Clive Cussler - The Striker

“Ready in a jiff, sir,” the driver called. “He’s not so bad as he looks. Just catching his breath.” He jerked the reins to pull its head up.

Bell kept running. The driver was wearing a top hat.

A block down, a crowd had gathered in the street, blocking traffic. Bell pushed through it. He saw a hansom cab with its traces empty. A horse was in the street, down on the cobblestones. A wizened man in a flat cap knelt beside it, stroking its face.

Bell pushed beside him and pressed ten dollars into his hand. “For the vet. Where did your fare go?”

The cabbie pointed mutely at a small, well-kept office building.

Bell ran to it, shouted to the doorman, “Big fellow, red hair and beard?”

“Blew past me like a maddened grizzly.”

Bell ran into the lobby and grabbed the elevator runner. “Big man. Red beard. What floor?”

The runner hesitated and looked away.

Bell seized his tunic in his fist. “That man is valuable to me. What floor? ”

“Tenth.”

“Take me.”

“Mister, I don’t think you ought to go up there.”

Bell shoved him out of the car, slammed the gate shut, and rammed the control to rise at full speed. He overshot the tenth, brought it back down, threw the door open, and leaped out into the shambles of a business office. Chairs and desks were tumbled everywhere, glass was shattered, and five men in colorful gangster garb lay still on the carpet.

Five more were gripping Joseph Van Dorn by his arms and legs. A sixth was swinging wildly at his face. The man’s fists had already blackened his eye and split his lip, but Van Dorn had not seemed to notice as he battled to free his arms.

Bell pulled his Army and fired two shots into the ceiling.

“Next are in your bellies,” he roared. “Let that man go.”

The gangsters were not easily intimidated. None moved, except the man who had been punching Van Dorn. He reached into his pocket. Bell fired instantly. The heavy .45 slug threw the gangster into a wall.

“Let him loose.”

“Mister, if we let him loose, he’ll start up again.”

“Count on it,” Van Dorn bellowed.

Bell fired, dropping a man who pulled a revolver from his belt. The others let go. Van Dorn slugged two, as he barreled across the wrecked office, and kicked a fallen man who was starting to rise with a knife. Shoulder to shoulder with Isaac Bell, Van Dorn drew a heavy automatic pistol from his coat.

“Louses started swinging the second I came in the door.”

“Where’s our man?”

“Not with these street scum. All right, boyos. You were waiting for me, weren’t you?”

No one answered.

“Where is he?” Van Dorn shouted. “Where is that son of a bitch?”

A weaselly little man with a swollen eye and no teeth whined, “Mister, we’re just doing a job. We didn’t mean no harm.”

“Eleven men ganging one?” Isaac Bell asked incredulously. “No harm?”

“We was just supposed to beat him up.”

“Shut up, Marvyn.”

A gangster, a little older than the rest and clearly the boss, stepped forward and said, “If you know what’s good for you, you two, you’ll just turn around and leave like nothing happened.”

“Cover them.” Van Dorn passed Bell his automatic. Bell leveled both guns at the gangsters, Van Dorn picked up a telephone off the floor.

“Central? Get me the police.”

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Pressing charges.”

“That’s not how it’s done.”

“I’ll promise you this,” Van Dorn retorted coldly. “Next time you try to beat up a Van Dorn, we won’t press charges. We’ll throw you in the river.”

“But—”

“Answer this! Where did Clay go?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me where he goes.”

“Where’s the people who worked in his office?”

“Ran for it when this rumpus started.”

“How long have you worked for Clay?”

“Years.”

Joseph Van Dorn was still holding the telephone and still breathing hard. “How long were you waiting for me?”

“Two days— Mister, you ain’t gonna call the cops, are youse?”

Van Dorn said, “You’ll owe?”

“Sure.”

“Make no mistake. If you give me your marker, I’ll collect.”

“I ain’t a welsher.”

“O.K. I’ll take you at your word. You pick up your boys and leave quietly. Got a man who does bullet wounds?”

“Sure.”

“All right. You owe me.”

“Me, too,” growled Isaac Bell.

“Hear that?” Van Dorn pointed at Bell. “Him, too. Whenever we come to you with a question, you’ll give us a straight answer. Square?”

“Square,” said the gangster. “Want to shake on it?”

“Get out of here!”

The Hudson dusters carried their fallen down the back stairs.

Joseph Van Dorn gave Isaac Bell a tight grin. “Heck of a scrap. Thanks, Isaac. Saved my bacon.”

“Who is Clay?”

“Henry Clay. A private detective.” Van Dorn pointed at a brass wall plaque that was smeared with the blood of a gangster Bell had shot. “Henry Clay Investigations Agency.”

“What is he to you?”

“My first apprentice,” said Van Dorn.

Bell glanced around the demolished office. “Turned out to be a disappointment?”

“In spades.”

“How did he know you were coming?”

“Henry Clay is about the most intelligent man I have ever met. I am not surprised he knew I was coming. He has an uncanny ability to see the future.”

“A psychic?”

“Not in any mystical way. But he is so alert — sees much more clearly than ordinary men in the present — that it gives him a leg up on the future. Darned-near clairvoyant.”

Van Dorn looked over the wreckage of what had been a first-class office and shook his head in what seemed to Isaac Bell to be sadness. “So gifted,” he mused. “So intelligent. Henry Clay could have been the best detective in America.”

“I’m not sure how intelligent,” said Bell. “He disguised nothing about his past. He practically handed it to me on a silver platter.”

Van Dorn nodded. “Almost like he wanted to be caught.”

“Or noticed.”

“Yes, that was always his flaw. He was so hungry for applause— But Isaac?” Van Dorn gripped Bell’s arm for emphasis. “Never, ever underestimate him.”

Bell wove through an obstacle course of broken furniture and tried a door marked Private . It was locked. He knelt in front of the knob and applied his picks, then stepped aside abruptly.

“What’s the matter?”

“Too easy.”

Van Dorn handed him a broken table leg. They stood on either side of the door, and Bell shoved it with the leg. The door flew inward. A twelve-gauge shotgun thundered, and buckshot screeched where he would have been standing as he pushed it open.

Bell glanced inside. Blue smoke swirled around a wood-paneled office. The shotgun was clamped to a desk, aimed at the doorway. Rope, pulleys, and a deadweight had triggered the weapon.

“Heck of a parting shot.”

“Told you not to underestimate him.”

“That was on my mind.”

They went through Clay’s desk and inspected his files carefully.

Not a word or a piece of paper applied to current cases.

“I’ve never seen so many telephone and telegraph lines in one office,” said Bell. “It’s a virtual central exchange station.”

Closer inspection showed every wire had been cut.

“He did not run in haste.”

“No, sir. He took his own sweet time. I doubt he’s out of commission.”

Van Dorn said, “I cannot imagine Clay out of commission until he wants to be. He’ll regard having to flee as a minor setback.”