“Let me think . . . The man had large hands, but I could see the butt— It was longer than most.”

“I think you were looking at a Bisley.”

“The target pistol?”

“Yes, that flat top is for mounting a rear windage sight. Fine, fine weapon. Very accurate.”

“It is, in my experience,” said Bell, remembering how close two pistol shots had come to killing him at extreme range in Gleasonburg.

“But it is more than a target pistol,” said the smith. “It makes an excellent close-in fighting gun with that long grip and wide hammer.”

“Do you have one?”

“I’d have to order it special.”

“Send it to the Van Dorn office at the Cadillac. They’ll forward to me.”

Bell paid for the guns, dropped the one-shot in his pocket, and put the Army in his shoulder holster. Then, as he started to slide the two-shot up his coat sleeve, he weighed it speculatively in his hand, wondering. Had the amber-eyed provocateur assumed or guessed he had a derringer in his sleeve? Or had he been sharp enough to spot that the sleeve was tailored extra-wide? Or had he just been covering all the places a man might hide a gun?

“I’d like another of these, please. But a lighter one, if you’ve got it.”

“I’ve got a real beaut I made myself. Weighs half that. Fires a .22 long. But it won’t pack quite the punch.”

“Some punch beats no punch,” said Bell. “I’ll take it.”

The gunsmith brought out a miniature two-shot over-under derringer. “Always happy to make a sale,” he said. “But you’re running out of places to put them.”

“Can you recommend a good hatmaker?”

•   •   •

THE HATMAKER was working late and eager to please the gunsmith, who was a source of clients who paid top dollar for custom-made. At midnight, Bell hurried back to the Cadillac Hotel to check for wires that had come in on the Van Dorn private telegraph.

Grady Forrer, who never seemed to sleep, said, “Excellent chapeau!”

Bell touched the wide brim in salute and looked for telegrams in his box.

Weber and Fields had not reported in, and he could only guess whether they were keeping tabs on the strikers heading for Pittsburgh or holed up in a saloon; he made a mental note to instruct Archie to report to him independently. But two wires had just come in from Chicago, both sent in the money-saving shorthand that the parsimonious Joseph Van Dorn demanded.

Wish Clarke reported,

R LAMING

LIKELY JOB.

In other words, Wish could not find Laurence Rosania in any of his usual haunts to question him about fellow experimenters with shaped explosives, but the detective had caught wind of rumors in the Chicago underworld that a wealthy dowager or an industrialist’s girlfriend was about to be separated from jewelry locked in her safe.