by J. T. Edson
Libby had decided that putting the scheme into effect on the first night of the journey would be the wisest course, as it was unlikely the escort for the loot would be expecting anything of the sort to happen so soon after leaving Washington, D.C. On being told something of what was planned, but not how the robbery was to be carried out, the fence had stated his approval of the time she had chosen on the grounds that it would allow him to put the loot into the hands of his principals without undue delay. He had not suspected that, even though she had demanded and received an advance payment, she had no intention of parting with such a valuable commodity in the way he envisaged.
In accordance with the plan concocted by the reddish-brunette, after the smallest of her associates had sought to establish he was carrying a harmless toy cap pistol at the depot, they had boarded the train separately and clad in attire that gave no suggestion of their connection with the Circus Maximus. In fact, she had been disguised as a woman whose face was concealed by the veil of her black “widow’s weeds” garments. When satisfied it could be done safely, the brothers having heard the escort ordering a meal and drinks from the club car’s attendant at nine-thirty and saying they would leave open the door of their compartment so he could deliver it, which had simplified matters, they had gathered outside the car. Removing and concealing their outer attire while their diminutive companion waited ready to play his part, they had climbed onto the roof of the car to await his signal that all was ready for the scheme to continue.
Being lowered as far as the men holding her could manage, the reddish-brunette required assistance to enter the private car. However, she had taken this into account when laying her plans. Still leaning out, the small masked figure quickly wrapped his arms around her legs. Then, displaying an even greater indication of his strength than when handling the heavy and powerfully kicking Webley, he drew her inward until she was able to signal for her wrists to be released and arrived inside the car without more than a minor difficulty.
“Good work, Jinks,” Libby praised somewhat breathlessly, for the descent had put a considerable strain on her and, for all her confidence in Giovanni and Padoubny’s ability to do what was required, she was relieved it had been accomplished with such comparative ease. “Did you have any trouble?”
“None,” the diminutive figure replied, drawing down the bandanna to bring into view the tanned and not bad-looking features, except for the shifty glint in his pale-blue eyes, of a man in his mid-thirties. “It went off just like you said it would. Not that I thought it wouldn’t, unlike some I could name.”
“Don’t let that worry you,” the reddish-brunette said reassuringly, crossing to the baggage rack and lifting down the first of the suitcases from it. “Our Italian friends and Laus have just about finished their usefulness, and the time will soon be on hand for them to retire permanently.”
“I’ll kind of miss that big stupid lummox. He had his uses providing no brains were needed,” said the man who was billed by the Circus Maximus as “Jinks The Master Clown” and never mentioned his actual name. “But not the wops. It’s a pity we couldn’t have left them behind, dead of course, at the Grand Republic.”
“It couldn’t have been done, more’s the pity,” Libby answered. The set of skeleton keys from the pouch on her belt and skill at picking locks allowed her to open the suitcase, and an examination proved its contents to be just clothing. “Still, everything comes to those who wait.”
“Only don’t let’s wait too long,” Jinks requested.
“I won’t,” the reddish-brunette promised, taking down another case. On opening it with no more difficulty than she had experienced with its predecessor, she gave a low hiss of satisfaction. “This is what I’m after.”
Removing the heavy oilskin-wrapped bundle that aroused the comment, Libby placed it into a drawstring-necked sack from underneath her belt. However, as she was about to turn, an idea struck her and, saying she might as well see if the men had anything else of value, she opened and scrutinized the contents of the remaining baggage. Despite failing to locate anything of value, some instinct caused her to turn out all the contents and subject the interior of the cases to an equally close examination. Beginning to gaze even more intently at the lining of the last, she let out another sound indicative of satisfaction and drew the knife from its sheath.
“I was right, Jinks!” Libby breathed after she had slit open the lining and removed another set of almost identical lead printing plates. “The bastards were playing it cagey. We’ll check over both sets and work out which of them are genuine when the circus catches up with us. Right now, we’ll get back to them and go down to get dressed in something suitable for us to be seen. Are you still going to be all right in that crate?”
“Yes,” Jinks replied. He had been put aboard the caboose of the train in a large locked wooden box that had airholes bored along the upper sides and was claimed to be housing the reddish-brunette’s pet Pekingese. “Only, you’d better have the conductor tell whoever’s been kicking the side to stop it. I’m getting tired of having to bark like a dog each time it happens.”
Eight – There’s Something Familiar About the Robbery
“That was a very short furlough, even for this department, sir,” Belle Boyd said dryly as she entered the office of General Philo Handiman, although she and Horatio A. Darren—who had met her in the passage—knew the matter that brought them there must be of some urgency.
What was more, the Rebel Spy and the male agent had already unknowingly reached the same conclusion over why they had been summoned to meet the superior in the United States Secret Service.
“Accounts said the taxpayers shouldn’t keep on being burdened by the expense of keeping you in a place as costly as the Grand Republic Hotel, Miss Boyd,” the General replied, instead of getting down to business immediately after the social amenities he only rarely overlooked were observed. He made the comment in such an apparently somber tone, he might have been serious rather than ironic. “And they are just as adamant that you ought to be in less extravagant accommodation than you have at present, Mr. Darren, as they are paying for it.”
“Somebody somewhere must love Accounts,” the male agent sighed in a seemingly heartfelt manner. “But I’m damned if I know who they might be.”
“You’ve seen the account in the newspapers this morning?” Handiman said, more as a statement than a question.
“I did order a most delightfully high-priced breakfast in my suite, which I mean to put down with my other expenses,” Belle confirmed, knowing to which item in the morning’s newspapers her superior was referring.
“Along with the ten dollars you’ve already claimed for the cab ride you took,” the General said in a mock-disapproving tone, as Darren was signifying concurrence with the Rebel Spy.
Although there was no longer any need to do so, the subject of her attentions having taken the advice she had given before they parted at Hoffmeister’s Hauf Brau, Belle had retained the suite taken for her to enable the surveillance of Countess Olga Simonouski to be simplified, reveling in a luxury far greater than she usually was granted when on an assignment. Darren had stayed in the less palatial accommodation he had used. Not that either was allowed to remain in relaxation for long. Each had anticipated the arrival of the note, delivered by a mounted messenger who showed signs of having traveled at some speed, ordering them to report to headquarters as soon as convenient, which both had known meant straightaway whether convenient or not.
“What’s behind the story of the robbery on the train, sir?” Darren asked.
“I’m pleased that the Washington Mail have handled it just as one would have expected of them,” Handiman declared after having told all he knew about the incident. “It simplifies things for us, although I’m sure that was never the editor’s intention when he included it.”
The comment aroused chuckles of appreciation from the two agents, despite each being aware of the situation’s gravity and why the head of their organiza
tion was taking such an interest as he implied they were to become involved.
Although not the largest of the newspapers published in Washington, D.C., the Mail was of a distinctly liberal persuasion, which led it to always seek out—even fabricate on occasion—any items detrimental to the government, the military, and the forces of law and order. While its competitors merely reported that two guards were killed while pretending to deliver printing plates for currency to a new mint opening in San Francisco, the Mail—which normally would not have regarded the murder of men following such an occupation as being worth mentioning—demanded to know why they were deliberately sacrificed in such an unnecessary fashion.
“Do you know, sir,” Belle said, “there’s something familiar about the robbery.”
“Such as?” Handiman prompted.
“The way the doors of the private car were locked with the keys left on the inside and one of the windows was open, for starters,” the Rebel Spy obliged. “As it must have happened earlier at night, doing that wouldn’t have been so easy as it would in the Grand Republic.”
“That’s true,” the General admitted. “The waiter who delivered the meal, then discovered the bodies when he had the conductor open up, offered a reasonably close estimation of when it happened. The trouble is finding out how it took place.”
“Like why a pair as smart and well used to such things as Charlie Forbes and Archie Fine let somebody get close enough to shoot them down without either being able to get his gun clear,” Darren suggested, having met the two men in the line of duty and retained their friendship. “There aren’t many they would trust. In fact, I’ll bet they told the waiter to make sure it was him and nobody else who fetched along their order. Which being the case, they wouldn’t have sat still if a stranger came with something pretending to be what they’d asked for.”
“They might have let a woman get close,” Belle offered. “That’s how the Bad Bunch down in Texas got away with it for so long.” x
“Knowing what they were carrying, even if it was only fake plates,” Darren answered, “I don’t believe they would have let a woman come as close as from where they were shot while on the job.”
“Or a priest, like Beguinage used to pretend to be?” the Rebel Spy asked, referring to a hired killer, claimed to be the most deadly and successful in Europe, who had come to Texas to carry out an assignment. xi
“Neither was a Catholic,” the male agent replied. “Or religious enough to let a preacher of any other kind, or even a nun, get near enough to do it without one or the other of them fetching out his gun. They might not be as fast as I’ve heard Dusty Fog and some of those other Texans you know so well are, Belle, but they weren’t exactly slow either.”
“Well, it happened, no matter how it was done,” Handiman asserted. Then there was a knock on his door, and as a booming voice sounded from the passage without the words being discernible, he went on, “Ah, it sounds like the man I’ve asked to come and meet you has arrived.”
There was something theatrical about the appearance of the tall and well-built man who entered the office upon the General’s calling for him to do so. Fairly handsome in a florid fashion, with bushy eyebrows and an equally auburn mustache of sizable dimensions, his features expressed a bonhomie and his deep-set dark eyes twinkled with amusement as he strode as if leading a parade of the more garish kind rather than merely walked forward. He carried a broad-brimmed black hat, and a black cloak lined with red silk hung over the shoulders of his stylishly cut dark suit. A multihued cravat was secured to the frilly bosom of his white shirt by a stickpin with a large ruby. His step was jaunty, and other than that he was well past the first flush of youth, nothing about him gave any suggestion of what his actual age might be.
“Hello, Barnie, you old reprobate,” Handiman greeted, rising and shaking hands with the visitor. “What’s your latest attraction, another Ki-Chu?”
“No more of them, thank you,” the visitor boomed in a voice that was clearly used to making itself heard over considerable distances. “Dash it all, Philo, the last one I had got religion in Boston, Mass., of all places. Right in the middle of my introduction, with his cage surrounded by assorted gilpins and rubes all agog over me expounding how he was a tailless Ki-Chu, the monkey that looks so much like a man that no attorney-at-law dare go near his cage for fear people would think the Ki-Chu had escaped when he pulled off his wig and false whiskers, then told them I, me, Phineas Taylor Barnum, with all undue modesty the Greatest Showman On Earth, was nothing but a fake. Such a display of base ingratitude cut me to the quick, wherever that may be, I may tell you.” xii
“I can see how that could be somewhat embarrassing,” the General declared without any show of sympathy. “Now let me present you to my two young friends. This is Miss Belle Boyd, and, before you ask her, I’m ordering her to tell you of her own free will that she doesn’t want you to lead her to fame and fortune equaling that of Lavinia and Tom Thumb.”
“Egad, that is a pity!” Phineas T. Barnum boomed, eyeing the slender girl with open approval and admiration. “I can visualize it all now. Dressed in a suitable fashion, you could demonstrate how you most justifiably became known as the Rebel Spy, my dear lady. Why, I might even be able to get the almost equally famous Scout of the Cumberland to engage you in a recreation of the great battle of fisticuffs in which you and she engaged at a theater the name of which escapes me for the nonce.”
“There’s only one slight trouble with that,” Belle replied, her demeanor showing amusement. “I never even met Pauline Cushman, much less engaged her in a bout of fisticuffs, as you put it.” xiii
“The latter is of little import, dear lady,” the showman claimed with the grandiloquence of manner that was second nature to him. “The gilpins and rubes believe it took place, and I consider there is something most meritorious about fulfilling their desire to see a belief brought to fruition.”
“I truly admire a man who thinks so much of others,” Handiman said dryly, and introduced Darren.
“And now, Philo,” Barnum said, taking the seat that was offered after having shaken hands with the two agents. “How can I be of assistance to you?”
“What do you know about the Circus Maximus?” the General asked.
“Old Cosmo Cathneiss’s little show?” Barnum intoned as if the mention of the name was close to being anathema where he was concerned. “They’ve just recently been gracing your fair metropolis with their presence, if that is the correct word.”
“It will do until something better comes along,” Handiman declared.
“We aren’t due to play here for some time,” Barnum said, making the words have the implication that he felt his small audience—and the population of Washington, D.C., in general—would be the losers because of the absence. “But it has gone down considerably of late. The balloon Cosmo goes up in isn’t a bad attraction, especially when he has it turned loose instead of being moored to the ground. The cats in the act are so old they couldn’t chew milksop, much less their trainer, or he wouldn’t be in with them. Although Momma and Poppa Martinelli were good in their day, those sons of theirs aren’t more than passable. Cosmo’s strong man is all right. Nothing spectacular, but not much needing to be faked. That little feller Dinks is a good clown, and he’s more proportionately formed than many of them. One of his games is to get dressed up as a cowboy bandit, with a bandanna over his face, and pretend to hold folks in the crowd up with a toy cap pistol that sends out a flag with ‘Bang’ on it when he pulls the trigger.” Giving no sign of noticing the way all three other occupants of the room stiffened as they heard the last words, he went on, “But he’s no Tom Thumb, and has a temper that makes most of us shy away from hiring him.”
“How about the women I saw mentioned on the bills?” the General queried.
“There’s only one of them,” Barnum stated. “Except for a few over-age flashers who can’t do more than walk around the ring to make it look like there’re more of them working than
is the case.”
“Just one woman does all those acts?”
“Just the one, Philo, although she doesn’t do them all every night, regardless of what Cosmo implies. Her name’s Libby Craddock, and she’s better than fair at everything she does. Whatever might be lacking, she covers it up by having quite a physique that she shows off most satisfactorily by the way she’s costumed for the part she’s playing.”
“If she’s that good,” Handiman said, “why haven’t you or one of the other big shows picked her up before now?”
“For the same reason Jinks is still with Cosmo,” Barnum explained. “Only even more so. She’s such a good shot with a pistol that she blew the ba—made the ringmaster of one show so he wouldn’t hope ever to raise any children when he tried to molest her. Which nobody could blame her for, as she wasn’t the first he’d done it to, even though some thought it a trifle extreme. Then, in another show, she laid open the face of a Gypsy girl who ran a mitt camp—fortune-telling concession to you gilp—with a knife quicker than a flash when they both fancied the same man. There have been other incidents of a like nature, and these combined to make owners shy away from taking her on.”
“Do you happen to have a poster for the circus, sir?” Belle inquired, just beating Darren to speaking and equally amused as the men by the way in which the visitor had only just refrained from referring to them as ‘gilpins.’
“I have,” the General confirmed, and came to his feet.
“Does the escapologist act she performs entail picking locks, Mr. Barnum?” the Rebel Spy wanted to know, after her superior had collected the poster from where it was standing in a roll alongside a filing cabinet and spread it open before her.