The Spy (Isaac Bell 3) - Page 18
“Just so the audience knows who’s who,” Marion suggested, “you better make them wear masks.”
“A mask can only mask a stranger,” said Mademoiselle Duvall.
“Were I to don a mask”-she demonstrated with her scarf, drawing the silk across her Gallic nose and sensual mouth so that only her eyes were visible-“Eee-zahk will still recognize me by my gaze.”
“That’s because you’re making eyes at him,” laughed Marion.
Isaac Bell’s expression changed abruptly.
“Is not my fault! Eee-Zahk is too handsome to contain myself. For that, I would have to pull the wool over my eyes.”
Now they noticed his features harden. He appeared remote and cold. Mademoiselle Duvall reached out and touched his arm. “Chéri,” she apologized. “You are too serious. Forgive my behavior if I was inapproprié.”
“Not at all,” Bell said, patting her hand distractedly as he gripped Marion’s tightly under the table. “But you have given me a strange idea. Something to think about.”
“No more thinking tonight,” said Marion.
Bell stood up. “Excuse me. I have to send a wire.”
The hotel had a telephone that he used to call the New York office and dictate a wire to be sent to John Scully care of every Van Dorn post in the region where the detective had last been heard from.
NAME CHANGED FRYES HEADED HOME NEAR
FIRST JOB IN NEW JERSEY
Marion was smiling in the lobby next to the stairs. “I said good night for you.”
7
GET DOWN TO GREENWICH VILLAGE AND BRING BACK Dr. Cruson,” Isaac Bell ordered an apprentice when he rushed into Van Dorn’s Knickerbocker office early the next morning. “You are authorized to take a taxi both ways. On the jump!”
Dr. Daniel Cruson was a handwriting expert.
The apprentice raced off.
Bell read his telegrams. The laboratory in Washington confirmed that the ink on Arthur Langner’s note was the same ink in Langner’s pen. He was not surprised.
A wire from Pennsylvania demonstrated the shortcomings of John Scully’s lone-wolf approach to detecting. The operatives who Joe Van Dorn had assigned to assist Scully while Bell investigated the Arthur Langner death had sent:
CAN’T FIND SCULLY.
STILL LOOKING.
RETURN C/O WESTERN UNION SCRANTON AND
PHILADELPHIA.
Bell growled a mild oath under his breath. They had split up to increase their chances of finding Scully. Ifthey didn’t find him by noon, it would fall to him to inform the boss that the detectives assigned to help Scully track the Frye Boys were instead tracking Scully.
Bell called for the research operative he had brought into the case. Grady Forrer was a grizzly bear of man with an immense chest and belly. He looked like a fellow you would want on your side in a barroom brawl. But his greatest strengths were a ferocious determination to track down the minutest details and a prodigious memory.
“Have you found out where home was for these hydrophobic skunks?” Bell asked. “Where did they grow up?”
The research man shook his head. “I’ve been beating my brains out, Isaac. Can’t find any set of three Frye brothers anywhere in New Jersey. Tried cousins. No go.”
Bell said, “I have an idea about that. What if they changed their name at the time of their first unauthorized withdrawal? That original robbery was in the middle of the state, if I recall. East Brunswick Farmers’ Mutual Savings.”
“Hick-town bank about halfway to Princeton.”
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