Clay dove to the carpet with astounding speed, scooped up the gun he had dropped, and shot first, lacing two bullets into the old man’s chest. Congdon tumbled backwards, jerking his trigger as he fell. His bullet struck The Kiss, shattering the marble. Congdon’s eyes locked in mourning on the ruin.

Clay stood over him. “But how did you move Mary’s body to the steamboat in Pittsburgh?”

James Congdon answered with his dying breath.

“You weren’t the only ambitious fool who worked for me.”

Henry Clay’s shoulders sagged as Congdon’s had in his defeat. He shook his head in dismay. Then he turned to Isaac Bell. “You never gave up, and you got the man who killed Mary.”

“But Judge Congdon didn’t kill Terry Fein, Mike Flannery, young Captain Jennings, Black Jack Gleason, and countless others caught in your schemes. Henry Clay, you’re under arrest.”

Clay’s amber eyes were dead with defeat, but his pistol was rising with superhuman speed. Isaac Bell shot it out of his hand. It fell on Congdon’s chest. Clay gazed at it a moment, clutching his fingers. His empty gaze shifted to Bell’s derringer, and his eyes came alive.

“Looks like a .22,” he said. “And only one shot left. Do you think you can stop Henry Clay with one bullet?”

The door behind him banged opened and a big voice boomed, “Isaac could stop you with one shot between your murderous eyes. But I made him swear to me that I would get the first seven shots if you gave us the slightest excuse to pull the trigger.”

Henry Clay looked over his shoulder and down the barrel of Van Dorn’s Colt M1911 semiautomatic pistol and raised his hands.

“Pick up that telephone and call Congdon’s train,” Van Dorn ordered.

“Train?”

Isaac Bell explained, “You’ve got a date with the electric chair. Sing Sing’s on the way to Chicago. We’ll drop you there for safekeeping until your trial.”

•   •   •

MARION BELL knew from experience that after her husband solved a case, he would tell her everything that had happened when he was ready to. But this time was special. When he glided across Wall Street and slipped soundlessly into the auto, she sensed that he wanted to tell her now but couldn’t form the words, and might never.

She started the Marmon, pulled away from the curb into the empty street, steered around the corner, and headed up Broadway. Isaac Bell sat quietly, watching the boisterous late-night city streets. When they got to Forty-second Street, Marion turned left toward the Hudson River.

“Where are we going?” asked Bell. Archie’s town house, where they stayed in New York, was up in the East Sixties.

“Home.”