The Wrecker Read online

  “The sidewinder knew his business, I’ll give him that.”

  “What do you mean ‘knew his business’?”

  The portly official stuck his thumbs in his vest, and explained. “There are numerous ways to derail a train, and I’ve seen them all. I was a locomotive engineer back in the eighties during the big strikes, which got bloody, you may recall—no, you’re too young. Take it from me, there was plenty of sabotage in those days. And it was hard on fellows like me that sided with the company, driving a train never knowing when strikers were conspiring to knock the rails out from under you.”

  “What are the ways to derail a train?” Bell asked. “You can mine the track with dynamite. Trouble is, you have to stick around to light the fuse. You might make a timing device out of an alarm clock, giving you time to get away, but if the train is delayed it’ll blow at the wrong time. Or you set up a trigger so the weight of the engine detonates the powder, but triggers are not reliable, and some poor track inspector comes along on a handcar and blows himself to eternity. Another way is, you pry up some tie spikes and unscrew the bolts out of the fisheye that holds two rails together, reeve a long cable through those bolt-holes, and yank on it when the train comes. Trouble is, you need a whole bunch of fellows strong enough to move the rail. And you’re standing there in plain sight, holding the cable, when she hits the ground. But this sidewinder used a hook, which is damned-near foolproof.”

  The director showed Bell marks on the crosstie where a spike puller had dented the wood. Then he showed him scratches on the last rail made by a track wrench. “Pried up spikes and unbolted the fisheye, like I told you. We found his tools thrown down the embankment. On a curve, it’s possible the loose rail might move. But to be sure, he bolted a hook onto the loose rail. The locomotive caught the hook and ripped her own rail right out from under her. Diabolical.”

  “What sort of man would know how to do something so effective?”

  “Effective?” The director bridled.

  “You just said he knows his business.”

  “Yes, I get your point. Well, he could have been a railroad man. Or even a civil engineer. And from what I heard of that cutoff tunnel explosion, he must have known a thing or two about geology to collapse both bores with one charge.”

  “But the dead unionist you found was an electrician.”

  “Then his radical unionist associates showed him the ropes.”

  “Where did you find the unionist’s body?”

  The director pointed at a tall tree two hundred feet away. The boiler explosion had blown all its leaves off, and bare branches clawed at the sky like a skeletal hand. “Found him and the poor fireman top of that sycamore.”

  Isaac Bell barely glanced at the tree. In his pocket was James Dashwood’s report on William Wright. It was so remarkably detailed that young Dashwood would get a “slap on the shoulder” promotion next time he saw him. Inside of eight hours, Dashwood had discovered that William Wright had been treasurer of the Electrical Workers Union. He was credited with averting strikes by employing negotiating tactics that elicited the admiration of both labor and owners. He had also served as a deacon of the Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara. According to his grieving sister, Wright had been accompanying her son to a job in Los Angeles with a film laboratory. The office manager of the laboratory had confirmed they were expecting the boy to arrive that morning and had reported to Dashwood that the apprenticeship had been offered because he and William Wright belonged to the same Shriners lodge. So much for the Wrecker killed in the crash. The murderous saboteur was still alive, and God alone knew where he would attack next.

  “Where’s the hook?”

  “Your men over there are guarding it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Bell, I’ve got a railroad to put back together.”

  Bell walked along the torn roadbed to where Larry Sanders from Van Dorn’s Los Angeles office was crouched down inspecting a tie. Two of his heavyset musclemen were holding the railway police at bay. Bell introduced himself, and Sanders stood up, brushing dust from his knees.

  Larry Sanders was a slim man with stylishly short hair and a mustache so thin it looked like he had applied it with a pencil. He was dressed similarly to Bell in a white linen suit appropriate to the warm climate, but his hat was a city man’s derby and, oddly, was as white as his suit. Unlike Bell’s boots, his shoes were shiny dancing pumps, and he looked like he would be happier guarding the lobby of an expensive hotel than standing in the coal dust that coated the busily trafficked roadbed. Bell, who was used to sartorial eccentrics in Los Angeles, paid Sander’s odd head and footwear little mind at first, and started on the assumption that the Van Dorn man was competent.

  “Heard about you,” Sanders said, offering a soft, manicured hand. “My boss wired from Sacramento, said you were coming down. I always wanted to meet you.”

  “Where’s the hook?”

  “The cinder dicks had already found it by the time we got here.”

  Sanders led Bell to a length of rail that had been bent like a pretzel. On one end was bolted a hook that looked like it had been fashioned from an anchor. “Is that blood or rust?”

  “Didn’t notice that.” Sanders opened a pearl-handled pocketknife and scratched at it. “Blood. Dried blood. Looks like he cut his hand on a burr of metal. Keen eyes, Mr. Bell.”

  Isaac ignored the flattery. “Find out who drilled this hole.”

  “What’s that, Mr. Bell?”

  “We can’t haul in every man in California with a cut on his hand, but you can find out who drilled that hole in this peculiar piece of metal. Canvas every machine shop and blacksmith in the county. Immediately. On the jump!”

  Isaac Bell turned on his heel and went to talk to the railroad dicks, who were watching sullenly. “Ever seen a hook like that before?”

  “Hunk of boat anchor.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He opened a gold cigarette case and passed it around. When the cinder dicks had smokes going and Bell had established their names, Tom Griggs and Ed Bottomley, he asked, “If that fellow in the tree happened not to wreck the Limited, how do you think the real wrecker got away after he ditched the train?”

  The railway cops exchanged glances.

  Ed said, “That hook bought him plenty of time.”

  Then Tom said, “We found a track-inspection vehicle tipped over the side in Glendale. Got a report someone stole it from the freight depot at Burbank.”

  “O.K. But if he got to Glendale by handcar, it must have been three or four in the morning,” Bell mused. “How do you suppose he got away from Glendale? Streetcars don’t run that late.”

  “Could have had a automobile waiting for him.”

  “Think so?”

  “Well, you could ask Jack Douglas, except he’s dead. He was watching Glendale. Someone killed him last night. Ran him straight through like a stuck pig.”

  “First I heard,” said Bell.

  “Well, maybe you ain’t been talking to the right people,” replied the cinder dick, with a scornful glance at the dandified Sanders waiting nearby.

  Isaac Bell returned a thin smile. “What did you mean by ‘ran through’? Stabbed?”

  “Stabbed?” asked Ed. “When’s the last time you saw a stabbing dust both sides of a fellow’s coat? The man who killed him was either one strong son of a bitch or used a sword.”

  “A sword?” Bell repeated. “Why do you say a sword?”

  “Even if he were strong enough to stick him in one side and out the other with a bowie knife, he’d have a heck of a time trying to pull it out. That’s why folks leave knives in bodies. Damned things get stuck. So I’m thinking a long, thin blade, like a sword.”

  “That is very interesting,” said Bell. “A very interesting idea . . . Anything else I should know?”

  The cinder dicks thought on that for a long moment. Bell waited patiently, looking both in the eye. Superintendent Jethro Watt’s “orders from on high” to cooperate did not automatically p
ercolate down to the cops in the field, particularly when they ran up against a supercilious Van Dorn agent like Larry Sanders. Abruptly, Tom Griggs came to a decision. “Found this in Jack’s hand.” He pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper and smoothed it with his grimy fin gers. Black lettering stood starkly in the sun.

  ARISE!

  FAN THE FLAMES OF DISCONTENT

  DESTROY THE FAVORED FEW

  So WORKINGMEN MAY LIVE!

  “I don’t suppose it was Jack‘s,” said Tom. “That old man weren’t the sort to turn radical.”

  “Looks like,” explained Ed, “Jack grabbed hold of it in their struggle.”

  Tom said, “Would have done better to grab his gun.”

  “So it would appear,” said Isaac Bell.

  “Strange thing is why he didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Bell.

  Tom said, “I mean you could make a mistake thinking that because Jack Douglas was ninety-two years old that he was asleep at the switch. Just last year, a couple of city boys came out to Glendale looking for easy pickings. Drew guns on Jack. He drilled one through the shoulder with that old hogleg of his and the other in the backside.”

  Ed chuckled. “Jack told me he was getting soft. In the old days, he would have killed them both and scalped them. I said, ‘You didn’t miss by much, Jack. You plugged one in the shoulder and the other in the rear.’ But Jack said, ‘I said soft, not afflicted. I didn’t miss. I hit ’em right where I aimed. Shows I’m turning kindly in my old age.‘ So whoever got the drop on Jack last night knew how to handle himself.”

  “Particularly,” Tom added, “if all he had on him was a sword. Jack would have seen that coming a mile away. I mean, how does a man with a sword get the jump on a man with a gun?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” said Bell. “Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much.” He took out two of his cards and gave one to each. “If you ever need anything from the Van Dorn Agency, get in touch with me.”

  “I WAS RIGHT,” BELL told Joseph Van Dorn when Van Dorn summoned him to San Francisco. “But not right enough. He’s thinking even bigger than I imagined.”

  “Sounds like he knows his business,” said Van Dorn, grimly echoing the Southern Pacific maintenance director. “At least, enough to run circles around us. But how does he get around? Freight trains?”

  Bell answered, “I’ve sent operatives to question the hobos in every jungle in the West. And we’re asking every stationmaster and ticket clerk in every station he might have been near who bought a ticket on a long-distance flyer.”

  Van Dorn groaned. “The ticket clerks are even a longer shot than the hobos. How many passengers did Hennessy say the Southern Pacific carries per year?”

  “One hundred million,” Bell admitted.

  7

  WHEN ISAAC BELL TELEPHONED MARION MORGAN TO TELL her he had one hour free in San Francisco before he caught his train to Sacramento and could she possibly get off work early, Marion replied, “Meet me at the clock!”

  The Great Magneta Clock, the first master clock west of the Mississippi, which had come around the Horn by steamship, was famous already, even though it had been installed in the St. Francis Hotel only the week before. Dominating the Powell Street lobby of the St. Francis, the ornately carved Viennese timepiece resembled a very large grandfather clock and looked somewhat old-fashioned in the European mode. But it was, in fact, electrically powered, and it automatically controlled all the clocks in the vast hotel that towered over Union Square.

  The lobby was furnished with suites of chairs and couches arranged on oriental carpets. Parchment- and glass-shaded electric lamps cast a warm glow, which was reflected and multiplied in gilt mirrors. The air smelled sweetly of sawn wood and fresh paint. Eighteen months after the fires ignited by the Great Earthquake had gutted its interior, San Francisco’s newest and grandest hotel was open for business with four hundred eighty rooms, and a new wing planned for the following spring. It had instantly become the most popular hotel in the city. Most of the chairs and couches were occupied by paying guests reading newspapers. The headlines blared the latest rumors about the labor agitators and foreign radicals who had ditched the Coast Line Limited.

  Marion swept into the lobby first, so excited to see Isaac that she was oblivious to the open stares of admiration she drew from various gentlemen as they watched her pace before the clock. She wore her straw-blond hair high on her head, a fashionable style that drew attention to her long, graceful neck and the beauty of her face. Her waist was narrow, her hands delicate, and, judging how she seemed to flow across the carpet, the legs beneath her full skirt were long.

  Her coral-sea green eyes flashed toward the clock as the minute hand inched upright and the Great Magneta struck three mighty gongs that resounded so much like the bells of a cathedral that they seemed to shake the walls.

  One minute later, Isaac strode into the lobby, tall and ruggedly handsome in a cream-colored woolen sack suit, crisp blue fold-collar shirt, and the gold-striped necktie she had given him that matched his flaxen hair and mustache. She was so delighted by the sight of him that all she could think to say was, “I’ve never seen you late before.”

  Isaac smiled back as he opened his gold pocket watch. “The Great Magneta is sixty seconds fast.” He let his eyes roam over her, saying, “And I’ve never seen you prettier.” Then he swept her into his arms and kissed her.

  He guided her to a pair of chairs where he could watch the entire lobby with the aid of several mirrors, and they ordered tea with lemon cake from a waiter in a tailcoat.

  “What are you looking at?” Bell asked. She was staring at him with a soft smile on her beautiful face.

  “You turned my life upside down.”

  “That was the earthquake,” he teased her.

  “Before the earthquake. The earthquake was only an interruption.”

  Ladies Marion Morgan’s age were supposed to have married years before, but she was a levelheaded woman who enjoyed her independence. At thirty, with years of experience supporting herself working as a senior secretary in the banking business, she had lived on her own since graduating with her law degree from Stanford University. The handsome, wealthy suitors who had begged for her hand in marriage had all been disappointed. Perhaps it was the air of San Francisco, so filled with endless possibilities, that gave her courage. Perhaps it was her education by handpicked tutors and her loving father after her mother died. Perhaps it was living in modern times, the excitement of being alive in the bold first years of the new century. But something had filled her with confidence and a rare ability to take real pleasure in the circumstance of being alone.

  That is, until Isaac Bell walked into her life and made her heart quicken as if she were seventeen years old and on her first date.

  I am so lucky, she thought.

  Isaac took Marion’s hand.

  For a long moment, he found it difficult to speak. Her beauty, her poise, and her grace never failed to move him. Staring into her green eyes, he finally said, “I am the happiest man in San Francisco. And if we were in New York right now, I would be the happiest man in New York.”

  She smiled and looked away. When she looked back to meet his eyes, she saw that his gaze had shifted to a newspaper headline: DITCHED!

  Train wrecks were a part of daily life in 1907, but to have a Los Angeles flyer crash and knowing that Isaac rode trains all the time was terrifying. Oddly, she worried less about the dangers in his work. They were real, and she had seen his scars. But to worry about Isaac encountering gunmen and knife fighters would be as irrational as fretting about a tiger’s safety in the jungle.

  He was staring at the paper, his face dark with anger. She touched his hand. “Isaac, is that train wreck about your case?”

  “Yes. It’s at least the fifth attack.”

  “But there is something in your face, something fierce, that tells me it is very personal.”

  “Do you remember when I told you abou
t Wish Clarke?”

  “Of course. He saved your life. I hope to meet him one day to thank him personally.”

  “The man who wrecked that train killed Wish,” Bell said coldly.

  “Oh, Isaac. I’m so sorry.”

  With that, Bell filled her in, as was his custom with her, detailing all he knew of the Wrecker’s attacks on Osgood Hennessy’s Southern Pacific Cascades Cutoff and how he was trying to stop them. Marion had a keen, analytical mind. She could focus on pertinent facts and see patterns early in their development. Above all, she raised critical questions that honed his own thinking.

  “Motive is still an open question,” he concluded. “What ulterior motive is driving him to such destruction?”

  “Do you believe the theory that the Wrecker is a radical?” Marion asked.

  “The evidence is there. His accomplices. The radical poster. Even the target—the railroad is a prime villain to radicals.”

  “You sound dubious, Isaac.”

  “I am,” he admitted. “I’ve tried to put myself in his shoes, tried to think like an angry agitator—but I still can’t imagine the wholesale slaughter of innocent people. In the heat of a riot or in a strike, they might attack the police. While I will not condone such violence, I can understand how a man’s thinking gets twisted. But this relentless attack on ordinary people ... such viciousness makes no sense.”

  “Could he be a madman? A lunatic?”

  “He could. Except that he is remarkably ambitious and methodical for a lunatic. These are not impulsive attacks. He plans them meticulously. And he plans his escape just as carefully. If it’s madness, it’s under fine control.”

  “He may be an anarchist.”

  “I know. But why kill so many people? In fact,” he mused, “it’s almost as if he is trying to sow terror. But what does he gain by sowing terror?”

  Marion answered, “The public humiliation of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company.”