YOUR SHAD ROE AND SCRAMBLED EGGS, MR. BELL,” announced the diner steward with a broad smile that faded as he saw the expression on Bell’s face change from pleasurable anticipation to rage. Two hours from its destination, the 20th Century Limited had picked up Chicago morning newspapers left by an eastbound express. A crisp edition folded at each place setting greeted the passengers at breakfast.

EXPLOSION IN U.S. NAVY TORPEDO
STATION AT NEWPORT
TWO OFFICERS BLOWN TO ATOMS

NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, MAY 15TH.—An explosion that caused death and destruction occurred in the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport. It killed two naval officers and wrecked a production line.

Isaac Bell was stunned. Had he gone in the wrong direction?

“Good morning, Bell! You haven’t touched your roe. Has it turned?”

“Morning, Riker. No, it smells fine. Bad news in the paper.”

Riker opened his as he sat. “Good Lord. What caused it?”

“It doesn’t say. Excuse me.” Bell went back to his stateroom.

If not an accident but sabotage, then the spy’s reach was as broad as it was vicious. In the course of a single day his ring had executed a traitor in Washington, murdered a detective hot on his trail in New York, and blown up a heavily guarded naval station on the Rhode Island coast.

ISAAC BELL SET UP temporary headquarters in the back of the LaSalle Station luggage room within minutes of the 20th Century steaming into Chicago. Van Dorn detectives from the Palmer House head office had already blanketed the railroad station. They followed his suspects as they scattered.

Larry Rosania promptly vanished. A veteran Chicago detective was reporting embarrassedly when another rushed in. “Isaac! The Old Man says to telephone long-distance from the stationmaster’s private office. And make sure you’re alone.”

Bell did so.

Van Dorn asked, “Are you alone?”

“Yes, sir. Was either of the officers killed Ron Wheeler?”

“No.”

Bell breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“Wheeler snuck off to spend the night with a woman. If he hadn’t, he’d be dead, too. It was his people who were killed.”

“Thank the Lord he wasn’t. Captain Falconer says he’s irreplaceable.”

“Well, here is something else irreplaceable,” Van Dorn growled. Six hundred miles of copper telephone wire between Chicago and Washington did not diminish the sound of his anger. “This is not in the newspapers, and it won’t ever be—are you still alone there, Isaac?”

“Yes, sir.”