The Chase ib-1

by Clive Cussler

  Cromwell’s mansion amid mansions sat on a small picturesque lane called Cushman Street. The other monuments to wealth had been built by the bonanza-mining types and the big-four barons of the Central Pacific, later the Southern Pacific Railroad: Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker. To the eye of a creative artist or designer, the mansions looked like monstrosities of architecture gone mad with ostentation.

  Unlike the others that were built of wood, Cromwell and his sister Margaret’s house was constructed of quarried stone and reflected more of a sedate, almost library-like exterior. There were some who thought it bore a striking resemblance to the White House in Washington.

  He found his sister impatiently waiting. At her urging, he quickly readied himself for a night on the Barbary Coast. Yes indeed, he thought, as he dressed in his evening clothes, it had been a productive week. One more success to add to his growing sense of invincibility.

  12

  IRVINE COULD NOT COME UP WITH CURRENCY SERIAL numbers in Bozeman. Not only had the bank failed to record them; it had gone out of business due to the robbery. By the time their assets made up for the loss, the bank had collapsed, and the founder sold what few assets that were left, including the building, to a rich silver miner.

  Irvine pushed on to the next robbed bank on his list and took the Northern Pacific Railroad to the mining town of Elkhorn, Montana, located at an elevation of 6,444 feet above sea level. A booming mining town with twenty-five hundred residents, Elkhorn had produced some ten million dollars in gold and silver from 1872 until 1906. The Butcher Bandit had robbed its bank three years earlier, leaving four dead bodies behind.

  Just before the train pulled into the town station, Irvine studied, for the tenth time since leaving Bozeman, the report on the robbery in Elkhorn. It was the same modus operandi the bandit used on all his other robberies. Disguised as a miner, he entered the bank soon after the currency shipment had arrived to pay the three thousand men working the quartz lodes. As usual, there were no witnesses to the actual crime. All four victims—the bank manager, a teller, and a husband and wife making a withdrawal—had been shot in the head at close range. Again, the shots went unheard, and the bandit escaped into the atmosphere without leaving a clue.

  Irvine checked into the Grand Hotel before walking down the street to the Marvin Schmidt Bank, its new name taken from the miner who bought it. The architecture of the bank building was typical of the current style in most mining towns. Local stone laid with a Gothic theme. He walked though a corner door, facing the intersection of Old Creek and Pinon Streets. The manager sat behind a low partition not far from a massive steel safe painted with a huge elk standing on a rock outcropping.

  “Mr. Sigler?” inquired Irvine.

  A young man with black hair, brushed back and oiled, looked up at the greeting. His eyes were a shade of dark green, and his features indicated Indian blood in his ancestry. He wore comfortable cotton pants, a shirt with soft collar, and no tie. He lifted a pair of spectacles from the desk and set them on the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m Sigler. How can I help you?”

  “I’m Glenn Irvine with the Van Dorn Detective Agency, here for an investigation into the robbery a few years ago.”

  Sigler quickly frowned with an attitude of annoyance. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for Van Dorn to arrive on the scene? The robbery and murders took place back in 1903.”

  “We were not engaged to make an investigation at that time,” Irvine retorted.

  “So why are you here at this late date?”

  “To record the serial numbers of the bills taken by the robbery, if they were listed in a register.”

  “Who is paying for your services?” Sigler insisted.

  Irvine could imagine Sigler’s distrust and incomprehension. He might have felt the same if he was in the bank manager’s shoes. “The United States government. They want the robberies and murders to stop.”

  “Strikes me that the bastard can’t be caught,” Sigler said coldly.

  “If he walks on two legs,” said Irvine confidently, “the Van Dorn Agency will catch him.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Sigler said indifferently.

  “May I see your register of serial numbers? If we have those from the stolen bills, we will make every effort to trace them.”

  “What makes you think they were recorded?”

  Irvine shrugged. “Nothing. But it never hurts to ask.”

  Sigler fished around in his desk and retrieved a set of keys. “We keep all the old bank records in a storehouse behind the building.”

  He motioned for Irvine to follow him as he led the way through a back door toward a small stone building sitting in the middle of the bank’s property. The door protested with a loud squeak as it opened on unoiled hinges. Inside, shelves held rows of ledgers and account books. A small table and chair sat at the back of the storeroom.

  “Sit down, Mr. Irvine, and I’ll see what I can find.”

  Irvine was not optimistic. Finding a bank that kept a record of serial numbers of its currency seemed highly improbable. It was a long shot, but every avenue had to be followed. He watched as Sigler went through several clothbound ledgers. At last, he opened one and nodded.

  “Here you are,” Sigler said triumphantly. “The serial numbers our bookkeeper recorded of all the currency in the vault two days before the robbery. Some of the bills, of course, were distributed to customers. But most were taken by the bandit.”

  Irvine was stunned as he opened the book and stared at the columns of neatly inked numbers within the lines of the pages. There were several different kinds of large banknotes. Gold certificates, silver certificates, notes issued by individual banks were recorded in the ledger. United States Treasury serial numbers were printed vertically and horizontally on the sides; the local bank that issued them added their own number at the bottom. Most came from the Continental & Commercial National Bank of Chicago and the Crocker First National Bank of San Francisco. He looked up at Sigler, now fired with elation.

  “You don’t know what this means,” Irvine said, gratified beyond his greatest expectations. “Now we can pass out numbers on the stolen bills to every bank in the country where the bandit might have deposited them. Handbills with the numbers can also be distributed to merchants throughout the West, urging them to be on the lookout for the bills.”

  “Good luck,” said Sigler pessimistically. “It’s hardly possible that you can trace them back three years. Any one of them could have changed hands a hundred times by now.”

  “You’re probably right, but hopefully the bandit is still spending them.”

  “Slim chance of that,” Sigler said with a tight grin. “I’ll bet a month’s wage he spent it all a long time ago.”

  Sigler was probably right, Irvine thought. But Irvine was not discouraged. Bell had said that it would be an insignificant mistake that would trip the bandit up. Now it was only a question of getting the information out to banks and merchants and hope there would be a response that led to the whereabouts of the mysterious killer.

  13

  CURTIS SAT AT A TABLE IN THE WESTERN ARCHIVES Division of the Union Pacific Railroad’s office in Omaha, Nebraska, surrounded by high shelves filled with ledgers and account books of reports on train operations. During the nine days since he launched his search, he had scoured the records of four different railroads and the Wells Fargo stage lines trying to find a link for how the Butcher Bandit escaped capture after committing his robberies and hideous murders.

  It was an exercise in futility. Nothing fell into place. He had begun with the stagecoach possibilities. Most of the stage lines were gone by 1906. Wells Fargo still held the monopoly, with lines extending several thousand miles over overland express routes in remote areas that were not serviced by railroads. But the schedules did not fall into the proper times.

  There were sixteen hundred different company railroads across the nation in 1906, with two hundred twenty thousand
miles of track among them. Fifty of the largest had a thousand miles of track each. Curtis had narrowed the number of companies down to five. They were the railroads with scheduled runs through the towns hit by the bandit.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Curtis looked up from a train schedule record into the face of a little man standing no more than five feet two inches. His name was Nicolas Culhane, and his biscuit brown–streaked graying hair was brushed forward over his head to cover the receding baldness. The ferret brown eyes shifted with amazing frequency, and he wore a thinly clipped mustache whose pointed ends extended a good inch on either side of his lips. He walked with a slight stoop and wore spectacles with lenses that magnified his eyes. Curtis was amused at the helpful little man with the springy step. He was the perfect stereotype of a keeper of musty records in an archive.

  “No, thank you.” Curtis paused to glance at his pocket watch. “I never drink coffee in the afternoon.”

  “Having any luck?” asked Culhane.

  Curtis shook his head wearily. “None of the passenger trains ran close to the time the bandit robbed the banks.”

  “I pray you catch the murdering scum,” Culhane said, his voice suddenly turned angry.

  “You sound like you hate him.”

  “I have a personal grudge.”

  “Personal?”

  Culhane nodded. “My closest cousin and her little boy were killed by the Butcher at the bank in McDowell, New Mexico.”

  “I’m sorry,” Curtis said solemnly.

  “You must catch and hang him!” Culhane struck a fist on the table, causing the schedule book lying open to tremble and flip its pages. “He has got away with his crimes far too long.”

  “I assure you, the Van Dorn Agency is working night and day to bring him to justice.”

  “Have you found anything at all that might trace him?” Culhane asked anxiously.

  Curtis raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “All we’ve discovered is that he is missing the little finger on his left hand. Besides that, we have nothing.”

  “Did you check out the stagecoach lines?”

  “I spent a day in the Wells Fargo records department. It was a dead end. None of their schedules put them in town within four hours of the robberies. More than enough time for the bandit to evade capture.”

  “And the passenger trains?”

  “The sheriff and marshals telegraphed surrounding towns to stop all trains and examine the passengers for anyone who looked suspicious. They even searched all luggage in hopes that one of the bags might contain the stolen currency, but they turned up no evidence, nor could they make an identification. The bandit was too smart. The disguises he used to rob and murder were too original and too well executed. The law officers had little or nothing to go on.”

  “Did time schedules work out?”

  “Only two,” Curtis replied tiredly. “The departure times on the others didn’t coincide with the events.”

  Culhane rubbed his thinning hair thoughtfully. “You’ve eliminated stagecoaches and passenger trains. What about freight?”

  “Freight trains?”

  “Did you check out the departure times on those?”

  Curtis nodded. “There, we have a different story. The trains I’ve been able to find in the right place at the right time left the robbed towns within the required times.”

  “Then you have your answer,” Culhane said.

  Curtis didn’t reply immediately. He was tired, on the verge of sheer exhaustion, and depressed that he was no further along and had made no discoveries. Inwardly, he cursed the Butcher Bandit. It didn’t seem humanly possible the man could be so obscure, so will-o’-the-wisp, so able to defy all attempts at detection. He could almost see the man laughing at the inept efforts of his pursuers.

  At last, he said, “You underestimate the law enforcement officials. They searched the boxcars of all the freight trains that passed through the towns during the specified time limits.”

  “What about the boxcars that were switched onto local sidings to be hauled later to other destinations by incoming trains? He could have dodged the posses by hiding in a freight car.”

  Curtis shook his head. “The posses searched all empty cars and found no sign of the bandit.”

  “Did they check out the ones that were loaded?” Culhane questioned.

  “How could they? The cars were locked tight. There’s no way the bandit could have entered them.”

  Culhane grinned like a fox on a hot scent. “I guess nobody told you that the train brakemen all carry keys that will open the locks on the loading doors in case of fire.”

  “I was not aware of that angle,” said Curtis.

  The steel-rimmed spectacles slid down Culhane’s nose. “It’s certainly something to think about.”

  “Yes, it is,” Curtis mused, his mind beginning to turn. “We’re looking at a process of elimination. The posses claimed there were no tracks leading out of town to follow, which means our man didn’t ride a horse. There is almost no chance he could have taken a stagecoach, and it appears unlikely he bought a ticket and traveled out of town as a passenger on a train. He also failed to be spotted in an empty boxcar.”

  “Which leaves loaded boxcars as the only means of transportation that was not examined,” Culhane persisted.

  “You may be onto something,” said Curtis thoughtfully.

  A peculiar expression crossed Curtis’s face as he began to envision a new scenario. “That leaves a whole new avenue to follow. Now I have to go through freight car records to study the cars that made up those specific trains, who owned them, their manifest, and their ultimate destination.”

  “Not an easy chore,” said Culhane. “You’ll have to check out hundreds of freight cars from a dozen trains.”

  “Like a piece of a puzzle. Find the boxcar that was parked on a nearby siding in all of the robbed towns on the days of the robberies.”

  “I’ll be happy to help you with the Union Pacific freight records.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Culhane. Two of the freight trains in question were hauled by Union Pacific.”

  “Just tell me which towns they were at and I’ll dig out the records that give the car’s serial numbers, their ownership, and the agent who arranged and paid for their transportation.”

  “You’ve been a great help to me and I’m grateful,” Curtis said sincerely.

  “I’m the one who is grateful, Mr. Curtis. I never thought I would be instrumental in bringing the Butcher Bandit, the killer of my cousin and her child, to justice.”

  Four hours later, with Culhane’s able assistance, Curtis had the information that gave him a solid direction to investigate. Now all he had to do was research the archives of the Southern Pacific, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, and the Denver & Rio Grande railroads to confirm Culhane’s theory.

  By nightfall, he was on a train to Los Angeles and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe archives. Too inspired to sleep, he stared at his reflection in the window since it was too dark to see the landscape roll by outside. He was optimistic that the end of the trail seemed to be over the next hill and around the next bend.

  14

  THE EARLY EVENING CAME WITH A LIGHT RAIN THAT dampened the dirt street through town as Bell stepped off the train. In the fading light, he could see that Bisbee, Arizona, was a vertical town, with sharply rising hills occupied by many houses that could be reached only by steep stairways. On his way to the Copper Queen Hotel, he walked through the narrow, twisting streets, a maze flanked by new, substantial brick buildings.

  It was a Saturday, and Bell found a deputy holding down the sheriff’s office and jail. The deputy said the sheriff was taking a few days off, to make repairs to his house that had been damaged in a flood that had swept down the hills, and would not return to work until Thursday. When Bell asked him for directions to the sheriff’s house, the deputy refused to give them, claiming that the sheriff was not to be disturbed unless it was an emergency.<
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  Bell checked into the Copper Queen, ate a light dinner in the hotel dining room, and then went out on the town. He skipped having a drink in the Copper Queen Saloon and walked up to the infamous Brewery Gulch, lined with fifty saloons, known throughout the territory as the wildest, bawdiest, and best drinking street in the West.

  He checked out four of the saloons, stepping into each and studying the action, before going on to the next one. Finally, he settled into a large, wooden-walled hall with a stage and a small band playing a ragtime tune while four dancing girls hoofed it around the stage. Moving through the crowded tables to the bar, he waited until a busy bartender asked, “What’ll it be, friend, whiskey or beer?”

  “What’s your best whiskey?”