“Instead of chopping his head off, or whatever they do to Japanese Lotharios, he banished him to the northernmost cape of the northernmost island of Japan—Hokkaido. For an artist who needed his workshop and staff, it was worse than prison. Then his mistress smuggled in paper, ink, and a brush. And until he died, alone in his tiny little hut, he drew calligraphy scrolls. But no one could admit they existed. His mistress and everyone who helped her visit him would have been executed. They could not be displayed. They could not be sold. Somehow the prints ended up with a dealer in San Francisco, who sold one to my father.”

“Forgive me my skepticism, but it does sound like an art dealer’s story,” said Bell.

“Except it is true. Yamamoto Kenta does not know about the Exile Scrolls. Therefore he is no scholar and no curator of Japanese art.”

“Which makes him a spy,” Bell said grimly. “And a murderer. Well done, my darling. We’ll hang him with this.”

THE SPEECHES THAT ACCOMPANIED the luncheon’s toasts were mercifully brief, and the rousing one delivered by Captain Lowell Falconer, Special Inspector of Target Practice, was, in the words of Ted Whitmark, “a real stem-winder.”

With crackling language and powerful gestures, the Hero of Santiago praised Camden’s modern yard, lionized the ship workers, thanked the Congress, commended the chief constructor, and acclaimed the naval architect.

During one of the explosions of applause, Bell whispered to Marion, “The only thing he hasn’t praised is the Michigan.”

Marion whispered back, “You should have heard what he said privately about the Michigan. He compared her to a whale. And I don’t believe he meant it as a compliment.”

“He did mention that it is barely half the size of Hull 44.” With a courtly bow in Dorothy’s direction, Falconer wound his toast up with a stirring testimonial to Arthur Langner. “The hero who built Michigan’s guns. Finest 12s in the world today. And a harbinger of even better to come. Every man jack in the Navy will miss him.”

Bell glanced at Dorothy. Her face was alight with joy that even a maverick officer like Falconer had said for all to hear that her father was a hero.

“May Arthur Langner rest in peace,” Captain Falconer concluded, “knowing that his nation sleeps in peace secured by his mighty guns.”

The last bit of business was the presentation by the chairman of New York Ship of a jeweled pendant to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy’s quick-moving daughter, who had cracked the champagne over Michigan’s bow before the ship got away. Heading for the podium, the savvy industrialist shook hands warmly with a man in an elegant European frock coat, who handed him the pendant. And before he draped it around the young lady’s neck, he used the occasion to plug the booming jewelry industry in Camden’s sister city of Newark.