Bell grabbed his hat. Enigmatic even by Scully’s standards, it meant either that Scully turned up something of vital importance or he was in danger. “Keep listening for Yamamoto. I’ll telephone from Grand Central if I can. But soon as Yamamoto reports, send a courier to come looking for me.”

JOHN SCULLY HAD DECIDED it was time to bring in Isaac Bell. Truth be told, he admitted to himself as he hunted the public telephone pay station in Grand Central, it was past time. He couldn’t find the damned thing. The old railroad station was being torn down and replaced by a vast new terminal, and they kept moving the telephones. Where the telephones had been the last time he used them was a gaping pit that offered a view of track levels descending sixty feet into the ground. When he finally found the telephones, losing ten minutes in the process, he told the operator, “Van Dorn Detective Agency. Knickerbocker.” A uniformed attendant showed him into one of the wood-paneled booths.

“Good afternoon,” came the dulcet tones of an operator chosen for her beautiful voice and clear head. “You have reached the Van Dorn Detective Agency. To whom do you wish to speak?”

“Message for Isaac Bell. Tell him Scully said, ‘Grand Central, three-thirty p.m.’ Got that? ‘Grand Central, three-thirty p.m.’ ”

“Yes, Mr. Scully.”

He paid the attendant and hurried toward the track designated for the 20th Century Limited. The terminal was in chaos. Workmen were everywhere, swarming over scaffolds and banging hammers on stone, steel, and marble. Laborers cluttered the hall, wheeling carts and barrows. But at the Limited’s temporary gate, beside which a blackboard said CHICAGO, company employees were respectfully checking tickets, and her famous red carpet was already in place leading out onto the platform. It looked like once a passenger got this close to the fabled Chicago express, his troubles were over.

“Jasper! Jasper Smith!”

Little Miss Knockout Drops from the opera house opium den was rushing toward him in an elegant traveling outfit capped by a broad-brimmed Merry Widow hat. “What a wonderful coincidence. Thank God, I found you!”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. I just saw you. Oh, Jasper, I didn’t know if I would ever see you again. You left in such a hurry last night.”

Something was way out of whack. He looked around. Where was her Hip Sing boyfriend? Already on the train? Then he saw cutting through the crowds of hurrying passengers a cigar-delivery cart wheeled by a Chinese. And there were three wagonloads of construction debris hauled by Irish laborers. The cart and wagons were converging on them like wagons circling to fend off the Indians.

“What are you doing here?” he asked her.

“Meeting a train,” she said.

I stood outside that opera house like a sitting duck, thought Scully. Long enough for the Hip Sing to get a line on me.