Wide-eyed constables boiled out of the house waving pistols. The bank robbers stayed inside. Rifle barrels poked from the window. A hail of lever-action Winchester fire stormed at the black-powder smoke billowing from Isaac Bell’s Sharps.

Bell ignored the lead howling past his head, methodically reloaded the single-shot Sharps, and shot the Ford’s motor cowling. Steam spurted from the hot radiator. Now their quarry was on foot.

All three bank robbers darted from the house, rifles blazing.

Bell reloaded and fired, reloaded and fired. A long gun went flying, and the man staggered, clutching his arm. Another turned and ran toward the woods. Rapid fire bellowed from Scully’s twelve-gauge autoload and caused him to change his mind. He skidded to a stop, looked around frantically, and flung his weapon down and threw his hands in the air. The constables, gripping pistols, froze. Bell stood up, aiming the Sharps through the black smoke. Scully sauntered from the woods, pointing his shotgun.

“Mine’s a twelve-gauge autoload,” Scully called conversationally. “Fellow up the hill’s got a Sharps rifle. About time you boys got smart.”

The constables dropped their pistols. The third Frye boy levered a fresh cartridge into his Winchester’s chamber and took deliberate aim. Bell found him in his sights, but Scully fired first, tipping the barrel of his shotgun high to increase the range. The slugs spread wide at that distance. Most tore past the bank robber. Two that did not peppered his shoulder.

NEITHER SHOT MAN WAS mortally wounded. Bell made sure that they would not bleed to death and handcuffed them with the others in Scully’s milk truck. They started downhill, Scully driving the truck, Bell in his Locomobile bringing up the rear. Just as they reached the Cranbury Turnpike, Mike and Eddie, the Van Dorns assigned to help Scully, appeared in an Oldsmobile, and the caravan headed for Trenton to turn the bank robbers and the crooked cops over to the State’s Attorney.

Two hours later, nearing Trenton, Bell saw a road sign that jogged his photographic memory. The sign was a stack of town and road names lettered on white arrows that pointed south: the Hamilton Turnpike, the Bordentown Road, the Burlington Pike, and the West-field Turnpike to Camden.

Arthur Langner had written appointments on a wall calendar. Two days before he died he had met with Alasdair MacDonald, the turbine-propulsion specialist who had been contracted by the Navy’s Steam Engineering Bureau. MacDonald’s factory was in Camden.

Her father loved his guns, Dorothy Langner had pleaded. As Farley Kent loved his hulls. And Alasdair MacDonald his turbines. A wizard, she had called MacDonald, meaning he was her father’s equal. Bell wondered what else the two men had in common.

He squeezed the Locomobile’s horn bulb. The Oldsmobile and milk truck skidded to a dusty halt. “There’s a fellow I ought to see in Camden,” Bell told Scully.

“Need a hand?”

“Yes! Soon as you turn this bunch in, could you get to the Brooklyn Navy Yard? There’s a naval architect in the drawing loft named Farley Kent. See if he’s on the up-and-up.”