38
THERE YOU ARE, BELL! JOLLY GOOD, WE DIDN’T MISS saying good-bye.”
Bell was surprised when he reboarded the train as it pulled out of Sacramento on the last ninety-mile leg to San Francisco that Arnold Bennett and the Chinese, who were ticketed through to San Francisco, had their bags packed and in the corridor.
“I thought you were going to San Francisco.”
“Changed our mind, inspired by all these orchards and berry fields.” The train was passing through strawberry fields crowded with fruit pickers in straw hats. “We’re hopping off early at Suisun City. Decided to catch a train to Napa Junction. An old school chum of mine is farming up St. Helena way—started a vineyard, actually, stomping grapes and all that. We’ll recover bucolically from the rigors of our travels—splendid as they were—before pressing on to San Francisco. I’ve a mind to cobble up an article for Harper’s on the subject while the boys enjoy some fresh air in the country before carrying the Word of God home to China.”
Bell thought fast, envisioning the long, sprawling bays of San Francisco enclosed from the Pacific Ocean by the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula. From Suisun City, the main line continued southwest seventeen miles to the Benicia Ferry that carried the train across the narrow Carquinez Strait to Port Costa. Then the final thirty-mile run beside San Pablo Bay to Oakland Mole, where a passenger ferry crossed San Francisco Bay to the city.
Twenty miles north of the city, up San Francisco Bay and across San Pablo Bay, was the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. It was the U.S. Navy’s Brooklyn Navy Yard of America’s West Coast, with a long history of building, repairing, and refitting warships and submarines. Napa Junction, connected to Suisan City by a local branch line to the west, was only five miles north of the shipyard.
Bennett and the Chinese would be a short train or electric trolley ride from Mare Island, where the Great White Fleet would put in from its voyage to refit, replenish food and water, and load fresh ammunition from the magazines.
“Isn’t that a coincidence?” said Isaac Bell.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m taking that very same train.”
“Where are your bags?”
“I travel light.”
The Overland Limited pulled into Suisun City ten minutes late. The train to Napa Junction was blowing its whistle. Bell snatched a handful of wires waiting for him at the telegraph office and hurried to board. It was a two-coach local, with a gaily striped awning sheltering its back platform. There were a half dozen passengers in the rear car, Arnold Bennett in their midst and starting to tell a story. He interrupted himself to indicate an empty seat. “Come let us talk you into tromping grapes with us at St. Helena.”
Bell waved the telegrams and headed back to the platform to scan them in private. “Join you in a minute. Orders from the front office.”
Bennett laughed jovially, calling over his shoulder, “But you already know they’re only instructing you to sell more insurance.”
The train was crossing salt marshes, and the cool, wet wind that swirled under the awning smelled of the sea. The wind rattled the emergency-brake handle that swung from a short rope rhythmically against the wall and buffeted the flimsy yellow telegraph paper.
Research had no word yet from Germany on the identity of the schoolgirl who was Riker’s ward—that it was taking so long was proof that Joe Van Dorn was right to expand field offices into Europe.
They had unearthed additional details about the death of Erhard Riker’s father in South Africa in 1902 during the Boer War. Smuts, the Transvaal leader, had led a sudden raid on the copper-mine railroad from Port Nolloth, where the senior Riker was searching for a rumored deposit of alluvial diamonds. He was taking refuge in a British railroad blockhouse when the Boers attacked with dynamite hand bombs.
The third wire was from James Dashwood.
RIKER ARRIVED LA.
NOW EN ROUTE TO SAN DIEGO.
BODYGUARD PLIMPTON SUSPICIOUS.
JD MISTOOK FOR TIFFANY JEWEL AGENT.
BODYGUARD PERSUADED JD ITINERANT TEMPERANCE SPEAKER.
Bell grinned. Dash had the makings of becoming a character. His grin faded abruptly. The last wire in the stack started with the warning initials YMK.
You must know—Archie Abbott warning that if Bell was not already aware, he should be.
YMK.
ARNOLD BENNETT AT HOME PARIS.
“What?” Bell said aloud. He glanced through the glass in the door, saw the man in tweed who claimed to be Arnold Bennett, and looked back at the telegram.
WRITER NOT—REPEAT NOT—ON OVERLAND LIMITED.
SF VD AGENTS MEETING TRAIN AT BENICIA FERRY.
WATCH STEP.
It was a stunning revelation, and Isaac Bell rejoiced.
At last he knew for sure who he was hunting. The man who claimed to be Arnold Bennett was in league with the Chinese, probably with their boss, who was likely the man who ordered the redhead to kill Scully when the detective uncovered the Chinatown connection.
At last he held the advantage. They did not know that Bell knew.
“Misser Bell?”
Bell looked up from his telegrams and down a gun barrel.
39
LOUIS, I THOUGHT WE AGREED THAT YOU WOULD KEEP that in your suitcase.”
Harold was behind Louis, drawing a weapon from his coat.
“You disappoint me, too, Harold. That is not a Bible. Not even a traditional tong hatchet but a firearm any self-respecting, modern American criminal thug would be proud to carry.”
Louis’s English was suddenly accentless, his manner superior.
“Step to the edge of the platform, Mr. Bell, and turn your back to us. Do not draw the pistol you conceal in your shoulder holster. Do not try for the derringer in your hat. Do not consider reaching for the knife in your boot.”
Bell glanced past them through the vestibule door. At the front of the coach, the false Arnold Bennett was holding forth with broad gestures that were having his desired effect of distracting the few people in the car. The wheels were clattering too loudly for Bell to hear their laughter.
“You’re unusually observant of sidearms for a divinity student, Louis. But have you considered that witnesses will hear you shoot me?”
“We’ll shoot you if you force us to. Then we will shoot the witnesses. I’m sure you’ve heard that we Asiatics and Mongolians have no regard for human life. Turn around!”
Bell looked over his shoulder. The railing was low. The roadbed was disappearing behind the train at fifty miles an hour, a blur of steel rails, iron spikes, stone ballast, and wooden ties. When he turned, they would crack his skull with a gun barrel or plunge a knife in his back and dump him over the railing.
He opened his hand.
The telegrams scattered, twisting and twirling in the buffeting slipstream, and flew in Louis’s face like demented finches.
Bell thrust his arms straight up, grabbed the edge of the roof awning, tucked his knees, and kicked a boot at Harold’s head. Harold jumped left where Bell wanted him to, clearing a path to the red wooden handle of the train’s emergency brake.
Any doubt that they were not divinity students vanished when Bell’s hand was an inch from the emergency brake. Louis smashed his gun against Bell’s wrist, slamming it away from the brake pull. Unable to bring the train to a crashing halt, Bell ignored the searing pain in his right wrist and punched with his left. It landed with satisfying force, hard enough on Louis’s forehead to buckle his knees.
But Harold had recovered. Concentrating his strength and weight like a highly trained fighter, the short, wiry Chinese wielded his gun like a steel club. The barrel smashed into Bell’s hat. The thick felt crown and the spring steel band within absorbed some of the blow, but momentum was against him. He saw the awning spin overhead, then the sky, and then he was tumbling over the side rail and falling toward the tracks. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. He saw the railroad ties, the wheels, the truck they
carried, and the platform steps. He seized the top step with both hands. His boots hit the ties. For an awful split second he was trying to run backward at fifty miles an hour. Squeezing hard on the steel step, knowing that if his hands slipped he was through, he curled his arms as if doing a chin-up and hauled his feet onto the bottom stop.
Harold’s pistol descended in a blur. It seemed to fill the sky. Bell reached past the gun to seize Harold’s wrist and yanked with all his might. The tong gangster catapulted over him, flew through the air, and smashed into a telegraph pole, his body bent backward around it like a horseshoe.
Clinging to the steps, Bell reached for his own pistol. Before he could pull it, he felt Louis’s automatic pressed to his head. “Your turn!”
40
BELL BRACED HIS FEET TO JUMP AND CAST A LIGHTNING-SWIFT glance over the ground racing past. From his precarious perch on the steps he could see farther ahead than Louis. Beside the train was a steep ballast embankment, an endless row of telegraph poles, and a clump of thick trees as deadly as the poles. But far ahead spread an open field dotted with sheep. A barbed-wire fence ran along the track to keep livestock off the rails. He had to clear the fence if he had any hope at all of surviving the jump. But first he needed a five-second reprieve to get to the field.
He shouted into the roaring wind and clattering wheels, “I will track you down, Louis.”
“If you live, I will cock my ears for the clump of crutches.”
“I will never give up,” Bell said, buying another second. Almost to the grassy field. The slope was steeper than it appeared from the distance.
“Last chance, Bell. Jump!”
Bell bought one more second with “Never!”
He launched in a desperate dive to clear the fence. Too low. He missed a telegraph pole by feet and a fence post by inches. But the top strand of barbed wire was leaping at his face. The speeding train’s slipstream slammed into him. The blast of air lifted his flying body over the wire. He hit the grass face-first like a base runner stealing second, and he tried to tuck arms and legs into a tight ball. He rolled, powerless to avoid any rock or boulder in his path. In the blur of motion there was suddenly something solid right in front of him, and he had no choice but to slam into it.
The shock jolted every fiber in his body. Pain and darkness clamped around his head. He was vaguely aware that his arms and legs had untucked and were flopping like a scarecrow’s as he continued rolling on the grass. He hadn’t the strength to gather them in again. The darkness deepened. After a while he had the vague impression that he had stopped moving. He heard a drum beat. The ground shook under him. Then the darkness closed in completely, and he lay absolutely still.
At some point the drums ceased. At another, he became aware that the darkness had lifted. His eyes were open, staring at a hazy sky. In his mind he saw a spinning field filled with sheep. His head hurt. The sun had moved an hour’s worth to the west. And when he sat up and looked around, he saw a flock of real sheep—unshorn woollies grazing peacefully, all but one a hundred yards away that was struggling to stand.
Bell rubbed his head, then he felt for broken bones and found none. He rose unsteadily and walked toward the sheep to see if he had injured it so badly that he would have to shoot it to put it out of its misery. But, as if inspired by his success, it managed to stand on all fours and limp painfully toward the flock. “Sorry, pardner,” said Bell. “Didn’t aim to run into you, but I’m glad I did.”
He went looking for his hat.
When he heard a train coming, he climbed up the embankment and planted himself in the middle of the tracks. He stood there, swaying on his feet, until the train stopped with the tip of its engine pilot pressing between his knees. A red-faced engineer stomped to the front of his locomotive and yelled, “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Van Dorn agent,” Bell answered. “On my way to Napa Junction.”
“You think that makes you own the railroad?”
Bell unbuttoned the inner breast pocket of his grass-stained coat and presented the most compelling of the several railroad passes he carried. “In a manner of speaking, I do.” He staggered to the ladder that led to the cab and climbed aboard.
At Napa Junction, the stationmaster reported, “The English clergyman and his Chinese missionary took the train north to St. Helena.”
“When’s your train to St. Helena.?”
“Northbound leaves at three-oh-three.’”
“Wait.” Bell steadied himself on the counter. “What did you say?” Another field of round sheep was spinning in his head. “Clergyman?”
“Reverend J. L. Skelton.”
“Not a writer? A journalist?”
“When’s the last time you saw a newspaperman wearing one of them white collars?”
“And he went north?” Away from Mare Island.
“North.”
“Did he take the Chinese student with him?”
“I told you. He bought two tickets to Mount Helen.”
“Did you see them both board?”
“Saw them board. Saw the train leave the station. And I can report that it didn’t come back.”
“When’s your next train south?”
“Train to Vallejo just left.”
Bell looked around. “What are those tracks?” An electric catenary wire was supported over them. “Interurban?”
“Napa-Vallejo and Benicia Railroad,” the stationmaster answered, adding with a disdainful sniff, “the trolley.”
“When’s the next trolley to Vallejo?”
“No idea. I don’t talk to the competition.”
Bell gave the stationmaster his card and ten dollars. “If that reverend comes through here again, wire me care of the commandant of Mare Island.”
The stationmaster pocketed half a week’s salary, and said, “I suppose I’ve never seen you if the reverend asks?”
Bell gave him another ten dollars. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
He was waiting at the Interurban tracks, head spinning, when a red, four-seat Stanley Steamer with yellow wheels glided by silently. It looked brand-new but for mud spattered on its brass headlamps.
“Hey!”
Bell ran after it. The driver stopped. When he peeled back his goggles, he looked like a schoolboy playing hooky. Bell guessed that he had “borrowed” his father’s car.
“I’ll bet you twenty bucks that thing can’t do a mile a minute.”
“You’ll lose.”
“It’s six miles to Vallejo. I’ll bet you twenty bucks you can’t get there in six minutes.”
Bell was losing the bet until, two miles from Vallejo, they came squealing around a bend in the road, and the driver stomped on his brakes. The road was blocked by a gang of men who had dug a trench across it to lay a culvert pipe. “Hey!” yelled the driver. “How in heck are we supposed to get to Vallejo?”
The foreman, seated in the shade of an umbrella, pointed at a cutoff they had just passed. “Over the hill.”
The driver looked at Bell. “That’s no fair. I can’t do sixty over a hill.”
“We’ll work out a handicap,” said Bell. “I think you’re going to win this race.”
The driver poured on the steam, and the Stanley climbed briskly for several hundred feet. They tore across a short plateau and climbed another hundred. At the crest, Bell saw a breathtaking vista. The town of Vallejo lay below, its grid pattern of streets, houses, and shops stopping at the blue waters of San Pablo Bay. To the right, Mare Island was marked by tall steel radio towers like those Bell had seen at the Washington Navy Yard. Ships lay alongside the island. In the distance, he saw columns of black smoke rising behind Point San Pablo, which divided San Francisco Bay from San Pablo Bay.
“Stop your auto,” said Bell.
“I’m losing time.”
Bell handed him twenty dollars. “You already won.”
A line of white battleships rounded the headland and steamed into view. He knew their silho
uettes from the Henry Reutendahl paintings reproduced for months in Collier’s. The flagship, the three-funnel Connecticut, led the column, followed by Alabama, with two smoke funnels side by side, then the smaller Kersage, with two tall in-line funnels and stacked forward turrets, and Virginia taking up the rear.
“Wow!” exclaimed the kid at the wheel. “Say, where are they going? They’re supposed to anchor at the city.”
“Down there,” said Bell. “Mare Island for maintenance and supplies.”
THE KID DROPPED HIM on a street of tailors’ shops that catered to Navy officers.
“How much to replace my suit of clothes?”
“Those are mighty fine duds, mister. Fifty dollars if you want it fast.”
“A hundred,” said Bell, “if every man in your shop drops everything and it’s done for me in two hours.”
“Done! And we’ll get your hat cleaned free of charge.”
“I would like to use your washroom. And then I believe I would like to sit in a chair where I can close my eyes.”
In the mirror over the sink he saw a slight dilation of his pupils that told him he might have suffered a minor concussion. If that was all. “Thank you, Mr. Sheep.”
He washed his face, sat in a chair, and slept. An hour later he awakened to the rumbling of a seemingly endless line of wagons and trucks heading for Mare Island Pier. Every fourth truck had T. WHITMARK stenciled on the side. Ted was doing well feeding the sailors.
The tailor was as good as his word. Two hours after arriving in Vallejo, Isaac Bell stepped off the ferry Pinafore onto the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. U.S. Marines snapped to attention at the gate. Bell showed the pass Joseph Van Dorn had procured from the Navy Secretary.
The Spy Page 27