EXPLOSION IN U.S. NAVY TORPEDO
STATION AT NEWPORT
TWO OFFICERS BLOWN TO ATOMS
NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, MAY 15TH.-An explosion that caused death and destruction occurred in the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport. It killed two naval officers and wrecked a production line.
Isaac Bell was stunned. Had he gone in the wrong direction?
“Good morning, Bell! You haven’t touched your roe. Has it turned?”
“Morning, Riker. No, it smells fine. Bad news in the paper.”
Riker opened his as he sat. “Good Lord. What caused it?”
“It doesn’t say. Excuse me.” Bell went back to his stateroom.
If not an accident but sabotage, then the spy’s reach was as broad as it was vicious. In the course of a single day his ring had executed a traitor in Washington, murdered a detective hot on his trail in New York, and blown up a heavily guarded naval station on the Rhode Island coast.
ISAAC BELL SET UP temporary headquarters in the back of the LaSalle Station luggage room within minutes of the 20th Century steaming into Chicago. Van Dorn detectives from the Palmer House head office had already blanketed the railroad station. They followed his suspects as they scattered.
Larry Rosania promptly vanished. A veteran Chicago detective was reporting embarrassedly when another rushed in. “Isaac! The Old Man says to telephone long-distance from the stationmaster’s private office. And make sure you’re alone.”
Bell did so.
Van Dorn asked, “Are you alone?”
“Yes, sir. Was either of the officers killed Ron Wheeler?”
“No.”
Bell breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“Wheeler snuck off to spend the night with a woman. If he hadn’t, he’d be dead, too. It was his people who were killed.”
“Thank the Lord he wasn’t. Captain Falconer says he’s irreplaceable.”
“Well, here is something else irreplaceable,” Van Dorn growled. Six hundred miles of copper telephone wire between Chicago and Washington did not diminish the sound of his anger. “This is not in the newspapers, and it won’t ever be-are you still alone there, Isaac?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Listen to me. The Navy has suffered a terrible loss. The explosion started a fire. The fire destroyed their entire arsenal of experimental electric torpedoes that had been imported from England. Wheeler’s people had apparently improved their range and accuracy vastly. More important-much more important-Wheeler’s people figured out a way to arm the warheads with dynamite. The Navy Secretary told me this morning. He is distraught. So much so, he is threatening to offer the President his resignation. Apparently the use of TNT would have given U.S. torpedoes ten times more power underwater.”
“Can we assume it was not an accident?”
“We have to,” Van Dorn answered flatly. “And even though the Navy is nominally in charge of guarding their own facility, they are extremely disappointed with Van Dorn Protection Services.”
Isaac Bell said nothing.
“I don’t have to explain the consequences of being a government entity’s target of blame, deserved or not,” Van Dorn continued. “And I am not entirely sure what you were doing in Chicago when the spy attacked in Newport.”
This did require an answer, and Bell said, “The Great White Fleet is about to make landfall at San Francisco. Scully was tracking the spy, or his agents, to San Francisco. Thanks to Scully, I very likely have him in my sights.”
“What do you suppose he intends to do?”
“I don’t know yet. But it must involve the fleet, and I am going to stop him before he does it.”
Van Dorn remained silent for a long minute. Bell said nothing. Finally the boss said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Isaac.”