Clive Cussler - The Spy

The animal was shockingly strong. Every inch of its four-foot length writhed with spasmodic, sinewy power as it squirmed to break his grip and strike him again. Its fangs were cocked inside its arrow-shaped head. Yellow venom dripped from its wide-open jaws. Bell imagined that he could see in its eyes a gleam of triumph, as if the serpent were sure that its deadly poison had already won the battle and that its prey would die in minutes. Gasping for breath, Bell reached with his free hand for the knife in his boot. “Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Snake. But you made the mistake of sinking your fangs into my shoulder holster.”

An Old Blue threw open the door. “Who’s shooting guns in here?”

At the sight of the headless snake still twitching in Bell’s fist, he turned white and pressed both hands to his mouth.

Bell pointed commandingly with his bloody knife. “If you are going to be sick, the facilities are down the hall.”

Matthew the doorman stuck his head in the room. “Are you-”

“Where did that steamer trunk come from?” demanded Bell.

“I don’t know. It must have arrived before I came on.”

“Get the manager!”

The club manager arrived minutes later in his nightclothes. His eyes widened at the sight of the broken mirror, the headless snake twitching on the floor, its head resting on the dresser, and Isaac Bell wiping his knife with a ruined pillowcase.

“Assemble your staff,” Bell told him. “Either Lachesis muta here was not blackballed by the Membership Committee, or one of your people helped him into my room.”

ICEMAN WEEKS WAS HOOFING IT across town, having watched from a stable until Isaac Bell entered the Yale Club and waited to make sure he didn’t come out again. At Eighth Avenue he turned up several blocks, walked under the connector line that linked the Ninth Avenue and Sixth Avenue Els, and knocked on an unmarked door to a house just inside 53rd Street where Tommy Thompson had opened a gambling hall on the second floor. The Gopher guarding the door said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Tell Tommy I got good news for him.”

“Tell him yourself. He’s on the third floor.”

“Figured he’d be.”

Weeks climbed the stairs, passed the gambling hall, guarded by another guy who looked surprised to see him, and headed for the third floor. One of the steps sagged a little under his foot, and he guessed it was rigged to dim the electric light in Tommy’s room above the gambling hall to warn him someone was coming.

Weeks waited, bouncing from leg to leg, while they sized him up through the peephole. Tommy himself opened the door. “I guess you did it,” he said. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

“Are we square now?”

“Come on in. Have a drink.”

Tommy was drinking Scotch highballs. Weeks was so excited that the booze went straight to his head. “Wanna hear how I did it?”

“Sure. Just wait ’til we’re done here. Shut that light.”

Tommy’s bouncer pushed the switch, plunging the room into near darkness. He hinged open a trapdoor, and Weeks saw that they had cut a square hole in the floor down through the ceiling below and filled it with a smoky pane of glass. “Latest thing,” chuckled Tommy. “One-way mirror. We see down. All they see in the ceiling is their own mugs.”

Weeks peered down at the gambling floor where six men were seated around a high-stakes poker table. One of them Weeks recognized as the best card mechanic in New York. Another, Willy the Roper, specialized in rounding up players to be fleeced. “Who’s the mark?”

“The swell in the red necktie.”

“Rich?”

“Eyes O’Shay says that necktie means he’s a Harvard.”

“What’s his line?”

“Selling food to the Navy.”

Selling food to the Navy sounded to Iceman Weeks like a way to get rich. The Navy business was booming. That Commodore Tommy was engaged in separating so exalted a dude from his money by rigging a high-stakes poker game sounded like Tommy had moved up several notches from robbing freight cars. “What are you taking this Harvard for?” he asked casually.

“Eyes said to take him for all he’s got and lend him dough to lose more.”

“Sounds like Eyes wants to have something on him.”

“Won’t be hard. Ted Whitmark is a gambling fool.”

“What do you get out of it?” Weeks asked, pouring himself another highball.

“Part of our arrangement,” Tommy answered. “Eyes has been mighty generous. If he wants Mr. Whitmark to lose his dough at poker and get in hock to lose some more, it’s a pleasure to help him.”

As Weeks poured his third drink, it occurred to him that Commodore Tommy Thompson was normally more tight-lipped. He wondered what made him so talkative all of a sudden. Jaysus! Was Tommy inviting him to share in the Gophers?

“Want to hear how I did Bell?”

Tommy shut the trapdoor and gestured for his bouncer to turn on the light. “You see that over there on the table? You see what that is?”

“It’s a telephone,” Weeks answered. It looked brand-new, all shiny, the candlestick type you saw in the best joints. “You’re getting up-to-date, Tommy. Didn’t know you had it in ya.”

Tommy Thompson grabbed Weeks by his lapels, effortlessly picked the smaller man off the floor, and threw him hard against the wall. Weeks found himself on the carpet, his head ringing, his brain squirming. “What?”

Tommy kicked him in the face. “You didn’t kill Bell!” he roared. “That telephone tells me that right now Bell is grilling everybody who works in that club.”

“What?”

“The telephone says the Van Dorn’s alive. You didn’t kill him.”

Iceman Weeks pulled the pistol that he had taken from the Cumberland Hotel house dick. Tommy’s bouncer stepped on his hand and took it away from him.

THE MANAGER OF THE YALE CLUB woke the staff and gathered them in the big kitchen on the top floor. They knew Isaac Bell as a regular who remembered their names and was generous when the club’s no-tipping rule was waived at Christmas. All of them, manager, housekeeper, barman, chambermaids, porters, and front-desk clerk, clearly wanted to be of help when Bell asked, “Where did the trunk outside my door on the third floor come from?”

No one could answer. It had not been there when the day shift ended at six. A night-shift waiter had noticed it when passing by with room service at eight. The freight-elevator operator had not seen it, but he admitted taking a long dinner between six and eight. Then Matthew, who had stayed at the front door after Bell interviewed him privately, suddenly appeared, saying, “The new laundress? Mr. Bell. I found her across the street, weeping.”

Bell turned to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Pierce, who is the laundress?”

“The new girl, Jenny Sullivan. She doesn’t live in the house yet.”

“Matthew, could you bring her in?”

Jenny Sullivan was small and dark and trembling with fear. Bell said, “Sit down, miss.”

She stood rigid by the chair. “I didn’t mean no harm.”

“Don’t be afraid, you’ve-” He reached to comfort her with a gentle hand on her arm. Jenny screamed in pain and shrank back.

“What?” Bell said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt-Mrs. Pierce, could you look after Jenny?”

The kindly housekeeper led the girl away, speaking to her softly.

“I think everyone can go back to bed,” said Bell. “Good night. Thank you for your help.”

When Mrs. Pierce returned, she had tears in her eyes. “The girl is beaten black-and-blue from her shoulders to her knees.”