The Spy Page 9

  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 c
over 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?”

  “That’s too big a deal to keep secret. You’re obviously a wealthy man, but no individual is rich enough to launch his own dreadnought. Where do you get your funds for Hull 44? Surely someone high up must know.”

  Captain Falconer answered obliquely. “Eleven years ago I had the privilege of advising an Assistant Secretary of the Navy.”

  “Bully!” Bell smiled his understanding. That explained Lowell Falconer’s independence. Today, that Assistant Secretary of the Navy was none other than the nation’s fiercest champion of a strong Navy-President Theodore Roosevelt.

  “The President believes that our Navy should be footloose. Let the Army defend ports and harbors-we’ll even build them the guns. But the Navy must fight at sea.”

  “From what I’ve seen of the Navy,” said Bell, “first you will have to fight the Navy. And to win that fight you would have to be as clever as Machiavelli.”

  “Oh, but I am,” Falconer smiled. “Though I prefer the word ‘devious’ to clever.”

  “Are you still a serving officer?”

  “I am, officially, Special Inspector of Target Practice.”

  “A wonderfully vague title,” Bell remarked.

  “I know how to outfox bureaucrats,” Falconer shot back. “I know my way around Congress,” he continued with a cynical smile and raised his maimed hand for Bell to see. “What politician dares deny a war hero?”

  Then he explained in detail how he had planted a cadre of l ike-minded younger officers in the key bureaus of Ordnance and Construction. Together, they were angling to overhaul the entire dreadnought-building system.

  “Are we as far behind as Alasdair MacDonald claimed?”

  “Yes. We launch Michigan next month, but she’s no prize. Delaware, North Dakota, Utah, Florida, Arkansas, and Wyoming, first-class dreadnoughts, are stuck on the drawing boards. But that’s not entirely a bad thing. Advancements in naval warfare pile up so quickly that the later we launch our battleships, the more modern they will be. We’ve already learned the shortcomings of the Great White Fleet, long before it reaches San Francisco. First thing we’ll fix when they sail home is to paint them gray so enemy gunners can’t spot them so easily.

  “Paint will be the easy part. Before we can turn our new knowledge into fighting ships, we have to convince the Navy Board of Construction and Congress. The Navy Board of Construction hates change, and Congress hates expense.”

  Falconer nodded at the Reuterdahl. “My friend Henry’s got his tail in a crack. The Navy invited him along to paint pictures of the Great White Fleet. They did not expect him to also fire off articles to McClure’s Magazine informing the world of its shortcomings. Henry will be lucky to find his way home on a tramp steamer. But Henry’s right, and I’m right: It’s O.K. to learn by experience. O.K. to learn by failure, even. But it is not O.K. not to improve. That is why I build in secret.”

  “You’ve told me why. You’ve not told me what.”

  “Don’t be impatient, Mr. Bell.”

  “A man was murdered,” Isaac Bell replied grimly. “I am not patient when men are murdered.”

  “You just said men.” Captain Falconer stopped bantering and demanded, “Are suggesting that Langner was murdered, too?”

  “I rate his murder increasingly likely.”

  “What about Grover Lakewood?”

  “Van Dorn operatives in Westchester are looking into his death.

  And in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, we are investigating the accident that killed Chad Gordon. Now, are you going to tell me about Hull 44?”

  “Let’s get topside. You�
��ll see what I mean.”

  Dyname had continued to increase her speed. There was still no trembling from the engines, despite a powerful drone of rushing sea and wind. The steward and a sailor appeared with seaboots and oil-skins. “You’ll want these on, sir. She’s no yacht, once she gets moving. More like a torpedo boat.”

  “Torpedo boat, hell,” muttered the sailor. “She’s a submarine.”

  Falconer handed Bell a pair of goggles with smoked glass so dark it seemed opaque and looped another pair over his own head.

  “What’s this for?”

  “You’ll be glad you have them when you need them,” the captain answered enigmatically. “All set? Let’s get up to the bridge while we can.” The seaman and steward wrestled the door open, and they stepped on deck.

  The slipstream hit like a punch in the face.

  Bell pushed forward on the narrow side deck less than five feet above the rushing water. “She must be doing thirty knots.”

  “Still loafing along,” Falconer yelled over the roar. “We’ll get moving once we pass Sandy Hook.”

  Bell glanced back. Fire was flickering from the smoke funnel, and the wake was so frothed that it glowed in the dark. They climbed onto the open bridge, where thick slabs of glass screened the helmsman, who was clinging to a small spoked wheel. Captain Falconer shouldered him aside.

  Ahead in the dark, an intermittent white light blinked every fifteen seconds.

  “Sandy Hook Lightship,” said Captain Falconer. “Last year we’ll see it. They’re moving the light to mark the new Ambrose Channel.”

  Dyname bore down on the fifteen-second blinker. In its back glow, Bell glimpsed the white-lettered “Sandy Hook” and “No. 51” on the side of the black vessel as it fell rapidly behind them.

  “Hang on!” said Captain Falconer.

  He laid the hand with the missing fingers on a tall lever. “Bowden cable connection direct to the turbines. Same as flexible-cable brakes for bicycles. I can increase steam from the helm without ringing the engine room. Like the throttle on your auto.”