The Striker ib-6

by Clive Cussler

  “I didn’t really burn it down,” said Bell.

  “Well, you held the lady’s coat.”

  Archie Abbott said, “A mechanician told me those chain bridles never break.”

  “Probably the same feller who rigged it up,” said Mack Fulton, and the others laughed.

  Isaac Bell tossed the broken bridle link on the table. It landed with a heavy thunk and did not bounce far. “What do you say, Wally? What do you think broke that?”

  Wally inspected it carefully. He ran his finger along the edge. “I’ll be.”

  “What?”

  “Looks like someone smacked it with a cold chisel. You see where the blade cut half through it?”

  Isaac Bell said, “I thought it was chiseled, too.”

  “O.K. Now what?”

  “It broke in plain sight of a hundred men who would have noticed a guy whacking it with a chisel.”

  “I recall you saying that back in Pittsburgh. But look. It looks like it was cut with a chisel.”

  “How?”

  Kisley sat back and stroked his chin as if he were grooming a beard. “Several ways to drive a cold chisel through steel spring to mind. Whack it with a hammer.”

  “Which didn’t happen,” said Mack Fulton.

  “Persuade an eagle to drop the chisel from a hundred feet in the air.”

  “Which didn’t happen.”

  “Drive it with an explosive charge.”

  Isaac watched a rare smile cross Mack Fulton’s grim face. “Which could have happened.”

  “Isaac,” said Wish Clarke. “Do you recall hearing a charge explode?”

  “I heard a heck of a bang. But how would you detonate it?”

  “Fulminate of mercury blasting cap.”

  “How would you attach the cap?”

  Wally Kisley poked the link. Then he picked it up and smelled it. “Could have stuck it on with tar, I suppose.”

  “Maybe just a short length of chisel.”

  “Molded in a ball of tar— Mighty cumbersome, though. Mighty cumbersome…”

  Wally Kisley stared silently out the saloon door into the dark street. Isaac Bell observed that the explosives expert was falling less and less in love with the concept of a dynamite-driven chisel.

  Archie Abbott glanced at Bell and raised an eyebrow to ask what was going on. Bell motioned for Archie to join him at the bar. He explained quietly, “They’ve seen it all. They’re just trying to remember which applies.”

  “How the heck old are they?”

  “Who knows? Wally was already a top agent when he investigated the bomb that set off the Haymarket Riot. They’ve got to be over fifty.”

  “Amazing,” Archie marveled.

  Finally, slowly, like a newly lighted oil lamp gathering kerosene up into its wick, Wally’s face began to glow. He turned to Mack Fulton. “Mack, you know what’s on my mind?”

  “Dynamite.”

  “A great improvement over black powder, patented in 1867 by Alfred Nobel.”

  “From which Alfred Nobel made so much dough — and felt so guilty for making it easier to kill people — that last year he handed out prizes of money to the best physicist, the best pacifist, the best poet, even the guy who invented X-rays.”

  “You know who else should have won a prize last year?”

  “Rosania,” said Fulton.

  “Laurence Rosania.”

  Isaac Bell and Wish Clarke exchanged a look.

  Archie asked, “Who’s that?”

  “Chicago safecracker,” answered Bell. “Jewel man.”

  “Best dynamite man in the business,” said Kisley, his smile growing.

  “Aces across the continent, too,” said Fulton, “since he’s taken up travel. If those other guys deserved that Nobel Prize and all that dough, so does he.”

  Bell called from the bar, “What about Rosania? Do you see his hand in this?”

  “No, no, no. He’s a jewel thief. Too fastidious a dude to muck around coal mines even if he was sabotage-minded, which he ain’t. But I am thinking about a job he pulled last year. Remember, Mack?”

  “Shaped charge.”

  “Sometimes called hollow charge.”

  Bell and Archie rejoined the others at the table.

  Mack said, “This politician bought himself a big safe with six-inch walls made of plates of iron and steel.”

  “In the event,” Wally explained to Archie, “that a city contractor or a police chief or a sporting house proprietor had a sudden need to safeguard some cash and it was after banking hours, this politician would help out by holding it for them in his safe.”

  Archie nodded.

  “Performing a public service.”

  “Some safecracker,” Mack continued, “tried to blow it. Seeing six-inch walls, the yegg applied enough dynamite to blast the roof off the politician’s house. Which it did, but only dented the safe. Barely scratched it. A while later, along comes Rosania. He’s caught wind that the politician purchased diamonds for his girl. Rosania blows a hole in the six-inch walls big enough to stick his hand in. Like it was made of cardboard. And no one even heard the explosion.”

  “How’d he do it?” asked Bell.

  “Rosania’s one of those fellows who’s always got his nose in a book,” said Fulton.

  Kisley said, “He read about this scientist at the Naval Torpedo Station up in Newport, Rhode Island, who came up with this big idea called a hollow charge. Sometimes they call it a shaped charge ’cause where you make it hollow, the direction its hollow points is the direction where the explosion goes. Instead of blowing off the politician’s new roof, Rosania drove all that dynamite in the exact direction he wanted, straight through the wall of the safe. Quiet little poof. Four-inch hole.”

  “Did he get the diamonds?” asked Archie Abbott.

  Mack Fulton looked at the apprentice incredulously. “What? No, he got diamond dust and diamond flakes.”

  “I thought diamonds were indestructible.”

  “So did Rosania,” said Mack Fulton.

  Wally Kisley laughed. “Clearly, the safecracking classes have some experimenting still to do. But, Isaac, if your saboteur found a way to stick a hollow charge to the chain bridle, he wouldn’t need a big bunch of sticks of dynamite you’d spot a mile off. Fact is, I don’t think he used a cold chisel at all. I think that hollow charge did the job all by itself. What you heard, Isaac, was a small charge of dynamite blowing all in one direction straight at this link — so concentrated that it sheared the chain like a chisel.”

  “But how long would the charge stick to the chain? Jerking around like it does.”

  Kisley shrugged. “Not long. Maybe he wired it on. You said you never found that shackle. I bet he packed the entire charge inside the shackle.”

  Mack Fulton said, “Maybe you couldn’t find the shackle because all that was left was shackle chips and shackle dust.”

  Bell stared at Fulton. For a second he felt the floor shift under him. Like a dream remembered days later, he could almost see a pair of golden eyes, wolf eyes, from which exploded a fist. The white-damp dream in which he thought he had seen the shackle he never found. He shook his head, wondering how to unscramble tangled memory, and pressed on. “It doesn’t take much shaking to explode fulminate of mercury. How long before the winch jerking the wire set off the detonator?”

  “Minutes at most.”

  “Which meant the saboteur was in the mine when he attached the explosive.”

  “Had to be. Slapped it on with a wad of tar last minute as the train went by.”

  “A cool customer, knowing the train might come crashing back at him before he could get out.”

  “Mighty cool,” Wish Clarke agreed. “Knowing it was coming gave him a certain leg up to get out of the way. Still, you gotta hand it to him. A cool customer.”

  “Who knows his business,” said Wally Kisley.

  “All of which supports young Isaac’s contention,” said Wish Clarke. “With the timing of the explosio
n unpredictable, what union man would perpetrate such an act knowing it could kill his brother miners?”

  “It does make you wonder what he’ll think of next time.”

  “This calls for a drink,” said Wish Clarke, emptying the bottle into his glass. “Wally’s right, we are onto something.”

  “Until Gleason fires us.”

  “When Gleason fires us,” said Bell, “I’ll try and talk Mr. Van Dorn into letting us stay on.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that.”

  The food arrived, and Isaac Bell’s squad began debating what it had been before the cook got ahold of it. Wish Clarke took his glass to the bar. He motioned for Bell to join him.

  “If you want us to keep looking for your provocateur, steer clear of the telegraph office.”

  “Why?”

  “And if you see a boy coming your way with a telegram, run like hell. The Boss can’t order you to stop if he can’t find you.”

  Bell grinned. “Thanks, Wish. Good advice.”

  “Want some more?”

  “What?”

  “Next time you shave, why not leave off the region encompassed by your lip and nose?”

  “Grow a mustache?”

  “You’ll look a mite older with a mustache. Make the opposition take you seriously.”

  Bell grinned again proudly. “Those Pinkertons took me seriously. They dropped their guns like they were red-hot.”

  “Indeed they did,” said Wish, draining his glass. “Although it could be argued that what they took seriously was a brace of double-barreled twelve-gauges.”

  “You always told me, the sure way to win a knife fight is bring a gun. They had so many pistols, I reckoned I needed scatterguns.”

  “You reckoned correctly, no doubt about it, Isaac. But speaking for the group, I can assure you that we’re all mightily pleased we didn’t end up with hides full of buckshot, which is always a possibility with so much firepower on the property… Mr. Reilly probably feels the same about his piano… At any rate, it’s worth considering whether a thick old mustache might obviate the need for brandishing artillery in the first place.”

  He signaled the barkeep for another bottle.

  “Thirsty today?” asked Bell.

  Wish Clarke smiled, amiably. “How observant you are, Isaac. You’d make a good detective.”

  “Hey, mister? Mister?”

  A boy was whispering from the door.

  “Get out of here!” bellowed Reilly. “No kids in my saloon.”

  Isaac Bell recognized the doorboy he’d given a coin to. “It’s O.K., Reilly. I’ll look out for him. Come in, son. What’s going on?”

  The boy glanced fearfully behind him and slunk inside. He had a cloth sack clutched to his chest. The sight of four Van Dorns glowering at their supper plates stopped him in his tracks. Bell shepherded him to a corner table. “Reilly, would you have a sarsaparilla back there?”

  “The only thing I got that ain’t booze is coffee.”

  “Do you like coffee?”

  The boy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “O.K., we’ll take coffee. Lots of sugar. Make it two. What’s your name, son?”

  “Luke.”

  “I’m Isaac, Luke.” He offered his hand and the boy took it politely. “What can I do for you?”

  “Are you really a Van Dorn?”

  “Yes, I am. So are those gents at the table.”

  “All of ’em?”

  “Any particular reason you ask, Luke?”

  The boy nodded. “I didn’t tell you the truth about my father.”

  “You said you don’t have a father.”

  “I do have a father.”

  “Good. Where is he?”

  Luke looked around and whispered, “Hiding from the cops.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The union sent more organizers from Pennsylvania.”

  Bell nodded, recalling, again, Jim Higgins’s promise that union men would replace him.

  “The cops caught one and beat names out of him.” Luke’s lips started trembling, and Bell saw him stare at the table as if imagining his father smashed to his knees in a hail of fists and blackjacks.

  “Whose names, Luke? Your father’s?”

  “Somebody warned him. He got away.”

  “What’s that smell?” called Wally Kisley.

  “That’s your supper,” said Mack Fulton.

  “Not these buffalo chips. I smell something good. Hey, boy, what’s in that sack?”

  Luke clutched his bag tighter.

  Bell whispered, “Is that for your dad?”

  “Yes, sir,” Luke whispered back. “From my mother.”

  “Why’d you come here?”

  “I thought if you’re private detectives, maybe…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “Maybe what, Luke?”

  “Maybe I could hire you to protect him from the cops. Or at least help him get away?”

  “Detectives cost a lot of money,” Bell said gently.

  “I don’t have any money — excepting what you gave me. But I’m wondering if maybe I could trade something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like things I heard.”

  “Things you heard where?”

  “Jake’s Saloon, where the cops hang out…”

  “Does Jake allow boys in his saloon?”

  “We climb up from the river, under the cellar, and we can hear ’em yelling upstairs.”

  Wally called, “What do you have in that sack, boy?”

  “Fatback and biscuits and baked taters, sir.”

  The Van Dorns looked at their plates, then at Luke’s sack.

  “I have an idea,” said Wally Kisley.

  “No,” said Isaac Bell. “Luke’s got a job to do, delivering supper. And we’re going to help him.”

  Truculent expressions on the faces of his men told Bell that he had a rebellion on his hands if he didn’t think quick. “Gents: Wally and Mack and Archie are going to the company store to buy fatback and flour and lard and coffee and sugar and milk and butter and potatoes, which they will carry to Luke’s mother and pay her five dollars to rustle up a couple of days’ worth of fatback, biscuits, and baked taters.”

  “What are you and Wish doing while all that shopping and cooking and waiting is going on? Eating the kid’s?”

  “Wish and I will provide Luke with an escort.”

  * * *

  James Congdon’s secretary carried a single sheet of paper into his office and laid it on his desk. “I’m sorry for the delay, sir. Detective Clay’s code is complicated.”

  Congdon read it, twice.

  “Are you sure you deciphered it correctly?”

  “Absolutely, sir. It is complicated but consistent.”

  Congdon read it again.

  “Shall I take down your reply, sir?”

  “No reply.”

  “Yes, Judge Congdon. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes.” Congdon named three stockbrokers who regularly bid for him in secret. “Tell them to buy up every share of Gleason Consolidated as they become available.”

  The secretary, a sly co-conspirator with an encyclopedic knowledge of Wall Street, had been privy to Judge Congdon’s schemes long before the financier hammered together U.S. Steel. “I was not aware that Black Jack is selling.”

  “His heirs are building mansions and buying yachts and private cars. They’re deep in debt, greedy, and impatient.”

  “But are they in a position to sell? Gleason keeps a tight rein on his stock.”

  Congdon read Henry Clay’s wire, again to be absolutely sure what the private detective was promising in veiled language. He said, “His heirs will be in a position to sell. What do we know about Gleason’s lawyers?”

  As they were discussing heirs and inheritance, Congdon’s secretary said, “There was the incident concerning the probate engrossment of the Widow O’Leary’s supposed will — yet to be resolved — which weighs heavily on their firm
.”

  “To be resolved by whom?”

  “It is still in probate court.”

  “Perfect. Resolve it for them.”

  “That should make the lawyers grateful,” said Congdon’s secretary — understanding in a flash that they were discussing the expeditious execution of Black Jack Gleason’s will when he finally shuffled off to that heavenly coalfield in the sky. Understanding, too, that that voyage to the other side might commence sooner than Gleason expected, the secretary calculated to the penny the bribe that the probate judge would accept.

  “Is there anything else, Judge Congdon?”

  “Transfer all Gleason stock to a holding company with no traceable connection to my interests.”

  “What do you want done with Gleason’s managers?”

  “They can keep their jobs so long as every last bushel of Gleason coal is barged to my Amalgamated Coal Terminal.”

  15

  “Hold on, Isaac,” said Wish. “Are you sure you want to be taking sides in this dustup?”

  The cave where Luke’s father was hiding in the woods up the mountain had been chosen for its view of the approach up the logged slopes, and when Bell asked whether his father was armed, Luke said he had a squirrel rifle, so he had sent the boy ahead to alert him that they were coming.

  “We’re not taking sides,” he told Wish. “Mr. Van Dorn stressed that point when we spoke. But he also warned me not to get caught in the middle, and the best way to do that is stay ahead of both sides. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  “Here comes the boy.”

  Luke led them the final hundred yards up the logged slope and into the cave, which Bell surmised, by its timber propping, was actually an old mining hole cut into the side of the hill by backwoodsmen digging for fuel to heat their cabins long before the Gleason Consolidated Coal & Coke Company commenced its commercial venture. Zeke, Luke’s father, could not risk lighting a fire. He had a thin blanket for the cold, and he tore hungrily into the biscuits, after first asking whether Bell and Wish had eaten and they answered that they had. Between bites he explained that union men were coming from Pennsylvania and that he and scores of others were going to join them and call a strike.