Isaac Bell climbed into the hole and down a steel ladder affixed to a concrete wall. At the bottom, he saw light at the end of a narrow hall and ran toward it, drawing his Browning. The hall ended at a dimly lit narrow stairwell. Steps spiraled tightly upward into the highest reaches of the building. Bell bounded up them, the sound of his boots muffled by rubber tile.

At an abbreviated landing at the top of the first flight, he saw several twelve-inch-square doors set in the walls at head height. He jerked one open. It covered the judas he had suspected was there. The spy hole took in the lobby. He saw four doormen blocking the front door, the stairs, and the steps to the theater. The elevators were open, their lights off, out of service.

Bell opened the judas hole cover on the opposite wall. The film exchange was empty at this late hour, and a steel scissors gate was closed across the motorcycle messengers’ entrance. Irina had given him the only way to breach the building’s defenses.

He climbed another flight and ran face-to-face into Detective Tim Holian. Holian shambled past him, bleeding from bullet wounds in his arms and legs, white with shock, and muttering, “Hospital, hospital, gotta get to the hospital.”

Bell thought fleetingly that Holian had to be one of the luckiest men alive to survive a fusillade of gunfire with only flesh wounds.

“Where’s Saunders?”

“Dead. All dead.”

Bell pounded up the stairs. At the fourth flight, the wall had disappeared, having been slid aside into a pocket. He stepped through the opening and stared in horror. The recording studio was a slaughterhouse.

Larry Saunders lay dead on the floor. Two men Bell didn’t know lay dead, revolvers locked in their fists, slouch hats fallen beside them. A third man had been strangled and bore the bloody gouge around the throat that was the Acrobat’s signature. Then he saw Clyde Lynds sprawled on his back, his chest covered in blood, his face drained of color.

“Clyde?” Pistol in hand, Isaac Bell knelt beside him. He saw immediately that the brash young scientist was not long for this world, and he had a horrible feeling that he had let him down.

Clyde opened his eyes. “Say, Isaac,” he whispered. “You didn’t make the rescue this time.”

“I’m sorry I got you into this,” said Isaac Bell. “I wish I had insisted you take your chances with Edison.”

“At least Edison wouldn’t kill me.”

“Did they take your machine?”

Clyde answered slowly, in a whisper so faint that Bell had to move within inches to hear him. “They took a jury-rigged contraption I slapped together with baling wire. It will drive their scientists nuts. Joke’s on the Acrobat. I fooled him again. And I kept the new plans— Isaac!”

“What?”

“You have to take care of the plans.”

“I will.”

“You have to promise.”