The Spy (Isaac Bell 3)

“We always ascribed their gunning down the teller and the customer to viciousness. But what if those three were stupid enough to rob the nearest bank to home?”

Grady Forrer stood up straighter.

“What if they murdered witnesses because they were recognized-even while wearing masks. Maybe the witnesses knew them as local boys. Little Johnny down the road grew up and got a gun. Remember their first note in blood? ‘Fear the Frye Boys.’ ”

“So maybe they weren’t so stupid, after all,” marveled the research man. “From then on everyone called them the ‘Frye Boys.’ ”

“Just like they wanted us to. Find a family near that East Brunswick bank with three brothers or cousins who suddenly disappeared. Even two brothers and a next-door neighbor.”

Bell wired the operatives sent to help Scully, and Scully himself, instructing them to head for East Brunswick.

Merci, Mademoiselle Duvall!

And who else has been steering my thoughts?

Which brought him straight back to his photograph of Arthur Langner’s suicide note. He laid it next to the snapshot he had taken yesterday morning of one of Langner’s handwritten patent applications. He pored over them with a magnifying glass, searching for inconsistencies that might suggest forgery. He could see none. But he was not an expert, which was why he had summoned the handwriting expert from Greenwich Village.

Dr. Daniel Cruson preferred the high-sounding title “graphologist.” His white beard and bushy eyebrows fit a man who spouted lofty theories about the European “talking cure” of Drs. Freud and Jung. He was also prone to statements like “The complex robs the ego of light and nourishment,” which was why Bell avoided him when he could. But Cruson possessed a fine eye for forgery. So fine that Bell suspected that “Dr. Graphology” made ends meet by cobbling up the occasional bank check.

Cruson inspected the photograph of the suicide note with a magnifying glass, then screwed a jeweler’s loupe into his eye and repeated the process. At last he sat back in his chair, shaking his head.

Bell asked, “D

o you see inconsistencies in that handwriting that might suggest it was penned by a forger?”

Cruson said, “You are a detective, sir.”

“You know I am,” Bell said curtly to head off a windy discourse.

“You are familiar with the work of Sir William Herschel?”

“Fingerprint identification.”

“But Sir William also believed that handwriting exposes character.”

“I am less interested in character than forgery.”

Cruson did not hear. “From this mere sample, I can tell that the man who wrote this note was eccentric, highly artistic, and very dramatic, too. Given to the grand gesture. Deeply sensitive with powerful feelings that could be overwhelming.”

“In other words,” Bell interrupted, bleakly conceding he would have to report the worst to Dorothy Langner, “the emotional sort likely to commit suicide.”

“So tragic to take his own life so young.”

“Langner wasn’t young.”

“Given time, with psychological analysis, he could have investigated the sources of his sorrow and learned to control his self-destructive impulses.”

“Langner was not young,” Bell repeated.

“He was very young.”

“He was sixty years old.”

“Impossible! Look at this hand. See the bold and easy flow. An older man’s writing cramps-the letters get smaller and trail off as the hands stiffen with age. This is beyond any doubt the handwriting of a man in his twenties.”

“Twenties?” echoed Bell, suddenly electrified.

“No older than thirty, I guarantee you.”