The Wrecker Read online

  “Found him? What do you mean, dead?”

  “Slit his throat. I was afraid to tell—they’d pin that on me, too.”

  “Slit his throat?” Bell demanded. “Or stabbed?”

  Jake ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Stabbed, I guess.”

  “Did you see a knife?”

  “No.”

  “Was he run through? Did the wound exit the back of his neck?”

  “I didn’t stick around to examine him close, Mr. Bell. Like I said, I knew they’d blame me.”

  “Get over there,” Bell told Kisley and Fulton. “Sheriff, would you send a doctor? See if he can reckon what killed him and how long he’s been dead.”

  “Where will you be, Isaac?”

  Another dead end, thought Bell. The Wrecker wasn’t just lucky, he made his own luck. “Railroad station,” he answered without a lot of hope. “See if any ticket clerks recall selling him a ticket out of here.”

  He took copies of the lumberjack’s drawing to Union Depot, a multigabled, two-story building with a tall clock tower, and queried the clerks. Then, driven in a Ford by a railway police official through tree-lined neighborhoods of cottages with jigsaw woodwork, he visited the homes of clerks and supervisors who were off work that day. Bell showed the drawing to each man, and when the man did not recognize the face, Bell showed him an altered version with a beard. No one recognized either face.

  How did the Wrecker get out of Ogden? Bell wondered.

  The answer was easy. The city was served by nine different railroads. Hundreds, if not thousands, of passengers passed through it every day. By now, the Wrecker had to know that the Van Dorn Agency was hunting him. Which meant he would choose his targets more carefully when it came to preparing his escapes.

  Bell enlisted Van Dorn agents from the Ogden office to canvass hotels, on the odd chance that the Wrecker had stayed in the junction city. No front-desk clerk recognized either drawing. At the Broom, an expensive, three-story brick hotel, the proprietor of the cigar store thought he might have served a customer who looked like the picture with the beard. A waitress in the ice-cream parlor remembered a man who looked like the clean-shaven version. He had stuck in her mind because he was so handsome. But she had seen him only once, and that was three days ago.

  Kisley and Fulton caught up with Bell in the spartan Van Dorn office, one large room on the wrong side of Twenty-fifth Street, which was a wide boulevard divided by electric-streetcar tracks. The side of the street that served the legitimate needs of railroad passengers using the station was lined with restaurants, tailors, barbers, soda fountains, ice-cream parlors, and a Chinese laundry, each shaded by a colorful awning. Van Dorn’s side housed saloons, rooming houses, gambling casinos, and hotels fronting for brothels.

  The office had a bare floor, ancient furniture, and a single window. Decoration consisted of wanted posters, the newest being the two freshly printed versions of the lumberjack’s drawing of the Wrecker, with and without the beard, noted by the sharp-eyed Southern Pacific ticket clerk in Sacramento.

  Kisley and Fulton had regained their spirits, though Fulton appeared exhausted.

  “Clearly,” Wally remarked, “the boss doesn’t waste money on office space in Ogden.”

  “Or furnishings,” Mack added. “That desk looks like it arrived by wagon train.”

  “Perhaps it’s the neighborhood that appeals, located within spitting distance of Union Depot.”

  “And spitting they are, on our sidewalk.”

  Continuing in Weber-and-Fields mode, they went to the window and pointed down at the crowded sidewalk. “Perceive Mr. Van Dorn’s genius. The view from this window can be used to instruct apprentice detectives in the nature of crime in all its varieties.”

  “Come here, young Isaac, gaze down upon our neighboring saloons, brothels, and opium dens. Observe potential customers down on their luck earning the price of a drink or a woman by panhandling. Or, failing to kindle charity, sticking up citizens in that alley.”

  “Note there, a mustachioed fop luring the gullible with shell games on a folding table.”

  “And look at those out-of-work hard-rock miners dressed in rags, pretending to sleep on the pavement outside that saloon while actually laying in wait for drunks to roll.”

  “How long was the man dead?” Bell asked.

  “Better part of a day, Doc thinks. You were right about the stabbing. A narrow blade straight through his neck. Just like Wish and the Glendale yard bull.”

  “So if the Wrecker killed him, he could not have left Ogden before last night. But no one saw him buy a ticket.”

  “Plenty of freights in and out,” ventured Wally.

  “He is covering mighty long distances in a short time to rely on stealing rides on freights,” said Mack.

  “Probably using both, depending on his situation,” said Wally.

  Bell asked, “Who was the murdered man?”

  “Local owlhoot, according to the sheriff. Sort of a real-life Broncho Billy—our chief suspect ... Sorry, Isaac, couldn’t resist.” Fulton nodded at the wanted poster.

  “Keep it up and I won’t resist asking Mr. Van Dorn to post Weber and Fields to Alaska.”

  “... Suspected of knocking over a stagecoach up in the mountains last August. The cinder dicks caught him robbing a copper-mine payroll off the Utah and Northern ten years ago. Turned in his partners for a lighter sentence. Looks like he knew Jake Dunn from prison.”

  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 & Ohio Railroad. The B&O already held, jointly with the Illinois Central—in which Henne
ssy 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?”

  14

  “I’M FIRST, YOU WATCH.”

  Wally Kisley ran for the stairs.

  The tall workman with the sack slung over his shoulder shoved through the crowd, stepped over one drunk and around another, and resumed his quick pace toward Union Depot. From the window, Mack Fulton traced the path he drove relentlessly through the pedestrians who were hurrying to and from the station.

  Wally bounded down the stairs and out the building. When he got to the sidewalk, he looked up. Mack pointed him in the right direction. Wally sprinted ahead. A quick wave said he found their quarry, and Mack tore down the stairs after him, his heart pounding. He’d been feeling lousy for days, and now he was having trouble snatching a breath.

  He caught up with Wally, who said, “You’re white as a sheet. You O.K.?”

  “Tip-top. Where’d he go?”

  “Down that alley. I think he saw me.”

  “If he did and he ran, he’s our man. Come on!”

  Mack led the way, sucking air. The alley was muddy underfoot and stank. Instead of cutting through to Twenty-fourth Street, as the detectives assumed it would, it hooked left where the way was blocked by a steel-shuttered warehouse. There were barrels in front big enough to hide behind.

  “We got him trapped,” said Wally.

  Mack gasped. Wally looked at him. His face was rigid with pain. He doubled over, clutching his chest, and fell hard in the mud. Wally knelt beside him. “Jesus, Mack!”

  Mack’s face was deathly pale, his eyes wide. He raised his head, staring over Wally’s shoulder. “Behind you!” he muttered.

  Wally whirled toward the rush of footfalls.

  The man they had been chasing, the man who looked like the sketch, the man who was definitely the Wrecker, was running straight at him with a knife. Wally shielded his old friend’s body with his own, and smoothly whipped a gun from under his checkerboard coat. He cocked the single-action revolver with a practiced thumb on the gnarled hammer and brought the barrel to bear. Coolly, he aimed so as to smash the bones in the Wrecker’s shoulder rather than kill him so they could question the saboteur about future attacks already set in motion.

  Before Wally could fire, he heard a metallic click, and was stunned to see a glint of light on steel as the knife blade suddenly jumped at his face. The Wrecker was still five feet from him, but the tip was already entering his eye.

  He’s made a sword that telescopes out of a ,rpring-loaded knife, was Wally Kisley’s last thought as the Wrecker’s blade plunged through his brain. And I thought I had seen it all.

  THE WRECKER JERKED His blade out of the detective’s skull and rammed it through the neck of his fallen partner. The man looked like he was dead already, but this was no time to take chances. He withdrew the blade and glanced around coldly. When he saw tha
t no one had followed the detectives into the alley, he wiped the blade on the checkerboard coat, clicked the release to shorten it, and returned it to the sheath in his boot.

  It had been a close call, the sort of near disaster you couldn’t plan for, other than to be always primed to be fast and deadly, and he was exhilarated by his escape. Keep moving!. he thought. The Overland Limited would not wait while he celebrated.

  He hurried from the alley, pushed through the mob on the sidewalk, and cut across Twenty-fifth Street. Darting in front of an electric trolley, he turned right on Wall Street, and walked for a block parallel to the long Union Depot train station. When he was sure he was not followed, he crossed Wall and entered the station by a door at the north end.

  He found the men’s room and locked himself in a stall. Racing against the clock, he stripped off the overalls that had concealed his elegant traveling clothes and took an expensive leather Gladstone bag with brass fittings from his tool sack. He removed polished black laced dress boots from the Gladstone, a gray Homburg from its own protective hatbox, and a derringer and packed in it the rough boots that held his sword. He laced up the dress boots and dropped the derringer into his coat pocket. He removed his beard, which he also put in the Gladstone, and rubbed traces of spirit gum off his skin. Then he stuffed the overalls in the sack and shoved the sack behind the toilet. There was nothing in the overalls or the sack that could be traced to him. He checked the time on his railroad watch and waited exactly two minutes, rubbing his boots against the back of his trouser legs to polish them and running an ivory comb through his hair.

  He stepped out of the stall. He inspected himself carefully in the mirror over the sink. He flicked a speck of spirit gum off his chin and placed his gray Homburg on his head.

  Smiling, he sauntered from the men’s room and across the bustling lobby, which was suddenly swarming with railroad detectives. With only seconds to spare, he brushed past station attendants who were closing the gates to the smoky train platforms. A locomotive shrieked the double Ahead signal, and the Overland Limited, a luxury flyer made up of eight first-class Pullmans, dining car, and an observation-lounge car, began to roll east for Cheyenne, Omaha, and Chicago.