Bell bounded across the front porch with a big grin on his face. The dining room, which turned into a bar at night, was still open and doing a roaring business as the actors, directors, and cameramen conceded that without sunlight to film by, tomorrow was a lost day. A gang of pitch-perfect singers was grouped around the piano harmonizing,

“You can go as far as you like with me

In my merry Oldsmobile.”

He spotted Marion at a corner table, and his heart nearly stopped. She was laughing, deep in conversation with two other women directors whom Bell had met before: Christina Bialobrzesky, who claimed to be a Polish countess but whose accent sounded to Bell’s ear like New Orleans, and the dark-haired, dark-eyed Mademoiselle Duvall of Pathé Frères.

Marion looked up. She saw him standing in the doorway and jumped to her feet with a radiant smile. Bell rushed across the room. She met him halfway, and he picked her up in his arms and kissed her.

“What a wonderful surprise!” she exclaimed. She was still in her working clothes-shirtwaist, long skirt, and a snug jacket. Her blond hair was heaped up in back, out of her way, exposing her long, graceful neck.

“You look lovely.”

“Liar! I look like I’ve been up since five in the morning.”

“You know I never lie. You look terrific.”

“Well, so do you. And then some… Have you eaten?”

“Dinner on the train.”

“Come. Join us. Or would you rather we sit alone?”

“I’ll say hello first.”

The hotel proprietor approached, beaming with fond memories of Bell’s last visit and rubbing his hands. “Champagne, again, Mr. Bell?”

“Of course.”

“For the table?”

“For the room!”

“Isaac!” said Marion. “There are fifty people in here.”

“Nothing in my grandfather Isaiah’s will says I can’t spend a portion of his five million dollars on a toast to the beauty of Miss Marion Morgan. Besides, they say that Grandfather had an eye for the ladies.”

“So five million was not all you inherited.”

“And when they get drunk, they won’t notice us slipping upstairs to your room.”

She led him by the hand. Christina and Mademoiselle Duvall were also still in their work clothes, though the flamboyant Frenchwoman wore her usual riding pants. She kissed Bell’s cheeks and called him “Eee-zahk.”

“This week we all three are each shooting about bank row-bears, Eee-zahk. You must give me inspector tips.”

“She wants more than tips,” Marion whispered with a grin.

“Are bank row-bears not the symbol of Americain freedom?” Mademoiselle Duvall demanded.

Bell returned a grim smile. “Bank robbers are symbols of death and terror. The trio I’m chasing at the moment routinely shoot everyone in the building.”

“Because they fear to be recognized,” said the French director. “My bank row-bears will shoot no one because they will be of the poor and known by the poor.”

Christina rolled her eyes. “Like Row-ben Hoods?” she asked acerbically.

“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.”

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.”

“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.