Dorothy Langner searched his face. Then she looked at Bell. “Hello, Isaac. Is there someplace I could talk to Ted for a moment, in private?” Her beautiful silvery eyes were blank, and Bell had the eeriest sensation that she was blind. But she couldn’t be blind, she had just marched in under her own steam.

“I believe that Mr. Van Dorn’s office is empty. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

He guided them into Van Dorn’s office, closed the door, and stood close to it listening. He heard Whitmark repeat, “This will square us, won’t it?”

“Nothing will square us.”

“Dorothy?” asked Ted. “What are you doing?”

The answer was the sharp crack of a gunshot. Bell threw open the door. Ted Whitmark lay on his back, blood pouring from his skull. Dorothy Langner dropped the nickel pistol she was holding onto Whitmark’s chest, and said to Isaac Bell, “He killed my father.”

“Yamamoto Kenta killed your father.”

“Ted didn’t set the bomb, but he’s been passing information about Father’s work on Hull 44.”

“Did Ted tell you that?”

“He tried to get rid of his guilt confessing to me.”

Harry Warren rushed in, gun drawn, and knelt by the body. Then he grabbed Van Dorn’s telephone. “She missed,” he told Bell, and said to the operator, “Get a doctor.”

“How badly is he hurt?” asked Bell.

“She only creased him. It’s his scalp that’s bleeding so much.”

“He won’t die?”

“Not from this. In fact, I think he’s starting to wake up.”

“She didn’t shoot him,” said Bell.

“What?”

“Ted Whitmark tried to kill himself. She grabbed the gun. She saved his life.”

Harry Warren had wise, old eyes. “Tell me why he tried to kill himself, Isaac.”

“He’s a traitor. He just confessed to me that he’s been passing information to the spy.”

Harry Warren looked Bell full in the face, and said, “It appears that Miss Langner saved the louse’s life.”

The Hotel Knickerbocker’s house doctor rushed in with his bag trailed by bellhops lugging a stretcher. “Stand back, everybody. Please stand back.”

Bell led Dorothy to his desk. “Sit down.” He beckoned an apprentice. “Please bring the lady a glass of water.”

“Why did you do that?” Dorothy whispered.

“I would not have if you had succeeded in murdering him. But since you didn’t, I think you’ve been through enough without adding police charges to your misery.”

“Will the police believe it?”

“If Ted goes along with it. And I imagine he will. Now, tell me everything he told you.”

“He lost a lot of money gambling last fall in Washington. Someone in the game offered to lend him money. In exchange, he talked to Yamamoto.” She shook her head in anger and bitterness. “He still doesn’t realize that that man must have set him up to lose.”