“And speaking of red, your ears are.”

“I am mortified! They make it sound as if I were sashaying up Fifth Avenue seeking attention. Every woman there was dressed up for Easter. I only wore that hat because Mademoiselle Duvall and Christina bet me ten dollars I didn’t have the nerve.”

“The reporter got it all wrong. You were attracting attention. Had you been seeking it, you would not have skedaddled in that red Locomobile but would have sashayed up and down the avenue until dark.”

Marion reached across the table. “Did you see this strange article on the other side?”

Bell turned it over. “Lachesis muta? Oh, yes. He’s a doozy of a snake. Dripping deadly venom and mean as a hanging judge. You know, the Cumberland Hotel is only ten blocks up Broadway. I’ll bet I can talk my way into a Pathology Society meeting with a pretty girl on my arm, if you want to go see him.”

Marion shuddered.

When the champagne arrived, Bell raised his glass to her. “I’m afraid I can’t say it better than Mr. Rector. Thank you for making me the most fortunate gent on the Great White Way.”

“Oh, Isaac, it’s so good to see you.”

They sipped the Mumm and discussed the menu. Marion ordered Egyptian quail, declaring she had never heard of such a bird, and Bell ordered a lobster. They would start with oysters, “Lynnhavens from Maryland,” their waiter assured them, “big ones sent up special for Mr. Diamond Jim Brady. If I may recommend, Mr. Bell, Mr. Brady usually follows his lobsters with some ducks and a steak.”

Bell demurred.

Marion took his hand across the table. “Tell me about your work. Will it keep you in New York?”

“We’ve landed a spy case,” Bell answered in a low voice no one else could hear over the stir of laughter and music. “It’s tangled up in the international dreadnought race.”

Marion, accustomed to him revealing case details to her to hone his own thoughts, replied in the same level tone. “Rather different than bank robbers.”

“I told Joe Van Dorn: international or not, if they kill people they are first and foremost murderers. At any rate, Joe will fort up in Washington, and he’s given me the New York office and carte blanche to dispatch operatives around the country.”

“I presume it has to do with the naval gun designer whose piano blew up.”

“It’s looking more and more that it was not a suicide but a diabolical murder deliberately staged to appear to be suicide. And in such a bizarre way as to discredit the poor man and the entire gun system he developed. Of course, the hint of bribery taints everything he touched.”

Bell told her his doubts about Langner’s suicide note, and his conviction that the Washington Navy Yard prowler seen by old John Eddison had indeed been Japanese. He told her how the deaths of the armor expert and the fire-control expert had been originally presumed to be accidents.

Marion asked, “Did anyone see a Japanese man in the Bethlehem Iron Works?”

“The men I sent out there report that someone was seen running off. But he was a big fellow. Over six feet. Pale. Fair-haired. And thought to be German.”

“Why German?”

“Apparently as he ran for it he was heard to mutter, ‘Gott im Himmel!’”

Marion cocked an exquisitely skeptical eyebrow.

“I know,” said Bell. “It’s thin stuff.”

“Was either a pale, fair-haired German or a Japanese seen with Grover Lakewood, who fell off the cliff?”

“The Westchester County coroner told my man that no witness saw Lakewood crash to the ground. Lakewood had told friends he was spending the weekend practicing rock climbing, and his fatal head injuries were consistent with a climbing accident. Poor devil fell a hundred feet. They buried him in a closed coffin.”

“Was he climbing alone?”

“An old lady said she saw him shortly before the accident with a pretty girl.”

“Neither German nor Japanese?” Marion asked with a smile.

“A redhead,” Bell smiled back. “Presumably Irish.”

“Why Irish?”

Bell shook his head. “Her features reminded the old lady of her Irish maid. Again, thin stuff.”

“Three different suspects,” Marion observed. “Three different nationalities… Of course, what could be more international than the dreadnought race?”

“Captain Falconer is inclined to blame Japan.”

“And you?”

“There is no question that the Japanese are practiced at spying. I learned that, before the Russo-Japanese War, they thoroughly infiltrated the Russian Far East Fleet with spies who pretended to be Manchurian servants and laborers. When the fighting started, the Japanese knew more about Russian Navy tactics than the Russians did. But I’m keeping an open mind. It really could be any one of them.”

“A tall, handsome detective once told me that skepticism was his most valuable asset,” Marion agreed.

“It’s a big case that keeps getting bigger. And because the dreadnought program is so large and widespread, the scope of the case-the links-might have gone unnoticed quite a while longer if it weren’t for Langner’s daughter insisting that her father didn’t kill himself. Even then, if she hadn’t managed to get to Joe Van Dorn through her old school chum, then I would not have personally witnessed poor Alasdair’s murder. His death would have been written off as a saloon brawl, and who knows how many more they might have killed before anyone got wise.”

Bell shook his head. “Enough talk. Here come the oysters, and we’ve both got early starts tomorrow.”

“Look at the size of these!” Marion tipped an enormous oyster off its shell into her mouth, let it slide down her throat, and asked with a smile, “Is Miss Langner as beautiful as they say?”

“Who says?”

“Mademoiselle Duvall met her in Washington. Apparently there isn’t a man on the East Coast over nineteen who hasn’t fallen for her.”

“She is beautiful,” said Bell. “With the most extraordinary eyes. And I imagine were she not grieving she probably would be even lovelier.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for her, too.”

“My falling days are over,” Bell grinned.

“Do you miss them?”

“If love was gravity, I would be in free fall. What was Mademoiselle Duvall doing in Washington?”

“Seducing an Assistant Secretary of the Navy into hiring her to shoot movies of the Great White Fleet steaming through the Golden Gate into San Francisco. At least, that’s how she got the job filming the fleet’s departure from Hampton Roads last winter, so I assume she’s using the same tactics. Why do you ask?”

“This is strictly between us,” Bell replied seriously. “But Mademoiselle Duvall has had a long affair with a French Navy captain.”

“Oh, of course! Sometimes when she’s being very eye-battingly mysterious she’ll hint about ‘Mon Capitaine.’”

“Mon Capitaine happens to specialize in dreadnought research-which is to say, the Frenchman is a spy, and she is likely working for him.”

“A spy? She’s such a flibbertigibbet.”

“The Navy Secretary gave Joe Van Dorn a list of twenty foreigners who’ve been poking around Washington and New York on behalf of France, England, Germany, Italy, and Russia. Most look like flibbertigibbets, but we’ve got to investigate each of them.”

“No Japanese?”

“Plenty. Two from their embassy-a naval officer and a military attaché. And a tea importer who lives in San Francisco.”

“But what could Mademoiselle Duvall possibly film for the French Navy that the rest of us can’t?”

“Filming could be her excuse to get close to American Navy officers who might talk too much to an attractive woman. What did you mean, ‘the rest of us.’ Are you filming the Fleet, too?”

“Preston Whiteway just got in touch.”

Bell’s eyes narrowed slightly. The wealthy Whiteway had inherited several California newspapers. He had expanded them into a powerful chain of the yellowest yellow journalism type, and a movie newsreel company that Marion had started up for him before she came east to make moving pictures.