“Thank you, sir, thank you. From Farley Kent, it is great honor.”
“And I’ll tell you something else,” said Kent, “though I suspect you’ve already thought of it yourself. Your hull would make a magnificent passenger liner-a North Atlantic greyhound that will run rings around Lusitania and Mauritania.”
“One day,” Yourkevitch smiled. “When there is no war.”
Kent invited Yourkevitch to have lunch with his staff, and the two fell into a discussion of the just-announced building of the White Star liners Olympic and Titanic.
“Eight hundred forty feet!” Kent marveled, to which the Russian replied, “I am thinking idea for one thousand.”
Bell believed that the earnest Russian naval architect had wanted nothing more than the chance to commune with the famous Farley Kent. He did not believe that the self-proclaimed officer who approached Yourkevitch in a Sand Street bar was a Marine.
Why did he give the Russian the password without demanding he report on Kent’s drawings? How had he even known to approach the Russian? The answer was chilling. The spy-the “saboteur of minds,” as Falconer called him-knew whom to target in the dreadnought race.
“THIS FOREIGN-SPY STUFF is new to us,” said Joseph Van Dorn. The boss was puffing agitatedly on a quick after-lunch cigar in the main lounge of the Railroad Club on the twenty-second floor of the Hudson Tunnels Terminal before catching a train to Washington.
“We hunt murderers,” Isaac Bell retorted, his tone grim. “Whatever their motive, they are first and foremost criminals.”
“Still, we’ll be making decisions on horseback.”
Bell said, “I had the research boys draw up a list of foreign diplomats, military attachés, and newspaper reporters who might double as spies for England, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Japan, and China.”
“The Navy Secretary just sent me a list of foreigners the Navy suspects could be engaged in espionage.”
“I’ll add it to mine,” said Bell. “But I want an expert to look them over and save us wild-goose chases. Don’t you have an old pal still in the Marines who pulls wires at the State Department?”
“That’s putting it mildly. Canning’s the officer who arranges for Marine Corps Expeditionary Regiments to storm ashore at State’s request.”
“He’s our man-tight with our overseas attachés. Soon as he goes through our lists of foreigners with a fine-tooth comb, I recommend that we observe them in Washington, D.C., and New York, and around navy yards and factories building warships.”
“That will require an expensive corps of detectives,” Van Dorn said pointedly.
Bell had his answer ready. “The expense can be written off as an investment in friendships forged in Washington. It can’t hurt to have the government rely upon the Van Dorn Agency as a national outfit with efficient field offices across the continent.”
Van Dorn smiled pleasedly, his red whiskers spreading wide and bright as a brush fire at that happy thought.
“In addition,” Bell pressed, “I recommend that Van Dorn Agency specialists listen in the various immigrant neighborhoods of the cities that have navy yards-German, Irish, Italian, Chinese-for talk of spying, rumors about foreign governments paying for information, and sabotage. The dreadnought race is international.”
Van Dorn considered that with a hollow chuckle. “We could be looking for more than one spy. Told you this is beyond our usual.”
“If not us,” retorted Isaac Bell, “who?”
17
TWICE THAT AFTERNOON ICEMAN WEEKS ADMINISTERED beatings notable for their viciousness and the fact that neither left marks not covered by clothing. He was an expert, exercising skills he had honed since boyhood shaking down peddlers and collecting debts for loan sharks. Compared to longshoreman and carters, a skinny bellboy and a frightened little laundress were pieces of cake. The pain grew worse as the day wore on. As did the fear.
Jimmy Clark, the bellboy at the Cumberland Hotel, received the first seemingly endless flurry of fists in the alley behind the pharmacist where he went to exchange last night’s take for tonight’s cocaine. Weeks emphasized that his problems would be nothing compared to Jimmy’s problems if the bellboy didn’t do exactly what he was told. Any sort of double cross would make this event a happy memory.
Jenny Sullivan, the apprentice laundress at the Yale Club, caught hers in an alley half a block from the Church of the Assumption, where she had gone to pray for relief of her debt.
Weeks left her vomiting with pain. But so important was her role in his plan that when Weeks stopped hitting the girl, he promised that if she did as he ordered her entire debt was canceled, paid in full. As she dragged her aching body to work, her pain and her fear were unexpectedly mingled with hope. All she had to do was stand lookout at the club’s service door at a late hour when no one was around and steal a key to unlock a third-floor bedroom.
18
ISAAC BELL AND MARION MORGAN MET FOR DINNER AT Rector’s. The lobster palace was as famous for its mirrored green-and-gold interior, its lavish linens and silver, its revolving door-the first in New York-and its glittering patrons as it was for its crustaceans. Situated on Broadway, it was two blocks from Bell’s office in the Knickerbocker. He waited out front under a gigantic statue of a gryphon ablaze in electric lights and greeted Marion with a kiss on her lips.
“I’m sorry I’m late. I had to change clothes.”
“I was, too. I just got done with Van Dorn.”
“I have to at least try to compete with the Broadway actresses who eat here.”
“When they see you in that getup,” Bell assured her, “they will run back to their dressing rooms and blow their brains out.”
They pushed around the revolving door into a brilliant room that held a hundred tables. Charles Rector gestured frantically to the orchestra as he rushed to greet Marion.
The musicians broke into “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” the title of Marion’s first two-reeler about a detective’s girlfriend who stopped the villain from burning down a town. At the sound of the music, every woman flashing diamonds and every gent dressed to the nines looked up to see Marion. Bell smiled as an appreciative buzz rippled across the restaurant.
“Miss Morgan,” Rector cried, seizing her hands in his. “When last you honored Rector’s you were making newsreels. Now everyone is talking about your moving picture.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rector. I thought the musical accompaniment was reserved for beautiful actresses.”