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When Joseph Van Dorn next replied to the caller, it was with a benign chuckle, though if the commandant had seen the chill in his eyes he might have retreated hastily.
“No, sir. I will not ‘produce’ an employee of mine on your sentries’ assertion that they caught a private detective red-handed. Clearly the man in my office was not ‘caught’ as he is standing here in front of me… I will register your complaint with the Navy Secretary when we lunch tomorrow at the Cosmos Club. Please convey my warmest regards to Mrs. Dillon.”
Van Dorn replaced the earpiece on its hook, and said, “Apparently, a tall, yellow-haired gent with a mustache knocked down some navy yard sentries who attempted to detain him.”
Bell displayed a row of even white teeth. “I imagine he’d have surrendered quietly if they hadn’t tried to beat him up.” He turned back to Dorothy Langner, his expression gentler. “Now, Miss Langner. There is something I must show you.”
He produced a photographic print, still damp from the developing process. It was an enlarged photograph of Langner’s suicide note. He had snapped it with a 3A Folding Pocket Kodak camera that his fiancée-a woman in the moving-picture line-had given him. Bell shielded most of the photograph with his hand to spare Miss Langner the deranged raving.
“Is this your father’s handwriting?”
She hesitated, peered closely, then reluctantly nodded. “It looks like his handwriting.”
Bell watched her closely. “You seem unsure.”
“It just looks a little… I don’t know! Yes, it is his handwriting.”
“I understand that your father was working under great strain to speed up production. Colleagues who greatly admired him admit he was being driven hard, perhaps beyond endurance.”
“Nonsense!” she snapped back. “My father wasn’t casting church bells. He ran a gun factory. He demanded speed. And if it were too much for him he would have told me. We’ve been thick as thieves since my mother died.”
“But the tragedy of suicide,” Van Dorn interrupted, “is that the victim can see no other escape from the unbearable. It is the loneliest death.”
“He would not have killed himself in that manner.”
“Why not?” asked Isaac Bell.
Dorothy Langner paused before she answered, noting despite her grief that the tall detective was unusually handsome, with an air of elegance tempered by rugged strength. That combination was a quality she looked for in men but found rarely.
“I bought him that piano so he could take up music again. To relax him. He loved me too much to use my gift as the instrument of his death.”
Isaac Bell watched her compelling silvery blue eyes as she pleaded her case. “Father was too happy in his work to kill himself. Twenty years ago he started out replicating British 4-inch guns. Today his gun factory builds the finest 12s in the world. Imagine learning to build naval guns accurate at twenty thousand yards. Ten miles, Mr. Bell!”
Bell cocked his ear for a change of tone that might express doubt. He watched her face for telltale signs of uncertainty in her lyrical description of the dead man’s work.
“The bigger the gun, the more violent the force it has to tame. There is no room for error. You must bore the tube straight as a ray of light. Its diameter can’t vary a thousandth of an inch. Rifling demands the artistry of Michelangelo; shrinking the jacket, the precision of a watchmaker. My father loved his guns-all the great dreadnought men love their work. A steam-propulsion wizard like Alasdair MacDonald loves his turbines. Ronnie Wheeler
up in Newport loves his torpedoes. Farley Kent his faster and faster hulls. It is joyous to be devoted, Mr. Bell. Such men do not kill themselves!”
Joseph Van Dorn intervened again. “I can assure you that Isaac Bell’s investigation has been as thorough as-”
“But,” Bell interrupted. “What if Miss Langner is right?”
His boss looked at him, surprised.
Bell said, “With Mr. Van Dorn’s permission, I will look further.”
Dorothy Langner’s lovely face bloomed with hope. She turned to the founder of the detective agency. Van Dorn spread his hands wide. “Of course. Isaac Bell will get right on it with the full support of the agency.”
Her expression of gratitude sounded more like a challenge. “That is all I can ask, Mr. Bell, Mr. Van Dorn. An informed appraisal of all the facts.” A sudden smile lit her face like a sunbeam, suggesting what a lively, carefree woman she had been before tragedy struck. “Isn’t that the least I can expect of a detective agency whose motto is ‘We never give up. Never!’ ”
“Apparently you’ve investigated us, too,” Bell smiled back.
Van Dorn walked her out to the reception room, repeating his condolences.
Isaac Bell went to the window that faced Pennsylvania Avenue. He watched Dorothy Langner emerge from the hotel with a slender redhead he had noticed earlier in the lobby. In any other company the redhead would be rated beautiful, but beside the gunner’s daughter she was merely pretty.
Van Dorn returned. “What changed your mind, Isaac? How she loved her father?”
