Clive Cussler - The Spy

“I believe that Mr. Van Dorn’s office is empty. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

He guided them into Van Dorn’s office, closed the door, and stood close to it listening. He heard Whitmark repeat, “This will square us, won’t it?”

“Nothing will square us.”

“Dorothy?” asked Ted. “What are you doing?”

The answer was the sharp crack of a gunshot. Bell threw open the door. Ted Whitmark lay on his back, blood pouring from his skull. Dorothy Langner dropped the nickel pistol she was holding onto Whitmark’s chest, and said to Isaac Bell, “He killed my father.”

“Yamamoto Kenta killed your father.”

“Ted didn’t set the bomb, but he’s been passing information about Father’s work on Hull 44.”

“Did Ted tell you that?”

“He tried to get rid of his guilt confessing to me.”

Harry Warren rushed in, gun drawn, and knelt by the body. Then he grabbed Van Dorn’s telephone. “She missed,” he told Bell, and said to the operator, “Get a doctor.”

“How badly is he hurt?” asked Bell.

“She only creased him. It’s his scalp that’s bleeding so much.”

“He won’t die?”

“Not from this. In fact, I think he’s starting to wake up.”

“She didn’t shoot him,” said Bell.

“What?”

“Ted Whitmark tried to kill himself. She grabbed the gun. She saved his life.”

Harry Warren had wise, old eyes. “Tell me why he tried to kill himself, Isaac.”

“He’s a traitor. He just confessed to me that he’s been passing information to the spy.”

Harry Warren looked Bell full in the face, and said, “It appears that Miss Langner saved the louse’s life.”

The Hotel Knickerbocker’s house doctor rushed in with his bag trailed by bellhops lugging a stretcher. “Stand back, everybody. Please stand back.”

Bell led Dorothy to his desk. “Sit down.” He beckoned an apprentice. “Please bring the lady a glass of water.”

“Why did you do that?” Dorothy whispered.

“I would not have if you had succeeded in murdering him. But since you didn’t, I think you’ve been through enough without adding police charges to your misery.”

“Will the police believe it?”

“If Ted goes along with it. And I imagine he will. Now, tell me everything he told you.”

“He lost a lot of money gambling last fall in Washington. Someone in the game offered to lend him money. In exchange, he talked to Yamamoto.” She shook her head in anger and bitterness. “He still doesn’t realize that that man must have set him up to lose.”

“He told me it was bad luck,” said Bell. “Go on.”

“The same thing happened this spring in New York and then out in San Francisco. Now it’s happened again. This time, he finally realized the enormity of what he was doing. Or so he claimed. I think he was trying to get me to come back. I told him we were through. He found out about someone I’ve been seeing.”

“Farley Kent.”

“Of course you know,” she said wearily. “Van Dorns never give up. When Ted found out about Farley, I think he realized that nothing in his entire life had any truth to it. He got religion. He was probably hoping I’d be waiting when he got out of jail. Or weeping when they hung him for treason.”

“Shooting him must have disabused him of that notion,” Bell observed.

She smiled. “I’m not sure how I feel right now about not killing him. I meant to. I can’t believe I missed. I was so close.”

“In my experience,” said Bell, “people who miss a sure shot wanted to miss. Murder does not come easily to most.”

“I wish I had killed him.”

“You would hang for it.”

“I wouldn’t care.”

“Where would that leave Farley Kent?”

“Farley would-” she started to say but stopped abruptly.

Bell smiled gently. “You were about to say that Farley would understand, but you realize that is not so.”

She hung her head. “Farley would be devastated.”

“I’ve seen Farley at work. He strikes me as your sort of man. He loves his work. Do you love him?”

“Yes, I do.”

“May I have a man escort you to the Brooklyn Navy Yard?” She stood up. “Thank you. I know the way.”

Bell walked her to the door. “You made this case, Dorothy, when you vowed to clear your father’s name. No one has done more to save his and Farley’s work on Hull 44. Thanks to you, we discovered the spy, and you can rest assured we will get him.”

“Did Ted tell you anything that helps?”

Bell answered carefully, “He believes that he did. Tell me, how did Ted happen to find out about Farley Kent?”

“A letter from a busybody signed ‘A friend.’ Why are you smiling, Isaac?”

“The spy is getting desperate,” was all Bell would say, but he had a powerful feeling that O’Shay had tricked Ted Whitmark into passing him false information. The spy wanted Bell to believe that he would attack from the land when in fact he intended to attack, somehow, from the water.

Dorothy kissed his cheek and hurried down the grand stairway.

“Mr. Bell,” said the front-desk man, “Knickerbocker house dick calling for you.”

GOT SOME UNSAVORY TYPES AT THE FRONT DOOR,” THE Hotel Knickerbocker’s house detective reported. “Claim they want to talk to you, Mr. Bell.”

“What are their names?”

“There’s a hairy oldster says he doesn’t have a name, and I’m inclined to believe him. The young ones call themselves Jimmy Richards and Marv Gordon.”

“Send ’em up.”

“They don’t look right for the lobby, if you know what I mean.”

“Understood. But they’re little Eddie Tobin’s cousins, so they’re coming in the front door. Tell the manager I authorized it. You walk with them so they don’t frighten the ladies.”

“O.K., Mr. Bell,” the house dick answered dubiously.

The Staten Island scowmen Richards and Gordon introduced their older companion, who had lanky gray hair and the squint lines from a lifetime on the water, as “Uncle Donny Darbee, who sailed us over.”

“What’s up, boys?”

“You still looking for torpedoes?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“The Navy and the Coast Guard and the Harbor Squad are swarming like mosquitoes,” said Richards.

“Searching every pier in the port,” said Gordon.

“Making it hard to do business,” muttered Uncle Donny.

“Have you seen the torpedoes?” Bell asked.

“Nope.”

“What do you know about them?”

“Nothing,” said Richards.

“Except you’re looking for them,” said Gordon.

“Nothing at all? Then what did you come to see me about?”

“We was wondering if you was interested in the Holland.”

“What Holland?”

“Biggest Holland we ever saw.”

“A Holland submarine?”

“YUP,” CHORUSED the Staten Island scowmen.

“Where?”

“Kill Van Kull.”

“Over on the Bayonne side.”

“Hold on, boys. If you’ve seen a submarine out in the open, it must belong to the Navy.”

“It’s hid. Under a car float.”

“Uncle Donny found it last night when the cops was chasing him.”

“Been watching that barge for days,” said Uncle Donny Darbee. Isaac Bell questioned them sharply.

Harbor cops hunting coal pirates had noticed Uncle Donny and his two friends following a coal barge in an oyster scow. Uncle Donny had declined to let the police board it for inspection. Pistol shots were exchanged. The cops had boarded anyway. Uncle Donny and his friends had jumped into the Kill and swam for shore.

Darbee’s friends were caught, but the old man swam for a car float that he had been eyeing for several days because the barge was tied up all by itself, unattended, and was carrying a pair of freight cars that might contain cargo. Tiring in the cold water as he hid in the shadow of the overhanging prow, the old man had begun to sink only to step on something solid where it was too deep to stand. When the cops gave up, Jimmy and Marv, who had been watching from the Staten Island side, had rescued their Dutch uncle in another oyster boat. Then they took a closer look at the barge. Under it, they saw the outline of a submarine.