The Titanic Secret Read online

  “I am indeed.” Wickersham stood, and the two men shook hands. “Please, call me Isaac.”

  “Tony.”

  “Tony. I am sorry I’m late. There were delays with the train.”

  “There are most days,” Wickersham said. “I heard a rumor that the locomotive had been left abandoned in Mexico before the line bought it and brought it here. True or not, she’s not suited for mountain work. Her drive wheels are far too small.”

  “As long as her brakes are in working order for the journey back . . .” It was a bit early in the day for a whiskey, so Bell ordered two beers, as well as a sliced-beef sandwich with mustard.

  Wickersham saluted Bell with his mug before taking a sip. “I’m not sure exactly what you’re planning to do up here. I know the Brothers Bloeser think Josh Brewster and the others might not have gone into the mine, but I’ve got a witness who saw them.”

  “Some things don’t add up,” Bell said. “The claim jumping, for one thing, and the fact that they were all unmarried, which means no one would miss them.”

  “I don’t disagree. Brewster’s pretty well known up in these hills. People were surprised when he talked about going back into the Little Angel. Had I been here, I would have told him that the mine, though unworked since the 1880s, was still considered an open claim. He might not have known that. Bill Mahoney, foreman of the Satan Mine, just below the Little Angel, was surprised when he learned Mr. Bloeser still retained mining rights. He admitted to using the shaft for storage at times.”

  “What about them all being bachelors?”

  “Coincidence?” Wickersham hazarded.

  Bell shook his head. “In my line of work, there’s no such thing. It means something. I want to investigate where these men lived, see if it looks like they had planned to come back after the end of their shift or were they leaving permanently. I also want to ask around about equipment. What sorts of gear did they buy to start mining again.”

  “They would have bought everything in Denver,” Wickersham said with confidence. “The stuff you can buy around here is pretty used up and overpriced.”

  “Okay, thanks, I’ll get my investigator on it.”

  “Have him check Kendry Ironworks and the Thor Forge Company. They’re the two major players for mining equipment.”

  “Does the hotel have a phone?”

  “It does.”

  “Okay, I’ll call him when we’re done here.”

  “May I ask your plan to get into the tunnel itself?”

  “Ever heard of a rebreather?” When Wickersham’s brow furrowed but no thought came, Bell continued. “When we exhale, there is still a great deal of unused oxygen in our breath as well as the carbon dioxide we produce. The idea of reusing expired breath goes back a couple of centuries, but it wasn’t until 1879 or ’80 that a practical device was built. It was an English firm that made it. Basically, it’s a mask with a hose attached to a tank with extra oxygen under pressure and a scrubber chamber that uses a chemical reaction to fix the carbon dioxide. The device was put to the test when flooding halted construction of the Severn Tunnel. A man walked a thousand feet into the flooded tunnel to close some watertight doors to allow the works to be pumped dry.”

  “I had no idea such a thing had been invented.”

  “Not exactly standard mining gear,” Bell said. “I have a friend in San Francisco that’s tinkering with rebreather designs. There’s a Van Dorn agent on his way here right now with one of his latest models. He says it’ll give me up to four hours underwater. That’ll give me more than enough time to see exactly what’s been sealed up inside the Little Angel Mine.”

  Bell’s first step following their meal was to head for the town’s lone post office. Wickersham had a vehicle, but the office was near the hotel so the two men walked. The single room was bisected by a low counter with prison-like iron bars to offer a measure of security for the off-limits area in the back. Bell could imagine some of the rougher characters who’d lived here over the years blaming the postal workers for late or nondelivered parcels.

  He waited until there were no more customers before approaching the clerk, who he could tell was also the postmaster.

  “May I help you?” the slight, balding clerk asked. His voice was high-pitched but friendly.

  Bell said nothing. He laid a business card on the counter.

  The clerk picked it up and pulled the glasses dangling around his neck on a slender silver chain to his eyes. “Wowza! All the way from Washington, D.C.”

  “There was a certain matter in Denver . . .”

  “Oh, the arrest. Yeah, I heard about that. Some cripple woman hiding in a trunk at night to steal money.”

  “She was missing a leg, but I assure you she was no cripple. Slapped me harder than a mule.” Bell turned his head and indeed his cheek was flushed. He took the card back and slid it into his coat pocket.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Northrop?”

  “We’re here on a separate matter. The Little Angel disaster.”

  “Terrible shame. These mountains claim their share of men every year, but it’s still a shock every time it happens.” The clerk suddenly looked suspicious. “There isn’t a postal angle to what happened to those men, is there?”

  Bell improvised. “There’s a question about invoicing for some mining equipment from the Thor Forge Company. They insist the invoices reached Joshua Brewster, but they weren’t paid. I wonder if you knew anything about this matter?”

  “Can’t say I do. Only one of the men killed had an address here. John Caldwell. He rented a room from the Dawson sisters up on Spring Street. The others were spread out too, I imagine, renting rooms or camping up near the mines. None had any business with me.”

  “What about Brewster? Do you know where he lived?”

  “Tent by the mine. Every once in a while, he’d rent a room at the Teller House for a night or two. Up until a few months ago he had a place in Denver, but I know for a fact he sold it to come here.”

  “Interesting. Any idea why?”

  “To open that worthless mine again. Folks that knew him best said he got a little crazy recently. He obsessed over Little Angel. Turned on friends and everything. It happens sometimes. It’s like people who drink too much or gamble all their money away. They can’t stop themselves. Brewster was like that at the end.”

  Bell knew he’d gotten as much out of the clerk as he could without rousing more suspicion, so he said, “Well, I thank you for your time. I’ll let the folks at the Thor Forge know that unless Brewster had a hidden stash of money with a lawyer or something, they’re out of luck getting paid.”

  He and Tony Wickersham left the post office.

  “Isn’t impersonating a federal investigator against the law?” the young Englishman asked as they started walking.

  “It is,” Bell replied. “But I didn’t impersonate anyone just now.”

  “Well, you gave him another man’s card and implied that you were Robert Northrop.”

  “I gave him the wrong card by mistake,” Bell said with a knowing smile. “That implied I am Robert Northrop. He was the one who assumed. I just didn’t correct him. Cops and judges usually get angry when I pull this trick, but I’ve never been prosecuted for it.”

  It took the pair only a few minutes to find Spring Street and the yellow house belonging to the Dawson sisters, a pair of elderly spinsters who supported themselves taking in and feeding lodgers in the large house left to them by their long-dead parents. There was a wide porch across the front of the clapboard house that would have a swing or chair in the summer months. Gingham curtains were peeking around the edges of the downstairs windows. The roof was slate and appeared to be in good shape despite its age.

  A man opened the front door and was backing out just as Bell and Wickersham mounted the porch.

  “Excuse me,” Bell said with a
friendly smile. “Are the Dawson sisters in?”

  “Oh, hi,” the man said, startled. He wore the threadbare suit of a traveling salesman. In one hand was a leather sample case. Patent medicines, or maybe cosmetics, was Bell’s guess. “Miss Emily is in, but Miss Sarah is in Boulder on a buying expedition, as she calls it. It appears that people get snowed in here quite often.”

  “We’ve heard,” Bell said, and thanked the man, who moved off down the street on his own business.

  Bell knocked at the door and waited only a few seconds before it was opened. The woman was young, raven-haired, and beautiful. She smiled at Wickersham, but her gaze lingered longer on Isaac Bell. Her teeth were dazzlingly white. “Well, hello there,” she said.

  “Miss Emily?” Bell chanced.

  “Goodness no,” she laughed. “I’m Corinne Johnson. I rent a room. I’m performing at the opera house.”

  “My apologies,” Bell said. “I don’t have a description of the Dawson sisters.”

  “Quite all right, Mr. . . .”

  “Bell . . . Isaac Bell.”

  He shook her hand in a way that showed the gold band around his left ring finger. She gave him a disappointed little look but nevertheless invited them into the home, calling out to the kitchen, “Miss Emily, there are two gentlemen to see you.” Her eyes still shone when she turned back. “Mr. Bell, if you’re still in town, I’m singing tomorrow night and all through the weekend.”

  “Not sure our schedule will permit it, but if we can make it, we most certainly will be there.”

  Corinne Johnson smiled up at him again before climbing the oak stairs to the second floor at the same time an elderly woman came out from the kitchen at the back of the large house. She was wiping her hands on a towel lest she soil her perfectly white apron. She was slender without looking frail, with short-cropped gray hair and wrinkled skin but sharp dark eyes. She was nearer seventy than sixty.

  “May I help you gentlemen? Are you looking for lodging?”

  “No, ma’am,” Bell said, and pulled out one of his business cards with the Van Dorn logo prominent. “I’m a private investigator hired by Mr. Bloeser, the owner of the Little Angel Mine, to look into the tragic events of last week. I understand that you rented a room to one of the miners.”

  “I did. Poor Mr. Caldwell. Johnny, is what he wanted everyone to call him. He was very young and polite. He would often fix little things around the house that Sarah and I never got around to.”

  “Did he leave any possessions?”

  “Some,” Emily Dawson said a little suspiciously. “Why do you ask?”

  “Reopening the Little Angel Mine was a rather odd act on the part of Joshua Brewster. The mine’s rightful owner, Mr. Bloeser, is hoping to discover why these men went in there. We hope there could be some clues in whatever the poor souls left behind.”

  “I understand,” she replied, satisfied with the answer. “I haven’t rented his room yet. And with winter about to set in, it isn’t likely we will. Please, follow me.”

  She led Bell and Wickersham up the stairs to the second floor. The staircase bisected a long hallway with several closed doors. At each end of the hall were open doors to white tile and marble bathrooms. Given its age, the house had to have been retrofitted with indoor plumbing. Emily Dawson pulled a set of keys from her apron and unlocked one of the doors midway down on the right. She left them alone to return to her kitchen.

  Johnny Caldwell’s room was small but serviceable. There was a tiny closet and a single bed with a white hand-stitched quilt. The four-drawer dresser matched the night table. Atop the table was a kerosene lamp and an incidentals dish. Usually, such dishes contained spare change, keys, maybe a button off a shirt that needed repair. This one was empty.

  Isaac Bell had tossed hundreds of rooms over the course of his career and went about the task quietly and efficiently. He found what he suspected he would—clothing mostly, a couple of books but no Bible, and a cache of dried beef jerky. He also found a silver picture frame that probably stood on the nightstand but was now in one of the drawers. The photograph was missing. What he didn’t find, and what told him what he already suspected, was cash or luggage. Presumably, all of Caldwell’s possessions had been brought to the room in a suitcase, but it was now no longer present. Also, miners were paid in cash, and they paid their rent in cash as well. There should have been a rolled-up wad of bills hidden in the back of the drawer or slipped into an envelope taped under the bed. Further suggestive evidence was the lack of shoes in the closet. No doubt Johnny Caldwell wore heavy work boots into the Little Angel Mine that fateful morning, but he didn’t wear them exclusively. There were no regular shoes for a night on the town or Sunday service at a church.

  “What do you think?” Tony Wickersham asked, Bell standing silently in the middle of the room now that he was finished. Although he had handled every single object in the room, there was no evidence a single thing had been disturbed.

  “Evidence suggests that Mr. Caldwell left that morning with no intention of returning home after his shift. He had packed a bag, took some clothes, including a pair of street shoes, and every dime he had to his name. Everything else was left behind.”

  “So, we know for certain they didn’t die in the mine?”

  “Not for certain. As I said, the evidence suggests a scenario different from what the papers reported. This isn’t proof. That will only come when I dive into the mine and see for myself. However, this is what we call an evidentiary link. It jibes with what we suspect.”

  Before leaving the boardinghouse, they thanked Emily Dawson for her help and inquired about other rooming establishments where Caldwell’s friends might have stayed. There was no point driving out to the mine until Bell’s equipment arrived from San Francisco, so he and Wickersham spent the afternoon asking lodge owners about the other miners. It turned out to be a fruitless endeavor. None of the men lived in the town proper. Like Brewster, they must have camped up near the mine itself.

  The one interesting thing Bell did realize as he and the young mine engineer crisscrossed Central City is that their presence had drawn interest.

  They had been followed all afternoon.

  4

  As the sun sank behind the towering Rocky Mountains, Bell and Wickersham headed to their hotel. Bell was aware that their tail was well back, not an amateur, but also not as seasoned as someone with Isaac’s abilities. He got an initial impression that it was a slender person, but didn’t make it so obvious as to stare at the lurker and let on that he knew the stranger was following them.

  They rounded the last corner before the hotel, and Bell pulled Tony Wickersham into the doorway of a boardinghouse so they weren’t easily visible from the street. To his credit, Wickersham didn’t cry out at the sudden maneuver, though his eyes went wide with unasked questions.

  “We’re being followed,” Bell whispered. “He’s going to walk past us in a minute or so. Sport jacket, no overcoat, and a black hat.”

  The black and boxy Colt .45 was in Bell’s hand.

  It was less than a minute after that that a figure dressed as Bell had just described ran past the vestibule. He saw the two men out of the corner of his eye and stopped jogging. His shoulders slumped and then went back up again when he saw that one of his quarry not only had detected him but held a pistol on him as well. The man was in his early thirties, dark-haired, with dark eyes behind round metal-framed glasses. He was clean-shaven and rather baby-faced, with an earnestness about him that made Bell think of an academician rather than a laborer. He’d blanched at the sight of the gun, and his mouth fell open slightly. His teeth were tobacco-stained.

  Bell could see that neither of the stranger’s hands was pocketed or holding anything, so he relaxed and was confident that he had the situation well in hand and there would be no surprises.

  “Only one question for you, friend, and I think you know what it
is,” Bell said, his gun steadily pointed at the man’s midriff.

  “Ah, Mr. . . . Ah, Mr. B . . . B . . . B . . .” the man stuttered, then stopped.

  “Bell,” Isaac offered.

  “Mr. Bell. I am so sorr . . . sorr . . . sorry.”

  Bell recognized that the man was truly terrified at having a gun held on him, but the detective wasn’t rookie enough to put it away until he knew who the stranger was and why he was tailing him. “Talk.”

  The stalker took several deep breaths and studiously avoided looking at the gun. “Mr. Bell. My name is William Gibbs. I’m a reporter with the Rocky Mountain News. When I heard you were headed here to Central City, I decided to follow you. Just in case you made another important bust like you did at the Denver post office.”

  “How’d you hear I was coming to Central City?” Bell asked.

  “I, ah . . . I have an informant at the Brown Palace Hotel. You were heard speaking with the owner of the Little Angel Mine.”

  It seemed reasonable, but it was also an annoyance that a hotel with the Brown’s reputation would allow staff to discuss the comings and goings of guests with newspapermen.

  “Is there a story for me, Mr. Bell?” Gibbs asked.

  Bell had always had a love/hate relationship with the press. At times, their ability to reach thousands of households per day made things like manhunts and kidnapping resolutions much easier. But, on the other hand, it made the quiet sleuthing, which was so much of what he did, more difficult. There were no shadows to hide in when the papers were shining lights on everything.

  “I’m afraid not, Mr. Gibbs.” Bell slid the .45 back into its shoulder holster. “I was asked to look into a few anomalies concerning the accident at the mine, but it appears the only people who know anything died in the collapse.” Bell mixed enough truth with the lie to satisfy the reporter.

  Gibbs couldn’t help but look a little crestfallen. “I doubt my editor will reimburse me for the train fare.”

  “You’re in time to catch the last train back to Denver,” Tony Wickersham offered. He checked his pocket watch. “It leaves in a half hour. This way, you’re not out the cost of a hotel room as well.”