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“But I do not like the killing,” Hans protested. Staring morbidly into the lens of the old battleship searchlight behind the spy’s desk, he saw his face reflected like a decaying skull.
The spy surprised Hans by answering in northern-accented German. Hans had assumed that the man was American, so perfect was his English. Instead, he spoke like a compatriot. “You had no choice, mein Freund. Chad Gordon’s armor plate would have given enemy ships an unfair advantage. Soon the Americans will launch dreadnoughts. Would you have their dreadnoughts sink German ships? Kill German sailors? Shell German ports?”
“You are right, mein Herr,” Hans answered. “Of course.”
The spy smiled as if he sympathized with Hans’s humane qualms. But in the seclusion of his own mind he laughed. God bless the simple Germans, he thought. No matter how powerful their industry grew, no matter how strong their Army, no matter how modern their Navy, no matter how loudly their Kaiser boasted “Mein Feld ist die Welt,” they always feared they were the little guy.
That constant dread of being second best made them so easy to lead.
Your field is the world, Herr Kaiser? The hell it is. Your field is full of sheep.
4
IT WAS A CHINAMAN,” SAID MARINE LANCE CORPORAL Black, puffing smoke from a two-dollar cigar.
“If you believe the Gramps Patrol,” puffed Private Little.
“He means the night watchmen.”
Isaac Bell indicated that he understood that the “Gramps Patrol” were the pensioners employed as night watchmen to guard the navy yard inside the gates, while the Marines manned the gates themselves.
He and the husky young leathernecks were seated at a round table in O’Leary’s Saloon on E Street. They had been generous sports about their previous encounter, offering Bell grudging respect for his fighting skills and forgiving black eyes and loosened teeth after only one round of drinks. At Bell’s urging they had polished off a lunch of steaks, potatoes, and apple pie. Now, with whiskey glasses at hand and Bell’s Havanas blueing the air, they were primed to be talkative.
Their commandant had ordered a list of everyone who had passed through the gates the night that Arthur Langner had died, they told him. No names had aroused any suspicion. Bell would get Joe Van Dorn to wangle a peek at that list to confirm the commandant’s judgment.
A night watchman had reported an intruder. The report had apparently not even reached the commandant, rising no higher up the chain of command than the sergeant of the gate guard, who had deemed it nonsense.
Bell asked, “If it were true, what the Gramps Patrol reported, why do you suppose a Chinaman would break into the navy yard?”
“Looking to steal something.”
“Or after the girls.”
“What girls?”
“The officers’ daughters. The ones who live in the yard.”
Private Little looked around to make sure no one was listening. The only patron close enough was curled up on the floor, snoring in the sawdust. “Commandant’s got a couple of lovelies I wouldn’t mind getting to know better.”
“I see,” said Bell, suppressing a smile. The idea of an amorous Chinese infiltrating an American Navy base by scaling a ten-foot wall guarded by Marines at every gate and watchmen inside did not suggest a productive path of investigation. But, he reminded himself, while a detective had always to be skeptical, the wise skeptic dismissed no possibility without first considering it. “Who,” he asked, “was this old night watchman who told you this?”
“He didn’t tell us. He told the sergeant.”
“His name is Eddison,” said Black.
“Big John Eddison,” Little added.
“How old is he?”
“Looks a hundred.”
“Big old man. Nearly as tall you, Mr. Bell.”
“Where would I find him?”
“There’s a rooming house where the salts hang out.”
Bell found Eddison’s rooming house on F Street within a short walk of the navy yard. It had a front porch filled with rocking chairs, empty this cold afternoon. He went in and introduced himself to the landlady, who was laying her long table for supper. She had a thick Southern accent, and a face still pretty despite the lines acquired in years of hard work.
