Van Dorn stood up from his desk and lumbered to the windows, where his second-floor corner office let him view people approaching the Willard’s front and side entrances. Then he wandered to the interior wall and inspected the reception room through a peephole drilled through the eye of Ben Franklin, whose portrait greeted visitors to the detective agency.

Bell sat still as ice, patient and silent.

At last, the boss faced him inquiringly. “Is this why you traveled all the way to Washington instead of telephoning me long-distance?”

“No. I came to tell you something more interesting.”

HANS REUTER—ARTHUR CURTIS’S painstakingly cultivated informant inside the Krieg Rüstungswerk munitions combine—refused to meet in a beer garden anymore. “Too many people,” he kept saying. “Too many people are seeing us together.”

Had they been speaking face-to-face instead of on the telephone, Arthur would have folded his hands calmly over his potbelly and listened with a sympathetic expression. All he had on the phone was a soothing voice and simple logic. “They don’t know what we talk about. They don’t know that I pay you money.”

“I was followed last time.”

“Are you sure?” Arthur Curtis asked more casually than he felt. The fact was, after their last meeting, when Reuter dropped the bombshell that Krieg had German consuls in America on its payroll, Curtis had wondered whether he was being followed and had returned to the office by a circuitous route, after going to great lengths to shake the shadow, if indeed there had been a shadow. Now it sounded like there had been, and a very stealthy one at that. He had to hand it to Krieg. It hadn’t taken long to catch on to him. He knew he had to do something to end the threat. The trouble was, his frightened informant still had a lot of good information bubbling in his embittered mind, although he was doling it out very slowly.

“I am deadly sure,” Reuter replied. “For all we know, they are listening in on this telephone wire.”

“They would have to be soothsayers to listen in on telephone kiosks in post offices on opposite sides of Berlin.”

“I would not be surprised if they were.”

“I have an idea,” said Arthur Curtis.

“No more ideas,” said Hans Reuter, and broke the connection.

Arthur Curtis worked his way slowly back to the office. Redoubling ordinary habits of caution, watching reflections in shop windows, changing trams repeatedly, stepping in and out of bakeries and cafes, he did not enter his building until he was one hundred percent sure that he was not being observed.

Pauline was sitting behind his desk, reading his mail.

“You should be home in bed. It’s late.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

“My mother’s friend is visiting. He’ll be gone at midnight.”

“Have you had your supper?”

“I’m not hungry.”