“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.”
“Beautiful actresses are a dime a dozen on Broadway. A beautiful moving picture director is as rare as oysters in August.”
“This is Mr. Bell, my fiancé.”
The restaurateur squeezed Bell’s hand and pumped heartily. “My congratulations, sir. I can’t imagine meeting a more fortunate gentleman on the Great White Way. Would you like a quiet table, Miss Morgan, or one where the world may see you?”
“Quiet,” Marion answered firmly, and when they were seated and the Mumm was ordered she said to Bell, “I am astonished he remembered me.”
“Perhaps he read yesterday’s New York Times,” Bell smiled. She was so pleased by her reception, and there was lovely high color in her face.
“The Times? What do you mean?”
“They sent a fashion reporter to the Easter Parade last Sunday.” He unfolded a clipping from his wallet and read aloud:
“ ‘One young woman, who strolled after tea from Times Square to the Fifth Avenue parade, caused a sensation. She wore lavender satin and a black, plume-laden hat, the size of which caused men to step aside to give her room to pass. This dazzling creature walked as far as the Hotel St. Regis, and then departed toward the north in a red Locomobile motorcar.’
“And speaking of red, your ears are.”
“I am mortified! They make it sound as if I were sashaying up Fifth Avenue seeking attention. Every woman there was dressed up for Easter. I only wore that hat because Mademoiselle Duvall and Christina bet me ten dollars I didn’t have the nerve.”
“The reporter got it all wrong. You were attracting attention. Had you been seeking it, you would not have skedaddled in that red Locomobile but would have sashayed up and down the avenue until dark.”
Marion reached across the table. “Did you see this strange article on the other side?”
Bell turned it over. “Lachesis muta? Oh, yes. He’s a doozy of a snake. Dripping deadly venom and mean as a hanging judge. You know, the Cumberland Hotel is only ten blocks up Broadway. I’ll bet I can talk my way into a Pathology Society meeting with a pretty girl on my arm, if you want to go see him.”
Marion shuddered.
When the champagne arrived, Bell raised his glass to her. “I’m afraid I can’t say it better than Mr. Rector. Thank you for making me the most fortunate gent on the Great White Way.”
“Oh, Isaac, it’s so good to see you.”
They sipped the Mumm and discussed the menu. Marion ordered Egyptian quail, declaring she had never heard of such a bird, and Bell ordered a lobster. They would start with oysters, “Lynnhavens from Maryland,” their waiter assured them, “big ones sent up special for Mr. Diamond Jim Brady. If I may
recommend, Mr. Bell, Mr. Brady usually follows his lobsters with some ducks and a steak.”
Bell demurred.
Marion took his hand across the table. “Tell me about your work. Will it keep you in New York?”
“We’ve landed a spy case,” Bell answered in a low voice no one else could hear over the stir of laughter and music. “It’s tangled up in the international dreadnought race.”
Marion, accustomed to him revealing case details to her to hone his own thoughts, replied in the same level tone. “Rather different than bank robbers.”
“I told Joe Van Dorn: international or not, if they kill people they are first and foremost murderers. At any rate, Joe will fort up in Washington, and he’s given me the New York office and carte blanche to dispatch operatives around the country.”
“I presume it has to do with the naval gun designer whose piano blew up.”
“It’s looking more and more that it was not a suicide but a diabolical murder deliberately staged to appear to be suicide. And in such a bizarre way as to discredit the poor man and the entire gun system he developed. Of course, the hint of bribery taints everything he touched.”
Bell told her his doubts about Langner’s suicide note, and his conviction that the Washington Navy Yard prowler seen by old John Eddison had indeed been Japanese. He told her how the deaths of the armor expert and the fire-control expert had been originally presumed to be accidents.
Marion asked, “Did anyone see a Japanese man in the Bethlehem Iron Works?”
“The men I sent out there report that someone was seen running off. But he was a big fellow. Over six feet. Pale. Fair-haired. And thought to be German.”
“Why German?”
“Apparently as he ran for it he was heard to mutter, ‘Gott im Himmel!’”
Marion cocked an exquisitely skeptical eyebrow.
“I know,” said Bell. “It’s thin stuff.”
“Was either a pale, fair-haired German or a Japanese seen with Grover Lakewood, who fell off the cliff?”
“The Westchester County coroner told my man that no witness saw Lakewood crash to the ground. Lakewood had told friends he was spending the weekend practicing rock climbing, and his fatal head injuries were consistent with a climbing accident. Poor devil fell a hundred feet. They buried him in a closed coffin.”
“Was he climbing alone?”
“An old lady said she saw him shortly before the accident with a pretty girl.”
“Neither German nor Japanese?” Marion asked with a smile.
“A redhead,” Bell smiled back. “Presumably Irish.”
“Why Irish?”
Bell shook his head. “Her features reminded the old lady of her Irish maid. Again, thin stuff.”
“Three different suspects,” Marion observed. “Three different nationalities… Of course, what could be more international than the dreadnought race?”
“Captain Falconer is inclined to blame Japan.”
“And you?”
“There is no question that the Japanese are practiced at spying. I learned that, before the Russo-Japanese War, they thoroughly infiltrated the Russian Far East Fleet with spies who pretended to be Manchurian servants and laborers. When the fighting started, the Japanese knew more about Russian Navy tactics than the Russians did. But I’m keeping an open mind. It really could be any one of them.”
“A tall, handsome detective once told me that skepticism was his most valuable asset,” Marion agreed.
“It’s a big case that keeps getting bigger. And because the dreadnought program is so large and widespread, the scope of the case-the links-might have gone unnoticed quite a while longer if it weren’t for Langner’s daughter insisting that her father didn’t kill himself. Even then, if she hadn’t managed to get to Joe Van Dorn through her old school chum, then I would not have personally witnessed poor Alasdair’s murder. His death would have been written off as a saloon brawl, and who knows how many more they might have killed before anyone got wise.”
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 Spy Page 12