“What a wonderful surprise!” she exclaimed. She was still in her working clothes-shirtwaist, long skirt, and a snug jacket. Her blond hair was heaped up in back, out of her way, exposing her long, graceful neck.
“You look lovely.”
“Liar! I look like I’ve been up since five in the morning.”
“You know I never lie. You look terrific.”
“Well, so do you. And then some… Have you eaten?”
“Dinner on the train.”
“Come. Join us. Or would you rather we sit alone?”
“I’ll say hello first.”
The hotel proprietor approached, beaming with fond memories of Bell’s last visit and rubbing his hands. “Champagne, again, Mr. Bell?”
“Of course.”
“For the table?”
“For the room!”
“Isaac!” said Marion. “There are fifty people in here.”
“Nothing in my grandfather Isaiah’s will says I can’t spend a portion of his five million dollars on a toast to the beauty of Miss Marion Morgan. Besides, they say that Grandfather had an eye for the ladies.”
“So five million was not all you inherited.”
“And when they get drunk, they won’t notice us slipping upstairs to your room.”
She led him by the hand. Christina and Mademoiselle Duvall were also still in their work clothes, though the flamboyant Frenchwoman wore her usual riding pants. She kissed Bell’s cheeks and called him “Eee-zahk.”
“This week we all three are each shooting about bank row-bears, Eee-zahk. You must give me inspector tips.”
“She wants more than tips,” Marion whispered with a grin.
“Are bank row-bears not the symbol of Americain freedom?” Mademoiselle Duvall demanded.
Bell returned a grim smile. “Bank robbers are symbols of death and terror. The trio I’m chasing at the moment routinely shoot everyone in the building.”
“Because they fear to be recognized,” said the French director. “My bank row-bears will shoot no one because they will be of the poor and known by the poor.”
Christina rolled her eyes. “Like Row-ben Hoods?” she asked acerbically.
“Just so the audience knows who’s who,” Marion suggested, “you better make them wear masks.”
“A mask can only mask a stranger,” said Mademoiselle Duvall.
“Were I to don a mask”-she demonstrated with her scarf, drawing the silk across her Gallic nose and sensual mouth so that only her eyes were visible-“Eee-zahk will still recognize me by my gaze.”
“That’s because you’re making eyes at him,” laughed Marion.
Isaac Bell’s expression changed abruptly.
“Is not my fault! Eee-Zahk is too handsome to contain myself. For that, I would have to pull the wool over my eyes.”
Now they noticed his features harden. He appeared remote and cold. Mademoiselle Duvall reached out and touched his arm. “Chéri,” she apologized. “You are too serious. Forgive my behavior if I was inapproprié.”
“Not at all,” Bell said, patting her hand distractedly as he gripped Marion’s tightly under the table. “But you have given me a strange idea. Something to think about.”
“No more thinking tonight,” said Marion.
Bell stood up. “Excuse me. I have to send a wire.”
The hotel had a telephone that he used to call the New York office and dictate a wire to be sent to John Scully care of every Van Dorn post in the region where the detective had last been heard from.
NAME CHANGED FRYES HEADED HOME NEAR
FIRST JOB IN NEW JERSEY
Marion was smiling in the lobby next to the stairs. “I said good night for you.”
7
GET DOWN TO GREENWICH VILLAGE AND BRING BACK Dr. Cruson,” Isaac Bell ordered an apprentice when he rushed into Van Dorn’s Knickerbocker office early the next morning. “You are authorized to take a taxi both ways. On the jump!”
Dr. Daniel Cruson was a handwriting expert.
The apprentice raced off.
Bell read his telegrams. The laboratory in Washington confirmed that the ink on Arthur Langner’s note was the same ink in Langner’s pen. He was not surprised.
A wire from Pennsylvania demonstrated the shortcomings of John Scully’s lone-wolf approach to detecting. The operatives who Joe Van Dorn had assigned to assist Scully while Bell investigated the Arthur Langner death had sent:
CAN’T FIND SCULLY.
STILL LOOKING.
RETURN C/O WESTERN UNION SCRANTON AND
PHILADELPHIA.
Bell growled a mild oath under his breath. They had split up to increase their chances of finding Scully. Ifthey didn’t find him by noon, it would fall to him to inform the boss that the detectives assigned to help Scully track the Frye Boys were instead tracking Scully.
Bell called for the research operative he had brought into the case. Grady Forrer was a grizzly bear of man with an immense chest and belly. He looked like a fellow you would want on your side in a barroom brawl. But his greatest strengths were a ferocious determination to track down the minutest details and a prodigious memory.
“Have you found out where home was for these hydrophobic skunks?” Bell asked. “Where did they grow up?”
The research man shook his head. “I’ve been beating my brains out, Isaac. Can’t find any set of three Frye brothers anywhere in New Jersey. Tried cousins. No go.”
Bell said, “I have an idea about that. What if they changed their name at the time of their first unauthorized withdrawal? That original robbery was in the middle of the state, if I recall. East Brunswick Farmers’ Mutual Savings.”
“Hick-town bank about halfway to Princeton.”
“We always ascribed their gunning down the teller and the customer to viciousness. But what if those three were stupid enough to rob the nearest bank to home?”
Grady Forrer stood up straighter.
“What if they murdered witnesses because they were recognized-even while wearing masks. Maybe the witnesses knew them as local boys. Little Johnny down the road grew up and got a gun. Remember their first note in blood? ‘Fear the Frye Boys.’ ”