The Spy

42

ISAAC BELL ASKED, “WHY DID THEY CALL HIM EYES?”

“If you got in a fight with him, he’d gouge your eye out,” said Tommy Thompson. “He fit a copper pick over his thumbnail. Now it’s made of stainless steel.”

“I imagine,” said Bell, “he didn’t get in many fights.”

“Not once word got around,” Tommy agreed.

“Other than that, what is he like?”

Tommy Thompson said, “If I’m going sit here yapping, I want a drink.”

Bell nodded. The Van Dorns produced an array of hip flasks. Tommy took long pulls from a couple and wiped his mouth with his bloody sleeve. “Other than gouging eyes, what’s Brian O’Shay like? He’s like he always was. A guy who can see around a corner.”

“Would you call him a natural leader?”

“A what?”

“A leader. Like you. You run your own gang. Is he that kind of a man?”

“All I know is he’s thinking all the time. Always ahead of you. Eyes could see inside of people.”

“If you’re telling us the truth, Tommy, that O’Shay is not dead, where is he?”

The gang leader swore he did not know.

“What name does he go by?”

“He didn’t say.”

“What does he look like?”

“He looks like anybody. Clerk in a store, guy owns a bank, bartender. I hardly recognized him. Duded up like a Fifth Avenue swell.”

“Big man?”

“No. A little guy.”

“Compared to you, Tommy, most guys are little. How tall is he?”

“Five-eight. Built like a fireplug. Strongest little guy I ever saw.” Bell continued conversationally, “He didn’t need the gouge to win a fight, did he?”

“No,” said Tommy, taking another slug of whiskey. “He just liked doing it.”

“Surely after he reappeared out of nowhere and paid you all that money, you had him followed.”

“I sent Paddy the Rat after him. Little bastard came back short one eye.”

Bell looked at one of the detectives, who was nodding agreement. “Yeah, I seen Paddy wearing a patch.”

“Disappeared, just like when we was kids. Vanished into thin air that time, too. Never thought we’d see him again. Thought he got thrown in the river.”

“By whom?” asked Bell.

The gang leader shrugged.

Harry Warren said, “A lot of people thought you were the one who threw him in the river, Tommy.”

“Yeah, well a lot of people thought wrong. I used to think Billy Collins done it. ’Til Eyes came back.”

Bell glanced at Harry Warren.

“Dope addict,” Harry said. “Haven’t heard his name in years. Billy Collins ran with Eyes and Tommy. They made quite the trio. Remember, Tommy? Rolling drunks, robbing pushcarts, selling dope, beatin’ up anybody got in their way. O’Shay was the worst, worse than the Commodore here, even worse than Billy Collins. Tommy was sweetness and light compared to those two. The last anybody expected was Tommy taking over the Gophers. Except you got lucky, Tommy, didn’t you? Eyes disappeared, and Billy got the habit.”

Isaac Bell asked, “Tommy, why did you think Billy Collins threw Eyes in the river?”

“Because the last night I ever saw Eyes, they was drinking together.”

“And today you have no idea where O’Shay is?”

“Just like always. He vanished into thin air.”

“Where is Billy Collins?”

The wounded gang leader shrugged, winced, and took another pull on a flask. “Where do hop fiends go? Under a rock. In a sewer.”

43

TEN MILES OFF FIRE ISLAND, A BARRIER BEACH BETWEEN Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean, fifty miles from New York, three vessels converged. The light of day started to slip over the western horizon, and stars took shape in the east. Atlantic Ocean swells were bunching up on the shallow continental shelf. Neither captain of the larger vessels-a 4,000-ton steam freighter with a tall funnel and two king posts, and an oceangoing tugboat hipped up to a three-track railcar barge-was pleased with the prospect of getting close enough to transfer cargo in such choppy seas, particularly with the wind shifting fitfully from sea to shore. When they saw that the third vessel, a broad-beamed little catboat powered only by sail, was steered by a petite redheaded girl, they began snarling at their helmsmen.

It looked like the rendezvous would end before it started. Then the girl took advantage of a shifty gust to bring her craft about so smartly that the steamer’s mate said, “She’s a seaman,” and Eyes O’Shay said to the tugboat captain, “Don’t lose your nerve. We can always throw you overboard and run the boat ourselves.”

He spotted Rafe Engels waving from the steamer’s bridge wing.

Rafe Engels was a gunrunner wanted by the British Special Irish Branch for arming rebels of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and by the Czar’s secret police for supplying Russian revolutionists. O’Shay had first met him on the Wilhelm der Grosse. They had danced carefully around each other, and again on the Lusitania, probing warily at the kindred spirit they each sensed behind the other’s elaborate disguise. There were differences: the gunrunner, always on the rebels’ side, was an idealist, the spy was not. But over the years they had worked out several trades. This exchange of torpedoes for a submarine would be their biggest.

“Where’s the Holland?” O’Shay called across the water.

“Under you!”

O’Shay peered into the waves. The water started bubbling like a boiling pot. Something dark and stealthy took shape under the bubbles. A round turret of armor steel emerged from the white froth. And then, quite suddenly, a glistening hull parted the sea. It was one hundred feet long and menacing as a reef.

A hinged cover opened on top of the turret. A bearded man thrust his head and shoulders into the air, looked around, and climbed out. He was Hunt Hatch, at one time the Holland Company’s chief trials captain, now on the run from Special Irish Branch. His crew followed him out, one after another, until five Republican Brotherhood fighters who had pledged their lives to win Home Rule for Ireland were standing on the deck, blinking in the light and breathing deeply of the air.

“Treat them well,” Engels had demanded as they clasped hands cementing their deal. “They are brave men.”

“Like my own family,” O’Shay had promised.

All had served as Royal Navy submariners. All had ended up in British prisons. All hated England. They dreamed, O’Shay knew, that when the Americans discovered that the submarine and its electric torpedoes were from England, it would appear that England had instigated an attack to cripple American battleship production. They dreamed that when war engulfed Europe, angry Americans would not side with England. Then Germany would defeat England, and Ireland would be free.

A lovely dream, thought the spy. It would serve no one better than Eyes O’Shay.

“There is your submarine torpedo boat,” Engels called from across it. “Where are my Wheeler torpedoes?”

Eyes O’Shay pointed at the sailboat.

Engels bowed. “I see the fair Katherine. Hallooo, my beauty,” he hailed through cupped hands. “I did not recognize you out of your sumptuous gowns. But I see no torpedoes.”

“Under her,” said O’Shay. “Four Wheeler Mark 14s. Two for you. Two for me.”

Engels gestured. The steamer’s seamen swung a cargo boom out from her king post. “Come alongside, Katherine. I’ll take two torpedoes-and maybe you, too, if no one is looking.”

As Katherine effected the difficult maneuver and Engels’s crew snaked the torpedoes out of the catboat, they heard a rumble like distant thunder. O’Shay watched the submarine’s crew coolly assess what the noise really meant and the distance from which it was coming.

“U.S. Navy’s Sandy Hook Test Range,” he called down to them. “Don’t worry. It’s far away.”

“Sixty thousand yards,” Hunt Hatch called back, and a man added, “Ten-inchers, and some 12s.”

O’Shay nodded his satisfaction. The Irish rebels who would crew his submarine knew their business.

It may not have looked like a fair trade, the submarine being six or seven times longer than the torpedoes and capable of independent action. But the Holland, though considerably elongated and modified by the English from its original design, was fully five years old and outstripped by rapid advances in underwater warfare. The Mark 14s were Ron Wheeler’s latest.

Each man had what he wanted. Engels was steaming away with two of the most advanced torpedoes in the world to sell to the highest bidder. And the Holland and the two torpedoes that the tug and barge crews were wrestling out of the sailboat and into the submarine made a deadly combination. The Brooklyn Navy Yard would never know what hit it.

44

JIMMY RICHARDS’S AND MARV GORDON’S DUTCH UNCLE, Donald Darbee, sailed them six miles across the Upper Bay in his oyster scow, a flat-bottomed boat with a square bow and a powerful auxiliary gasoline motor he only used when chasing or running from something. Jimmy and Marv knew every watery inch of the Port of New York, but neither of the enormous young men had ever set foot on Manhattan Island despite many a night poking around Manhattan piers for items that had fallen off. Uncle Donny recalled going ashore in 1890 to rescue a fellow Staten Islander from the cops.

As they approached the Battery, a Harbor Squad policeman on a launch tied to Pier A called his roundsman up on deck. “Looks like we’re being invaded.”

Roundsman O’Riordan cast a jaundiced eye on the Staten Island scowmen. “Watch ’em, closely,” he ordered, hoping they were not up to no good. Arresting a gang of muscle-bound oyster tongers would cost broken arms and busted teeth on both sides.

“How do we get to the Roosevelt Hospital at 59th Street?” called the shaggy oldster at the helm.

“If you got a nickel, take the Ninth Avenue El.”

“We got a nickel.”

Jimmy Richards and Marv Gordon paid their nickels and rode to 59th Street, staring at tall buildings and crowds of people they could scarcely believe, many of whom stared back at them. Wandering the huge hospital wards, they finally asked directions from a pretty Irish nurse and found their way to a private room with only one bed. The patient in the bed was completely wrapped in bandages, and they would never have recognized Cousin Eddie Tobin except that hanging on a clothes tree was the snappy suit of clothes that the Van Dorns had staked Eddie when they hired him to apprentice last winter.

A tall, yellow-haired dude, lean as wire rope, was bending over him, holding a glass so Eddie could drink from a straw. When he saw them in the doorway, his eyes turned gray as a nor’easter, and a big hand slid inside his coat where he could keep a pistol, if he was the sort to pack one and he looked like he was.

“May I help you gentlemen?”

Jimmy and Marv instinctively raised their hands. “Is that little Eddie Tobin? We’re his cousins come to visit.”

“Eddie? Do you know these fellows?”

The bandaged head was already craning painfully toward them. It nodded, and they heard little Eddie croak, “Family.”

The blue-gray eyes turned a warmer shade. “Come on in, boys.”

“Fancy digs,” said Jimmy. “We looked in the ward. They sent us up here.”

“Mr. Bell paid for it.”

Isaac Bell offered his hand and shook their horny mitts. “Everyone chipped in. Van Dorns look out for their own. I’m Isaac Bell.”

“Jimmy Richards. This here’s Marv Gordon.”

“I’ll leave you boys to your visit. Eddie, I’ll see you soon.”

Richards lumbered out after him into the hall. “How’s he doing, Mr. Bell?”

“Better than we hoped. He’s a tough kid. It’s going to take a while, but the docs are saying he’ll come out of it in pretty good shape. But I have to warn you, he won’t win any beauty contests.”

“Who did it? We’ll straighten them out.”

“We’ve already straightened them out,” said Bell. “It’s a Van Dorn fight, and your cousin is a Van Dorn.”

Richards didn’t like it. “None of us was happy when Eddie joined the law.”

Isaac Bell smiled. “The law does not like their appellation given to private detectives.”

“Whatever you say, bub. We appreciate what you’re doing for him. You ever need a church burned down or someone drowned, Eddie knows how to find us.”

ISAAC BELL WAS PORING through the noon reports from the squads hunting for Billy Collins when Archie Abbott telephoned from Grand Central. “Just got off the train. Something is missing from the Newport Torpedo Factory.”

“What?”

“Is the Old Man still in town?”

“Mr. Van Dorn’s in his office.”

“Why don’t you meet me downstairs?”

“Downstairs” meant privacy in the Hotel Knickerbocker’s cellar bar. Ten minutes later, they were hunched over a dark table. Archie beckoned the waiter. “You might want a drink before we report to the boss. I certainly do.”

“What’s missing?”

“Four electric torpedoes imported from England.”

The waiter approached. Bell waved him off.

“I thought everything burned up in the fire.”

“So did the Navy. They loaded all the junk on a barge to dump it offshore. I said to this Wheeler character, ‘Why don’t we count torpedoes? ’ Long story short, we went through the debris with a fine-tooth comb and tallied four missing electrics.”

Bell stared at his old friend. “By any chance were they the ones armed with TNT?”

“Wheeler is certain that those with TNT warheads are the ones missing.”

“Do you agree?”

“He had serial numbers. We found them on the remains of the cowlings. Found them all except those four-they’d been set aside for a torpedo boat to fire on the Test Range. It would have been too much of a coincidence if they’d been the only ones blown completely to smithereens.”

“And you’re sure the explosion wasn’t an accident?”

“I talked to the Navy-found an Annapolis man I knew at prep school. Our specialist confirmed. Riley from Boston, you know him. There is no doubt.”

“They are the Holy Grail of torpedoes,” Bell said, grimly. “Fast, long-range, silent propulsion married to immensely more powerful warheads.”

“The spy got the best. The only good news is that Wheeler can make more of them. The English are livid. They won’t sell us any more, but I learned that Ron Wheeler and his boys already started making unauthorized copies for the Navy. In the meantime, the spy got himself the latest British propulsion armed with the latest American warheads-priceless secrets to sell to the highest bidder.”

“Or deadly weapons to attack.”

“Attack? How would he fire them?” asked Archie. “Even a spy as cunning as this one can’t get his hands on a battleship.”

Isaac Bell said, “I would not put it past him to acquire a small torpedo boat.”

The old friends locked gazes. The laughter fled Archie’s green eyes. Bell’s blue turned dark as stone. He and Joseph Van Dorn had already blanketed Captain Falconer’s key engineers with protection. And Van Dorn operatives had infiltrated the Brooklyn Navy Yard workforce. But they both knew that neither the arrest of the Chinese spy nor that of the head of the Gopher Gang would stop Eyes O’Shay. The spy would easily rebuild his fluid organization. And with the Great White Fleet beyond his reach at sea, he would resume his attacks on future American battleships.

“We better talk to Mr. Van Dorn.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

“We need manpower to track down those torpedoes. He’s got to convince the Navy, Coast Guard, and the police Harbor Squads in every city with a battleship yard-Camden, Philadelphia; Quincy, Fore River, Massachusetts; Bath Iron Works, Maine; Brooklyn-that the threat is deadly. Then I’m going repeat what I’ve been telling him all along. This is, first and foremost, a murder case. It will take old-fashioned detective work to hang Eyes O’Shay. We’ll start with Billy Collins.”

ISAAC BELL LEFT the Hotel Knickerbocker by the kitchen door. He dipped his fingers in a vat of used beef fat waiting to be picked up by the rendering plant and rubbed it into his hair. In the alley, down-on-their-luck men were waiting on the breadline. He astonished one, who despaired of raising a nickel to flop indoors on this chilly night that threatened rain, by offering five dollars for his battered slouch hat. Offered the same amount, a man almost as tall as the detective parted eagerly with his ragged coat.

Bell palmed a rusty revolver with three slugs in it and shifted it from his trousers into the coat. He pulled the hat low over his brow, worked his golden hair under it, and buttoned the coat to his chin. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets, bowed his head, and stepped out of the alley onto Broadway. A cop told him to move along.

For the fifth time in five days, he wandered Hell’s Kitchen.

He was learning its rhythms, where and when the slum blocks were busy, the streets rumbling with wagons and trucks, the sidewalks crowded, as men streamed into saloons, women into churches, and children roamed, ignoring mothers shouting from tenement windows. He had previously wandered from Ninth Avenue to the river and from the Pennsylvania Railroad Station construction site at 33rd to the 60th Street rail yards. But he hadn’t found the “hop fiend,” Billy Collins, who might lead him to Eyes O’Shay.

So today Isaac Bell was taking a different tack.

As part of his disguise, he limped, left foot dragging slightly, scuffing the shine off his boots as he crossed curbs and streetcar tracks. A coal truck backing to a cellar chute blocked the sidewalk. Bell trailed his fingers along its sooty side and stroked his mustache. He repeated the exercise when he passed an ash can, still warm, and ran his fingers through the hair that escaped from the slouch hat. He inspected his reflection in a window. His eyes glittered too brightly in a worn face. He cast his gaze downward, plucked a clump of straw out of the gutter, and rubbed it to his sleeves until it appeared that he had slept in his coat. They never look a dirty man in the face, Scully taught the apprentices.

He kept checking his image in windows, which, as he headed toward the river, got smaller and dirtier. He knelt beside an empty barrel standing in a puddle outside a saloon, pretended to tie his shoe, and continued on, his trousers smelling of stale beer. The deeper into the slum he wandered, the more slowly he walked, the lower he stooped-a weary, aimless man lost in the crowds.

A young tough wearing a tight suit and red derby blocked his path. “What do you got for me, Gramps? Come on! Hand it over.”

Isaac Bell resisted the impulse to floor him, dug deep in his coat, and surrendered a nickel.

The tough shoved past.

“Wait!” Bell called.

“What?” The tough spun around. “What? What do want?”

“Do you know a fellow named Billy Collins?”

The tough hung a blank expression on his face. “Who?” He was a kid, Bell realized, barely into his teens. An infant when Tommy Thompson and Billy Collins were running with Eyes O’Shay.

“Billy Collins. Tall, skinny fellow. Ginger hair. Maybe turning gray.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Skin and bones,” Bell said, repeating what Harry Warren and his boys had speculated the opium and morphine addict would look like after all these years. They knew he was still alive, or had been within the week. “Probably missing teeth.”

“Where you from, Gramps?”

“Chicago.”

“Yeah, well there’s a lot of guys around here got no teeth. You’re next.” He raised a bony fist. “Get out of here! Run, old man. Run.”

Bell said, “Billy Collins used to run with Tommy Thompson and Eyes O’Shay when they were kids.”

The thug backed up a step. “You with the Gophers?”

“I’m just looking for Billy Collins.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the only one.” He hurried away, calling over his shoulder, “Everybody’s asking about him.”

They should be, Bell thought. Considering what it was costing the agency. In addition to Harry Warren’s boys and Harry’s informants, he had two hundred railroad cops asking the same question every time they slugged it out with Gophers attempting to rob freight cars. Bell kept asking himself, Where does a hop fiend hide? Where does he sleep? Where does he eat? Where does he get his dope? How come no one saw him in a district where everyone knew everyone?

There had been sightings near Collins’s known dens, several by a coal pocket that replenished locomotive tenders in the 38th Street yards, twice around an abandoned caboose at 60th Street. Picked men were watching both. And Bell had a feeling he himself had actually glimpsed Collins through a wind-spun swirl of locomotive smoke-a rail-thin figure had flitted between freight cars, and Bell had run full tilt after him only to find smoke.

Since then, the one man who might know where O’Shay disappeared to fifteen years ago hadn’t shown up at either den. On the plus side, they’d had enough reports to know he was alive, and he was unlikely to leave Hell’s Kitchen.

Eyes O’Shay’s location was another story. Everyone over the age of thirty had heard the name. No one had seen him in fifteen years. Some people had heard he was back. No one admitted to laying eyes on him. But Bell knew a man described by Tommy Thompson as “duded up like a Fifth Avenue swell” could sleep and eat anywhere he chose.

45

TAXICAB, SIR?” THE WALDORF-ASTORIA’S DOORMAN ASKED of a hotel guest stepping out in a top hat and loden green frock coat.

“I will promenade,” said Eyes O’Shay.

Wielding a jewel-headed walking stick, he strolled up Fifth Avenue, pausing like a tourist to admire mansions and peering into shopwindows. When he was reasonably sure that he wasn’t being followed, he entered St. Patrick’s Cathedral through the great Gothic arch in front. In the nave, he genuflected with the ease of a daily habit, dropped coins in the poor box, and lighted candles. Then he threw back his head and reflected upon the stained glass in the rose window, imitating the proud gaze of a parishioner who had contributed handsomely to the installation fund.

Since Isaac Bell nailed Tommy Thompson, he had to assume that every Van Dorn in New York, plus two hundred railway police, and the Devil himself knew how many paid informants, were hunting him, or soon would be. He exited the cathedral out the back, through the boardwalks and scaffolding where brick and stone masons were building the Lady Chapel, and strode onto Madison Avenue.

He headed up Madison, still watching his back, turned onto 55th, and stopped in the St. Regis Hotel. He had a drink in the bar and chatted with the bartender, whom he always tipped lavishly, while he watched the lobby. Then he tipped a bellboy to let him out the service entrance.

Moments later, he walked into the Plaza Hotel. He stopped at the Palm Court in the middle of the ground floor. The people seated around small tables for the elaborate afternoon tea were mothers with children, aunts and nieces, and here and there an older gentleman enthralled by a daughter. The maître d’ bowed low.

“Your usual table, Herr Riker?”

“Thank you.”

Herr Riker’s usual table let him watch the lobby in two directions while screening himself with a jungle of potted palms that would have given Dr. Livingstone and Henry Stanley pause.

“Will your ward be joining you, sir?”

“It is my fond hope,” he replied with a courtly smile. “Tell your waiter that we will have only sweets at our table. None of those little sandwiches. Only cakes and cream.”

“Of course, Herr Riker. As always, Herr Riker.”

Katherine was late, as usual, and he used the time to rehearse for what he knew would be a difficult discussion. He felt as ready as he could be when she stepped off the elevator. Her tea gown was a cloud of blue silk that matched her eyes and complemented her hair.

O’Shay rose as she approached his table, taking her gloved hands in his and saying, “You are the prettiest girl, Miss Dee.”

“Thank you, Herr Riker.”

Katherine Dee smiled and dimpled. But when she sat, she looked him full in the face in her direct way, and said, “You look very serious-ward-and-guardian serious. What are you up to, Brian?”

“Self-annointed ‘good warriors’ who fight ‘good wars’ accuse me with deep disdain of being a mercenary. I take it as a testament to my intelligence. Because for a mercenary the war is over when he says it is over. He retires a victor.”

“I hope you’ve ordered whiskey instead of tea,” she said. O’Shay smiled. “Yes, I know I’m bloviating. I am attempting to tell you that we are in the endgame, dearest.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is time to vanish. We will go out-and lay our future-with a bang they’ll never forget.”

“Where?”

“Where they will treat us like gold.”

“Oh, not Germany!”

“Of course Germany. What democracy would take us in?”

“We could go to Russia?”

“Russia is a powder keg waiting for a match. I am not about to take you out of the frying pan into a revolution.”

“Oh, Brian.”

“We will live like kings. And queens. We will be very rich, and we will marry you to royalty… What is it? Why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying,” she said, her blue eyes brimming.

“What is the matter?”

“I don’t want to marry a prince.”

“Would you settle for a Prussian noble with a thousand-year-old castle?”

“Stop it!”

“I have one in mind. He is handsome, remarkably bright, considering his lineage, and surprisingly gentle. His mother could prove tiresome, but there is a stable teeming with Arabian horses and a lovely summer place on the Baltic where a girl could sail to her heart’s content. Even practice for the Olympic yachting event… Why are you crying?”

Katherine Dee put both small hands on the table and spoke in a clear, even voice. “I want to marry you.”

“Dear, dear Katherine. That would be like a marrying your own brother.”

“I don’t care. Besides, you’re not my brother. You only act like one.”

“I am your guardian,” he said. “I have pledged that no one will ever hurt you.”

“What do you think you’re doing now?”

“Stop this silliness about marrying me. You know I love you. But not that way.”

Tears hovered on her lashes like diamonds.

He passed her a handkerchief. “Dry your eyes. We have work to do.”

She dabbed, lifting her tears onto the linen. “I thought we were leaving.”

“Leaving with a bang requires work.”

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked sullenly.

“I can’t let Isaac Bell get in my way this time.”

“Why don’t I kill him?”

O’Shay nodded thoughtfully. Katherine was lethal, a finely tuned machine unencumbered by remorse or regret. But every machine had its physical limits. “You would only get hurt. Bell is too much like me, a man not easily killed. No, I won’t have you risk trying to kill him. But I do want him distracted.”

“Do you want me to seduce him?” asked Katherine. She flinched from the sudden fury distorting O’Shay’s face.

“Have I ever asked you to do such a thing?”

“No.”

“Would I ever ask you?”

“No.”

“It destroys me that you could say such a thing.”

“I am sorry, Brian. I didn’t think.” She reached for his hand. He pulled away, his normally bland face red, his lips compressed in a hard line, his eyes wintery.

“Brian, I am not exactly a schoolgirl.”

“Whatever seductions you allow yourself are your business,” he said coldly. “I have ensured that you possess the means and manner to indulge yourself as only privileged women can. Society will never tell you what you can do and not do. But I want it clearly understood that I would never use you that way.”

“What way? As a seductress? Or an indulgence?”

“Young lady, you are beginning to annoy me.”

Katherine Dee ignored the very dangerous tone in his voice because she knew he was too careful to break up the furniture in the Palm Court. “Stop calling me that. You’re only ten years older than I am.”

“Twelve. And mine are old years, while I have moved heaven and earth to make yours young years.”

Waiters bustled up. Ward and guardian sat in stony silence until the cakes were spread and tea poured.

“How do you want me to distract him?” When he started talking that way there was nothing to do but go along.

“The fiancée is the key.”

“She is suspicious of me.”

“How do you mean?” O’Shay asked sharply.

“At the Michigan launching, when I tried to get close, she pulled back. She senses something in me that frightens her.”

“Perhaps she is psychical,” said O’Shay, “and reads your mind.” An expression as desolate as it was wise transformed Katherine Dee’s pretty face into a lifeless mask of ancient marble. “She reads my heart.”

46

YOUR FIANCEÉE IS CALLING ON THE TELEPHONE, MR. BELL.”

The tall Van Dorn detective was standing over his desk in the Knickerbocker, impatiently sifting reports for some decent news on the whereabouts of Eyes O’Shay or the stolen torpedoes before he hit the streets hunting Billy Collins again.

“This is a nice surprise.”

“I’m across the street at Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre,” said Marion Morgan.

“Are you all right?” She didn’t sound all right. Her voice was tight with tension.

“Could you stop by when you have a moment?”

“I’ll be right there.”

“They’ll let you in the stage door.”

Bell ran down the Knickerbocker’s grand staircase three steps at a time and set off a blast of horns, bells, and angry shouts as he ran through the moving wall of autos, streetcars, and horse carts that blocked Broadway. Sixty seconds after dropping the telephone, he pounded on the Victoria’s stage door.

“Miss Morgan is waiting for you in the house, Mr. Bell. Through there. Go in quietly, please. They’re rehearsing.”

A high-speed, rhythmic tapping echoed from the stage, and when he flung open the door he was surprised to discover that the source of all the noise was a small boy and a tall girl dancing in shoes with wooden soles. He exhaled in relief when he saw Marion sitting alone, safe and sound, in the eighth row of the partially darkened empty house. She pressed a finger to her lips. Bell glided up the aisle and sat beside her, and she took his hand, and whispered, “Oh, my darling, I’m so glad you’re here.”

“What happened.”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. They’re almost done.”

The orchestra, which had been waiting silently, burst into a crescendo, and the dance was over. The children were instantly surrounded by the director, the stage manager, costumers, and their mother.

“Aren’t they wonderful? I found them on the Orpheum Circuit in San Francisco. The top vaudeville circuit. I’ve persuaded their mother to let them appear in my new movie.”

“What happened to your movie about the bank robbers?”

“The detective’s girlfriend caught them.”

“I suspected she would. What’s wrong? You don’t sound yourself. What happened?”

“I’m not sure. I may be silly, but it seemed sensible to call you. Did you ever meet Katherine Dee?”

“She’s a friend of Dorothy Langner. I’ve seen her at a distance. I’ve not met her.”

“Lowell introduced her to me at the Michigan launching. She hinted that she would like to come out to the movie studio. It was on the tip of my tongue to invite her. She looks like she might be one of those creatures the camera is so fond of-you know, as I’ve told you, the large head, fine features, slight torso. Like that boy you just saw dancing.”

Bell glanced at the stage. “He looks like a praying mantis.”

“Yes, the narrow head, the big, luminous eyes. Wait ’til you see him smile.”

“I gather you did not invite Katherine Dee. What changed your mind?”

“She’s very strange.”

“How?”

“Call it what you will. Intuition. Instinct. Something about her does not ring true.”

“Never deny a gut feeling,” said Bell. “You can always change your mind later.”

“Thank you, darling. I do feel a little silly, and yet… when I was away in San Francisco, she came out to see me in Fort Lee. Uninvited. She just showed up. And now she just showed up again this morning.”

“What did she say?”

“I didn’t give her a chance. I was rushing to the ferry to see these children and their mother, who is also their manager and very ambitious. I just waved and kept going. She called out something about offering to give me a lift. I think she had a car waiting. I just kept moving and hopped the ferry. Isaac, I’m sure I’m being silly. I mean, Lowell Falconer knows her. He didn’t seem to think she was strange. On the other hand, I doubt anyone in a skirt would be strange to Lowell.”

“Who told you she had shown up when you were in San Francisco?”

“Mademoiselle Duvall.”

“What did she think of Katherine?”

“I think she sensed what I sensed, though not as strongly. Strange people often show up at the studio. The movies tug at them. They imagine all sorts of fantastical futures for themselves. But Katherine Dee is different. She’s obviously well-off and well-bred.”

“She’s an orphan.”

“Oh, my Lord! I didn’t realize. Maybe she does need the work.”

“Her father left her a fortune.”

“How do you know?”

“We’ve investigated everyone in the Hull 44 set.”

“So I’m probably imagining things.”

“Better safe than sorry. I’ll have Research dig deeper.”

“Come meet the children… Fred, say hello to my fiancé, Mr. Bell.”

“Hello, Mr. Bell,” Fred mumbled, staring at his shoes. He was a shy little guy, seven or eight.

“Hello, Fred. When I came in, I heard you dancing so fast I thought it was a machine gun.”

“Did you?” He looked up and studied Bell with a warm smile.

“How’s Miss Morgan treating you?”

“Oh, she’s very nice.”

“I agree.”

“And this is Adele,” said Marion. The girl was buoyant, several years older, and did not need any coaxing. “Are you really Miss Morgan’s fiancé?”

“I’m the lucky man.”

“I’ll say you are!”

“I’ll say you’re very wise. What’s the movie about?”

Adele looked surprised when little Fred answered for her. “Child dancers are captured by Indians.”

“What’s it called?”

“The Lesson. The kids teach the Indians a new dance and they let them go.”

“Sounds uplifting. I look forward to seeing it. Pleased to meet you, Fred.” He shook his little hand again. “Pleased to meet you, Adele.” He shook hers.

Marion said, “I’ll see you in the morning, children,” and called to their mother, “Eight o’clock call, Mrs. Astaire.”

They stood alone at the back of the house.

Bell said, “When you get back to Fort Lee tomorrow morning, you will see someone you know dressed like an Indian. Give him a part that will keep him near you at all times.”

“Archie Abbott?”

“He’s the only man I would trust with your life, other than Joe Van Dorn. But no one would ever believe that Mr. Van Dorn dressed up like an Indian was looking for an acting job in your movie. Whereas Archie would have been an actor if his mother had not forbidden it. Until we can be sure that Katherine Dee means no harm, Archie will watch over you at work during the day. At night, I want you to stay at the Knickerbocker.”

“An unmarried lady alone in a respectable hotel? What will the house detective say?”

“If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll say, ‘Good night, Mr. Bell. Sleep tight.’”

ISAAC BELL WENT BACK into the streets. He felt he was getting close, so close that he carried sandwiches in his coat pockets assuming that a man living as on the edge as Billy Collins would be glad of a meal. There had been two more sightings. Both were on Ninth Avenue near where it ended abruptly at 33rd Street by the huge hole in the ground they were excavating for the Pennsylvania Terminal rail yard.

He went to the construction site, shabbily dressed, and watched for the tall, thin silhouette he had seen in the coal pocket. An entire district of the city-six acres of houses, apartments, shops, and churches-had vanished. Ninth Avenue crossed the gigantic hole on stiltlike temporary shoring girders that held up two streetcar lines, the roadbed, and a trestle for pedestrians. Propped high above it, Ninth Avenue Elevated locals and expresses still ran, rumbling across the gaping hole like giant airplanes made of iron and steel.

A steam whistle blew day’s end. A thousand workmen climbed out of the pit and hurried home into the city. When they had gone, Bell climbed in, down ladders and temporary wooden stairs, past the severed ends of gas mains, cast-iron water mains, electrical conduits, and brick sewers. Twenty-four feet down, he encountered a steel viaduct partially constructed-underpinning, he had been told, for Ninth Avenue and the buildings around it. He descended through it into darkness lighted by pinpricks of electric work lamps.

Sixty feet below the surface, he found the floor of the pit. It was a field of stone rubble, dynamited granite, crisscrossed by narrow-gauge rails for the cars that hauled debris out and material in and forested with wide columns that carried the viaduct. Through its frame he could see blue electrical sparks arcing as the El trains thundered across the sky.

Bell explored for an hour, keeping an eye peeled for night watchmen. He tripped repeatedly on the uneven ground. The third time he fell, he smelled something sweet and discovered a gnawed apple core. Poking around, he found a man’s den-a crumpled blanket, more apple cores, and chicken bones. He settled down to wait, sitting on the ground, still as ice, moving only when he had to stretch his limbs to stay agile and then only when the Els clattering overhead masked his movements.

He was not alone. Rats scuttled, a dog barked, and from hundreds of feet away in the dark he heard an argument between two hobos, which ended with a heavy thump and a groan drowned out by a passing El. It got quieter as the night wore on and the El trains ran less frequently. Someone lit a bonfire on the edge of the hole at 33rd Street, which sent flickers and shadows dancing on pillars, girders, and rough-hewn stone walls.

A voice whispered in Bell’s ear.

“It’s like church in here.”

47

ISAAC BELL MOVED ONLY HIS EYES.

By the flickering firelight, he saw a long, bony face with a vacant smile. The man was dressed in rags. His hands were empty, his eyes were puffy as if he had just woken, and Bell surmised that he had been nearby all along sleeping soundlessly. Now he was staring with wondering eyes up at the steel skeleton of the viaduct, and Bell saw what he meant by church. The interlocking girders, the dark sky speckled with stars, and the bonfire light conspired to form the image of a medieval cathedral lit by candles.

“Hello, Billy.”

“Huh?”

“You are Billy Collins?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“You used to run with Eyes O’Shay.”

“Yeah… Poor Eyes… How’d you know?”

“Tommy told me.”

“Fat bastard. You a friend of his?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

Though he was about Bell’s age, Billy Collins looked ancient. His hair was gray, his nose was dripping, and now his puffy eyes began leaking tears.

“You Tommy’s friend?” he asked again angrily.

“What did Tommy do to Eyes?” Bell asked.

“Tommy do to Eyes? Are you kidding? That fat bastard? Couldn’t do Eyes on his best day. You a friend of Tommy?”

“No. What happened to Eyes?”

“I don’t know.”

“They said you were with him.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So what happened?”

Billy closed his eyes, and murmured, “One of these days, I’m going to get back to doing trains.”

“What do you mean, Billy?” Bell asked.

“There’s good money doing trains, you get the right freight. Good money. I used to be rich doing trains. Then they got my little girl, and all of a sudden I couldn’t do ’ em anymore.” He looked at Bell, the firelight making his eyes look as mad as the tone of his voice. “Got jobs once. You know that?”

“No, I didn’t know that, Billy. What sort of jobs?”

“Got jobs. Sceneshifter in a theater. Once I was a stableman. I even worked as a dummy boy.”

“What is a dummy boy?” Bell asked.

“Railroad signalman. Eleventh Avenue. I rode a horse ahead of the train. It’s the law in New York. You can’t run a train on Eleventh Avenue without a guy on a horse. Only time the law ever gave me a job. I didn’t stick it.”

He started coughing. Consumption, Bell thought. The man is dying.

“Are you hungry, Billy?”

“Naw. I don’t get hungry.”

“Try this.” Bell handed him a sandwich. Billy Collins sniffed, held it near his mouth, and said, “You a friend of Tommy?”

“What did Tommy do to Eyes?”

“Nothing. Told you. Tommy couldn’t do Eyes. Nobody could do Eyes. Except that old man.”

“Old man?”

“Hard old man.”

“You mean his father?”

“Father? Eyes didn’t have no father. The old man. He’s what got us. Got us good.”

“What old man?”

“On Clarkson.”

“Clarkson Street?” Bell asked. “Downtown?”

“The Umbria was sailing for Liverpool.”

The Cunard liner. One of the old ones. “When?”

“That night.”

“When Eyes disappeared?”

“When we was kids,” Billy answered dreamily. He lay back and gazed up at the frame for the viaduct.

“The Umbria?” Bell prompted. “The steamship? The Cunard liner?”

“We seen this old man. He was rushing to Pier 40 like he’s late. Not even looking where he was going. We couldn’t believe our luck. We was down on Clarkson Street looking for drunk sailors to roll. Instead, here comes a rich old man in a rich green coat and sparkling rings on his fingers who could pay one hundred fifty dollars for his steamship ticket. It was dark and pouring down rain, not a soul on Clarkson. Eyes clipped on his thumb gouge in case he gave us trouble. We pounced like cats on our rich rat. Brian went to tear his rings from his fingers. I figured to find a wallet bulging with money in his fancy coat…”

“What happened?”

“He pulled a sword out of his cane.”

Billy Collins turned his gaze on Bell, his eyes wide with wonder. “A sword. We were so drunk, we couldn’t hardly get out of our own way. The old man swings his sword. I dodged it. He floored me with the cane. Tough old man, knew his business. Set me up. I dodged right into his cane. Heard a noise like dynamite going off inside my head. Then I was gone.”

Billy Collins sniffed the sandwich again and stared at it.

“Then what happened?” asked Bell.

“I woke up in the gutter, soaking wet and freezing cold.”

“What about Eyes?”

“Brian O’Shay was gone, and I never seen him again.”

“Did the old man kill Eyes O’Shay?”

“I didn’t see no blood.”

“Could the rain have washed the blood away?”

Collins begins to weep. “Vanished into thin air. Just like my little girl. Except she wasn’t hurting nobody. But Eyes and me, we sure as hell was trying.”

“What if I told you Eyes came back?”

“I rather you told me my little girl came back.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know. Tiny little thing.”

“Your child?”

“Child? I got no child… Eyes came back, I heard.”

“Yes, he did. Tommy saw him.”

“Didn’t come to see me… But who the hell would?” He closed his eyes and began to snore. The sandwich fell from his fingers.

“Billy.” Isaac Bell shook him awake. “Who was the old man?”

“Rich old guy in a green coat.” He slipped toward sleep again.

“Billy!”

“Leave me be.”

“Who was your little girl?”

Billy Collins screwed his eyes shut. “No one knows. No one remembers. Except the priest.”

“Which priest?”

“Father Jack.”

“What church?”

“St. Michael’s.”

AFTER BELL LEFT HIM, Billy Collins dreamed that a dog clamped its jaws around his foot. He kicked it with his other foot. The dog grew a second head and bit down on that foot, too. He awoke in terror. A figure was hunched over his feet, working at his laces. A goddamned hobo who wouldn’t have dared touch him in the old days was trying to steal his shoes.

“Hey!”

The hobo tugged harder. Billy sat up and tried to punch him in the head. The hobo dropped his shoe, picked up a broken board, and hit him. Billy saw stars. Stunned, he was vaguely aware that the guy was winding up with the board to hit him again. He knew the guy would hit him hard, but he couldn’t move.

Steel flashed. A knife materialized out of nowhere. The hobo screamed and fell back, holding his face. The knife flashed again. Another scream, and the hobo scrambled away on all fours, clambered to his feet, and ran for his life. Billy sank back. Hell of a dream. Everything was strange. Now he smelled perfume. It made him smile. He opened his eyes. A woman was kneeling over him, her hair brushing his face. Like an angel. It seemed he had died.

She leaned very close, so close he could feel her warm breath, and whispered, “What did you tell the detective, Billy?”

48

THE LADY OF THE HOUSE IS NOT A FORTUNE-TELLER,” Eyes O’Shay assured the anxious captain of his Holland submarine torpedo boat.

Hunt Hatch was not assured. “There’s signs all over the house advertising that Madame Nettie tells fortunes. She’ll have customers in and out all hours of the day and night. You’ve put us in a parlous situation keeping us here, O’Shay. I won’t stand for it.”

“The fortune-telling is a blind. She doesn’t tell fortunes.”

“What’s it a blind for?”

“A counterfeit ring.”

“Counterfeiters. Are you crazy, man?”

“They’re the last people in Bayonne who would complain to the cops. That’s why I put you here. And the woman who cooks your meals escaped from state prison. She won’t tell anyone either. Besides, they can’t see your boat from the houses. It’s screened by the barge.”

A mowed lawn spread from the counterfeiters’ frame house at the foot of Lord Street to the Kill Van Kull. The Kill was a narrow, deep-water channel between Staten Island and Bayonne. The barge was moored on the bank.

The Holland was under the barge. Its turret was accessible through an inside well. It was less than four miles from New York’s Upper Bay, and from there a clear five-mile run to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Hunt Hatch was not appeased. “Even if they can’t, the Kill is swarming with oyster catchers. I see them in their scows. They come right up to the barge.”

“They’re Staten Islanders,” O’Shay answered patiently. “They’re not looking for you. They’re looking to steal something.”

He gestured at the hills a thousand feet across the narrow strait. “Staten Island became part of New York City ten years ago. But the Staten Island scowmen haven’t heard the news. They’re the same coal pirates, smugglers, and thieves they’ve always been. I promise you, they don’t talk to the cops either.”

“I say we attack now and get it over with.”

“We attack,” O’Shay said quietly, “the moment I say we attack.”

“I am not risking life and freedom to get caught on your whims. I am captain of the ship, and I say we attack now before someone stumbles upon where we’ve hid the bloody thing.”

O’Shay stepped closer. He raised a hand as if to strike the captain. Hatch quickly lifted both hands, one to block the blow, one to counterpunch. He exposed his belly. By then O’Shay was flicking open a Butterflymesser with his other hand. He slid the long knife under Hatch’s sternum, plunged it to the hilt, jerked the razor-sharp blade down with all his might, and stepped back quickly before the intestines spilling out could stain his clothes.

The captain clutched at them, gasping with horror. His knees buckled. He fell on the rug. “But who will run the Holland?” he whispered.

“I’ve just promoted your first mate.”

“THIS IS THE NEWEST church building I have ever been in,” Isaac Bell told Father Jack Mulrooney.

The Church of St. Michael smelled of paint, shellac, and cement. The windows gleamed and the stones were fresh, unblemished by soot.

“We’ve just moved in,” said Father Jack. “The parishioners are pinching themselves wondering can it be true. In actual fact, the only way that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company could remove us from 31st Street to build the terminal yards without bringing the wrath of God-not to mention Tammany Hall and His Grace the Cardinal-down on their heads was to build us a brand-new church, rectory, convent, and school.”

Bell said, “I am a private detective, Father, with the Van Dorn Agency. I would like to ask you some questions about people who used to live in your parish.”

“If you want to talk, you must walk. I have my rounds, and you will see that our people live in less bright places than their new church. Come along.” He set off with a surprisingly springy step for a man his age, turned a corner, and plunged into a neighborhood that felt miles, not yards, from his brand-new church.

“You’ve served here long, Father?”

“Since the Draft Riots.”

“That’s forty-five years ago.”

“Some things have changed in the district, most have not. We are still poor.”

The priest entered a tenement with an elaborate carved stone portal and started up a steep flight of rickety stairs. He was breathing hard by the third floor. At the sixth, he paused to catch his breath, and when the wheezing stopped he knocked on a door, and called, “Good morning! It is Father Jack.”

A girl with a baby in her arms opened the door. “Thank you for coming, Father.”

“And how is your mother?”

“Not good, Father, not good at all.”

He left Bell in the front room. A single window that looked onto a yard crisscrossed with clotheslines in the shade admitted the stench of a privy six stories below. Bell folded a wad of dollar bills in his hand and slipped it to the girl as they left.

At the bottom of the stairs, Father Jack caught his breath again. “Who are you inquiring about?”

“Brian O’Shay and Billy Collins.”

“Brian’s long gone from here.”

“Fifteen years, I’ve been told.”

“If God ever blessed this district, it was the day O’Shay disappeared. I would never say such a thing lightly, but Brian O’Shay was Satan’s right-hand man.”

“I’ve heard he’s back.”

“I’ve heard rumors,” the priest said bleakly, and he led Bell back into the street.

“I saw Billy Collins last night.”

Father Jack stopped and looked at the tall detective with sudden respect. “Did you really? Down in the hole?”

“You know he’s there?”

“Billy has, shall we say, hit bottom. Where else would he go?”

“Who is his little girl?”

“His little girl?”

“He kept referring to his little girl. But he claimed he had no children.”

“That’s a dubious claim considering the youth he led. In those years, it was rare I baptized a carroty-topped infant and didn’t wonder if Billy was the father.”

“I wondered if his hair was red. It seemed mostly gray in the dim light.”

“Though I suppose,” Father Jack added with a thin smile, “Billy could claim with a certain degree of truth that he is not aware he had any children. It would have been an unusually brave girl who would have named him the father. Still, I see his point. Whoring and drunk since he was twelve years old, what would he remember?”

“He was adamant he had no children.”

“That would make the little girl his sister.”

“Of course. He weeps for her.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“What happened to her?” Bell asked.

“Wait for me here,” the priest said. “I’ll only be a moment.” He entered a building and came out shortly. As they continued along the block, Father Jack said, “There are wicked men living in this community who live by stealing from poor, ignorant people. They’ll steal their money, and if they have no money they will steal their drink. If they have no drink, they’ll steal their children. Whatever the wicked can sell or use themselves. The child was kidnapped.”

“Billy’s sister?”

“Snatched from the street-no more than five years old-and never seen again. Surely she courses through Billy’s brain when he injects the morphine. Where was he when she was stolen? Where was he ever when the poor babe was needful? He looks back now and loves the idea of that wee child. More than he ever loved the child herself.”

The old priest shook his head in anger and disgust. “When I think of the nights I prayed for that child… and all the children like her.”

Bell waited, sensing a natural ebullience in the old man that would rise to the surface. And it did after a while. His expression brightened.

“In truth, it was Brian O’Shay who cared for that little girl.”

“Eyes O’Shay?”

“He looked after her when Billy and his shiftless parents were drunk.” Father Jack lowered his voice. “They say that O’Shay beat her father to death for sins against the child only the Devil could imagine. She was the only soul Brian O’Shay ever loved. It was a blessing that he never knew what happened to her.”

“Could Brian O’Shay have kidnapped her?”

“Never in this life! Even if he weren’t long gone to Hell.”

“But what if he was not killed when he vanished? What if he came back? Could he have kidnapped her?”

“He would never hurt her,” said the priest.

“Evil men do evil, Father. You’ve told me how wicked he was.”

“Even the most wicked man has a streak of God in him.” The priest took Bell’s arm. “If you remember that, you will be a better detective. And a better man. That wee child was Brian O’Shay’s streak of God.”

“Was her name Katherine?”

Father Jack looked at him curiously.

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t really know. But I’m asking you, was it?”

Father Jack started to answer. A pistol shot cracked from a tenement roof. The priest tumbled to the pavement. A second shot drilled the space Bell had occupied an instant before. He was already rolling across the sidewalk, drawing his Browning, snapping to his knees, raising his weapon to fire.

But all he could see were women and children screaming from their windows that their priest was murdered.

“I WANT A DIRECT telephone connection to the chief of the Baltimore office now!” Isaac Bell shouted as he stalked into Van Dorn headquarters. “Tell him to have his Katherine Dee file on his desk.”

It took an hour for Baltimore to telephone back. “Bell? Sorry I took so long. Raining like hell again, half the city’s flooded. You’ll get yours, it’s another nor’easter.”

“I want to know exactly who Katherine Dee is and I want to know now.”

“Well, as we reported, her father went back to Ireland with a boat-load of dough he made building schools for the diocese and took her with him.”

“I know that already. And when he died, she went to a convent school in Switzerland. What school?”

“Let me go through this while we’re talking. I’ve got it right here in front of me. The boys have brought it up-to-date since we sent our last report to New York… Takes so long back and forth to Dublin… Let’s see here… Well, I’ll be. No, no, no, that can’t be.”

“What?”

“Some damned fool got confused. Says the daughter died, too. That can’t be. We’ve got records of her at the school. Mr. Bell, let me get back to you on this.”

“Immediately,” said Bell, and hung up.

Archie walked in, still ruddy-faced with Indian war paint. “You look like death, Isaac.”

“Where’s Marion?”

“Upstairs.” Bell had rented a suite for the days she was in New York. “We got rained out again. Are you O.K.? What happened to you?”

“A priest was gunned down in front of my eyes. For talking to me.”

“The spy?”

“Who else? The block was swarming with cops, but he got clean away.”

An apprentice approached the grim-faced detectives warily. “Messenger left this at Reception, Mr. Bell.”

Bell tore it open. On Waldorf-Astoria stationery Erhard Riker had written:

FOUND IT!

PERFECTION FOR THE PERFECT FIANCÉE!!

I’ll be at Solomon Barlowe’s Jewelry Shop around three o’clock with a brilliant emerald, if this finds you in New York.

Best wishes,

Erhard Riker

49

BELL THREW RIKER’S NOTE ON THE DESK.

Archie picked it up and read it. “The ring for fair Marion?”

“It’ll keep.”

“Go.”

“I’m waiting to hear from Baltimore.”

Archie said, “Take an hour. Cool off. I’ll talk to Baltimore if they call before you’re back. Say, why don’t you take Marion with you? All this rain is making her stir-crazy. She’s raving about going to California to shoot movies in the sunshine. Neglecting to explain where she’d find the actors. Go! Let some steam off. You found Collins. You’ve got two hundred men looking for O’Shay. And the Navy and Harbor Squad hunting torpedoes. I’ll cover for you.”

Bell stood up. “Just an hour. Back soon.”

“If she likes it, steal an extra ten minutes to buy her a glass of champagne.”

THEY TOOK THE SUBWAY downtown and walked rain-swept streets to Maiden Lane. Barlowe’s shop cast a warm glow into the dreary afternoon. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Marion asked as they neared the door.

“What do you mean?”

“Once you slip a ring on a girl’s finger, it’s pretty hard to get out of it.”

They were holding hands. Bell pulled her close. Her eyes were bright with laughter. Rain and mist gilded the wisps of hair that escaped her hat. “Houdini couldn’t get out of this one,” he said, and kissed her on the mouth. “Not that he’d want to.”

They entered the shop.

Erhard Riker and Solomon Barlowe were bent over the counter, each with a jeweler’s loupe screwed in his eye. Riker looked up, smiling. He extended his hand to Bell, and said to Marion, “I am afraid that you taxed your fiancé’s powers of observation. Try as he might-and I assure you he tried mightily-he was hard put to convey the fullness of your beauty.”

Marion said, “You tax my power of speech. Thank you.”

Riker bowed over Marion’s hand, kissed it, and stepped back, smoothing his mustache and slipping his thumb into his vest pocket. Barlowe whispered to Bell, “It is most unusual, sir, for a gentleman to show the ring to his fiancée before he has purchased it.”

“Miss Morgan is a most unusual fiancée.”

Something ticked against the window. On the sidewalk, ignoring the rain, laughing young men in black derbies were batting a badminton shuttlecock with their hands.

“You should call a constable before they break the glass,” said Riker.

Solomon Barlowe shrugged. “College boys. This summer, they’ll meet girls. Next spring, they’ll be buying engagement rings.”

“Here is the making of yours, Miss Morgan,” said Riker. He drew a slim leather case from his pocket, opened it, and removed a folded sheet of white paper. Opening the paper, he let slide onto a demonstration panel of white velvet an emerald-flawless, fiery, and filled with life.

The jeweler Solomon Barlowe gasped.

Isaac Bell thought it shimmered like a green flame.

Marion Morgan said, “It is certainly very bright.”

“Mr. Barlowe proposes setting it in a simple Art Nouveau ring,” said Erhard Riker.

“I have prepared some sketches,” said Barlowe.

Isaac Bell watched Marion study the emerald. He said, “I have the impression you do not love it.”

“My dear, I will wear anything you like.”

“But you would prefer something else.”

“It’s very beautiful. But since you ask, I would prefer a softer green-rich yet quiet, like the loden green of Mr. Riker’s coat. Is there such a gem, Mr. Riker?”

“There is a blue-gray shade of tourmaline found in Brazil. It is very rare. And extremely difficult to cut.”

Marion grinned at Bell. “It would be less expensive to buy me a nice loden coat like Mr. Riker’s…” Her voice trailed off. She was about to ask, Isaac, what’s the matter? Instead, she moved instinctively closer to him.

Bell was staring at Riker’s coat. “A rich green coat,” he said softly. “An old man in a rich green coat with rings on his fingers.” He fixed a cold gaze on Riker’s gem-studded cane.

“I’ve always admired that cane of yours, Herr Riker.”

“It was a gift from my father.”

“May I see it?”

Riker tossed it to Bell. Bell weighed it in his hands, testing its balance and heft. He closed one hand around the gold-and-gem head, twisted it with a flick of his wrists, and drew out a gleaming sword.

Erhard Riker shrugged. “One cannot be too careful in my business.”

Bell held the blade to the light. It was honed so sharply that no light gleamed on the edge. He hefted the cane, the scabbard that had held it. “Heavy. You wouldn’t even need the sword. You could floor a man with this.”

Bell watched Riker eye him warily as if he were wondering whether he had heard Bell correctly or was just taking his measure. Wondering, Do I have to fight? At last Riker spoke. “Two men, if you were faster than you looked.”

“And if the men were drunk.” Bell said, moving swiftly to shield Marion. It was suddenly clear to both men that they were discussing the night that Eyes O’Shay and Billy Collins had tried to rob the senior Mr. Riker.

Riker answered in a conversational voice, although his eyes were focused as hard on Bell’s as Bell’s were on his.

“I awakened,” he said, “in a first-class cabin on the high seas. The old man was tough as nails. But kind to me. Anything I wanted was mine for the asking. The food on that ship was like what I had heard people say that Diamond Jim Brady ate. Beefsteaks, oysters, roast ducks, wine from crystal glasses. I felt like I had arrived in Heaven. Of course, I wondered what did he want back for all that? But all he ever asked was that I go to school and learn to be a gentleman. He sent me to public school in England, and the finest universities in Germany.”

“Why didn’t Mr. Riker leave you in the gutter with Billy Collins?”

“You’ve spoken with Billy? Of course. How is he?”

“Still in the gutter. Why didn’t Riker leave you there?”

“He was grieving for his son who had died of influenza. He wanted another.”

“And you were available.”

“I was garbage. I could barely read. But he saw something in me no one else could see.”

“And you repaid him by becoming a murderer and a spy.”

“I repaid him,” Riker said, his shoulders squared, his head held high.

“You’re proud of being a murderer and a spy?” Isaac Bell asked scornfully.

“You’re a privileged child, Isaac Bell. There are things you can never know. I repaid him. I say it with pride.”

“I say with equal pride that I arrest you for murder, Brian O’Shay.”

Katherine Dee darted through the curtain that screened the back room, slid her arm around Marion’s throat, and pressed her thumb to Marion’s eye.

50

BRIAN TAUGHT ME THIS TRICK FOR MY TWELFTH BIRTHDAY. He even gave me my own gouge. It’s made of pure gold, see?” The sharpened metal fit her thumb like a claw.

“Stay perfectly still,” Bell told Marion. “Do not struggle. Mr. O’Shay has the upper hand.”

“Obey your fiancé,” said Katherine Dee.

Eyes O’Shay said, “To answer your question, Bell, one of the ways I repaid the old man’s kindness was by rescuing Katherine as he had rescued me. Katherine is educated, accomplished, and free. No one can hurt her.”

“Educated, accomplished, free, and lethal,” said Bell.

With her other hand Katherine drew a pistol.

“Another birthday present?”

“Give Brian his sword, Mr. Bell, before your fiancée is blinded and I shoot you.”

Bell flicked the sword haft at O’Shay. As he expected, the spy was too sharp to fall for that trick. O’Shay caught it coolly without his eyes leaving Bell’s. But when he started to sheathe it, he glanced down to make sure the tip went into the sheath instead of piercing his hand. Bell was waiting for that split second of distraction. He kicked with lightning speed.

The sharp toe of his boot struck Katherine Dee’s ulnar nerve, which was drawn tightly over her flexed elbow. She cried out in startled pain and could not prevent her hand from opening convulsively. Her thumb splayed away from Marion’s eye.

But the gouge remained attached.

Marion tried to pull away from the smaller woman. Katherine whipped the gouge back at her face. Bell had his derringer in his hand by then and was squeezing the trigger. O’Shay screamed a piercing “No!” and smashed his cane down on Bell’s arm. The gunshot was deafening in the confined space. Solomon Barlowe dove to the floor. Marion cried out, and Bell thought he had shot her. But it was Katherine Dee who fell.

O’Shay grabbed the girl under one powerful arm and flung the door open. Bell lunged for them. He tripped over Solomon Barlowe. By the time he had hurled himself through the door, he saw O’Shay pushing Katherine into a Packard driven by a uniformed chauffeur. Gunmen in black derbies stepped from behind the car and from doorways, aiming pistols.

“Marion, get down!” Bell roared. The pretty-boy bruisers of Riker & Riker’s private protection agency unleashed a scathing hail of gunfire. Wild ricochets smashed glass and blasted stone dust from the walls and diamonds from the window display. Pedestrians dropped to the sidewalk. Bell fired back as fast as he could pull the trigger. He heard the Packard roar away. He fired again, emptying his Browning. The big car screeched around a corner and crashed into something. But when the lead stopped flying and he galloped after it, the Packard was smoldering against a lamppost, and O’Shay, Katherine Dee, and their gunmen had gotten away. Bell ran back into the jewelry shop, his heart in his throat. Solomon Barlowe was groaning and holding his leg. Marion was on the floor behind the counter, eyes wide open.

Alive!

He knelt beside her. “Are you hit?”

She ran a hand over her face. Her skin was dead white. “I don’t think so,” she said in a small voice.

“Are you all right?”

“Where are they?”

“Got away. Don’t worry. They won’t get far.”

She was clenching something in her tightly closed fist, which she now pressed to her chest.

“What is that?”

Slowly, painfully, she forced her fingers to open. Nestled in her palm was the emerald, green and mysterious as the eye of a cat.

“I thought you didn’t like it,” Bell said.

Marion’s beautiful eyes roved across the broken glass and the walls pocked with bullet holes. “I’m not even scratched. Neither are you. It’s our lucky charm.”

“THE ENTIRE NEWARK fine-jewelry industry is in shock,” said Morris Weintraub, the stocky, white-haired patrician owner of Newark, New Jersey’s largest belt-buckle factory. “I’ve been buying gemstones from Riker and Riker since the Civil War. Back when there was only one Riker.”

“Did you know that Erhard Riker was adopted?”

“You don’t say? No, I didn’t.” Weintraub gazed across a sea of workbenches where jewelers labored in pure north light streaming through tall windows A speculative smile played on his lips, and he stroked his chin. “That explains a lot.”

“What do you mean?” asked Bell.

“He was such a nice man.”

“The father?”

“No! His father was a cold bastard.”

Bell exchanged incredulous glances with Archie Abbott.

The factory owner noticed. “I am a Jew,” he explained. “I know when a man dislikes me because I am a Jew. The father hid his hatred in order to conduct business, but hatred seeps out. He could not hide it completely. The son did not hate me. He was not so European as the old man.”

Bell and Archie exchanged another look. Weintraub said, “I mean, he acted like a good man. He was a gentleman in business and kindly in person. He is one of the very few people I buy from who I would invite into my own home. Not a man who would shoot up a jewelry shop on Maiden Lane. Not a bigot like his father.”

Archie said, “So I suppose you were not that upset when his father was killed in South Africa.”

“Nor was I surprised.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Archie, and Issac Bell said sharply, “What do you mean by that?”

“I used to joke to my wife, ‘Herr Riker is a German agent.’ ”

“What made you say that?”

“He couldn’t resist boasting to me of his travels. But I noticed over many years that somehow his trips always led him to where Germany was making trouble. In 1870, he just happened to be in Alsace-Lorraine when the Franco-Prussian War broke out. He was on the island of Samoa in ’eighty-one when the United States, England, and Germany instigated their civil war. He was in Zanzibar when Germany stole her so-called East African Protectorate. He was in China when Germany took Tsingtao, and in South Africa when the Kaiser egged on the Boers fighting England.”

“Where,” Archie noted, “he was killed.”

“In an engagement led by General Smuts himself,” said Isaac Bell. “If he wasn’t a German spy, he was a master of coincidence. Thank you, Mr. Weintraub. You have been very helpful.”

On their way back to New York, Bell told Archie, “When I accused O’Shay of repaying the man who adopted him by becoming a murderer and a spy, he answered that rescuing Katherine from Hell’s Kitchen was ‘one’ of the ways he repaid him. He said, ‘I say it with pride.’ I realize now that he was bragging that he followed in his adopted father’s footsteps.”

“If the father who adopted him was a spy, does that mean that Riker-O’Shay spies for Germany? He was born in America. He was adopted by a German father. He attended public school in England and university in Germany. Where are his loyalties?”

“He’s a gangster,” said Bell. “He has no loyalties.”

“Where can he go now that he’s exposed?”

“Anywhere they’ll take him in. But not before he commits a final crime to benefit the nation that will protect a criminal.”

“Using those torpedoes,” said Archie.

“Against what?” wondered Bell.

TED WHITMARK WAS WAITING in the Van Dorn reception room when Bell got back to the Knickerbocker. He was holding his hat on his knees and could not meet Bell’s eye as he asked, “Is there someplace private we can talk, Mr. Bell?”

“Come on in,” Bell said, noting that Whitmark’s Harvard College tie was askew, his shoes scuffed, and his trousers in need of a pressing. He led him to his desk and moved a chair alongside so they could sit close and not be overheard. Whitmark sat, worrying his hands, gnawing his lip.

“How is Dorothy?” Bell asked to put him at ease.

“Well… she’s one of the things I want to talk about. But I’ll get to the main event first, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

“You see, I, uh, I play cards. Often…”

“You gamble.”

“Yes. I gamble. And sometimes I gamble too much. I’ll hit a losing streak and, before I know it, I’m in over my head. All I’m trying to do is win back some of my losses, but sometimes it only gets worse.”

“Are you in a losing streak at the moment?” Bell asked.

“It looks that way. Yes, you could say that.” Again he fell silent.

“Can I assume that Dorothy is upset with this?”

“Well, yes, but that’s the least of it. I’ve been something of a fool. I’ve done several really stupid things. I thought I’d learned my lesson in San Francisco.”

“What happened in San Francisco?”

“I dodged a bullet out there, thanks to you.”

“What do you mean?” Bell asked, suddenly alert to a situation more serious than he had assumed.

“I mean when you stopped that cart from blowing up the Mare Island magazine, you saved my life. There would have been lot of innocent folks killed, and they would have been on my head.”

“Explain,” Bell said tersely.

“I gave them the pass and paperwork to get into the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.”

“Why?”

“I owed so much money. They were going to kill me.”

“Who?”

“Well, Commodore Tommy Thompson at first. Here in New York. Then he sold my debt to a guy who had a casino in the Barbary Coast and I lost more out there and he was going to kill me. He said they’d do it slow. But all I had to do to get out of it was give him one of my wagon passes and my company invoices and show ’em the ropes and everything. I know what you’re thinking, that I allowed a saboteur onto the base, but I didn’t realize that was what they wanted. I thought it was about them landing a big contract. I thought they were doing it for the money.”

“You hoped they were doing it for the money,” Isaac Bell retorted coldly.

Ted Whitmark hung his head. When he finally looked up again, he had tears in his eyes. “That’s what I hoped this time, too. But I’m scared it isn’t, and something tells me this time will be worse.”

The intercommunicating phone on Bell’s desk rang. He snatched it up. “What?”

“There’s a lady out here to see you and the gent you’re with. Miss Dorothy Langner. Should I let her in?”

“No. Tell her I’ll be out there shortly.” He hung up. “Continue, Ted. What has happened this time?”

“They want me to turn over one of my trucks going into the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”

“Who?”

“This smooth guy named O’Shay. I heard somebody call him Eyes. Must be his nickname. Do you know who I mean?”

“When do they want the truck?”

“Tomorrow. When the New Hampshire is loading food and munitions. She just finished her shakedown, and she’ll be ferrying a Marine Expeditionary Regiment to Panama to keep the Canal Zone election peaceful. My New York outfit got the provisions contract.”

“How big a truck?”

“The biggest.”

“Big enough to carry a couple of torpedoes?”

Whitmark chewed his lip. “Oh, God. Is that what they want it for?”

The door from the reception room opened, and Harry Warren walked in. Bell was turning back to Ted Whitmark when a sudden motion at the door caught his eye and he saw Dorothy Langner in a black sheath dress and black feathered hat slip through it right behind Harry Warren, who said, “Help you, ma’am?”

“I’m looking for Isaac Bell,” she said in her clear, musical voice. “There he is, I see him.” She rushed toward Bell’s desk, reaching into her handbag.

Whitmark jumped to his feet. “Hello, Dorothy. Told you I’d talk to Bell. This’ll square us, won’t it?”

Dorothy Langner searched his face. Then she looked at Bell. “Hello, Isaac. Is there someplace I could talk to Ted for a moment, in private?” Her beautiful silvery eyes were blank, and Bell had the eeriest sensation that she was blind. But she couldn’t be blind, she had just marched in under her own steam.

“I believe that Mr. Van Dorn’s office is empty. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

He guided them into Van Dorn’s office, closed the door, and stood close to it listening. He heard Whitmark repeat, “This will square us, won’t it?”

“Nothing will square us.”

“Dorothy?” asked Ted. “What are you doing?”

The answer was the sharp crack of a gunshot. Bell threw open the door. Ted Whitmark lay on his back, blood pouring from his skull. Dorothy Langner dropped the nickel pistol she was holding onto Whitmark’s chest, and said to Isaac Bell, “He killed my father.”

“Yamamoto Kenta killed your father.”

“Ted didn’t set the bomb, but he’s been passing information about Father’s work on Hull 44.”

“Did Ted tell you that?”

“He tried to get rid of his guilt confessing to me.”

Harry Warren rushed in, gun drawn, and knelt by the body. Then he grabbed Van Dorn’s telephone. “She missed,” he told Bell, and said to the operator, “Get a doctor.”

“How badly is he hurt?” asked Bell.

“She only creased him. It’s his scalp that’s bleeding so much.”

“He won’t die?”

“Not from this. In fact, I think he’s starting to wake up.”

“She didn’t shoot him,” said Bell.

“What?”

“Ted Whitmark tried to kill himself. She grabbed the gun. She saved his life.”

Harry Warren had wise, old eyes. “Tell me why he tried to kill himself, Isaac.”

“He’s a traitor. He just confessed to me that he’s been passing information to the spy.”

Harry Warren looked Bell full in the face, and said, “It appears that Miss Langner saved the louse’s life.”

The Hotel Knickerbocker’s house doctor rushed in with his bag trailed by bellhops lugging a stretcher. “Stand back, everybody. Please stand back.”

Bell led Dorothy to his desk. “Sit down.” He beckoned an apprentice. “Please bring the lady a glass of water.”

“Why did you do that?” Dorothy whispered.

“I would not have if you had succeeded in murdering him. But since you didn’t, I think you’ve been through enough without adding police charges to your misery.”

“Will the police believe it?”

“If Ted goes along with it. And I imagine he will. Now, tell me everything he told you.”

“He lost a lot of money gambling last fall in Washington. Someone in the game offered to lend him money. In exchange, he talked to Yamamoto.” She shook her head in anger and bitterness. “He still doesn’t realize that that man must have set him up to lose.”

“He told me it was bad luck,” said Bell. “Go on.”

“The same thing happened this spring in New York and then out in San Francisco. Now it’s happened again. This time, he finally realized the enormity of what he was doing. Or so he claimed. I think he was trying to get me to come back. I told him we were through. He found out about someone I’ve been seeing.”

“Farley Kent.”

“Of course you know,” she said wearily. “Van Dorns never give up. When Ted found out about Farley, I think he realized that nothing in his entire life had any truth to it. He got religion. He was probably hoping I’d be waiting when he got out of jail. Or weeping when they hung him for treason.”

“Shooting him must have disabused him of that notion,” Bell observed.

She smiled. “I’m not sure how I feel right now about not killing him. I meant to. I can’t believe I missed. I was so close.”

“In my experience,” said Bell, “people who miss a sure shot wanted to miss. Murder does not come easily to most.”

“I wish I had killed him.”

“You would hang for it.”

“I wouldn’t care.”

“Where would that leave Farley Kent?”

“Farley would-” she started to say but stopped abruptly.

Bell smiled gently. “You were about to say that Farley would understand, but you realize that is not so.”

She hung her head. “Farley would be devastated.”

“I’ve seen Farley at work. He strikes me as your sort of man. He loves his work. Do you love him?”

“Yes, I do.”

“May I have a man escort you to the Brooklyn Navy Yard?” She stood up. “Thank you. I know the way.”

Bell walked her to the door. “You made this case, Dorothy, when you vowed to clear your father’s name. No one has done more to save his and Farley’s work on Hull 44. Thanks to you, we discovered the spy, and you can rest assured we will get him.”

“Did Ted tell you anything that helps?”

Bell answered carefully, “He believes that he did. Tell me, how did Ted happen to find out about Farley Kent?”

“A letter from a busybody signed ‘A friend.’ Why are you smiling, Isaac?”

“The spy is getting desperate,” was all Bell would say, but he had a powerful feeling that O’Shay had tricked Ted Whitmark into passing him false information. The spy wanted Bell to believe that he would attack from the land when in fact he intended to attack, somehow, from the water.

Dorothy kissed his cheek and hurried down the grand stairway.

“Mr. Bell,” said the front-desk man, “Knickerbocker house dick calling for you.”

51

GOT SOME UNSAVORY TYPES AT THE FRONT DOOR,” THE Hotel Knickerbocker’s house detective reported. “Claim they want to talk to you, Mr. Bell.”

“What are their names?”

“There’s a hairy oldster says he doesn’t have a name, and I’m inclined to believe him. The young ones call themselves Jimmy Richards and Marv Gordon.”

“Send ’em up.”

“They don’t look right for the lobby, if you know what I mean.”

“Understood. But they’re little Eddie Tobin’s cousins, so they’re coming in the front door. Tell the manager I authorized it. You walk with them so they don’t frighten the ladies.”

“O.K., Mr. Bell,” the house dick answered dubiously.

The Staten Island scowmen Richards and Gordon introduced their older companion, who had lanky gray hair and the squint lines from a lifetime on the water, as “Uncle Donny Darbee, who sailed us over.”

“What’s up, boys?”

“You still looking for torpedoes?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“The Navy and the Coast Guard and the Harbor Squad are swarming like mosquitoes,” said Richards.

“Searching every pier in the port,” said Gordon.

“Making it hard to do business,” muttered Uncle Donny.

“Have you seen the torpedoes?” Bell asked.

“Nope.”

“What do you know about them?”

“Nothing,” said Richards.

“Except you’re looking for them,” said Gordon.

“Nothing at all? Then what did you come to see me about?”

“We was wondering if you was interested in the Holland.”

“What Holland?”

“Biggest Holland we ever saw.”

“A Holland submarine?”

“YUP,” CHORUSED the Staten Island scowmen.

“Where?”

“Kill Van Kull.”

“Over on the Bayonne side.”

“Hold on, boys. If you’ve seen a submarine out in the open, it must belong to the Navy.”

“It’s hid. Under a car float.”

“Uncle Donny found it last night when the cops was chasing him.”

“Been watching that barge for days,” said Uncle Donny Darbee. Isaac Bell questioned them sharply.

Harbor cops hunting coal pirates had noticed Uncle Donny and his two friends following a coal barge in an oyster scow. Uncle Donny had declined to let the police board it for inspection. Pistol shots were exchanged. The cops had boarded anyway. Uncle Donny and his friends had jumped into the Kill and swam for shore.

Darbee’s friends were caught, but the old man swam for a car float that he had been eyeing for several days because the barge was tied up all by itself, unattended, and was carrying a pair of freight cars that might contain cargo. Tiring in the cold water as he hid in the shadow of the overhanging prow, the old man had begun to sink only to step on something solid where it was too deep to stand. When the cops gave up, Jimmy and Marv, who had been watching from the Staten Island side, had rescued their Dutch uncle in another oyster boat. Then they took a closer look at the barge. Under it, they saw the outline of a submarine.

“Bigger than the Navy Holland. Same boat, but it looks like they added on a chunk at each end.”

“Uncle Donny knows the Holland,” Jimmy Richards explained. “He took us off Brooklyn to watch the Navy tests. When was that?”

“In 1903. She made fifteen knots with her conning turret out of the water. And six submerged.”

Bell reached for the telephone. “So you have good reason to believe that you saw a submarine.”

“Want to come see it?” asked Marv Gordon.

“Yes.”

“Told you he would,” said Uncle Donny.

Isaac Bell telephoned the New York Police Harbor Squad, rounded up Archie Abbott and Harry Warren, and grabbed a golf bag. The Ninth Avenue Elevated express whisked the Van Dorns and the scowmen to the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan in ten minutes. A forty-foot Harbor Squad launch had its steam up at Pier A.

“Don’t touch anything,” the captain warned the Staten Islanders as they trooped warily aboard. He did not want to tow Donald Darbee’s scow, which was moored nearby, but Bell insisted and slipped him twenty dollars “for your crew.”

“Never thought I’d be on one of these,” muttered old Darbee as they churned away from the pier.

A water cop muttered back, “Except in handcuffs.”

Bell said to Archie and Harry, “If there’s no submarine in the Kill Van Kull, we’re going to end up in a cross fire.”

“You really think we’re going to find one, Isaac?”

“I believe they think they saw a submarine. And a submarine would make those torpedoes a much deadlier affair than a surface torpedo boat. Nonetheless, I will believe a submarine when I see one.”

The Harbor Squad launch plowed across the Upper Bay, threading a swift course through ferries, tugs, barges, and oceangoing schooners and steamers. A thunderous whistle announced the New York arrival of an Atlantic liner passing through the Verrazano Narrows. Tugboats meeting her piped replies. A steady stream of car floats carried freight trains between New Jersey, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the East River.

The police boat steered into the crooked channel of water between Staten Island and New Jersey known as the Kill Van Kull. Bell estimated it was a thousand feet wide, about the same as the narrow arm of the Carquinez Strait where he had captured Louis Loh swimming from Mare Island. To his left rose the hills of Staten Island. The city of Bayonne spread to his right. Docks, warehouses, boatyards, and residences lined the banks. Four miles down the waterway, Richards and Gordon said, “There she is!”

The car float stood by itself, tied to the shore beside the flat green back lawn of a large frame house in a district of similar dwellings. It was an old New Jersey Central barge of the three-track type, short and wide, with a boxcar on the nearside tracks and a tall gondola on the inside. The middle track appeared to be empty, though the men on the police launch could not see the space between the two cars.

“What submarine?” asked the Harbor Squad captain.

“Under it,” growled Donald Darbee. “They cut a well in the middle of the barge for the conning turret.”

“You saw that?”

“No. But how else could they get in and out?”

The launch captain glowered at Isaac Bell. “Mr. Bell, I predict that my boss is going to be talking to your boss, and neither of us is going to be very happy about it.”

“Let’s get closer,” said Bell.

“There isn’t enough water there for a Holland submarine.”

“It’s plenty deep,” Donald Darbee retorted quietly. “The tide scours the bank on this side.”

The helmsman called for Dead Slow, and drew within fifty feet.

The Van Dorns, the scowmen, and the harbor police peered into the murky water. The launch drifted closer to the car float.

“Lot of mud stirred up,” Darbee muttered worriedly.

“Our propeller’s stirring it,” said the captain. “Told you it’s too shallow.” To the helmsman he barked, “Back off before we run aground.”

Darbee said, “There’s thirty feet of water here if there’s an inch.” “Then what’s causing that mud?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

“So am I,” said Isaac Bell, peering into the water. Bubbles were rising from the murk and hissing on the surface.

52

BACK AWAY!” ISAAC BELL SHOUTED. “BACK! FULL ASTERN.”

The helmsman and the engineer had quick reflexes. They reversed the engine in an instant. The propeller churned backward. Smoke and steam shot from the short stack. The boat stopped. But before it could gather way in reverse, a gray malevolent form rose swiftly under it.

“Grab ahold!”

Bell saw a pipe emerge just ahead of the launch-the periscope, a tube of angled mirrors, the submarine’s eye. A squat round turret broke the surface, the conning tower, rimmed with handrails. Then a mighty blow from underneath smashed into the bottom of the police launch and pushed its forty-foot hull out of the water. Its keel shattered with a loud crack of splitting wood, and still the police boat rose, lifted by a powerful steel hull that broke the surface like a maddened sperm whale.

The police launch fell onto its side, spilling Van Dorns, cops, and scowmen into the Kill.

Bell jumped onto the steel hull and waded through waist-deep water to the conning tower. He grabbed the handrails that surrounded the hatch on top and reached for a wheel that would open the hatch.

“Look out, Isaac!” Archie Abbott yelled. “He’s going under!”

Ignoring Archie and the water that was suddenly climbing up his chest, Bell threw his weight on the wheel. For a second, it wouldn’t budge. Then he thought he felt it move. Salt water rushed over his shoulders, his mouth, his nose, his eyes. Suddenly the submarine was surging ahead. He held the wheel as long as he could, still struggling to open it, but the force of the rushing water ripped it from his hands. The hull raced under him, and he realized, too late, that the propeller driving it was about to cut him to pieces.

He pushed off desperately with both boots and swam with all his strength. The water rushing past the hull sucked him back. He felt the hull sliding under him. Something hit him hard. It threw him aside and drove him deep. A powerful thrust of turbulence tumbled him deeper. Slammed about in the submarine’s propeller wash, he realized that he had been struck by cowling that protected the propeller and, in this instance, protected him, too, from the thrashing blades.

He fought to the surface, saw the conning turret racing up the Kill Van Kull, and swam after it. Behind him, Archie was helping Harry Warren climb onto the muddy bank, Richards and Gordon and the engineer were holding ropes dangling from the barge, and the police captain clung to his overturned launch. “Telephone for help!” the captain yelled, and two cops staggered toward the frame house.

Donald Darbee was climbing onto his oyster scow, which had broken free of the sinking launch.

“Uncle Donny!” Bell shouted over his shoulder as he swam after the submarine. “Pick me up.”

Darbee’s gasoline motor clattered, spewing blue smoke.

The submarine kept submerging. The top of the turret and the periscope tube were all that remained above the surface. The handrails around it, the periscope, and the hatch wheel Bell had tried to open left a wake up the channel, splashing like a mobile f ountain.

Darbee’s scow came alongside, and Bell climbed on, rolling over the low gunnel onto the flat deck. “After him!”

Darbee shoved his throttle forward. The motor got louder, the wooden boat trembled, and the old man muttered, “What do we do with him when we catch him?”

Bell heard gunfire crackling behind him. The cops running to the frame house to telephone for help dove behind shrubs. Pistol fire raked the lawn from every window in the house.

“Counterfeiters live there,” Uncle Darbee explained.

“Faster!” said Bell.

He jumped onto the square forward deck.

“Get me alongside of the turret.”

The mostly submerged Holland was headed toward the Upper Bay at six knots. Darbee fiddled with his motor. The noise deepened to an insistent growl, and the oyster scow doubled her speed. It halved the distance to the splashing handrails, halved it again, and pulled past the backwash of the submarine’s enormous propeller. Bell braced to jump to the conning tower. The wooden boat surged alongside. He could sense more than actually see the steel hull beneath the surface. He braced to jump, targeting the periscope tube, gambling that the thin tube was strong enough to hold him until he got a grip on the rails.

The Holland submarine disappeared.

One moment, the turret was just ahead of him. The next, it was gone, deep in the water. Bell could see trailing bubbles and the ripples from the propeller, but there was nothing to jump onto anymore, no turret, no rails, no periscope.

“Slow down,” Bell called to Darbee. “Follow his wake.”

Darbee throttled back to match the submarine’s six-knot speed.

Bell stood on the foredeck, watching the rhythmic swirls of propeller wash and signaling the old man when to nudge his tiller to the left or right. How the underwater ship was navigating its course was a mystery that was solved after they had gone half a mile. Shortly before the submarine reached the next bend in the channel, its periscope suddenly emerged from the water, and the submarine changed course.

The spy had plotted their route out of the Kill Van Kull by noting the time that would elapse between each turn. Bell signaled a similar change and the oyster scow turned with it. The periscope stayed above water. It swiveled around until its glass eye was facing him.

“Stop engine!” Bell shouted.

The oyster boat’s speed dropped as it drifted on momentum. Bell watched for signs that the Holland would back up or even turn around to ram them. But it held its course and pulled ahead of the scow, still showing its periscope.

“Darbee, did the test Holland you watched have a torpedo tube in back?”

“No,” Darbee answered to Bell’s relief, until he added, “I heard talk they might add one.”

“I can’t imagine he’d waste an entire torpedo on us.”

“Suppose not.”

“Speed up. Get closer.”

Ahead, the Kill took a sharp turn. The periscope swiveled around, and the unseen helmsman steered through it. Bell signaled for the oyster boat to accelerate. He drew within twenty yards of the stubby tube and the swirling propeller wash. But the water ahead was turning choppy as the Kill spread into the Upper Bay.

Staten Island and Bayonne fell behind. A chilly breeze cut through Bell’s wet clothes, and waves began curling over the periscope. Enormous bubbles burst on the surface, and he realized that the Holland was forcing air out of its floatation tanks and admitting water to descend deeper. The periscope dropped from sight. The windswept waves of the Upper Bay obliterated the swirling wake.

“He’s gone,” said Darbee.

Bell searched hopelessly. Three miles across the bay sprawled the dockyards of Brooklyn and beyond them low green hills. To his left, four or five miles to the northwest, Bell saw the tall buildings of lower Manhattan and the elegantly draped cables of the Brooklyn Bridge spanning the East River.

“Do you know where Catherine Slip is?”

Darbee swung his tiller. “What do you want there?”

“Dyname,” Bell answered. The fastest ship in New York, equipped with a telephone and a radio telegraph, and commanded by a high-ranking naval hero who could move quickly to rally the Navy against the spy’s submarine and radio the New Hampshire to rig torpedo nets before entering the port.

Darbee gave him a canvas pea jacket that smelled of mold. Bell stripped off his wet coat and shirt, dried out his Browning, and poured water out of his boots. The overpowered oyster scow covered the five miles to the Brooklyn Bridge in twenty minutes. But as they passed under the bridge, Bell’s heart sank. The battleship New Hampshire had already landed. It was moored to the pier closest to the way that held Hull 44. If 44 was O’Shay’s target, they were a pair of sitting ducks. Explosions on the floating ship would set the entire navy yard afire.

TO ISAAC BELL’S RELIEF, Dyname was at Catherine Slip.

He jumped from the oyster scow onto the nearest ladder, climbed onto the pier, crossed her gangway, and shoved through the door to Dyname’s main cabin. Captain Falconer was seated on the green leather banquette flanked by two of his yacht’s crewmen.

“Falconer. They’ve got a submarine.”

“So I am told,” said the Hero of Santiago with a grim nod at three Riker & Riker Protection Service gunmen who were covering the cabin with pistols and a sawed-off shotgun. Bell recognized the bodyguard, Plimpton, who had accompanied Herr Riker on the 20th Century Limited. Plimpton said, “You’re all wet, Mr. Bell, and you’ve lost your hat.”

53

HELLO, PLIMPTON.”

“Hands up.”

“Where’s O’Shay?”

“In the air!”

“Tell your boss that I owe him for an excellent emerald and I’m looking forward to paying him in person.”

“Now!”

“Do it, Bell,” Falconer said. “They’ve already shot my lieutenant and my engineer.”

Isaac Bell raised his hands, having stalled long enough to rate the opposition. Plimpton held a semiautomatic German Navy Luger like he knew his business. But the pretty-boy bruisers flanking him were out of their league. The elder, gingerly toting a sawed-off 20-gauge Remington, might pass for a small-town bank guard. The younger gripped his revolver like a bouncer in a YMCA. They were not on Falconer’s yacht due to a well-thought-out plan, Bell surmised. Something had gone wrong.

What had drawn them at the last moment to Dyname? Escape on the fastest ship in the harbor after O’Shay unleashed his torpedoes? But Dyname hadn’t the range to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Surely O’Shay had intended to take a liner to Europe, traveling with Katherine Dee under assumed names, or had booked secret passage on a freighter.

She was what went wrong, Bell realized. Katherine was wounded.

“Is the girl aboard?” he asked Falconer.

“She needs a doctor!” the boy with the shotgun blurted.

“Shut up, Bruce!” Plimpton growled.

“I’m aboard,” said Katherine Dee. She staggered up the companionway from Falconer’s private cabin. Disheveled, pale, and feverish, she looked like a child shaken from a deep sleep. Except for the hatred on her face. “Thanks to you,” she said bitterly to Bell. “You’re ruining everything.” She had held tight to her pistol when he had shot her in Barlowe’s jewelry shop. She raised it with a trembling hand and aimed it at him.

“Miss Dee!” said Bruce. “You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

“She needs a doctor,” said Bell.

“That’s what I’ve been saying. Mr. Plimpton, she’s got to have a doctor.”

“Shut up, Bruce,” said Plimpton. “She’ll have a doctor as soon as we get out of this mess.”

Hands in the air, boxed in by O’Shay’s gunmen, the tall detective searched her eyes, seeking some advantage, even as he braced for the bullet. He saw no mercy, no hesitation, only the deep, deep weariness of a person with a mortal wound. But she intended to kill him before she died. As she had killed Grover Lakewood and Father Jack and who knew how many others for Eyes O’Shay. How long before she passed out? Where, he wondered, was her “streak of God”?

“Did you know,” he asked, “that Father Jack prayed for you?”

“A lot of good his prayers did. It was Brian O’Shay who saved me.”

“What did Brian save you for? To hurl Grover Lakewood to his death? To shoot the priest?”

“Just like you shot me.”

“No,” said Bell. “I shot you to save the woman I love.”

“I love Brian. I will do anything for him.”

Bell recalled the words of train conductor Dilber on the 20th Century Limited. “Riker and his ward are completely on the up-and-up. Always separate staterooms.”

And O’Shay himself, speaking as Riker, had said, “The girl brings light into my life where there was darkness.”

“And what will Brian be for you?”

“He saved me.”

“Fifteen years ago. What will he do for the rest of your life, Katherine? Keep you pure?”

Her hand shook violently. “You-” Her breath came hoarsely.

“You kill to please him, and he keeps you pure? Is that how it works? Father Jack was right to pray for you.”

“Why?” she wailed.

“He knew in his heart, in his soul, that Brian O’Shay couldn’t save you.”

“And God could?”

“So the priest believed. With all his heart.”

Katherine lowered the gun. Her eyes rolled back in her head. The gun slipped from her fingers, and she folded to the deck as if she were a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“Plimpton, damn you!” Bruce shouted. “She’ll die without a doctor.” He gestured emphatically with his pistol.

Like a viper striking reflexively at movement, Plimpton shot Bruce between the eyes and whirled back to the blur of motion that was Isaac Bell. The bodyguard had committed a fatal error.

Bell fired his Browning twice. Plimpton first, then the remaining gunman. As the gunman pitched forward, his shotgun went off, the report deafening in the confined space of the yacht’s cabin. A swath of pellets tore under the banquette into the legs of Lowell Falconer and his crew.

Bell was wrapping a tourniquet above Falconer’s knee when Donald Darbee stuck a cautious head in the door. “Thought you’d want to know, Mr. Bell, the Holland is passing under the Brooklyn Bridge.”

54

SURFACE!” SHOUTED DICK CONDON, THE FIRST MATE WHOM Eyes O’Shay had put in command of his Holland submarine after he murdered Captain Hatch.

“No!” O’Shay countermanded the order. “Stay down. They’ll see us.”

“The tide is killing us,” the frightened Irish rebel shouted back. “The current is running four knots. We only make six knots on electric! We have to surface to use the gasoline engine.”

O’Shay gripped Condon’s shoulder. The panic in the man’s voice was scaring the men who were operating the ballasting and trimming tanks and preparing to fire the torpedo, which was precisely why he had decided to sail with the submarine. Someone had to keep a clear head. “Six? Four? Who cares? We’re two knots faster.”

“No, Mr. O’Shay. Only directly into the tide. When I turn broadside to line up a torpedo, we’ll be swept away.”

“Try it!” O’Shay demanded. “Take the chance.”

Dick Condon switched the vertical rudder to hand control from the less fine compressed-air steering and moved it cautiously. The deck tilted under their feet. Then the East River caught the hundred-foot submarine with the fury of a shark tearing into a weak swimmer. The men in the small dark space smashed into pipes, conduits, valves, and air hoses as the boat was tumbled.

“Surface!” Condon’s voice rose to a scream.

“No.”

“I must put the conning tower in the air, sir. It doesn’t matter, Mr. O’Shay,” he pleaded. “We can shoot better on the surface. The first torpedo is already loaded. We can fire, submerge, let the current sweep us down again while we reload, and return to the surface. You’ll get what you want, sir. And if anyone sees us, they’ll see it’s a British ship. Just like we want. Please, sir. You must listen to reason or all is lost.”

O’Shay shoved him from the periscope and looked for himself.

The river surface was wild, an ever-moving crazy quilt of tumbling waves. Spray obscured the glass. Just as it cleared, a wave curled over it, blacking it out. The boat lurched violently. Suddenly the periscope stood free of the jumbled water, and O’Shay saw that they were nearly abreast of the navy yard.

The New Hampshire was just where he wanted it. He could not have positioned the long white hull better himself. But the submarine was slipping backward even though the propeller was thrashing and the electric motor smelled like it was burning up.

“All right,” O’Shay conceded. “Attack on the surface.”

“Reduce to half speed!” Condon ordered. The motor stopped straining, and the boat stopped shaking. He watched through the periscope, controlling their drift with skillful twists of the horizontal and vertical rudders. “Prepare to surface.”

“What’s that noise?”

The Royal Navy veterans exchanged puzzled glances.

“Is something wrong with the motor?” asked O’Shay.

“No, no, no. It’s in the water.”

The crew stood still, ears cocked to a strange, high-pitched whine that grew louder and shriller by the second.

“A ship?”

Condon spun the periscope, searching the river. The engineer voiced what his shipmates were thinking.

“It doesn’t sound like any ship I ever heard.”

“Down!” Condon shouted. “Take her down.”

“WHERE DID HE GO?” Lowell Falconer gasped. To Isaac Bell’s astonishment, the bloodied Navy captain had dragged himself topside, where Bell was driving Dyname toward the Brooklyn Bridge at thirty knots.

“Dead ahead,” said Isaac Bell. He had one hand on the steam lever, the other gripped the helm. “Is that tourniquet doing its job?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the river.

“I’d be dead if it weren’t,” Falconer snapped through gritted teeth. He was white from loss of blood, and Bell doubted he would be conscious much longer. The effort to climb the few steps to the bridge must have been herculean. “Who’s in the engine room?” Falconer asked.

“Uncle Darbee claims he was coal stoker on the Staten Island Ferry, and assistant engineer when the regular fellow got drunk.”

“Dyname burns oil.”

“He figured that out when he couldn’t find a shovel. We’ve got plenty of steam.”

“I don’t see the Holland.”

“It’s gone up and down. I saw the periscope a moment ago. There!”

The stubby conning tower broke the surface. The hull itself emerged briefly and rolled back under.

“Tide’s battering him,” muttered Falconer. “It’s ebbing under a full moon.”

“Good,” said Bell. “We need all the help we can get.”

Dyname streaked through the patch of roiled water. The submarine was nowhere to be seen. Falconer tugged at Bell’s sleeve, whispering urgently, “He’s some sort of A-Class Royal Navy Holland-triple our tonnage. Look out, if he surfaces. He’ll be faster on his main engine.” With that warning, the captain slid unconscious to the deck. Bell throttled back and turned the speeding yacht around until it was pointing upstream again. He was several hundred yards beyond the Brooklyn Bridge now, scanning the water in the failing light.

A ferryboat pulled abruptly from its Pine Street Pier, cut off a big Bronx-bound Pennsylvania Railroad ferry, and raced up the East River. Their wakes combined to render vast stretches of water too choppy for Bell to distinguish the periscope from breaking seas. He drove into the chop and circled. Suddenly he saw it far ahead. It had trailed behind the ferries, masked by them, and was pulling abreast of the navy yard.

The Holland submarine burst from the water, revealing her conning tower and the full hundred feet of her hull. Blue smoke spewed. Gasoline exhaust, Bell realized, from her powerful main engine. On the surface now, she was a full-fledged torpedo boat, quick and nimble.

But vulnerable.

Bell shoved the steam lever forward, seizing this precious chance to ram her. But even as the steel yacht gathered speed, the long Holland heeled into a tight turn and pointed straight at Dyname. Her bow reared. Bell saw the dark maw of an open bow tube. From it leaped a Mark 14 Wheeler torpedo.

55

THE TORPEDO SUBMERGED.

Isaac Bell could only guess whether to steer left or right. He could not see the torpedo bearing down on him underwater. Nor whether it was veering left or right. Whatever wake it trailed was erased by the heavy chop. Dyname was one hundred feet long and ten feet wide. The instant he turned, he would present a bigger target broadside. If he guessed wrong, the TNT warhead would blow the yacht to pieces. O’Shay would submerge to reload at leisure and continue his attack.

Bell steered straight ahead.

The Holland saw him coming. It began to submerge. But it was descending too slowly to escape the knife-thin steel hull bearing down on it at nearly forty knots. It turned abruptly to the right, Isaac Bell’s left. He still could not see the torpedo’s wake, nor any trail of bubbles. “Hang on, Uncle Danny!” he shouted down the voice pipe, and turned left to ram.

A flash of light and an explosion behind him told Bell he had guessed correctly. Had he not counterpunched, the torpedo would have sunk him. Instead, it had detonated against an impervious stone pier of the Brooklyn Bridge, and he was close enough to the Holland to see its rivets. He braced for the impact by pressing hard against the helm the second before she hit the submarine just behind its conning tower. At the speed Dyname was traveling, Bell expected to shear through the Holland and cut it in half. But he had miscalculated. With her sharp bow lifting from the water as her nine propellers churned, the yacht rode up onto the Holland’s hull, perched across it, then slid off with screech of tearing steel and shearing rivets.

Dyname’s propellers were still spinning, and they pushed the yacht hundreds of yards from the collision before he could stop them. The Holland had vanished, submerged or sunk, he could not tell. Then Uncle Donny poked his head up to report, “Water’s coming in.”

“Can you give me steam?”

“Not for long,” the old man answered. Bell circled the site of the collision. He could feel the water weighing down Dyname’s hull.

Seven minutes after the Holland submerged, it reappeared a short distance away.

Bell steered to ram again. The yacht resisted the helm. He could barely coax her into a turn. Suddenly the Holland’s conning-tower hatch flipped open. Four men scrambled out and jumped into the river. The tidal current swept them under the bridge. None were Eyes O’Shay, and the Holland was circling, pointing slowly but inexorably toward the four-hundred-fifty-foot hull of the New Hampshire. At a range of less than four hundred yards, the spy could not miss.

Bell wrestled with the helm and forced the stricken yacht on a course to ram. He shoved the steam lever to flank speed. There was no response. He yelled down the voice pipe. “Give me everything you can, and get out before she sinks!”

Whatever the old man managed in the engine room caused the yacht to lumber ahead fitfully. Bell steered at the Holland, which had stopped in place, low in the water, with the East River waves lapping the rim of its open hatch. The thrashing propeller held it against the tide. Its bow was completing its turn, lining its torpedo tube up with the New Hampshire.

Isaac Bell drove Dyname into the submarine. The vessels lurched together like bloodied, bare-knuckle prizefighters staggering through their final round. The yacht bumped the heavier submarine slightly off its course and scraped alongside. As the effect of the impact receded and the submarine resumed lining up its torpedo, Bell glimpsed through the open hatch Eyes O’Shay’s hands manipulating the rudder wheels.

He jumped down from the bridge, dove over Dyname’s rails onto the submarine, and plunged through the hatch.

56

THE DETECTIVE RAMMED THROUGH THE HATCH LIKE A pile driver. His boots smashed down on O’Shay’s shoulders. The spy lost his grip on the rudders. Hurtled into the control room below, he sprawled on the deck. Bell landed on his feet.

The stench of bleach-poisonous chlorine gas mixed from saltwater leaks and battery acid-burned his nostrils and stung his eyes. Half blinded, he caught a blurry glimpse of a cramped space, a fraction of a boxing ring, with a curved ribbed ceiling so low he had to crouch and walled in by bulkheads bristling with piping, valves, and gauges.

O’Shay leaped up and charged.

Isaac Bell met the spy with a hard right. O’Shay blocked it and counterpunched, landing a fist that knocked the tall detective sideways. Bell slammed into the bulkhead, seared his arm on a white-hot pipe, bounced off the sharp rim of a rudder indicator, raked his scalp on the compass protruding from the ceiling, and threw another right.

The spy blocked him again with a left arm as strong as it was quick and blasted back with a counterpunch deadlier than the first. It caught Bell in his ribs with the force to hurl him back against the hot pipes. His boots skidded on the wet deck, and he fell.

The stink of chlorine was much stronger low down, the gas being heavier than air, and as Bell inhaled it he felt a burning pain in his throat and the sensation that he was suffocating. He heard O’Shay grunt with effort. The spy was launching a kick at his head.

Bell dodged all but the man’s heel, which tore across his temple, and rolled to his feet. Gasping to draw breaths of marginally cleaner air, he circled the spy. They were more evenly matched than Bell had supposed. He had a longer reach, but O’Shay was easily as strong as he and as fast. Bell’s extra height was a distinct disadvantage in the confined space.

Again he threw a right, a feint this time, and when O’Shay executed another lightning-fast block and counterpunch the tall detective was ready to hit him with a powerful left that rocked the spy’s head back.

“Lucky hit,” O’Shay taunted.

“Counterpunching is all you ever learned in Hell’s Kitchen,” Bell shot back.

“Not all,” said O’Shay. He slipped his thumb into his vest and brought it out again, armed with a razor-sharp stainless-steel eye gouge.

Bell moved in, throwing combinations. He landed most, but it was like a punching a heavy workout bag. O’Shay never staggered but merely absorbed the powerhouse blows while he waited for his chance. When it came, he took it, sinking a gut-wrenching blow into Bell’s body.

It doubled the detective over. Before Bell could pull back, O’Shay closed in on him with blinding speed and circled his neck with his powerful right arm.

Isaac Bell found himself trapped in a headlock. His left arm was pinned between their bodies. With his right, he tried to reach the knife in his boot. But O’Shay’s thumb gouge was arced toward his eye. Bell surrendered all thoughts of his knife and seized O’Shay’s wrist.

He realized instantly that he had never grappled with a stronger man. Even as he held his wrist with all his might, O’Shay forced the razor-sharp gouge closer and closer to Bell’s face until it pierced the skin and began crawling cross his cheek, plowing a fine red furrow toward his eye. All the while, O’Shay’s right arm was squeezing harder and harder around his throat, cutting off air to his burning lungs and blood to his brain. He heard a roaring in his ears. White flashes stormed before his eyes. His sight began to fade, his grip on O’Shay’s wrist loosened.

He tried to free his left arm. O’Shay shifted slightly to keep it pinned.

Head trapped, bent low, Bell suddenly saw that he was now partially behind O’Shay. He slammed his knee into the back of O’Shay’s knee. It buckled. O’Shay pitched forward. Bell wedged his shoulder under him and rose like a piston.

He flipped O’Shay up and yanked down, slamming the spy to the deck with bone-shaking force. The powerful O’Shay kept hold of Bell’s head, took a deep breath of air, and pulled the detective down with him into the heavier concentration of the suffocating gas. But Bell’s left arm was no longer pinned between them. He slammed his elbow into O’Shay’s nose, cracking bone. Still O’Shay choked him, still the gouge raked at his eye.

Suddenly cold water cascaded down on the fighting men, sending fresh clouds of chlorine up from the massive battery under the deck. The submarine was heeling, the river spilling through the hatch. Bell pushed out with long legs, found a foothold, and forced O’Shay’s head against the bulkhead lined with hot pipes. O’Shay tried to writhe away. Bell held fast. Even sharper than the stench of chlorine was the stink of burning hair, and at last O’Shay’s grip loosened. Bell pulled out of it, dodged a vicious slash of the gouge, and punched out repeatedly as waves poured in.

Bell struggled to stand, kicked free of O’Shay’s grasping hands, and climbed out of the hatch. He saw lights converging. Launches were setting out from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and lowering from the New Hampshire. The submarine was sinking, engine still roaring, propeller still fighting the current. A wave tumbled over the hatch and swept Bell to the back of the submarine. He kicked off from the propeller shield, just missing the blades, and was thrown behind by its wash.

O’Shay climbed out of the hatch, retching from the chlorine. He dove after Bell, his face a mask of hatred. “I’ll kill you.”

The Holland’s propeller dragged him into its spinning blades. The river current whisked his torso past Bell. The gangster’s head raced after it, glaring at the detective, until the river yanked it under.

The Holland submarine rolled quite suddenly on its side and slid beneath the waves. Isaac Bell thought he was next. He battled to stay afloat, but he was weakened by cold and rendered breathless by the poison gas. A wave curled over him, and his mind suddenly filled with his memory of the day he met Marion and the floor had trembled beneath his feet. His eyes were playing tricks on him. Her thick, lustrous hair was piled atop her head. One long, narrow strand fell nearly to her waist. She looked dainty but strong as a willow, and she was reaching for him.

She gripped his hand. He tightened his own grip and pulled himself to the surface. He looked up into the grinning face of a bearded sailor.

THE NEXT ISAAC BELL KNEW, he was sprawled on his back in the bottom of a wooden boat. Beside him lay Captain Lowell Falconer. The Hero of Santiago looked as beat-up as Bell felt, but his eyes were bright.

“You’ll be O.K., Bell. They’re taking us into sick bay.”

It hurt to talk and was hard to breathe. His throat was burning. “Better warn the salvage boys that the Holland has a live Wheeler Mark 14 still in its tube.”

“Still in its tube, thanks to you.”

The launch bumped against a dock.

“What are those lights?” asked Bell. The sky was white with them.

“Hull 44 is going to double shifts.”

“Good.”

“ ‘Good’?” Lowell Falconer echoed. “The most you can say for yourself is ‘good’?”

Isaac Bell thought hard. Then he grinned. “Sorry about your yacht.”