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“Let theage for the next five days”
“You will never make me talk”
“We’ll find a way,” Bell promised
LUXURY TRAIN TICKETS, a suit of “wealthy English writer” tweed, a gold pocket watch, expensive luggage, and a hundred dollars were all it had cost the spy to hire the defrocked J L Skelton to masquerade as Arnold Bennett So reported Horace Bronson, the head of the San Francisco office, in a aiting for Isaac Bell in Ogden But although threats of a long prison ter freely, Skelton had no idea why he had been hired to pretend to escort so-called missionary students
“He swore on a stack of Bibles,” Bronson noted wryly, “that he did not knohy he was then paid another hundred dollars to revert to clergy status and hold a service in the Mare Island chapel And he denied any knowledge of why Harold Wing and Louis Loh tried to azine to cripple ships of the Great White Fleet” Horace Bronson believed hi others do his dirty work Like Arthur Langner’s big guns, he stayed miles away from the explosion
The source of the pass that Loh had used to get his wagon aboard the ferry into the navy yard would have been a clue But the paper itself had burned up in the explosion, along with the wagon and the truck Even the mule was no help It had been stolen in Vaca the day before The guards, who had adons, could not pinpoint any helpful inforon load of strawberries they had allowed on the island
Two days later, when the train was highballing across Illinois, Bell brought Louis Loh a newspaper froster lay on a fold-down cot in the dark, less baggage car with a wrist and ankle handcuffed to theon a stool “Get yourself some coffee,” Bell ordered, and when they were alone he showed Louis the newspaper “Hot off the press News from Tokyo”
“What do I care about Tokyo?”
“The Emperor of Japan has invited America’s Great White Fleet to make an official visit when it crosses the Pacific”
The bland mask that Louis Loh habitually wore on his face slipped a hair Bell detected aof his shoulders that broadcast an inner collapse of hope that his failed attack had still somehow provoked a clash between Japan and the United States
Bell was puzzled Why did Louis care so? He had already been caught He was facing prison, if not the hangman, and had lost the money he would have been paid for success What did he care? Unless he had done it for reasons other than money
“We can assume, Louis, that His Imperial Majesty would not have invited the fleet if you had ed to blow up the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in his name”
“What do I care about the Emperor of Japan?”
“That ishatchet onism?”
“Go to hell”