The Spy Read Online Free Page A

sir, such a general description could fit half the tall men in Washington . . . It could even describe a gentleman right here in my office as we speak. But I assure you that he does not look like he’s been at fisticuffs with the United States Marines—unless the Corps turns out a lesser breed of Leatherneck than in my day.”
    Isaac Bell put his hand in his pocket.
    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