“Probably using both, depending on his situation,” said Wally.
Bell asked, “Who was the murdered man?”
“Local owlhoot, according to the sheriff. Sort of a real-life Broncho Billy-our chief suspect … Sorry, Isaac, couldn’t resist.” Fulton nodded at the wanted poster.
“Keep it up and I won’t resist asking Mr. Van Dorn to post Weber and Fields to Alaska.”
“… Suspected of knocking over a stagecoach up in the mountains last August. The cinder dicks caught him robbing a copper-mine payroll off the Utah and Northern ten years ago. Turned in his partners for a lighter sentence. Looks like he knew Jake Dunn from prison.”
Bell shook his head in disgust. “The Wrecker is not only hiring hands to help but hiring criminals to hire help. He can hit anywhere on the continent.”
There was a tentative knock at the door. The detectives looked up, gazes narrowing at the sight of a nervous-looking youth in a wrinkled sack suit. He had a cheap suitcase in one hand and his hat in the other. “Mr. Bell, sir?”
Isaac Bell recognized young James Dashwood from the San Francisco office, the apprentice detective who had done such a thorough job establishing the innocence of the union man killed in the Coast Line Limited wreck.
“Come on in, James. Meet Weber and Fields, the oldest detectives in America.”
“Hello, Mr. Weber. Hello, Mr. Fields.”
“I’m Weber,” said Mack. “He’s Fields.”
“Sorry, sir.”
Bell asked, “What are you doing here, James?”
“Mr. Bronson sent me with this, sir. He told me to ride expresses to beat the mail.”
The apprentice handed Bell a brown paper envelope. Inside was a second envelope addressed to him in penciled block letters, care of the San Francisco office. Bronson had clipped a note to it: “Opened this rather than wait. Glad I did. Looks like he made you.”
Bell opened the envelope addressed to him. From it, he withdrew the front cover of a recent Harper’s Weekly magazine. A cartoon by William Allen Rogers depicted Osgood Hennessy in a tycoon’s silk top hat astride a locomotive marked SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. Hennessy was pulling a train labeled CENTRAL RAILROAD OF NEW JERSEY into New York City. The train was drawn to look like a writhing octopus. Hand-lettered in black pencil across the cartoon was the question CAN THE LONG ARM OF THE WRECKER REACH FARTHER THAN OSGOOD’S TENTACLE?
“What the heck is that?” asked Wally.
“A gauntlet,” answered Bell. “He’s challenging us.”
“And rubbing our noses in it,” said Mack.
“Mack’s right,” said Wally. “I wouldn’t cloud my head taking it personal, Isaac.”
“The magazine is in there, too,” said Dashwood. “Mr. Bronson thought you’d want to read it, Mr. Bell.”
Seething inwardly, Bell quickly scanned the essence of the first page. Harper‘s, dubbing itself “A Journal of Civilization,” was reporting avidly the depredations of the railroad monopolies. This issue devoted an article to Osgood Hennessy’s ambitions. Hennessy, it seemed, had secretly acquired a “near-dominating interest” in the Baltimore amp; Ohio Railroad. The B amp;O already held, jointly with the Illinois Central-in which Hennessy had a large interest-a dominating interest in the Reading Railroad Company. The Reading controlled the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which gave Hennessy entry into the coveted New York district.
“What does it mean?” asked James.
“It means,” explained a grim Isaac Bell, “that the Wrecker can attack Hennessy’s interests directly in New York City.”
“Any train wreck he causes in New York,” said Mack Fulton, “will hit the Southern Pacific even harder than an attack in California.”
“New York,” said Wally Kisley, “being the biggest city in the country.”
Bell looked at his watch. “I’ve got time to catch the Overland Limited. Send my bags after me to the Yale Club of New York City.”
He headed for the door, firing orders. “Wire Archie Abbott! Tell him to meet me in New York. And wire Irv Arlen and tell him to cover the rail yards in Jersey City. And Eddie Edwards, too. He knows those yards. He broke up the Lava Bed gang that was doing express-car jobs on the piers. You two finish up here, make sure he’s not still in Ogden-which I doubt-and find which way he went.”
“New York is, according to this,” Wally said, holding up the Harp- er’s Weekly and quoting from the article, “ ‘the Holy Land to which all railroaders long to make a pilgrimage.’ ”
“Which means,” said his partner, “he’s on his way already and will be waiting for you when you get there.”
Halfway out the door, Bell looked back at Dashwood, who was watching eagerly.
“James, do something for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve read the reports on the wreck of the Coast Line Limited?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell Mr. Bronson I’m sending you to Los Angeles. I want you to find the blacksmith or machinist who drilled a hole in that hook that derailed the Limited. Can you do that for me-what’s the matter?”
“But Mr. Sanders is in charge of Los Angeles, and he might-”
“Stay out of Sanders’s way. You’re on your own. Catch the next flyer west. On the jump!”
Dashwood ran past Bell and thundered down the wooden stairs like a boy let out of school.
“What’s a kid going do on his own?” asked Wally.
“He’s a crackerjack,” said Bell. “And he can’t do worse than Sanders has so far, O.K. I’m on my way. Mack, get some rest. You look beat.”
“You’d look beat too if you’d been sleeping sitting up on trains for the last week.”
“Let me remind you geezers to watch your step. The Wrecker is poison.”
“Thank you for your wise advice, sonny,” answered Wally.
“We’ll try real hard to remember it,” said Mack. “But, like I said, even money he’s already on his way to New York.”
Wally Kisley went to the window and watched Isaac Bell run to catch the Overland Limited.
“Oh, this’ll be fun. Our hard-rock miners ran out of drunks.”
He motioned for Mack to join him at the window. Springing suddenly from the sidewalk, the hard-rock miners swooped from both sides to ambush the well-groomed dude running for his train in an expensive suit. Neither stopping or even slowing, Bell cut through them like a one-man flying wedge and the miners returned to the sidewalk facedown.
“Did you see that?” Kisley asked.
“Nope. And neither did they.”
They stayed at the window, observing closely the citizens swarming about the sidewalk.
“That kid Dashwood?” Fulton asked. “Remind you of anybody?”
“Who? Isaac?”
“No. Fifteen-what am I saying?-twenty years ago, Isaac was still chasing lacrosse balls at that fancy prep school his old man sent him to. You and me, we was in Chicago. You were investigating certain parties engineering the corner in grain. I was up to my ears in the Haymarket bombing, when we figured out the cops did most of the killing. Remember, this slum kid showed up looking for work? Mr. Van Dorn took a shine to him, had you and me show him the ropes. He was a natural. Sharp, quick, ice water in his veins.”
“Son of a gun,” said Mack. “Wish Clarke.”
“Let’s hope Dashwood teetotals.”
“Look!” Mack leaned close to the glass.
“I see him!” said Wally. He ripped the lumberjack’s drawing off the wall, the picture with the beard added, and brought it to the window.
A tall, bearded workman dressed in overalls and derby who had been striding toward the railroad station carrying a large tool sack over his shoulder had been forced onto stop in front of a saloon to allow two bartenders to throw four drunks to the sidewalk. Hemmed in by the cheering crowd, the tall man was glancing around impatiently, raising his face out of the shadow of his derby.
The detectives looked at the drawing.
“Is
that him?”
“Could be. But it looks like he’s had that beard awhile.”
“Unless it’s rented.”
“If it is, it’s a good one,” said Mack. “I don’t like the ears either. They’re nowhere near this big.”
“If it’s not him,” Wally insisted, “it could be his brother.”
“Why don’t we ask him if he has a brother?”
14
“I’M FIRST, YOU WATCH.”
Wally Kisley ran for the stairs.
The tall workman with the sack slung over his shoulder shoved through the crowd, stepped over one drunk and around another, and resumed his quick pace toward Union Depot. From the window, Mack Fulton traced the path he drove relentlessly through the pedestrians who were hurrying to and from the station.
Wally bounded down the stairs and out the building. When he got to the sidewalk, he looked up. Mack pointed him in the right direction. Wally sprinted ahead. A quick wave said he found their quarry, and Mack tore down the stairs after him, his heart pounding. He’d been feeling lousy for days, and now he was having trouble snatching a breath.
He caught up with Wally, who said, “You’re white as a sheet. You O.K.?”
“Tip-top. Where’d he go?”
“Down that alley. I think he saw me.”
“If he did and he ran, he’s our man. Come on!”
Mack led the way, sucking air. The alley was muddy underfoot and stank. Instead of cutting through to Twenty-fourth Street, as the detectives assumed it would, it hooked left where the way was blocked by a steel-shuttered warehouse. There were barrels in front big enough to hide behind.
“We got him trapped,” said Wally.
Mack gasped. Wally looked at him. His face was rigid with pain. He doubled over, clutching his chest, and fell hard in the mud. Wally knelt beside him. “Jesus, Mack!”
Mack’s face was deathly pale, his eyes wide. He raised his head, staring over Wally’s shoulder. “Behind you!” he muttered.
Wally whirled toward the rush of footfalls.
The man they had been chasing, the man who looked like the sketch, the man who was definitely the Wrecker, was running straight at him with a knife. Wally shielded his old friend’s body with his own, and smoothly whipped a gun from under his checkerboard coat. He cocked the single-action revolver with a practiced thumb on the gnarled hammer and brought the barrel to bear. Coolly, he aimed so as to smash the bones in the Wrecker’s shoulder rather than kill him so they could question the saboteur about future attacks already set in motion.
Before Wally could fire, he heard a metallic click, and was stunned to see a glint of light on steel as the knife blade suddenly jumped at his face. The Wrecker was still five feet from him, but the tip was already entering his eye.
He’s made a sword that telescopes out of a ,rpring-loaded knife, was Wally Kisley’s last thought as the Wrecker’s blade plunged through his brain. And I thought I had seen it all.
THE WRECKER JERKED His blade out of the detective’s skull and rammed it through the neck of his fallen partner. The man looked like he was dead already, but this was no time to take chances. He withdrew the blade and glanced around coldly. When he saw that no one had followed the detectives into the alley, he wiped the blade on the checkerboard coat, clicked the release to shorten it, and returned it to the sheath in his boot.
It had been a close call, the sort of near disaster you couldn’t plan for, other than to be always primed to be fast and deadly, and he was exhilarated by his escape. Keep moving!. he thought. The Overland Limited would not wait while he celebrated.
He hurried from the alley, pushed through the mob on the sidewalk, and cut across Twenty-fifth Street. Darting in front of an electric trolley, he turned right on Wall Street, and walked for a block parallel to the long Union Depot train station. When he was sure he was not followed, he crossed Wall and entered the station by a door at the north end.
He found the men’s room and locked himself in a stall. Racing against the clock, he stripped off the overalls that had concealed his elegant traveling clothes and took an expensive leather Gladstone bag with brass fittings from his tool sack. He removed polished black laced dress boots from the Gladstone, a gray Homburg from its own protective hatbox, and a derringer and packed in it the rough boots that held his sword. He laced up the dress boots and dropped the derringer into his coat pocket. He removed his beard, which he also put in the Gladstone, and rubbed traces of spirit gum off his skin. Then he stuffed the overalls in the sack and shoved the sack behind the toilet. There was nothing in the overalls or the sack that could be traced to him. He checked the time on his railroad watch and waited exactly two minutes, rubbing his boots against the back of his trouser legs to polish them and running an ivory comb through his hair.
He stepped out of the stall. He inspected himself carefully in the mirror over the sink. He flicked a speck of spirit gum off his chin and placed his gray Homburg on his head.
Smiling, he sauntered from the men’s room and across the bustling lobby, which was suddenly swarming with railroad detectives. With only seconds to spare, he brushed past station attendants who were closing the gates to the smoky train platforms. A locomotive shrieked the double Ahead signal, and the Overland Limited, a luxury flyer made up of eight first-class Pullmans, dining car, and an observation-lounge car, began to roll east for Cheyenne, Omaha, and Chicago.
The Wrecker strode alongside the last car, the observation-lounge, matching its pace, his eyes everywhere.
Far ahead, just behind the baggage car, he saw a man leaning from the steps of the first Pullman, holding on to a handrail so he could swing out to get a clear look at whoever was catching the Limited at the last minute. It was six hundred feet from there to where the Wrecker was reaching for a handrail to pull himself aboard the last car of the moving train, but there was no mistaking the sharp silhouette of a hunter.
The head of the train moved out of the shadow cast by the station, and he saw that the man leaning out to watch the platform had a full head of flaxen hair that gleamed like gold in the light of the setting sun. Which meant, as he had suspected, that the hunter was none other than Detective Isaac Bell.
Without hesitation, the Wrecker gripped the handrail and stepped onto the train’s end platform. From this open vestibule, he entered the observation-lounge car. He closed the door behind him, shutting out the smoke and noise, and luxuriated in the peace and quiet of a first-class transcontinental flyer decorated with heavy moldings, polished-wood panels, mirrors, and a thick carpet on the floor. Stewards were carrying drinks on silver trays to passengers lounging on comfortable couches. Those who looked up from newspapers and conversation acknowledged the well-dressed late arrival with the sociable nods of brother clubmen.
The conductor broke the mood. Flinty of eye, hard of mouth, and impeccably uniformed, from his gleaming visor to his gleaming shoes, he was imperious, brusque, and suspicious like conductors everywhere. “Tickets, gents! Ogden tickets.”
The Wrecker flourished his railway pass.
The conductor’s eyes widened at the name on the pass, and he greeted his new passenger with great deference.
“Welcome aboard, sir.”
THE FAVORED FEW
15
OCTOBER 14, 1907
EASTBOUND ON THE OVERLAND LIMITED
“TAKE ME TO MY STATEROOM IMMEDIATELY!”
Isaac Bell would be racing to the back of the train to see who had boarded last minute, and the Wrecker intended to confront the detective at a time of his own choosing.
The conductor, obsequious as a palace courtier serving a prince robed in ermine, led the Wrecker down a window aisle to a large suite in the middle of a car where the train was smoothest riding.
“Come in! Shut the door!”
The private suite, reserved for the railroad’s special guests, was palatially fitted with hand-carved cabinetry and an embossed-leather ceiling. It included a sitting room, a sleeping compartment, and its own
bathroom with a marble tub and fixtures of pure silver. He tossed his Gladstone bag on the bed.
“Any ‘interests’ on your train?” he asked the conductor, meaning were there other important personages aboard. He made the inquiry with a confidential smile and slipped the conductor a gold piece.
No guest of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company had to tip to ensure lavish treatment and fawning service. But the conductor of a transcontinental train, like the purser of an Atlantic liner, could be a useful confederate and a source of inside information about the powerful passengers traveling across the country. The combination of pretended intimacy and cold cash was an investment that would pay off in spades. And indeed it did, as the conductor answered freely.
“Mr. Jack Thomas, president of First National Bank, got on at Oakland, along with Mr. Bruce Payne, Esquire.”
“The oil attorney?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Payne and Mr. Thomas are very close, as you can imagine.”
“Money and petroleum law make fast bedfellows,” the Wrecker smiled, encouraging the conductor to keep talking.
“Judge Congdon and Colonel Bloom, the gentleman in coal, have been on the train since Sacramento.”
The Wrecker nodded. Judge James Congdon had joined with J. P. Morgan to buy Andrew Carnegie’s steel trust. Kenneth Bloom owned coal in partnership with the Pennsylvania Railroad.
“And Mr. Moser of Providence, the mill owner, whose son sits in the Senate, sir.”
“Capital fellow,” said the Wrecker. “His father’s textile interests are in good hands.”
The conductor beamed, basking in the proximity of such celebrated plutocrats. “I am certain that they would be honored if you would join them for dinner.”
“I’ll see how I feel,” he answered casually, adding with an almost imperceptible wink, “Any talk of a little game of draw?”
“Yes, sir. Poker after dinner in Judge Congdon’s stateroom.”
“And who else is aboard?”
The conductor rattled off the names of cattle barons, western mining magnates, and the usual complement of railroad attorneys. Then he lowered his voice to confide, “There’s a Van Dorn detective got on at Ogden just before you, sir.”
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