Clive Cussler - The Wrecker

The steel magnate stared. “I’ll be damned. Three lonely ladies. You were bluffing. You only had trips. I’d have beat you with my straight. Though your flush would have beaten me, Charlie. If Mr. Bell hadn’t forced us both out.”

Charles Kincaid exploded, “You bet half a million dollars on three lousy queens?”

“I’m partial to the ladies,” said Isaac Bell. “Always have been.”

KINCAID REACHED ACROSS AND touched the queens as if not quite believing his eyes. “I will have to arrange to transfer funds when I get to Washington,” he said stiffly.

“No rush,” Bell said graciously. “I’d have had to ask the same.”

“Where should I mail my check?”

“I’ll be at the Yale Club of New York City.”

“Son,” said Congdon, writing a check for which he did nothave to transfer funds to cover, “you sure paid for your train ticket.”

“Train ticket, hell,” said Bloom. “He could buy the train.”

“Sold!” Bell laughed. “Come back to my observation car and drinks are on me, and maybe a bite of late supper. All this bluffing makes me hungry.”

As Bell led them to the rear of the train, he wondered why Senator Kincaid had folded. It had been a strictly correct move, he supposed, but after Congdon had folded it was a lot more cautious than Kincaid had been all night, which was puzzling. It was almost if Kincaid had been acting a bit more the fool earlier than he really was. And what was all that blather about Osgood Hennessy taking enormous risks? He certainly hadn’t improved his benefactor’s standing with the bankers.

Bell ordered champagne for all in the observation car and asked the stewards to serve up a late-night supper. Kincaid said he could stay for only one quick glass. He was tired, he said. But he let Bell pour him a second glass of champagne and then ate some steak and eggs and seemed to get over his disappointment at the card table. The players mingled with one another and some other travelers who were passing the night drinking. Groups formed fluidly, broke up, and formed again. The tale of the three queens was told over and over. As the crowd thinned, Isaac Bell found himself alone with Ken Bloom, Judge Congdon, and Senator Kincaid, who remarked, “I understand you’ve been showing the train crew a wanted poster.”

“A sketch of a man we’re investigating,” Bell answered.

“Show us!” said Bloom. “Maybe we’ve seen him.”

Bell took one from his coat, pushed plates aside, and spread it on the table.

Bloom took one look. “That’s the actor! In The Great Train Robbery. ”

“Is it really the actor?” asked Kincaid.

“No. But there is a similarity to Broncho Billy Anderson.”

Kincaid trailed his fingers across the sketch. “I think he looks like me.”

“Arrest this man!” laughed Ken Bloom.

“He does,” said Congdon. “Sort of. This fellow has chiseled features. So does the Senator. Look at the cleft in the chin. You’ve got one of those too, Charles. I heard a bunch of damned fool women in Washington squawking like hens that you look like a matinee idol.”

“My ears aren’t that big, are they?”

“ No.”

“That’s a relief,” said Kincaid. “I can’t be a matinee idol with big ears.”

Bell laughed. “My boss warned us, ‘Don’t arrest any ugly mugs.”’

Curiously, he looked from the sketch to the Senator and back to the sketch. There was a similarity in the high brow. The ears were definitely different. Both the suspect in the sketch and the Senator had intelligent faces with strong features. So did a lot of men, as Joseph Van Dorn had pointed out. Where the Senator and the suspect diverged, in addition to ear size, was the penetrating gaze. The man who had struck the lumberjack with a crowbar looked harder and filled with purpose. It was hardly surprising that he had looked intense to the man he was attacking. But Kincaid did not seem driven by purpose. Even at the height of their betting duel, Kincaid had struck him as essentially self-satisfied and self-indulgent, more the servant of the powerful than powerful himself. Although, Bell reminded himself, he had wondered earlier whether Kincaid playing the fool was an act.

“Well,” said Kincaid, “if we see this fellow, we’ll nab him for you.

“If you do, stay out of his way and call for reinforcements,” Bell said soberly. “He is poison.”

“All right, I’m off to bed. Long day. Good night, Mr. Bell,” Kincaid said cordially. “Interesting playing cards with you.”

“Expensive, too,” said Judge Congdon. “What are you going to do with all those winnings, Mr. Bell?”

“I’m going to buy my fiancee a mansion.”

“Where?”

“San Francisco. Up on Nob Hill.”

“How many survived the earthquake?”

“The one I’m thinking of was built to stand for a thousand years. The only trouble is, it might hold ghosts for my fiancee. It belonged to her former employer, who turned out to be a depraved bank robber and murderer.”

“In my experience,” Congdon chuckled, “the best way to make a woman comfortable in a previous woman’s house is to hand her a stick of dynamite and instruct her to enjoy the process of redecorating. I’ve done it repeatedly. Works like a charm. That might apply to former employers, too.”

Charles Kincaid rose and said good night all around. Then he asked, casually, almost mockingly, “Whatever happened to the depraved bank robber and murderer?”

Isaac Bell looked the Senator in the eye until the Senator dropped his gaze. Only then did the tall detective say, “I ran him to ground, Senator. He won’t hurt anyone ever again.”

Kincaid responded with a hearty laugh. “The famous Van Dorn motto: ‘We never give up.”’

“Never,” said Bell.

Senator Kincaid, Judge Congdon, and the others drifted off to bed, leaving Bell and Kenny Bloom alone in the observation car. Half an hour later, the train began to slow. Here and there, a light shone in the black night. The outskirts of the town of Rawlins took shape. The Overland Limited trundled through dimly lit streets.

THE WRECKER GAUGED THE train’s speed from the platform at the end of the Pullman car that housed his stateroom. Bell’s sketch had shaken him far more than his enormous losses at poker. The money meant nothing in the long run, because he would soon be richer than Congdon, Bloom, and Moser combined. But the sketch represented a rare piece of bad luck. Someone had seen his face and described him to an artist. Fortunately, they’d got his ears wrong. And thank God for the resemblance to the movie star. But he could not count on those lucky breaks confusing Isaac Bell for much longer.

He jumped from the slowing train, and set out to explore the dark streets. He had to work fast. The stop was scheduled for only thirty minutes, and he didn’t know Rawlins. But there was a pattern to railroad towns, and he believed the flow of luck that had moved against him tonight was shifting his way. For one thing, Isaac Bell’s guard was down. The detective was exhilarated by his great fortune at the card table. And it was likely that among the telegraph messages waiting at the depot would be tragic news from Ogden that would throw him for a loop.

He found what he was looking for within minutes, tracing the sound of a piano to a saloon, which was still going strong even though it was well past midnight. He didn’t push through the swinging doors but instead filled his hand with a fat wad of money and circled the saloon by plunging fearlessly down side and back alleys. Bright lights from the second story revealed the dance hall and gambling casino, duller lights the cribs of the attached brothel. The sheriff, bribed to ignore the illegal operations, wouldn’t venture near their doors. Bouncers were hired, therefore, to keep the peace and discourage robbers. And there they were.