Bell shook his head. “Enough talk. Here come the oysters, and we’ve both got early starts tomorrow.”
“Look at the size of these!” Marion tipped an enormous oyster off its shell into her mouth, let it slide down her throat, and asked with a smile, “Is Miss Langner as beautiful as they say?”
“Who says?”
“Mademoiselle Duvall met her in Washington. Apparently there isn’t a man on the East Coast over nineteen who hasn’t fallen for her.”
“She is beautiful,” said Bell. “With the most extraordinary eyes. And I imagine were she not grieving she probably would be even lovelier.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for her, too.”
“My falling days are over,” Bell grinned.
“Do you miss them?”
“If love was gravity, I would be in free fall. What was Mademoiselle Duvall doing in Washington?”
“Seducing an Assistant Secretary of the Navy into hiring her to shoot movies of the Great White Fleet steaming through the Golden Gate into San Francisco. At least, that’s how she got the job filming the fleet’s departure from Hampton Roads last winter, so I assume she’s using the same tactics. Why do you ask?”
“This is strictly between us,” Bell replied seriously. “But Mademoiselle Duvall has had a long affair with a French Navy captain.”
“Oh, of course! Sometimes when she’s being very eye-battingly mysterious she’ll hint about ‘Mon Capitaine.’”
“Mon Capitaine happens to specialize in dreadnought research-which is to say, the Frenchman is a spy, and she is likely working for him.”
“A spy? She’s such a flibbertigibbet.”
“The Navy Secretary gave Joe Van Dorn a list of twenty foreigners who’ve been poking around Washington and New York on behalf of France, England, Germany, Italy, and Russia. Most look like flibbertigibbets, but we’ve got to investigate each of them.”
“No Japanese?”
“Plenty. Two from their embassy-a naval officer and a military attaché. And a tea importer who lives in San Francisco.”
“But what could Mademoiselle Duvall possibly film for the French Navy that the rest of us can’t?”
“Filming could be her excuse to get close to American Navy officers who might talk too much to an attractive woman. What did you mean, ‘the rest of us.’ Are you filming the Fleet, too?”
“Preston Whiteway just got in touch.”
Bell’s eyes narrowed slightly. The wealthy Whiteway had inherited several California newspapers. He had expanded them into a powerful chain of the yellowest yellow journalism type, and a movie newsreel company that Marion had started up for him before she came east to make moving pictures.
“Preston asked me to shoot the Fleet arriving in San Francisco for Picture World.”
“Preston’s newspapers are predicting war with Japan within the week.”
“He’ll print anything to sell a newspaper.”
“Is this a one-time job?”
“I would not be working for him as an employee, you can be sure, but as a highly paid contractor. I could squeeze it in between the movies I’m shooting here. What do you think?”
“I have to hand it to Whiteway. He is certainly persistent.”
“I don’t think he sees me that way anymore-Why are you l aughing?”
“I believe he is still male and in possession of his eyesight.”
“I mean that Preston knows that I am not available.”
“By now that should have sunk in,” Bell agreed. “If memory serves, the last time he was in our company you threatened to shoot him. When do you leave?”
“Not before the first of May.”
“Good. They’re launching the Michigan next week. Captain Falconer will throw a big party. I was hoping you could come with me.”
“I’d love to.”
“It’s my chance to observe the foreign flibbertigibbets in a room full of Americans who might talk too much. You’ll provide cover and a second pair of eyes and ears.”
“What do you suppose ladies wear to a battleship launching?”
“How about that hat men step aside for?” Bell grinned. “Or you can ask Mademoiselle Duvall. Even money, she’ll be there, too.”
“I don’t like that she knows you’re a detective. It could put you in danger if she really is a spy.”
TEN BLOCKS UP BROADWAY, things were going like clockwork for Iceman Weeks.
First, he managed to make it the four blocks from the subway to the Cumberland Hotel without being spotted by anybody who’d squeal to Tommy Thompson. Crossing Broadway, he passed right under the noses of Daley and Boyle-Central Office pickpocket detectives who were hurrying down to their regular station at the Metropolitan Opera-and they didn’t even notice him in the sack suit he’d found airing on a Brooklyn fire escape.
Then in the lobby, the Cumberland’s house detectives were distracted while changing shifts. Neither dick gave Weeks’s duds a second glance. Even if his boots did not compare to the polished shoes on the college men, the Academy of Pathological Science doctors rushing to their meeting weren’t watching his feet.
Jimmy Clark, dressed up like an organ-grinder’s monkey in his purple bell-hopper uniform, looked right through him, doing a good job of acting like they had not had a “conversation” earlier in the day.
“Boy!”
Jimmy hurried over, ducking his head to conceal the fear and hatred in his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
Weeks handed him a luggage ticket for the battered old steamer truck he had had delivered earlier to the hotel and tipped him a nickel. “Put my trunk on your cart and wait for me by the side door of the Academy meeting. I have a steamship to catch and I don’t want to disturb the members when I leave early.”
Jimmy Clark said, “Yes sir.”
Weeks was luckier than he knew. Between out-of-town guests swaggering out for a night on the Great White Way and Pathological Academy doctors pouring in to view the lance-headed viper, the hotel lobby was too busy for anyone to take note of a queer accent. While dressed like a college man, Weeks still spoke like a lifelong citizen of Hell’s Kitchen, and anyone who listened would have heard, “Dun wanna destoib de members wen I leave oily.”
The other piece of good luck-and this one he knew about-was that the hotel fuse box in the cellar was at the bottom of the same stairs that led to the side door of the lobby-level ballroom where the doctors were meeting the snake. Weeks put his hat on the chair nearest the door to reserve it and milled around a little so he didn’t have to talk to anyone before the meeting started. When it did, he took his seat and caught a last glimpse of the sticker-plastered steamer trunk on Jimmy’s cart as the door closed.