In the short time since he had sent his wires from Harmon, Research had not learned anything about the German, the Australian, the Chinese traveling with Arnold Bennett, or Herr Riker’s ward. But the Van Dorns who had raced to Grand Central had started piecing together witnesses’ accounts of Scully’s murder. They had found no one who reported actually seeing the hatpin driven into John Scully’s brain. But it appeared that the killing had been coordinated with military precision.

This was now known: A Chinese delivery man bringing cigars to the departing trains reported seeing Scully rush up to the 20th Century platform. He seemed to be looking for someone.

Irish laborers hauling demolition debris said that Scully was talking to a pretty redhead. They were standing very closely as if they knew each other well.

The police officer hadn’t come along until the crowd had formed. But a traveler from upstate New York had seen a mob of college students surround Scully and the redhead, “Like he was inside a flying wedge.”

Then they hurried away and Scully was on the floor.

Where did they go?

Every which way, like melted ice.

What did they look like?

College boys.

“They set him up good,” Harry Warren had put it in his telegram to Bell. “Never knew what hit him.”

Bell, mourning his friend, doubted that. Even the best of men could be tricked, of course, but Scully had been sharp as tacks. John Scully would have known that he had been fooled. Too late to save himself, sadly. But Bell bet that he’d known. If only as he took his last breath.

Harry Warren went on to speculate whether the girl seen with Scully was the same redhead he had seen in the Hip Sing opium den where the detectives had inadvertently bumped into each other. The witnesses’ descriptions at Grand Central were too general to know. A pretty redheaded girl, one of a thousand in New York. Five thousand. Ten. But descriptions of her clothing did not jibe with the costume worn by the girl Harry had seen in the Chinatown gambling and drug parlor. Nor had she been wearing thick rouge and paint.

Bell took the spy’s taunting note from his pocket and read it again.

EYE FOR AN EYE, BELL.

YOU EARNED WEEKS SO WE WON’T COUNT HIM.

BUT YOU OWED ME FOR THE GERMAN.

The spy was boasting that both Weeks and the German had worked for his ring. Which struck Bell as reckless behavior in a line of business where discretion was survival and victories should be celebrated in the quietest manner. He could not imagine the cool Yamamoto or even the supercilious Abbington-Westlake writing such a note.

The spy also seemed deluded. Did he really believe that Isaac Bell and the entire Van Dorn Agency would ignore his attack? He was practically begging for a counterpunch.

Bell went to the dining car for the second seating.