Bell’s sharp blue eyes softened in an instant. Now they were tinged violet, his inquiring gaze veiled with tenderness. He took off his broad-brimmed hat in deference to her, saying, “I am so sorry for your loss, Miss Langner,” and swept a drop of blood from his hand with a pure white handkerchief in a motion so graceful as to be invisible.
“Mr. Bell,” she asked. “What have you learned that will clear my father’s name?”
Bell answered in a voice pitched low with sympathy. He was kindly yet direct. “Forgive me, but I must report that your father did indeed sign out a quantity of iodine from the laboratory store.”
“He was an engineer,” she protested. “He was a scientist. He signed for chemicals from the laboratory every day.”
“Powdered iodine was an essential ingredient of the explosive that detonated the smokeless powder in his piano. The other was ammonia water. The porter noticed a bottle missing from his cleaning closet.”
“Anyone could have taken it.”
“Yes, of course. But there are indications that he mixed the chemicals in his private washroom. Stains on a towel, a volatile powder on his toothbrush, residue in his shaving mug.”
“How can you know all this?” she asked, blinking away angry tears. “The Navy won’t let me near his office. They turned away my lawyer. They even barred the police from the Gun Factory.”
“I gained admittance,” said Bell.
A male secretary wearing a vest, bow tie, banded shirtsleeves, and a double-action Colt in a shoulder holster entered urgently. “Beg your pardon, Mr. Van Dorn. The commandant of the Washington Navy Yard is calling on the telephone, and he’s hopping mad.”
“Tell the operator to switch the line to this telephone. Excuse me, Miss Langner… Van Dorn here. Good afternoon, Commandant Dillon. How are you today?… You don’t say?”
Van Dorn listened, casting Miss Langner a reassuring smile.
“… Well, if you’ll forgive me, sir, such a general description could fit half the tall men in Washington… It could even describe a gentleman right here in my office as we speak. But I assure you that he does not look like he’s been at fisticuffs with the United States Marines-unless the Corps turns out a lesser breed of Leatherneck than in my day.”
Isaac Bell put his hand in his pocket.
When Joseph Van Dorn next replied to the caller, it was with a benign chuckle, though if the commandant had seen the chill in his eyes he might have retreated hastily.
“No, sir. I will not ‘produce’ an employee of mine on your sentries’ assertion that they caught a private detective red-handed. Clearly the man in my office was not ‘caught’ as he is standing here in front of me… I will register your complaint with the Navy Secretary when we lunch tomorrow at the Cosmos Club. Please convey my warmest regards to Mrs. Dillon.”
Van Dorn replaced the earpiece on its hook, and said, “Apparently, a tall, yellow-haired gent with a mustache knocked down some navy yard sentries who attempted to detain him.”
Bell displayed a row of even white teeth. “I imagine he’d have surrendered quietly if they hadn’t tried to beat him up.” He turned back to Dorothy Langner, his expression gentler. “Now, Miss Langner. There is something I must show you.”
He produced a photographic print, still damp from the developing process. It was an enlarged photograph of Langner’s suicide note. He had snapped it with a 3A Folding Pocket Kodak camera that his fiancée-a woman in the moving-picture line-had given him. Bell shielded most of the photograph with his hand to spare Miss Langner the deranged raving.
“Is this your father’s handwriting?”
She hesitated, peered closely, then reluctantly nodded. “It looks like his handwriting.”
Bell watched her closely. “You seem unsure.”
“It just looks a little… I don’t know! Yes, it is his handwriting.”
“I understand that your father was working under great strain to speed up production. Colleagues who greatly admired him admit he was being driven hard, perhaps beyond endurance.”
“Nonsense!” she snapped back. “My father wasn’t casting church bells. He ran a gun factory. He demanded speed. And if it were too much for him he would have told me. We’ve been thick as thieves since my mother died.”
“But the tragedy of suicide,” Van Dorn interrupted, “is that the victim can see no other escape from the unbearable. It is the loneliest death.”
“He would not have killed himself in that manner.”
“Why not?” asked Isaac Bell.
Dorothy Langner paused before she answered, noting despite her grief that the tall detective was unusually handsome, with an air of elegance tempered by rugged strength. That combination was a quality she looked for in men but found rarely.
“I bought him that piano so he could take up music again. To relax him. He loved me too much to use my gift as the instrument of his death.”
Isaac Bell watched her compelling silvery blue eyes as she pleaded her case. “Father was too happy in his work to kill himself. Twenty years ago he started out replicating British 4-inch guns. Today his gun factory builds the finest 12s in the world. Imagine learning to build naval guns accurate at twenty thousand yards. Ten miles, Mr. Bell!”
Bell cocked his ear for a change of tone that might express doubt. He watched her face for telltale signs of uncertainty in her lyrical description of the dead man’s work.
“The bigger the gun, the more violent the force it has to tame. There is no room for error. You must bore the tube straight as a ray of light. Its diameter can’t vary a thousandth of an inch. Rifling demands the artistry of Michelangelo; shrinking the jacket, the precision of a watchmaker. My father loved his guns-all the great dreadnought men love their work. A steam-propulsion wizard like Alasdair MacDonald loves his turbines. Ronnie Wheeler up in Newport loves his torpedoes. Farley Kent his faster and faster hulls. It is joyous to be devoted, Mr. Bell. Such men do not kill themselves!”
Joseph Van Dorn intervened again. “I can assure you that Isaac Bell’s investigation has been as thorough as-”
“But,” Bell interrupted. “What if Miss Langner is right?”
His boss looked at him, surprised.
Bell said, “With Mr. Van Dorn’s permission, I will look further.”
Dorothy Langner’s lovely face bloomed with hope. She turned to the founder of the detective agency. Van Dorn spread his hands wide. “Of course. Isaac Bell will get right on it with the full support of the agency.”
Her expression of gratitude sounded more like a challenge. “That is all I can ask, Mr. Bell, Mr. Van Dorn. An informed appraisal of all the facts.” A sudden smile lit her face like a sunbeam, suggesting what a lively, carefree woman she had been before tragedy struck. “Isn’t that the least I can expect of a detective agency whose motto is ‘We never give up. Never!’ ”