The Spy Page 13

  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 medico 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.

  He unlocked his door and took a step into his room. An odd odor tweaked his nostrils. It was so faint, it was almost indiscernible. He paused, his hand already outstretched, feeling for the wall switch to turn on the overhead light. He tried to identify the gamy aroma. Almost like a sweaty pigskin fencing suit. But his was around the corner on 45th Street, hanging in his locker with his foils and saber at the Fencers Club.

  The light from the hall spilled over this shoulder. Something on the bed glinted.

  Isaac Bell was suddenly wide awake. He bounded sideways into the room so at not to present a silhouette in the open door. Flattened against the wall with all his senses on high alert, he whipped his Browning pistol from his shoulder holster and hit the light switch.

  On the narrow bed was a box made of glass, so heavy that it pressed deep into the chenille spread. It was cube-shaped, about twenty-four inches on each side. Even the lid was glass. It was open. It dangled from sprung hinges as if whoever had opened it had hastily dropped the heavy slab, which had bent the metal hinges, and run for his life.

  Bell felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

  He shot a swift look around the small room. The dresser top was empty but for a box of his cuff links. On the night table was a reading lamp, a Pocket Guide to New York, Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, and Burgoyne’s Submarine Navigation. The door to the closet was closed and the small safe in the corner where he stored his weapons locked. Still pressing his back to the wall, Bell peered again at the glass box itself. The interior was mostly obscured by reflections on the glass. Slowly, he moved his head to view it from different angles.

  The box was empty.

  Bell stood still as a hunter. There was only one place the snake could be hiding and that was under the bed in the dark space hidden by the overhanging bedspread. Suddenly he saw movement. A long, forked tongue flickered from under the bedspread, testing the air for motion at which to strike. Tight against the wall, moving in minute increments, Bell eased toward the door to get out of the room and lock the reptile inside. Chloroform poured under the door would put it out of action.

  But before he had moved half a foot the viper’s tongue began flickering faster as if it were about to make its move. He braced to hurl himself out the door in one jump. Just as he was about to spring, he heard the elevator door open. The Old Blues tumbled into the hall bellowing:

  “Where’er upon life’s sea we sail:

  For God, for Country and-”

  Isaac Bell knew he had no choice. If he shouted for the alums to run, the old boys weren’t sober enough to understand even if they heard him. At the same time, his warning would either spook the creature into striking him or send it slithering out the door, straight at them.

  He reached to the side with the barrel of his pistol and used it to swing the door shut. The air it stirred aroused the lance-head. In a sudden blur of motion, it shifted position under the bed and flew at his leg.

  Bell had never moved so fast. He kicked out at the pointed head blazing toward him. The snake smashed against his ankle with an astonishingly muscular impact, staining his trouser cuff with a splash of yellow venom. Only his own animal reflexes and the fact that his boot covered his ankle saved Bell’s life. In the space of a breath, the animal spun itself into a tight coil and struck again. By then Bell was airborne. Diving for the bed, he grabbed the pillow and threw it at the snake. The snake struck, spraying the pillow yellow and leaving two deep holes in the cloth. Bell ripped the spread off the bed, twirled it like a toreador, and flung it over the snake to trap it in the cloth.

  The snake slithered out from under, coiled again, and tracked Bell with malevolent eyes. Bell raised his pistol, aimed carefully at its head, and fired. The snake attacked at the same instant the gun roared, striking so swiftly that Bell’s bullet missed and smashed the dresser mirror. As glass flew, the snake’s needle-sharp fangs struck Bell in the chest, directly over his heart.

  2
0

  BELL DROPPED HIS GUN AND CLOSED HIS HAND AROUND the snake’s neck.

  The animal was shockingly strong. Every inch of its four-foot length writhed with spasmodic, sinewy power as it squirmed to break his grip and strike him again. Its fangs were cocked inside its arrow-shaped head. Yellow venom dripped from its wide-open jaws. Bell imagined that he could see in its eyes a gleam of triumph, as if the serpent were sure that its deadly poison had already won the battle and that its prey would die in minutes. Gasping for breath, Bell reached with his free hand for the knife in his boot. “Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Snake. But you made the mistake of sinking your fangs into my shoulder holster.”

  An Old Blue threw open the door. “Who’s shooting guns in here?”

  At the sight of the headless snake still twitching in Bell’s fist, he turned white and pressed both hands to his mouth.

  Bell pointed commandingly with his bloody knife. “If you are going to be sick, the facilities are down the hall.”

  Matthew the doorman stuck his head in the room. “Are you-”

  “Where did that steamer trunk come from?” demanded Bell.

  “I don’t know. It must have arrived before I came on.”

  “Get the manager!”

  The club manager arrived minutes later in his nightclothes. His eyes widened at the sight of the broken mirror, the headless snake twitching on the floor, its head resting on the dresser, and Isaac Bell wiping his knife with a ruined pillowcase.

  “Assemble your staff,” Bell told him. “Either Lachesis muta here was not blackballed by the Membership Committee, or one of your people helped him into my room.”

  ICEMAN WEEKS WAS HOOFING IT across town, having watched from a stable until Isaac Bell entered the Yale Club and waited to make sure he didn’t come out again. At Eighth Avenue he turned up several blocks, walked under the connector line that linked the Ninth Avenue and Sixth Avenue Els, and knocked on an unmarked door to a house just inside 53rd Street where Tommy Thompson had opened a gambling hall on the second floor. The Gopher guarding the door said, “What the hell are you doing here?”