the Spy (2010) by Cussler Clive (early readers .txt) 📕

I'll keep in touch, said Bell.

Would you stay for a cocktail?

I'm afraid I can't, thank you. I'm expected in New York. As she walked him to the door, Bell glanced into the dining room and remarked, That is a splendid table. Is it a Mackintosh? It sure is, she answered proudly. Father used to say if buying a piece of art that he could not afford meant eating beans for supper, he would eat beans for supper.

Bell had to wonder if Langner had gotten tired of beans and accepted a bribe from a steel mill. As he stepped through the gate he looked back. Dorothy was standing on the step, looking for all the world, he thought, like a fairy princess locked in a tower.

THE B & O RAILROAD'S ROYAL LIMITED was the fastest and most luxurious train from Washington to New York. As night darkened the lead crystal windows, Isaac Bell used the quiet journey to review the hunt for the Frye Boys. The state line-jumping bank robbers that Van Dorn detectives had been tracking through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio had vanished somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania. As had Detective John Scully.

Dinner aboard the Royal, the equal of Delmonico's or the new Plaza Hotel, was served in a mahogany-paneled dining car. Bell had Maryland rockfish and a half bottle of Mumm, and reflected upon how much Dorothy Langner reminded him of his fiancEe. Clearly, were she not grieving for her father, Dorothy would be a quick-witted, interesting woman, much like Marion Morgan. The women had similar backgrounds: each lost her mother young and had been educated more than most women thanks to doting fathers who were accomplished men and wanted their daughters to exercise their talents fully.

Physically, Marion and Dorothy could not be more different. Dorothy's hair was a glossy black mane, Marion's a gleaming straw blond; Dorothy's eyes were a compelling blue-gray, Marion's an arresting coral-sea green. Both were tall, slim, and lithe. And both, he thought with a smile, could stop traffic by merely stepping into the street.

Bell checked his gold pocket watch as the Royal pulled into its Jersey City terminal. Nine o'clock. Too late to visit Marion at her hotel in Fort Lee if she was shooting pictures tomorrow. The laugh was on him. Marion was directing a two-reel moving picture about imaginary bank robbers while he was chasing real ones. But a movie drama, he had already learned from observing her at work, took as much planning and detail work as the real thing. And for that, a girl needed her sleep.

He scanned the newsstands and the papers that boys were hawking when he got off the train. Headlines dueled for attention. Half proclaimed a fantastic variety of Japanese threats to the Great White Fleet if-as was rumored-President Roosevelt ordered it close to the Japanese Islands. Half blamed the murder of a New York school-teacher on Chinese white slavers. But it was the weather banners Bell was searching, hoping for a bad forecast.

Excellent! he exclaimed aloud. The Weather Bureau predicted clouds and rain.

Marion would not have to rise at dawn to catch every available ray of sunlight.

He hurried from the terminal. The sixteen-mile trolley ride to Fort Lee would take at least an hour, but there might be a better way. The Jersey City Police were experimenting with a motor patrol like New York's across the river and, as he expected, one of their six-cylinder Ford autos was sitting in front of the terminal manned by a sergeant and patrolman formerly of the Mounted Division.

Van Dorn, Bell addressed the sergeant, who looked a little lost without his horse. It's worth twenty dollars to get me to Cella's Park Hotel in Fort Lee.

Ten would have done it. For twenty, the sergeant cranked the siren.

THE RAIN STARTED as the racing police Ford crested the Palisades. Flinging mud, it tore down Fort Lee's Main Street, skidded along the trolley tracks, and whisked past a movie studio whose glass walls glittered in its feeble headlamps. Outside the village, they pulled up to Cella's, a large white two-story frame building set in a picnic grounds.

Bell bounded across the front porch with a big grin on his face. The dining room, which turned into a bar at night, was still open and doing a roaring business as the actors, directors, and cameramen conceded that without sunlight to film by, tomorrow was a lost day. A gang of pitch-perfect singers was grouped around the piano harmonizing,You can go as far as you like with me In my merry Oldsmobile.

He spotted Marion at a corner table, and his heart nearly stopped. She was laughing, deep in conversation with two other women directors whom Bell had met before: Christina Bialobrzesky, who claimed to be a Polish countess but whose accent sounded to Bell's ear like New Orleans, and the dark-haired, dark-eyed Mademoiselle Duvall of PathE FrA"res.

Marion looked up. She saw him standing in the doorway and jumped to her feet with a radiant smile. Bell rushed across the room. She met him halfway, and he picked her up in his arms and kissed her.

What a wonderful surprise! she exclaimed. She was still in her working clothes-shirtwaist, long skirt, and a snug jacket. Her blond hair was heaped up in back, out of her way, exposing her long, graceful neck.

You look lovely.

Liar! I look like I've been up since five in the morning.

You know I never lie. You look terrific.

Well, so do you. And then some . . . Have you eaten?

Dinner on the train.

Come. Join us. Or would you rather we sit alone?

I'll say hello first.

The hotel proprietor approached, beaming with fond memories of Bell's last visit and rubbing his hands. Champagne, again, Mr. Bell?

Of course.

For the table?

For the room!

Isaac! said Marion. There are fifty people in here.

Nothing in my grandfather Isaiah's will says I can't spend a portion of his five million dollars on a toast to the beauty of Miss Marion Morgan. Besides, they say