The Titanic Secret Page 12

  “So finally we come to what you wanted to know,” Bell said. “And, regrettably, I have to tell you that my investigation was inconclusive. A section of the mine shaft had collapsed before I reached the tunnel’s end. In all likelihood, Brewster and the others are sealed off behind the wall of rubble, as had been reported by the eyewitness and press accounts.”

  “No other clues?”

  “I am sorry to say, no. There was nothing in what little I was able to find that led me to believe anything other than that the men planned to return from work at the end of their shift. I don’t know why Brewster jumped your brother’s claim and tried to find ore in a worthless shaft. Because of the massive outlay of time, resources, and especially money it would take to breach the tunnel to its end, no one ever will.” Bell laid it on a little thick so the Brothers Bloeser would let the matter drop without further inquiry.

  “Mr. Bell, no one can ever accuse you of not doing a thorough job. This has cost us time and money enough, and let’s not forget poor Tony’s injury. We’ll let the matter rest just as surely as those men now rest at the back of the Little Angel Mine.”

  Bell finished the last of his coffee and stood. He resettled his hat on his head and took up his leather suitcase in his left hand, leaving his right free to shake both men’s hands. “I would prefer to stay and chat, but I have a very tight schedule to get back to New York.”

  “A pressing case?”

  “A long-abandoned wife.”

  Bloeser chuckled. “Even more pressing, sir. Safe travels, Mr. Bell.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bloeser. While the task was certainly not a pleasure, meeting you was.”

  Bell strode across the open concourse and found his way to the proper platform. He mounted the stairs onto the dark green Pullman car and eased into the saloon from the outside vestibule. He noted immediately that his Pullman was at least twenty years old and woefully out of date. The benches were dark, overstuffed affairs with deep-set buttons that reminded him of a spinster aunt’s front parlor. Also, the car didn’t have electric lighting but was lit by Pintsch gas globes mounted on the ceiling.

  Most of the passengers, he saw, were tired men, returning home from sales calls or meetings, or brighter-faced men heading off to call on potential sales prospects or attend big meetings. However, there were two families. One had a single child in a basket that appeared just months old. The other had two towheaded boys of about six. That was what his eyes took in. His ears told him something altogether much worse. The infant was wailing at the top of its lungs, a high-pitched scream that waxed and waned as it drew breath and protested some outrage that its mother could not appease.

  As for the two boys, they were in a full-on argument consisting of the phrases Are too and Am not shouted back and forth while their mother tried to shush them and the father had his nose buried in his paper and seemingly didn’t hear.

  “David, do something,” the long-suffering wife intoned as Bell threaded past.

  “About what, dear?”

  “The boys, David. The boys.”

  “Hmm?”

  Bell and Marion knew they wanted children when they could both devote more time to a homelife rather than their current vagabond existence. Isaac vowed that he wouldn’t become one of those disengaged fathers who left childrearing to his wife. His own father had been as much a part of his upbringing as his mother, and for that he was grateful.

  He was less grateful that this leg of the trip was seventeen hours. The boys would eventually wear themselves out and rest just fine, but the baby was far too young to sleep through the night. Come nightfall, when the porter reconfigured the bench seats into the upper and lower sleeping berths, the child’s midnight cries would wake them all.

  Bell shook his head, recalling one particular night in his pursuit of the circus thieves. He’d been in the open section of a Pullman car like this with a drunk who snored loudly enough that the porter had to finally roust him from his berth and have him sleep it off in the empty dining car.

  During the first part of the journey, Bell left his seat to relax in the lounge car and enjoy a whiskey and soda while he wrote out copious notes about his recent investigation into the Little Angel disaster, the subsequent confrontation, Tony’s injury, and the revelations laid out by Colonel Patmore. He ate supper with several single travelers at a table in the twin-unit dining car.

  By the time he returned to his car, the porter had converted all the seats for sleeping. Bell at least had a lower bunk. The car was quiet, the gas lamps dimmed to a faint glow. Outside, the moon shone bright silver across the featureless prairie. Bell thanked the porter. He detested the practice of calling them all George, after the founder of the company, George Pullman. If he knew the man from previous trips, he’d call him by his given name. Otherwise, he’d converse in such a way that avoided using a name at all.

  He crawled into his berth and then stripped out of his clothes and changed into sleeping attire. The heat had been turned down, so he did this quickly and slid under the blankets. Everything was quiet save for the rhythmic tempo of wheels over rails, a mechanical lullaby that usually put Bell to sleep in seconds.

  The baby began crying just before he slid into unconsciousness and didn’t relent for the next hour.

  And on it went across the country. The locomotive wasn’t hauling a particularly heavy load, and the terrain was flat, and this meant fewer stops to take on water and fuel. While the stops themselves were short, and fifteen thousand gallons of water and twenty-plus tons of coal could be loaded in less than five minutes, it took time to slow the train comfortably from fifty miles per hour, and considerably longer to accelerate back up to speed again. Still, they reached Topeka ahead of the California Limited. As before, he slept in an open car since all the private cabins were taken.

  Fourteen hours later, the train arrived at Chicago’s Dearborn Station. The New York Central Railroad’s 20th Century Limited left the city via the LaSalle Street Station. The two were only a few blocks apart, but the distance seemed much more formidable thanks to an icy rain slashing the sidewalks and buildings. It was the kind of storm that lofted men’s hats and inverted ladies’ umbrellas and led to a lack of available taxis.

  Bell had plenty of time—the 20th Century was an overnight express, after all—but he felt the burden of time growing heavier with each passing minute, and his impatience became unbearable, standing outside the station, watching car after car sweep past on the watery road. Just as he was about to toss caution aside and walk the five blocks, a liveried taxi pulled up.

  The ride was brief, but he still tipped the driver well, for driving through such miserable conditions, and headed into the next terminal.

  He purchased a ticket and was relieved to learn he had a drawing room to himself. Though he was hungry, he put off eating at the station’s diner counter. He rode the night train from New York at least once a month, on average, and knew the train’s chef was an absolute master. He sent a couple of coded cables to the New York office, updating the staff on his location and making certain someone had booked an express liner to Europe.

  As it stood, the major lines—White Star, Cunard, Hamburg America, Dutch-American, and the French line Compagnie Générale Transatlantique—cooperated in such a fashion that there was a sailing to Europe every day of the week, and sometimes more. The trick, Bell knew, wasn’t to get on the first ship out of Manhattan but the fastest one to get him to Le Havre, the closest port to Paris.

  At last, Bell walked down the now famous red carpet covering the trackside platform along the length of the express train and boarded his car.

  “Mr. Isaac,” he was greeted enthusiastically by a redcap with a wide, friendly smile. “Didn’t know you were traveling with us tonight.”

  “Short notice and all, Tom,” he told the Pullman-employed porter. “I’ve got the drawing room tonight.”

  “And I’
ll take real fine care of you, Mr. Isaac.”

  “You always do.”

  “Need help with your bag?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks.”

  “Just so you know, the inlet scoop acted up on the run here last night, but the conductor and engineer say it’s all fixed up now.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  Unlike the trains Bell had taken across the country, the 20th Century Limited didn’t need to stop in every jerkwater town—so named because the engineer jerked a chain to get water flowing from the towering cisterns—to satisfy the locomotive’s unquenchable thirst. This train was outfitted with a special siphon that could be lowered from the locomotive tender. The Limited would need to slow some as they came to special lengths of track that were flooded with water in anticipation of their passing. The siphon would scoop water straight into the tender, and, once the tender was full, the train would speed up again. This ingenious system ensured the rail linking America’s two greatest cities had the highest average speed of any long-distance run in the nation.

  “Anyone on board tonight?” Bell asked, meaning anyone of significance.

  “No, Mr. Isaac. No need for you to be snooping about my train tonight.”

  Bell laughed. “I’m going to set my luggage in my cabin and head to the observation car for a drink.”

  “Do you want me to make up your room now?”

  “Why don’t you. I’ve been traveling nonstop for three weeks and I am exhausted.”

  “Well, you’ll be with Mrs. Bell soon enough. She’ll cure what ails ya.”

  Bell chuckled. Truer words were never spoken.

  Eighteen hours after pulling out of the LaSalle Street Station, the Limited rumbled into Grand Central. Bell had completed a report about his upcoming mission for Joseph Van Dorn. He kept it light on details, which was his usual style. Van Dorn trusted Bell’s judgment, so they’d always enjoyed a tight working relationship. He had also managed to sleep well and felt better than he had in days. He’d repacked his case and was standing in the vestibule when the train shuddered to a stop. He tipped his hat to Tom, who was readying steps for less athletic passengers, and began striding the length of the platform. While the urgency of his mission was a driving force within him, when he was so close to home his desire to be with his wife superseded everything.

  He crossed the richly appointed Great Hall, where dishwater light filtered through the multiple windows. The Chicago storm had stayed with them across the country, and the sky was leaden. He climbed the stairs for street level and had started looking for a taxi when he spotted a beautiful Rolls-Royce automobile and its even more stunning driver.

  Wisps of Marion’s blond hair had escaped the leather cap she wore as she stood, clad in baggy jodhpurs, with one foot on the car’s running board and her hip cocked alluringly. Her eyes were the green of the clearest emeralds and smiled just as much as her lips. Marion was a classic beauty and spent plenty of time on movie sets explaining to people that she was the director and not a starlet.

  She tried to play aloof for a second longer but couldn’t. She cried out like a little girl seeing a new doll on Christmas morning and launched herself at her husband. She kissed him openly, social conventions be damned.

  “What are you doing here?” Isaac asked when they’d detangled themselves.

  “Driving you to Hoboken.”

  Bell’s enthusiasm flagged. “Today?”

  Marion nodded, stroking his cheek. “The office called first thing this morning, my poor darling. You’re booked on the Rotterdam for this afternoon’s sailing. I’m going to drive you to the Algonquin Hotel, where we will enjoy a few hours in each other’s company, as it were, and then it’s off to beautiful Hoboken, where the Dutch-American Steamship Company docks their ships.”

  Bell saw that Marion had two large suitcases loaded in the backseat of the Rolls. He knew she’d have thought of everything for him, including additional ammunition and a few accessories he usually carried in the field but hadn’t thought necessary in pursuit of the circus thieves.

  “Wait,” he said as Marion slid into the driver’s seat. “The Rotterdam doesn’t make landfall in France.”

  “Special stop. A funicular railroad engine was too late being delivered here to make it aboard the French line’s La Provence and apparently they need the little loco right away. The Rotterdam has a shallow enough draft for Le Havre Harbor. Et voilà! Rather than a relaxing night together, you and I have to tryst like Antony and Cleopatra.”

  Bell laughed aloud, always loving Marion’s turn of phrase. “In that case, my Nile Queen, let’s get this chariot in gear.”

  10

  The crossing to Europe aboard the Rotterdam was about the worst Isaac Bell had ever experienced. He could place blame on neither ship nor crew but squarely on the shoulders of Mother Nature. The storm that seemingly followed him from Denver, through Chicago, and on to New York, had dogged the Dutch liner across the Atlantic. While Bell had never felt the full effects of mal de mer, even he had spent one night in his cabin nibbling bland water biscuits and drinking a cloying pink dyspeptic fluid that was originally marketed for children with cholera but which was finding a market among adults suffering stomach issues.

  To his inner ear, the rain-lashed train from Le Havre to Paris bucked and yawed and rolled ponderously even though the tracks were level and straight. It would take a couple of whiskies and a comfortable bed in the new Art Deco–style Hôtel Lutetia to make him right. Marion had made him promise that he wouldn’t stay at the Ritz, their customary residence in Paris, without her.

  He woke early on his first full morning in France, and when he rolled off the feather-soft bed and stood, he paused to see if the floor was still in motion as it had been the previous night. He smiled at the fact he did not sway. He’d gotten his land legs back. As with so many modern hotels, it had an en suite, which made getting ready in the morning so much quicker.

  Bell entered the lobby restaurant at a little past eight and saw that his guest was already seated and enjoying a pot of tea. Cigarette smoke coiled from the cut-glass tray at his elbow. He smiled when he saw Bell but did not stand. Bell crossed the room, noting the other patrons, mostly businessmen or gentleman tourists who’d come down early while their wives readied themselves upstairs. Paris being Paris, one does not act the tourist unless elegantly turned out at all times.

  The Van Dorn Agency was slowly expanding into Europe. Joseph saw, and Bell heartily agreed, that the world was becoming much smaller due to the speed and safety of the Atlantic express liners and the interconnectivity of burgeoning international trade. It was inevitable that cases originating in the United States would spill over into countries lying across the pond. Therefore, they currently had an office in London, and a one-person contingent in Berlin, but they had yet to establish a formal presence in France. They’d had one man, Horace Bronson, for a short time, but it hadn’t worked out. This left Bell relying on a personal contact he’d cultivated on the few trips he’d taken to Paris, always with his wife, who loved the City of Lights more than any other in the world.

  Bell and his best friend and fellow investigator, Archie Abbott, had been trying to come up with an appropriate name for such an underhanded business contact. The best they’d managed was “fixer.” Bring the person a problem and they fix it for you no matter what.

  He missed Archie on this trip. He could have used the help, but Abbott was off tracking a lawyer who’d facilitated bogus contracts for companies doing business in Panama, building the great canal. That case had turned scandalous when it was found the absconding attorney had a young mistress in the family way. Bell had no doubt that Archie was just eating it all up with wolfish delight.

  “Henri, old boy, good to see you,” Bell said by way of greeting the man at the table. He slid into a chair opposite the Frenchman and, only when settled, reached across to shake his friend’
s left hand.

  Henri Favreau had lost his right arm as a boy during what the French call the War of 1870 and what Isaac Bell knew as the Franco-Prussian War. He had been an unwitting civilian caught in the cross fire of an attempted breakout from the city of Metz, which the Germans had besieged. His younger sister and his mother had been killed. His father, a conscript, died later in the war, leaving young, crippled Henri to fend for himself in a nation afflicted with chaos and strife.

  Whatever lessons he’d learned in those early days when the beleaguered country saw so many starving, they had served him well. Henri Favreau was now a man who exchanged favors for a living. He knew practically everybody from every stratum of society, from politician to prostitute—who, in Henri’s eyes, were one and the same.

  Joseph Van Dorn had written a letter of introduction for Bell years earlier when he and Marion were on a European holiday. Van Dorn didn’t know Favreau personally but shared enough mutual friends to give the letter import. Despite their age difference, the French fixer and the American investigator had an instant rapport, one that only grew stronger on their subsequent meetings.

  “Isaac, mon ami.” Henri smiled with tobacco-stained teeth. His English was much better than Isaac’s French. “You are too handsome and refined not to be a Parisian. How is that beautiful wife of yours?”

  “Upset that I’m here without her but doing well. What about Claire?”

  “If she is not nagging me, she is not happy. So, she is very happy indeed.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Favreau was a plain-featured man in most all ways. But not when he let his guard down and the intelligence and shrewdness behind his dark eyes shone through. It was in those tiny flashes that his brilliance suddenly made him seem much more extraordinary and gave him a natural charisma that drew people to him without their having the slightest understanding why. Bell once told him it was the beguilement of the cobra.