The Spy (Isaac Bell 3)

“If anyone else on the train gives you trouble, just come to me.”

“Please don’t tell Mr. Bennett. He wouldn’t understand.”

“Why not?”

“He is kind man. He has no idea how cruel people are.”

“Put it in your suitcase, and I won’t tell him a thing.”

Louis seized Bell’s hand in both of his. “Thank you, sir. Thank you for understanding.”

Bell’s face was a mask. “Go put it in your suitcase,” he repeated. The Chinese man hurried down the corridor and through the vestibule to the next car, where Bennett had his adjoining staterooms. Louis turned and waved another grateful thank-you. Bell nodded back as if thinking, What a pious young fellow.

In truth, he was speculating that the boyish-looking missionary students could be tong gangsters. And if that were so, he had to marvel at John Scully’s clairvoyance.

No other detective in the Van Dorn Agency could wander alone into Chinatown and two weeks later connect a pair of tong gangsters to the Hull 44 spy ring. He was tempted to clamp cuffs on Louis Loh and Harold Wing and lock them in the baggage car. Except he doubted that Louis and Harold were ringleaders if gangsters at all-and if they were henchmen, he could trail them to their boss.

That the spy recruited tong Chinese was typical of his international reach. It was hard to imagine someone like Abbington-Westlake even thinking about it. That the spy had tricked a famous English novelist into providing cover for his operatives indicated an imagination as intricate as it was diabolical.

“BET’S TO YOU, WHITMARK. In or out?”

Ted Whitmark knew full well that he should never stay in a hand of seven-card stud trying to fill an inside straight. The odds were ridiculous. He needed a four. There were only four fours in the deck, one heart, one diamond, one spade, one club. And the four of clubs had already been dealt to a hand across the table, and that man had bet when it fell, suggesting another four hidden in his hole cards. Four fours in a deck, one clearly missing, another likely. The odds were less than ridiculous, they were impossible.

But he had dropped a ton of money into the pot already and he had a feeling his luck was about to change. It had to. His losing streak had started weeks ago in New York, and it was tearing him down. He had lost more on the train to San Francisco, and since he had arrived he had lost nearly every night. One four gone. One or even two likely gone. Sometimes you had to take the bull by the horns and be brave.

“Bet’s to you, Whitmark. In or out?”

No more “Mr.” Whitmark, Ted noticed. Mr. had gone by the boards when he borrowed his third five thousand early in the evening. Sometimes you had to be brave.

“In.”

“It’s eight thousand.”

Whitmark shoved his chips in the pot. “Here’s three. And here’s my marker.”

“You sure?”

“Deal the cards.”

The man dealing looked across the table not at Ted Whitmark but at the scarred-face owner of the Barbary Coast casino who had been approving the loans. The owner frowned. For a moment, Whitmark felt saved. He could not call if he didn’t have the money. He would fold. He could go back to his hotel, sleep, and tomorrow work out a schedule to pay his losses from money the Navy would owe him after he delivered the goods to the Great White Fleet. Or Great White “Eat,” as one of his rivals had noted approvingly. Fourteen thousand sailors ate a lot of food.

The casino owner nodded.

“Deal the cards.”

The guy with the four caught another four. Whitmark got a nine of clubs, about as ugly a card as he had ever seen. Somebody bet. Somebody called. The fours raised the pot. Ted Whitmark folded.

“You mind showing me your last card after the hand?” he asked of the man to his left.

When it was over and three fours across the table had won, the man to Ted’s left, who had received the card Ted would have if he had stayed in, said, “It was a four. Bet you would have liked that,” he called across the table to the trip fours. You would have had four fours.”

“I would have liked it, too,” said Ted, and he stumbled to the bar. Before he could raise a glass, the man who owned the casino walked up and said, “I have a message for you from Tommy Thompson in New York.”

Ted shrank from the man’s cold gaze. “Don’t worry,” he mumbled. “I’ll pay you first, soon as I can.”

“Tommy says to pay me. I bought your marker.”

“On top of what I owe you? You’re taking a hell of chance.”