“It’s my chance to observe the foreign flibbertigibbets in a room full of Americans who might talk too much. You’ll provide cover and a second pair of eyes and ears.”

“What do you suppose ladies wear to a battleship launching?”

“How about that hat men step aside for?” Bell grinned. “Or you can ask Mademoiselle Duvall. Even money, she’ll be there, too.”

“I don’t like that she knows you’re a detective. It could put you in danger if she really is a spy.”

TEN BLOCKS UP BROADWAY, things were going like clockwork for Iceman Weeks.

First, he managed to make it the four blocks from the subway to the Cumberland Hotel without being spotted by anybody who’d squeal to Tommy Thompson. Crossing Broadway, he passed right under the noses of Daley and Boyle—Central Office pickpocket detectives who were hurrying down to their regular station at the Metropolitan Opera—and they didn’t even notice him in the sack suit he’d found airing on a Brooklyn fire escape.

Then in the lobby, the Cumberland’s house detectives were distracted while changing shifts. Neither dick gave Weeks’s duds a second glance. Even if his boots did not compare to the polished shoes on the college men, the Academy of Pathological Science doctors rushing to their meeting weren’t watching his feet.

Jimmy Clark, dressed up like an organ-grinder’s monkey in his purple bell-hopper uniform, looked right through him, doing a good job of acting like they had not had a “conversation” earlier in the day.

“Boy!”

Jimmy hurried over, ducking his head to conceal the fear and hatred in his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

Weeks handed him a luggage ticket for the battered old steamer truck he had had delivered earlier to the hotel and tipped him a nickel. “Put my trunk on your cart and wait for me by the side door of the Academy meeting. I have a steamship to catch and I don’t want to disturb the members when I leave early.”

Jimmy Clark said, “Yes sir.”

Weeks was luckier than he knew. Between out-of-town guests swaggering out for a night on the Great White Way and Pathological Academy doctors pouring in to view the lance-headed viper, the hotel lobby was too busy for anyone to take note of a queer accent. While dressed like a college man, Weeks still spoke like a lifelong citizen of Hell’s Kitchen, and anyone who listened would have heard, “Dun wanna destoib de members wen I leave oily.”