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 other piece of good luck—and this one he knew about—was that the hotel fuse box in the cellar was at the bottom of the same stairs that led to the side door of the lobby-level ballroom where the doctors were meeting the snake. Weeks put his hat on the chair nearest the door to reserve it and milled around a little so he didn’t have to talk to anyone before the meeting started. When it did, he took his seat and caught a last glimpse of the sticker-plastered steamer trunk on Jimmy’s cart as the door closed.
He listened impatiently as the speaker gassed on about welcoming the members and dispensing with reading the minutes. Then the head doctor talked about how they would milk the snake’s deadly poison and turn it into a serum to cure lunatics. And the good thing about this particular species of snake was that it had a lot more venom that most. Christ knew how many loonies it would cure, but for Isaac Bell it meant that even if the snake missed its first shot it’d hit him again fully loaded.
The zookeepers came in with the snake. The room got real quiet.
The glass box, Weeks saw, would fit in the trunk. That was a relief. He had had no way of knowing for sure until now. Two men were carrying it, and they placed it on a table up front.
Even from halfway across the ballroom, the snake looked wicked. It was moving, coiling and uncoiling, its surprisingly thick, diamond-patterned body gleaming in the lights. It seemed to flow, moving around the box like one long, powerful muscle, flicking a forked tongue and investigating the seams where the glass sides met the glass top. It took particular interest in where the hinges attached, and Weeks figured that a little air got in there, and the snake could sense movement. The doctors were muttering, but no one seemed that inclined to have a closer look.
“Do not worry, gentlemen,” called the me
dico running the show. “The glass is strong.” He dismissed the men who had carried it. Iceman Weeks was glad to see them go because they might make more trouble than the doctors. “And thank you, sir,” he said to the curator, who left, too. Better and better, thought Weeks. Just me and the snake and a bunch of sissies. He looked to the door. Jimmy Clark had opened it a crack. Weeks nodded. Now.
It did not take long. Just as the first row rose and tentatively approached the glass box, the lights went out, and the room was suddenly pitch-black. Fifty men shouted at once. Weeks sprang to the door, wrenched it open, and felt in the dark for the trunk. He heard Jimmy pounding up the steps, trusting the banisters to guide him. Weeks opened the streamer trunk, felt for the pane of glass, tucked it under his arm, and pushed back into the ballroom where the shouts were getting loud.
“Keep your heads!”
“Don’t lose your nerve!”
A couple of quick thinkers lit matches, which cast weird, jumpy shadows.
Weeks hadn’t a moment to lose. He rushed up the side of the ballroom, hugging the wall, and then cut across the front. When he was six feet from the snake, he shouted at the top of lungs, “Look out! Jaysus, don’t drop it!,” and smashed the window glass on the wooden floor.
Shouts turned to screams, followed immediately by the pounding of hundreds of feet. Before Weeks could yell, “He’s loose. He’s out. Run! Run! Run!,” many panicky voices did it for him.
Jimmy Clark deserved a place in Heaven for how quickly he wheeled up the trunk.
“Careful,” muttered Weeks. “Let’s not drop it.”
Feeling in the dark, they lifted the glass box into the trunk, shut the lid, got it back on the cart, and wheeled it out the side door of the ballroom. They were almost to the alley when the lights came on.
“House dick!” Clark hissed a warning.
“Keep going,” Weeks said coolly. “I’ll deal with the dick.”
“Hey! Where you going with that?”
Dressed like a college man, Weeks blocked the way so Jimmy could roll his cart out the door, and answered, “Out of here, before I miss my steamer.”
The house dick heard, “Outta her, ’fer I miss me steamer,” and drew his pistol.
By then Weeks had his fingers firmly inside his brass knuckles. He brought the bigger man down with a lightning-fast, bone-smashing blow between the eyes. He caught the pistol as it dropped, pocketed it, and found Jimmy in the alley. The bellboy looked scared stiff.
“Don’t go rattly on me, now,” Weeks warned him. “We still got to get across town.”
19
THERE APPEARED TO BE A COMMOTION UP BROADWAY when Isaac Bell and Marion Morgan stepped out of Rector’s. They heard clanging fire bells and police whistles and saw crowds of people milling in every direction and decided the best way to Marion’s ferry was to take the subway.
Uptown in twenty minutes, they walked to the pier holding hands. Bell escorted her aboard the boat and lingered on the gangway. The whistle blew.
“Thank you for dinner, darling. It was lovely to see you.”
“Shall I come across with you?”
“I have to get up so early. So do you. Give me a kiss.”
After a while, a deckhand bawled, “Break it up, lovebirds. All ashore that’s goin’ ashore.”
Bell stepped off, and called as the water widened between the boat and dock, “They say it may shower on Friday.”
“I’ll do a rain dance.”
He rode the subway downtown and stopped at the Knickerbocker to check in with the Van Dorn night watch, who asked, “Did you hear about the snake?”
“Lachesis muta.”
“He escaped.”
“From the Cumberland?”
“They think he made it down to the sewer.”
“Bite anybody?”
“Not yet,” said the nightman.
“How’d he get loose?”
“I’ve heard fourteen versions of that since I came on tonight. The best one is they dropped his box. It was made of glass.” He shook his head and laughed, “Only in New York.”
“Anything I should know before morning?”
The nightman handed him a stack of messages.
On top was a cablegram from Bell’s best friend, Detective Archie Abbott, who, in return for an extended European-honeymoon leave, was making contacts in London, Paris, and Berlin to establish Van Dorn field offices overseas. Socially prominent and married to America’s wealthiest heiress, the blue-blooded Archibald Angell Abbott IV was welcome in every embassy and country estate in Europe. Bell had already cabled him with instructions to use that unique access to get an inside perspective on the dreadnought race. Now Archie was coming home. Did Bell prefer he take the British Lusitania or the German Kaiser Wilhem der Grosse?
“Rolling Billy,” Bell cabled back, using the popular name for the grand but lubberly German liner. Archie and his beautiful bride would spend their Atlantic crossing in the first-class lounges, charming high-ranking officers, diplomats, and industrialists into speaking freely on the subjects of war, espionage, and the naval race. Neither the stiffest Prussian officer nor the worldliest Kaiser’s courtier would stand a chance when Lillian started batting her eyes. While Archie, a confirmed bachelor until he had fallen head over heels for Lillian, was no slouch in the wife-beguiling business.
John Scully had left an enigmatic note: “The PS boys are babysitting Kent. I got a mind to nose around Chinatown.” Bell tossed it in the wastebasket. In other words, he’d hear from the detective when Scully felt like it.
Reports from the Van Dorn agents in Westchester and Bethlehem offered no new news about the climbing accident and the steel mill explosion. Neither had gotten a line on their possible suspects, the “Irish” girl or the “German” mill worker. But the agent in Bethlehem warned against jumping to conclusions. It seemed that no one who knew Chad Gordon was surprised by the accident. The victim was an impatient, hard-driving man, casual about the safety rules and known to take terrible risks.
There was disturbing news from Newport, Rhode Island. The Protection Services agent assigned to Wheeler at the Naval Torpedo Station reported chasing off, but failing to capture, two men who tried to break into the torpedo expert’s cottage. Bell ordered up extra PS boys, fearing it had not been an ordinary burglary attempt. He also wired Captain Falconer recommending that Wheeler be instructed to sleep in the well-guarded torpedo station barracks instead of his own place.
The middle telephone, the one marked with a chorus girl’s rouge, rang, and the nightman snapped it up. “Yes, sir, Mr. Van Dorn! . . . As a matter of fact, he’s right here.” The nightman passed Bell the telephone, mouthing: Long-distance from Washington.
Bell pressed the earpiece to his ear and leaned into the mouthpiece. “You’re working late.”
“Setting an example,” Van Dorn growled. “Anything I should know before I turn in?”
“Archie’s coming home.”
“About time. Longest honeymoon I ever heard of.”
Bell filled him in on the rest. Then he asked, “How did you make out with your pal at the State Department?”
“That’s why I’m telephoning,” Van Dorn said. “Canning crossed off most of our list’s foreigners and added a couple he’s got suspicions about. One that catches my eye is some kind of visiting art curator at the Smithsonian Institution. Named Yamamoto Kenta. Japanese. Just like Falconer says. Might be worth getting a line on him.”
“Have you got someone down there you can send to the Smithsonian?”
Van Dorn said he did, and they rang off.
Bell stifled a yawn as he shrugged into his coat. It was well past midnight.
“Watch your step passing sewers,” said the nightman.
“I imagine by now Mr. Snake is swimming in the Hudson River.”
THE MEN’S CLUBS ON West 44th Street shared the block between Sixth and Fifth avenues with stables and parking garages, and Isaac Bell was too busy sidestepping manure and dodging
town cars to worry about snakes. But when he arrived at the limestone-and-brick, eleven-story Yale Club of New York City, he found the entrance blocked by three ruddy-faced, middle-aged men, considerably worse for wear from a night on the town, swaying arm in arm on the front steps.
Clad in blazers and Class of ’83 reunion scarves, the Old Blues were singing “Bright College Years” at the top of their lungs. Isaac Bell lent a sleepy baritone to the chorus and tried to get around them.
“We’re taller than the Harvard Club,” they cried, gesticulating derisively at a squat clubhouse across the street.
“Come up to the roof with us!”
“We’ll hurl bouquets down upon the Crimsons.”
The doorman came out and cleared a path for the tall detective. “Out-of-town members,” he marveled.
“Thanks for the escort, Matthew. Never would have made it inside without you.”
“Good night, Mr. Bell.”
There was more Yalesian song coming from the Grill Room in back, though not as loud as the revelers out front. Bell took the stairs instead of the elevator. The grand, two-story lounge was typically empty this late at night. He lived on the third floor, which contained twelve spartan bachelor rooms, six on each side of the hall, with the bathroom at the end. A steamer trunk sat in the hall, partly blocking his door.
Apparently a member had just got off the ship from Europe.
Yawning sleepily, Bell reached to push the trunk out of his way as he stepped around it. He was surprised it felt light—already empty. The staff usually cleared trunks the instant they were unpacked. He gave it a closer, second look. It was a battered old trunk, with faded labels from the Hotel Ritz in Barcelona and Brown’s of London and the Cunard liner Servia. He could not recall the last time he had seen that name; the ship had probably been out of service since the turn of the century. Among the faded luggage check labels, a bright new one caught his eye. The Cumberland Hotel, New York.
Funny coincidence, last-known residence of Mr. Snake. He wondered why a member of the Yale Club of New York would stay at the Cumberland before moving to the private but austere bachelor quarters. Most likely a decision to stay long-term in New York, as the rates were considerably lower at the club, even counting the cost of dues.