“Speaking of alone, I bumped into your pal John Scully.”

“Where? I haven’t heard from him in weeks.”

“I shadowed a Gopher lieutenant into Chinatown. Dead end. He spent the day smoking opium. Scully wandered into the joint tricked out like a tourist.”

“What was Scully doing?”

“Last I saw, lighting a pipe.”

“Tobacco?” Bell asked, doubting it.

“ ’Fraid not.”

Bell looked at Harry Warren. “Well, if you could survive it, Scully will, too.”

THE TRANSATLANTIC STEAMER Kaiser Wilhem der Gross II thrust four tall black funnels and two even taller masts into the smoky sky at the edge of Greenwich Village. Her straight bow towered over tugboats, the pier, and fleets of horse-drawn hansom cabs and motor taxis.

“Right here is fine, Dave,” Isaac Bell said into the speaking tube of a brewster green Packard limousine provided by Archie Abbott’s wife Lillian’s father. The railroad tycoon was unable to meet his beloved daughter’s ship, as he was steaming across the continent on his private train—on the trail, Bell assumed, of an independent railroad to fold into his empire. Bell, who had urgent reason to speak with Archie, had offered to stand in for him.

“Pick me up on Jane Street after you get them loaded.”

He stepped out onto the cobblestones and watched the gangway. Not surprisingly, the newlyweds were first off the ship, guided ashore by solicitous purser’s mates and followed closely by a pack of newspaper reporters, who would have boarded the ship at Sandy Hook to greet New York’s most exciting young couple. More reporters were waiting on the pier. Some had cameras. Others were accompanied by sketch artists.

Bell, who preferred not to see his face on newsstands while investigating in disguise, retreated from the pier and waited on the street of low houses and stables.

Fifteen minutes later the limousine slowed, and he stepped nimbly aboard.

“Sorry about all the hoopla,” the blue-blooded Archibald Angell Abbott IV greeted him, clasping his hand. They had been best friends since boxing for rival colleges. “All New York is dying to see my blushing bride.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Bell, kissing the beauteous young Lillian warmly on the cheek before he settled on the folding seat that faced the couple. “Lillian, you look absolutely radiant.”

“Blame my husband,” she laughed, running her fingers through Archie’s thick red hair.

When they got to the limestone Hennessy mansion on Park Avenue, Bell and Archie talked in the privacy of the library. “She’s radiant,” said Bell. “You look beat.”

Archie raised his glass with a shaking hand. “Revels all night, cathedrals and country-house parties all day, then more revels. One forgets how energetic one was at nineteen.”

“What did you learn on the ship?”

“The Europeans are all looking for a fight,” Archie replied soberly.