Bell waited for the captain on his turbine yacht. Dyname was moored to a navy yard pier, between Hull 44’s ways and a huge wooden barge attended by a seagoing tugboat. On the barge, engineers were erecting a cage mast. It was a full-scale rendition of the twelve-to-one scale model that Bell had seen in Farley Kent’s design loft.

High overhead, Hull 44’s stern filled the blue sky. Hull plating was creeping higher up her frame, and she more and more was taking the shape of a ship. If she became half the fighting ship Falconer had envisioned and Alasdair MacDonald and Arthur Langner had labored to make swift and deadly, Bell thought, then this view of the back of her was one the enemy would never see until their own ships were adrift and on fire.

Falconer came aboard after he got the prisoner settled. He reported that Louis’s last words as they clanged the door shut were, “Tell Isaac Bell I will not talk.”

“He’ll talk.”

“I would not count on that,” Falconer cautioned. “When I was in the Far East, Japs and Chinese virtually eviscerated captured spies. Not a peep.”

The Van Dorn detective and the Navy captain stood on the foredeck as Dyname backed into the East River, her nine propellers spinning with a smoothness that Bell still found eerie.

“There is something more to Louis Loh,” he mused. “I can’t yet put my finger on what makes him different.”

“Strikes me as being fairly low down the totem pole.”

“I don’t think so,” said Bell. “He conducts himself with pride, like a man who has a mission.”

“IT’S AN UP-AND-DOWN WORLD for the New York gangs,” said Harry Warren, and the handful of Van Dorn detectives who kept track of them nodded solemnly. “One day they’re high-and-mighty, next they’re in the gutter.”

The back room of the Knickerbocker headquarters was gray with cigar and cigarette smoke. A bottle of whiskey Isaac Bell had bought was making the rounds.

“Who is in the gutter currently?” he asked.

“The Hudson Dusters, the Marginals, and the Pearl Buttons. The Eastmans are in trouble, what with Monk Eastman at Sing Sing, and making it worse for themselves by continuing to feud with the Five Pointers.”

“They had a wonderful shoot-out under the Third Avenue El the other night,” remarked a detective. “No one killed, unfortunately.”

“In Chinatown,” Harry continued, “the Hip Sing are clawing ahead of the On Leongs. On the West Side, Tommy Thompson’s Gophers are riding high. Or were. The sons of bitches have their hands full since you sicced the railroad police on ’em for ambushing little Eddie Tobin.”

This was met by enthusiastic nods, and a remark in grudging admiration, “Those western cinder dicks are about the worst bastards I ever seen.”