Dashwood looked around, clearly unhappy to be the center of attention. He saw Bell watching from the back. A pleased grin lit his face. Bell gave his former apprentice a proud thumbs-up.
Dashwood drew a pistol from his coat, held it up for all to see, and ducked his head shyly at the cheers.
When they were alone, walking down Park Avenue, Bell asked, “How are you feeling?”
“I’m O.K.”
“I asked for a reason,” said Bell. “How is your health?” Dashwood had been caught in a German gas attack and the chlorine had played havoc with his lungs.
“I have good days and bad. At the moment I’m doing O.K.”
“When’s the last time the coughing laid you low?”
“Last month. I got over it. What’s up, Mr. Bell?”
“I think you should start calling me Isaac.”
“O.K., Isaac,” Dashwood answered slowly, working his way around the unaccustomed way of conversing with the boss who had been his teacher, sage, and adviser all in one. “Why do you ask about my condition?”
“I promised Mr. Van Dorn to look after the agency until he recovers. I need a right hand. And a troubleshooter I can send around the continent.”
“Why not Archie Abbott?”
“Archie’s stuck in France.”
“Isn’t there anyone else?”
“None I’d prefer.” Bell stopped walking, looked Dashwood in the eye, and thrust out his hand. “Can we shake on it?”
• • •
“TELEPHONE, MR. BELL. Dr. Nuland at the morgue.”
“Hello, Shep. Thanks again for reporting on that powder.”
“Would you happen to be looking for a Russian?”
Bell felt a surge of excitement. “It’s likely that neck shot was by a Russian. Why?”
“I looked a little deeper when I got your note. About your hunch? Turns out in 1914, 1915, and 1916 the Aetna Explosives Company filled huge contracts to supply the Russian government with smokeless powder.”
After Bell put down the phone, he called someone he knew in the New York Police Department laboratory. He was a bullet expert who was paid well and regularly to do private work for the Van Dorn Detective Agency. “I’m calling about that shell casing they found at Roosevelt where a shooting victim was murdered. The one with the expansion ring from a Mann pistol. Any idea where it was manufactured? . . . What’s that?”
It sounded to Bell as if the expert was whispering into a mouthpiece muffled by his hand.
“Like I already told you, Mr. Bell, they got egg on their face, and it’ll cost me my job to speak a word. I’m really sorry, Mr. Bell. But they’ll sack me if I get caught.”
“No hard feelings,” said Bell and hung up. He was not surprised, but it had been worth a try. He had run into similar resistance with the Coast Guard. Every time he tried to interview the crew of CG-9, he was told she was out of reach, far at sea, or her radio was broken. The truth was, the Coast Guard brass were just as embarrassed about Van Dorn’s shooting as the cop brass were about the bungled police protection at the hospital.
He had managed to wrangle a glimpse of the report on the slug that Shepherd Nuland fished out of Johnny’s skull. But it had offered no clue to its source of manufacture. Which made the possible Russian source of the smokeless powder the only information as close to a fact that he could get his hands on.
He composed a Marconigram in Van Dorn cipher. The Radio Corporation of America would transmit it from the former Marconi Wireless Station in New Jersey to the liner Nieuw Amsterdam:
NECK SHOT POWDER POSSIBLY RUSSIAN.
It wasn’t much to go on. But it would give Pauline Grandzau something to think about on the boat. And when Pauline put her mind to something, something interesting often came of it.
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