Forrer nodded. “At this point, it moves into the realm of the bizarre. The artist called himself Isaac Bell.”
“What?”
“He knows you’re working up the case, Isaac.”
Isaac Bell stood out of his chair and stalked through the empty lounge to the tall windows that overlooked West 44th Street. A thin smile formed on his lips.
“He’s calling you out!” said Forrer, who had grown up in the Deep South where calling a man out meant parking yourself on his front lawn with a gun in your hand until he came out shooting.
“Sounds that way.” Bell stared down at 44th Street. Carriages and motor limousines were returning for the night to the many stables and garages on the block.
Suddenly he stared unseeing out the window. “At last.”
“At last what?” Forrer asked.
“At last he’s made a mistake.”
“Thinking he can take you?”
“That, too.”
The tall detective turned abruptly and crossed the big room in several strides, his face alight with energy. “We’re finally getting something. Let’s find out who this champion really is.”
Forrer climbed out of his chair and rose to his full height. “I’ll go back to the office.” He kept a cot there, and Bell knew that after a short nap he would dive into his files. Assistants and apprentices arriving for work early would find their boss deep in newspapers and magazines and telegrams from the agency’s private wires.
Bell walked him down to the front door.
“There’s something else I want you to look into.”
“What’s that?”
“Edna Matters has an interesting theory.” He told him Edna’s theory about John D. Rockefeller’s newspaper code.
Forrer was intrigued by the idea of far-flung Rockefeller operatives reading the newspapers for his instructions. “Not to mention those hundreds of ‘correspondents’ spying for Standard Oil around the world, reading the papers and realizing what he wants information on.”
“Can you crack it?”
“It isn’t only what he says,” Forrer explained, “but when he says it. He’s referring to things they already know, telling them now we wait, now we get ready, now we move.”
“Check your files back to January when Rockefeller was in Cannes.”
“I’ll start earlier.”
“The phrase about watching children digging in the sand appears only in recent weeks.”
“I’ll pay particular attention to it. What do you want me to tell Mr. Van Dorn?”
“Tell him the assassin is not quite as professional as he thinks he is.”
“He’s going to ask me what you mean. I’d like to have an answer ready.”
“Tell him the assassin is a show-off.”
“What do you suppose he’ll make of that?”
“He’ll make of it what he taught me: Show-offs trip themselves up when they forget to watch where they’re going.”
“And where are you going, Isaac?”