“I want you to send a message back.”

“I can get the word passed to people who will tell him, if that’s what you mean.”

“Tell them that Isaac Bell is wiring his old friend Jethro Watt-Chief of the Southern Pacific Railroad Police-asking him to dispatch two hundred yard bulls to New York to guard the Eleventh Avenue freight sidings.”

“Can you do that?”

“Jethro is always spoiling for a fight, and I know for a fact that the railroads are getting fed up with their freight trains being robbed. Tommy Thompson will think twice before he hits a Van Dorn again. The SP’s cinder dicks may be the dregs but they’re tough as nails, and the only thing they fear is Jethro. Until they get here, none of our boys go alone. Two Van Dorns or more on the job, and careful when they’re off duty.”

“Speaking of alone, I bumped into your pal John Scully.”

“Where? I haven’t heard from him in weeks.”

“I shadowed a Gopher lieutenant into Chinatown. Dead end. He spent the day smoking opium. Scully wandered into the joint tricked out like a tourist.”

“What was Scully doing?”

“Last I saw, lighting a pipe.”

“Tobacco?” Bell asked, doubting it.

“ ’Fraid not.”

Bell looked at Harry Warren. “Well, if you could survive it, Scully will, too.”

THE TRANSATLANTIC STEAMER Kaiser Wilhem der Gross II thrust four tall black funnels and two even taller masts into the smoky sky at the edge of Greenwich Village. Her straight bow towered over tugboats, the pier, and fleets of horse-drawn hansom cabs and motor taxis.

“Right here is fine, Dave,” Isaac Bell said into the speaking tube of a brewster green Packard limousine provided by Archie Abbott’s wife Lillian’s father. The railroad tycoon was unable to meet his beloved daughter’s ship, as he was steaming across the continent on his private train-on the trail, Bell assumed, of an independent railroad to fold into his empire. Bell, who had urgent reason to speak with Archie, had offered to stand in for him.

“Pick me up on Jane Street after you get them loaded.”

He stepped out onto the cobblestones and watched the gangway. Not surprisingly, the newlyweds were first off the ship, guided ashore by solicitous purser’s mates and followed closely by a pack of newspaper reporters, who would have boarded the ship at Sandy Hook to greet New York’s most exciting young couple. More reporters were waiting on the pier. Some had cameras. Others were accompanied by sketch artists.

Bell, who preferred not to see his face on newsstands while investigating in disguise, retreated from the pier and waited on the street of low houses and stables.

Fifteen minutes later the limousine slowed, and he stepped nimbly aboard.

“Sorry about all the hoopla,” the blue-blooded Archibald Angell Abbott IV greeted him, clasping his hand. They had been best friends since boxing for rival colleges. “All New York is dying to see my blushing bride.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Bell, kissing the beauteous young Lillian warmly on the cheek before he settled on the folding seat that faced the couple. “Lillian, you look absolutely radiant.”

“Blame my husband,” she laughed, running her fingers through Archie’s thick red hair.

When they got to the limestone Hennessy mansion on Park Avenue, Bell and Archie talked in the privacy of the library. “She’s radiant,” said Bell. “You look beat.”

Archie raised his glass with a shaking hand. “Revels all night, cathedrals and country-house parties all day, then more revels. One forgets how energetic one was at nineteen.”

“What did you learn on the ship?”

“The Europeans are all looking for a fight,” Archie replied soberly.

“All worried the other guy will throw the first punch. The British are convinced there will be war with Germany. They know that the German Army is immense, and the German military has the Kaiser’s ear. Ear, hell, the Army and the Navy have the Kaiser’s heart and his blessing!

“The Germans are convinced there will be war with England because England will not tolerate an expanding German Empire. The British know that defeating the German Navy would not guarantee victory, whereas the defeat of the British Navy would spell the end to England’s overseas empire. If that weren’t enough, the Germans suspect that Russia will attack them to derail a revolution by distracting their peasants with a war. If that happens, the Germans fear, Britain will side with Russia because France is allied with the Russians. So Germany will force Austria and Turkey onto their side. But none of these idiots understand that their alliances will cause a war like no one’s ever seen.”

“That bleak?”

“Fortunately for us, none of them want the United States as an enemy.”

“Which is why,” Bell said, “I wonder if England and Germany are attempting to make the United States think the other is their enemy.”

“That’s precisely the kind of byzantine talk I heard on the ship,” said Archie. “You have an evil mind.”

“I’ve been hanging around the wrong crowd lately.”

“I thought it was that Yale education,” said Archie, a Princeton man.

“Courting the United States to be their ally, England and Germany could each secretly be maneuvering to make their enemy look like our enemy.”

“What about the Japanese?”

“Captain Falconer claims that anything that loosens the European footholds in the Pacific will embolden the Japanese. They’ll stay out of it as long as they can and then side with the winner. Frankly, he seems possessed by a fear of the Japanese. He saw them up close in the Russo-Japanese War, so he thinks he knows them better than most. He insists they’re brilliant spies. Anyway, to answer your question, we’ve had a Jap under surveillance for a week. Unfortunately, he gave us the slip.”

Archie shook his head in mock dismay. “I go away for one little honeymoon, and the detective business goes to hell. Where do you suppose he is?”

“Last seen on the railroad ferry into New York. We’re combing the city. He’s the best part of the case. I need him badly.”

“GOT THE REPORT on Riker and Riker,” Grady Forrer reported when Bell got back to headquarters. “On your desk.”

Erhard Riker was the son of the founder of Riker & Riker, importers of precious gems and precious metals for the New York and Newark jewelry industries. The younger Riker had expanded the company since taking over seven years ago when his father was killed in Boer War cross fire in South Africa. He shuttled regularly between the United States and Europe on luxury transatlantic ocean liners, favoring the German Wilhelm der Grosse and the British Lusitania, unlike his father who had patronized older, more staid steamships like the Cunard Line Umbria and North German Lloyd’s Havel. One fact caught Bell’s eye: Riker & Riker maintained its own private protection service both for guarding jewelry shipments and escorting Riker personally when he himself was carrying valuables.

Bell sought out the head of Research. “Are private guard services common in the gem line?”

“Seem to be with the Europeans,” said Grady Forrer, “traveling the way they have to.”

“What sort does he hire?”

“Pretty-boy bruisers. The sort you can dress up in fancy duds.”

A receptionist stuck his head in the door. “Telephone call for you, Mr. Bell. Won’t say who he is. English accent.”

Bell recognized the plummy drawl of Commander Abbington-Westlake.

“Shall we have another cocktail, old chap? Perhaps even drink it this time.”

“What for?”

“I have a very interesting surprise for you.”