Isaac Bell’s fiancée was in the moving picture line. She had caught the last boat train from London after photographing King Edward VII’s funeral procession for Picture World News Reels. Cine-negatives from the taking machines she had stationed along the route had been immediately developed, washed, dried, and printed. Tonight — only nine hours after old “King Teddy” had been buried — five hundred and twenty feet of “topical film” was showing in the Piccadilly theaters, and the hardworking director was enjoying a hot bath in her First Class room along the Mauretania’s promenade deck.
“No one doubts the ardor of your courtship,” Archie said with a wink so suggestive it would have earned any other man a fist in the eye. “And who but the blind could fail to notice the colossal emerald on her finger that signifies your engagement? Yet friends observe that it’s been a while since you announced… cold feet?”
“Not mine,” said Bell. “Nor Marion’s,” he added hastily. “We’re both so busy we haven’t time to nail down a date.”
“Now’s your chance. Four and a half days on the high seas. She can’t escape.” Archie gestured with his cigar up at the Mauretania’s darkened bridge and asked casually, as if he and his wife had not conjured up this conversation the day they booked passage, “What do you say we ask the captain to marry you?”
“Miles ahead of you, Archie.”
“What do you mean?”
A big grin lighted Bell’s face with a row of strong, even teeth that practically flashed in the dark. “I’ve already spoken with Captain Turner.”
“We’re on!” Archie grabbed Bell’s hand and shook it vigorously. “I’m best man. Lillian’s matron of honor. And we’ve got a boatload of wedding guests. I snuck a look at the manifest. Mauretania is carrying half the ‘Four Hundred’ and a fair slice of Burke’s Peerage.”
Bell’s grin set in a determined smile. “Now all I have to do is corral Marion.”
* * *
Archie, who was recuperating from a gunshot wound, announced abruptly that he was going to bed. Bell could feel him trembling as he helped him through a heavy door that led into a companionway.
“I’ll walk down with you.”
“Waste of good tobacco,” said Archie, holding tight to the banister. “Finish your cigar. I’ll make it under my own steam.”
Bell listened until Archie had safely descended. Then he stepped back out on deck, where he lingered, his ears cocked to the dark sea.
He leaned over the rail. Sixty feet below, the water swirled in the lights of the pilot boat lumbering close, belching smoke and steam. The helmsman pressed his bow skillfully to the moving black cliff of the Mauretania’s riveted hull. The pilot who had guided the mammoth steamer out of the river and over the sandbar descended a rope-and-wood Jacob’s ladder. It was neatly done, and in another minute the two vessels disengaged, the smaller extinguishing her deck lights and disappearing astern, the larger gaining speed.
Bell was still peering speculatively into the night when h
e heard the crisp V-8 rumble again. This time it sounded nearer. A quarter mile or less, he estimated, and approaching rapidly. The motorboat closed within a hundred yards. Bell still could not see it, but he could hear it running alongside, pacing the steamship, no small job in the steepening seas. He thought it odd, if not plain dangerous, that the vessel showed no lights. Suddenly it did — not running lights but a shielded Aldis signal lamp flashing code.
2
Isaac Bell looked up at the open overhang that extended from the bridge, expecting the Mauretania’s answering flash. But the bridge wing was deserted of officers and seamen, and no one signaled back. He saw no response either from the foremast that towered invisibly two hundred feet into the dark sky. The lookout perched in his crow’s nest watched ahead of the ship, not to the side where the Aldis lamp had aimed its narrow beam.
Suddenly Bell saw the splash of a bow wave. It gleamed white, in sharp contrast to the black water. Then he saw the boat itself veering close. It was a Wolseley-Siddeley, burying its nose in the steep seas, hurling spray, and tearing ahead in the hands of a helmsman who knew his business. It drew alongside directly under him, forty feet long, sharp as a knife, spewing a bright feather of propeller wash.
Bell heard a shout behind him, a frightened cry stifled abruptly. He whirled around and scanned the dark boat deck. Then he heard a grunt of pain and a sudden rush of feet.
From the companionway where he had said good night to Archie burst a tight knot of men in fierce struggle. Their silhouettes lurched past the light spilling from the First Class library windows. Three big men were forcing two smaller fellows to the rail. Bell heard another shout, a cry for help, a hard blow, a muffled groan. A victim doubled over, clutching his stomach, the wind knocked out of him.
Isaac Bell sprinted the distance that separated them.
He moved in utter silence.
So intent were the three that the first they knew of the tall detective’s approach was the crack of a powerful right fist knocking the nearest man to the deck. Bell wheeled on the balls of his feet and launched a left-hand haymaker with all his weight and strength behind it. Had it landed, he would have evened the odds at one to one.
Bell’s target moved with superhuman speed. He slipped the punch so it missed his head and smashed his shoulder. It still connected with sufficient power to drive the man to the deck. But he was carrying a heavy rope looped over his shoulder, and the springy Manila coils absorbed the shock.
A counterpunch exploded from the dark with the concentrated violence of a pile driver. Isaac Bell rolled with it, sloughing off some of the impact, but the momentum pinwheeled him into the railing and so far over it that he found himself gazing down at the motorboat pressed against the hull directly under him. The man who had unleashed the blow that sent Isaac Bell flying dragged his two victims to the rail. At a grunted command, his accomplice jumped over the body of their fallen comrade and charged Bell to finish him off.
Bell saw a knife flash in the light from the library.
He twisted off the rail, regained his feet, and tried to sidestep a vicious thrust. The blade passed an inch from his face. Bell kicked hard. His boot landed solidly. The man hit the railing and tumbled over it. A shriek of pain and fear ended abruptly with the sickening thud of his body smashing on the motor-boat sixty feet below.
The boat sped away with a roar of throttles opened wide.