“Even the most wicked man has a streak of God in him.” The priest took Bell’s arm. “If you remember that, you will be a better detective. And a better man. That wee child was Brian O’Shay’s streak of God.”

“Was her name Katherine?”

Father Jack looked at him curiously.

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t really know. But I’m asking you, was it?”

Father Jack started to answer. A pistol shot cracked from a tenement roof. The priest tumbled to the pavement. A second shot drilled the space Bell had occupied an instant before. He was already rolling across the sidewalk, drawing his Browning, snapping to his knees, raising his weapon to fire.

But all he could see were women and children screaming from their windows that their priest was murdered.

“I WANT A DIRECT telephone connection to the chief of the Baltimore office now!” Isaac Bell shouted as he stalked into Van Dorn headquarters. “Tell him to have his Katherine Dee file on his desk.”

It took an hour for Baltimore to telephone back. “Bell? Sorry I took so long. Raining like hell again, half the city’s flooded. You’ll get yours, it’s another nor’easter.”

“I want to know exactly who Katherine Dee is and I want to know now.”

“Well, as we reported, her father went back to Ireland with a boat-load of dough he made building schools for the diocese and took her with him.”

“I know that already. And when he died, she went to a convent school in Switzerland. What school?”

“Let me go through this while we’re talking. I’ve got it right here in front of me. The boys have brought it up-to-date since we sent our last report to New York . . . Takes so long back and forth to Dublin . . . Let’s see here . . . Well, I’ll be. No, no, no, that can’t be.”

“What?”

“Some damned fool got confused. Says the daughter died, too. That can’t be. We’ve got records of her at the school. Mr. Bell, let me get back to you on this.”

“Immediately,” said Bell, and hung up.

Archie walked in, still ruddy-faced with Indian war paint. “You look like death, Isaac.”

“Where’s Marion?”

“Upstairs.” Bell had rented a suite for the days she was in New York. “We got rained out again. Are you O.K.? What happened to you?”

“A priest was gunned down in front of my eyes. For talking to me.”

“The spy?”

“Who else? The block was swarming with cops, but he got clean away.”

An apprentice approached the grim-faced detectives warily. “Messenger left this at Reception, Mr. Bell.”

Bell tore it open. On Waldorf-Astoria stationery Erhard Riker had written:

FOUND IT!
PERFECTION FOR THE PERFECT FIANCÉE!!

I’ll be at Solomon Barlowe’s Jewelry Shop around three o’clock with a brilliant emerald, if this finds you in New York.

Best wishes,

Erhard Riker

Chapter 49

49