“Are you all right?”
“Where are they?”
“Got away. Don’t worry. They won’t get far.”
She was clenching something in her tightly closed fist, which she now pressed to her chest.
“What is that?”
Slowly, painfully, she forced her fingers to open. Nestled in her palm was the emerald, green and mysterious as the eye of a cat.
“I thought you didn’t like it,” Bell said.
Marion’s beautiful eyes roved across the broken glass and the walls pocked with bullet holes. “I’m not even scratched. Neither are you. It’s our lucky charm.”
“THE ENTIRE NEWARK fine-jewelry industry is in shock,” said Morris Weintraub, the stocky, white-haired patrician owner of Newark, New Jersey’s largest belt-buckle factory. “I’ve been buying gemstones from Riker and Riker since the Civil War. Back when there was only one Riker.”
“Did you know that Erhard Riker was adopted?”
“You don’t say? No, I didn’t.” Weintraub gazed across a sea of workbenches where jewelers labored in pure north light streaming through tall windows A speculative smile played on his lips, and he stroked his chin. “That explains a lot.”
“What do you mean?” asked Bell.
“He was such a nice man.”
“The father?”
“No! His father was a cold bastard.”
Bell exchanged incredulous glances with Archie Abbott.
The factory owner noticed. “I am a Jew,” he explained. “I know when a man dislikes me because I am a Jew. The father hid his hatred in order to conduct business, but hatred seeps out. He could not hide it completely. The son did not hate me. He was not so European as the old man.”
Bell and Archie exchanged another look. Weintraub said, “I mean, he acted like a good man. He was a gentleman in business and kindly in person. He is one of the very few people I buy from who I would invite into my own home. Not a man who would shoot up a jewelry shop on Maiden Lane. Not a bigot like his father.”
Archie said, “So I suppose you were not that upset when his father was killed in South Africa.”
“Nor was I surprised.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Archie, and Issac Bell said sharply, “What do you mean by that?”
“I used to joke to my wife, ‘Herr Riker is a German agent.’ ”
“What made you say that?”
“He couldn’t resist boasting to me of his travels. But I noticed over many years that somehow his trips always led him to where Germany was making trouble. In 1870, he just happened to be in Alsace-Lorraine when the Franco-Prussian War broke out. He was on the island of Samoa in ’eighty-one when the United States, England, and Germany instigated their civil war. He was in Zanzibar when Germany stole her so-called East African Protectorate. He was in China when Germany took Tsingtao, and in South Africa when the Kaiser egged on the Boers fighting England.”
“Where,” Archie noted, “he was killed.”
“In an engagement led by General Smuts himself,” said Isaac Bell. “If he wasn’t a German spy, he was a master of coincidence. Thank you, Mr. Weintraub. You have been very helpful.”
On their way back to New York, Bell told Archie, “When I accused O’Shay of repaying the man who adopted him by becoming a murderer and a spy, he answered that rescuing Katherine from Hell’s Kitchen was ‘one’ of the ways he repaid him. He said, ‘I say it with pride.’ I realize now that he was bragging that he followed in his adopted father’s footsteps.”
“If the father who adopted him was a spy, does that mean that Riker-O’Shay spies for Germany? He was born in America. He was adopted by a German father. He attended public school in England and university in Germany. Where are his loyalties?”
“He’s a gangster,” said Bell. “He has no loyalties.”
“Where can he go now that he’s exposed?”
“Anywhere they’ll take him in. But not before he commits a final crime to benefit the nation that will protect a criminal.”
“Using those torpedoes,” said Archie.
“Against what?” wondered Bell.
TED WHITMARK WAS WAITING in the Van Dorn reception room when Bell got back to the Knickerbocker. He was holding his hat on his knees and could not meet Bell’s eye as he asked, “Is there someplace private we can talk, Mr. Bell?”
“Come on in,” Bell said, noting that Whitmark’s Harvard College tie was askew, his shoes scuffed, and his trousers in need of a pressing. He led him to his desk and moved a chair alongside so they could sit close and not be overheard. Whitmark sat, worrying his hands, gnawing his lip.
“How is Dorothy?” Bell asked to put him at ease.
“Well . . . she’s one of the things I want to talk about. But I’ll get to the main event first, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
“You see, I, uh, I play cards. Often . . .”
“You gamble.”
“Yes. I gamble. And sometimes I gamble too much. I’ll hit a losing streak and, before I know it, I’m in over my head. All I’m trying to do is win back some of my losses, but sometimes it only gets worse.”
“Are you in a losing streak at the moment?” Bell asked.
“It looks that way. Yes, you could say that.” Again he fell silent.
“Can I assume that Dorothy is upset with this?”
“Well, yes, but that’s the least of it. I’ve been something of a fool. I’ve done several really stupid things. I thought I’d learned my lesson in San Francisco.”
“What happened in San Francisco?”
“I dodged a bullet out there, thanks to you.”
“What do you mean?” Bell asked, suddenly alert to a situation more serious than he had assumed.
“I mean when you stopped that cart from blowing up the Mare Island magazine, you saved my life. There would have been lot of innocent folks killed, and they would have been on my head.”
“Explain,” Bell said tersely.
“I gave them the pass and paperwork to get into the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.”
“Why?”
“I owed so much money. They were going to kill me.”
“Who?”
“Well, Commodore Tommy Thompson at first. Here in New York. Then he sold my debt to a guy who had a casino in the Barbary Coast and I lost more out there and he was going to kill me. He said they’d do it slow. But all I had to do to get out of it was give him one of my wagon passes and my company invoices and show ’em the ropes and everything. I know what you’re thinking, that I allowed a saboteur onto the base, but I didn’t realize that was what they wanted. I thought it was about them landing a big contract. I thought they were doing it for the money.”
“You hoped they were doing it for the money,” Isaac Bell retorted coldly.
Ted Whitmark hung his head. When he finally looked up again, he had tears in his eyes. “That’s what I hoped this time, too. But I’m scared it isn’t, and something tells me this time will be worse.”
The intercommunicating phone on Bell’s desk rang. He snatched it up. “What?”
“There’s a lady out here to see you and the gent you’re with. Miss Dorothy Langner. Should I let her in?”
“No. Tell her I’ll be out there shortly.” He hung up. “Continue, Ted. What has happened this time?”
“They want me to turn over one of my trucks going into the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”
“Who?”
“This smooth guy named O’Shay. I heard somebody call him Eyes. Must be his nickname. Do you know who I mean?”
“When do they want the truck?”
“Tomorrow. When the New Hampshire is loading food and munitions. She just finished her shakedown, and she’ll be ferrying a Marine Expeditionary Regiment to Panama to keep the Canal Zone election peaceful. My New York outfit got the provisions contract.”
“How big a truck?”
“The biggest.”
“Big enough to carry a couple of torpedo
es?”
Whitmark chewed his lip. “Oh, God. Is that what they want it for?”
The door from the reception room opened, and Harry Warren walked in. Bell was turning back to Ted Whitmark when a sudden motion at the door caught his eye and he saw Dorothy Langner in a black sheath dress and black feathered hat slip through it right behind Harry Warren, who said, “Help you, ma’am?”
“I’m looking for Isaac Bell,” she said in her clear, musical voice. “There he is, I see him.” She rushed toward Bell’s desk, reaching into her handbag.
Whitmark jumped to his feet. “Hello, Dorothy. Told you I’d talk to Bell. This’ll square us, won’t it?”
Dorothy Langner searched his face. Then she looked at Bell. “Hello, Isaac. Is there someplace I could talk to Ted for a moment, in private?” Her beautiful silvery eyes were blank, and Bell had the eeriest sensation that she was blind. But she couldn’t be blind, she had just marched in under her own steam.
“I believe that Mr. Van Dorn’s office is empty. I’m sure he won’t mind.”
He guided them into Van Dorn’s office, closed the door, and stood close to it listening. He heard Whitmark repeat, “This will square us, won’t it?”
“Nothing will square us.”
“Dorothy?” asked Ted. “What are you doing?”
The answer was the sharp crack of a gunshot. Bell threw open the door. Ted Whitmark lay on his back, blood pouring from his skull. Dorothy Langner dropped the nickel pistol she was holding onto Whitmark’s chest, and said to Isaac Bell, “He killed my father.”
“Yamamoto Kenta killed your father.”
“Ted didn’t set the bomb, but he’s been passing information about Father’s work on Hull 44.”
“Did Ted tell you that?”
“He tried to get rid of his guilt confessing to me.”
Harry Warren rushed in, gun drawn, and knelt by the body. Then he grabbed Van Dorn’s telephone. “She missed,” he told Bell, and said to the operator, “Get a doctor.”
“How badly is he hurt?” asked Bell.
“She only creased him. It’s his scalp that’s bleeding so much.”
“He won’t die?”
“Not from this. In fact, I think he’s starting to wake up.”
“She didn’t shoot him,” said Bell.
“What?”
“Ted Whitmark tried to kill himself. She grabbed the gun. She saved his life.”
Harry Warren had wise, old eyes. “Tell me why he tried to kill himself, Isaac.”
“He’s a traitor. He just confessed to me that he’s been passing information to the spy.”
Harry Warren looked Bell full in the face, and said, “It appears that Miss Langner saved the louse’s life.”
The Hotel Knickerbocker’s house doctor rushed in with his bag trailed by bellhops lugging a stretcher. “Stand back, everybody. Please stand back.”
Bell led Dorothy to his desk. “Sit down.” He beckoned an apprentice. “Please bring the lady a glass of water.”
“Why did you do that?” Dorothy whispered.
“I would not have if you had succeeded in murdering him. But since you didn’t, I think you’ve been through enough without adding police charges to your misery.”
“Will the police believe it?”
“If Ted goes along with it. And I imagine he will. Now, tell me everything he told you.”
“He lost a lot of money gambling last fall in Washington. Someone in the game offered to lend him money. In exchange, he talked to Yamamoto.” She shook her head in anger and bitterness. “He still doesn’t realize that that man must have set him up to lose.”
“He told me it was bad luck,” said Bell. “Go on.”
“The same thing happened this spring in New York and then out in San Francisco. Now it’s happened again. This time, he finally realized the enormity of what he was doing. Or so he claimed. I think he was trying to get me to come back. I told him we were through. He found out about someone I’ve been seeing.”
“Farley Kent.”
“Of course you know,” she said wearily. “Van Dorns never give up. When Ted found out about Farley, I think he realized that nothing in his entire life had any truth to it. He got religion. He was probably hoping I’d be waiting when he got out of jail. Or weeping when they hung him for treason.”
“Shooting him must have disabused him of that notion,” Bell observed.
She smiled. “I’m not sure how I feel right now about not killing him. I meant to. I can’t believe I missed. I was so close.”
“In my experience,” said Bell, “people who miss a sure shot wanted to miss. Murder does not come easily to most.”
“I wish I had killed him.”
“You would hang for it.”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“Where would that leave Farley Kent?”
“Farley would—” she started to say but stopped abruptly.
Bell smiled gently. “You were about to say that Farley would understand, but you realize that is not so.”
She hung her head. “Farley would be devastated.”
“I’ve seen Farley at work. He strikes me as your sort of man. He loves his work. Do you love him?”
“Yes, I do.”
“May I have a man escort you to the Brooklyn Navy Yard?” She stood up. “Thank you. I know the way.”
Bell walked her to the door. “You made this case, Dorothy, when you vowed to clear your father’s name. No one has done more to save his and Farley’s work on Hull 44. Thanks to you, we discovered the spy, and you can rest assured we will get him.”
“Did Ted tell you anything that helps?”
Bell answered carefully, “He believes that he did. Tell me, how did Ted happen to find out about Farley Kent?”
“A letter from a busybody signed ‘A friend.’ Why are you smiling, Isaac?”
“The spy is getting desperate,” was all Bell would say, but he had a powerful feeling that O’Shay had tricked Ted Whitmark into passing him false information. The spy wanted Bell to believe that he would attack from the land when in fact he intended to attack, somehow, from the water.
Dorothy kissed his cheek and hurried down the grand stairway.
“Mr. Bell,” said the front-desk man, “Knickerbocker house dick calling for you.”
51
GOT SOME UNSAVORY TYPES AT THE FRONT DOOR,” THE Hotel Knickerbocker’s house detective reported. “Claim they want to talk to you, Mr. Bell.”
“What are their names?”
“There’s a hairy oldster says he doesn’t have a name, and I’m inclined to believe him. The young ones call themselves Jimmy Richards and Marv Gordon.”
“Send ’em up.”
“They don’t look right for the lobby, if you know what I mean.”
“Understood. But they’re little Eddie Tobin’s cousins, so they’re coming in the front door. Tell the manager I authorized it. You walk with them so they don’t frighten the ladies.”
“O.K., Mr. Bell,” the house dick answered dubiously.
The Staten Island scowmen Richards and Gordon introduced their older companion, who had lanky gray hair and the squint lines from a lifetime on the water, as “Uncle Donny Darbee, who sailed us over.”
“What’s up, boys?”
“You still looking for torpedoes?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“The Navy and the Coast Guard and the Harbor Squad are swarming like mosquitoes,” said Richards.
“Searching every pier in the port,” said Gordon.
“Making it hard to do business,” muttered Uncle Donny.
“Have you seen the torpedoes?” Bell asked.
“Nope.”
“What do you know about them?”
“Nothing,” said Richards.
“Except you’re looking for them,” said Gordon.
“Nothing at all? Then what did you come to see me about?”
“We was wondering if you was interested in the Hollan
d.”
“What Holland?”
“Biggest Holland we ever saw.”
“A Holland submarine?”
“YUP,” CHORUSED the Staten Island scowmen.
“Where?”
“Kill Van Kull.”
“Over on the Bayonne side.”
“Hold on, boys. If you’ve seen a submarine out in the open, it must belong to the Navy.”
“It’s hid. Under a car float.”
“Uncle Donny found it last night when the cops was chasing him.”
“Been watching that barge for days,” said Uncle Donny Darbee. Isaac Bell questioned them sharply.
Harbor cops hunting coal pirates had noticed Uncle Donny and his two friends following a coal barge in an oyster scow. Uncle Donny had declined to let the police board it for inspection. Pistol shots were exchanged. The cops had boarded anyway. Uncle Donny and his friends had jumped into the Kill and swam for shore.
Darbee’s friends were caught, but the old man swam for a car float that he had been eyeing for several days because the barge was tied up all by itself, unattended, and was carrying a pair of freight cars that might contain cargo. Tiring in the cold water as he hid in the shadow of the overhanging prow, the old man had begun to sink only to step on something solid where it was too deep to stand. When the cops gave up, Jimmy and Marv, who had been watching from the Staten Island side, had rescued their Dutch uncle in another oyster boat. Then they took a closer look at the barge. Under it, they saw the outline of a submarine.
“Bigger than the Navy Holland. Same boat, but it looks like they added on a chunk at each end.”
“Uncle Donny knows the Holland,” Jimmy Richards explained. “He took us off Brooklyn to watch the Navy tests. When was that?”
“In 1903. She made fifteen knots with her conning turret out of the water. And six submerged.”
Bell reached for the telephone. “So you have good reason to believe that you saw a submarine.”
“Want to come see it?” asked Marv Gordon.
“Yes.”
“Told you he would,” said Uncle Donny.
Isaac Bell telephoned the New York Police Harbor Squad, rounded up Archie Abbott and Harry Warren, and grabbed a golf bag. The Ninth Avenue Elevated express whisked the Van Dorns and the scowmen to the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan in ten minutes. A forty-foot Harbor Squad launch had its steam up at Pier A.