“I think between Balant and me,” Bell answered drily, “we can handle one back-East banker… Walt, would you do me a favor?”

“Shore, Isaac. What do you need?”

“Get an auto and park outside the house we took up on Bunker Hill.”

“Keep an eye on Marion?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“You want me to go in the house?”

“No, she’s up so early, she’s probably sleeping by now. Just watch from outside.”

Bell hurried to Levy’s Café. Many of the tables were empty as the late second seating was finishing up. Boot heels clicking on the tile floor, he strode straight to the table where Tarses was listening to the Morgan banker with an expression of unconcealed suspicion. Bell pulled up a chair. Tarses looked up, remembering Bell but not quite sure why. Singleton Brooks, too, recognized Bell, and the banker turned out to have a very fine memory.

“Detective Bell. What are you doing here?”

“My question exactly,” said Isaac Bell. “Why are you dining with Mr. Tarses instead of Mademoiselle Irina Viorets?”

Jay Tarses’s face darkened, as if his suspicions had all been confirmed. “Why didn’t you tell me you were talking to Imperial, too?”

“I am not talking to Imperial. I told you, I came all the way out here specially to talk to you.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why are you meeting Irina Viorets, who happens to run Imperial?”

“I’m not,” Brooks protested. “I don’t know the woman.”

“You know who she is.”

“Of course I know who she is.”

Tarses looked at Isaac Bell. “Mr. Bell, what is it about moving pictures that rewards the worst and punishes the best?”

“What, sir, are you implying?” demanded Brooks.

Isaac Bell said, “Hold on, gentlemen, I owe you an apology. Answer one more question, Mr. Brooks, and I will be able to assure Mr. Tarses that you are on the level. Do you represent the Artists Syndicate?”

“I don’t even know what the Artists Syndicate is. And whatever it is I certainly don’t represent it.”

“And you don’t know Mademoiselle Viorets?”

“I know who she is. I do not recall ever meeting her.”

“You would,” said Tarses. “She’s a looker.”

“I am a married man,” Brooks said stiffly.

Bell stood up. “Further proof that he’s on the up and up, Mr. Tarses. Sorry to have interrupted your supper.”

“MRS. RENNEGAL,” MARION SAID TO her favorite Cooper-Hewitt operator. “We are supposed to be laying a scene on a pier beside a ship on a foggy night in the spooky glare of searchlights. This looks like a romantic candlelit dinner for two.”

“But Mrs. Bell,” said Rennegal, climbing wearily down the ladder from yet another adjustment of the Cooper-Hewitts hanging high in the flies over a stage decorated to depict the immigrants’ landing at Ellis Island, “Mr. Bitzer and Mr. Davidson keep complaining the searchlights overexpose their film.”