Read The Spy for Free Online

no possibility without first considering it. “Who,” he asked, “was this old night watchman who told you this?”
    “He didn’t tell us. He told the sergeant.”
    “His name is Eddison,” said Black.
    “Big John Eddison,” Little added.
    “How old is he?”
    “Looks a hundred.”
    “Big old man. Nearly as tall you, Mr. Bell.”
    “Where would I find him?”
    “There’s a rooming house where the salts hang out.”
    Bell found Eddison’s rooming house on F Street within a short walk of the navy yard. It had a front porch filled with rocking chairs, empty this cold afternoon. He went in and introduced himself to the landlady, who was laying her long table for supper. She had a thick Southern accent, and a face still pretty despite the lines acquired in years of hard work.
    “Mr. Eddison?” she drawled. “He’s a good old man. Never a bit of trouble like certain of his shipmates I could name.”
    “Is he in?”
    “Mr. Eddison sleeps late, being as how he works at night.”
    “Would you mind if I waited?” Bell asked with a smile that flashed his even teeth and lighted his blue eyes.
    The landlady brushed a wisp of gray hair from her cheek and smiled back. “I’ll bring you a cup of coffee.”
    “Don’t trouble yourself.”
    “No trouble, Mr. Bell. You’re in the South now. My mother would spin in her grave if she heard I let a gentleman sit in my parlor without a cup of coffee.”
    Fifteen minutes later, Bell was able to say without stretching the truth too far, “This is the finest coffee I have had since my mother took me to a pastry shop in Vienna, Austria, when I was only knee-high to a grasshopper.”
    “Well, you know what I’ve a mind to do? I’ll put on a fresh pot and ask Mr. Eddison if he’d like to have a cup with you.”
    John Eddison would have been even taller than Bell, the detective saw, had age not bent his back. He had big hands and long arms that must have been powerful in his day, a shock of white hair, pale runny eyes, the enormous nose that old men often grew, and a firm mouth set in sagging jowls.
    Bell extended his hand. “I’m Isaac Bell, Van Dorn investigator.”
    “You don’t say,” Eddison grinned, and Bell saw that the slow movement of age masked a sprightly manner. “Well, I didn’t do it. Though I might have when I was younger. How can I help you, sonny?”
    “I was speaking with Lance Corporal Black and Private Little of the Marine guard, and—”
    “You know what we said about the Marines in the Navy?” Eddison interrupted.
    “No, sir.”
    “A sailor had to accidentally bang his head four times on a low beam to demonstrate that he was qualified to join the Marines.”
    Bell laughed. “They told me that you reported you had surprised a prowler in the navy yard.”
    “Aye. But he got away. They didn’t believe me.”
    “A Chinese?”
    “Not a Chinaman.”
    “No? I wonder where Black and Little got the idea the prowler was Chinese?”
    “I warned you about the Marines,” Eddison chuckled. “You laughed.”
    “What sort of man did the prowler look like?”
    “Like a Jap.”
    “Japanese?”
    “I told those fools’ sergeant. Sounds like their sergeant had Chinamen on the brain. But like I said, I don’t think the sergeant believed I saw anyone at all—Chinaman, Jap—he didn’t believe me, period. Thought I was a stupid old man having visions. The sergeant asked me if I was drinking. Hell, I haven’t had a drink in forty years.”
    Bell couched his next question carefully. He had met very few Americans who could distinguish Japanese from Chinese. “Did you get a close look at him?”
    “Aye.”
    “I was under the impression it was dark.”
    “The moon shone square in his face.”
    “How near were you to him?”
    Eddison held up his large, wrinkled hand. “Any closer, I’d have wrapped these fingers around his throat.”
    “What was there about him that seemed Japanese?”
    “His eyes, his mouth, his nose, his lips, his hair,”