“They claim they didn’t,” Bell replied. “I made it clear that we are after bigger fish than thieving cops, and from the answer I got back I am reasonably certain that the amounts were small. Perhaps they would be paid afterward. Perhaps their boss kept the bulk of it.”
“Both,” said Harry Warren. He thought hard. “But it’s strange, Isaac. These gang boys usually stick close to home. Like I say, Tommy would do anything for dough, but Gophers and the like tend not to venture out of their own neighborhoods. Half of them couldn’t find Brooklyn, much less cross state lines.”
“Find out why they did this time.”
“I’ll try and brace Weeks soon as I learn where he’s recuperating and—”
“Don’t brace him. Send for me.”
“O.K., Isaac. But don’t count on much. No one’s keeping books on a deal like this. For all we know, it could have been personal. Maybe MacDonald poked one too many guys in the snoot.”
“Have you ever heard of a New York gangster using a Butterflymesser?”
“You mean the Philippine flip-open knife?”
Bell showed him the Butterflymesser.
“Yeah, there was a Duster who joined the Army to get away from the cops, ended up fighting in the Filipino insurrection. He brought one back and killed a gambler with it who owed him money. At least, that’s what they said, but I bet it was the cocaine. You know how ‘dust’ makes ’em paranoiac.”
“In other words, the Butterflymesser is not common in New York.”
“That Duster’s was the only one I ever heard of.”
BELL RACED TO NEW YORK.
He hired a driver and mechanic to drive his Locomobile back while he took the train. A police launch, provided by Detective George, who was delighted to help him leave Camden, ran him across the Delaware River to Philadelphia, where he caught a Pennsylvania Railroad express. When he arrived at the Knickerbocker Hotel, light in the afternoon sky still glowed on the green copper roof, but nearer the street the red brick, French renaissance façade was growing dim.
He telephoned Joseph Van Dorn long-distance in Washington.
“Excellent job on the Frye Boys,” Van Dorn greeted him. “I just had lunch with the Attorney General, and he is tickled pink.”
“Thank John Scully. I only held his coat.”
“How much longer to wrap up the Langner suicide?”
“This is bigger than Langner,” Bell retorted, and he told Van Dorn what had transpired.
“Four murders?” Van Dorn asked incredulously.
“One for sure—the one I witnessed. One likely—Langner.”
“Depending upon how much credence you put in that crackpot Cruson.”
“And the other two we have to investigate.”
“All connected by battleships?” Van Dorn asked, still sounding incredulous.
“Every victim worked in the dreadnought program.”
“If they’re all victims, who’s behind it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t suppose you know why either.”
“Not yet.”
Van Dorn sighed. “What do you need, Isaac?”
“Van Dorn Protection Services to guard Farley and Wheeler.”
“To whom do I bill those services?”
“Put it on the cuff ’til we figure who the client is,” Bell answered drily.
“Very amusing. What else do you need?”
BELL ISSUED INSTRUCTIONS to the crew of operatives Van Dorn put at his call—temporarily, as his call with the boss had made clear. Then he took the subway downtown and a trolley across the Brooklyn Bridge. John Scully met him in a Sand Street lunchroom a stone’s throw from the fortresslike gates of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
The cheap restaurant was starting to fill up as day shifts ended at the yard and surrounding factories, and boilermakers, drop forgers, tank testers, reamers, and patternmakers, machinists, coppersmiths, pipe fitters, and plumbers rushed in for supper.
Scully said, “Near as I can discover, Kent’s on the up-and-up. All he does is work and work some more. Devoted as a missionary. I’m told he hardly ever leaves his drawing table. He’s got a bedroom attached to his drawing loft, where he stays most nights.”
“Where does he stay the rest of the nights?”
“Hotel St. George when a certain lady from Washington comes to town.”
“Who is she?”
“Well, that’s the funny thing. She’s the daughter of your exploding-piano guy.”
“Dorothy Langner?”
“What do you think of that?”
“I think Farley Kent is a lucky man.”
THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD surrounded a large bay of the East River between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge. Designated a “battleship yard,” and officially named the New York Navy Yard, its factories, foundries, dry docks, and shipways employed six thousand ship workers. Tall brick walls and iron gates enclosed twice the acreage of the Washington Navy Yard. Isaac Bell showed his Navy pass at the Sand Street Gate, which was flanked by statues of eagles.
He found Farley Kent’s drawing loft in a building dwarfed by enormous ship sheds and gantry cranes. Night had blackened the high windows, and the draftsmen worked by electric lamps. Kent was young, barely out of his twenties, and deeply shaken by Alasdair Mac-Donald’s murder. He mourned that MacDonald’s death would cripple America’s development of large-ship turbines. “It will be a long while before the United States Navy will be able to install advanced turbines in our dreadnoughts.”
“What is Hull 44?” Bell asked.
Kent looked away. “Hull 44?”
“Alasdair MacDonald implied that it was important.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“He spoke freely about Arthur Langner and Ron Wheeler and Chad Gordon. And about you, Mr. Kent. Clearly, you five men worked closely. I am sure you know what Hull 44 means.”
“I told you. I do not know what you are talking about.”
Bell regarded him coldly. Kent looked away from his stern face.
“ ‘Hull 44,’ ” the detective said, “were your friend’s dying words. He would have told me what it meant if he had not died. Now it’s up to you.”
“I can’t—I don’t know.”
Bell’s features hardened until they looked like they had been cut from stone. “That powerful man held my hand like a child and tried to tell me why he was murdered. He could not get the words out. You can. Tell me! ”
Kent bolted into the hallway and yelled loudly for the sentries.
Six U.S. Marines escorted Bell out the gates, their sergeant polite but unmoved by Bell’s pass. “I recommend, sir, that you telephone for an appointment with the commandant of the yard.”
Scully was waiting in the lunchroom. “Have yourself some supper. It’s a swell grub station. I’ll watch for Kent.”
“I’ll spell you in fifteen minutes.”
Bell could not remember when he had last eaten. He was just raising a sandwich from his plate when Scully dashed back and motioned him to the door. “Kent broke from the gate like the favorite at the Kentucky Derby. Heading east on Sand. Wearing a tall-crowned black derby and a tan topcoat.”
“I see him.”
“That’s the direction of the Hotel St. George. Looks like the lady’s back in town. I’ll cut over to the St. George on Nassau in case you lose him.” Without waiting for Bell’s response, the independent Scully disappeared around the corner.
Bell followed Kent. He lay back half a block, screened by the crowds pouring in and out of the saloons and eateries, and passengers hopping on and off streetcars. The naval architect’s tall bowler was easy to track in a neighborhood where most men wore cloth caps. His tan coat stood out among dark coats and pea jackets.
Sand Street passed through a district of factories and storehouses on its route between the navy yard and the Brooklyn Bridge. The damp evening chill carried the scents of chocolate, roasting coffee, coal
smoke, harbor salt, and the sharp, pungent aroma of electrical shorts sparking from the trolley wires. Bell saw enough saloons and gambling halls to rival San Francisco’s “Barbary Coast.”
Kent surprised him at the enormous Sand Street Station where streetcars, elevated railway trains, and a trolley line under construction converged on the Brooklyn Bridge. Instead of passing under the station and continuing on to the Heights and the Hotel St. George, the naval architect suddenly darted through an opening in the stone wall that supported a ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge and hurried up the stairs. Bell dodged a trolley and tore after him. Hordes of people were streaming down the steps, blocking his view. He pushed his way to the top. There he caught sight of Farley Kent walking toward Manhattan on the wooden promenade in the center of the bridge. So much for a lady at the Hotel St. George.
The wooden walkway was flanked by elevated rail and trolley tracks and crowded with an evening rush of men walking home from work in Manhattan. Trains and streetcars hurtled past. They were packed with humanity, and Bell—who had spent many years tracking criminals on horseback in the open spaces of the West—understood those who preferred to walk in the cold, even assaulted by the constant shriek and rumble of train wheels.
Kent shot a glance over his shoulder. Bell removed his distinctive broad-brimmed white hat and moved side to side to be shielded by the crowds. His quarry hurried against the foot traffic, head down, staring at the boards and ignoring the dramatic panorama of New York’s skyscraper lights and the twinkling carpet of red, green, and white lanterns shown by the tugboats, schooners, steamers, and ferries plying the East River two hundred feet under the bridge.
The stairs on the Manhattan side led down to the City Hall district. The instant Kent hit the pavement he spun on his heel and hurried back toward the river he had just crossed. Bell followed, wondering what Kent was up to as they neared the waterfront. South Street, which passed under the bridge and paralleled the East River, was bordered by a forest of ship masts and bowsprits. Finger piers and warehouses thrust into the stream, forming slips in which moored three-masted sailing ships, tall-funneled steamers, and railroad barges.
Kent turned uptown, away from the Brooklyn Bridge. He hurried for several blocks, walking fast, not bothering to look back. When he reached Catherine Slip, he turned toward the water. Bell saw trading vessels rafted side by side. Deck cranes swung pallets of freight from ship to shore. Longshoremen trundled them into the warehouses. Kent passed the ships and headed for a long and unusually narrow steam yacht, which had not been visible from South Street.
Bell observed from the corner of a warehouse. The narrow yacht, which was fully one hundred feet long, had a sleek knife blade of a steel hull painted white, a tall steering bridge amidships, and a tall smokestack aft. Despite its businesslike appearance, it was luxuriously finished with brass fittings and varnished mahogany. Moored incongruously among the grimy trading vessels, it was, Bell thought, well hidden.
Farley Kent dashed up a gangway. Lighted portholes gleamed from the low cabin. Farley Kent pounded on the door. It opened, spilling light, and he disappeared inside and yanked it shut. Bell followed immediately. He put his hat on his head and crossed the pier with quick, firm strides. A deckhand on one of the trading vessels noticed. Bell gave him a grim stare and a dismissive nod, and the man looked away. Bell confirmed that the yacht’s decks were still empty of sailors, stepped quietly across the gangway, and pressed his back to the bulkhead that formed the cabin.
Removing his hat again, he peered in a porthole cracked open for ventilation.
The cabin was small but luxurious. Brass ship lamps cast a warm glow on mahogany paneling. In a swift glance, Bell took in a sideboard with crystal glasses and decanters secured in racks, a dining table set within a horseshoe banquette with green leather upholstery, and a voice pipe for communicating throughout the vessel. Hanging over the table was a Henry Reuterdahl oil painting of the Great White Fleet.
Kent was shrugging out of his coat. Watching him was a short, stocky, athletic-looking Navy officer with an erect posture, a puffed-out chest, and a captain’s bars on his shoulder boards. Bell could not see his face, but he could hear Kent shout, “Damned detective. He knew exactly what to ask.”
“What did you tell him?” the captain asked calmly.
“Nothing. I had him thrown out of the yard. Impertinent busybody.”
“Did it occur to you that his visit concerned Alasdair MacDonald?”
“I didn’t know what the hell to think. He gave me a case of the rattles.”
The captain seized a bottle from the sideboard and poured a generous glass. As he thrust it at Kent, Bell finally saw his face—a youthful, vigorous face that ten years ago had been splashed reverently on every newspaper and magazine in the nation. His exploits in the Spanish-American War had rivaled those of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders for coolheaded bravery.
“Well, I’ll be . . .” said Bell, half aloud.
He shoved open the cabin door and strode inside.
Farley Kent jumped. The Navy captain did not, but merely regarded the tall detective with an expectant gaze.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Bell. When I learned the terrible news from Camden, I hoped you’d find your way here.”
“What is Hull 44?”
“Better to ask why Hull 44,” answered Captain Lowell Falconer, the Hero of Santiago.
He offered a hand that had lost two fingers to shell splinters.
Bell closed it in his. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance, sir.”
Captain Falconer spoke into the voice pipe. “Cast off.”
13
FEET POUNDED ON DECK. A LIEUTENANT APPEARED AT the door, and Falconer engaged him in urgent conversation. “Farley,” he called. “You might as well get back to your loft.” The architect left without a word. Falconer said, “Please wait here, Bell. I won’t be a minute.” He stepped outside with his lieutenant.
Bell had seen the Reuterdahl painting of the Great White Fleet on the cover of Collier’s magazine last January. The fleet lay anchored in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. A native boat was rowing toward the bright white hull of the anchored flagship Connecticut, waving an advertisement that read:
American Drinks. SQUARE DEAL at JS Guvidor
Smoke and shadow in a dark corner of the sunny harbor scene obscured the sleek gray hull of a German cruiser.
The deck moved under Bell’s feet. The yacht began backing out of her slip into the East River. When she engaged her propellers ahead and wheeled downstream, Bell felt no vibrations, nor even the faintest throbbing of the engines. Captain Falconer stepped back into the cabin, and Bell gave his host a curious glance. “I’ve never been on such a smooth-running steam yacht.”
Falconer grinned proudly. “Turbines,” he said. “Three of them, linked to nine screw propellers.”
He pointed at another painting, one which Bell had not seen from the porthole. It depicted Turbinia, the famous experimental turbine-powered vessel Alasdair MacDonald’s mentor had raced through an international gathering of naval fleets at Spitshead, England, to dramatize turbine speed.
“Charles Parsons left nothing to chance. In the event that something went wrong with Turbinia, he built two turbine racers. This one’s named Dyname. Do you remember your Greek?”
“The result of forces acting together.”
“Very good! Dyname is actually Turbinia’s big sister, a trifle beamier, modeled after the torpedo boats of the nineties. I had her refitted as a yacht and converted her boilers to oil, which opened up a lot of space in the former coal bunkers. Poor Alasdair used her as a test craft and modified the turbines. Thanks to him, even though she’s beamier than Turbinia, she burns less fuel and goes faster.”
“How fast?”
Falconer laid an affectionate hand on Dyname’s varnished mahogany and grinned. “You would not believe me if I told you.”
The tall detective grinned back. “I wouldn’t mind a trick at the helm.”
/> “Wait ’til we’re out of congested waters. I don’t dare open her up in the harbor.”
The yacht steamed down the East River into the Upper Bay and increased her speed dramatically. “Quite a clip,” said Bell.
Falconer chuckled, “We rein her in until we reach the open sea.”
The lights of Manhattan Island faded astern. A steward appeared bearing covered dishes and spread them on the table. Captain Falconer bid Bell sit across from him.
Bell stood where he was, and asked, “What is Hull 44?”
“Please join me for supper, and while we head to sea I will tell you the secret of why Hull 44.”
Falconer began by echoing Alasdair MacDonald’s lament. “It’s ten years since Germany started building a modern Navy. The same year we captured the Philippine Islands and annexed the Kingdom of Hawaii. Today, the Germans have dreadnought battleships. The British have dreadnought battleships, and the Japanese are building, and buying, dreadnought battleships. So when the U.S. Navy embarks on distant service to defend America’s new territories in the Pacific, we will be outclassed and outgunned by the Germans and the British and the Empire of Japan.”
Brimming with such zeal that he left his beefsteak untouched, Captain Falconer regaled Isaac Bell with the dream behind Hull 44. “The dreadnaught race teaches that change is always preceded by a universal conviction that there is nothing new under the sun. Before the British launched HMS Dreadnaught, two facts about battleships were engraved in stone. They took many years to build and they had to be armed with a great variety of guns to defend themselves. HMS Dreadnaught is an all-big-guns ship, and they built her in a single year, which changed the world forever.
“Hull 44 is my response. America’s response.
“I recruited the best brains in the fighting-ship business. I told them to do their damnedest! Men like Artie Langner, the ‘Gunner,’ and Alasdair, whom you met.”
“And saw die,” Bell interrupted grimly.
“Artists, every one of them. But like all artists, they’re misfits. Bohemians, eccentrics, if not plain loony. Not the sort that get along in the regular Navy. But thanks to my misfit geniuses hatching new ideas and refining old ones, Hull 44 will be a dreadnought battleship like none that sail the seas—an American engineering marvel that will overwhelm the British Dreadnought and the German Nassau and Posen, and the worst Japan can throw at her—Why are you shaking your head, Mr. Bell?”
The Spy Page 9