Clive Cussler - The Wrecker

Bell shook his head in disgust. “The Wrecker is not only hiring hands to help but hiring criminals to hire help. He can hit anywhere on the continent.”

There was a tentative knock at the door. The detectives looked up, gazes narrowing at the sight of a nervous-looking youth in a wrinkled sack suit. He had a cheap suitcase in one hand and his hat in the other. “Mr. Bell, sir?”

Isaac Bell recognized young James Dashwood from the San Francisco office, the apprentice detective who had done such a thorough job establishing the innocence of the union man killed in the Coast Line Limited wreck.

“Come on in, James. Meet Weber and Fields, the oldest detectives in America.”

“Hello, Mr. Weber. Hello, Mr. Fields.”

“I’m Weber,” said Mack. “He’s Fields.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Bell asked, “What are you doing here, James?”

“Mr. Bronson sent me with this, sir. He told me to ride expresses to beat the mail.”

The apprentice handed Bell a brown paper envelope. Inside was a second envelope addressed to him in penciled block letters, care of the San Francisco office. Bronson had clipped a note to it: “Opened this rather than wait. Glad I did. Looks like he made you.”

Bell opened the envelope addressed to him. From it, he withdrew the front cover of a recent Harper’s Weekly magazine. A cartoon by William Allen Rogers depicted Osgood Hennessy in a tycoon’s silk top hat astride a locomotive marked SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD. Hennessy was pulling a train labeled CENTRAL RAILROAD OF NEW JERSEY into New York City. The train was drawn to look like a writhing octopus. Hand-lettered in black pencil across the cartoon was the question CAN THE LONG ARM OF THE WRECKER REACH FARTHER THAN OSGOOD’S TENTACLE?

“What the heck is that?” asked Wally.

“A gauntlet,” answered Bell. “He’s challenging us.”

“And rubbing our noses in it,” said Mack.

“Mack’s right,” said Wally. “I wouldn’t cloud my head taking it personal, Isaac.”

“The magazine is in there, too,” said Dashwood. “Mr. Bronson thought you’d want to read it, Mr. Bell.”

Seething inwardly, Bell quickly scanned the essence of the first page. Harper‘s, dubbing itself “A Journal of Civilization,” was reporting avidly the depredations of the railroad monopolies. This issue devoted an article to Osgood Hennessy’s ambitions. Hennessy, it seemed, had secretly acquired a “near-dominating interest” in the Baltimore amp; Ohio Railroad. The B amp;O already held, jointly with the Illinois Central-in which Hennessy had a large interest-a dominating interest in the Reading Railroad Company. The Reading controlled the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which gave Hennessy entry into the coveted New York district.

“What does it mean?” asked James.

“It means,” explained a grim Isaac Bell, “that the Wrecker can attack Hennessy’s interests directly in New York City.”

“Any train wreck he causes in New York,” said Mack Fulton, “will hit the Southern Pacific even harder than an attack in California.”

“New York,” said Wally Kisley, “being the biggest city in the country.”

Bell looked at his watch. “I’ve got time to catch the Overland Limited. Send my bags after me to the Yale Club of New York City.”

He headed for the door, firing orders. “Wire Archie Abbott! Tell him to meet me in New York. And wire Irv Arlen and tell him to cover the rail yards in Jersey City. And Eddie Edwards, too. He knows those yards. He broke up the Lava Bed gang that was doing express-car jobs on the piers. You two finish up here, make sure he’s not still in Ogden-which I doubt-and find which way he went.”

“New York is, according to this,” Wally said, holding up the Harp- er’s Weekly and quoting from the article, “ ‘the Holy Land to which all railroaders long to make a pilgrimage.’ ”

“Which means,” said his partner, “he’s on his way already and will be waiting for you when you get there.”

Halfway out the door, Bell looked back at Dashwood, who was watching eagerly.

“James, do something for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve read the reports on the wreck of the Coast Line Limited?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell Mr. Bronson I’m sending you to Los Angeles. I want you to find the blacksmith or machinist who drilled a hole in that hook that derailed the Limited. Can you do that for me-what’s the matter?”

“But Mr. Sanders is in charge of Los Angeles, and he might-”

“Stay out of Sanders’s way. You’re on your own. Catch the next flyer west. On the jump!”

Dashwood ran past Bell and thundered down the wooden stairs like a boy let out of school.

“What’s a kid going do on his own?” asked Wally.

“He’s a crackerjack,” said Bell. “And he can’t do worse than Sanders has so far, O.K. I’m on my way. Mack, get some rest. You look beat.”

“You’d look beat too if you’d been sleeping sitting up on trains for the last week.”

“Let me remind you geezers to watch your step. The Wrecker is poison.”

“Thank you for your wise advice, sonny,” answered Wally.

“We’ll try real hard to remember it,” said Mack. “But, like I said, even money he’s already on his way to New York.”

Wally Kisley went to the window and watched Isaac Bell run to catch the Overland Limited.

“Oh, this’ll be fun. Our hard-rock miners ran out of drunks.”

He motioned for Mack to join him at the window. Springing suddenly from the sidewalk, the hard-rock miners swooped from both sides to ambush the well-groomed dude running for his train in an expensive suit. Neither stopping or even slowing, Bell cut through them like a one-man flying wedge and the miners returned to the sidewalk facedown.

“Did you see that?” Kisley asked.

“Nope. And neither did they.”

They stayed at the window, observing closely the citizens swarming about the sidewalk.

“That kid Dashwood?” Fulton asked. “Remind you of anybody?”

“Who? Isaac?”

“No. Fifteen-what am I saying?-twenty years ago, Isaac was still chasing lacrosse balls at that fancy prep school his old man sent him to. You and me, we was in Chicago. You were investigating certain parties engineering the corner in grain. I was up to my ears in the Haymarket bombing, when we figured out the cops did most of the killing. Remember, this slum kid showed up looking for work? Mr. Van Dorn took a shine to him, had you and me show him the ropes. He was a natural. Sharp, quick, ice water in his veins.”

“Son of a gun,” said Mack. “Wish Clarke.”

“Let’s hope Dashwood teetotals.”

“Look!” Mack leaned close to the glass.

“I see him!” said Wally. He ripped the lumberjack’s drawing off the wall, the picture with the beard added, and brought it to the window.

A tall, bearded workman dressed in overalls and derby who had been striding toward the railroad station carrying a large tool sack over his shoulder had been forced onto stop in front of a saloon to allow two bartenders to throw four drunks to the sidewalk. Hemmed in by the cheering crowd, the tall man was glancing around impatiently, raising his face out of the shadow of his derby.

The detectives looked at the drawing.

“Is that him?”

“Could be. But it looks like he’s had that beard awhile.”

“Unless it’s rented.”

“If it is, it’s a good one,” said Mack. “I don’t like the ears either. They’re nowhere near this big.”

“If it’s not him,” Wally insisted, “it could be his brother.”

“Why don’t we ask him if he has a brother?”

“I’M FIRST, YOU WATCH.”