Margaret stopped beside the desks and counter. “And this is where you rehearse.”
He nodded. “After our agents obtain a layout of the interior of the bank and I arrange the furnishings accordingly.”
“You have it down to a fine science.”
“I try,” he said loftily.
“Your method of operation is becoming too polished, too sophisticated,” she cautioned him.
He took her by the arm and gently squeezed. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
17
BELL CAME TO THE OFFICE DIRECTLY FROM THE TRAIN and found Irvine and Curtis already in the conference room waiting for him. He could tell the news was good because there were no frowns or grim looks on their faces. The jovial mood was enhanced by Irvine smoking a cigar and Curtis pulling a silver cigarette case from his coat pocket. “You two seem to be in good spirits,” said Bell, setting down his suitcase.
“We found some leads,” Curtis said, lighting a cigarette. “Nothing earth-shattering, but a few small pieces to fit in the puzzle.”
“How about you, Isaac, did you turn up anything?” asked Irvine.
Before Bell could answer, Agnes Murphy entered the conference room carrying a tray with three cups and a coffeepot. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said sweetly, “but I thought you gentlemen might like some coffee.”
Bell took the tray from her and set it on the long table. “That’s very kind of you, Agnes.”
She turned and started for the door. “I’ll be right back.” In less than a minute, she returned with a sugar bowl and cream pitcher. “I didn’t forget. I just couldn’t carry it all.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” said Curtis with a broad smile, as he lightly kissed her on the cheek.
Bell and Irvine exchanged glances, smiling. They both knew that Curtis and Agnes were just pals and always teasing each other. Agnes gathered her skirts as she turned, left the conference room, and closed the door.
“Besides the coffee,” said Bell, “it was thoughtful of her to close the door.”
Curtis blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. “She knows the score. Agnes has no more respect for Alexander than we do.”
“You were about to say…” Irvine prompted Bell.
“I discovered that, besides a missing finger, he probably has red hair. And rides a motorcycle, which he’s used on more than one robbery.” Bell reached into his pocket and lifted out a small silk sack, opened it, and spilled the cartridge out on the table. “We now know the Butcher Bandit uses a thirty-eight-caliber Colt automatic. This shell casing was found under a carpet. The killer somehow missed it since he hasn’t left any shells at his other bank hits. Sheriff Murphy of Bisbee was a smart man and had the county coroner remove the bullets from the murder victims. They all came from a thirty-eight Colt.”
“We can check sales of all thirty-eight Colt automatics,” said Curtis.
“There couldn’t be more than ten thousand of them,” Irvine replied sarcastically. “It would take ten agents years to check out every gun dealer, salesman, and hardware store owner who sells thirty-eight Colt automatics.”
“Art is right,” Bell said as he stared at the brass cartridge. “It would be a tremendous long shot.”
Curtis grinned like a fox. “Not if we have a lead to where the bandit hides out. Then we can check out dealers in the area.”
“Good thinking,” Bell agreed, not knowing what Curtis was about to reveal. “In the meantime, I’ll send it off to Chicago and see if our agency experts can pull any fingerprints.” He relaxed in a chair and tilted it back on two legs, propping a foot against the table. “Now, let me hear what you two have unearthed.”
Irvine opened a bound ledger and placed the book on the table in front of Bell and Curtis. “I hit pay dirt in Elkhorn, Nevada. They had recorded the serial numbers of the fifty-dollar bills in their vault the day before the robbery.”
“I can understand why,” said Bell. “Fifties are counterfeited more than any other bill. As their bookkeeper itemized the bills, he must have studied each one and made sure they weren’t bogus.”
Irvine tapped the entries in the book with his finger as he looked at Bell. “You can request the Chicago office to put out bulletins to banks around the West to be on the lookout for them. Fifties will be easier to trace than fives, tens, or twenties.”
“And a lot easier than ones,” Curtis added.
“I’ll see to it,” Bell assured Irvine.
“I made a few inquiries on my own and actually came up with two banks in San Francisco where three of the bills showed up.”
“Good work,” said Bell. He then focused on Curtis. “Now, how about you, Arthur? Any luck on your end?”
“Did you find any passenger trains the killer might have escaped on?” Irvine queried.
“No. But freight trains are a different story.”
“Weren’t they searched by the posses?”
Curtis shook his head. “Not the ones that were loaded and locked.”
“So where did you go from there?” inquired Bell.
Curtis broke out into a smile that spread and beamed. “It took many hours of digging in musty old railroad company records, but I did manage to make an interesting discovery. I found three cars that were on the sidings of towns that were robbed. Boxcar serial number 15758 was present in Virginia City and Bisbee during the robberies. In Virginia City, its cargo manifest was listed as fifty bales of barbed wire to be transported to a ranch in Southern California. Boxcar 15758 was empty when it sat on a siding waiting to be switched to another train in Bisbee.”
“Empty,” Irvine repeated, stirring restlessly in his chair.
“Yes, empty. It had hauled a load of pottery from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to Tucson, before being sent empty back to El Paso.”
“So we can scratch that one,” muttered Bell. “What about the others?”
Curtis referred to his notes. “Number 18122 was present at Elkhorn, Nevada, and Grand Junction, Colorado, when their banks were robbed. It was on the siding at Grand Junction waiting to be switched to a train to take it to Los Angeles. Its cargo was sixty cases of wine. At Elkhorn, it carried a load of mattresses, from a factory in Sacramento, California.”
“So much for 18122,” said Irvine. “It’s not likely the bandit escaped to different locations.”
Curtis fairly beamed. “I saved the best for last.” Rising and walking to a blackboard, he wrote O’BRIAN FURNITURE COMPANY, DENVER on the black surface. Then he turned with a pleased expression on his face. “Now we come to a boxcar that was present at five robberies.”
Both Bell and Irvine sat up suddenly in their chairs as Curtis caught their fixed attention. The agent had taken the bull by the horns and delved into an area no one had thought to go.
Bell, surprised at Curtis’s unexpected revelation, said, “The car was in five towns on the day their banks were robbed?”
“I’ve made a list of towns, times, and its final destination.”
Irvine nearly spilled his coffee as he set it back on the tray. “Don’t you mean destinations, plural?”
“No. Destination, singular.” Curtis laughed softly. “In every instance, the furniture car from Denver went to San Francisco. I could find no record of it ever having been hauled to Denver or anywhere else. I can only assume it was a façade the bandit used to escape the posses.”
Bell stared at the writing on the blackboard. “I’ll bet a month’s pay that a check of furniture stores in Denver will prove O’Brian Furniture does not exist.”
“I think that goes without saying,” Irvine summed up.
Bell turned to Curtis. “When was the last Southern Pacific Railroad account of the car?”
“It was put on a siding in the San Francisco railyards two weeks ago. At my last inquiry, it was still there.”
“Then we’ve got to find and search it.”
“And stake it out,” said Irvine.
“That, too,” replied Bell. “But we must be very c
areful not to alert the bandit that we’re closing in on him.”
Curtis lit another cigarette. “I’ll leave on the first train in the morning for San Francisco.”
“Irvine and I will join you.” Bell then turned his attention to Irvine. “You mentioned that three bills turned up in San Francisco.”
Irvine nodded. “That’s right. One at the Cromwell National Bank of San Francisco and two at the Crocker National Bank.”
Bell smiled for the first time. “It would seem, gentlemen, all roads lead to San Francisco.”
“It’s beginning to look that way,” Curtis agreed, his enthusiasm growing.
The two agents stared expectantly at Bell as he studied the map with the flags marking the terrible crimes committed by the Butcher Bandit. The evidence was almost infinitesimal and could easily lead to dead ends. Yet there was satisfaction in what the three Van Dorn agents had gleaned. Meager as it was, they had little else to go on. But it was enough for a plan to form in Bell’s mind.
“It might be like betting on a plow horse at the racetrack, but I think we may have an opportunity to trap the bandit.”
“You have a plan?” asked Irvine.
“Suppose we plant stories in the local San Francisco newspapers revealing that a million-dollar payroll is being shipped by special train to a bank in a town populated by several thousand miners. The large amount would be because the mine owners have declared a special bonus for the workers to avert a threatened strike called by the miners’ union over the demand for substantially increased wages.”
Curtis pondered Bell’s proposition and said, “The bandit could easily check out the story and find it’s false.”
“Not if we have one of us sitting in the telegraph office when the inquiry comes in and give the appropriate reply.”
“We might even get lucky and discover who sent the telegram,” said Irvine.
Bell nodded. “There is that, too.”
Irvine gazed into his coffee cup as if he was a fortune-teller reading tea leaves. “It’s a thousand-to-one shot. We all know that.”
“No doubt about it,” Bell said, “it’s worth a try. And, if the scheme fails, we might still stumble onto another lead to the bandit.”
“Got a mining town in mind?” Curtis asked.
“Telluride, Colorado,” answered Bell. “Because the town is situated in a box canyon. Telluride is also the area where its miners struck the mine owners in 1901 and 1903, so another strike is quite plausible.”
“If the O’Brian Furniture freight car shows up,” said Curtis, “we’ll know our man took the bait.”
“Once the train pulls it onto the Telluride siding, the only way out is the way it came.” Irvine sighed and smiled contentedly. “The bandit will be trapped and have no means of escape.”
The atmosphere in the conference room crackled with expectation and hope. What had almost seemed like a lost cause was coming together. Three pairs of eyes trained on the giant wall map, traveled west toward the Pacific Ocean, and focused on the port city of San Francisco.
In the elevator that took him down to the street for his walk to the Brown Palace, Bell felt jubilant. Win, lose, or draw, the end of the game was in sight. Granted, it was still hazy and indistinct, but the cards were finally falling in Bell’s favor. His thoughts turned to Rose and he found himself wondering for the hundredth time what connection she had with the Butcher Bandit.
What woman could be close to a man who murdered women and children? He began to believe that she might be as rotten as the bandit, if not more so.
BELL STEPPED from the Brown Palace elevator and walked to his suite. He pulled the key from his pant pocket and inserted it in the door lock. Before he could turn the key, the door slipped open a crack. The latch had not been fully engaged when the door had been closed.
Bell paused and tensed. His first thought was that the maid had forgotten to close the door and spring the bolt. It was a logical assumption, but an inner wisdom made him suspicious. The perception of something being not quite right had saved him on more than one occasion.
Bell had made many enemies during his years as a detective with Van Dorn. Several of the men he had captured and seen tried and sentenced to prison had vowed they would come after him. Three had tried and two had died.
If someone was waiting for him inside his room, it wouldn’t be with a gun, he reasoned. Gunshots would echo throughout the hotel and bring a dozen staff running. For a criminal to escape from the ninth floor, he either would have to wait for an elevator or run down the stairs, neither a good choice for a successful escape.
Bell was aware that he was probably overexaggerating the threat, which could very well be nonexistent. But he hadn’t survived this long without a suspicious mind. If someone was waiting inside his suite, he thought, they would do their dirty work with a knife.
He removed his hat and dropped it. Before it hit the carpet, his derringer was in his hand, an over-and-under, two-barrel, .41 caliber small handgun that packed a surprisingly heavy punch at close range.
Bell waggled the key in the door as if he was turning the lock. He pushed the door open and hesitated, staring around the foyer of the suite and the living room beyond before he entered. The smell of cigarette smoke greeted his nostrils, confirming Bell’s suspicions. He only rarely smoked a cigar and then only with brandy after a gourmet dinner. With the derringer in hand, he stepped into the suite. Death, like a third man, was waiting inside.
A man was sitting on a settee reading a newspaper. At Bell’s approach, he laid the paper aside and revealed a face as ugly as sin. The black hair was greasy and slicked flat. His face looked like it had been stomped on by a mule, and he had the body of a state fair prizewinning boar. His eyes were strangely soft and friendly, a guise that fooled many of his victims. Bell was not fooled; he could see the man had the strength to spring like a tiger.
“How did you get in?” Bell asked simply.
The stranger held up a key. “Skeleton key,” he said in a voice that came like a rock crusher. “I never leave home without one.”
“What is your name?”
“It won’t matter if you know my name. You’ll never get a chance to use it. But since you’ve asked, it’s Red Kelly.”
Bell’s photographic memory shifted into gear and the recollection of a report he’d once read came back. “Yes, the infamous Red Kelly, boxer, Barbary Coast saloonkeeper, and murderer. You fought a good battle against world champion James J. Corbett. I once studied a report on you in the event you ever wandered beyond the California border. This is a mistake on your part. You have protection from crooked politicians that keeps you from getting extradited for crimes in other states, but that won’t help you in Colorado. You’re subject to arrest here.”
“And who is going to arrest me?” said Kelly showing an expanse of gold teeth. “You?”
Bell stood loosely, waiting, and expecting a move from Kelly. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“I know all about you, pretty boy,” said Kelly contemptuously. “You’ll bleed just like the other poor slobs I’ve put in the grave.”
“How many detectives and police?”
Kelly grinned nastily. “Three that I can remember. After a while, the numbers began to fade.”
“Your days of murder are over, Kelly,” Bell said calmly.
“That’ll be the day, pretty boy. If you think you can bully me with that popgun in your hand, you’re wasting your breath.”
“You don’t think I could kill you with it?” Bell said.
“You’d never get the chance,” Kelly retorted coldly.
There it was. Bell caught it instantly. The sudden shift in the eyes. He swung into a crouch and, in the blink of an eye, aimed and fired a shot into the forehead of the man who was creeping up behind him from where he’d been, hidden by a curtain. The report reverberated out the open door and throughout the atrium of the hotel.
Kelly glanced at the body of his henchman with all the interest
of a horse that had stepped on a prairie dog. Then he smiled at Bell. “Your reputation is well founded. You must have eyes in the back of your head.”
“You came to kill me,” said Bell evenly. “Why?”
“It’s a job, nothing more.”
“Who paid you?”
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