Clive Cussler - The Striker

He was generally conversant with locomotives from avid reading as a child, schoolboy engine tours hosted by Kenny’s father, and leading a Yale Glee Club midnight excursion to Miss Porter’s School on an Atlantic 4-4-0 “borrowed” from the New Haven Railroad train yards. He left the Johnson bar reverser in the center notch and searched for the throttle.

The throttle would not budge. He looked closely. The train wreckers had screwed a clamp on to hold it in the wide-open position. He unscrewed the clamp and notched the throttle forward to stop the flow of steam into the cylinders. Tens of thousands of pounds of steel, iron, coal, and water just kept rolling. Gently, he applied the automatic air brakes on the cars behind him, reducing about eight pounds of pressure, which also set the locomotive’s brakes. Screeching steel and a violent bucking told him, Too much. He put on more air pressure, easing the brake shoes on the wheels, and tried a softer touch. At last the train began to slow until there came a point at about fifty miles an hour when Isaac Bell realized to his huge relief that he, more than momentum, was in command.

Just in time. He had reduced the train’s speed to a crawl when he saw a red lantern ahead. A brakeman was standing on the tracks, swinging the Stop signal. A passenger train had stopped for a dispatcher’s signal and was blocking the tracks. “Ran back as fast as I could,” shouted the brakeman. “Good thing you saw me. Bumping into us at ten miles an hour, somebody might get hurt.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Bell.

While he waited for the train ahead to get moving again, he checked his gauges for boiler pressure and water level and injected more water into the firebox and scooped coal into the fire. Then he followed the passenger train into Pittsburgh, tight on its tail to squeeze through the same switches. Crossing the Allegheny River, he saw a fire at the Point — the still-burning wreckage of the stern-wheeler Camilla . A bigger fire was shooting flames into the sky from the edge of the Golden Triangle. It looked as if the union hall fire had spread to surrounding buildings.

Wally and Mack were waiting at the specials’ platform. One look at Bell’s face and Wally said, “I see you already heard what happened.”

“Henry Clay wired the news himself. Couldn’t resist bragging. And I just saw the fires from the bridge. Did the boys burn to death?”

“Firemen I talked to think they had their heads bashed in first.”

“I should have sent you two. You’d have seen it coming.”

“Don’t start blaming yourself,” said Mack. “Terry and Mike were grown-ups.”

“Just so you know, Isaac, they found another body, apparently the guy who set the fire. Papers in his wallet said he was on the Strike Committee.”

“How come his wallet didn’t burn up?”

“Smoke poisoning killed him, apparently,” said Wally. “Or so the cops say.”

Mack said, “Whatever happened, the strikers will catch hell for it. The newspapers are putting on extra editions, howling for blood.”

“What about Jennings’s steamboat?”

“Similar situation,” Wally said. “Sheriff’s men shot a striker in a rowboat. It was nearby.”

Mack said, “With all this in mind, we sent Archie to keep an eye on Jim Higgins.”

Bell said, “But Jim Higgins is protected by armed strikers.”

“So they’ll protect Archie, too.”

Bell nodded. “Of course. You’re right. Thank you for looking after Archie.”

“Now what?” asked Wally.

“Any word from Research?”

“Dead end.”

Mack handed him a telegram from Grady Forrer.

THIBODEAU & MARZEN PRINCIPALS UNNAMED, UNKNOWN, UNKNOWABLE.

Bell had been counting heavily on the broker leading him to Henry Clay’s boss. He crumpled the telegram in his fist and flung it from him. Mack caught it on the fly, smoothed the paper, and handed it back. “Put it away for later. Sometimes dead ends turn around.”

“Now what?” Wally asked again.

“Where’s that black steamboat?”

“Terry and Mike saw it tied up behind a mill at McKeesport.”

“Which is probably what got them killed.”

A bell clanged. A gleaming locomotive pulled a New York-to-Chicago limited into the train shed. Bell looked around the train platforms, which were deserted at this late hour. He wondered where Mary was. But he asked, “Where’s Jim Higgins?”

“Forted up at Amalgamated,” said Mack. “He’s got trains blocked, trolleys blocked, and streets blocked. But the black boat is making them nervous.”

Wally said, “The cops are gnashing their teeth.”

“So’s the sheriff,” said Mack. “At least, according to my sources. Rarin’ to roust the strikers out of their tents.”

“That would be a bloodbath.”

Wally said, “The operators, and the Coal and Iron cops, and the Pinkertons, and the state militia wouldn’t mind a bloodbath one bit.”

“But the mayor and some of Pittsburgh’s powers that be are afraid of a bloodbath,” said Mack, “account of all the women and kids. And with church ladies and progressives breathing down their necks. They’re hinting they’ll negotiate.”

“At least ’til after the ball,” said Wally.

“What ball?”

“Pittsburgh Society ball. Big annual la-di-da. Industrialists looking for gentility. Swells steaming in on specials. The mayor knows the newspapers would have the real ball — tycoons dancing on workmen’s graves — so he’s trying to sit on the hotheads for a couple of days more. Meaning we have two days before this blows sky-high.”

Bleeding steam, the limited from New York rolled beside a platform, and a big man in a voluminous coat bounded down before it stopped.

Wally Kisley said, “Look out, Isaac! If you think you have problems now, here comes the Boss.”

Joseph Van Dorn spotted Bell’s wave from across the tracks, strode into the station building, and doubled back to the private platform where his detectives were conferring. On the way he had bought an extra edition the newsboys were hawking inside. He waved it in their faces.

“Couldn’t help but notice that the city’s on fire. Says here, we lost two men.”

“Terry Fein and Mike Flannery,” said Bell. “And a steamboat captain who went out on a limb for us.”

“Us?” Van Dorn demanded. “Who are ‘us’? Detectives or strikers?”

“Both,” said Isaac Bell. “We ended up on the same side.”

Instead of remonstrating with Bell, Joseph Van Dorn asked, “Driven there by Henry Clay?”

“Explosives and arson are Clay’s hallmarks,” answered Bell. “Captain Jennings’s towboat was a dependable workhorse. Highly unlikely it would blow up without help. And even the cops say the union hall was arson.”

“But conveniently blame a dead striker,” said Wally Kisley.

Joseph Van Dorn looked Bell in the eye. “What’s your next move, Isaac?”

Wally Kisley blurted, “ Isaac’s next move? Aren’t you taking over?”

Joseph Van Dorn’s hard gaze never left Bell’s face. He answered in a tone that invited no questions. “Isaac got us into this mess. I’m counting on him getting us out of it. What’s your next step, Detective Bell?”

Now Mack Fulton protested, exercising the privilege of the Van Dorn Agency’s oldest employee. “It’s too much to put all on him, Joe.”

And Wally chimed in, “It needs an experienced man with a bird’s-eye view.”

Van Dorn asked, “What do you say to that, Isaac?”

Van Dorn, Kisley, and Fulton were staring expectantly at him, and if Isaac Bell had any doubts left about his “bird’s-eye view” of the Striker Case, they were demolished once and for all when Kenny Bloom staggered off his train arm in arm with the cook.