The Striker ib-6 Read online

  “Read this!” She thrust the Denver Post in his face and pulled a carpetbag from under her cot. Jim read quickly. “What is this? We know Gleason got blown up.”

  “Keep reading. Do you see what happened next?”

  Jim read to the end where it was reported that the barges that sank at Gleasonburg had blocked the river for four days.

  Mary asked, “The rivers are not deep at Pittsburgh, are they?”

  “Not very. The Mon’s about eight or ten feet. Shallower in many places, depending on rain. About the same for the Allegheny.”

  “And the Ohio?”

  “About the same… Why?”

  Mary’s eyes were burning.

  “Why?” Jim repeated sharply.

  “Even scab coal has to reach Pittsburgh to be shipped by trains to the eastern cities and by barge to the west.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Jim. He understood fully, but he didn’t want to hear it.

  Mary said, “The barges that sunk at Gleasonburg blocked the river for four days. One tow’s worth of barges, brother, a single fleet. What would happen at Pittsburgh if many, many, many barges sank and blocked the river?”

  “No coal would move,” said Jim Higgins.

  “No coal to the Pittsburgh mills,” said Mary. “No coal trained east to the cities. No coal barged west down the Ohio.”

  “But the miners are already marching. What about the march? A peaceful march.”

  “The marchers will need all the help they can get. This will help them.”

  “Sabotage is war, Mary.”

  “Coal is the lifeblood of the capitalist class.”

  “War means death.”

  “Precisely, brother. Without coal, the capitalist class will die.”

  * * *

  Isaac Bell headed to New York to get a handle on the new owners of Gleason Consolidated Coal & Coke. He wangled the last seat on the Pennsylvania Special by flourishing Kenny Bloom’s rail pass. Ten thousand buyers from out-of-town firms were flocking to the city to purchase merchandise for the fall and winter, and the eastbound trains were packed.

  “Don’t let the Boss catch sight of you before you can prove what’s driving your provocateur,” Wish Clarke warned as they parted in Pittsburgh. Wish was heading out to Chicago to ask Laurence Rosania who, in a safecracker’s opinion, might practice the esoteric and extremely rare art of shaping explosives. “He’ll pepper you with questions: Who is he? Who’s behind him? What do they want? Better have a clear idea or he’ll switch you to another case.”

  But Bell had been far from forming clear ideas, even before the explosions on the Monongahela. Was a saboteur provoking violence for profit or to win the war between labor and operators? Whoever bought Gleason Consolidated Coal & Coke could be angling for both.

  “I can’t dodge Mr. Van Dorn. I have to go to the office to tap the new research man.”

  “Tap him in a bar around the corner. I was in New York last September when the buyers came. The Broadway hotels were putting up cots and turning people away. If only a small portion of them encounter New York sharpers, our new field office will be doing a land-office business. And you will get shanghaied into interviewing waiters, bartenders, cabbies, ushers, maître d’s, and chambermaids on behalf of a ladies’ unmentionables buyer from Peoria who, having celebrated a morning of wholesaler haggling with drinks in a club, lunch at a café, an automobile ride around Central Park, dinner in a roadhouse, a show at the vaudeville, and late supper and a cold bottle on a roof garden, woke up minus his wallet — which he will finally recall he saw last in the company of a respectable, refined young lady he met in one of those establishments.”

  The Pennsylvania Special’s last stop was at the Hudson River’s edge in Jersey City. Bell rode a ferry to Manhattan and the El uptown and walked to the Cadillac Hotel on Broadway. Avoiding the front door and the sharp-eyed house detectives recruited personally by Mr. Van Dorn, he found a bellboy smoking a cigarette outside the service entrance and tipped him to pass a private message to Grady Forrer in the Van Dorn suite.

  Then Bell retreated five blocks down Broadway to the bar of the Hotel Normandie, which was loud with jobbers and wholesalers entertaining buyers. He watched from a corner table, guessing who among the customers streaming through the door was the big brain that the Boss had hired to establish the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s division of research.

  Was it the guy with his hat cocked like a newspaperman? Reporters were trained in research. But, no, he did not appear to be meeting anyone as he went straight to the lunch bar. Was it the stern academic with a waxed mustache? No, he clapped a salesman on the back and was greeted like an old friend. Nor was it the long-haired fellow who looked like a scientist.

  Suddenly, the bar grew quiet, conversations ceasing, as an immense shadow filled the door. It was certainly not this guy, large of shoulder and substantial of belly. As young as Bell, he had his hair slicked down and parted in the middle like a high-class floor manager who could keep a saloon orderly with a glance. He churned across the room, parting the crowd like a steamboat, straight at Bell. Then he placed wire-rimmed glasses on his nose and inspected the young detective closely.

  His voice rumbled from deep in his chest. “I’m Grady Forrer, Mr. Bell. Your note described a fair-haired gent with a mustache. I’m going to venture that it’s a mustache you have just begun to encourage.”

  “I’m hoping it will be worth the wait,” said Bell, thrusting out his hand. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Glad to. It’s a madhouse up there. More business than you can shake a stick at.”

  “Flimflammed buyers?”

  “Flimflammed buyers by the gross, yard, bolt, ream, karat, bale, peck, dram, grain, pennyweight, each according to his measure. So many beating at the door that Mr. Van Dorn stripped my office of assistants to interview victims. Let’s have a drink.”

  Bell hailed a waiter, and when the waiter ran with their order, he asked, “Do you have experts in Wall Street?”

  “I have access to experts. And a certain rudimentary knowledge as I apprenticed down there before I became interested in this library work, and I’ve maintained friendships. What do you need to know?”

  Bell told him about the sudden purchase of a controlling interest in Gleason Consolidated. “I’ve pored through newspapers and buttonholed a banker at a dinner in Pittsburgh, but I got no further than the name of a trust that no one’s heard of.”

  “How quickly did they buy it up?” asked Forrer.

  “Days.”

  “Astonishing. Buying up a controlling interest takes time, particularly when trying to mask your intention. And buying from grieving heirs who are battling each other for the spoils takes even longer. Even if the deceased’s will was rammed through probate. Which is not impossible. If there is a more corrupt breed of judge than probate, I’ve never heard of them. Interesting, though, unless it was already in the works. Has it occurred to you that whoever bought Gleason had advance notice the shares would come to market?”

  “I wondered if you would ask,” said Bell. “Fact is, whoever blew up Gleason’s yacht would know precisely when.”

  After an hour, during which time Isaac Bell concluded that the Boss had made a brilliant decision to invest in a research department, and doubly brilliant to hire Grady Forrer, a weedy young man sidled into the Normandie Bar and spoke urgently to Forrer.

  “Himself has gone to supper and won’t return ’til morning. Our boys are back at work.”

  “Come on, Isaac! Now’s our chance.”

  * * *

  Forrer’s office was a collection of shabby rooms that connected by a narrow hall to the lavish Van Dorn suite. It was a windowless warren, unlike the agency’s big open front office. Cabinets, chairs, and tables were stacked with newspapers from towns and cities around the country, and, as Bell and Grady entered, a mailman staggered in under a canvas sack, which contained, he announced, three hundred subscription newspapers, none more than a week old. Clatt
ering ceaselessly in one corner was the research division’s own telegraph key, presided over by an operator sending and receiving the Morse alphabet with a lightning-fast fist. A telephonist with a listening piece pressed to his ear was taking notes in another corner. A typewriter banged away, printing catalog cards, and the rooms echoed with shouts of “Boy!” as file boys were sent scampering to the ever-growing stacks.

  Forrer explained that at this early stage he was devoting all his energy to collecting a library of information. He had hired students part-time from Columbia College and the seminaries to clip stories from the thousands of newspapers published around the country.

  Bell asked, “How will you keep track?”

  “I’m adapting the Dewey decimal system to Van Dorn requirements,” Grady explained. “All the information in the world is worth nothing if we can’t find it.”

  * * *

  Isaac Bell worked at a desk deep in clippings of newspaper headlines, features, cartoons, and pen-and-ink sketches about coal interests in Wall Street. The railroads had a powerful hand in the mineral, as he had seen in Pittsburgh. But Kenny’s father was only one of several line presidents depicted as grasping for controlling interests in the transport and sale of coal.

  The western railroad builder Osgood Hennessy had attracted far more cartoonists’ ire than Mr. Bloom. Bell found the titan drawn in the images of an anaconda, an octopus, and a spider, all with more teeth than such creatures possessed in their natural state. Wall Street financiers — especially Judge James Congdon, founder of U.S. Steel; John Pierpont Morgan, consolidator of General Electric and lender of gold to the U.S. Treasury; and the lamp oil magnate John D. Rockefeller — received similar treatment, portrayed as sharks and alligators and rampaging grizzly bears.

  In contrast on the Society pages, Congdon and Hennessy and Rockefeller assumed human form in staff-artist sketches, Congdon with young brides on his arm, Rockefeller attending his Fifth Avenue church, the widowed Hennessy escorting a pretty daughter of thirteen. Much attention was paid to Congdon’s art collection, much more to Hennessy’s private train.

  Black Jack Gleason’s obituaries touted the coal combine he had put together, mansions he had built in West Virginia, and the shooting estate he had bought in Ireland. Bell read an editorial written before his death that lauded Gleason’s oft-stated opinion that labor organizers were “vampires that fatten on the honest labor of the coal miners of the country.”

  The New York World charged Gleason with exacting tribute from the people by illegally banding the Coal Trust into “the most powerful, grasping and grinding trusts in existence, beyond any question, not even second to J. P. Morgan’s Great Fuel Octopus that limits supply and fixes prices.” A Nebraska paper excoriated Gleason as “a coal baron who got fat on the honest labor of the coal miners, and rich through overcharging the coal consumers of the country.”

  Grady Forrer arrived with a pot of coffee.

  “You’ve been here all night.”

  “Grady, you know many things.”

  “I know how to find many things.”

  “Have you ever seen amber-colored eyes?”

  “They are unusual,” said Grady. “Very rare. And amber is something of a misnomer. I would describe them as solid yellow or gold. Except in sunlight they will likely appear coppery, even orange. Why do you ask?”

  “My provocateur might have them. Or might not.”

  Grady looked troubled. “Based on the enmity already existing between labor and owners, you wouldn’t necessarily need a provocateur to provoke a war in the coalfields.”

  “I would only agree that you would not need a provocateur to merely foment violence in the coalfields. There’s plenty of bitterness for that. But you would need a provocateur to set off a real, ongoing war.”

  “To what purpose?!” roared a voice in Bell’s ear.

  “Mr. Van Dorn!” cried Grady Forrer. The telegrapher, the telephonist, the typist shot to their feet, and the file boys froze in their tracks.

  Isaac Bell stood up and offered his hand.

  “Good morning, sir,” he greeted Van Dorn and answered the Boss with the main thought on his mind. “To the purpose of drawing attention.”

  Joseph Van Dorn said, “Come with me!”

  Bell winked reassuringly at Grady Forrer and glided alongside Van Dorn, confident he had discovered the answer.

  Van Dorn’s private office was fitted out with up-to-date telephones, speaking tubes, and its own telegraph key. He sat at a mahogany desk and indicated a tufted leather chair for Bell.

  “Whose attention?”

  “The President’s, the Congress’s, and, most important, the nation’s.”

  Van Dorn nodded. “I’ve been watching Prince Henry operate and I’ve been thinking along the same lines you are. By the time the Prince completes his tour, half the continent will be in love with him and all things German — despite his brother the Kaiser’s dismal record as a bloodthirsty despot. It’s a new world, Isaac. If you get in the newspapers, people will love you as long as the reporters spell your name right.”

  “Or hate you,” said Bell.

  “Tell me who wants to be loved.”

  “They all do. But I don’t see the union having the talent for it.”

  “How can you say that? The papers are on their side. The front pages are full of cartoons of tycoons in top hats abusing workingmen.”

  “Not all,” said Bell. “Half I saw in the train stations depicted fresh-faced soldiers set upon by unshaven mobs. The same with those I read last night.”

  “So it could be either side, could it not?”

  Bell hesitated.

  Van Dorn said, “Let me remind you that taking sides is no way to keep a clear eye.”

  “But the unionists aren’t capable of a precision attack like the one I saw on the Monongahela. The timing was exquisite — two vessels dynamited within ten minutes and the barge fleet set adrift at the right moment to do the most damage. The union fellows I’ve encountered are brave men, but not all that practical, nor disciplined. Nor, frankly, trained in the dark arts. What I saw demanded military precision by someone who’s devoted his life to destruction.”

  “How many men do you reckon it took to blow up the two vessels and set the barges adrift?”

  “No more than three.”

  “Only three?”

  “It could have been one.”

  “Impossible. One could not be in all three places at once.”

  Bell said, “He wouldn’t have to be. The yacht and the steamboat both burned coal in sizable furnaces. A knowledgeable saboteur could have hidden dynamite and detonators fashioned to look like large chunks of coal in their bunkers.”

  “But what would persuade the fireman — who was bound to die in the explosion — to shovel it into the furnace at just the right moment?”

  Isaac Bell said, “I went aboard two of the steamboats that were clearing the channel. I took a good look at their boilers and I talked to their firemen.”

  Joseph Van Dorn sat back in his chair and smiled. “Did you? What did you learn?”

  “The coal is shifted in wheelbarrows from bunker to bunker, closer and closer to the furnace, in a logical manner. And the steamboats burn it at a consistent rate, depending on the speed they’re making and the current.”

  “To calculate the timing, your provocateur must know all about steamboats, perhaps been employed on them.”

  “No, sir. I figured it out, and I’m only a detective.”

  Van Dorn looked out his window, cogitated in silence, then mused, “He sounds like quite an operator… Quite an operator… Provided he exists… But ‘fashioning’ dynamite and detonators to look like coal could be rather more difficult than you suggest.”

  “Wally Kisley reckons that the runaway mine train was sabotaged with a so-called hollow or shaped charge. May I ask are you aware—”

  “I know what a shaped charge is, thank you. Though, admittedly, the average farmer dynamiting stumps
does not.”

  “Nor the average coal miner dynamiting the seam,” said Bell.

  “You are postulating a fellow with an extraordinary skill with explosives. I know what a shaped charge is, but I would likely blow my head off trying to fashion one. Particularly disguised as coal that would fool an experienced fireman. Extraordinary knowledge.”

  “I’ve got Wish Clarke tracking down Laurence Rosania.”

  “Rosania?” Van Dorn stroked his red whiskers. “Morally, I would put nothing past Rosania of course. But why would a successful safecracker with his refined tastes stoop to blowing up coal mines and steamboats? It wouldn’t be worth his trouble or the risk. He’s made a splendid career of not getting caught. Yet.”

  “I’m betting that Rosania can point us toward other experts in what must be a small field of inquiry. And I’ve asked Grady Forrer to research who among the military are experimenting with hollow charges, other than the fellows at the Torpedo Station.”

  Van Dorn asked, “What’s your next move?” and Isaac Bell realized with a swell of pride that the Boss was treating him more like a fellow detective than a new man on the job.

  “My next move is to find out who bought a controlling interest in Black Jack Gleason’s coal mines and coking plants within a week of his death.”

  “But if all this sabotage is in aid of a crime of profit, your provocateur theory falls into a cocked hat.”

  “Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You told me not to take sides.”

  “I meant between the operators and the union.”

  “Your same advice could apply to evidence this early in my case.

  19

  “There’s a lady to see you, Isaac.”

  “Lady?” Bell yawned. He looked up blearily from a fresh stack of newspaper cuttings. “What kind of lady?”

  Grady Forrer removed his spectacles, polished them on his shirtfront, and considered. “I would characterize her as the beautiful kind of lady with a snowy complexion and glossy black locks.”

  Isaac Bell jumped to his feet. “Gray eyes?”