“How old is this widow?”

“Twenty-eight,” Rosania replied smugly.

“Congratulations.”

As Bell turned away, Rosania called, “Wait a minute.” Again he lowered his voice. “Did you see the Chinamen? There’s two of them on board.”

“What about them?”

“I wouldn’t trust them.”

“I understand they’re divinity students,” said Bell.

Laurence Rosania nodded sagely. “The preacher man is ‘The Invisible Man.’ When I worked the divinity student game, and the old ladies took me home to meet nieces and granddaughters, the gentlemen who owned the mansions looked through me like I was furniture.”

“Thanks for the help,” said Bell, fully intending when the train changed engines at Albany to send Sing Sing’s warden a telegram recommending a head count.

He walked back through the club car, eyeing the German. Skillful European tailoring mostly concealed a powerful frame. The man sat bolt upright, erect as a cavalry officer. “Afternoon,” Bell nodded.

Herr Shafer returned a cold, silent stare, and Bell recalled that Archie had told him that in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany citizens, both male and female, were required to surrender their train seats to military officers. Try that here, Bell thought, and you’ll earn a punch in the snoot. From men or women.

He continued toward the back of the train through six Pullman and stateroom cars to the observation car, where passengers were drinking cocktails as the setting sun reddened the sky across the Hudson River. The Chinese divinity students were dressed in identical ill-fitting black suits, each with a bulge indicating a bible near his heart. They sat with a bearded Englishman in tweed whom Bell assumed to be their protector, the journalist and novelist Arnold Bennett.

Bennett was a rugged-looking man with a stocky, powerful build. He appeared a bit younger than Bell had assumed him to be based on the articles he had read in Har per’s Weekly. He was holding forth to a rapt audience of Chicago businessmen on the pleasures of travel in the United States, and as Bell listened he got the distinct impression that the writer was practicing phrases for his next article.

“Could a man be prouder than to say, ‘This is the train of trains, and I have my stateroom on it.’”

A salesman with a booming voice like Dorothy Langner’s Ted Whitmark brayed, “Finest train in the world, bar none.”

“The Broadway Limited ain’t nothing to sneeze at,” remarked his companion.

“Old folks ride the Broadway Limited,” the salesman scoffed. “The 20th Century’s for up-and-up businessmen. That’s why Chicago fellows like it so.”

Arnold Bennett corralled the conversation again with practiced ease. “Your American comforts never cease to amaze. Do you know I can switch the electric fan in my bedchamber to three different speeds? I expect that it will provide through the night a continuous vaudeville entertainment.”

The Chicagoans laughed, slapped their thighs, and shouted to the steward for more drinks. The Chinese men smiled uncertainly, and Isaac Bell wondered how much English they understood. Were the slight young men frightened in the presence of large and boisterous Americans? Or merely shy?

When Bennett flourished a cigarette from his gold case, one student struck a match and the other positioned an ashtray. It looked to Bell like Harold Wing and Louis Loh filled dual roles as wards of the journalist and as manservants.

Approaching Albany, the train crossed the Hudson River on a high trestle bridge that looked down upon brightly lighted steam-boats. It halted in the yards. While the New York Central trainmen wheeled the engine away, then coupled on another and a dining car for the evening meal, Isaac Bell sent and collected telegrams. The fresh engine, an Atlantic 4-4-2 with drive wheels even taller than the last, was already rolling when he swung back aboard and locked himself in his stateroom.

In the short time since he had sent his wires from Harmon, Research had not learned anything about the German, the Australian, the Chinese traveling with Arnold Bennett, or Herr Riker’s ward. But the Van Dorns who had raced to Grand Central had started piecing together witnesses’ accounts of Scully’s murder. They had found no one who reported actually seeing the hatpin driven into John Scully’s brain. But it appeared that the killing had been coordinated with military precision.

This was now known: A Chinese delivery man bringing cigars to the departing trains reported seeing Scully rush up to the 20th Century platform. He seemed to be looking for someone.

Irish laborers hauling demolition debris said that Scully was talking to a pretty redhead. They were standing very closely as if they knew each other well.

The police officer hadn’t come along until the crowd had formed. But a traveler from upstate New York had seen a mob of college students surround Scully and the redhead, “Like he was inside a flying wedge.”

Then they hurried away and Scully was on the floor.

Where did they go?

Every which way, like melted ice.

What did they look like?

College boys.

“They set him up good,” Harry Warren had put it in his telegram to Bell. “Never knew what hit him.”

Bell, mourning his friend, doubted that. Even the best of men could be tricked, of course, but Scully had been sharp as tacks. John Scully would have known that he had been fooled. Too late to save himself, sadly. But Bell bet that he’d known. If only as he took his last breath.

Harry Warren went on to speculate whether the girl seen with Scully was the same redhead he had seen in the Hip Sing opium den where the detectives had inadvertently bumped into each other. The witnesses’ descriptions at Grand Central were too general to know. A pretty redheaded girl, one of a thousand in New York. Five thousand. Ten. But descriptions of her clothing did not jibe with the costume worn by the girl Harry had seen in the Chinatown gambling and drug parlor. Nor had she been wearing thick rouge and paint.

Bell took the spy’s taunting note from his pocket and read it again.

EYE FOR AN EYE, BELL.

YOU EARNED WEEKS SO WE WON’T COUNT HIM.

BUT YOU OWED ME FOR THE GERMAN.

The spy was boasting that both Weeks and the German had worked for his ring. Which struck Bell as reckless behavior in a line of business where discretion was survival and victories should be celebrated in the quietest manner. He could not imagine the cool Yamamoto or even the supercilious Abbington-Westlake writing such a note.

The spy also seemed deluded. Did he really believe that Isaac Bell and the entire Van Dorn Agency would ignore his attack? He was practically begging for a counterpunch.

Bell went to the dining car for the second seating.

The tables were arranged in place settings of four and two, and the custom was to be seated wherever there was room. He saw Bennett and his Chinese had an empty chair at their table for four. As earlier in the observation car, the witty writer was regaling nearby tables while his solemn charges sat quietly. The German, Shafer, was eating in stiff silence across from an American drummer who was failing miserably to make conversation. The Australian was at another table for two speaking earnestly with a table mate dressed as if he could afford to buy a gold mine. At another two, Laurence Rosania was deep in conversation with a younger man in an elegant suit.

Bell slipped the diner captain money. “I would like that empty seat at Mr. Bennett’s table.”

But as the captain led him toward the writer’s table, Bell heard another diner call out from a table he had just passed.

“Bell! Isaac Bell. I thought that was you.”

The gem merchant Erhard Riker rose from his table, brushing a napkin to his lips and extending his hand. “Another coincidence, sir? We seem to repeat them. Are you alone? Care to join me?”