Scully looked some more. Nothing. Drawers and cabinets were bare as a hotel room. He cast a look down the hall, and opened her purse. Just as he heard the door open, he hit the jackpot. Two railroad tickets for tomorrow’s three-thirty p.m. 20th Century Limited—the eighteen-hour excess-fare flyer to Chicago—with connections through to San Francisco. Tickets for Katy and whom? The boss? The Hip Sing boyfriend?

WHEN SHE FOUND the little thirteen-ounce .25 holstered in the small of his back, she wanted to know what it was doing there.

“Got robbed once carrying the payroll for my clerks. It ain’t gonna happen again.”

She seemed to believe him. At least it didn’t get in the way of the proceedings. Not until he saw her add the knockout drops to his second highball.

Scully felt suddenly old and blue.

She was so very good at it. She had the patience to wait to dress the second drink so he’d be less likely to taste the bitter chloral hydrate flavor. She hid the vial expertly between the crease of her palm and the fleshy part of her thumb. She crossed her legs as she did it, with a distracting flash of snow-white thighs. Her only failing was her youth. He was too old to be buncoed by a kid.

“Bottoms up,” she smiled.

“Bottoms up,” Scully whispered back. “You know, I never met a girl quite like you.” Gazing soulfully into her pretty blue eyes, he reached blindly for his glass and knocked it off the table.

ISAAC BELL GOT to the Knickerbocker’s cellar bar ten minutes early. Midafternoon on a sunny day, it was largely empty, and he saw right away that Abbington-Westlake had not yet arrived. There was one man at the bar, two couples at tables, and a single slight figure seated on the banquette behind the small table where he had sat with the English Naval Attaché in the darkest corner of the room. Immaculately dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat, high-standing collar, and four-in-hand tie, he beckoned, half rising and bowing his head.

Bell approached, wondering if he could believe his eyes.

“Yamamoto Kenta, I presume?”

Chapter 32

32

MR. BELL, ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE NAMBU TYPE B?”

“Low-quality, 7-millimeter semiautomatic pistol,” Bell answered tersely. “Most Japanese officers buy themselves a Browning.”

“I’m a sentimental patriot,” said Yamamoto. “And it is remarkably effective at a range of one small tabletop. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Bell sat down, laid his big hands on the table, one palm down, one up, and scrutinized a face that gave away nothing.

“How far do you think you will get if you shoot me in a crowded hotel?”