The subway whisked them in moments uptown to Forty-second and Broadway. They climbed the steps into a world where night had been banished. Times Square was lit bright as noon by "spectaculars," electric billboards on which thousands of white lights advertised theaters, hotels, and lobster palaces. Motorcars, taxicabs, and buses roared in the streets. Crowds rushed eagerly on wide sidewalks.

Bell cut into the Knickerbocker Hotel, a first-class hostelry with a mural of Old King Cole painted by Maxfield Parrish decorating the lobby. The Van Dorn office was on the second floor, set back a discreet distance from the grand stairway. A competent-looking youth with slicked-back hair and a sliver of a bow tie greeted clients in a tastefully decorated front room. His tailored coat concealed a sidearm he knew how to use. A short-barreled scatter gun was close at hand in a bottom drawer of his desk. He controlled the lock to the back room by an electric switch beside his knee.

The back room looked like an advertising manager's office, with typewriters, green-glass lamps, steel filing cabinets, a calendar on the wall, a telegraph key, and a row of candlestick telephones on the duty officer's desk. Instead of women in white blouses typing at the desks, a half dozen detectives were filling out paperwork, discussing tactics, or lounging on a break from house-dick lobby duty in the Times Square hotels. It had separate entrances for visitors whose appearance might not pass muster in the Knickerbocker's fine lobby or were more comfortable entering and leaving a detective agency by the alley.

Catcalls greeted Bell's and Abbott's costumes.

"Gangway! Opera swells comin' through!"

"You bums never seen a gentleman before?" asked Abbott.

"Where you headed dressed like penguins?"

"The Jardin de Paris on the roof of the Hammerstein Theater," said Abbott, tipping his silk hat and flourishing his cane. "To the Follies of 1907."

"What? You have tickets to the Follies?" they blurted in amazement. "How did you get your mitts on them?"

"Courtesy of the boss," said Abbott. "The producer, Mr. Ziegfeld, owes Mr. Van Dorn a favor. Something about a wife that wasn't his. Come on, Isaac. Curtain's going up!"

But Isaac Bell stood stock-still, staring at the telephones, which were lined up like soldiers. Something was nagging at him. Something forgotten. Something overlooked. Or a memory of something wrong.

The Jersey City powder pier leaped into his mind's eye. He had a photographic memory, and he traced the pier's reach from the land into the water, foot by foot, yard by yard. He saw the Vickers machine gun pointed at the gate that isolated it from the main yards. He saw the coal tenders he had ordered moved to protect the gate. He saw the string of loaded boxcars, the smoke, the tide-roiled water, the redbrick Communipaw passenger terminal with its ferry dock at the water's edge in the distance ...

What was missing?