The Wrecker Read online

  “Excellent choice, sir! Sabotage will be beyond the local sheriffs, if I may say so, even if you could find one up here in the middle of nowhere. Even a bit much for your railway police.” Thugs in dirty uniforms, Kincaid could have added, but the senator was a servant of the railroad and careful how he spoke to the man who had made him and could as easily break him. “What’s the Van Dorn motto?” he asked ingratiatingly. “‘We never give up, never!’ Sir, as I am qualified, I feel it’s my duty to direct your crews in clearing the tunnel.”

  Hennessy’s face wrinkled with disdain. The popinjay had worked overseas building bridges for the Ottoman Empire’s Baghdad Railway until the newspapers started calling him the “Hero Engineer” for supposedly rescuing American Red Cross nurses and missionaries from Turkish capture. Hennessy took the reported heroics with many grains of salt. But Kincaid had somehow parlayed bogus fame into an appointment by a corrupt state legislature to represent “the interests” of the railroads in the “Millionaires’ Club” United States Senate. And no one knew better than Hennessy that Kincaid was growing wealthy on railroad-stock bribes.

  “Three men dead in a flash,” he growled. “Fifteen trapped. I don’t need any more engineers. I need an undertaker. And a top-notch detective.”

  Hennessy whirled back to the telegrapher. “Has Van Dorn replied?”

  “Not yet, sir. We’ve just sent—”

  “Joe Van Dorn has agents in every city on the continent. Wire them all!”

  Hennessy’s daughter Lillian hurried in from their private quarters. Kincaid’s eyes widened and his smile grew eager. Though on a dusty siding deep in the Cascade Range, she was dressed to turn heads in the finest dining rooms of New York. Her evening gown of white chiffon was cinched at her narrow waist and dipped low in front, revealing decolletage only partially screened by a silk rose. She wore a pearl choker studded with diamonds around her graceful neck, and her hair high in a golden cloud, with curls draping her high brow. Bright earrings of Peruzzi triple-cut brilliant diamonds drew attention to her face. Plumage, thought Kincaid cynically, showing what she had to offer, which was plenty.

  Lillian Hennessy was stunningly beautiful, very young, and very, very wealthy. A match for a king. Or a senator who had his eye on the White House. The trouble was the fierce light in her astonishingly pale blue eyes that announced she was a handful not easily tamed. And now her father, who had never been able to bridle her, had appointed her his confidential secretary, which made her even more independent.

  “Father,” she said, “I just spoke with the chief engineer by telegraphone. He believes they can enter the pioneer tunnel from the far side and cut their way through to the main shaft. The rescue parties are digging. Your wires are sent. It is time you dressed for dinner.”

  “I’m not eating dinner while men are trapped.” “Starving yourself won’t help them.” She turned to Kincaid. “Hello, Charles,” she said coolly. “Mrs. Comden’s waiting for us in the parlor. We’ll have a cocktail while my father gets dressed.”

  Hennessy had not yet appeared when they had finished their glasses. Mrs. Comden, a voluptuous, dark-haired woman of forty wearing a fitted green silk dress and diamonds cut in the old European style, said, “I’ll get him.” She went to Hennessy’s office. Ignoring the telegrapher, who, like all telegraphers, was sworn never to reveal messages he sent or received, she laid a soft hand on Hennessy’s bony shoulder and said, “Everyone is hungry.” Her lips parted in a compelling smile. “Let’s take them in to supper. Mr. Van Dorn will report soon enough.”

  As she spoke, the locomotive whistle blew twice, the double Ahead signal, and the train slid smoothly into motion.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, not surprised they were on the move again.

  “Sacramento, Seattle, and Spokane.”

  3

  FOUR DAYS AFTER THE TUNNEL EXPLOSION, JOSEPH VAN DORN caught up with the fast-moving, far-roaming Osgood Hennessy in the Great Northern rail yard at Hennessyville. The brand-new city on the outskirts of Spokane, Washington, near the Idaho border, reeked of fresh lumber, creosote, and burning coal. But it was already called the “Minneapolis of the Northwest.” Van Dorn knew that Hennessy had built here as part of his plan to double the Southern Pacific’s trackage by absorbing the northern cross-continent routes.

  The founder of the illustrious Van Dorn Detective Agency was a large, balding, well-dressed man in his forties who looked more like a prosperous business traveler than the scourge of the underworld. He appeared convivial, with a strong Roman nose, a ready smile slightly tempered by a hint of Irish melancholy in his eyes, and splendid red burnsides that descended to an even more splendid red beard. As he approached Hennessy’s special, the sound of ragtime music playing on a gramophone elicited a nod of heartfelt relief. He recognized the lively, yearning melody of Scott Joplin’s brand-new “Search-Light Rag,” and the music told him that Hennessy’s daughter Lillian was nearby. The cantankerous president of the Southern Pacific Railroad was a mite easier to handle when she was around.

  He paused on the platform, sensing a rush from within the car. Here came Hennessy, thrusting the mayor of Spokane out the door. “Get off my train! Hennessyville will never be annexed into your incorporated city. I will not have my rail yard on Spokane’s tax rolls!”

  To Van Dorn, he snapped, “Took your time getting here.”

  Van Dorn returned Hennessy’s brusqueness with a warm smile. His strong white teeth blazed in his nest of red whiskers as he enveloped the small man’s hand in his, booming affably, “I was in Chicago, and you were all over the map. You’re looking well, Osgood, if a little splenetic. How is the beauteous Lillian?” he asked, as Hennessy ushered him aboard.

  “Still more trouble than a carload of Eye-talians.”

  “Here she is, now! My, my, how you’ve grown, young lady, I haven’t seen you since—”

  “Since New York, when father hired you to return me to Miss Porter’s School?”

  “No,” Van Dorn corrected. “I believe the last time was when we bailed you out of jail in Boston following a suffragette parade that got out of hand.”

  “Lillian!” said Hennessy. “I want notes of this meeting typed up and attached to a contract to hire the Van Dorn Agency.”

  The mischievous light in her pale blue eyes was extinguished by a steady gaze that was suddenly all business. “The contract is ready to be signed, Father.”

  “Joe, I assume you know about these attacks.”

  “I understand,” Van Dorn said noncommittally, “that horrific accidents bedevil the Southern Pacific’s construction of an express line through the Cascades. You’ve had workmen killed, as well as several innocent rail passengers. ”

  “They can’t all be accidents.” Hennessy retorted sternly. “Someone’s doing his damnedest to wreck this railroad. I’m hiring your outfit to hunt down the saboteurs, whether anarchists, foreigners, or strikers. Shoot ‘em, hang ’em, do what you have to do, but stop them dead.”

  “The instant you telegraphed, I assigned my best operative to the case. If the situation appears as you suspect, I will appoint him chief investigator.”

  “No!” said Hennessy. “I want you in charge, Joe. Personally in charge.”

  “Isaac Bell is my best man. I only wish I had possessed his talents when I was his age.”

  Hennessy cut him off. “Get this straight, Joe. My train is parked only three hundred eighty miles north of the sabotaged tunnel, but it took over seven hundred miles to steam here, backtracking, climbing switchbacks. The cutoff line will reduce the run by a full day. The success of the cutoff and the future of this entire railroad is too important to farm out to a hired hand.”

  Van Dorn knew that Hennessy was used to getting his way. He had, after all, forged continuous transcontinental lines from Atlantic to Pacific by steamrollering his competitors, Commodore Vanderbilt and J. P. Morgan, outfoxing the Interstate Commerce Commission and the United States Congress, and staring down trust-busting Presi
dent Teddy Roosevelt. Therefore, Van Dorn was glad for a sudden interruption by Hennessy’s conductor. The train boss stood in the doorway in his impeccable uniform of deep blue cloth, which was studded with gleaming brass buttons and edged with the Southern Pacific’s red piping.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir. They’ve caught a hobo trying to board your train.”

  “What are you bothering me for? I’m running a railroad here. Turn him over to the sheriff.”

  “He claims that Mr. Van Dorn will vouch for him.”

  A tall man entered Hennessy’s private car, guarded by two heavyset railway police. He wore the rough garb of a hobo who rode the freight trains looking for work. His denim coat and trousers were caked with dust. His boots were scuffed. His hat, a battered cow-poke’s J. B. Stetson, had shed a lot of rain.

  Lillian Hennessy noticed his eyes first, a violet shade of blue, which raked the parlor with a sharp, searching glance that penetrated every nook and cranny. Swift as his eyes were, they seemed to pause on each face as if to pierce the inner thoughts of her father, Van Dorn, and lastly herself. She stared back boldly, but she found the effect mesmerizing.

  He was well over six feet tall and lean as an Arabian thorough-bred. A full mustache covered his upper lip, as golden as his thick hair and the stubble on his unshaven cheeks. His hands hung easily at his sides, his fingers were long and graceful. Lillian took in the determined set to the chin and lips and decided that he was about thirty years old and immensely confident.

  His escort stood close by but did not touch him. Only when she had torn her gaze from the tall man’s face did she realize that one of the railroad guards was pressing a bloody handkerchief to his nose. The other blinked a swollen, blackened eye.

  Joseph Van Dorn allowed himself a smug smile. “Osgood, may I present Isaac Bell, who will be conducting this investigation on my behalf?”

  “Good morning,” said Isaac Bell. He stepped forward to offer his hand. The guards started to follow after him.

  Hennessy dismissed them with a curt “Out!”

  The guard dabbing his nose with his handkerchief whispered to the conductor who was herding them toward the door.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said the conductor. “They want their property back.”

  Isaac Bell tugged a leather-sheathed sap of lead shot from his pocket. “What’s your name?”

  “Billy,” came the sullen reply. Bell tossed him the sap, and said coldly, with barely contained anger, “Billy, next time a man offers to come quietly, take him at his word.”

  He turned to the man with the black eye. “And you?”

  “Ed.”

  Bell produced a revolver and passed it to Ed, butt first. Then he dropped five cartridges into the guard’s hand, saying, “Never draw a weapon you haven’t mastered.”

  “Thought I had,” muttered Ed, and something about his hang-dog expression seemed to touch the tall detective.

  “Cowboy before you joined the railroad?” Bell asked.

  “Yes, sir, needed the work.”

  Bell’s eyes warmed to a softer blue, and his lips spread in a congenial smile. He slid a gold coin from a pocket concealed inside his belt. “Here you go, Ed. Get a piece of beefsteak for that eye, and buy yourselves a drink.”

  The guards nodded their heads. “Thank you, Mr. Bell.”

  Bell turned his attention to the president of the Southern Pacific Company, who was glowering expectantly. “Mr. Hennessy, I will report as soon as I’ve had a bath and changed my clothes.”

  “The porter has your bag,” Joseph Van Dorn said, smiling.

  THE DETECTIVE WAS BACK in thirty minutes, mustache trimmed, hobo garb exchanged for a silver-gray three-piece sack suit tailored from fine, densely woven English wool appropriate to the autumn chill. A pale blue shirt and a dark violet four-in-hand necktie enriched the color of his eyes.

  Isaac Bell knew that he had to start the case off on the right foot by establishing that he, not the imperious railroad president, would boss the investigation. First, he returned Lillian Hennessy’s warm smile. Then he bowed politely to a sensual, dark-eyed woman who entered quietly and sat in a leather armchair. At last, he turned to Osgood Hennessy.

  “I am not entirely convinced the accidents are sabotage.”

  “The hell you say! Labor is striking all over the West. Now we’ve got a Wall Street panic egging on radicals, inflaming agitators.”

  “It is true,” Bell answered, “that the San Francisco streetcar strike and the Western Union telegraphers’ strike embittered labor unionists. And even if the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners standing trial in Boise did conspire to murder Governor Steunenberg—a charge I doubt, as the detective work in that case is slipshod—there was obviously no shortage of vicious radicals to plant the dynamite in the Governor’s front gate. Nor was the murderer who assassinated President McKinley the only anarchist in the land. But—”

  Isaac Bell paused to turn the full force of his gaze on Hennessy. “Mr. Van Dorn pays me to capture assassins and bank robbers everywhere on the continent. I ride more limited trains, expresses, and crack flyers in a month than most men will in a lifetime.”

  “What do your travels have to do with these attacks against my railroad?”

  “Train wrecks are common. Last year, the Southern Pacific paid out two million dollars for injuries to persons. Before 1907 is over, there’ll be ten thousand collisions, eight thousand derailments, and over five thousand accidental deaths. As a frequent passenger, I take it personally when railroad cars are rammed inside each other like a telescope.”

  Osgood Hennessy flushed pink with incipient fury. “I’ll tell you what I tell every reformer who thinks the railroad is the root of all evil. The Southern Pacific Railroad employs one hundred thousand men. We work like nailers transporting one hundred million passengers and three hundred million tons of freight every year!”

  “I happen to love trains,” Bell said, mildly. “But railwaymen don’t exaggerate when they say that the tiny steel flange that holds the wheel on the track is ‘One inch between here and eternity.”’

  Hennessy pounded the table. “These murdering radicals are blinded by hate! Can’t they see that railway speed is God’s gift to every man and woman alive? America is huge! Bigger than squabbling Europe. Wider than divided China. Railroads unite us. How would people get around without our trains? Stagecoaches? Who would carry their crops to market? Oxen? Mules? A single one of my locomotives hauls more freight than all the Conestoga wagons that ever crossed the Great Plains—Mr. Bell, do you know what a Thomas Flyer is?”

  “Of course. A Thomas Flyer is a four-cylinder, sixty-horsepower Model 35 Thomas automobile built in Buffalo. It is my hope that the Thomas Company will win the New York to Paris Race next year.”

  “Why do you think they named an automobile after a railroad train?” Hennessy bellowed. “Speed! A flyer is a crack railroad train famous for speed! And—”

  “Speed is wonderful,” Bell interrupted. “Here’s why ...”

  That Hennessy used this section of his private car as his office was evinced by the chart pulls suspended from the polished-wood ceiling. The tall, flaxen-haired detective chose from their brass labels and unrolled a railroad map that represented the lines of California, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, and Washington. He pointed to the mountainous border between northern California and Nevada.

  “Sixty years ago, a group of pioneer families calling themselves the Donner Party attempted to cross these mountains by wagon train. They were heading for San Francisco, but early snow blocked the pass they had chosen through the Sierra Nevada. The Donner Party was trapped all winter. They ran out of food. Those who did not starve to death survived by eating the bodies of those who died.”

  “What the devil do cannibalistic pioneers have to do with my railroad?”

  Isaac Bell grinned. “Today, thanks to your railroad, if you get hungry in the Donner Pass it’s only a four-hour train ride to San Francisco’s excellent restauran
ts.”

  Osgood Hennessy’s stern face did not allow for much difference between scowls and smiles, but he did concede to Joseph Van Dorn, “You win, Joe. Go ahead, Bell. Speak your piece.”

  Bell indicated the map. “In the past three weeks, you’ve had suspicious derailments here at Redding, here at Roseville and at Dunsmuir, and the tunnel collapse, which prompted you to call on Mr. Van Dorn.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” Hennessy snapped. “Four track layers and a locomotive engineer dead. Ten off the job with broken limbs. Construction delayed eight days.”

  “And one railway police detective crushed to death in the pioneer tunnel.”

  “What? Oh yes. I forgot. One of my cinder dicks.”

  “His name was Clarke. Aloysius Clarke. His friends called him Wish.”

  “We knew the man,” Joseph Van Dorn explained. “He used to work for my agency. Crackerjack detective. But he had his troubles.”

  Bell looked each person in the face, and in a clear voice spoke the highest compliment paid in the West. “Wish Clarke was a man to ride the river with.”

  Then he said to Hennessy, “I stopped in hobo jungles on my way here. Outside Crescent City on the Siskiyou line”—he pointed on the map at the north coast of California—“I caught wind of a radical or an anarchist the hobos call the Wrecker.”

  “A radical! Just like I said.”

  “The hobos know little about him, but they fear him. Men who join his cause are not seen again. From what I have gleaned so far, he may have recruited an accomplice for the tunnel job. A young agitator, a miner named Kevin Butler, was seen hopping a freight train south from Crescent City.”

  “Toward Eureka!” Hennessy broke in. “From Santa Rosa, he cut up to Redding and Weed and onto the Cascades Cutoff. Like I’ve been saying all along. Labor radicals, foreigners, anarchists. Did this agitator confess his crime?”

  “Kevin Butler will be confessing to the devil, sir. His body was found beside Detective Clarke’s in the pioneer tunnel. However, nothing in his background indicates the ability to carry out such an attack by himself. The Wrecker, as he is called, is still at large.”