“‘COLOSSAL’ IS THE ONLY WORD TO DESCRIBE the new steamship terminal of the Chelsea Improvement,” said Archie Abbott, who was as tireless a promoter of his beloved New York as a Chamber of Commerce publicity man. To shelter as many as sixteen express liners as big as the Mauretania, he enthused, the terminal’s piers extended six hundred feet into the Hudson River and burrowed two hundred feet inland for three-quarters of a mile from Little West 12th Street all the way to West 23rd.

“There’s even room for Titanic when she goes into service. And wait till you see the portals on West Street—pink granite! An eyesore of a waterfront is transformed.”

“Not entirely transformed,” said Isaac Bell, studying the pier through field glasses. Crowds of people had stepped out of the second-story waiting room onto the pier’s apron to wave handkerchiefs to friends and relatives on the approaching ship.

Earlier, steaming up the harbor, Isaac and Marion Bell and Archie and Lillian Abbott had stood arm in arm admiring the city from the promenade deck railing. It was a beautiful day. The air was crisp. A stiff northeast wind parted the coal smoke that normally blanketed the harbor. Manhattan’s skyscrapers gleamed in a blue sky.

Now, as music from a ragtime band danced on the water and tugboats battled to land thirty-two thousand tons of Mauretania against the wind pushing her lofty superstructure, the detectives were concentrating on getting their prisoner and Clyde Lynds safely ashore, after which they would meet up with their wives at Archie and Lillian’s town house on East 64th, where the newlyweds were invited to stay.

“What do you mean not entirely?” Archie protested. “We sailed from Hoboken last month. You haven’t seen the Chelsea portals or the magnificent waiting rooms. The elevators are solid bronze. There’s never been a city project like it.”

Bell passed him the field glasses. “They forgot to transform the plug-uglies.”

“You’ll always find a couple of pickpockets when a ship lands,” Archie scoffed.

“I’m not talking about pickpockets. Look closer.”

A thousand people awaited the liner at Pier 54. Longshoremen were poised to work ship, heaving lines and unloading mail and baggage. Treasury Department customs agents swarmed the pier’s lower deck to inspect luggage for dutiable gowns and jewels being smuggled. On coal barges in the slip, trimmers had gathered before the usual time to refill the Mauretania’s bunkers for Captain Turner’s extraordinarily speedy turnaround. And up on the second-story waiting room terrace, the regular contingents of sneak thieves sidled among the passengers’ friends and relatives, crackerjack vendors, newspaper reporters, and moving picture operators. But it was six Hell’s Kitchen gangsters who had caught Bell’s attention.

“Gophers!” said Archie.

The Gophers, pronounced “goofers,” were snappy dressers, favoring tight suits, pearl gray bowler hats, fancy shoes, and colorful hose.

“Who the heck gave them pier passes?”