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“What else do you know about him?”
“From my former point of view, that was all I needed to know.”
Bell stood up. “Interesting seeing you, Larry.”
Rosania suddenly looked embarrassed. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I go by Laurence now. The widow likes calling me Laurence. Says it’s more refined.”
“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 citiz
ens, 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.”
