Bell turned the Locomobile south.

“ON CAMDEN’S SUPPLIES, THE WORLD RELIES,”

a billboard greeted Isaac Bell as he entered the industrial city, which occupied the eastern shore of the Delaware River across from Philadelphia. He passed factories that made everything from cigars to patent drugs to linoleum and terra-cotta and soup. But it was the shipyard that dominated. The incongruously named New York Shipbuilding Company lined the Delaware and Newton Creek with modern covered ways and gigantic gantries thrusting at the smoky sky. Across the river sprawled Cramp Ship Builders and the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Evening was falling before Bell found the MacDonald Marine Steam Turbine Company inland from the riverfront in a warren of smaller factories that supplied the shipyard with specialty items. He parked the Locomobile at the gates and asked to see Alasdair MacDonald. MacDonald was not in. A friendly clerk said, “You’ll find the Professor down in Gloucester City—just a few blocks from here.”

“Why do you call him the Professor?”

“Because he’s so smart. He was apprenticed to the inventor of the naval turbine, Charles Parsons, who revolutionized high-speed ship propulsion. By the time the Professor emigrated to America, he knew more about turbines than Parsons himself.”

“Where in Gloucester City?”

“Del Rossi’s Dance Hall—not that he’s dancing. It’s more saloon than dance hall, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ve encountered similar establishments out west,” Bell said drily.

“Cut over to King Street. Can’t miss it.”

Gloucester City was just down the river from Camden, the two cities blending seamlessly. King Street was near the water. Saloons, quick-and-dirties, and boardinghouses hosted workingmen from the shipyards and the bustling river port. Del Rossi’s was as unmissable as MacDonald’s clerk had promised, boasting a false front mocked up to look like a proscenium arch in a Broadway theater.

Inside was bedlam, with the loudest piano Bell had ever heard, women shrieking with laughter, perspiring bartenders knocking the necks off bottles to pour faster, exhausted bouncers, and wall-to-wall sailors and shipyard hands—five hundred men at least—determined to win the race to get drunk. Bell studied the room over a sea of flushed faces under clouds of blue smoke. The only occupants of the saloon not in shirtsleeves were himself, in his white suit, a handsome silver-haired gent in a red frock coat whom he guessed was the proprietor, and a trio of dandified gangsters tricked out in brown derbies, purple shirts, bright waistcoats, and striped ties. Bell couldn’t see their shoes but suspected they were yellow.

He plowed through broad shoulders toward the frock coat.

“Mr. Del Rossi!” he shouted over the din, extending his hand.

“Good evening, sir. Call me Angelo.”

“Isaac.”

They shook hands. Del Rossi’s were soft but bore the long-healed burns and cuts of ship work in his youth.

“Busy night.”

“God bless our ‘New Navy.’ It’s like this every night. New York Ship launches the Michigan next month and just laid the keel for a twenty-eight-knot destroyer. Across the river, the Philadelphia Navy Yard is building a new dry dock, Cramp launches South Carolina come summer, plus they’ve already nailed a contract for six 700-ton destroyers—six, count ’em, six. What can I do for you, sir?”