The Spy (Isaac Bell 3)

“All he said was, ‘Grand Central, three-thirty p.m.’ ”

Bell grabbed his hat. Enigmatic even by Scully’s standards, it meant either that Scully turned up something of vital importance or he was in danger. “Keep listening for Yamamoto. I’ll telephone from Grand Central if I can. But soon as Yamamoto reports, send a courier to come looking for me.”

JOHN SCULLY HAD DECIDED it was time to bring in Isaac Bell. Truth be told, he admitted to himself as he hunted the public telephone pay station in Grand Central, it was past time. He couldn’t find the damned thing. The old railroad station was being torn down and replaced by a vast new terminal, and they kept moving the telephones. Where the telephones had been the last time he used them was a gaping pit that offered a view of track levels descending sixty feet into the ground. When he finally found the telephones, losing ten minutes in the process, he told the operator, “Van Dorn Detective Agency. Knickerbocker.” A uniformed attendant showed him into one of the wood-paneled booths.

“Good afternoon,” came the dulcet tones of an operator chosen for her beautiful voice and clear head. “You have reached the Van Dorn Detective Agency. To whom do you wish to speak?”

“Message for Isaac Bell. Tell him Scully said, ‘Grand Central, three-thirty p.m.’ Got that? ‘Grand Central, three-thirty p.m.’ ”

“Yes, Mr. Scully.”

He paid the attendant and hurried toward the track designated for the 20th Century Limited. The terminal was in chaos. Workmen were everywhere, swarming over scaffolds and banging hammers on stone, steel, and marble. Laborers cluttered the hall, wheeling carts and barrows. But at the Limited’s temporary gate, beside which a blackboard said CHICAGO, company employees were respectfully checking tickets, and her famous red carpet was already in place leading out onto the platform. It looked like once a passenger got this close to the fabled Chicago express, his troubles were over.

“Jasper! Jasper Smith!”

Little Miss Knockout Drops from the opera house opium den was rushing toward him in an elegant traveling outfit capped by a broad-brimmed Merry Widow hat. “What a wonderful coincidence. Thank God, I found you!”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. I just saw you. Oh, Jasper, I didn’t know if I would ever see you again. You left in such a hurry last night.”

Something was way out of whack. He looked around. Where was her Hip Sing boyfriend? Already on the train? Then he saw cutting through the crowds of hurrying passengers a cigar-delivery cart wheeled by a Chinese. And there were three wagonloads of construction debris hauled by Irish laborers. The cart and wagons were converging on them like wagons circling to fend off the Indians.

“What are you doing here?” he asked her.

“Meeting a train,” she said.

I stood outside that opera house like a sitting duck, thought Scully. Long enough for the Hip Sing to get a line on me.

The Irishmen pulling the wagon were staring at him. Gophers? Or were they watching the pretty girl who was smiling up at him like she meant it?

Or did they tip to me and Harry Warren, recognizing each other inside? The Chinaman wheeling cigars looked his way, expression blank. Tong hatchet man?

The train ticket! She let me find the train ticket. She set me up to be here. Scully reached back for his Vest Pocket pistol. Even the police raid was a phony. Paid the cops to raid so he would run with the girl.

Something whacked him in the head.

A football bounced at his feet, and a big, grinning college boy in coat and tie loped up. “Sorry, sir, we didn’t mean it, just horsing around.”

Saved! Saved by a piece of luck he didn’t deserve.

Six strapping, privileged young men skylarking with a ball as they ran to catch a train had scared off the tong and the Gophers. They trooped over, apologizing and offering to shake his hand, and suddenly he and Katy were surrounded inside a scrum. But only when three of the college boys held his arms and little Katy whipped a ten-inch steel hatpin from the Merry Widow did Scully realize that little Miss Knockout Drops had completely outfoxed him.

ISSAC BELL RUSHED THROUGH the crowded construction site. He spotted a mob of people milling around the gate to the 20th Century Limited. A cop was shouting, “Stand back! Stand back!,” and pleading for a doctor. With an awful feeling he was too late, Bell shoved into the center of the crowd.

The cop tried to stop him.

“Van Dorn!” Bell shouted. “Is that one of my men?”

“Take a look.”

John Scully lay on his back, his eyes staring wide open, his hands folded over his chest.

“Looks like a heart attack,” said the cop. “He yours?”

Bell knelt beside him. “Yes.”

“Sorry, mister. Least he went peaceful. Probably never knew what hit him.”