The Striker ib-6

by Clive Cussler

  “You’ve always said he’s a crack sleuth.”

  “When sober,” Van Dorn shot back.

  Bell said, “You are right, sir. I will be thin on the ground. Would you consider hiring a particular friend of mine as an apprentice? He’s a handy fellow with his fists — when I met him, he was captain of Princeton’s boxing team.”

  “That will stand him in good stead against college men who’ve taken up crime.”

  “He’s a whiz at disguises. He wanted to be an actor.”

  “If he wanted to be, why isn’t he?”

  “His mother forbade it.”

  “Obedience to mothers,” Van Dorn responded drily, “is an admirable trait, but not the sort that spawns detectives with the requisite moxie.”

  “He’s got plenty of moxie, and Kisley and Fulton will show him what to do with it. Sir, I could really use the extra hand.”

  Van Dorn looked dubious. “I’d have to speak with him, size him up.”

  “But you already have spoken with him.”

  “What? When?”

  “I believe you have his card in your vest pocket.”

  Van Dorn reached into his vest. “Jack Finnerty?”

  Isaac Bell kept a straight face. “Based on all I’ve learned about coal for this case, Mr. Van Dorn, I wouldn’t bet the farm on supercoal.”

  Van Dorn flushed red as his whiskers. His eyes narrowed to pinpricks of blue flame, and his mighty chest filled like a bull’s. Isaac Bell braced for the explosion. But, at last, the Boss laughed.

  “Flimflammed! You flimflammed me.”

  “I had to demonstrate his moxie.”

  “You did that, all right. Really had me going there— Well, at least I was flimflammed by a brother Irishman.”

  Bell could no longer hide his smile.

  “Now what are you smirking about?”

  “Sorry to disillusion you, sir, but your ‘Irish brother’ is a direct descendant of the English and Dutch founders of New York — Archibald Angel Abbott IV, listed first in Society’s Four Hundred.”

  * * *

  The Congdon Building was more secure than most in Wall Street, tight as a bank.

  Henry Clay entered by the basement service entrance, dressed in steamfitter’s overalls and carrying a ball-peen hammer, a pipe wrench, a measuring tape, and an inspection gauge with its thin metal gap gauges modified to pick locks. He knew the guards’ routine and eluded them easily. He picked open a lock, bounded up twelve flights of stairs without sweating or breathing hard, removed his overalls, picked two more locks in utter silence, and stepped suddenly through the back door of Judge James Congdon’s private office.

  Clay saw immediate confirmation of the wisdom of his plan. The tough old bird glanced up from his desk startled but not one bit frightened. He had chosen well.

  11

  James Congdon was intrigued by the intruder.

  He could summon help in an instant with a shout into the speaking tube or one of several candlestick telephones on his desk. Better yet, simply shoot him with a revolver from his desk. Or, best of all, he could activate his “lunatic stopper.” But for the moment, Congdon was curious. Why would such an elegant, well-dressed gentleman break in his back door?

  As if to prove that he was as cultured as he looked, the intruder complimented the marble sculpture that dominated Congdon’s office with a connoisseur’s appreciation. “I commend your knowledge of antiquities.”

  Judge Congdon uncapped the speaking tube. “Antiquities? You’re showing off your ignorance. Auguste Rodin carved that statue two years ago.”

  “But unlike the prudish original, this superior copy of Le Baiser that you commissioned depicts the male form complete — in the classical Greek style — rather than draped, as it were, under a modest limb.”

  Congdon snorted, “That’s a big-sounding way of saying he’s showing his tackle.”

  The intruder flushed and lost his composure for an instant. “In the presence of such beauty,” he said stiffly, “I would consider an expression less crude.”

  Congdon pulled a gun from his desk. “While I consider whether to have you beaten to a pulp or shoot you myself.”

  “That is a privilege of wealth,” said Henry Clay. “But you would miss the greatest opportunity of your life. I will make an offer you will find irresistible.”

  “I am rarely tempted.”

  “But when you are, sir, you seize the opportunity.”

  Clay cast a significant glance at Rodin’s passionate lovers. Then he nodded appreciatively at the bronze statuette on Congdon’s desk, which depicted the most recent of Congdon’s shapely young wives au naturel.

  “My name is Henry Clay. I am a painter’s son by birth and a private detective by profession. I offer no threat, only promise. And I do it at great risk because you could have me beaten or killed.”

  “So you’re a betting man?”

  “Yes, sir. I am betting my life that you’ll see this opportunity for what it is.”

  “What opportunity?”

  “The opportunity to destroy the miners’ unions: the United Mine Workers in the east and the Western Federation of Miners in the west. Stop them dead, once and for all. It will be twenty years before another miner dares start a union, much less call a strike, anywhere on the continent. And here’s a sugarplum bonus for you. You will profit mightily knowing ahead of time to invest in businesses that will flourish when you destroy the unions.”

  “By what means?”

  “Every means. No holds barred.”

  Congdon shook his head. “No. I risk everything if you are caught and turn blab-mouthed.”

  “What would the word of a lowly detective be against the great Judge Congdon?”

  Congdon fixed him with a gimlet eye. “‘The great Judge Congdon’ intends to be president of the United States. Unfortunately, that means convincing the ignorant people that he is above suspicion.”

  “What could I blab? You can seal our deal with a nod. No signature, no contract. There is no way to record a nod.”

  “Without a contract, you are betting on the groundless hope that I will reward you. What if I don’t?”

  “I don’t need your reward.”

  “Then why—”

  “Here is all I need from you,” said Clay, and ticked items off on fastidiously manicured fingers. “Unlimited operating funds to do the job. Certain information that only you possess. Rail passes on all lines, and special trains to help me travel quickly about the continent. Permission to send and receive messages over the private closed telegraph wires leased by your brokers.”

  Congdon interrupted with a sarcastic comment that the Interstate Commerce Commission forbid outsiders sending messages over leased wires.

  Clay laughed. Brokers of stocks, bonds, and commodities bent that law day and night. “Speed and privacy are a matter of business.” He knew that he did not have to remind Congdon that owners and lessees of private wires got a jump on competitors who had to rely on Western Union’s slower public wires.

  “In every city I operate, we will communicate swiftly and secretly through your branch offices.”

  “Branch offices untraceable to me,” Congdon said sharply.

  “Doesn’t a financier of your stature hold secret controlling interests in firms that lease private wires?”

  Congdon ignored the flattery and demanded, “But what do you get out of this scheme?”

  “Reputation. By rights, you will pay me handsomely when I succeed. But if you don’t — if you cheat me — it will not matter. I will be a made man.”

  “How?”

  “Henry Clay Investigations will become the detective agency to presidents and kings when the men who run this country learn who smashed the unions. When you are president, I, too, will be very big in Washington.”

  Congdon mulled over Clay’s proposal. He was a famous judge of character. The detective, a robust physical specimen, possessed the steady gaze of a valuable man capable of finishing what he sta
rted. “What makes you so sure that this would appeal to me?”

  “I have studied you, Judge Congdon. I understand you. I am a very good detective. I am the best.”

  “You think you know me, do you? Have another look at my statue. Look close at The Kiss. Do you see anything unusual?”

  Henry Clay did as Congdon ordered. He leaned close to the marble and let his eyes roam over the man and woman in passionate embrace. “I see a magnificent statue.”

  “It draws you closer, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. I am actually standing closer to it than I was a moment ago. But what is it you want me to see?”

  “Look up.”

  The skylight that illuminated the marble was ringed by a plaster frieze studded with tiny holes one-tenth the diameter of a dime.

  “I see holes in the frieze. They’re barely visible.”

  “Now look down.”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Look down.”

  In the pattern of the marble circle on which he was standing were dozens of similar holes. “I still don’t understand.”

  “I will teach you two things about wealth, Mr. Best Detective. Wealth attracts lunatics. My old enemy Frick was shot and nearly killed in his own office by a lunatic ten years ago, which set me to thinking of my own safety. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “You said two things about wealth.”

  “Common wisdom holds that coal is the source of all wealth. Like most common wisdom, that’s dead wrong. Coal is only fuel. It happens to be the best fuel at the moment, but it will be replaced by a better fuel. Oil is the coming fuel until the scientists come up with something even better, which they will. The real source of wealth for the past hundred years, and hundreds more to follow, is steam — hot steam made by boiling water with the cheapest and most efficient fuel available — wood, coal, oil, and whatever science dreams up next. Steam pushes pistons that drive locomotives. Steam whirls turbines to spin electricity. Steam storms through pipes under city streets to heat modern buildings like mine.”

  Congdon reached for the bronze statuette of his current wife. He stroked it with his gnarled fingers.

  “Steam scalds flesh. Steam from a mere teakettle will sear your hand with the most painful burn imaginable. Shortly after the attack on Frick, a six-inch steam riser in a building like this one ruptured. Escaping steam blasted through the walls as if they were made of paper. Every man and woman in the office died in an instant. They were found still seated at their desks, scalded head to toe, horribly disfigured, cooked to death inside and out. That set me to thinking about the lunatic attack on Mr. Frick. What he should have installed in his office — and what I have installed in mine — is a steam-powered lunatic stopper.”

  Congdon tightened his grip on the bronze statuette.

  “Do you notice anything peculiar about this statue of my new wife?”

  Clay looked more closely and saw what he had missed earlier. The bronze was hinged to the top of the desk. “I see a hinge.”

  “The hinge makes it a lever. When I move this lever, it will open a valve that will deliver a scalding hot three-hundred-and-fifty-degree blast of steam straight from the central boiler plant on Cortlandt Street to your skin, Best Detective Clay.”

  Henry Clay eyed the holes in the floor and the ceiling.

  “Scalding jets of high-pressure steam will cook you to death in seconds. The longest and worst, most painful seconds of your life.”

  “It will kill you, too.”

  “I’ll be unscathed. The jet holes are calculated to deliver just enough for you.”

  “O.K.,” said Clay, “you caught me flat-footed. If you throw that lever, I’m dead.”

  “Painfully dead.”

  “Painfully dead.”

  Hand firmly on the lever, James Congdon recognized a certain unique quality in Henry Clay: If the fellow felt fear, Congdon could not see it. In fact, it appeared that if Clay had one strength above all others, it was the strength to recognize the inevitable and accept it without complaint. A controlling interest in such a man could be a solid investment.

  “If I were to give you unlimited operating funds, private information, rail passes, and specials, how would you use them?”

  “The details are mine alone to know.”

  Congdon frowned. “You’re a brave man to stand your ground in your precarious situation. Or a fool.”

  “A determined man,” Clay shot back. “The only thing you can count on in this world is determination. I’m offering determination. I repeat: The details are mine alone to know.”

  “Assume, for the moment, that tactics are up to you,” Congdon conceded. “What is your strategy?”

  “You need a story to destroy the unions. The newspapers are already on your side. They will tell your story. I will give you your story.”

  “What story?”

  “The owners upon whom God has seen fit to bestow property will protect property and liberty from murderous agitators.”

  “How will you tell it?”

  “By starting a war in the coalfields.”

  “How?”

  “Are you familiar with the accident at Gleason Mine No. 1?”

  “Runaway coal train, some hands killed, and production interrupted for four days. Are you telling me you started that?”

  “And finished it. Before the miners returned to work, they burned down Gleason’s jail and the courthouse. I’d call that a war.”

  “I’d call it a good beginning,” Congdon conceded. “A veritable Harry O’Hagan one-man triple play.”

  “A quadruple play, counting the fire.”

  “Yes indeed you outdid O’Hagan. But I am deeply disappointed.”

  “Why, sir?”

  James Congdon answered with a wistful sigh. “My lunatic stopper will have to wait for another lunatic.”

  He let go the steam lever and gestured for Henry Clay to take a seat beside him.

  12

  Crackerjack army Mr. Van Dorn gave you, kid: two spavined geezers and an amiable drunk.”

  Isaac Bell defended his friend. “Wish goes long stretches when he never touches a drop.”

  Wally Kisley, who looked less like a private detective than an aging harness salesman in a sack suit patterned bright as a checkerboard, grinned at his old partner, ice-eyed Mack Fulton. Fulton, somber in gray and black, looked the deadly sort that no sensible man would inquire about his business.

  “Say, Mack, what is the difference between a drinking man and a drowning man?”

  “Beats me, Wally. Didn’t know there was a difference between a drinking man and a drowning man.”

  “The drowning man sinks in water. The drinking man sinks in whiskey.”

  “Say, Wally,” asked Mack, “here comes a passerby, strolling by the sea, what does the drowning man yell?”

  “Throw me a rope.”

  “What does the drinking man yell?”

  “Throw me a bottle.”

  They looked to Bell for a laugh.

  Stone-faced, Isaac Bell said, “I worked with Wish Clarke in Wyoming and New Orleans. He’s sharp as they come.”

  “So’s a busted bottle.”

  “I also remember when you ‘spavined geezers’ took over my apprenticeship from Mr. Van Dorn, you taught me plenty. And you weren’t so spavined that you couldn’t clear a saloon of Harry Frost’s boys.”

  “Your recent apprenticeship,” Kisley and Fulton chorused.

  Bell saw that the old detectives were not joking but deadly serious and with a purpose. Kisley stared hard at him. Mack Fulton got down to brass tacks.

  “Who’s ramrodding this outfit?”

  “It’s my case,” said Isaac Bell. “I am.”

  Kisley said, “It was not long ago we was changing your diapers in Chicago.”

  “I’ve got the hang of it since.”

  The partners shot back obstinate glowers and Mack said, flatly, “The man bossing an outfit has to change everyone
’s diapers and still stay on top of the case.”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “I’m looking at a kid who started shaving yesterday,” Fulton shot back.

  “Spouting highfalutin French,” Kisley piled on. “Provocateur? Whatever happened to good old agitator?”

  “Or provoker?”

  “Or instigator?”

  Isaac Bell was constitutionally incapable of punching a man twice his age, but he was getting tempted.

  Suddenly, Aloysius Clarke was standing in the doorway.

  He was a big, red-faced fellow who moved quietly.

  Bell said, “Hello, Wish.”

  Clarke nodded. “Kid.”

  “We was just discussin’ who ramrods this outfit,” said Mack Fulton.

  Wish Clarke stood silent. He had small blue eyes buried so deeply in drink-swollen, purple-veined cheeks that observers who associated whiskey with dulled wits and melancholy would miss the glow of intelligence and laughter. He smiled unexpectedly and answered the question on all minds. How long had Wish Clarke been standing there and how much had he overheard?

  “It’s Isaac’s case. The kid’s the boss.”

  Wally Kisley shook his head. “Them coal miners ain’t the only ones who need a union.”

  “And to close another subject,” said Wish Clarke, a self-educated man who revered the English language, “Provoker is too general a word, agitator is a misspelling of adjutator, which means ‘a representative,’ and instigator is vague. But provocateur, short for agent provocateur, describes exactly what Isaac suspects we’re up against — a smart fellow who’s hoodwinking not-so-smart fellows into committing crimes that will discredit them.”

  “For what reason?”

  “For reasons,” said Wish Clarke, “we have not yet detected, Detective Kisley.”

  Isaac Bell raised his voice. “Saddle up, gents!”

  He pulled tickets from his vest and passed them out.

  “Train’s leaving for West Virginia. All aboard!”

  * * *

  Locomotive headlamp blazing through the night, a train of sixty ore cars steamed from the Cripple Creek gold mines on Pikes Peak down the Colorado Front Range into the smoke-shrouded city of Denver. Pinkerton detectives boarded the locomotive in the Auraria rail yard.