This did require an answer, and Bell said, “The Great White Fleet is about to make landfall at San Francisco. Scully was tracking the spy, or his agents, to San Francisco. Thanks to Scully, I very likely have him in my sights.”
“What do you suppose he intends to do?”
“I don’t know yet. But it must involve the fleet, and I am going to stop him before he does it.”
Van Dorn remained silent for a long minute. Bell said nothing. Finally the boss said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Isaac.”
“He will not pack his bags and go home after Newport. He will attack the fleet.”
Van Dorn said, “All right. I’ll alert Bronson in San Francisco.”
“I already have.”
He went back to the luggage room. Van Dorns reported that Herr Shafer and the Chinese traveling with Arnold Bennett had transferred to the Overland Limited to San Francisco, as their tickets had indicated. “Their train’s leaving, Isaac. If you’re going with ’em, you gotta go.”
“I’m going.”
TWO STRONG HORSES PULLED an ice wagon modified with carriage springs and pneumatic tires instead of hard rubber, which made its ride unusually smooth on the rough cobbled streets that slanted down to Newport’s waterfront. No one took note in the dim light of the thinly scattered gas lamps that the driver clutching the brake handle cut too slight and boyish a figure to heave hundred-pound blocks of ice onto a fishing dock. And if anyone thought it odd that the driver was singing to her horses,
“You can’t remember
what I can’t forget,”
in a soft soprano, they kept their opinions to themselves. The seamen of Newport had been smuggling rum, tobacco, slaves, and opium for three hundred years. If a girl wanted to entertain her horses while delivering ice to a boat in the dark, that was her business.
The boat was a rugged, broad-beamed, thirty-foot catboat with a stubby mast ahead of a low coach roof. With its gaff-rigged sail that was nearly square, and a centerboard instead of a fixed keel, it was faster than it looked and equally at home in shallow bays and off the coast. A gang of men in slickers and wool watch caps climbed out of the cabin.
While the girl stood watch with her hands buried in her pockets, the men drew the canvas off the ice wagon’s cargo, inclined a ramp of planks between the wagon and dock, and gently slid four seventeen-foot-long, cigar-shaped metal tubes down the ramp one by one. They shifted the ramp and slid all four into the boat, and lashed them securely to a cushioned bed of canvas sails.
When they were done, the wide wooden hull squatted low in the water. All but one of the men climbed into the wagon and drove away. The man who stayed raised the sail and untied the mooring lines.
The girl took the tiller and sailed the boat skillfully off the dock and into the night.
THAT SAME NIGHT-the westbound Overland Limited’s first night out of Chicago-reports waiting for Bell at Rock Island, Illinois, confirmed that the gem merchant Riker had indeed boarded the California Limited to San Diego. Still disliking coincidences, Bell wired Horace Bronson, head of the San Francisco office, asking him to assign James Dashwood, a young operative who had proven himself on the Wrecker case, to intercept the California Limited at Los Angeles. Dashwood should see whether Riker actually continued on to San Diego to purchase pink tourmaline gems or changed trains to San Francisco. Regardless, the young detective would trail Riker and observe his subsequent actions. Bell warned Bronson that Riker was traveling with a bodyguard named Plimpton, who would be watching his back.
Then he wired Research back in New York, asking for more information on the death of Riker’s father in South Africa and urging Grady Forrer to step up the hunt for information about his ward.
Laurence Rosania’s disappearance upon arrival had set off a frantic manhunt. But when Bell reached Des Moines, Iowa, the information was waiting that the retired thief-after giving his Van Dorn shadows the slip out of habit or professional pride-had been written up in the Chicago Tribune marriage announcements and was scheduled to steam toward a San Francisco honeymoon in his bride’s private car. So much for admonishing youth that crime did not pay, noted the Chicago Van Dorn headquarters.
Herr Shafer, Arnold Bennett, and Bennett’s Chinese companions had transferred to the Overland Limited to San Francisco, and it was with them that Bell continued on the journey west, hoping to pick up additional information from Research at the station stops along with what he could detect in their presence.
Then New York wired that Shafer was definitely a German spy.
“Herr Shafer” was an active cavalry officer, still serving as a major in the German Army. His real name was Cornelius Von Nyren. And Von Nyren was expert in land tactics and the use of quickly laid narrow-gauge railroads to supply an army’s front lines. Whatever he was spying on in America had nothing to do with Hull 44.
“Formidable on land,” Archie wrote. “But wouldn’t know a dreadnought from a birch-bark canoe.”
37
CHINESE TO THE BACK OF THE LINE!”
It was the second morning out of Chicago, the Overland Limited drawing near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and something was wrong with the dining car. The corridor in the Pullman behind it backed up with hungry people in line for a breakfast already an hour late.
“You heard me! Chinks, Mongolians, and Asiatics to the back!”
“Stay where you are,” Isaac Bell said to the divinity students.
Arnold Bennett was whirling to their defense. Bell stopped him. “I’ll deal with this.” At last a chance to get to know Arnold Bennett’s charges, Harold and Louis. He turned around and faced the bigot who had shouted. The cold anger in Bell’s blue eyes, and the unmistakable impression that it was barely contained, caused the man to back away.
“Don’t mind him,” the tall detective told the divinity students. “People get testy when they’re hungry. What’s your name, young fellow,” he asked, thrusting his hand out. “I’m Isaac Bell.”
“Harold, Misser Bell. Thank you.”
“Harold what?”
“Harold Wing.”
“And you?”
“Louis Loh.”
“L-e-w Lewis or L-o-u Louis?”
“L-o-u.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Little wonder that unpleasant chap is hungry,” growled Arnold Bennett, who was standing first in line. “The breakfasting accommodation of this particular unit of the Overland Limited was not designed on the same scale as its bedroom accommodation.”