The doctor hesitated. To Isaac Bell, Lillian Osgood Abbott was the little sister he had never had. He could forget that she was so exquisitely beautiful that most men found it very difficult to speak to her on first meeting. In this awful instance, Bell guessed that the doctor could not bear to utter any word that would cause tears to track her cheeks or her brave mouth to crumble.

“Tell me,” she repeated, and took the doctor’s hand. Her firm touch gave the man courage.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Abbott. The bullet did much damage, barely missed the heart and shattered two ribs.”

Bell felt a cavern open in his own heart. “Is he dead?”

“No! . . . Not yet.”

“Is it hopeless?” Lillian asked.

“I wish I could . . .”

Bell held tighter as she sagged in his arms.

He said, “Is there nothing that can be done?”

“I . . . nothing I can do.”

“Is there anyone who can save him?” Isaac Bell demanded.

The doctor gave a deep sigh and stared sightlessly back at him. “There is only one man who could even attempt to operate. The surgeon S. D. Nuland-Novicki. In the Boer War, he developed new procedures for treating gunshot wounds. Unfortunately, Dr. Nuland-Novicki—”

“Get him!” cried Lillian.

“He is away. He’s lecturing in Chicago.”

Isaac Bell and Lillian Osgood Abbott locked eyes in sudden hope.

The doctor said, “But even if Nuland-Novicki could board the Twentieth Century Limited in time, your husband will never last the eighteen hours it will take to get here. Nineteen, with the extra time from here to Long Island. We can’t move him to New York.”

“How long does he have?”

“Twelve or fourteen hours at most.”

“Take us to a telephone,” Bell demanded.

The doctor led them at a dead run through echoing halls to the hospital’s central telephone station. “Thank God, Father’s at home,” said Lillian. “New York,” she told the operator. “Murray Hill four-four-four.”

The connection was made to Osgood Hennessy’s limestone mansion on Park Avenue. The butler summoned Hennessy to the telephone.

“Father. Listen to me. Archie’s been shot . . . Yes, he is desperately wounded. There is a surgeon in Chicago. I need him here in twelve hours.”

The doctor shook his head, and said to Bell, “The Twentieth Century and the Broadway Limited take eighteen hours. What train could possibly make it from Chicago to New York faster than those crack fliers?”

Isaac Bell allowed himself a hopeful smile. “A special steaming on tracks cleared by a railroad baron who loves his daughter.”

“COMMISSIONER BAKER’S ENEMIES call him a lightweight,” growled Osgood Hennessy, referring to New York City’s recently appointed police commissioner. “I call him a damned good fellow.”