The Spy Page 18

  “They’ve been walking back and forth across the bridge pretending to be tourist snapshot fiends. But somehow their Brownies are always pointed down at the navy yard. And I don’t think those are real Brownies inside those Brownie boxes but something with a special lens. The large, round fellow is Abbington-Westlake. The terrific-looking woman is his wife, Lady Fiona.”

  “I’ve seen her. Who’s the little guy?”

  “Peter Sutherland, retired British Army major. Claims he’s traveling to Canada to look over the oil fields.”

  The strangely cold spring had persisted into May, and the chilly wind blew hard high over the East River. All three wore topcoats. The woman’s had a sable collar that matched her hat, which she was anchoring with one hand against the gusts.

  “Looking the oil fields over for what?”

  “Last night at dinner Sutherland said, ‘Oil is the coming fuel for water transportation.’ Abbington-Westlake being Naval Attaché, you can bet water transportation means dreadnoughts.”

  “How’d you happen to overhear it?”

  “They thought I was the waiter.”

  “I’ll take over before they order more pheasant.”

  “Want the glasses?”

  “No, I’m going to make my move.”

  Scudder Smith vanished among the pedestrians crossing to Manhattan.

  Bell headed for the make-believe tourists.

  Nearing the middle of the span, he gained a clear view of the Brooklyn Navy Yard immediately north of the bridge. He could see all the shipways, even a section of the northernmost that cradled the beginnings of Hull 44. All were open to the weather, markedly different from the closed sheds at New York Ship in Camden. Cantilevered bridge cranes trundled along elevated rails that allowed them to hover directly over the ships under construction. Switch engines moved freight cars laden with steel plate around the yard.

  Away from the building area, horse-drawn wagons and auto trucks were delivering daily rations to the warships moored in slips beside the river. Long strings of sailors in white were carrying sacks up gangways. Bell saw a dry dock nearly eight hundred feet long and over a hundred wide. In the middle of the bay was an artificial island containing docks and ways and slips. A ferry shuttled between it and the mainland, and fishing boats and steam lighters moved slowly up and down a crowded channel that ran between the artificial island and a market on the shore.

  The trio was still snapping photographs as Bell bore down on them. Emerging suddenly from the stream of Brooklyn-bound pedestrians, he flourished his 3A Folding Pocket Kodak and called out a friendly, “Say, would you like me to snap all three of you together?”

  “No need, old boy,” Abbington-Westlake replied in plummy aristocratic tones. “Besides, how would we get the film?”

  Bell snapped their picture anyway. “Should I use one of your cameras? You have a lot of them,” Bell said affably.

  Suspicion hardened Fiona Abbington-Westlake’s attractive features. “I say!” she exclaimed in an accent that managed to sound clipped and drawled at the same time. “I’ve seen you before, somewhere. Quite recently, as a matter of fact. Never forget a face.”

  “And in a similar setting,” Isaac Bell replied. “Last week at New York Ship in Camden, New Jersey.”

  Lady Fiona and her husband exchanged glances. The major grew watchful.

  Bell said, “And today we ‘observe’ the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn. These reversed names must be confusing to tourists.” He raised his camera again. “Let’s see if I can get all of you in the picture with the navy yard right behind you-the way you were snapping it.”

  It was Abbington-Westlake’s turn to blurt, “I say!,” and he did arrogantly. “Who the devil do you think you are? Move along, sir. Move along!”

  Bell threw a hard look at “retired major” Sutherland. “Drilling for oil in Brooklyn?”

  Sutherland allowed himself the abashed smile of a man who’d been caught. But not Abbington-Westlake. The Naval Attaché charged past his companions and blustered at Isaac Bell, “You’ll move along if you know what’s good for you. Or I’ll call a constable.”

  Bell answered quietly. “A constable is the last person you want to see you here at this moment, Commander. Meet me in the basement bar of the Knickerbocker at six o’clock. Take the entrance from the subway.”

  Flummoxed by Bell’s use of his rank, Abbington-Westlake transformed himself from arrogant aristocratic naval officer to a type that Bell had known at college-the young man eager to act old and stuffy before his time. “I’m afraid I don’t use the subway, old chap. Rather a plebeian form of transport, don’t you think?”

  “The subway entrance will let you meet me for a cocktail without the upper crust noticing, ‘old chap.’ Six o’clock sharp. Leave your wife and Sutherland. Come alone.”

  “And if I don’t appear?” Abbington-Westlake huffed.

  “I’ll come looking for you at the British Embassy.”

  The Naval Attaché turned white. Research had assured Bell that he would, because Great Britain’s Foreign Office, Military Intelligence, and Naval Intelligence were all highly mistrustful of one another. “Hold on, sir!” he whispered. “The game just isn’t played that way. One doesn’t blunder into one’s adversary’s embassy shouting secrets.”

  “I didn’t know there were rules.”

  “Gentlemen’s rules,” Abbington-Westlake replied with a studied friendly wink. “You know the drill. Do what we please. But set a good example for the servants and don’t frighten the horses.”

  Isaac Bell handed him his card. “I don’t follow spy rules. I’m a private detective.”

  “A detective?” Abbington-Westlake echoed disdainfully.

  “We have our own rules. We collar criminals and turn them in to the police.”

  “What the devil do-”

  “On rare occasion we give criminals a break-but only when they help us collar criminals much, much worse than they are. Six o’clock. And don’t forget to bring me something.”

  “What?”

  “A spy worse than you are,” Isaac Bell smiled coldly. “Much worse.”

  He turned on his heel and walked back toward Manhattan, certain that Abbington-Westlake would report at six as ordered. Descending the stairs from the Brooklyn Bridge walkway, he failed to take note of a one-eyed slum urchin disguised as a newsboy hawking the afternoon Herald.

  BELL GOT AS FAR AS the subway steps when a sixth sense told him he was being watched.

  He passed the subway entrance, crossed Broadway, and turned down the thoroughfare, which was jam-packed with delivery trucks and wagons, buses and streetcars. He paused repeatedly, studied reflections in shopwindows, ducked around moving vehicles, and popped in and out of stores. Did Abbington-Westlake have men backing him up, who had taken up his trail? Or the so-called major? He wouldn’t put it past the major. Sutherland looked competent, like a man who’d been in the wars. And it would be wise to remember that the bombastic, vaguely silly demeanor Abbington-Westlake affected should not obscure his espionage successes.

  Bell jumped onto a trolley on busy Fulton Street and looked back. No one. He rode the trolley to the river, got off as if heading for the ferry, but suddenly reversed course and boarded the westbound trolley. He disembarked as quickly and swerved into Gold Street. He saw no one. But he still had an intense feeling that he was being stalked.

  He entered a crowded oyster house and slipped a dollar to a waiter to let him out the kitchen door into an alley that led him to Platt Street. When he still saw no one following but still sensed it, he plunged deep into the ancient lanes of lower Manhattan-Pearl, Fletcher, Pine, and Nassau.

  Try as he might, Bell saw no one following.

  He was studying reflections in the showroom window of a manufacturer of assay and diamond scales, having just gone in the front and out the back of the Nassau Café, when he found himself on Maiden Lane-New York’s jewelers’ district. The upper floors of the four- and five-story cast-iron-fronte
d buildings that darkened the sky were a beehive of gem cutters, importers, jewelers, goldsmiths, and watchmakers. Below the factories and workrooms, retail jewelry shops lined the sidewalk, their windows gleaming like pirate chests.

  As Bell cast a sharp eye up and down the narrow street, his stern visage softened and a quizzical smile began to tug at the corners of his mouth. Most of the men crowding the pavement were around his own age, smartly dressed in topcoats and derbies, but with shoulders sloped and faces bewildered as they blundered in and out of the jewelry shops. Bachelors about to propose marriage, Bell surmised, attempting to seal a momentous decision with the purchase of a valuable gem about which they feared they knew nothing.

  Bell’s smile got bigger. This was a fine happenstance. Maybe no one had followed him after all. Maybe some “Higher Being” with a sense of humor had foxed his ordinarily trustworthy sixth sense to send him wandering into lower Manhattan for the express purpose of buying his beautiful fiancée an engagement ring.

  Isaac Bell’s smile grew less sure as he joined the parade of men pacing the sidewalk and meditating upon the dozens of display windows that glittered with myriad possibilities and infinite choices. Finally, the tall detective took the bull by the horns. He squared his shoulders and strode into the shop that looked the most expensive.

  THE CHILD WHO WATCHED Isaac Bell enter the jeweler’s shop-a boy who was clean enough not to be chased out of the jewelry district and had a shoeshine box strapped to his back as a disguise-waited to be sure that the Van Dorn had not ducked inside just to give them the slip again. He was the fourth to have trailed their quarry on his circuitous ramble. Eyeing the shadowy silhouettes of Bell and the jeweler through the window, he signaled another boy and passed him the box. “Take over. I gotta report.”

  He ran the few short blocks west into the tenement-and-warehouse district that bounded the North River, darted into the pier-side Hudson Saloon, and made for the free lunch.

  “Get outta here!” roared a bartender.

  “Commodore!” the shoeshine boy growled back, fearlessly stuffing liverwurst between slabs of stale bread. “Make it quick!”

  “Sorry, kid. Didn’t recognize you. This way.” The bartender ushered him into the saloon owner’s private office, which had the only telephone in the neighborhood. The owner watched him warily.

  “Get out,” said the boy. “This ain’t none of your business.”

  The owner locked his desk and left, shaking his head. There was a time when a Hell’s Kitchen Gopher ventured downtown into this neighborhood, he’d end up hanging from a lamppost. But that time had ended fast.

  The boy telephoned Commodore Tommy’s Saloon. They said Tommy wasn’t there, but he’d call him right back. That was strange. The boss was always in his saloon. People said Tommy hadn’t been outdoors in daylight in years. He stepped out to the free lunch for another sandwich, and when he returned the phone was ringing. Commodore Tommy was mad as hell that he’d been kept waiting. When he got done yelling, the boy told him about Isaac Bell’s wander around the city starting from the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Maiden Lane.”

  27

  ISAAC BELL RETREATED IN COMPLETE CONFUSION FROM the fourth jewelry store he had entered in an hour. He had time for one or two more before heading uptown to grill Abbington-Westlake at the Knickerbocker.

  “Shine, sir? Shoeshine?”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  He leaned his back against the wall and submitted his left boot to the polish-stained fingers of the skinny kid with the wooden box. His mind was reeling. He had been simultaneously informed that a diamond set in platinum was the “only appropriate stone to make a girl feel properly engaged” and that a large semiprecious gemstone mounted in gold was “considered most fashionable.” Particularly when compared to a small diamond. Although even a small diamond was an “acceptable token of betrothal.”

  “Other foot, sir.”

  Bell removed his throwing knife, palming it, and let the kid polish his right boot.

  “Is it always so busy down here?”

  “May and June are the bridal months,” the kid answered without looking from the cloth he was whipping so fast it was a blur.

  “How much?” Bell asked when the boy was done and his boots gleamed like mirrors.

  “A nickel.”

  “Here’s a dollar.”

  “I don’t got no change for a buck, mister.”

  “Keep it. You did a fine job.”

  The kid stared at him. He appeared about to speak.

  “What is it?” asked Bell. “You all right, son?”

  The boy opened his mouth. He looked around and suddenly grabbed his box and ran, dodging shoppers, and disappeared around the corner. Bell shrugged, and entered another jewelry store, Solomon Barlowe, a smaller establishment on the ground floor of a five-story, Italianate-style cast-iron-clad building. Barlowe sized him up with piercing brown eyes as shrewd as a police magistrate’s.

  “I want to buy an engagement ring. I think it should be a diamond.”

  “Were you considering a solitaire setting or incluster?”

  “Which would you recommend?”

  “If expense were an object, of course-”

  “Assume it is not,” Bell growled.

  “Ah! Well, I can see that you are a man of taste, sir. Let us look at some stones for your approval.” The jeweler unlocked a case and laid a black velvet tray on the counter between them.

  Bell whistled amazement. “I’ve seen kids shooting marbles smaller than these.”

  “We are fortunate in our supplier, sir. We import our own. Ordinarily, I would have more stock to show you, but the bridal months are upon us, and the choice gems have already been snapped up.”

  “In other words, buy now before it’s too late?”

  “Only if you need something immediately. Is your wedding impending?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bell. “We’re neither of us children and both rather busy. On the other hand, I would like to nail things down.”

  “A large solitaire diamond of a unique hue has a way of doing that, sir. Here, for instance-”

  The door opened and a well-dressed gentleman about Bell’s age walked into Barlowe’s shop flourishing a gold-headed cane studded with gems. He looked vaguely familiar, but the detective could not quite place him. It was rare his memory for faces failed, and he suspected it would be a case of seeing someone completely out of context, as if they had last met in a Wyoming saloon or been seated side by side at a Chicago prizefight. He was clearly not a desperate bachelor. There was nothing of the tentative buyer in his demeanor, which was supported by a confident smile.

  “Mr. Riker!” Barlowe exclaimed. “What a wonderful surprise.” To Bell he said, “Excuse me, sir. I’ll just be a moment.”

  “No, no,” said Riker. “Don’t let me interrupt a sale.”

  Barlowe said, “But I was just discussing you with my customer, who is in the market for something special and has a bit of time to look for it.”

  He turned to Bell. “This is the very gentleman I mentioned to you, our gem supplier. Mr. Erhard Riker of Riker and Riker. We’re in luck, sir. If Mr. Riker can’t find your stone, it doesn’t exist. He is the foremost supplier of the finest gemstones in the world.”

  “Good Lord, Barlowe,” Riker smiled. “Your generosity of spirit will mislead your customer into believing I am a miracle worker instead of a simple merchant.”

  Riker spoke with an English accent similar to Abbington-Westlake’s aristocratic drawl, but the color of his coat suggested to Bell that he was German. It was a Chesterfield, with the traditional black velvet collar. An Englishman’s or American’s Chesterfield would be cut of a navy or charcoal gray fabric. Riker’s was a dark green loden cloth.

  Riker removed his gloves, slipped his cane into his left hand, and extended his right. “Good day, sir. As you have just heard, I am Erhard Riker.”

 
“Isaac Bell.”

  They shook hands. Riker had a strong, firm grip.

  “If you would allow me the honor, I will look for the perfect gem for your fiancée. What color are the lady’s eyes?”

  “Coral-sea green.”

  “And her hair?”

  “Her hair is blond. Pale as straw.”

  “By the smile on your face, I have a picture of her beauty.”

  “Multiply it by ten.”

  Riker bowed in the European manner. “In that event, I will find for you a gem that is almost her equal.”

  “Thank you,” said Bell. “You are very kind. Have we met before? Your face is familiar.”

  “We have not been introduced before,” replied Riker. “But I, too, recognize you. I believe it was at Camden, New Jersey, early this week.”

  “At the Michigan launching! Of course. Now I remember. You gave the shipyard owner the gift he presented to the young lady who sponsored the battleship.”

  “I stood in for one of my Newark clients who decorated the pendant with my gemstones.”

  “Well, isn’t this a wonderful coincidence?” exclaimed Solomon Barlowe.

  “Two coincidences,” Isaac Bell corrected him. “First, Mr. Riker happened along while I was shopping for a special diamond. Second, it turned out we attended the same ship launching in Camden last Monday.”

  “As if written in the stars!” Riker laughed. “Or should I say diamonds? For what are diamonds but man-size stars? My hunt begins this instant! Do not hesitate to get in touch, Mr. Bell. In New York I stay at the Waldorf-Astoria. The hotel forwards my mail when I travel.”

  “You can find me at the Yale Club,” said Bell, and they exchanged cards.

  EVERY VAN DORN, from apprentice to chief investigator, was taught from the first day he went to work that coincidences were presumed guilty until proven innocent. Bell asked Research to look into the gem importers Riker & Riker. Then he turned over his camera, ordered the film to be developed and brought to him immediately, and went down to the hotel’s basement lobby, off of which was snugged a quiet, dimly lit bar.