”

“Were the dungarees overalls? With a bib?”

“Yes. Exactly like a Jap fruit picker.”

Bell exchanged glances with the commandant. “Do you have fruit trees on Mare Island?”

“Of course not. It’s a shipyard. Now, see here, you, you’d better come clean or-”

Bell interrupted. “Reverend, you have one opportunity not to spend the rest of your life in prison. Answer me very carefully. Where did you see Louis Loh dressed like a fruit picker?”

“On the queue.”

“What queue?”

“The carts queued up for the freight ferry.”

“Was he on a cart?”

“He was driving one, don’t you see?”

Bell headed for the door. “He is disguised as a Japanese farmer delivering fruit?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“What kind of fruit?”

“Strawberries.”

“PASS! YOU LOUSY MONGOLIAN,” shouted the Marine guarding the entrance to the short road that crossed Mare Island from the ferry dock to the piers, where sailors were streaming up and down gangways carrying provisions into the ships. “Show your pass!”

“Here, sir,” said Louis Loh, eyes cast downward as he handed over the paper. “I showed it at the ferry.”

“Show it again here. And if I had my way, Japs wouldn’t set foot on Mare Island, pass or no pass.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Marine glowered at the paper, muttering, “Asiatics driving trucks. Farmers must be getting hard up.” He commenced a slow, deliberate circle around the wagon. He snatched a strawberry from one of the crates and popped it in his mouth. A sergeant marched up. “What the hell is the delay?”

“Just checking this Jap, sir.”

“You got a hundred wagons lined up. Get it moving.”

“You heard him, you stupid Mongolian. Get out of here.” He slammed a big hand down on the mule and it jumped ahead, nearly throwing Louis Loh off the wagon. The road, paved with cobblestones, cut in and out of storehouses and machine shops and crossed a railroad track. Where it forked, Louis Loh jerked the reins. The mule, which had been plodding after the other wagons, reluctantly turned.

Loh’s heart started pounding. The map he had been given indicated that the magazine was at the end of this road at the water’s edge. He rounded a factory building, and there it was, a stone structure a quarter mile ahead, with small barred windows and terra-cotta tile roof. The terra-cotta roof and the splash of blue of San Pablo Bay reminded him of his native city of Canton on the South China coast. Scared as he was, he was suddenly assailed with a powerful dose of homesickness that tore at his resolve. There were so many beautiful things he would never see again.

Wagons were streaming out of the magazine onto a long finger pier, at the end of which lay the gleaming white Connecticut, the flagship of the Great White Fleet. He was close. Ahead, he saw the final guard post manned by Marines. He reached under the wagon seat and tugged a string. He imagined he could hear the alarm clock ticking under the strawberries, but in fact it was completely muffled by the barrels of explosives under the fruit. He was close. The only question was, how much closer could he get before they stopped him?

He heard the grinding of a heavy motor and chain drive behind him. It was a stake truck piled high with red-and-white Coca-Cola syrup barrels. Had it followed him by mistake out of the provisioning line? Whatever the reason, its presence made his lone wagon less conspicuous. The truck blared its horn and roared ahead of him. A second later it stopped short, hard rubber tires screeching on the cobblestones. It slid sideways, blocking the road, which had a ditch on either side. There was no way around it, and Loh had already started the timing device that would detonate the explosives.

Louis called, “Sir, could you please move your truck? I am making delivery.”

Isaac Bell jumped down from the cab, grabbed the mule’s bit collar, and said, “Hello, Louis.”

Louis Loh’s fear and homesickness dissolved like windswept fog. Icy clarity replaced it. He reached under the wagon seat and tugged a second cord. This one led forward along the wagon tongue and under the mule’s traces. It detonated a strip of firecrackers that went off in a string of rapid explosions. The terrified mule reared violently, throwing Bell to the ground. It plunged blindly into the ditch, dragging the wagon, which overturned, spilling the strawberries and the explosives. The maddened animal broke free and ran, but not before Louis Loh, seeing that all was lost, jumped on its back. Bucking and kicking, it tried to throw Louis Loh, but the agile young Chinese clung tightly, urging it toward the water.

Isaac Bell took off after them, running full tilt over a field that led back toward the narrow strait that separated Mare Island from Vallejo. He saw the mule stop suddenly. Louis Loh was catapulted over its neck. The Chinese rolled across on the grass, flipped to his feet, and ran. Bell followed. Suddenly a massive explosion shook the ground. He looked back. Coca-Cola barrels were flying through the air. The wagon had disappeared and the truck was burning. The Marines at the guard post and the men on the munitions pier ran toward the fire. The Connecticut and the stone magazine were both unscathed.

Bell took off after Louis Lou, who was running toward a pier. A launch was tied alongside. A sailor scrambled out of it and tried to stop the Chinese. Louis Loh straight-armed him and dove into the water. When Bell got to the pier, he was swimming toward Vallejo.

Bell ran to the launch. “Steam up?”

The sailor was still on the pier, dazed. “Yes, sir.”

Bell cast the fore and aft lines off the bollards.

“Hey, what are you doing, mister?” The sailor scrambled onto the launch and reached for Bell. “Stop!”

“Can you swim?”

“Sure.”

“Good-bye.”

Bell took his hand and threw him overboard. The tide was pulling the boat from the dock. Bell engaged the propeller and steered around the sailor, who sputtered indignantly, “What did you do that for? Let me help you.”

The last thing Bell wanted was the Navy’s help. The Navy would arrest Louis and hold him in the brig. “My prisoner,” he said. “My case.”

The tide swept Louis downstream. Bell followed closely in the launch, ready to rescue him from drowning. But he was a strong swimmer, cutting through the water with a modern front crawl.

In the last hundred yards, Bell drove the launch ashore at a pier and was waiting on the bank, dangling handcuffs, when Louis staggered out of water. The Chinese stood, breathing hard, staring in disbelief at the tall detective, who said, “Stick out your hands.”

Louis pulled a knife and lunged with surprising speed for a soaking-wet man who had just swum across a racing tide. Bell parried with the cuffs and punched him hard. Louis went down, sufficiently stunned for Bell to cuff his hands behind his back. Bell hauled him to his feet, surprised by how slight he was. Louis couldn’t weigh more than one-twenty.

Bell marched him toward the pier where he had tied the launch. It was only four or five miles down the Carquinez Strait from Vallejo to Benicia Point, where, with any luck, he could board a train before the Navy got wise.

But before he could reach the pier, a Mare Island Ferry pulled in and disgorged a mob of ship workers.

“There he is!”

“Get him!”

The workmen had heard the explosion and seen the barrels flying and put two and two together. As they ran toward Bell and Louis Loh, a second group who’d been repairing a trolley siding came running with sledgehammers and iron bars and joined the first. They became a solid mass, blocking the Van Dorn detective and his prisoner from the launch.

The track gang lit an oxyacetylene torch. “Burn the Jap. To hell with a trial.”

Isaac Bell told the lynch mob, “You can’t burn him, boys.” “Yeah, why not?”

“He’s not a Jap. He’s Chinese.”

“They’re all Mongolians-Asiatic coolies-they’re all in it together.”

“You still can’t burn him. He belongs to me.”

“You?” the mob erupted in angry chorus.

“Who the hell are you?”

“There’s one of you and a hundred of us!”

“A hundred?” Bell snapped his derringer from his hat and his Browning from his coat and swept the crowd with the muzzles. “Two shots in my left hand. Seven in my right. You don’t have a hundred. You have ninety-one.”

Some in front backed up, slipping between the men behind them, but others replaced them. The new front row edged closer, exchanging glances, seeking a leader. Face unyielding as granite, eyes cold, Bell looked from man to man, watching their eyes.

It would only take one to get brave.

“Who’s first? How about you fellows in front?”

“Get him!” yelled a tall man in the second row.

Bell fired the Browning. The man screamed and fell to his knees, clapping both hands to a bloody ear.

41

NINETY-NINE,” SAID ISAAC BELL.

The mob backed away, mumbling sullenly.

A trolley glided up, clanging its bell to chase men off the tracks. Bell dragged Louis Loh onto it.

“You can’t get on here,” the operator protested. “That Jap’s all wet!”

Bell shoved the wide mouth of the double-barreled derringer in the trolley driver’s face. “No stops. Straight through to Benicia Terminal.”

Speeding past waiting passengers at the many stops along the way, they pulled up to the Southern Pacific Ferry Slip in ten minutes. Across the mile-wide strait at Port Costa, Bell saw the Solano, the largest railway ferryboat in the world, loading a locomotive and a consist of eastbound Overland Limited Pullmans. He dragged Loh to the stationmaster’s office, identified himself, purchased stateroom tickets to cross the continent, and sent telegrams. The ferry crossed in nine minutes, tied up, and locked to the tracks. The locomotive pulled the front half of the train onto the apron. A switch engine pushed the rear four cars off the boat. In ten minutes the train was whole again and steaming out of Benicia Terminal.

Bell found his stateroom and handcuffed Louis to the plumbing. As the transcontinental train sped up the Sacramento River Valley, Louis Loh finally spoke. “Where are you taking me?”

“Louis, to which tong do you belong?”

“I am not tong.”

“Why were you trying to make it look like the Japanese blew up the magazine?”

“I will not talk to you.”

“Of course you will. You will tell me everything I want to know about what you were trying to do, why, and who gave you your orders.”

“You do not understand a man like me. I will not talk. Even if you torture me.”

“ ‘That ain’t my style,’ ” Bell quoted from a popular poem.

“ ‘ “Strike One,” the umpire said,’ ” Louis Loh shot back smugly, “I read your ‘Casey at the Bat.’ ”

“You’ve told me something already,” Bell replied. “You just don’t know it.”

“What?”

The tall detective fell silent. In fact, Louis Loh had confirmed his suspicion that he was more complicated than a run-of-the-mill tong gangster. He did not believe that the Chinese was the spy himself, but there was more to Loh than today’s attempt at Mare Island had revealed.

“You give me a great advantage,” said Loh.

“How is that?”

“By admitting you are not man enough to torture me.”

“Is that the Hip Sing definition of a man?”

“What is Hip Sing?”

“You will tell me.”

“When the tables are turned,” said Louis Loh, “when you are my prisoner, I will torture you.”

Bell stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes. His head hurt, and sheep were still turning somersaults.

“I will use a chopper, at first,” Loh began. “A cleaver. Razor-sharp. I will start with your nose…” Louis Loh continued to recite lurid descriptions of the horrors he would inflict on Bell until Bell began to snore.

The detective opened his eyes when the train stopped in Sacramento. There was a knock at the stateroom door. Bell admitted two burly Protection Services agents from the Sacramento office. “Take him to the baggage car, manacle him hand and foot. One of you stays with him at all times. The other sleeps. I’ve got a Pullman berth for you. You will never let him out of your sight. You will not distract yourself talking to the train crew. If there is a cut or a bruise on him, you will answer to me. I will look in on you regularly. We will be particularly vigilant whenever the train stops.”

“All the way to New York?”

“We have to change trains at Chicago.”

“Do you think his friends will try to bust him out?”

Bell watched Loh for a reaction and saw none. “Did you bring shotguns?”

“Autoloads, like you said. And one for you, too.”

“Let them try. All right, Louis. Off you go. Hope you enjoy being luggage for the next five days.”

“You will never make me talk.”

“We’ll find a way,” Bell promised.

LUXURY TRAIN TICKETS, a suit of “wealthy English writer” tweed, a gold pocket watch, expensive luggage, and a hundred dollars were all it had cost the spy to hire the defrocked J. L. Skelton to masquerade as Arnold Bennett. So reported Horace Bronson, the head of the San Francisco office, in a wire waiting for Isaac Bell in Ogden. But although threats of a long prison term had frightened him into talking freely, Skelton had no idea why he had been hired to pretend to escort so-called missionary students.

“He swore on a stack of Bibles,” Bronson noted wryly, “that he did not know why he was then paid another hundred dollars to revert to clergy status and hold a service in the Mare Island chapel. And he denied any knowledge of why Harold Wing and Louis Loh tried to make it look like the Japanese blew up the Mare Island magazine to cripple ships of the Great White Fleet.” Horace Bronson believed him. So did Isaac Bell. The spy was an expert at making others do his dirty work. Like Arthur Langner’s big guns, he stayed miles away from the explosion.

The source of the pass that Loh had used to get his wagon aboard the ferry into the navy yard would have been a clue. But the paper itself had burned up in the explosion, along with the wagon and the truck. Even the mule was no help. It had been stolen in Vaca the day before. The guards, who had admitted hundreds of trucks and wagons, could not pinpoint any helpful information about the passes or the wagon load of strawberries they had allowed on the island.

Two days later, when the train was highballing across Illinois, Bell brought Louis Loh a newspaper from Chicago. The tong gangster lay on a fold-down cot in the dark, windowless baggage car with a wrist and ankle handcuffed to the metal frame. The PS operative guarding him was dozing on a stool. “Get yourself some coffee,” Bell ordered, and when they were alone he showed Louis the newspaper. “Hot off the press. News from Tokyo.”

“What do I care about Tokyo?”

“The Emperor of Japan has invited America’s Great White Fleet to make an official visit when it crosses the Pacific.”

The bland mask that Louis Loh habitually wore on his face slipped a hair. Bell detected a minute slumping of his shoulders that broadcast an inner collapse of hope that his failed attack had still somehow provoked a clash between Japan and the United States.

Bell was puzzled. Why did Louis care so? He had already been caught. He was facing prison, if not the hangman, and had lost the money he would have been paid for success. What did he care? Unless he had done it for reasons other than money.

“We can assume, Louis, that His Imperial Majesty would not have invited the fleet if you had managed to blow up the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in his name.”

“What do I care about the Emperor of Japan?”

“That is my question. Why would a Chinese tong hatchet man try to inflame U.S.-Japanese antagonism?”

“Go to hell.”

“And for whom? Who did you do it for, Louis?”

Louis Loh smiled mockingly. “Save your breath. Torture me. Nothing will make me talk.”

“We’ll find a way,” Bell promised. “In New York.”

Heavily armed Chicago Van Dorns backed up by railroad police transferred Louis Loh from the Overland Limited across LaSalle Station to the 20th Century Limited. No one tried to snatch Louis or kill him, which Bell had half expected. He decided to leave him in the care of Protection Services until the 20th Century got to New York. And Bell continued to stay out of Louis’s sight at Grand Central, where another squad of Van Dorns put Louis in a truck and drove him to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Lowell Falconer was on hand to smooth the way for Louis Loh to spend his first night in a Navy brig.

Bell waited for the captain on his turbine yacht. Dyname was moored to a navy yard pier, between Hull 44’s ways and a huge wooden barge attended by a seagoing tugboat. On the barge, engineers were erecting a cage mast. It was a full-scale rendition of the twelve-to-one scale model that Bell had seen in Farley Kent’s design loft.

High overhead, Hull 44’s stern filled the blue sky. Hull plating was creeping higher up her frame, and she more and more was taking the shape of a ship. If she became half the fighting ship Falconer had envisioned and Alasdair MacDonald and Arthur Langner had labored to make swift and deadly, Bell thought, then this view of the back of her was one the enemy would never see until their own ships were adrift and on fire.

Falconer came aboard after he got the prisoner settled. He reported that Louis’s last words as they clanged the door shut were, “Tell Isaac Bell I will not talk.”

“He’ll talk.”

“I would not count on that,” Falconer cautioned. “When I was in the Far East, Japs and Chinese virtually eviscerated captured spies. Not a peep.”

The Van Dorn detective and the Navy captain stood on the foredeck as Dyname backed into the East River, her nine propellers spinning with a smoothness that Bell still found eerie.

“There is something more to Louis Loh,” he mused. “I can’t yet put my finger on what makes him different.”

“Strikes me as being fairly low down the totem pole.”

“I don’t think so,” said Bell. “He conducts himself with pride, like a man who has a mission.”

“IT’S AN UP-AND-DOWN WORLD for the New York gangs,” said Harry Warren, and the handful of Van Dorn detectives who kept track of them nodded solemnly. “One day they’re high-and-mighty, next they’re in the gutter.”

The back room of the Knickerbocker headquarters was gray with cigar and cigarette smoke. A bottle of whiskey Isaac Bell had bought was making the rounds.

“Who is in the gutter currently?” he asked.

“The Hudson Dusters, the Marginals, and the Pearl Buttons. The Eastmans are in trouble, what with Monk Eastman at Sing Sing, and making it worse for themselves by continuing to feud with the Five Pointers.”

“They had a wonderful shoot-out under the Third Avenue El the other night,” remarked a detective. “No one killed, unfortunately.”

“In Chinatown,” Harry continued, “the Hip Sing are clawing ahead of the On Leongs. On the West Side, Tommy Thompson’s Gophers are riding high. Or were. The sons of bitches have their hands full since you sicced the railroad police on ’em for ambushing little Eddie Tobin.”

This was met by enthusiastic nods, and a remark in grudging admiration, “Those western cinder dicks are about the worst bastards I ever seen.”

“They’ve got the Gophers so discombobulated that the Hip Sing tong opened a new opium den right in the middle of Gopher Gang territory.”

“Not so fast,” Harry Warren cautioned. “I saw Gophers in a Hip Sing joint downtown. Where Scully was, Isaac? I got a feeling that something was up between the Hip Sing and Gophers. Maybe Scully did, too.”

A few muttered agreement. They’d heard rumors.

“But none of you can tell me anything about Louis Loh?”

“That don’t mean much, Isaac. Chinatown criminals are just plain more secretive.”

“And better organized. Not to mention smarter.”

“And hooked up to Chinatowns throughout the United States and Asia.”

“The international connection is intriguing, this being a spy case,” Bell admitted. “Except for one big thing. Why send two men from New York all the way across the continent when they could have used local San Francisco Chinatown men who knew the territory?”

No one answered. The detectives sat in uncomfortable silence broken only by the clink of glass and the scrape of a match. Bell looked around the room at Harry’s team of veterans. He missed John Scully. Scully had been a wizard in a brain session.

“Why the whole charade on the train?” he demanded. “It doesn’t make sense.”

More silence ensured. Bell asked, “How’s little Eddie doing?” “Still touch and go.”

“Tell him I’ll get up there soon as I can for a visit.”

“Doubt he’ll know you’re in the room.”

Harry Warren said, “That’s another weird thing, as far as I’m concerned. Why would the Gophers go out on a limb to fire up Van Dorns against them?”

“They’re stupid,” a detective answered, and everyone laughed.

“But not that stupid. Like Isaac says about Louis Loh crossing the continent. Beating up the kid didn’t make sense. The gangs don’t pick fights outside their circle.”

Isaac Bell said, “You told me it was strange that the Iceman went to Camden.”

Harry nodded vigorously. “Gophers don’t leave home.”

“And you said that Gophers don’t send warning messages or take revenge that will bring down the wrath of outsiders. Is it possible that the spy paid them to take revenge, just like he paid killers to go to Camden?”

“Who the hell knows how spies think?”

“I know someone who does,” said Bell.

COMMANDER ABBINGTON-WESTLAKE sauntered out of the Harvard Club, where he had wrangled a free honorary membership, and signaled for a cab with a languid wave. A red Darracq gasoline taxi zipped past a man hailing it outside the New York Yacht Club and stopped for the portly Englishman.

“Hey, that’s my cab!”

“Apparently not,” Abbington-Westlake drawled as he stepped into the Darracq. “Smartly now, driver, before that disgruntled yachtsman catches up.”

The cab sped off. Abbington-Westlake gave an upper Fifth Avenue address and settled in for the ride. At 59th, the cab suddenly swerved into Central Park. He rapped his stick on the window.

“No, no, no, I’m not some tourist you take around the park. If I wanted to drive out of my way through the park, I would have instructed you to go out of the way through the park. Return to Fifth Avenue immediately!”

The driver slammed on the brakes, throwing Abbington-Westlake off his seat. When he recovered, he found himself glaring into the cold eyes of a grim-visaged Isaac Bell.

“I warn you, Bell, I have friends who will come to my aid.”

“I will not deliver a well-deserved punch in your nose for selling me down the river to Yamamoto Kenta if you answer a question.”

“Was that you who killed Yamamoto?” the English spy asked f earfully.

“He died in Washington. I was in New York.”

“Did you order his death?”

“I am not one of you,” said Bell.

“What is your question?”

“Whoever this freelance spy is, I believe he is acting strangely. Look at this.”

He showed Abbington-Westlake the note. “He left this on the body of my detective. Why would he do such a thing?”

The Englishman read it in a glance. “Appears to be sending you a message.”

“Would you?”

“One does not indulge in childish exercises.”

“Would you kill my man for revenge?”

“One does not indulge in the luxury of revenge.”

“Would you do it as a threat? Believing it would stop me?”

“He should have killed you, that would put a stop to it.”

“Would you?”

Abbington-Westlake smiled. “I would suggest that successful spies are invisible spies. Ideally, one copies a secret plan rather than stealing it so one’s enemy never knows that his secret was stolen. Similarly, if an enemy must die, it should seem to be an accident. Falling debris at a work site might crush a man without raising suspicion. A hatpin piercing his brain is a red flag.”

“The hatpin was not in the newspapers,” Bell said coldly.

“One reads between the lines,” the Englishman retorted. “As I told you at the Knickerbocker, welcome to the world of espionage, Mr. Bell. You’ve learned a lot already. You know in your gut that the freelance spy is not first and foremost a spy.”

“He doesn’t think like a spy,” said Bell. “He thinks like a gangster.”

“Then who better to catch a gangster than a detective? Good day, sir. May I wish you happy hunting?” He climbed out of the cab and walked toward Fifth Avenue.

Bell hurried back to the Hotel Knickerbocker and corralled Archie Abbott.

“Get up to the Newport Torpedo Factory.”

“The Boston boys are already-”

“I want you. I’m getting a strange feeling about that attack.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“What if it wasn’t sabotage? What if it was a robbery? Stay there until you discover what they took.”

He walked Archie to the train at Grand Central and returned to the office, deep in thought. Abbington-Westlake had confirmed his suspicions. The spy was first and foremost a gangster. But he couldn’t be Commodore Tommy. The Gopher had lived and fought within the narrow confines of Hell’s Kitchen his whole life. The answer must lie with Louis Loh. He could be the tong. He could even be the spy. Perhaps that was what he had noticed was different about Louis: he acted like he had a purpose. It was time to put the question to him.

Bell collected Louis Loh from the Brooklyn Navy Yard brig late at night and handcuffed his wrists behind his back.

Loh’s first surprise came when instead of putting him in a truck or an auto, Bell walked him toward the river. They waited at the water’s edge. Hull 44 loomed behind them. The wind carried the sounds of ship engines, slatting sails, whistles, and horns. Blacked out but for running lights, Lowell Falconer’s turbine yacht Dyname approached in near silence.

Deckhands guided Bell and his prisoner aboard without speaking a word. The yacht backed into the river and headed downstream. It went under the Brooklyn Bridge and passed the Battery and picked up speed on the Upper Bay.

“If you’re planning to throw me overboard,” Louis Loh said, “remember I know how to swim.”

“Wearing those manacles?”

“I assumed you would remove them, being above torture.”

The helmsman increased speed to thirty knots. Bell took Loh into the darkened cabin, where they sat in silence sheltered from the wind and spray. Dyname crossed the Lower Bay. Bell saw the lightship flash by the porthole. When Dyname’s bow rose to the first Atlantic comber, Louis Loh asked, “Where are you taking me?”

“To sea.”

“How far to sea?”

“About fifty miles.”

“That will take all night.”

“Not on this ship.”

The helmsman opened her up. An hour passed. The turbines slowed, and the yacht settled down. Suddenly it bumped hard against something and stopped. Bell took Louis’s arm, checked that he hadn’t jimmied open the cuffs, and led him out on deck. Silent deckhands helped them onto the wooden deck of a barge. Then Dyname wheeled about and raced off. In minutes, all to be seen of her was the fiery discharge from her stack, and soon she vanished into the night.

“Now what?” asked Louis Loh. Creamy whitecaps shone in the starlight. The barge rolled with the movement of the sea.

“Now we climb.”

“Climb? Climb what?”

“This mast.”

Bell directed Louis’s gaze up the cage mast. The airy structure rose so high that its swaying top seemed to brush the stars. “What is this? Where are we?”

“We’re on a target barge anchored in the U.S. Navy Atlantic Firing Range. Test engineers have erected on the barge this one-hundred-twenty-five-foot cage mast, the latest development in dreadnought spotting masts.”

Bell climbed two rungs, unlocked Louis’s right cuff, and locked it around his own ankle.

“Ready? Here we go.”

“Where?”

“Up these ladders. When I raise my leg, you raise your arm.”

“Why?”

“There’s a test scheduled for dawn to see how the cage mast fares in battle conditions when bombarded by 12-inch guns. Any spy worth his salt would give his eyeteeth to watch. Let’s go.”

It was long climb to the spotting top, but neither man was breathing hard when they reached the platform. “You are in excellent condition, Louis.” Bell removed the cuff from his ankle and locked it to the tubing that formed the mast.

“Now what?”

“Wait for dawn.”

A cold wind sprang up. The mast swayed as it sighed aound the tubing.

At first light, the silhouette of a battleship took shape on the horizon.

“New Hampshire,” said Bell. “You recognize her, I’m sure, by her three funnels and old-fashioned ram bow. You will recall that she carries 7- and 8-inch guns in addition to four 12s. Any minute now.”

The battleship emitted a red flash. A five-hundred-pound shell roared past like a freight train. Louis ducked. “What?” he screamed. “What?” Now the sound of the gun rumbled their way.

Another flash. Another shell roared closer.

“They’ll have the range soon!” Bell told Louis Loh.

The 12-inch gun flashed red. A shell struck in a shower of sparks fifty feet below. The mast shook. Louis Loh cried, “You’re a madman.”

“They say this helix design is remarkably strong,” Bell replied.

More shells roared by. When another hit, Louis covered his face.

Soon there was enough light in the sky for Bell to read his gold watch. “A few more single shots. Then they’re scheduled to blast salvos. Before they finish up with full broadsides.”

“All right. All right. I admit I am tong.”

“You’re more than tong,” Isaac Bell replied coldly. He was rewarded by an expression of surprise on Louis’s ordinarily immobile face.

“What do you mean?”

“Sun-tzu on the art of war. If I may quote your countryman: ‘Be so subtle that you are invisible.’ ”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You told me on the train, ‘They think we’re all opium addicts or tong gangsters.’ You sounded like a man with a broader point of view. Who are you really?”

A salvo thundered. Two shells ripped through the structure. Still it stood, but it was swinging side to side.

“I am not tong.”

“You just told me you are. Which is it?”

“I am not a gangster.”

“Stop telling me what you aren’t and start telling me what you are.”

“I am Tongmenghui.”

“What is Tongmenghui?”

“Chinese Revolutionary Alliance. We are a secret resistance movement. We pledge our lives to revive Chinese society.”

“Explain,” said Isaac Bell.

In a rush of words, Louis Loh admitted that he was a fervent Chinese Nationalist plotting to overthrow the corrupt Empress. “She is strangling China. England, Germany, all Europe, even the U.S., feed on China’s dying body.”

“If you are a revolutionist, what are you doing in America?”

“Dreadnought battleships. China must build a modern fleet to fend off colonial invaders.”

“By blowing up the Great White fleet in San Francisco?”

“That wasn’t for China! That was for him.”

“ ‘Him’? Who are you talking about?”

With a fearful glance at the New Hampshire, Loh said, “There is a man-a spy-who pays. Not in money but in valuable information about other nations’ dreadnoughts. We, Harold Wing and me, pass it along to Chinese naval architects.”

“And you pay for it by doing his bidding.”

“Exactly, sir. Can we go down now?”

Bell knew this was a major breakthrough in the case. This was the freelance whom Yamamoto had tried to betray in exchange for a clean escape. Louis had gotten him close again.

“You are working for three masters. The Chinese Navy. Your Tongmenghui resistance movement. And the spy who paid you to attack the magazine at Mare Island. Who is he?”

Another freight train of a shell roared by. The structure trembled. “I don’t know who he is.”

“Who is your intermediary? How does he give you orders and information?”

“Mailboxes. He sent information, orders, and money for expenses in mailboxes.” Loh ducked another shell. “Please, let us go down.”

Across the water, sparkling in the first rays of sunlight, all the New Hampshire’s guns traversed toward the cage mast. “Here comes a broadside,” said Bell.

“You must believe me.”

Bell said, “I feel a certain affection for you, Louis. You held off shooting me until I jumped from the train.”

Louis Loh stared at the battleship. “I was not sparing your life. I didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger.”

“I’m tempted to let you down, Louis. But you haven’t told me all you know. I don’t believe that everything came in the mail.”

Louis Loh cast another fearful gaze at the white battleship and broke down completely. “It was Commodore Tommy Thompson who told us to attack the magazine at Mare Island.”

“How did you hook up with the Gopher Gang?”

“The spy bribed the Hip Sing to allow us to approach Commodore Tommy Thompson in their name, pretending we were tong.”

Bell handed Louis Loh a snowy white handkerchief. “Wave this.” He led Loh down the mast. When they reached the barge, apoplectic Test Range officers raced up in a boat. “How did you-”

“Thought you’d never stop shooting. We were getting hungry up there.”

“I DON’T BELIEVE for a moment that Commodore Tommy is the spy,” Isaac Bell told Joseph Van Dorn. “But I’m willing to bet Tommy’s got a good idea who he is.”

“He better,” said Van Dorn. “Raiding his territory is costing a carload of money for the cops and some very expensive favors to keep Tammany Hall from protesting.” The tall detective and his broadchested boss were overseeing preparations for the raid from inside a Marmon parked across from Commodore Tommy’s Saloon on West 39th Street.

“But the railroads will love us,” said Bell, and the boss conceded that several rail tycoons had already thanked him personally for cutting back the worst depredations of the Gopher Gang. “Looking at the bright side, after this the spy’s ring will be a lot smaller.”

“I’m not counting on that,” said Isaac Bell, mindful of learning about the explosion at the Newport Torpedo Factory while on the train to San Francisco.

A dozen railroad cops led the attack, battering down the saloon door, breaking up the furniture, smashing bottles, and staving in beer kegs. Shots rang within. Harry Warren’s boys, standing by with handcuffs, marched a dozen Gophers into a Police Department paddy wagon.

“Tommy’s holed up in the cellar with a bullet hole in his arm,” Harry reported to Bell and Van Dorn. “He’s all alone. He may listen to reason.”

Bell went first, down wooden steps into a damp cellar. Tommy Thompson was slumped in a chair like a mountain brought low by an earthquake. He had a pistol in his hand. He opened his eyes, looked up blearily at Bell’s weapon pointed at his head, and let his pistol fall to the earthen floor.

“I’m Isaac Bell.”

“What’s wrong with the Van Dorns?” Tommy was indignant. “It’s always been live and let live. Pay the cops, stay out of each other’s business. We got a whole system at work here, and a bunch of private dicks screw it up.”

“Is that why you put one of my boys in the hospital?” Bell asked coldly.

“That wasn’t my idea!” Tommy protested.

“Wasn’t your idea?” Bell retorted. “Who ramrods the Gophers?”

“It weren’t my idea,” Tommy repeated sullenly.

“You’re asking me to believe that the famous Commodore Tommy Thompson, who’s killed off every rival to command the toughest gang in New York, takes orders from someone else?”

Resentment boiled behind Tommy’s tough façade. Bell played on it, laughing, “Maybe you are telling the truth. Maybe you are just a saloonkeeper.”

“Goddammit!” Tommy Thompson erupted. He tried to get out of the chair. The tall detective restrained him with a warning gesture. “Commodore Tommy don’t take orders from no one.”

Bell called out, and Harry Warren and two of his men trooped down the stairs. “Tommy says it wasn’t his idea to beat up little Eddie Tobin. Some fellow made him do it.”

“Some fellow?” Harry echoed scornfully. “Did this ‘some fellow’ who ordered you to beat up a Van Dorn happen to be the same fellow who ordered you to send Louis Loh and Harold Wing to blow up the magazine at Mare Island?”

“He didn’t order me. He paid me. There’s a difference.”

“Who?” Bell demanded.

“Bastard, left me to stick around and face the music.”

“Who?”

“Goddamned Eyes O’Shay. That’s who.”

“Eyes O’Shay?” Harry Warren echoed incredulously. “You take us for jackasses? Eyes O’Shay is dead fifteen years.”

“No he ain’t.”

“Harry,” Bell snapped. “Who is Eyes O’Shay?”

“Gopher kid, years ago. Vicious piece of work. A comer, ’til he disappeared.”

“I heard talk he was back,” muttered one of Harry’s detectives. “I didn’t believe it.”

“I still don’t.”

“I do,” said Isaac Bell. “The spy’s been acting like a gangster all along.”